Theresa, your site is beautiful, intelligent, professional, and highly useful. Congratulations on such great work. I perused quite a bit last night, or rather in the wee hours of this morning, and found the humongous amount of information there very interesting and helpful. I will continue to access your site in the future. I would like to say that, following on some suggestions of contributing researchers, that, in my private practice as well as work with institutions, there is a very high percentage of young males molested, or seduced, by females. These women were mothers, sisters, other female relatives, maids, babysitters, teachers, friends of the family, female employees of mental and correctional institutions, and the like. What is interesting to me about this virtually unreported phenomenon is that it seems these boys sense that the culture expects them to want and be grateful for these encounters. To report such incidents as molestation would be saying they are not ‘real’ men, or are plainly nuts. Yet in my experience with these men, it seemed quite clear to me that their sexuality was compromised, twisted, and perverted. These experiences prevented normal sexual health and distorted their perception of women. On the other end of the spectrum are men whose mothers were men-haters or sexually phobic or exceedingly moralistic about sex and this caused these young men to dysfunctional sexually and incapable of relating in a healthy way with women. Perhaps what we have here is a general cultural problem with sex and due to our polarized concepts of gender identity and gender expectations and we have wrongly and narrowly framed the problem. It is natural that our culture would focus on molestation of females by males. However, by not taking a more encompassing view, or by taking a partial view, we may be aiding in perpetuating the problem just when we are trying to solve it. This is just a hunch and I may be way wide of the mark. At any rate, thank you for emailing me and exposing me to your very professional web site.
With Love and Gratitude, Ed
Ed Young, PhD
dredyoung@earthlink.net
