Has the abuse/trauma impacted your sense of masculinity?

Has the abuse/trauma impacted your sense of masculinity?
It has mine. I am asking because I believe I share this with other men.
 
Hey @BDD,

Great to hear from you as always.

This is an interesting question, and I think I'm a little different than some. With my dad as my abuser, sadly there were things I absorbed from him - both genetically and from his modeling - whether I wanted to or not. I'd be lying to say I didn't - because it just happens when you are a boy and your dad - outside of the abuse - is a pretty decent person and is with you during all your growing up years.

That said, I was so mad and angry even as a young boy (though it wasn't externalized until I was a teenager) and I told myself repeatedly: "I'll never be like my dad!" I was determined. In some areas, I succeeded in that commitment. In other areas, I failed.

All that to say this: my dad is a thinker, and is pretty emotional as far as guys go. Due to my commitment to not be like him, I looked for men who were "men's men." My mom was negative about stereotype macho men like John Wayne, etc. But silently I admired men like that and wanted to be like them. I have had a few older friends during the years who were very masculine, and I could emulate them to a degree. I don't have any effeminate traits - again, attributable to me looking up to masculine guys and the fact my dad wasn't effeminate either (note: I'm not criticizing effeminate qualities - but growing up in the 1970's, it was not a trait that was favorable).

So for the most part, I don't think my CSA has affected my sense of masculinity. But... then again, it has. I, like so many, have challenges with sexual and non-sexual intimacy. The area of sex and sexual prowess is highly associated with masculinity (again - I grew up in the 1970's :) ). So in this area of my life and marriage, it is easy to feel shame for not being able to be and do what culture says I should for my wife.
 
Thats an tough one to answer for me. I am one that was always and still am sensative not just about myself but of everything aroudn me. People, animals, events, even cry over something in a movies ot tv show. Though now i mostly will only tear up. But i was the kid who would ball at say the movies O’l Yeller. I am also and have been very timid. I guess in my mind I grew up thinking guys dont cry or was told to stand up for myself but I couldn’t do either for myself. I view this as a masculinity issue, maybe its not i dont know. I do not come across as not being masculine it Is just i am the sensative type. Which as i type that why cant a guy be sensitive? Society stuff.

I dont knwo why i am like this. I have posed this question to myself and with my T multiple times. Did the CSA events shape me to be this way or that way, or is it who i was going to be regardless. She is of the mindset that experiences we have as kids especially when younger does play a major part is shaping us but it does not have to define who we become.

I dont judge the masculinity or feminity of the person as something that defines them i guess. I think that most people do however judge people on this.

Not sure i answered your question.
 
BDD, I feel it that it has affected mine. The
suppression and control by my father abuser
made me feel inferior and weak. I felt growing up that I was not equal to other boys. As I become an adult I tried desperately to change that. I did everything in my power to
appear more masculine. Probably why I still
lift weight at 65! Lol!
 
It affected mine. I was always physically smaller and weaker than the other boys while growing up, and that compounded the feeling that I was less masculine. I was terrible at sports - slow, clumsy, and again, very weak. I knew that the girls would never pick me to be with when they had so many other choices, and in adulthood, no woman would choose to be with me. I feel like less of a human being, less of a man, etc.
 
Yes, of course. I feel emasculated, less then and inferior to straight-alpha males.

Religion taught me i'm going to hell for being gay too. I'm just happy I grew up in all four seasons so when Hell freezes over due to climate change--i'll be all set! And if its hot as Sun, then so be it. Flames are enigmatic.

ok that was snarky. I'm grumpy and tired haha.
 
