As the war on "sex deviants"
heats up, queer adolescent boys are getting sent to prison in record
numbers. Shneur looks at their plight behind bars.
The setting sun highlights
a wolf-pack of rapidly traversing clouds, seeming to flee across the
sky as if driven in hot pursuit. All eyes in the rag-tag column
of men are drawn to the slice of brilliant color shining between
canyons of dirty red brick and rusted iron bars. If only their
bodies could follow their eyes, they would soar toward the distant tip
of mountain just visible over the thirty-foot gray concrete wall.
Black, white, and Hispanic, they emerge into the cramped sand and
cement yard for their daily "recreation," Some shout loudly in the
raucous accents of their native ghettos; a few are dressed as much like
females as prison regulations will tolerate; but most are absorbed in a
sort of grim determination to walk, talk, or gamble away a few
hours of the timeless "time," of the unbidden "bid."
If one were to poll these men, incarcerated in a special unit of the
New York State prison system, one would find a collection of thieves,
murderers, extortionists, and Mafiosi. However, the reality is
that two-thirds or more of them are imprisoned because of sexual
relations with minors. Here, in what probably comes closest to
being a "community" of lovers of adolescents or children, the flight
from self-awareness and acknowledgement seems singularly
pathetic. Here, where the secret has been "outted," often in
sensationalistic newspaper headlines, and where individuals might find
comfort in the sharing of their common tragedy, the self-imposed
isolation and denial seem particularly pointless. And saddest of
all are the young faces, those still adolescent or barely into
adulthood, whose identities have been cut off, crushed, aborted
literally "in statu nascendi." These unfortunate young prisoners
are the subject of this article.
The author has spoken informally with a number of fellow prisoners who
were persecuted as adolescents for their sexual orientation. Some
of these conversations have been in great depth, and some only brief,
depending upon opportunity and the degree of trust established.
These hard-won confidences are protected here by exclusion of
identifying details. This is not a scientific study, nor even a
pilot study. But if systematic research were to be done in this
field, some promising points of inquiry are herein suggested.
Five areas were included in all the discussions; they are:
1) When and how did you begin to realize that your sexual orientation
was "different" from that of most of your peers?
2) When and how were you first "officially" persecuted by the political
system?
3) How did "Authorities" attempt to convince you that you were "bad" or
"sick"?
4) How do you feel now about your sexual experiences with younger
persons?
5) How do you plan to "handle" your sexuality after release from prison?
1) How did you realize your sexual orientation was "different"?
Young persons who are attracted to children or adolescents become aware
of their orientation at a fairly wide range of ages, although in
general later than that found for "adultophiles," either heterosexual
or homosexual. The age of awareness seems to correlate more with
overall personality and level of sexual activity than it does with
orientation. By orientation is meant the individual's subjective
hierarchy of sexual responsiveness to men, women, boys, and girls.1
Individuals who are more highly sexual, and/or who have more
extroverted personalities, tend to have more and earlier contacts, and
to become aware of their orientation at an earlier age. One
outgoing respondent, who describes himself as having been "promiscuous"
as a child, was aware by age ten of his strong preference for younger
partners.2 Another respondent,
who says he was a
"loner" throughout childhood and adolescence, did not "discover
himself" until he was into his early twenties. Even today, he is
a gentle and retiring person.3
The most common pattern involves sexual identity emerging during early
to mid- adolescence, around ages thirteen to sixteen years. As
contemporaries, one by one, make their definitive turns toward adult
orientations and away from childhood sexuality,4
the lover
of adolescents or children is gradually "left behind." This is why
awareness comes at a relatively late age. If, at age eleven or
twelve, a girl is having erotic fantasies about teenage women at the
same time that her peers are falling in love with high school boys, it
rapidly occurs to her that she is sexually "different." However,
if, after several years of sexual expression with "the kids in the
neighborhood," she continues to enjoy the kids in the neighborhood, she
probably thinks nothing of it. A twelve-year-old boy masturbating
with another twelve-year-old boy is "just playing around," i.e.,
expressing childhood sexuality. A twelve-year-old boy
masturbating with a ten-year-old boy is also just "playing around" --
or is he? One young prisoner recalls an ongoing sexual
relationship he had at twelve with another twelve- year-old. This
person was one-and-a-half years into puberty at the time, while the
other boy was just pubescent. The partner remarked, "How can you
get turned on by someone who has less hair than you?" To which
the respondent replied, "Why would you want to do it with someone who
has more hair than you?" Clearly in retrospect, this peer
relationship had inter-generational overtones. However, not until
most of one's peers have made their definitive turns toward either
adult heterosexuality or adult homosexuality, and one continues to age
but one's desired sexual partners do not, does the suspicion of
difference assert itself. Finally, when one's partners begin to
regard one, not as a slightly older contemporary, but as "grown-up,"5
the identity component "I am someone who loves children and
adolescents" must come to the fore. So the continuity between
childhood sexuality and an adult orientation as a person who feels
erotic love for adolescents or children delays self-recognition,
probably by two to four years.
