There is a special place in hell for pedophiles. While I might rail against any form of sexual contact that involves non-consent [and I have posted about this before], pedophilia has always struck me as a particularly heinous and unforgivable crime.
What happened to me in my late teens did not feel like being made victim by a pedophile, and yet, technically it was. First off, I was under the age of consent. Did I ask for it? No. Wearing shorts, and the style was short, and exposing my luscious long legs did not occur to me as a sexual act. Indeed, that is the essence of innocence—as a younger me, at that age, I didn’t think at all about how I was dressing as a sexual thing. It wouldn’t have occurred to me.
I guess I had no business hitch-hiking either. The clothes I wore, the fact of standing by the road side with my thumb out, wearing a pair of jean shorts. To the predatory eyes of the man who stopped to give me a ride, I must have looked like a teen boy version of Daisy Duke.
I should have known that something was wrong by the way he drove, on and off the highway, but also about the direction he took the conversation. It started innocently enough. Did I have a girlfriend? Was she pretty? What was she like? And then it turned weird, but gradually, almost like I wouldn’t notice–and it veered behind weird and vanilla to keep my guard down.
What did he kink it up with? Did she ever tie you up? Did she ever spank you? Have you ever worn panties?
What was my mistake? I answered truthfully. Yes she had, yes she did, yes I have. He wanted to know more. He told me about how he had seen a man wearing a dog collar and that this man was being walked by a woman who held his leash, and what did I think of that? And would I ever let a woman do that to me? And would l like that? What did I think it would be like to wear a collar? Did I know that some men wear collars all the time? Did I know that women were really submissive? That only a man can be dominant?
The thing is, as I replay it over and over in my mind, as I have so often over the intervening years, I realise that he was simply looking for a “way in”. What was it that would turn me on. And then, once turned on, he could then proceed to the next step. His conversation was like a gentle, subtle probing—a way of finding out without being too overt. He ranged around and around until he found it, and then when he did, he started to play with it, to tease. He was “grooming” me. Collar and leash were already triggers for me, deeply exciting concepts. But in my teen mind it was always a girl that was holding it. And I remember thinking at the time, “how funny, maybe it takes a man…”
And when he knew that he had me, I remember looking out the window, and feeling so horribly turned on. And he said, “I guess you know why I’m doing this, don’t you?” And I just kept staring out the window, wondering if I was even still in my body. But I was so aroused. And when he told me to put my satchel in the back seat, I just did, and he told me to open my legs, so there was nothing between us, and he began to grope me. I can still feel how different his hand felt to a woman’s. It was heavy, muscular, insistent. There was nothing soft or gentle about it. And I let him fondle me, opening my legs for him and staring out the window, having an out-of-body experience.
When he pulled off the road into a secluded rest area, I would have likely soon been on my knees, but something about it scared me, and I ran. It was a secluded spot and it was the fear of violence, not the fear of being faced with his cock that made me run…and that in itself scared me, disgusted me, fascinated me. I was out hitching again and providence found me getting a ride immediately. I ended up in the car of a middle-aged family man with diapers on the back seat—and we sped away.
What I couldn’t shake was my feeling of how filthy I felt, but also why I had been so aroused, and what ifs. So many what ifs. And yes, although I was almost old enough to be allowed to say yes legally, there is a reason that there is an age of consent. I hadn’t reached it.
And I think still of the predatory way in which he “seduced” me, and how this has left a permanent mark on my psyche. I am still coming to terms with other parts of my childhood that constituted molestation, and am looking forward to trying to unpick them through hypnosis and therapy. But there was something about this man that was a universal in the predatory sex offender world that I came to recognise later in life.
Working on assignment in my late 20’s, I was on a project overseas with a small team of colleagues. One of my colleagues was an older man who was there for his topic expertise. I was an earnest and hard-working young analyst. I was also at my maximum pretty-boy phase. I wore my hair in a bob or kept it pinned, a bit like Brian Molko from Placebo. I painted my nails—a subtle shade of very light, almost transparent green. I put highlights in my hair. I wore lip gloss. In retrospect it amazes me that I got away with it in the corporate environment. I guess a boy dress liked that, a young man, was “asking for it”, right?