BDD - I am sorry for your pain and I applaud you for your bravery in posting the many things I have read written by you since I joined. Absolutely being raped as a child impacted my sense of masculinity profoundly and no amount of counselling or reasoning has allowed me to recover it... I cannot even say "recover" because that implies that I had it at one point but I was 5 years old when I was brutally raped for the first time by a man and younger than that when my mother used me to give her orgasms... so, I don't know that I ever felt "masculine" as my mother called me a big sissy because I did not want to play her games... thus, shaming me into doing as she demanded.
So the answer is YES. I feel like less of man, less of a person. I want to be desired and I want to look attractive in the hope that if a masculine man wants me physically, then I will have value. Because as horrific as being raped was, those instances were the only times I felt a man wanted me. I am not into sports probably because my father was violent and told me that I throw like a girl and run like a girl and screamed at me when I failed to catch a ball... so I became terrified of sports and stopped even trying... and those feelings are so deeply ingrained that I cannot get rid of them. And remembering the orgasms that my mother had with me and my brother left me repulsed at the thought of sex with a woman - which also make me feel emasculated.
That's it.
Yes, my sense of masculinity was murdered before it ever had a chance to develop.
 
Absolutely. Being abused by a woman, begging to be abused, and *TW* having my genitals mutilated all very much impacted my sense of myself as a man.

I'm very, very glad that all of the trauma therapists I've worked with have been women, because when they told me that they still saw me as a man no matter what I went through, it was much easier to hear. At my worst, I even asked my wife pretty much every week if she saw me as a man. She always thought that was a weird question and always answered "Of course, what else would you be?"

What else would I be? I really didn't have any answers to that, so ultimately I was able to re-accept my masculinity.
 
Full confession, I asked because I knew I wasn’t alone. And I needed to know I was in the company of men. A hallmark of my trauma was severe isolation from everyone. The destruction of my right to boyhood and the resulting inability to be with other boys was devastating. I existed in a weird limbo. I didn’t feel “lesser”, I was not even on the spectrum. I was “other”. I was so lowly I didn’t have a right to even want to be a boy. But that’s all I wanted. I wanted to belong. I wished I wasn’t so terrified if another boys was nearby. But I was. I was scared if anyone learned of my dream I would be humiliated and shamed. (I was to little to realize this is what the assault taught me).

I’ll say it. It was horrible. I knew I had a male body. But that was almost worst. It betrayed my secret desire to be a boy. I don’t expect anyone to understand. It wasn’t rational or logical. But it was my truth.

Knowing that about me, it may be easy to think my bodybuilding is about compensating. It is not. I have to fight my demons who scream ugly things at me for even thinking about building muscle. I had an affinity for physicality and muscularity before I was assaulted, before my gender was taken away from me. Every time I touch a weight or post that I did is a fuck you to my demons. It’s also serving my pre-assault self.

I’ve been journaling about it ad nauseam. I needed to explain it to my therapist this week. It was really hard making it clear (He only wants to know exactly what we are talking about). I don’t think I have ever spoken of the affects from the assault as I had in that session. And though that feels great, I left immensely sad. I am still weighed down in the sorrow days later. I am not functioning well (but not in danger) Yes, I am sad for that confused lonely boy that no one knew.
 
I'm not so sure that the abuse fractured my masculinity, or just who I am did. I knew at an early age that I was attracted to boys as well as girls, and that's confusing shit for a kid. So I don't think I ever had a chance to learn what a sense of masculinity really was, and now, I have no clue really how I feel. I mostly feel confused, but somewhat confident in who I am and what I feel, because that is just how it is.
 
Bri - Thanks for asking. My sense of masculinity was impacted by numerous things. My struggles with masculinity started with a father who treated me with contempt and scorn since I was a little boy. He never taught me how to "be a man". It was exacerbated by an overly "intimate" relationship with my mother. It wasn't sexual but it was inappropriate. She confided in me like she might a girlfriend or a surrogate husband. Also I was not interested in or good at things that boys "should" be interested in. I felt 'less than' and 'other' - first from boys then men.

It started to change for me when I went to a men's retreat in 2014. I began to help lead the retreats. For several years I felt like an imposter. I thought that they were all men and me just a poser. Over the last 2 years that changed as I increasingly felt more confident around them.

