queer via sexual abuse

[tos3]

(I do not want to flood the inboxes, but as a newbie with many questions I have no other way to find answers.)

I am bisexual.

I am a COCSA survivor. I am also a survivor of rape, as previously stated.

I always knew I was attracted to cis boys. Last spring I fell in love (more like in lust) with a trans boy, so I was still straight, but I envisioned having sex with him in two different bodies -- his pre-transition body and post-transition body. I was aroused by both.

This, among many girl crushes, and angry hateful sexually urgent relationships with a certain nonbinary person, made me realize I was bisexual.

With therapy, there is always this unearthing of fossils within. I rediscovered the sexual abuse I had gone through as a child. My abuser was a cis female, around my age.

My rapist was a trans female, two years older than me at the time.

I know many not-straight sexual abuse survivors wonder this -- but am I bisexual because my abusers are female? Did they change me forever?

I know that I will never know, because I was sexually abused and discovered I was bisexual in the same lifetime. These two things are inextricable.

But I still wonder.

[Heather]

The thing is, no one can "make" anyone else be queer. I think a good example of this is an inverse: we can grow up with family who are all straight, a culture that pushes us to be so, and even with all those powerful influences, many of us are still queer, and that's because it is just not something anyone can make happen (or not) with a person. We just are who we are.

Another good example of this is thinking about how many straight women who are assaulted by men still remain heterosexual even though some struggle a lot with trusting men, and even wish they were not hetero.

I have never seen any study or data that links sexual abuse or assault with sexual orientation, and those studies have been done. In other words, to my knowledge, no one has ever found that sexual abuse or assault has ever changed someone's orientation or made it so.

(It's okay to come here and ask a bunch of questions at once, btw. A lot of people find us and have so many questions they have been waiting for somewhere like this to ask and talk about, so that happens a lot, and we totally get it!)

[tos3]

Much of this comes from a feeling that I have been permanently altered -- like they both abused me, and now I am completely different because of it.

I wish I could have sexual interactions with other people without those memories. Is this possible?

You are right in that I "am who I am". I just wish that this person didn't come with so much baggage.

[Heather]

I very much understand (I had two incidents of sexual abuse and assault at 11 and 12, and so professional education and experience aside, I also personally had very similar feelings and concerns once upon a time).

If it helps, my process over the decades has turned out to be that I simply accept that of course my experiences are part of who I am: they were big, they were in my life. And there are some ways I can easily identify as being related to those things, positive and negative. For instance, certain things that trigger me, but also certain kinds of strength and resilience.

The memories do fade over time, and also feel further and further away and less impactful, in my experience, again, both personal and professional. And by all means, sometimes that means that you can be sexual with someone, in time, without ANY of those memories being part of the picture. Most people do get there. If it helps to have someone's anecdote, with me, now 30 years past most assault/abuse experiences in my life, I'd say it's pretty rare that memories or triggers come up, and when they do, I find it pretty easy to toss them off. And that's been the case for a good while now, that's not only recent. (In other words, it won't take 30 years for things to get better, I promise.)

But I digress. You're right, there are some things where we won't ever absolutely know what impact abuse had on them. But, in my mind, that's okay, because we don't have to. However we feel about a thing, whatever we want, it's not like if and when it was influenced by the abuse, that would make those things not okay, or that we'd want them any less, you know?

[tos3]

Thanks for the reassurance.

I will just have to wait, and take care of myself while I wait.

[Heather]

Or maybe think of it less as waiting, and more as just moving on with your life in the ways you can. It feels a lot less like waiting when you are really involved and engaged in the things you can do, and do feel good and excited about, and get immersed in the rest of your life, IME.

For me, that was being very, very immersed in music and art, to the point that I went to a creative arts high school, which demanded a LOT of my energy and time. I think that good counseling got me very far, but sometimes I feel like what got me further was that: not waiting, not focusing on parts of my life or self where progress was slow and stuck sometimes, but instead focusing on what felt good and what felt positive.