This older colleague invited himself to my hotel room to continue work. There was something about the way he said it, and the way he looked at me when he did, that made me say no. I picked up this strong vibe, but I could feel being triggered in the same way that I had been all those years before in that car. In this man’s case, my instincts proved correct. He was convicted and jailed 6 months later for being a pedophile—and jailed.
My presentiment of him was true, and I can still remember the way he looked at me, a kind of possessiveness in his gaze and in his skin. Gross. But what disturbs me even more was the occasional imagining of myself sitting on his lap like an obedient little boy as he fondled me.
My first experience in that car in my teens so utterly shaped my sexuality thenceforth, and it shouldn’t have. Because abuse is toxic and has the power to redirect the river. It has taken me decades to reclaim my sexuality for me, a process which I never should have had to do. How could my body have betrayed me in that way? How could my mind have just succumbed to the betrayal? How could a moment of non-consent so fundamentally reshaped my life path and sexual development?
Growing up, we all have fantasies, we get aroused by things. Up until that time in the car, I had never been aroused by a man. I was very girl oriented, in all the ways that I have described on this blog. I loved girls, feminine things, being feminine, and loved making out with the different girlfriends I had had. But I had also suffered emotional hurt in breakups [written about here] and was beginning to question whether it was possible to be submissive and to still attract a girl. This particular dilemma has stayed with me my whole life. If I were to put a finger on one thing that I seek with Mistress, it is this feeling that one can be held, loved, and respected even though one is deeply submissive. Being submissive does not mean giving up being challenging and interesting and fun to be with.
What I was already as a little boy, was a submissive boy. When those girls used to wrestle me to the floor in the taxi and take my socks off and tickle me, they were not creating my submissiveness, they were revelling in something that was already there [blogged about here]. What that man did by commanding me and groping me was to tap into this submissiveness, but to direct it to a place that was in his interest. Ever since that time I have had bouts of gay humiliation fantasies, a replay of a thousand times of guilt over become aroused by that situation. And finally, I have understood it and am leaving it behind.
I have nothing against any sexual persuasion, but I do have something against taking from others, particularly in the sexual domain. I begin to understand this, and I begin to understand that perhaps what I am playing out with Mistress is an elaborate dance that is at once creating new fantasy (around her and being physically with her in the moment), releasing shame around the fantasies of others, working out trauma, but also finding that I need not be ashamed of the parts of me that exist in me because of me and who I am and how I feel. I love being vulnerable, of being innocent, of being able to go to her with my heart open and to just let go…and as she says, I have only just begun to taste it. It is profoundly healing and strengthening.
And what I realise is that I have been gaslighting myself for all these years about this—refusing to acknowledge that what happened to me was abuse, and its time I did. It is funny how we can have something present for long and not ever see it for what it is.
Beyond Non-Binary 
I felt a myriad of emotion while reading about this part of your story, my beautiful friend. Shock, anger, fear, sadness… but by the end of this post… all I feel is incredibly proud. You are an incredible human being and I feel lucky to know you. I am so grateful to your Mistress for helping you to explore your past and reconcile with it…what a beautiful journey ❤
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You are just the best. What amazes me is how we lie to ourselves and hide from things just below the surface, maybe to protect ourselves. Being submissive to someone seems to allow this all to float to the surface, because I don’t need to keep it together in the same way.
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Although I may have already said this in an earlier comment, I believe there also stubbornly remains an outdated general societal mentality, albeit perhaps subconsciously held: Men can take care of themselves, and boys are basically little men. It is the mentality that might help explain why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse. Could it be evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset? One in which so many men, even with anonymity, would prefer not to ‘complain’ to some stranger/author about his torturous childhood, as that is what ‘real men’ do? I tried multiple times contacting the book’s author via internet websites in regards to this non-addressed florescent elephant in the room, but I received no response.
