Pedophilia and Sex Positivity: Millennial Sexuality and the Performance of Sexual Intactness

The sex positivity movement is a fascinating backdrop for a generation that has been sexually impacted to a phenomenal degree — as I use it here, I mean the amount of sexual trauma and violence we have experienced on a material level, has been massive and devastating. Not “messages” we get from society and “cultural ideas” we have about sex: rape and sexual violence specifically, as a material context of the sex positivity movement.

Sex positivity has been everywhere for the past ten years at least. The general framework is that society creates shame around, discourages, gatekeeps, marginalizes, etc. sex, through things like gender roles and purity culture and beauty standards and racism and fat phobia and transphobia; that in addressing that shame and stigma, and embracing ourselves as sexual beings, we can meaningful overcome some of those challenges, and be liberated, through sex; that sex positivity would challenge dominant narratives about sexuality, as well as more deeply embrace things like queer sex and kinky sex in this era.

But the number one issue with sex in this generation is not, at all, some nebulous concept like “self love” or “body positivity” or “representation in advertising and television”; the number one barrier in this country to positive sexual experiences is sexual trauma; and for the purposes of this article most specifically, I want to narrow in on child sexual abuse. 

The prevalence of child sexual abuse is absurdly high; we are talking about 25% of girls experiencing child sexual abuse, and one in 13 boys. Then you have to look at the teen sexual assault that occurs after 18, but is still early-age sexual abuse: the campus rape, in particular;  1 in 5 women in college are sexually assaulted, and there’s a clear link to child sexual abuse there as well — child sexual assault often leads to significant serial abuse over a lifetime. Children and teens live in a war zone of sexual violence; they are not safe with parents, school teachers, family friends, clergy, older men of any kind. 

The impact of child sexual abuse on sexuality is incalculable. Pedophilia victims often go on to develop eating disorders, resulting in often lifetime issues around body image; and these are not the body image issues of “I don’t look like the girls on the magazines”, but rather, “someone destroyed my view of my own body through extreme physical and sexual torture.” Eating disorders decrease libido. Pedophile victims may struggle to have sex at all, they may be promiscuous; in all scenarios, they are forced to reckon with the sexual abuse and its relationship to their sexuality. 

This is from The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Counseling Implications by Melissa Hall and Joshua Hall:

“Many survivors experience sexual difficulties. The long-term effects of the abuse that the survivor experiences, such as, depression and dissociative patterns, affect the survivors sexual functioning. Maltz (2001a, as cited in Maltz, 2002) gives a list of the top ten sexual symptoms that often result from experiences of sexual abuse: “avoiding, fearing, or lacking interest in sex; approaching sex as an obligation; experiencing negative feelings such as anger, disgust, or guilt with touch; having difficulty becoming aroused or feeling sensation; feeling emotionally distant or not present during sex; experiencing intrusive or disturbing sexual thoughts and images; engaging in compulsive or inappropriate sexual behaviors; experiencing difficulty establishing or maintaining an intimate relationship; experiencing vaginal pain or orgasmic difficulties (women); and experiencing erectile, ejaculatory, or orgasmic difficulties (men; p. 323). A study done on the prevalence and predictors of sexual dysfunction in the United States revealed that victims of sexual abuse experience sexual problems more than the general population. They found that male victims of childhood sexual abuse were more likely to experience erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and low sexual desire, and they found that women were more likely to have arousal disorders (Laumann, Piel, & Rosen, 1999).”

Addressing intimacy after sexual trauma is extremely complicated, a complexity that hasn’t been reflected in the sex positivity movement, even though 1 in 4 women deal with the sexual trauma stemming from child sexual abuse… this would make up one of the biggest constituents of a broad sex positivity movement; is a proportional 25% percent of sex positivity addressing this is some way? Or… practically any of it at all? (This is not to sideline anyone doing work in that space, for I know we are united in concern on this matter). And this is just sexual trauma stemming from that one type of sexual abuse, so if you are incorporating a lens of sexual violence, you’re really talking about a MAJORITY of women who have experienced sexual, domestic and/or stalking violence at some point in time, and are thus dealing not with some vague societal scolding, but rather, depths and layers of physical and sexual trauma that will affect their sexual lives forever. 