2) When and how were you first "officially" persecuted by the political
system?
The younger the prisoner in my sample, the more likely he is to have
been officially persecuted as an adolescent. The author found no
prisoner over the age of forty who had been arrested as a
teenager. Those in an intermediate age range may have been
prosecuted as "juvenile offenders," or just "sent for treatment."
But the youngest group -- those in their early twenties or later teens
-- had as adolescents been tried and imprisoned as adults. This
change represents, of course, the new witch-hunt mentality around sex
involving minors. That which a generation ago was viewed as
eccentric and undesirable is now seen as a heinous crime, committed by
a "monster" who is hopelessly incorrigible -- even if that
"perpetrator" is himself little more than a child.
Among older respondents, political persecution often first took the
form of mandatory "counseling" or "treatment." This may have been
mediated through parental or school authority, or under the threat of
(or with actual) juvenile court intervention. Removal from the
home, or banishment to a special school, may have followed.
Younger respondents generally were simply arrested, sometimes quite
roughly, and almost always with vicious verbal abuse. Among older
interviewees, there was almost never any malicious intent on behalf of
their younger partner, who merely shared what appears to have been a
pleasurable encounter by relating it to a "significant other."
That is not the case with the more recent episodes, where government-
sponsored indoctrination programs create sexual self-hatred in young
persons, frequently causing them to reinterpret pleasurable experiences
in a negative light.
3) How did "authorities" attempt to convince you that you were "bad" or
"sick"?
The two key concepts in understanding how these young prisoners are
brainwashed to reject themselves are isolation and unanimity.
These are essentially mirror images of each other. The young
person is isolated from any alliance with other persons who share his
erotic and emotional feelings in a positive and self-affirming way, and
all the adult authority figures around him agree unanimously that he is
"sick" and in need of "help."
In the 1950s, numerous studies and experiments were done to try to
understand the phenomenon of Nazism. One persistent question was,
"How can persons who otherwise are intelligent, cultured, and moral, be
persuaded to perform acts of egregious cruelty, contrary to deeply held
principles?" The two salient factors that repeatedly emerged were
conformity and approval. In experiments where all the other
participants agreed to an incorrect perception of reality (e.g., that
the shorter of two lines was longer), an experimental subject would not
only come to agree, but would actually begin to believe that his
perception was the same as everyone else's. In other experiments,
approval voiced by persons seen as authority figures (such as
scientists or doctors) could cause ordinary people to perform acts
which they otherwise would have rejected as morally reprehensible.6
In these studies, the "others" were strangers. The adolescent
attracted to younger partners, however, is confronted by his very own,
very personal, authority figures: parents, teachers, clergy, relatives,
and so on. They all present to him that what he thought was
loving, delightful, and "good," i.e., sexual pleasure with young
partners, was really terribly "bad." Furthermore, what he thinks
is "bad," i.e., being incarcerated and never seeing his loved ones
again, is actually "good," both for him and for them. The
principles of both conformity and approval unite to urge the youth's
personality to collapse in the face of such unanimity.
Another finding in these experiments on conformity was that many
individuals could resist the pressure of the group if they were given
one ally. This minimal case of "strength in numbers," combined
with some degree of confidence in their own subjective perception, was
enough to insulate them against group unreality. Those in prison
for sex with minors are carefully guarded from forming any
self-affirming alliances. Supportive literature is not allowed in
most prisons, and outspoken advocates tend to be transferred to other
prisons where they may be beaten, raped, or killed. Where group
"treatment" is employed, the young subject is isolated in a group of
more thoroughly brainwashed prisoners, who can resolve their own
remaining doubts7 and gain approval
from their captors by
strongly
affirming the shared unreality to the newcomer. Such submissive
and brainwashed prisoners believe that they may be rewarded with
earlier release.