I have noticed over many years of news-media consumption that when victims of sexual abuse are girls their gender is readily reported as such; however, when they’re boys, they’re usually referred to gender-neutrally as children. It’s as though, as a news product made to sell the best, the child victims being female is somehow more shocking than if male. Also, I’ve heard and read news-media references to a 19-year-old female victim as a ‘girl’, while (in an unrelated case) a 17-year-old male perpetrator was described as a ‘man’. Maybe this is revelatory of an already present gender bias held by the general news consumership, since news-media tend to sell us what we want or are willing to consume thus buy.
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Hi…thanks for chiming in. These are important points, and no, your speculation is not wrong. There has been some excellent work written on how society tends to regard women and children with the same eye–that we look at the female sex as more childlike. In a similar but separate vein, the idea that boys need to be “torn from the effeminate embrace of childhood” is a theme that comes up in the writings of feminist theorists, chief among them Dworkin. I don’t fully understand why or how this came about, but it is certainly one more strike against the morality of patriarchal thinking…
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Hi…thanks for chiming in. These are important points, and no, your speculation is not wrong. There has been some excellent work written on how society tends to regard women and children with the same eye–that we look at the female sex as more childlike. In a similar but separate vein, the idea that boys need to be “torn from the effeminate embrace of childhood” is a theme that comes up in the writings of feminist theorists, chief among them Dworkin. I don’t fully understand why or how this came about, but it is certainly one more strike against the morality of patriarchal thinking…
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(If I may add one last relevant text from The Highly Sensitive Man as a reply) In the subsection titled “What We Define as Masculine Is Not Set in Stone”, the author also writes: “Society’s view of how a man should be and what attributes are desirable and attractive in him is something that is more flexible than we think. In her book A History of Male Psychological Illness in Britain: 1945-1980, historian Allison Haggett, Ph.D., describes the development of men’s psychological problems in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. When I talked to her, she explained to me that she finds the current, very narrow definition of masculinity in the Western world to be ‘problematic and restrictive,’ referencing numerous psychological and medical studies on men’s health.
“Haggett also describes how our understanding of typical masculinity has changed radically throughout history and says that, from a historical perspective, it is much harder to define than we might suppose. In her book, she argues that masculine attributes are first and foremost socially constructed and not biologically determined. They are, therefore, prone to change and have often done so in the past. She describes how, during the Georgian era (1714-1830), just before the start of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, the picture of a desirable man was completely different from the image we have today. At that time, masculinity was equated with wisdom and virtuousness. Not only was it socially acceptable for a man to express himself emotionally, it was positively desirable. The Georgian man was not afraid of being scorned for showing emotion. According to Haggett, this led to a culture of introspection among men, in which it was socially acceptable to be self-reflective and contemplative.
“The central nervous system was also seen as being particularly important in understanding the human body at that time, and it was believed that a particularly nervous or sensitive disposition was a clear indication of a noble or educated background and refinement, not a sign of a lack of masculinity. The finer and more sensitive a man’s nervous system was, the better. What we might now call ‘weak nerves’ used to be something that was valued. Our understanding of masculinity was, however, profoundly changed by the new focus on productivity and efficiency during the Industrial Revolution and the twentieth century’s two world wars. Since then, open displays of emotion by men, with the exception of anger, have been stigmatized and are commonly seen as something negative and embarrassing.
“In order for men to assert themselves socially and professionally, it became increasingly important in the Western world for them to develop characteristics such as dominance, independence, and high performance. But as we have seen in this chapter, men have paid a high price for this. The rest of society has paid, too: their partners, their families, their children, their siblings, their parents, and their friends. It has affected all of us. …”
Thank you, again, for allowing my lengthy posts/responses.
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Thank you so much for sharing this. It adds to my reading list! Yes, social restrictions on desirable traits based on gender are not positive on any level. Other cultures have had an easier relationship with gender, including Native Americans, and the acceptance of a third gender. I have different wiring—I know that on every level how I think and feel about things is not classically male or female. An acceptance of this sure would have made life easier.
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