OPINION: I am a CSA survivor. I am still being abused.
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Hard-hitting title, isn’t it? No, I am not still a child — thankfully that part of my life is over. However, while that trauma lingers, I face new abuse every day from people who don’t even know me.
This article talks about child sexual abuse, including paedophilia and grooming. Reader discretion is advised.
There are growing behaviors in online spaces, mainly social media and networking sites such as Twitter and TikTok, where the words paedophile and groomer are being used topically in forms that do not match their definition. Ranging from fandom spaces to political battlefields, these words are being used to weaponize people’s discomforts or disagreements on opposing opinions, from topics such as relationships or kink dynamics between consenting adults to levying against trans rights.
This might sound far-fetched at first glance, but there is a sinister intention behind using these words, such as to shame or silence dissenting opinions. But by using these words out of the context they were meant for, they can evoke a range of uncomfortable feelings. We perceive these words as something evil or awful, and, when slapped against someone, it dehumanizes them. By doing this, we trivialize the definition of these words, using them to defame innocent people who had done nothing to warrant such descriptors.
To better understand how damaging this is, let me tell you my story and how I survived.
The below is a personal account that should not be reposted, quoted, screen-capped, or re-used out of the context of this article without permission. If reading about personal experiences makes you uncomfortable, or you may find it triggering or difficult, please scroll down to the next break to continue the article.
My earliest memory of being exposed to the act of sex was by two other boys at the age of 13. They were of the same age, and upon reflection, I always put the experience down to experimenting with my sexuality and who I was. It was the start of a journey that would take me years to navigate through and continues with me today, over two decades on. It has been a rocky road, filled with highs and lows, as I worked out who I was and what I liked. I navigating my way in the dark, thanks to the damaging Section 28 legislation, which prohibited the promotion of homosexuality at the time.
I knew the terms gay and homosexual from reading them in a dictionary. I was commonly labeled a poof after I made the terrible mistake of admitting that I liked one of the boys I had experimented with, who had already started to isolate me from our friendship circle as I was too mature (yes, at the age of 13). Other kids around me quickly ostracized me and severely bullied me, and my undiagnosed autism made it difficult to communicate with others, which only worsened things.
I knew what sex was. I had seen it on television and in movies, read it in newspapers and books, and heard about it from others. I wasn’t oblivious to gay sex either — I had enough information from various media to understand how sex between two men worked. While schools were barred from teaching or talking to me about being gay, I learned what I could from what I was given in public spaces.
My childhood hadn’t been great either. Alcoholic parents who were overworked and never at home meant I spent a lot of time on my own, and with a lack of a social circle, I struggled with that isolation. I was already shy and withdrawn, which only deepened with how I was treated. Even when I tried to tell my parents how my best friend had made a move on me and then ditched me, I cried, telling them, “I don’t want to like boys,” which only sent me to a therapist to try and “sort my head out.”
But I was obsessed with sex, and I might go as far as to admit it was an unhealthy obsession. I would go to public toilets and read all the messages scribbled into doors and walls of men looking for sex, what time they would show up, and the masturbatory charts (dates and times when people masturbated in the cubicle) they would draw up. I got to making my own, writing my messages or making charts in other toilets, and becoming excited to see any responses.
But this was a slippery slope; I was already a vulnerable teenager, riding the wave of sexual awakening. Men in the toilets at the time would take the chance, wave me over, and try to seize the opportunity to engage in sexual activity with me. I was nervous and scared and knew it was wrong, but I was also curious and sought the type of attention I had been obsessing over.
The prominent memory of interacting with another man who would come to groom me at 13 through 16 was in a train station toilet. I remember being at the urinal, and he was waving me into a cubicle. Instead of going in, I remember I “chickened out” (as I put it in my head at the time) and went and sat on the window sill edge outside the toilet. Eventually, he came out, walked past me and smiled. But then he came back to me.
“You know it’s dangerous to be doing things like that with strangers.”
At first thought, you might think he’s giving me a warning. When I sit and think about it today, that is likely how he meant to present it, but that would only work in his favor.
I didn’t answer him.
“If you want to experiment, I can show you. But it should be in a safe place with a person you can trust.”
By appealing to my curiosity, he managed to get me interested, and upon trusting him, I would then go on to meet this man several times. He drove me places in his van, which he used as his safe place. So, while I was never forced to do anything and never had a “bad” experience, I knew it was wrong.
