WARNING: EXPLICIT IMAGERY & COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE

"i believe you" : Show Me Your Life, Sexwork

these are the people... we do not exist familiar in any room/ as long as we remain invisible, you never have to look at our little black books/ at who our tricks were (in some cases still are)/ their husbands and their fathers and their brothers and their girlfriend’s husband, too, and their ministers and their doctors and their stockbrokers and their cops and their politicians and their bosses and their co-workers and their colleagues and their priests and the people they tell their secrets to/ these are the people who pay to fuck us/

sexwork is by Tim Barrus

Sexwork is a tent.

Sexwork is a tent of secrets in a desert of ideas and desire.

Sexwork is theatre, drudgery, strained, bring your grist to the mill, boy, shallow, off the deep end, timeless, telling, art, judgement, crucial to the species, helios looming with the sun; sexwork is as ancient as you can get.

The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

When Alexander’s army marched across the face of what was Persia, the long line of physical support, animals for protein, rice for carbohydrate, and wine for drink, was so long it stretched to the horizon. At the end of that line was the jackass as beast of burden, and the whores. Pulling up the tail end.

Humanity has poisoned the earth. There are too many homo homo sapiens walking upright. Even as man continues to gravitate to an urban context, the planet is overcrowded by the likes of us. Sexwork is crucial to the species because it would be unimaginable if every impregnation resulted in yet another child, and yet another child, and yet another starving child. Sexwork is cultural birth control.

I never failed at getting any of them to cum. Often, I would tie them up, and they would cum at the touching of my eyelash.

If you added up all the efforts of all the financial foundations on the planet, the United Nations, the World Bank, Soros, Ford, Gates, Rockefeller, HHMI, you would find a focus on biomedical research, viral pharmacology, the demographics of infectious disease, distribution networks of condoms for the truck drivers, and the whores, and the slaves of the world; you would also find an institutional disgust camouflaged by upper-class mannerisms, bureaucratic paperwork analysis, and discussions at international conferences where the idea of sexworkers as a single, driving, social entity is an illusion juxtaposed against a reality where sexworkers are commonly arrested, connected to organized crime at the hip, and the consumers of more illicit drugs than any other subgroup on every continent there is including Antarctica. There is no sex in Antarctica. Yes, there is. Anywhere there is sex there is the selling of it.

What you would not find at the funding level is one iota of understanding or compassion. These foundations, these people, especially at the Gates Foundation, wish they were not spending their money on HIV/AIDS. In fact, many of them have stopped spending money on this problem of pandemic proportions, in favor of something they feel they can have an impact on such as malaria.

“We were not prepared for the complexity of AIDS,” Bill Gates says. His eyes widen. Like a deer in headlights. “AIDS is a real problem for humanity.”

No kidding.

The AIDS pandemic has eluded all the smart people. And yet it is a single strand of genetic retrovirus. But it’s ability to mutate is far more prolific than a consortium of corporations’ ability to distribute drugs to the people who need them to stay alive. AIDS has been one scientific dead end after another. None of the individuals in any of these places knows a single person infected by HIV. And, like most of the aristocracy, they find such realities as whores (geishas are merely interesting) to be repellant. If the perception of HIV as a gay disease has moved from the funding consciousness, and who can testify that it, in fact, really has, transcending sexuality to the funding consciousness of class (where only the lower classes are infected because they cannot and will not control themselves, the animals; this is the religious missionary legacy), in which the numbers of the dead alone rival numbers from world wars, their rapacious understanding of how sexwork works, and what sexwork is, remains fundamentally stunted, stuck is the morality of the Nineteenth-Century, and is as ignorant as any set of cloven hooves. Bio-medical research fiddledeedee. They couldn’t tell you how many border crossings a whore will have to negotiate as he/she/it (they see us as subhuman) rides in the back of a truck for a week of fleeing revolution.

Whores get killed in revolutions. The male of the species is often unable to distinguish sex from violence as he is able to comprehend that the line between homicide and suicide is infinitesimal. He didn’t want to kill it. But he did. Revolutions come with guns. The kind of guns males do not willingly surrender when they enter the sexwork tent.

None of the people in the foundations will tell you that. Because they don’t know shit about sex and they are conflicted. The National Institutes of Health in Betheda sees sex itself as a psychiatric and biological problem to be solved. Or not. Mainly or not.

Revolutions are bad for business. There is little profit in a dead whore. They will not tell you that. The graphic posters on the New York Transit system will not tell you that. I will tell you that.

HIV gives the big girls a convenient out. The organism is so small it requires an extraordinary effort to get the focus right, the thing is minute, in order to develop a comprehension of its sub-atomic particles, the science must be funded, and funded, and funded.

It is sexwork that greases the wheels of disease. Include tuberculosis in that paradigm. The educated sexworker in contemporary culture will tell you that every sexworker they know is rigidly committed to safe sex.  And perhaps they are (this is not my experience). But none of them are working Bangkok, or surviving in North Africa, or working a corner in Nairobi. To understand how sexwork moves like liquid across a map and renders all borders figments of the imagination, there is only one criteria. Follow the money. The line of whores always forms at the back.

Our understanding of prostitution is the equivalent of our understanding of a retrovirus. The analogy is no accident. The longitude and latitude of prostitution is a sublineation underlining caste and financial caricature.

Humanity will never defeat HIV. Like sexwork, it’s here to stay. There is much evidence to indicate that the rich have opted for expedience.

So let us talk of sexwork. Sexwork is a commodity ordinarily seen as the renting of a body. Sexwork is actually the renting of a brain.

I am going to write a series of essays dealing with sexwork. I am doing this for free. Why. So I can say what I want to say without having to adopt the milieus and languages of corporate culture. These are designed to obfuscate as is scientific culture and language. You get what you pay for. In sexwork and in writing. Every whore I know is a writer. But every writer I know is not a whore. Giving them what they want was never my approach to prostitution. Giving you what I want is my modus operandi stretching far beyond Alexander’s reign of conquest. Survival is the beginning and the end. The concept is: We will have what you think is sex for money where I am the one who gets paid, and you are the one who buys my skill and time. But there is only one conquest in sexwork. You are alive today. Or you are dead. There is a middle ground. It’s not a conquest or a winning. It’s not exactly losing either. It’s murky, and it’s a riddle, and it’s conflicted with shadows, questions, obligations, bones, laundry, scars, sadism, contamination, facility, craft, camels through the eyes of needles, tricks among the travelers, superstitions, and skill, and traps. The people conversant with the realities of sexwork include children (male and female), and adults, (male and female). In other words. Us. The people who practice sexwork range from the janitor who mops the flood of a Parisian bordello to the whore in the bed. Just because you aren’t getting fucked does not mean you are not doing sexwork.

