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Submitted by Nathan on February 03 2001 14:00:51
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Welcome home! Sorry I didn't mail you earlier but I've been busy with work and stuff. But I saw "can you help me?" from back in January and I wanted to say something. First of all, you need to drop everything else and learn to love yourself a lot. I know just how you feel, because I spent years thinking I was the only person in the world who had these feelings. I knew I didn't want to hurt the boys because I loved them so much. But I couldn't get these thoughts out of my head that I wanted to do all thesde other things with them, and sometimes the other things were really bad, like rape and worse. For a long time I thought I was evil and I didn't know what do do because I couldn't tell anybody. What made it worse was that when I was 13-15 I kind of fooled around with some kids I was babysitting and after a while I got used to it. So even after I quit I always felt guilty and was afraid I would do it again. Well it took me a long time and a lot of therapy to figure this out so pay attention. There is a BIG difference between touching someone gently without hurting them, and raping them against their will. That's not to say that it's okay to use other people's bodies without their consent, but it's still not rape. And this is even more important. There is a HUGE difference between WANTING to rape somebody and actually DOING it. Everybody has feelings like that sometimes-- if they tell you they don't then they're in a lot of denial. It's okay to have feelings like that. It's not okay to DO it. But even if someone has done it before, it's okay as long as they don't do it AGAIN. So you have to get to know yourself and your feelings. You have to ask yourself, "Why am I fantasizing about doing something that I'd never actually do? Why am I convincing myself that I'm a predator when I'm really just lonely?" Here's what I came up with after I thought about this for a long time. First of all, don't get caught up in the whole idea of "sin." A lot of people who call themselves Christian are still caught in the idea that "God loves this and God hates that," so then you're forced into a choice: either believe that there's no God, or believe that God hates you, or believe that God will only love you if you're constantly breaking yourself to be perfect for Him. I don't like any of these options. If there is a God-- I believe there is but that's up to you-- then He loves EVERYTHING, especially you, because He made you. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to do the right thing, but you're not bad if you don't. God's not the voice in your head saying how you're not trying hard enough; He's the one saying, "You're trying too hard. Lighten up and let Me take care of it." A good friend of mine told me once, "If He's real, His love is unconditional. If He's not, it doesn't matter anyway." That helped me a lot. The next thing to do is to realize where you're thoughts of self-hatred are coming from. Everyone has them, so why? Well, as far as the whole boylove thing comes from, you've been told that your desires are bad ever since you were born BY OTHER PEOPLE. Well how should they know? They're not you. And they're not the person you're desiring-- how do they know that those kids don't want to be touched that way? And they're certainly not God, so they can quote the Bible all they want but there's no proof that they know what it means. You have to realize that your sexuality is between you, and the boy(s)/girl(s) who want, and God, if you believe in Him. It's nobody else's damn business. So now ask yourself: if you got the chance, would you REALLY hurt these boys? Or do you just want to be with them so badly that you'd do almost anything to be close to them? That's not rape. That's love. It's not our fault that the way we love is forbidden by our society. So naturally, when you can't have something that is perfectly okay just because someone else says it's not, you're going to get angry. You're going to start feeling "Fuck you! I'll take whatever I want!" And those feelings get mixed up with your sexuality, and, there you have it. What we all need to be doing here-- AND I HOPE EVERYONE IS READING THIS-- is to stop worrying so much about what Jesus wants and to start looking at how we can really come to live with our feelings. They're not going to go away just because we wish them away. Maybe if we pray hard enough? Yeah right. I tried that for years. God is not going to just make everything all better just because we ask Him to. That might have worked in Sunday school, but we're grown-ups now. We have to realize that it's up to us to develop a good sense of morality. So here is what it comes down to for me-- you have to decide what is best for you. I know this much: a) If I want to touch someone the same way that he or she wants to touched, that's okay-- even if it's something violent or dangerous like being tied up or hurt or something. b) If that person does not want to be touched that way, it's rape-- even if it's only something like touching a bum for a second or something. c) There are lots of things that are against the law even though they're ok and lot's of things that are legal even though they're not. The only way this is going to change is if we have the courage to DO WHATEVER WE WANT, EXCEPT VIOLATE OTHER PEROPLE'S FREE WILL. There have been lots of people who died in the past because they had the courage love the way they wanted. If they hadn't done that, think how bad the world would be. So we have the obligation to do the same thing, even though for the first 3 or 4 generations we will be hated and probably martyred. d) Having said that, it's still up to every person to decide just how much courage they want to show. The important thing is to learn how to turn your shame into a power. (That's the whole point of Christianity. It's why Jesus went to the Cross.) e) Fear of paedophilia is more about jealousy than anything else. It comes from treating kids like possessions instead of people who can think for themselves. They used to justify slavery by saying that blacks were biologically inferior-- their brains weren't mature enough to think for themselves. Then they said this about women to keep them from voting. And they say it about kids, too. But blacks and women had no choice-- they had to fight for their freedom. Since kids can grow up, we just tell them, "Don't worry about it. You can do whatever you want when you're older. And then we send them to schools to brainwash them so that by the time they're adults they actually think that they want what they've been told to want. f) But I talk to kids. And it's my experience that they're usually smarter than the adults because they can still think for themselves. The problem is that they have no experience. So they can get taken advantage of really easily. This is our basic problem. We can't expect them to understand what can happen to them if they decide to tell someone that they're sexually active. All they know is they're not supposed to be and something bad will happen if they are. Well, I remember being very sexually active, by myself, when I was 7. And the thing I regret the most was that I didn't act on it when I had the chance to experiment with other boys, because I was ashamed. I wish I had an older man to teach me how to enjoy my body, instead of an angry father who, I later found out, was so driven by guilty feelings because of his own teenage experiments with forbidden sex that he never made me feel like these feelings are ok. g) If a boy is involved with an older man he is almost guaranteed to believe later on that he has been taken advantage of, even if this is not the case. That's not to say that rape doesn't happen-- I'm really sorry about your Dad-- but what I mean is that our society doesn't teach people the difference between child molestation and child sexual love. So kids grow up hating themselves, and then, after years of therapry, they learn to hate their lover instead. So if we decide to get involved this way with a boy we need to realize that we may be setting them and us up for a life of suffering that the child can never understand. h) If they're old enough to want it, thet're old enough to get it. If they're not old enough to want it, they're not old enough to get it. When I was 14 I was DOING the molesting, so as far as protecting the innocent goes, I think that goes out the window once you hit puberty. i) The more outspoken you are on this topic the more people will watch you. So there is a trade-off. If you want to be sexually active you need to either keep your mouth shut or get the courage to face the consequences. j) Whatever else we do we have the obligation to educate our society about boylove and show that we are not the evil predators that everyone thinks. We just have another sexual orientation that's different, and it's our actions and the reasons we do them that makes us guilty or not. Here's what William Blake had to say: Children of a future age, Reading this indignant page, Know that in a former time A path to love was thought a crime. You know, they used to think anyone who grew tomatoes was a witch. Remember you are loved. Nathan |
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