 You could say that sex positivity includes these factors, that sex positivity can be a way of overcoming that type of pain or transforming it or working through it with a loving partner or whatever; the reality is that the movement hasn’t gotten anywhere close to discussion of what it can take to overcome sexual trauma, and how very different that is from this idealized, sex positive path of repressed sexuality to liberated sexuality. 

Recovery from the trauma of child sexual abuse is, among many things, a medical process. Some people never have sex again, whether by choice or by the difficulty of having it. There are therapists who work specifically with people who struggle to or cannot have sex tolerably, due to pedophilia, and it is an arduous and exceptionally painful journey that can take years of treatment, with no guarantee of success.  Such a program can include individual therapy, couple’s therapy, a long series of sometimes excruciating sexual exercises, EDMR and use of aids like benzodiazepines to, quite literally, stop panic attacks from happening. For many of those who have experienced sexual violence, having positive sexual experiences isn’t about “overcoming societal shame”, “being open to receiving pleasure” and “learning about your body and what works for you”, its about undergoing a very serious, arduous, physical and medical process. 

Flashbacks during sex — incredibly painful for both an individual and their partner. Some people develop a medical condition, vaginismus, in response to sexual violence, where they are not able to physically have penetrative sex; this can happen regardless of how much you love the person, how much you love yourself, or how theoretically “liberated” you are. There are parts of trauma that exist outside of our reasoning, that aren’t affected by talk of loving our bodies or more representation of consent dialog in television shows. 

 In many womens’ cases, what you are primarily talking about with relationship to sexual shame, self-hatred, guilt, etc., is very specifically from pedophilia, and it cannot be addressed without taking that head on. If you have up to 25% of women being child sexual assault victims, many by pedophiles, it seems total lunacy to exclude them from the sex positivity discussion — in fact, it just reinforces that shame of being a pedophile victim, that you are broken, that you have something that can’t be solved purely of conversations about boundaries and non-monogamy. In maintaining the silence, the movement itself alienates the huge number of people who are actually most likely to be unable to have or enjoy healthy sex, due to violence. We will NEVER be able to have a sex positive community until we end pedophilia. 

As a pedophile victim, I frankly have found the movement extremely alienating, as well as reinforcing the idea that if you’re not having great sex, there’s something wrong with you. 

You say that society shames sexually liberated woman; but what about how a society shames pedophilia victims for being -unable- to have a healthy sexual relationship? Part of the whole movement is that if you aren’t sexually liberated and free, that you’re “internalizing society’s expectations for women” and “conforming”, as if these are lessons being inscribed by a culmination of a lifetime of micro aggressions, as opposed to very material and direct factors; a flaw in the sex positivity movement, is the same flaw that we have seen across these movements, which is a lack of materialism; gauzy interpersonal and vague societal auras, media trends and representations, are solely implicated. This is the individualism that defines the past 10 years of movements; in this case, of becoming personally sexually liberated, of personally having great sex and being empowered by that, as the primary goal.

The erasure of the experiences of pedophile victims once they have grown up — is part of an overall cultural mechanism where pedophile victims are left to the shadows. In all of these conversations about the role of shame in sex positivity, what about the fact that pedophile victims are shamed throughout life for being victims, that they are thought of as broadly discardable and ruined, that they are shamed away from disclosing to anyone in their lives, especially their partners for fear of losing them? This is the source of the idea of sexual brokenness — what happens to sexually abused women but more fundamentally, stemming from, sexually abused children; the idea that pedophile victims are broken. How has that specific shame been sublimated by some general concept of “slut shaming” and “modesty culture”? Why do we have endless time for the vagaries of shame but not its strongest and most material pillars? 