When I was editing Drummer and Mach magazines, it was sexwork. The real money was in selling what I wrote. As in notoriety. The notoriety was public relations. Call me. It will cost you.

This space will explore what sexwork is.

“Aren’t you the top who could tie me up and make me cum with barely an eyelash.”

Notoriety travels, too.

Sexwork is a very big tent of duplicity, transparency, irons in a fire, beguilement, pharmacopoeia, truth, a glimmering visibility staked to the ground in the dead, vast, and middle of the night.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

Article 5.

• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 8.

• Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 12.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 22.

• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 27.

• (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
• (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

CENSORSHIP

Real Stories Gallery asks journalists, attorneys and censors to please bear in mind the destructive power associated with re-presenting visual imagery and/or words.

BOYS subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation within our neighbourhoods around the world, are exposed to and infected with HIV, as well as to new strains of HIV that evolve as this retrovirus mutates.  Tim Barrus & Cinematheque Films raise AWARENESS of HIV/AIDS and explore the consequences of the crimes committed against hundreds of thousands of boys around the world TODAY. Boys whose voices have been and are silenced by too many adults.

**No Boys have been HURT by Tim Barrus during the creation of this visual poetry. Cinematheque Films: Arts Education: Students are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Representations and facsimiles posted here are presented as teaching tools and instruments employed to instruct students in the techniques and application of mixed media art and collage. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows art-teaching entities the fair use of such materials in classroom and teaching-research applications.

timothée barrus

dirty little secrets only have whatever power we give them

i am writing for 30 kids who live in a shelter for battered boys and whose therapeutic focus is an art program

Cinematheque is a residential 24/7 art program that serves as a safe house protection for male adolescents with HIV/AIDS, who are also at risk for psychological, neurological, and developmental disabilities due to sexual abuse, gang violence, addiction, human trafficking, and cyclical prostitution.

The boys are reached and educated through painting, music, photography, video, film, dance, poetry, mentoring, and intensive counseling.

The idea of a safe house is fundamentally based on the dynamics of protection from what brought them here. Witnesses of a time and of a place. While the boys are very connected to the outside world through the interactive use of technology, their contact with that world is monitored in such as way as to prevent contact and/or relationships with abusers, pedophiles, and people from their past who would harm them.

The boys are thusly encouraged to utilize such features as banning within the context of social networks. Communications with the boys that are deemed as sexual invites will be banned immediately. Stalking, either physical or electronic, will not be tolerated and is specifically prohibited by EU law. Stalking is defined by us as seeking contact with boys who have either banned people or have requested that they be left alone. Any subsequent attempt to either arrange to physically meet a boy or continue electronic communication is reported to EU authorities.

Attempts to communicate with the boys that involve asking them questions about their personal lives, histories, relationships, legal status, physical whereabouts, private email addresses, or sexual preferences are regarded as stalking and will be dealt with accordingly.

We are a SAFE environment where boys at risk learn to empower themselves through the self-actualization and educational modalities of art.

that would be me/ still alive yet buried in the rubble/

timothée barrus/ how everything turns away/ all the old men are dangerous

we’re dead anyway/ i see them as if they were horses/ they have turned away the night/ far gone in stippled blueish-grey/ caught up by the old men who would herd them into the conduits/ granted tombs, pits, banishment from entire kingdoms into wild where the kicking up its life containing whatever exists of menace above the trees of men/ the old academic crones are dangerous — they would fit you into the status quo/ for darkness, blood, stones; death awaits the slaughterhouse/ tell the bones being such frames of us, lives and grows these years of streets for those who cum to play and pay to let out their rage and speak directly to the music of the marches/ the sun climbs in / such skateboards in what appears to be translucent exhortation similarly plastered on the walls of time/ for a rock even and flocking where/ o you fell then suddenly emerge from a concrete floor whose ascending shadows are, in fact, concentric shocks, what heavens will attend to unsuspected viral loads almost worn away against his better judgment back behind us like the rings around the moon in bright and thundering formation must be counted in the bloodstream’s complex twist/ i have always seen them like the burning herd of horses that they are/ pegasus whose memories of wings were not confined to metal cages where a nail was shot into your head robed in pretty pink and grease-stained floors/ the dim-lit hospital rooms and boundary lines of after all how many of them can the land support beyond contamination/ madness leads the inner selves to theatre’s stunning audience of whores who themselves tho remain nomadic in the rounding up where the running through the dust of risk that the nail could be for them finished with its meat-packing protocols of blessing in disguise/ such a stallion’s noise when mounted by a man or another stallion, unborns where the tongues and wanting rubs the asshole clean/ the lure will come crashing to its roots of plunder — whipped on and slapped — the sun to swirl its milk in throats and thighs to be released back into a wilderness unbending where when man arrives and upon the salt and licks inundate our breathing sleep; our speaking spoke of speaking and our boots outrun by longing that spills so deep within us, the impudent among us can be counted on to kick the doors in/ how everything turns away/ the afterglow unfolding/ the stirrups still clinging to the groin and to the bed/  yet still the landscape as seen from above in flights/ falls away in ruin faster than a horse can gallop/

timothée barrus/ desire inside the gliding skull

at the core of the thing we have the individual/ you; solo, the secret in the knots of blood/ small wonder, eyes with hallows where the wars go in/ culture wars to dress the dead, the body is a wretch/ it covers grief and sin/ only in an instant, one shadow that flows to the rhythm and servitude of the species/ a rootless dream, you, throbbing like the night around me/ gnashes its teeth/ you/ boy/ scarecrow/ with a bloody grin/ there are those who say the past of old men hacks and cuts away at time/ you/ old man/ your sunless bones risen from the earth in secret, the ripening of rivers listening and remembering the pain like dust upon our faces/ you/ touching toward the dark emptiness of self/ your ominous wings and fatal weeping i have your answer/ existence burning away your impotence/ body counts/ building tombs of avid pour/ those long nights of swimming through regret slash/ we lived them and the stake; drifting back, the wind died down/ as all our old lovers have/ you pull/ on/ into my rippled youth/ you boy/ pushing through an eternity of release and mutilation/

“In Summa” © Paul A. Toth (USA)

In Summa: So that man may respect himself, he must be capable of doing evil - Nietzsche