This year I have again wrestled with what it means to be a man as I accepted my sexuality. I believed that being attracted to men once again set me a part making me 'less than' and 'other'. (That perspective about myself is completely hypocritical because I don't feel that way about the GBTQ men I know. I don't consider them less than or other but am quick to throw myself into that category.) I finally realized who I am attracted to has nothing to do with whether I am a man.

So ironically for me, I am not sure how much the abuse played in my struggles to feel like a man. It is something I need to consider.
 
Full confession, I asked because I knew I wasn’t alone. And I needed to know I was in the company of men. A hallmark of my trauma was severe isolation from everyone. The destruction of my right to boyhood and the resulting inability to be with other boys was devastating. I existed in a weird limbo. I didn’t feel “lesser”, I was not even on the spectrum. I was “other”.
That states more accurately how I feel and how I have always felt: "other". I have always known that my body has a penis and testicles and, thus, my body ("I") was male - but I never "felt" male - and even though I was teased and taunted throughout childhood (and adulthood, too), I never identified as "female" even though my own father said I throw and run like a girl and I was called pansy and fairy and faggot... I never knew what any of those words meant. So, I felt, and still to some degree "feel" isolated, different, "other" - in fact Monday of this week I told my therapist that I feel like a fucking freak because I don't know anyone else who was raped by multiple men and women (my own "mother") and, very significantly, in addition to this horrific violation - I was mutilated - treated like a piece of meat.
. I was so lowly I didn’t have a right to even want to be a boy. But that’s all I wanted. I wanted to belong. I wished I wasn’t so terrified if another boys was nearby. But I was. I was scared if anyone learned of my dream I would be humiliated and shamed. (I was to little to realize this is what the assault taught me).

I’ll say it. It was horrible. I knew I had a male body. But that was almost worst. It betrayed my secret desire to be a boy. I don’t expect anyone to understand. It wasn’t rational or logical. But it was my truth.
I always wanted to belong. I still want to belong. But it seems I will never overcome the feeling of not belonging. I think that is somehow related to wanting to be loved, to be considered of value - to be considered as of equal worth as other human beings.
Knowing that about me, it may be easy to think my bodybuilding is about compensating. It is not. I have to fight my demons who scream ugly things at me for even thinking about building muscle. I had an affinity for physicality and muscularity before I was assaulted, before my gender was taken away from me. Every time I touch a weight or post that I did is a fuck you to my demons. It’s also serving my pre-assault self.
I don't know who my "pre assault self" was... except I know he had the courage to fight back to try to protect his grandmother from being raped at the same time he was raped by this gang of barbarians; but that experience as well as the experience of trying to beat up my father when I was very young in order to prevent him from beating up my mother and he just tossed me across the room.... those experiences taught me "learned helplessness" so I just stopped fighting back because I knew it was futile - so I never tried to catch or throw a ball because I knew I would get screamed at and that terrified me because it was a prelude to being beaten or raped... and I "let" other people belittle and berate me and use me sexually and I did not fight back... in some cases, I was frozen.

So, I guess we are all survivors but we are not all the same. What we have in common is our humanity. We are not our bodies even though we identify with our bodies.... and I have always envied men who, in my mind, have bodies that are "masculine" and who are attractive and always deep inside wish I could look like them because then maybe men would "like" me - i.e. consider me worthy to share my company - but
deep inside none of us are our bodies or even our thoughts or experiences - even though that is how we define and understand ourselves.... we are our awareness - our consciousness - and we are a part of a greater whole - the whole of all the universe - all creation.... and we are all worthy and we are all loved.... even when we don't "feel" it.

Deep inside, this is what each of us needs to know.
We are worthy we are loved - and we have a right to be here right now, in this moment. and we have a right to speak our truth as we understand it - because I have found that, over time, my understanding evolves.... that does not mean I was wrong in the past, I was just in a different spot - my awareness was not complete...

But, yes, life circumstances impact how we interpret reality - as horribly as I was abused, what my brother suffered was worse and he grew up to be abused and violated as an adult and is diagnosed as schizophrenic... but I remember him as a toddler who was used and abused for sex and was told that he was evil....