So there is an element where the people who most need it, are nowhere to be found in this movement. I personally haven’t a single time in as many years online as sex positivity has been raging, even heard the word vaginismus or pedophilia. And now you have a cultural environment, this media environment which is, in some related effort to be sex-positive, drenched even more in sex than ever before. While representation is a key part of this and other movements from this era, you have to wonder, where has the push been to include the sexual experiences of pedophile victims? 

I can’t help but comment on the explicitness of the sex positive movement. When do we talk about sexually traumatized people who do not want to see this much sex period in the cultural environment? Personally, as a survivor of pedophilia and serial rape and domestic violence, I don’t really like sex scenes on TV and I will often look away, it makes me uncomfortable and it makes me start to feel repulsed and sometimes even vaguely triggered. Sex repulsion is not something every pedophile victim will experience, ditto its broader medical implication in sexual aversion disorder (haven’t heard that one either). But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a reaction that a significant percent of people (again, up to 25% of women have experienced child sexual abuse), have to sexually graphic material in general; that even outside of making sexual violence scenes unbearable, it can make just general sexual scenes overall triggering.

Now, I’m not saying that means we should cut sex out of media; what it indicates to me is yet more balance and a more nuanced understanding of sex and sexual experiences and stances is required. Where is the representation of pedophile victims trying to navigate lives and relationships, where is the focus on that, to be held ALONG WITH things like people navigating open relationships, polycules, kink relationships and so on? 

There’s a certain voyeurism to the sex positivity movement; where sex is becoming not only something that we are doing with people in our lives, but that is part, more than ever, of how we present to the world, a part of our identity, a part of our public politics. And while I commend the brave displays of sexuality publicly (though they have problems), you have to wonder if sex positivity has something to do with proving our sexual intactness in the middle of truly mass sexual violence. If you buy into the notion that we are an extremely sexually traumatized population, and by that I mean, society had caused significant destruction in our sexualities through violence, and our entire generation has sustained huge amounts of sexual trauma; how does that line up with the portrayals of sex as overwhelming celebratory, when that certainly isn’t the experience of our generation?  

Sometimes it feels like sex positivity has a certain desperateness to it, as if to say “I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine! See, I’m having great sex!!!” This is simply not the case for significant numbers of our generation, no matter how you cut it. Even in adulthood there is a huge deal of “sex”  happening in coerced situations, including marital rape, date rape, sex with men in the workplace and office, sex involving abusive age gaps, etc. Again, we see the biggest actual obstacle to sexual liberation being sexual violence, and yet the expectation is that this is going to be lifted by confronting our shame. “Shame” really does a lot of heavy lifting in the movement; in theory, its a cover for a wide range of things that may negatively impact sex, but its incredibly non-specific; it is not even clear what this shame refers to or where that shame is being generated from…. When a lot of it is coming from sexual violence, not “the culture”.  

The sex positivity movement acts as if sexual activity is inherently good and furthermore, represents some kind of triumph over self and society. Portraying sex as health means that not-sex is unhealthy; more slap in the face to the many, many people who are unable to have sex or to have sex that feels good, or who don’t want to have sex. Where is the dialog that says… it’s OK to not be able to have sex? Where is the discussion of acceptance of perhaps permanent sexual trauma, about how to make the decision to stop trying or to stop treatment when you don’t want to anymore? 

There’s a tidal wave of information about how having sex is good for your sleep and your happiness and your this and your that, but that’s an extremely difficult variable to isolate, not to mention that any number of things can produce slight increases to our baseline. And there is 0 evidence that not having sex is bad for you, that if you’re not having sex it is unhealthy. Still, the very same idea in sex positivity as sex being the height of liberation, results in a dichotomy where the pedophile victim or the person with sexual trauma, feels even MORE that they are wrong, gross, sick, broken, mentally disturbed, undesirable, etc. 