(response to timothée barrus/ desire inside the gliding skull)

near the pounding riggery
we live in all our piratry
eat oiled eel with scalloped rust
of peeling ships swirled to dust
in water funnels spun at dusk
nothing permitted
everything forbidden
we live without conviction
made prone to perversion
by energized pollution
spurning the most spidery fruition
beyond the tension of comprehension
father and son watch daughter roast
a holier note than He can host

at sunrise time unwinds
while we seek our own demise
how the clock burns the flesh
in narcissistic revolutions
until anxiety roots itself in earth
and sprays a nervous gas
upon our trenches
we sound the horns
throw monkey wrenches
as papers beat upon the rocks
warning us the bulls
will only doze so long

and yet they speak
of right and wrong
diatribes to diabetics
allergic to their sugared ethics
turning deaf and dumb
entirely senseless
we push elongation
of our fences
and like Quixote
lacking windmills
operate a circus of dementia
while the century in early sun
still reels in the previous one

trying to digest
my daughter's kidneys
the soldiers lie
in arms of lovers
of noxious fumes
beyond suppression
some call this primal regression
but look to me for explanation
I've inhaled annihilation
it is that to which we were born
and from that which we've been shorn

timothée barrus/ talk don't change a thing

talk don’t change a thing/ o it’s fading for ya/ words don’t sink, they swim/ o it’s fading for ya/ the olive clutches of damascus were far but not so far i could not sail away/ it works like a universe tonight by snakes/ setting sail for the speechless cities of the barbarous night strapped against my father’s breast/ we stood there mute for the longest time just watching her dance in her madness further and further away until she was the size of an ovum/ o mama/ daddy/ how can it be a surprise i/ love the people i love/ time coming down/ no sleep at all/ whores and thieves and we’re all going to fall/ my mother’s dancing in her ornaments could suspend reality for a time/ like the light through trees/ you do not believe my life/ it is not what you know/ to me it is just a life/ i lose track of how unusual it is to other people/ i, too, cannot imagine their lives/ freud has his inappropriate list of analogies/ mumbojumbo/ but i do not care about him and find people who ape that swill annoying/ do not go there with me/ get your sacred sigmund out of my face/ he is diseased by the cold and the smells of mold and fungi in his empty house/ my house was never empty it was filled with hate mostly for me/ he who has stayed forever/ with his copper wings green as a cadillac/ daddy is home from work and he will have you now/ his whores of fish and lipstick on his factory skin and i could smell them out in the cheap perfume of their woolworth stones/ your mind racing as he mauled you in your ten-thousand years of loneliness/ if you so much as made a sound, he would throw you naked into the unforgiving wall/ grab your hair and pound your face into the death of salt with death again and the only time he had ever regarded you with anything like regard was that one time you begged him to kill you — kill me now, daddy — break my skull in this foxhole you give me to live in and there she was/ my mother in her violent robes/ screaming at him to give it to me/ harder/ fuck him in the mouth until he breaks in two/ stands the man whose fists are never finished/ mother, what was wrong with you/ to unleash this whip and there was no home to crawl to/ his withering and i will shut my eyes/ i wore rags until i could move away/ the physical gauntlet i could take/ the rags were unmended like sawdust falling to the stage/ the boy hired for his hours to float like angels above the neon moon and lick daddy clean of deadly dreams, desire, and summer’s tombs, she dances toward the treeline twirling at my fields asleep in blood/ she drank her water from the pond and tortured the torturers’ wounded hours with exile from her vacant motherhood of love/ i was just a piece of meat to beat to them/ always dreaming of escape/ once joined/ there was no going back/ and when they died torn down and torn away and torn from the shreds they had salvaged/ a circumstance of dancing so far apart and falling/ i could only shudder at what flesh was left/ my bones were gone to aids/ all the letting go and narrowing/ i had moved and was living alone somewhere in damascus o/ how can it be a surprise i love/ the people i love/ time coming down/ no sleep at all/ whores and thieves and we’re all going to fall/ talk don’t change a thing/ o it’s fading for ya/ words don’t sink, they swim/ o it’s fading for ya/ o damascus/

“egrets, irisses.  hacking away the time” © Aad de Gids (The Netherlands)

(response to  - timothée barrus/ desire inside the gliding skull)

how to describe this vortex of disconnected and disidentitised flashes of images, comprised with words, saviors, pushers, hookers.

they hook a meaning, to set then, the john free, with his pompous impression of satisfaction.

a john is a fix.

in leaving a john is a fix.

in coming a john already was the fix, kleenex his dick and swap your vulva and get that motherfucking fix.

what is life, also those bonbonlives, other then working the johns as soon as possible out of the door and get your fix.

car 54 where are you?

even if you live the bonbonlife, dressed in lanvin, living on the rue feaubourgh saint-honoré, or on madison avenue, or on willshire boulevard, or bond street or in omotesando, your oscar de la renta dresses or your hawkes&gieves suits couldn’t hide the fact of your hide, your skin, your bones.

only those with the limoges-bones or the pain dusted away in the dust of a silver sparkle, of an unsurmountable zest for life, or just of an unironic affirmation of life in all its facets, can see that existence is burning away impotence, when seen besides a venereological or urogenital or sexuopsychological context we can pick this up in the curtains of life, its’ theatre, its’ antichambres, and, simply, say and see, that life and time are hacking away, also and precise where you live the bonbonlife, excluding nastyness or sacrilège.  the riverial alluvial memory remembers your pains in dusts, in dusks.

now we’re entrapped inside your grimases and your throbbings as the night around us, distant barking, distant lights.

there are people who remember the future.

they live FFWD.

that is tim, whom i love in all gestallts, whom is to be loved, to relieve long nights of regrets with visions of autumnal migrating egrets and the luxe scent of irisses.

timothée barrus/ The Field They Burned

i was seven when the fire came racing for the house/ the back field where i played was burning and roaring like a train/ the one that ran along the grand river down at potter's park where they kept the lions/ that fire never had a chance not with my father fighting it with shovels/ we never did discover who set that fire/ you're standing there looking at death coming toward you and for the first time in your stupid existence you understand that everything can end in a second/ all we knew is that my father had a lot of enemies/

i would be one from time to time/ the pain of knowing him and loving him was carried piecemeal through all the old silences/ the fuckin' irish/ chin up/ timothy patrick/ trouble is/ the ink has smeared on the postmarks of the places we no longer lived/ it was painful to know and love him/ i never did tell him i had aids/ he begged me to come to him i refused and he died alone/ the trip to his deathbed could not be made/ i could barely make it down the stairs of the mountain cabin i was living in/ aids is, in fact, a whole laundry list of diagnosis/ this was a bone disease called avascular necrosis/ yes/ it rhymes/ for effect/ more longfellow than whitman/ god i can't stand longfellow/