He wasn’t the only man I was abused by when I was underage. After this man gifted me with a mobile phone, a luxury item compared to today’s standard, I would connect with other men through cottaging and cruising, sexting, internet chat rooms, and more. I actively sought out sexual attention from older men, even though I knew what I was doing wasn’t right. My first boyfriend at 15, who was 2 two years older than me, was abused by his uncle, and he was also selling himself as a rent boy. He habitually (I don’t believe intentionally) passed that abuse onto me — sexually, physically, and emotionally. I became the bait to older men he would set up who would rent me for sex, which led to me being raped at 16.
It wasn’t until I was 17, being snuck into gay bars though I was underage, that I met people who would eventually break me out of the hands of these people. My experience as a young man on the gay scene was just as troubling, but that story is for another day.
If you read my experience, first of all, thank you for hearing my story. It’s only a toe-dip into what I’ve been through, but it’s enough to help you understand my experience. You might also be wondering, Why have I been told all of this? Assuming you have read the above, you should now have an idea of my experience and why I call myself a CSA survivor. While the above does not cover everything, it should allow you to put yourself in my shoes for the rest of this article as I get back to the original question — how am I still being abused?
My account above has elements of paedophilia and grooming. The men who engaged with me sexually were paedophiles, either opportunistic or by definition. Some of these men groomed me, using my vulnerability and curiosity to warp or influence me into engaging in an activity they knew was wrong and illegal. They had the intent to get me to the point where they could commit the abuse; they used validation of my curiosity while displaying concern to convince me that I was better with them than some “stranger” who might hurt me. I recall being told off at 14 by my primary abuser or meeting others as they may have diseases I could catch. My abuser made it look like he cared (which he may have done), but he used this to his advantage to keep me where he wanted me.
Thinking about the above, one of the ways the term “paedophile” is used in online arguments and political spats is to describe individuals, primarily adults, who are in a relationship where there is an age gap present. This gap could be anything deemed “inappropriate”, but the typical age range is usually around two years or more. So it could be someone aged 20 in a relationship with another who is 5 years or 25 years older than them (but is not singled out to just those in their twenties). On the other hand, you could be in your thirties or forties plus and still have this label lobbied at you for who you engage with sexually or romantically. The reason typically given for this is that when the older person was, say, in their twenties, their chosen partner will have been a minor at that point in their life, and this would effectively make the older person a paedophile and/or groomer, even if the younger person is an adult at the time of engaging with each other.
This is the reason I say that I am still abused. The trivialization of my experiences as a young man has been watered down to include adults in legal relationships. I struggled with carrying the guilt of my abuse. I felt that I was responsible for what happened to me and that I should have known better for a long time. I tried to self-harm through my teens into my late twenties as I struggled to cope with what had happened to me. Yet now, that trauma from my childhood is deemed on par with someone’s discomfort with an age gap of above two years. Labeling anyone a paedophile or groomer for accepting these gaps spits on what I have been through and continue to manage. In the eyes of these people, the three-year gap between my boyfriend and I would warrant me being given such a horrendous title, even though we are both in our thirties. This abusive tactic should not be accepted just for someone to get a cheap win or silence those who disagree with them.
These words are thrown around to dehumanize people that someone dislikes so they can justify the abusive behavior they inflict on others by disagreeing with their own thoughts, opinions, or values. Even where critical evidence is used to support the opposing argument, this vitriol name-calling is used to gain upper leverage. But in doing so, it disrespects the actual definition and harms those who have survived abuse, and puts those in danger of abuse even further at risk.
I fear that one day, someone will ask the question on the internet when defining paedophilia: “Are you talking about child sexual abuse, or are you talking about age gaps between legally consenting adults?” I fear that the crime will be watered down to internet discourse and will only serve to harm others.
To quote Dr. Julia Shaw in a TED talk, she did on Time To Rethink Evil:
Because when we stop seeing people as human beings, it makes us capable of the worst kinds of atrocity. And one of the ways that we do that is by calling people evil. When we call us someone evil, we’re trying to communicate to someone that, “This person, I don’t even want to try and understand. This person is so different from me that I’m not even going to consider them a human being; I’m going to use words like ‘monster’ instead.” And the problem is — as Nietzsche has said in his critique of the concept of evil, especially of the dichotomous concept of good versus evil rather than in more nuanced understanding, suggesting that we’re all a mix of things that some people consider good and others consider evil — is that when you start fighting with monsters, you have to be careful that you don’t become the monster.
Every time these words are used out of context to dehumanize someone and used as a way to win an argument, you commit abuse. And this is why, as a CSA survivor, I am still abused today.