Perception and memory, then, are not as static or carved into stone as
many people believe, but rather fluid and subject to modification and
revision. Very recent studies, both naturalistic and experimental
are showing that "memory implantation" in both children and adults may
be relatively common and easily accomplished. The same
brainwashing techniques discussed above are also used to change the
"affective sign" of past experiences, i.e., to remember them as "bad,"
"unpleasant," or "coerced" when in fact they have been "good,"
"pleasurable," and "sought after."
The "drug-addiction" model is generally used with these imprisoned
youths to accomplish this transformation. Young people today are
familiar with that model. Most adolescents today have had
experience with drugs, and at least know someone who is addicted to, or
otherwise dependent on them. Youth today are familiar with the
paradigm of the addict whom everyone else sees destroying himself, but
who lusts after his addiction with a sick passion to which he himself
is blind. The adolescent imprisoned for sex with minors is told
that he, through no fault of his own, has become addicted to an
"unnatural" sexual outlet, the way that opium might be seen as
providing an "unnatural" relief from life's stress. Like the
opium addict, he must learn to give up his "easy high" and direct
himself to more "natural," "better" outlets. As to how he came to
be "addicted" in the first place - well, obviously there must be a
"pusher" lurking overtly or covertly in the past. Whether
the poor addict remembers it or not, his father must have flipped his
penis a couple of extra times on the "changing table," or her
grandmother must have washed her clitoris a little too attentively back
in the bassinet. Just as the drug addict must come to view the
pleasurable memories of pharmacological euphoria as suspect, and
ultimately to remember those experiences hatefully in light of their
long term destructiveness, so the imprisoned adolescent must come to
reverse the "positive sign" of his loving experiences, and remember
them as acts of cruelty and self-destruction.
4) How do you feel about your sexual experiences now?
Asking these youths in prison how they now feel about their prior
sexual experiences was truly eerie. Their responses conjured
images from Manchurian Candidate, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and
A Clockwork Orange. Generally, the first reaction was to not
answer the question at all, but to make some statement about future
behavior. If the query were pursued, frightening changes would be
observed: voices lost normal intonation and rhythm, eyes glazed.
One heard what sounded like a memorized statement, always featuring the
words "crime" and "victim," delivered in a flat, affectless cadence.
Attempts to elucidate further or to elicit details were usually met
with a deflection from the subject, or with premature termination of
the conversation.
This reaction was quite different from fellow prisoners who were older
when they were publicly identified and humiliated. The latter are more
likely to refuse to talk about their experiences at all. This
would seem to indicate a reluctance or inability to spout the party
line, silence being a preferable alternative. If they do discuss
themselves, they recall their loves with nostalgia and yearning.
Apparently, passing through the adolescent crisis of identity
formation, and then having the opportunity to "live with oneself" for a
period of years, insulates to some extent against the disintegrative
effects of oppression. Having a history of loving relationships,
perhaps even having seen some of one's partners grow to healthy
maturity, makes it more difficult to acquiesce to a revisionist
discrediting of those relationships.
Persons with erotic feelings for youths who are caught in the
implacable jaws of the legal machinery as adolescents or young adults
suffer identity dissolution, not resulting from inner psychological
conflict as described in classical sources, but as a consequence of
confrontation between the proverbial "irresistible force" and the
"immovable object." Long experience with adolescents has taught
the author that despite outward bravado, their adult personae, their
emerging senses of self, are beautifully tender, hothouse
flowers. Long, graceful stems they have, vibrant contrasting hues
and moist petals; but too much or too rough handling, too much stress,
and they readily wither and die. Transplanted outdoors, after a
time they will toughen, perhaps less heartbreakingly lovely, but
hardier and better able to survive in stormy weather. Adolescent
personalities attacked at the very root of their sexual selves simply
crumble. These adolescents are confronted with an "immovable
object" of overwhelming power: not only the power to bodily take them
out of their natural environment and lock them up as criminals, but the
power to make labels of "deviant" and "pervert" stick within the mind
of their prison peers and within their own minds. Under this dual
physical and mental onslaught, the unfolding personality retreats to
cower silently in some forgotten corner of the mind, fermenting, and
biding its time. Meanwhile, an alien pseudo-identity is forcibly
grafted onto these unfortunate young people, giving rise to the
automaton-like productions noted earlier.