The way we treat one another matters.

BDD, I am sorry for your pain and for your isolationl. I can identify with some of what you say, but, again, each of us is unique and by sharing our uniqueness we help pave the way for our community to have greater understanding and greater empathy if we just open our eyes and ears and hearts.
 
"masculinity", is always something that confused me directly.

As a small child in a boarding school where there were literally only two boys my own age, there wasn't much chance to form set gender friendship groups. My dad was a male nurse and neither of my parents had rigidly defined rules about who should do what housework or the like, neither was there any encouragement to get involved with things like sports.

so at age 11, before the abuse started, I was probably pretty well rounded as far as gender expectations go.
then the abuse started and suddenly I was trapped between two rigidly defined groups, boys who offered constant physical abuse, and girls who offered sexual humiliation, and then accused me of harming them or fucking with them, and of course, the sexual humour and crudity was constant among boys and girls, constant to the point of discomfort.

I genuinely felt I didn't exist as a male as a teenager, I was attracted to girls, but I could equally imagine being female myself, literally possessing a female body, I sometimes felt I could literally feel what it would be like to have breasts and have them fondled, just as I was forced to fondle a girl's breasts on several occasions.

The abuse from boys remained physical, never sexual, but the fact I could do nothing about either that or the sexual abuse turned me extremely passive, I often felt like I was literally a passenger in my own body, as though I could slip out of it, and be someone else.

After I came out of the other side of this at 16 and 17, and started to learn about gender differences, I noticed myself a resistance, whenever someone was saying "girls are like this", and "boys are like that", yet, there was the dichotomy that I was very very straight, and yet profoundly genophobic. I loved the idea of "being in love!", but hated the idea of sexual attraction, I could get on fine with boys and girls as friends, but had no idea how anything else even worked.

it was at this point I started to hate being male, here was I, stuck in a body which had random sexual desires, where any attempt to be intimate would cause me to become an abusive beast.

As to "male sterreotyped activities", or "male friends", well mosdt people who most heavily identified as "masculine", just seemed shallow to me, though the same could be said for heavily feminine women, and since I was not interested in drinking or playing sports, what did it matter? My interests, music, literature, science fiction, computer games, were pretty gender neutral.

if I had had the least attraction to men I might have considdered changing my gender, since it seemed to me being female was so much easier, after all, all women had to do to find relationships was just wait to be asked, wait for someone else to lay their emotions bare. I wanted that kind of power! and of course that's not counting the hole disability thing, since it's much easier to be a disabled woman than a disabled man (in five out of six mixed gender couples where one partner is disabled, it's one disabled woman with a none disabled man).

Yet things continued, I still made friends, I still was attracted girls, and nothing really changed, even after my breakdown in 2007. I became even more divorced from being male after that, indeed there are posts on this forum where I vehemently abhor the fact that I happened to be born straight and male.


I might have considered the "none binary", thing if it had been around at that stage.

Then two things happened in quick succession, I married my lady, and got swamped in me too women first propergander.

I suddenly realised that yes there is something about being male which actually has a point. Something which is not related to not showing emotions, or being competitive or playing sports.
A good female friend of mine once called it the male protective impulse.

the best I can say, is that my lady, who is very definitely "female", sparks a certain way of relating in me which other female friends don't.

this isn't to do with being dominant or submissive, or one person being "in charge", of another, it's just a way of being with her, parts of our personalities and actions interlocking in certain ways.

This meant I had to cope with the fact that yes, I do happen to be male, and there is something positive about masculinity.

this would all be fine, accept for the other problem.
At the moment, there is a massive cultural pressure that being male is synonymous with being evil, that any women (including the girls who sexually tortued me for five years), are automatically good virtuous victims, and men are always abusive, patriarchal scum bags.