whitman at least cums from a long line of fellow literate cocksuckers/

i know/ i know/ we are all dying/ jesus fucking christ i could be cursed to live in this body for another hundred years/ avascular necrosis means your bones are dying/ ahhhh, now to the marrow of it/ i'm irish like the headboard and the bed/ the dull fingers from that field on fire spoke to me of smothering/ i could not attend my father's funeral because i couldnafucking walk/ he's running toward the fire with his shovels/ and all the old smoldering silences between us/

here's to liquor and fists, maynard/ we all have to leave our weapons somewhere/ lovers, poets, goats, and children, now/ i never understood the thing with guns -- seriously, it was a mystery to me all my life it was just guns, guns, guns; i thought everyone lived with guns like we did but they didn't and they don't -- until belfast and there it was/ the shadows of something looking so bleakly leaden at myself/ fuukin'gunsdaddy/ i'm dying here in my bones, old man, the paralysis of words/ a fuukin'poet anafailure forason/ pauses in the lovemakin' your cock up my ass i'm the son i can say it/ you wanted it so why not all the other men i sold it to/

ahh the irish in my head and in my bed i am alone/ headboards and footboards/ the red hair flowing like the stars, daddy/ trouble is/ indifference isn't even irish/ they called us blond but we knew better/ we have seen our pubic hair/ i shaved my head tonight and went out and faced the wall, old man/ i do that from time to time/ in fact, i will do just about anything to end the pain from these dying bones that are determined to die before the body does/ it's a strange disease/ what aids/ that, too/ stephen's surname is spelled daedalus the architect in greek myth who was contracted by minos to build the labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife's son, the minotaur i would suggest we simply simply fly and so i do/ errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery/

i shall try to fly by those nets, daddy/ the last one was called dilaudid/ the drugs don't work anymore, you see/ it's just us and the pain, old man/ isn't that how it was supposed to be/ so let us build the fuuckin' labyrinth and they can't come in because if they did they might find out the secret is we're lost/ now, they'll be wantin' to leave their facebook comments nice poem powerful truly a lovely poem you've written here magnificent it's the cliches, ya know/ but here the worst one and it stops me in my tracks/

inspirational/

you want it inspirational, now do ya/ oh, a little leipreachán glitter here and there/ i've shaved me head and i'm facing the friggin' wall, woman, and you're leavin' me a cliche to chew on are ye, oh daddy you nailed'em you really did/ i'm dying on the cliches, daddy/ pauses in the lovemaking/ you may take your cock out now/ i'm not that irish/ you know that field has been burning and comin' at me all this time, daddy/ tortured men in the stockade and mama's not even in this dream/ peeling potatoes written fifty years ago jeanann/ the truth is that we were all violently asleep in that old house even as you burned it down/ i am tired of walking those cliche streets/ o dublin/ o paris/ moving with our shovels blindly towards the door/

do not open it/ inspirational/ i shaved my head/ i swear to you i did i will take a photograph in the morning and i will publish it in facebook/ the wall, the wall/

trouble is/ the thing itself and not the myth/ we all leave our weapons somewhere/

"Sexual Abuse: Surviving the Pain" by Barabara E. Bogorad, Psy.D., A.B.P.P.

Founder and Former Director, Sexual Abuse Recovery Program Unit, South Oaks Hospital, New York

Introduction

Reported incidents of child sexual abuse are markedly on the rise. What is especially shocking is the fact that these reports represent only a small portion of actual occurrences of sexual abuse. Incest affects individuals and families regardless of class, income, profession, religion or race. The statistics are truly alarming. It is currently estimated that one-third of all children are sexually abused before the age of 18. This includes 40% of all females and 30% of all males. The vast majority of these reports involve very young children, below age seven.

Every year in this country, two million children are brutally beaten or sexually abused. 340,000 new cases were reported in 1989 (U.S. Advisory Board, April, 1991). Of these abused children, 3,000 to 5,000 die every year. In New York State alone, 200 bodies of sexually and physically abused children are found each year and not even identified. These are the ultimate victims.

Children who are neglected or sexually abused are known to have lower IQs and an increased risk of depression, suicide and drug problems. Abused children are 53% more likely to be arrested as juveniles, and 38% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime. During preschool years, abused children are more likely to get angry, refuse direction from teachers, and lack enthusiasm. By the time they reach grade school, they are more prone to being easily distracted, lacking in self-control, and not well-liked by peers. ^l

Myths

There are many commonly held beliefs about sexual abuse. One is that abusers are always men. In fact, reports of female perpetrators are on the rise, involving both male and female victims. At least 5% of abusers are known to be women. Another myth is that the abuser is usually a stranger. More than 70% of abusers are immediate family members or someone very close to the family. Remember - bad guys don't always look bad; they're often the people we love. A third myth is that the abuser is always hated. Often the victim loves and protects the perpetrator. Some children feel "special" about the abuse. It may be the only attention or physical contact they're getting. Because of this, some survivors even into adulthood will deal with the abuse by minimizing it. Thus, they make the abuser and the events "OK", to make it feel like they're okay. An additional myth is that only females are sexually abused. In fact, 30% of all male children are molested in some way, compared to 40% of females.

Occurrence of Abuse

If you are one of the survivors, you are acutely aware that these numbers represent much more than statistics. They represent the pain and anguish and shattered dreams of so many individuals. You are also aware, if you are a survivor, that it's often not the mysterious stranger in a trench coat who commits this type of crime. Typically it's a friend, a parent, someone you love and trust - and it often happens at home. The effects of this kind of brutal betrayal are shattering and may last a lifetime.

Specialists in the addiction field (alcohol, drugs and eating disorders) estimate that up to 90 percent of their patients have a known history of some form of abuse. Recent studies (Calam, 1989²; Blume, 1989³) point out that substance abuse, including "food abuse," is a frequent aftermath of early sexual abuse. Current studies (Koopmans, 1990⁴) demonstrate that the vast majority of children and adolescents who attempt suicide have a history of sexual abuse as well. However, many individuals are resistant to seeking treatment for sexual abuse. This is especially true for males and adolescents. Men are often extremely reluctant to admit to any history of abuse and often fail to identify it as such. Many survivors are in denial of the effects of early abuse and may fail to see any connection with later tendencies toward ongoing abusive relationships, feelings of self-loathing, inability to trust, or problems with intimacy. Some patients denigrate themselves further, claiming that their abuse could not have been "as bad" as that of other victims. All abuse is bad.

