Institutional abuse

Your linking abuse to repression of ones sexuality? Not sure I understand the direct connection. Would you mind elaborating on that?

 

ah, got it!

 

I do not see a direct coorrelation between sexual abuse and the effect it has on repression of someones sexuality, and that's what I thought you were suggesting.

 

I think that you need to take a step or two back and look at a bigger picture on this. Institutions such as boarding schools and care homes have been an environment that has cultivated abuse in many forms. The media likes nothing more than a scandalous sexual abuse story. They are not in it to bring justice to the injured, they are there to sell copy. So they continuously look at these stories from one angle.

In my expierience (I survived six years at boarding school) the way to control the school was by developing a culture of bullying. Older pupils bullied younger ones, the athletic pupils bullied the not so athletic ones and so on. It was a way to keep control. You lived your life in fear. Fear of being attacked because you liked different music, because you liked a certain style of clothes. The teachers look on And
a, do nothing
or
b, encourage it by picking on the vulnerable, giving permission by example to other pupils to do the same.
Within this culture sexual abuse is easy to implement. A caring teacher, showing compassion is a beacon of hope for the vulnerable victim.

That was a very general summery of the issues, but a fairly accurate one.

These types of institutions, such as boarding schools, do a great deal of damage. They are unnatural environments. Anyone coming to terms with their sexuallity is going to have a very tough time here. If they have been bullied for any other reason they will naturally do what they must to keep their sexual orientation from becoming common knowledge. This is a defence mechanism, the safety default. It is how we survived. It becomes second nature to hide who you are. You don't trust people.

OnTheHighway, you are right in a way that there is no direct correlation between sexual abuse and repressing ones sexuality. But sexual abuse is a small part of the picture. Fear of being outed, fear of being targeted, the verbal and physical abuse, the heightened state of awareness of events around you and keeping yourself out of the firing line, the lack of support by those who were meant to care for you. These are the reasons people repress their sexuality and other feelings. When you leave the institution and go out into the world, you find that those fears stay with you. They are what you know and you react in the only way you know to keep safe

 

I think you just described the broader reasoning why individuals go into the closet regardless of Institutions, boarding schools, churches, day schools, etc.

The events you described occur daily without limitation.

This is the fight most of us have struggled with.

You have articulated it well.

 

Thanks.

Obviously, I come form a particular view point. Each'institution ' will have their own particular issues, its a complex topic, one that really can't be summed up in a few paragraphs.

I shut down on anything that could endanger me, endanger my life, I'm not kidding. I had someone try and smash my head against a steel bed frame. It was all I could do to stop him fracturing my skull. You had no escape from violence it was always there in the background. Being gay was not something I wanted to be. It was a danger, I was a danger to myself. My only choice was to repress my feelings.

The repression of ones sexuality is the minds way of protecting the person from the type of harm that they are being subjected to.

 

Hugs both you guys!

 

(*hug*)Sorry, Brainwashed. Hope I've not dragged up too much in the way of nightmares.

Thanks OnTheHighway

 

Triggers, Triggers - Sexual abuse and repression of feelings, growing up living in constant fear of disclosure. Here comes 50, having the EC community to support my transition from scared boy into strong gay man. Thanks all! -J

 

Thank you Boatman for an incredible perspective on this issue! I often wonder too how parents could be so naive about all this. For me, going to Catholic School in the 60's was absolutely horrible. I guess our parents saw "discipline" as a good thing. Truth is, that discipline was just one of many forms of abuse inflicted on children. I'm not angry that our parents didn't see it . They were brought up under the same or even worse circumstances. But, if a teacher today tried to bully and physically abuse my daughter the way it was dished out to us back then, I think Id be driven to violence. I heard about this latest case this morning. I hope the abusers and even more so, those who turned a blind eye to the abuse, all rot in hell. The pain they inflicted didn't end when students packed up and left. It lasted their entire lives.

 

My extended family is largely made up of people who belong to an *extremely* conservative religious group. (You've probably never heard of them unless you grew up in some specific, very rura,l parts of midwestern USA.) I can pretty easily identify members of this group out in public based only on how they dress and manage their hair. I kind of feel like this religion can be compared to an institution. There's a lot of really direct teaching about women being submissive to men. And almost all forms of sexuality that are not sex between a married man and woman for the sole purpose of reproducing is forbidden. So you end up with a whole bunch of people who are trying desperately to repress any of their sexuality and who also have some scary power differentials between men and women. Veey bad things happen pretty often. Also you end up with families who have a ridiculous number of children because birth control is forbidden --huge families with not enough money have under-supervised kids. And in this religion most of the under-supervised kids are being raised in a culture where they.are led to believe that females should submit to males . Lots of abuse happens,.even amongst the children. Also, NO ONE is gay. I've actually never heard these people denounced homosexuality they simply never ever ever discuss the existence of people who are not straight. (And TV is forbidden as being too "worldly"'so there are also a lot of seriously sheltered people. ) And there sure as hell aren't any openly gay people around in these communities.

I was sexually abused by older cousins as a child. That history of abuse served as an excellent distraction from noticing I was gay. I thought I didn't have crushes on men because I was messed up from abuse. Also I was swimming in shame about the fact that I'd had sexual experiences at all, and it never occurred to me to try be tuned into who I was sexually attracted to AND I was SURROUNDED by people who just didn't acknowledge the existence of non-straight people. So, maybe it's not a huge surprise that I didn't figure out that I was gay until I was 39. I had a lot of shit to wade through to get down to just the essence of WHO I WAS beneath the trauma and the effects of spending a lot of time in a weird culture.

 

And for what it's worth no one in the household I grew up in was a member of this church (though when we went to church, which was quite often, this was the church we went to). I grew up with TV. But all of my cousins (I have a lot of.them), except for one I rarely saw, were raised in this religion and my grandparents were of this religion and I spent a lot of time in these communities.

 

In my case they lied to my mother (my father died before I went away). So everything that was wrong, everything that I criticised was me, I was at fault. You end up believing things about your self that are not true. I do have issues with my mum, I'm not that close to her and it is because I can't trust her, like I can't trust other people.

yeehaw, it's not really anything to do with a particular religion, or upbringing, and you put is so well. It is about that imbalance in power. When one way of thinking dominates a group. Even when you are kind of outside of that main power base the ripples still rock your boat.

 

Yip, unloveable. I would question why people wanted to be my friend, and I still do. There were so many things that I had to hide, sexuality being one, but it was not hidden any more than others areas that I was vulnerable about.
I think I was fortunate In That my grandmother was very supportive of me. She'd send me money and I'd by alcohol, so I only resented my mother because she would not take my side, she believed the lies she was fed. What hurts there is that it's taken so long for her to believe me, and only after the schools abuse was exposed. In her eyes up until two years ago I was overly sensitive and the school was good for me.
I felt I never deserved to be happy. One thing that's scared me was how good sex with men felt, I did not deserve such pleasure. After all I was a failure, not accademic, not athletic. What I realise now was I suffered depression in silence, attempting suicide on a couple of occasions. My accademic failure was not because I was stupid, but because I was ill.
My mental health and beliefs in myself have hindered me so much in life. All because a group of men, inadequate in their teaching abilities, and warped by religious and political beliefs thought they had power over me.