I react to this with anger and frustration, since it feels very much as if I'm being encouraged to get back into the same box I spent years trying to climb out of! I will not be ashamed of being male, I will not be ashamed of being attracted to women, and I dam well deserve as much right to success in my life as any female victim of abuse.

This is I think why I react so badly to misandry, since it feels like an attack on what I've found, as well as a major call back to my abuse.

I remember a quote by the French existentialist, and proto feminist Simone De Beauvoir, that women needed to redefinee femininity.

that is fine, but I now feel that I, and indeed a lot of other men, probably need to be allowed the same right when it comes to masculinity, since if there is! a personal, rather than cultural point to being "male", it's one which needs to be discovered and worked through, not one which needs to be imposed, either by ridiculously old fashioned notions of "competitive manliness", or by the modern idea that masculine equates only to aggression and egotism.

Luke.
 
It's funny for me, I have never felt the need to be a manly man, never been afraid to cry or express love or anything like that. I also have no issues with homosexuality or anything like that. Other than my abuse, I have not been involved with another male, I am about 97% sure I wouldn't be with a man, I might be a small bit curious though. It's interesting though to me, I am definitely not motivated by manly things or being tough. I also watch a lot of feminine shows and things like that.

My only hang-up seems to have been the fact that I lost my virginity technically at 8 years old and I have been in a homosexual sexual relationship. I am OCPD as well (obsessive compulsive personality disorder) so I focus on technicalities a lot. My wife said, "no that doesn't count" but it does to me. That's been my only hang up though with manly stuff. I am religious and I have been homosexual, which bothers me a bit but I also know homosexuality is a sin just like everything else we do on a daily so why do religions harp on it more than other things? Sorry, rambling and soapbox stuff there.
 
This conversation has taken a good turn into more of a topic of, "What does it mean to be manly / masculine, and what does it mean to be womanly / feminine? What traits of each are cultural and what traits are in our DNA (and the result of physiological differences, such as hormones)?" Because unless you can clearly define this, it is difficult to answer the original question. I think I answered mostly in terms of traditional 1970's stereotypes of masculinity and feminine. These stereotypes were a combination of cultural and physiological traits during that time. I'd have to think more deeply on this to determine whether the majority of masculine traits in the 1970's were cultural, or based in physiological differences.

@dark empathy (Luke) - you spoke well of one trait I would consider more of a physiological / DNA based trait for masculinity. Of course when it comes to kids, men may actually have less of this than women (consider the "mama bear" description of mothers with their children):
I suddenly realised that yes there is something about being male which actually has a point. Something which is not related to not showing emotions, or being competitive or playing sports.
A good female friend of mine once called it the male protective impulse.

When I first became a dad, and my first kid was a baby, I wondered about this protective instinct. I felt like, even with a baby in the house, I hadn't really experienced this instinct or feeling. I talked with my wife about it, and even prayed that I would experience this. Through a couple interesting things that happened soon thereafter, I had the opportunity to see what this felt like firsthand and I think this instinct was nurtured in me from that point on. I never analyzed why I didn't feel this to begin with - but now I can see this was possibly because I didn't allow myself to feel much of anything at all during that time.

My T and I just talked about something tangential to this, this week. She was commenting that, because of my mom's own abuse and the example of her own mother, she was not very nurturing, affectionate, etc. My T said that my "maternal" qualities were underdeveloped. She brought this up because I had mentioned my wife had also not experienced a very maternal example and was likely underdeveloped in this area as well - except... that we had kids and her she chose to develop those qualities on her own by looking at other examples of women in her life. Anyway, I mention that because: as kids in a two parent home (where one parent, regardless of sex, fills a masculine role and the other fills a more feminine role) we do learn both masculine & feminine behaviors. We develop both paternal and maternal qualities - if we are allowed to grow up unhindered.

So... in considering this question, I would think we all need to look at what we consider to be masculine and feminine traits. And also probably whether we base those traits on physiological differences, cultural difference, or both. Anyway... something to think about when you consider whether you feel "masculine" or not.
 