Defining Sexual Abuse

The diversity of examples and case histories may lead one to ask, "What is sexual abuse?" There are many definitions. One of the most succinct is provided by the Incest Survivors Resource Network.⁵ They state "the erotic use of a child, whether physically or emotionally, is sexual exploitation in the fullest meaning of the term, even if no bodily contact is ever made." This last point - "no bodily contact" - is crucial. A parent who exposes a child to intercourse or deviant sexual behaviors or pornographic materials is abusing that child. New York State law now clarifies that such abuse is a crime. The law defines a sexually abused child as one whose parent or person legally responsible for the child's care, commits, allows to be committed, permits or encourages a sex offense against the child, including prostitution, incest, obscene sexual performance or sexual conduct.

Sexual abuse in the extreme includes ritual and cult abuse. Ritual abuse involves a specific rite or form in which the abuse is encapsulated. Cult abuse embraces a "religious" or spiritual belief system, usually Satanic. Cults may consist of individual "dabblers" or small, isolated groups. They may also include generations within families or whole segments of communities. They operate by destroying all bonding for their victims, and surrounding the child with total unpredictability or powerlessness. Drugs or trickery may be employed...sometimes even murder.

Defining Incest

Incest was traditionally defined as sex between close relatives. But incest is, above all, abuse; abuse by the very person(s) entrusted with the child's care. Incest is "any use of a minor child to meet the sexual or sexual/emotional needs of one or more persons whose authority is derived through ongoing emotional bonding with that child."⁶

Incest is especially common in alcoholic families, where judgment and boundaries are impaired. If the perpetrator always commits the act while under the influence of alcohol or some other substance, (s)he may have no memory of the events. Victims also may or may not remember. The trauma may be so severe that part or all of the abuse is blocked from conscious memory. This may continue for many years until something triggers a "flashback," although the effects of the abuse, emotionally or behaviorally, continue all along. The protective role of such blocking must be explained to patients who may, in fact, experience increasing flashbacks as treatment continues.

My own growing awareness of this led to the start of the Survivors' Group Program at South Oaks Hospital in July, 1988. I began with five women patients. Within a year and a half, I was easily able to expand the groups and the program to include six times that many patients from the hospital - men and women, adolescents and adults. This grew into a full-scale Sexual Abuse Recovery Program with inpatient, outpatient, and aftercare components. It was the first unit of its kind on the East Coast, and was unique for Long Island, despite the pervasiveness of individuals with life problems stemming from a background of abuse. Survivors are everywhere.

Reporting Sexual Abuse

Health professionals are legally obligated by New York State to report suspected child abuse when there exists reasonable cause to suspect. Absolute certainty is not required. The professional may be civilly or criminally liable if no report is made and is provided legal immunity for making the report. The call is made to the New York State Central Register of Child Abuse (1-800-342-3720). Anyone may call this number to report suspected abuse.

Identifying Abused Children

No child is psychologically prepared to deal with ongoing or intensive sexual stimulation. Even very young children, two or three years old, may sense that the sexual activity is "wrong," but they are unable to stop it. Children are frequently threatened that if they tell anyone, they will be killed or sent away, or their puppy will be killed; or their whole family will breakup.

Children subjected to sexual over-stimulation, with or without threats, will develop problems. Those older than five years of age become caught between loyalty to or dependence on the perpetrator, and shame at doing something "wrong." Over time, the child develops low self-esteem, feelings of being worthless or "dirty," and an abnormal view of sexuality.

How do you recognize such children? There are many signs:

Withdrawal and mistrust of adults

Suicidality

Difficulty relating to others except in sexual or seductive ways

Unusual interest in or avoidance of all things sexual or physical

Sleep problems, nightmares, fears of going to bed

Frequent accidents or self-injurious behaviors

Refusal to go to school, or to the doctor, or home

Secretiveness or unusual aggressiveness

Sexual components to drawings and games

Neurotic reactions (obsessions, compulsiveness, phobias)

Habit disorders (biting, rocking)

Wears long sleeves in hot weather (to hide bruises?)

Unusual sexual knowledge or behavior

Prostitution

Forcing sexual acts on other children

Extreme fear of being touched

Unwillingness to submit to physical examination

Specific physical indicators of recent sexual abuse include:

Difficulty in walking or sitting

Torn, stained or bloody clothing

Pain or itching in genital area

Bruises or bleeding in genital area or mouth

Pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, especially in preteens

Repeated urinary infections or genital blockages

Identifying Adults Abused As Children

The effects of early sexual abuse last well into adulthood, affecting relationships, work, family, and life in general. Individual symptomatology tends to fall into four areas: ⁷

1. Damaged goods: Low self-esteem, depression, self-destructiveness (suicide and self-mutilation), guilt, shame, self-blame, constant search for approval and nurturance.

2. Betrayal: Impaired ability to trust, blurred boundaries and role confusion, rage and grief, difficulty forming relationships.

3. Helplessness: Anxiety, fear, tendency towards re-victimization, panic attacks.

4. Isolation: Sense of being different, stigmatized, lack of supports, poor peer relations.

Adult incest survivors may demonstrate some of the following symptoms:

Fear of the dark, fear of sleeping alone, nightmares, night terrors

Difficulty with swallowing, gagging

Poor body image, poor self-image in general

Wearing excessive clothing

Addictions, compulsive behaviors, obsessions

Self-abuse, skin-carving (also addictive),

Suicidality

Phobias, panic attacks, anxiety disorders, startle response

Difficulties with anger/rage

Splitting/ de-personalization, shutdown under stress

Issues with trust, intimacy, relationships

Issues with boundaries, control, abandonment

Pattern of re-victimization, not able to say "no"

Blocking of memories, especially between age one and 12

Feeling crazy, different, marked

Denial, flashbacks

Sexual issues and extremes

Multiple personalities

Signs of posttraumatic stress disorder

Certain issues appear repeatedly. For example, victims typically blame themselves for the abuse, even if they were two or three years old at the time of the event. Guilt and shame are expressed, along with intense feelings of rage⁸

If the rape or molestation was committed by an individual of the same sex (i.e., a man abusing a boy), questions regarding sexual orientation tend to arise in the patient ("I must be gay; after all, a man raped me!"). Female victims will frequently develop sexually promiscuous lifestyles in an effort to "conquer" the situation and bring it under their control. In other instances individuals will largely withdraw from any social or sexual interactions in order to avoid the feared stimuli, and turn toward extremely isolated lives.

The connection that is made for victims between sex and pain (love and humiliation, closeness and betrayal) is a particularly disastrous one. Frequently patients will express and/or demonstrate the belief that the only way to be loved or cared for is if they are also being abused ("I knew if I didn't let him keep beating me, I'd always be alone"). Often, in the extreme, physical and sexual abuse are even viewed as a normal part of everyday life. Healthy boundaries do not exist for these individuals, and therefore, healthy relationships are impossible. Victims will actually respond to feelings of loneliness or sadness by abusing themselves (e.g., self-mutilation) if the "significant other" is not available to do so.