To admit that you can’t have sex because you’ve been raped by a pedophile, becomes an admission of some character flaw, some fundamental flaw in your life, that you are cut off from the ways the women love and express themselves and build relationships. That you aren’t liberated, that you aren’t free, that you aren’t confident, that you aren’t a feminist etc. Etc. Etc. Sex, and lots of it, is equated in the sex positivity movement with health, vitality, political liberation, spirituality, resistance even, etc. But for many, sex isn’t analogous with any of those things and likely will never be. Even as it claims to want to remove stigma, it stigmatizes entirely other populations who, as those most negatively sexually impacted by society, should actually be first in the movement. Nor does sex positivity even offer you a way towards its goals and aims, for any value outside of challenging “internalized patriarchy” and “embracing your body” and “talking to your partner” and being “an ethical slut”. On a final assessment, it is a movement far too shallow to hold up to analysis under the experiences of our generation. 

We must expand our consideration of what our experiences of sex can be, even while consenting to it: that people before, during, and after sex have pretty complex experiences, far beyond “men don’t know where the clitoris is”. Many, many people who have had sexual trauma, will never ever feel comfortable telling their partner about their sexual trauma or how it affects them, and will go through performing sexual intactness, often bringing on great suffering. Again, this is the original performance of sexual intactness: hiding your sexual trauma while having sex. 

There is no reflection of the pedophile victim even in the sex positivity movement, nor in the broader dialogue on sexuality; no reflection and no existence. Particularly when it comes to having negative sexual consequences flowing from abuse, it’s all quiet all around. Sex has never been left in the dark; but sexual brokenness, sexual pain, sexual suffering, that is left in the dark and always has been, and the sex positivity movement provides no remedy to it. There is even no cultural guide stone, no series of takes, that is available to discuss this or refer to it (please do not send me the one person or articles on it that is the exception, this is very obviously addressing the movement on the whole). The woman trying to explain this to her partner, does so in what still feels like a vacuum — not only has the movement done nothing for her, it has done nothing to prepare partners for being a better intimate partner to pedophile victims. 

If victims of child sexual abuse are not made more legible and addressed via a sex positivity movement, at what point is it even a movement, if contact with some of the most impacted groups, would require fundamental changes in the operating framework? In short, it’s not a political movement at all; its political character has been removed from it, because it has shunned the people who are the furthest from the goals of sex positivity: pedophile victims. Again and again, we find pedophile victims missing even in movements that are most directly related to them. 

We have all kinds of infographics and podcasts and blog posts and books on how to bring up your fetishes to a partner, how to talk about desire, how to start a dialogue on polyamory… and while I’m sure there have been some tools, I haven’t seen anywhere near a proportional element of “here’s how to talk to your partner about your sexual trauma” or “here’s 10 things to take into consideration if your lover is a pedophile victim” (If I were to make one, it would include things like: understand that your partner may suddenly want to stop having sex, might start having a panic attack, might be unable to physically have sex, might want you to go to counseling together, might require healthcare, etc.)  

People haven’t just been kicked out from the garden of sexual pleasure by modesty culture and by body shaming culture and kink shaming; but from very, very serious sexual abuse, often in childhood, from which many go on to have profound sexual problems and dysfunctions. In what had the potential to be a revolutionary movement, we instead end up with so much of the yardstick being personal pleasure. How many conversations have we had about pegging alone? About rope bondage and dominatrixes and furries and play piercings? How much about the importance of the female orgasm? In this, what remains as ever, the REAL taboo, is child sexual abuse and its victims. Instead of focusing on communities who are sexually impacted, the movement had to organize instead around fetish objects. Sometimes I question what the actual gains are of movement that has resulted in just having to hear about and see sex all of the time, which again, is not materially different than what it was before, just more obnoxious. The idea that resolving trauma through acting out some kind of fetish is somehow revolutionary is extremely suspect, especially without even being willing to name the trauma. 

I have another piece about the need to incorporate a lens of pedophilia into ALL of our movements you can read here; and in closing, please consider pedophile victims as part of your political concerns. When pedophilia is ended and pedophile victims aren’t pushed to the edges of society, every movement, but especially sex positivity, will benefit; beyond that, it is our ethical obligation and requires no other cause.