I am now 65 and where I struggle with this the most is when I am in a mens locker room where other men are walking around naked. I often can’t help myself and will look at their penis’. Sometimes I get aroused by that. This is a trigger for me. I can’t help but feel they can just look at me and know who I am and that I am “damaged goods.” The abuse has always made me feel “less than” and when I was around others I would always try to be who they wanted me to be as I felt if they knew who I really was that they would want nothing to do with me. So low self-esteem has been with me since I was 8 years old.
 
@MO-Survivor, the "male protective impulse", is not something I tend to think of as particularly feminine or nurturing, or especially related to children, since it could equally be applied to friends, spouses, or heck, other men or animals. It's something I've seen occasionally in my own father, indeed with my parents, it was usually my mum who was more inclined to provide action, and my dad who was more inclined to provide relaxed emotional support, although this wasn't a hard and fast rule, and general housework type tasks were pretty equally shared between the two, then again they're both medics.

There are good examples of it in Literature, consider Sam's care of Frodo in Lord of the rings for example, which (in the books at least), has nothing romantic about it, but everything about a protective male friendship.

A good friend of mine who happens to also have a masters in humanistic councelling once described this as "protective", but not in the sense of "protecting from danger", or predators, not violently protective, but protecting in the sense of protecting from wind or weather.

I occasionally find moments in myself when I need to exemplify this, and indeed a large part of my struggle with genophobia and my desire for emotional intimacy with a woman was very much tied up with a frustration of this impulse. Indeed, a female friend of mine once described me as the least sexual man she knew, and yet, when I suddenly met my lady all of that changed in a huge way, though as much due to the emotional relation betwween us as opposed to the sexual.

For example, when my lady had to go for two months of daily radio therapy treatments for cancer last year, I would've counted myself "less of a man", if I didn't go with her and at least be there, even if there wasn't anything I could do.

She has a tendency to worry late at night before sleeping, and at that point, there is something of my "male impulse", which inclines me to get her to calm down and sleep, because that's a really bad point to discuss things.

This is the sort of thing I mean, the sort of thing which is directly under attack from the current very black and white "good gentle women, vs evil violent men", cultural zeitgeist.

I once asked my lady directly what me being male meant. She replied very simply "your strong, your gentle and you love me."

That's not a complete answer, but it comes close I think.

this isn't to say there aren't other ways of "being male", or other relationships, but it's this idea of "male", as more an emotional and yes, probably partly physiological response to another person, something personal which occurs in relationships rather than something culturally imposed from above or biologically determined that I've tended to be interested in, since I think for me, and probably for other people as well there was no way to "be male", without someone to also "be female", to relate to, not in the sense of "dominant", or "submissive", but in the sense of one set of impulses and actions counterbalancing another, EG, though my lady is as intraverted as I am, she's far more able to get people on side, talk to people and be friendly than I am. I can! do it, but it's far easier for her, though being tiny and cute probably helps a lot there too, again, another bennifit of being female which I always felt jealous of, and which seemed to have no corresponding male corolary.

Luke.
 
hi all,
It took me to 30/31/32 years old to finally feel like a man.

I had to be a builder for 2 years in my late 20s to try and subconsciously feel like a man with a ‘manly job’.

Im a better man now. I openly compliment women now and I think im good at it. It feels so natural albeit society is prone to deter men from the act of making women who aren’t your partner feel special or wanted.

im 33 soon and im naturally low muscle mass bar my legs. I try to work out and slowly try to look more manly in terms of muscle definition. But I never cared about my appearance due to the abuse so image wise I never cared about my masculinity it was more in my head not feeling like a man which hurt.

I generally feel good at the moment and it’s nice to feel better than in the past. I look back at the last 10 years as being in a mental coma. So it feels less regret and more acceptance my poor mental health was partially out of my control.

I hope we all find frequent solace in our constant battle with the past. Take care all.
Dan.
 
Yes. I felt that if I couldn't defend myself, I couldn't defend a family. It's part of why I didn't marry.
 
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