One of the more difficult issues that arise is the recollection, by some individuals, of experiencing a certain amount of physical pleasure during a molestation or incest. This adds enormously to the sense of being at fault and "dirty." Thus, one of the aims of treatment is to educate survivors as to normal physiological responsiveness. The realization that their feelings are/were normal helps tremendously toward alleviating the sense of shame.

Even when individuals have spoken of their abuse prior to group treatment, any pleasurable aspects have typically been denied. The opportunity to relate to others who have shared these feelings, as well as the experience, is part of the healing power of this form of therapy. The sense of isolation, of being "different from the whole world," quickly begins to subside. It is only in revealing the secrets and dealing with the pain that survivors of sexual abuse can and do go on with their lives.

— tim barrus

Shane Ortega is a New York City high school student who does sex work in Soho. He describes himself as “low on the food chain.” Shane has asked to become a part of Cinematheque. It’s not up to me. It’s up to his peers; the other boys already in Cinematheque. They will decide. What Shane doesn’t understand is that the boys of Cinematheque will challenge him to show them his life.

I have major problems with this adolescent. The problems are mine. The kid is probably a musical genius. He wants to join Cinematheque but he doesn’t want to give up sex work because — he says — he needs the money. I do believe him. He could be a very gifted filmmaker. He is quite talented. Has a great eye. Has a great ear. But he’s at-risk. Big Time. I am not even concerned about his tricks. I have so little empathy when it comes to tricks. I am concerned about the kid. Just this week, the remains of an eight-year-old in NYC (the kid I am writing about lives not far from where we are looking to move) were found in a refrigerator. This will not evolve into anything like that. But the kid is AT-RISK, and I have big problems investing in him because I just don’t want to inhabit another world of hurt. I am hoping that if given enough time to work on it, and some positive peer interactions, he might see advantages in not feeling compelled to do sex work as I can see very clearly it is eating away at his person and his soul.

This video is his first shot at it. 

Cinematheque Films: The Studio Arts Education: Students are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Representations and facsimiles posted here are presented as teaching tools and instruments employed to instruct students in the techniques and application of mixed media art and collage. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows art-teaching entities the fair use of such materials in classroom and teaching-research applications.

IS TIME TURNING AROUND (tim barrus & shane ortega)

Let’s Talk About Sex (Workers): by Zoe Hudson (Open Society Foundation, 2011)

Let’s hear it for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Really.  In a decision yesterday, they defended the right to speak freely about sex workers and in so doing will help us fight HIV/AIDS.

Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic more than 30 years ago, families, communities, and government have been forced to have difficult conversations about messy topics.  Those most in need of HIV treatment and prevention are also people deemed criminals around the world: sex workers, drug users, and men who have sex with men.   The U.S. global AIDS program, unhelpfully, asks funding recipients to take a pledge to “oppose prostitution” as a condition of getting funding.  While it is unclear what this means—must you send them to jail or simply speak ill of them?—it has prevented debate and discussion where it is most needed.

The Court of Appeals agrees.  Yesterday, an appellate court affirmed that the U.S. Constitution protects the right to free speech, including the right to debate, have opinions, or have no opinion at all on the subject of prostitution.  In making this decision, they took into account that the debate about prostitution is integral to fighting HIV/AIDS.  There are differences of opinion and we need to discuss them.  Putting a muzzle on funding recipients violates the U.S. Constitution and undermines our global health programs. Unfortunately, the decision only provides protection to U.S. groups.  Foreign NGOs don’t have first amendment protections and are still gagged.

Here are excerpts from the opinion:

The right to communicate freely on such matters of public concern lies at the heart of the First Amendment.  The Policy Requirement offends that principle, mandating that Plaintiffs affirmatively espouse the government’s position on a contested public issue where the differences are both real and substantive.  For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have recognized advocating for the reduction of penalties for prostitution—to prevent such penalties from interfering with outreach efforts—as among the best practices for HIV/AIDS prevention.

The government has, by compelling NGOs to affirmatively pledge their opposition to prostitution, stepped beyond what might have been appropriate to ensure that its anti-prostitution message would not be “garbled” or “distorted. ”

We do not mean to imply that the government may never require affirmative, viewpoint-specific speech as a condition of participating in a federal program.  To use an example supplied by Defendants, if the government were to fund a campaign urging children to “Just Say No” to drugs, we do not doubt that it could require grantees to state that they oppose drug use by children.  But in that scenario, the government’s program is, in effect, its message.  That is not so here.  The stated purpose of the Leadership Act is to fight HIV/AIDS, as well as tuberculosis, and malaria.  Defendants cannot now recast the Leadership Act’s global HIV/AIDS-prevention program as an anti-prostitution messaging campaign.

The very excellent attorneys at the Brennan Center who successfully argued the case have much more information on their website.  But be warned, your new ability to talk about sex won’t necessarily make it sexy.

Tim Barrus Comment:

Cinematheque Films and Real Stories Gallery and I are involved in the creation of a Video/Art program called Show Me Your Life where kids at-risk are given video cameras and challenged to go out into the world and film their lives. Usually, it’s a journalist who does this. But we never see these lives as portrayed by the people who live them. Inevitably, we are going to have kids who do sex work in a variety of countries (Thailand, Congo, USA, France, Brazil, etc). These kids are at risk for HIV and some of them are at risk for violence as they already have HIV.

The world is not necessarily Disneyland. Many of our video cameras have been returned to us by social service agencies who have articulated: “we did not understand prostitution would be included in your program. We cannot participate.”

We have always said that children who are at-risk are often at risk for prostitution. This is called survival sex. These children are making videos of their lives. Those videos are stunning. The violence children live surrounded by is extraordinary. We have just never wanted to see it. HIV/AIDS is not an abstract idea in Show me Your Life. It is an everyday reality. Children forced into survival sex is repugnant. Yet the issue must be met head on to understand how it works.

These children at-risk are in need of voices, too. They are all too often silenced.

Silence equals death.

We will continue to arm children with video cameras and we will continue to tell them: show me your life. It isn’t always pretty and it isn’t always acceptable. Children have been killed because they were discovered with our cameras. Until we can face and understand HOW CHILDREN ON THE PLANET REALLY LIVE THEIR LIVES, we will never meet the challenge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

This could be your mother. This is someone’s mother somewhere.

There is a difference between sex work and torture. Real torture. The kind that strips away a person’s humanity.

Sex workers vigorously oppose human trafficking and real torture. Sex workers demand human rights for everyone.

The Helen Bamber Foundation does great hands-on work. Dealing directly with healing the wounds of people who have managed to escape.

There is an entire underground railway that defies the out-dated idea of imaginary borders. This underground system is comprised of a series of safe houses maintained by groups and individuals who together spirit people who have been trafficked out of the nightmare and into safe places where they are given the opportunity to recover. This robbing traffickers of their slaves is illegal in every country on the planet. Crossing borders illegally is an issue of sovereignty.

The reality of boys who are trafficked is never acknowledged by the media. The subject is taboo. I know many of these boys. I have never met one who is not infected with HIV.

How can this be true. If you sexually desire boys and you are already obviously the trick AND infected with HIV yourself, your chances of actually having sex with a boy are far greater (virtually ensured) if you pay for it versus attempting to find it on your own. Men who avail themselves of this horror are involved in what is called Sex Tourism. 

No one could write about this underground activity anywhere to give the enslaved hope. Anyone who would attempt to directly give hope to the enslaved would have to be a great fool.

But such illegal activity as robbing traffickers of their human property exists. The people who dare to do this are courageous beyond words. You will never hear from them.

Many of the rescued are children and adolescent minors. Some are literally fucked to death. They die on the way to safety. In Russia, the zombies (those unable to physically respond in any way, and often they have gone not only deaf, but blind) and the diseased are simply shot in the head. Many who survive to their destinations are scarred for life.

Some are rescued to discover they have HIV. The numbers are never counted because essentially the rescued are off the grid and they do not exist. Many do heal and go forward with their lives. Many establish new identities. They are worthy of the kind of support that attempts to deal with torture.

Slavery is not prostitution. Real torture is not sex work. Trafficking it not a fantasy. It is real, and it is everywhere.

Sex workers who demand their human rights are not good candidates for trafficking. Poor women and children are good candidates for trafficking. Trafficking flourishes when economic times are bad. 

Question: If traffickers are allowed to cross borders with the enslaved, and with impunity, why not the people who extricate them from enslavement.

The United Nations estimates nearly 2.5 million people from 127 different countries are being trafficked around the world. The rescued are only a trickle here and there. Providing HIV health care to the infected is imperative. The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children, was adopted by the United Nations in 2000.

120 days by Dom Gabrielli (Italy)

they stripped you to the core

to the bloodless blood of words

the names they tried to pin on your estranged ego

undone in a clinic for the delirious

the only names you know are lofted high

they are events and scenes and panoramiques

kids you say

with stories to share

with you as one of the actors

escaping from a hideous world

which was never worth living

a film of the outside

a free zone

where the mafia hunt

the inviting anus of the adolescent

love burnt in their narcotic revolvers

just as they'd sound out a vein

with a suspect needle

the film has no actors

because life is already full of those

the real people fled long ago

when words were banned to the confines

and my heart still pulsated with the living

film died with Pier Paolo

on a Roman rubbish tip

with the detritus of the outside people

where the poetry of life itself had once stood proud

the centaur

of everywhere a god gone wounded screaming

his knee caps hacked

crippled before they brought him down

poetry didn't rally

fascism of a new kind permeates

words dead

in the face of bigotry and shame

insult-words begging the scrotum of opinion

the finally victorious hand bag of the eternally foul mother

drooling God from the sweet tea of her wrath

words dying

where insults have to fly

to the absolute limit where breathing-words

from the land of the peyotl eaters

write still in strange dialects

where sounds reverberate in sunsets orange

and thought from the depth of unthinking

sings still

this is where we sing and read and write

all of us now

in this unknown moment

of banished future

they will live to regret their terror yet

from his cell

the eternal marquis writes

his obdurate masturbations

are systematically destroyed

burning with his evil tears in a bonfire of silhouettes

dancing heathens have won

the decapitated sung under torture

the film goes on

censored

the original 120 days

animus of rejection

hindered

plundered

murdered

(living)

"Sexual violence against men and boys" (fmreview.org)

The problem of male-directed sexual violence remains largely undocumented. We do not know about the relationship between conflict-related violence and sexual violence within institutions such as militaries, police forces and penal systems.  The reluctance of many men and boys to report sexual violence makes it very difficult to accurately assess its scope.  In the last decade, sexualized violence against men and boys – including rape, sexual torture, mutilation of the genitals, sexual humiliation, sexual enslavement, forced incest and forced rape – has been reported in 25 armed conflicts across the world.  If one expands this tally to include cases of sexual exploitation of boys displaced by violent conflict, the list encompasses the majority of the 59 armed conflicts identified in the Human Security Report (www.humansecurityreport.info).

Sexualised violence against adult men and boys can emerge in any form of conflict – from interstate wars to civil wars to localized conflicts – and in any cultural context.  Both men and boys are vulnerable in conflict settings and in countries of asylum alike.  Both adult men and boys are most vulnerable to sexual violence in detention and during military operations in civilian areas and in situations of military conscription or abduction into paramilitary forces.  Boys, are also highly vulnerable in refugee/IDP settings.  The issue of disclosure is further challenged in localities where homosexual activity attracts legal penalties.  Sexual violence is however a mechanism by which men and boys are placed or kept in a position subordinate to other men and has no relationship to generally accepted notions of homosexuality as consensual relations between adult male partners. 

Sexual violence is an exercise in power and humiliation.

Male sexual abuse rape and HIV/AIDS

Sexual abuse survivors are more likely to participate in activities that increase their risk for unintended pregnancy (self and partner) and infection with HIV and other STDs (sexually transmitted diseases).  Youth who run away or are forced out of the home are especially vulnerable because of their participation in survival sex, prostitution and/or drug use.  Several studies indicate more than half of all sex workers are sexual abuse survivors.

In many countries, the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is considered to be a crime.  People who do so can be charged with criminal transmission of HIV, murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, or assault.  Some states have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission, as in the United States, while others charge under the existing laws, as in the United Kingdom.

"individuals diagnosed with HIV/AIDS have been found to have increased risk for suicide...   in the U.S.A. in 2000, suicide deaths outnumbered homicide deaths by 5 to 3.  Suicide was the third leading cause of death for 10-24 year olds..." (niv.gov)

"Each year, up to 20 million people worldwide attempt to commit suicide, with about a million of these completing the act. That’s a significant minority of deaths—and near deaths—in our species...  In our own species, suicide usually means deliberately trying to end our psychological existence—or at least this particular psychological existence" (Jesse Bering Oct 11, 2010)

"Suicide is analyzed in terms of motivations to escape from aversive self-awareness. The causal chain begins with events that fall severely short of standards and expectations" (Baumeister RF, 1990)

 

"The Hanging Man"

(**no boys were hurt during the creation of this image)

(**Tim Barrus' Facebook account was abruptly and without warning closed by Facebook on 11/14/10).

For the record: I receive suicide notes from adolescents on Facebook.  This is my latest response.  It's word-for-word (I have eliminated names).  I want this on my wall because these young people are serious.  This will ALWAYS be my typical response.  I want that to be public and perfectly clear:
 

Dear ***

Someone, anyone, on Facebook cannot be anything like the kind of help you need.  It's too easy to write to me on Facebook.  Because it means you don't really have to confront or work on getting well.  You have a disease: it's called clinical depression.   What's amazing about clinical depression is that there are now very effective medications and you need to be on one. 

Suicidal ideation is very serious; not a joke.  You need to go to your counselor at school (it doesn't matter if they ARE judging you) and you need to tell them that you are suicidal and that you need help THAT IS NOT SCHOOL-BASED BUT IS HOOKED UP TO PSYCHIATRIC COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH.  I don't care where you live in the U.S. -- there's help.  You have to stop writing to me and you have to get HELP. 

My liability as a person who works with adolescents is at stake here.  I have NOTHING else to say but GO GET HELP. 

You need to convince yourself you are WORTH the help because you are.  I do not CARE what a school counselor thinks.   They have an OBLIGATION to make a referral and do it TODAY.  I mean it...  Stop selling yourself short.  If there is help why NOT access it.  Do this immediately.  I am very, very serious.

"Suicide Boy" by Tim Barrus

Male Sexual Abuse and Rape

Rape and sexual assault can happen to anyone, including males. Many thousands of men and boys are sexually assaulted and raped every year, and it has nothing to do with their race, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, size, appearance, or strength. A male can be sexually assaulted by a stranger, a family member, friend, baby-sitter, or someone he knows and trusts such as a teacher etc.

Experts expect that more than 1 in 5 men are sexually violated during their lifetime. Even though male sexual assault remains vastly under reported, the United States Department of Justice, for example, documents over 13,500 cases of male rape every year, and many more cases of childhood sexual abuse. This is thought to be only the tip of the iceberg, the true number been at least 5 to 6 times higher. In the UK there are no government figures that I can locate.

The sexual abuse of males brings with it some different and extra issues for the male victim of abuse. Many of these come from what society has in the past taught males that they should be like, even though many of these assumptions are quite wrong.

For instance :- all males should be strong and able to safeguard themselves. Of course, some males are physically strong, but physical strength is NO guarantee that a male can protect himself. Unfortunately the male victim of abuse has such ideas to deal with on top of the abuse, and in most cases, these ideas will make it vastly harder for a male to deal with the abuse.

Males also tend to mistrust their sexuality because of the abuse more than females do. To some extent this is because we males get an erection at the drop of a hat, usually when we do not need nor want one. For the abuser this gives a weapon that he can use… "You must have liked it because … you got an erection… or you ejaculated… or both". This is quite wrong of course, but does lead to a lot of confusion.

Getting an erection is NOT under the person's control; it is a REFLEX reaction to stimulation, as is ejaculation.

Neither of which means that you found the experience pleasurable and neither of which mean that you must be gay or bisexual, and neither which were your fault if you are gay or bisexual. Whilst it is true that it is possible to think of thoughts that will cause an erection, it is not possible to think of thoughts that will stop you getting an erection when being stimulated. Also, muscles in the anus often relax when a man is raped, but this if also true of any animal on the planet that it very afraid, and NOT a sign that you wanted, nor enjoyed, the experience.

Males who have been abused often feel conflicted about their sexuality and  their intense and complex desires surrounding solo or group masturbation. The cultural and social messaging that males must be strong makes it difficult for them to disclose and they often struggle with finding humane outlets for their anger and hurt.

Research on the reduction and prevention of suicidality in the U.S.A.

In 2000, 29,350 persons died by suicide in the United States.  Suicide deaths outnumbered homicide deaths by 5 to 3.  Suicide was the third leading cause of death for 10-24 year olds, and the eighth leading cause of death for males.  Vital statistics indicate that suicide rates vary dramatically by demographic characteristics.  Males die by suicide more frequently than females by a ratio of 4 to 1. 

Suicide attempts and serious suicide ideation (e.g., thoughts that include suicide plans), each more frequent than suicide deaths, also carry a substantial health burden.  For the year 2000, estimates of the number of persons treated annually for self-inflicted injuries, most of which are suicide attempts, range from 264,000 to 864,000.  Another estimated 50 percent of persons who attempt suicide do not seek treatment.  In addition to the burden from physical harm consequent to the behavior, suicide attempts are associated with an increase in the risk of later suicide death by 40-fold...  Serious suicide ideation is more frequent among youth than adults, and is associated with other high-risk behaviors.  Annual surveys indicate that 1 in 5 high school students report suicide ideation in the past year.

Because few males access traditional sites of care prior to suicide death, tests of acceptable outreach and referral practices through non-health care settings (e.g., unemployment offices, workplace, DWI court, agricultural loan offices) are needed.

Most medical illnesses are not associated with an increased risk for suicide.  However, individuals diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, brain cancers have been found to have increased risk for suicide.  Patients with cancers who also have depression, unrelieved pain, and deteriorating functional ability, have been reported to have higher rates of suicide ideation.

School-based suicide preventive interventions have included awareness training, screening, skills-building, and social support-building for students, and gatekeeper and post-intervention training for school staff, but few have been well specified or evaluated for efficacy or safety.  Although a number of popular programs are assumed to be useful, the costs and benefits of such existing programs need more systematic evaluations.  Refinement of existing programs, as well as tests of new theory-driven interventions, are also needed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), focuses on addressing the need for effective, population-based prevention and intervention strategies regarding self-directed violence.  NCIPC's activities fall into four categories: disseminating information about suicidal behavior and its prevention and supporting the implementation of proven programs and policies; applying scientific methods to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention and prevention programs; enhancing the knowledge base about risk and protective factors and the consequences of suicidal behavior; and continuing to improve methods for data collection in order to describe and track suicidal behaviors. 

Public health approaches have used mass-media campaigns to varying success to reduce smoking, alcohol and other substance use, but few evaluation efforts have been implemented to test campaigns to reduce suicide.  Evidence of suicide contagion from media coverage of youth suicide deaths has been one reason for concern in mounting broad campaigns.  If the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention is to be adequately implemented, safe approaches to building awareness in the public about suicide and its risk factors must be developed.