5) How do you plan to "handle" your sexuality after release from prison?
Persons whose sexual identities were severely damaged during
adolescence by imprisonment are at great risk upon release. They
have no solid, stable sense of self, only that which has been foisted
upon them by their captors. Even in this, they have not been
allowed to "identify with the aggressor," a psychological defense
mechanism that, although neurotic, might afford them a workable
identity of some kind. This is because, along with the "drug
addict" model discussed above, they have been taught an "Alcoholics
Anonymous" approach to "treatment." Thus, they see themselves
forever "Recovering" -- "Once an abuser, always an abuser" -- with
eternal vigilance and total abstinence being the only protections
against "falling off the wagon." In this way, their identities
are destroyed, but they are not permitted to "join the club" of their
"normal" persecutors. The goal of "AA" is not for a person to
become a normal drinker, but become a non-drinker. Transferred to
those who feel erotic love for adolescents or
children then, the goal with which these people have been indoctrinated
is not "normal" relationships with young people, but to have no contact
with them.
In fact, within the prison walls or fences, where there are almost
never any children or young adolescents, it is quite possible for these
young individuals, who after all have never lived as adults in the
outside world, to believe that they are "in recovery" from their
"sickness." Their identity, which had never really "gelled," is
dissolved: their sexuality stripped of all appropriate stimuli, except
for long-faded memories, is suppressed and denied. They naively
but honestly believe that they will live without any eroticism ("I can
look but not touch"), or that with the omnipotentiality of childhood
still intact, they will now suddenly manifest the "straight"
hyper-heterosexuality they have read about in pornographic magazines,
but never experienced ("I'm normal now"). They delude themselves
and serve their sentences without ever learning how to understand their
sexuality, or how to handle it in the real world, either through
appropriate expression or through selfconscious non-expression.
When released, they are vulnerable to being swept away by erotic
stimuli, and with the added stress of insidious parole practices, they
are susceptible to again becoming victims of their captors.
The only exception noted to this depressing picture is the individual
who has a strong secondary, or even primary, adult homosexual
attraction. These persons often are able to grow into at least a
partial adult sexual identity during the years of their
incarceration. Caring and emotionally stable gay partners are
themselves rare in prisons, and unfortunately some youths imprisoned
for relationships with minors may have been yet further traumatized by
nonconsensual jailhouse encounters. However, if they found
mutuality in a growth-promoting relationship for any substantial period
of time, they may have avoided to some extent at least the identity
dissolution discussed above. Once again, older prisoners in jail
on the same charge, having lived with themselves over years or decades,
tend to have a much more balanced attitude, and more realistic plans
for themselves upon release from prison.
From the very same considerations discussed in this article as
contributing to the tragic situation of youths jailed for sex with
minors, a program of intervention and rescue may also be
inferred. First and foremost, their isolation must be
broken. People on the outside with an understanding of these
issues should take it as their duty to befriend these unfortunate
prisoners.8 This actually is not
very difficult in
prison: prison grapevines generally possess accurate knowledge of the
charges for which each person is incarcerated, and young prisoners are
most often hungry for friendships in which they perceive they will not
be sexually assaulted. Sharing news of the struggle of sexual
minorities for human rights, or even just small talk, can provide the
crucial ally to help someone preserve his identity in the face of
efforts to undermine it.
As discussed, pressure toward conformity depends on near-unanimity,
especially among authority figures and "significant others."
Young prisoners must be provided with authoritative information with
which to bolster their intuitive sense of right and wrong. Papers
and reports on the history of this kind of affection -- its nature, its
practices, and its benefits -- must find their way into the hands of
all who share these feelings. Legal and administrative
restrictions on the free flow of information must be fought in the
courts and circumvented by creative legal alternatives. Any
positive publicity for organizations dealing with these issues -- even
just that such things exist -- can help the young, isolated prisoner to
feel that there are others who hold an opinion different from that of
his captors.
Perhaps the greatest service that those on the outside can offer their
imprisoned brothers, particularly those incarcerated before reaching
full adulthood, is help upon release. This should begin in
advance, with stories and information about the lifestyles of people
like themselves who live successfully on the outside, and where and
with whom one can live. Also included should be stories about
those who have chosen to live openly as advocates of free sexuality in
a hostile society, i.e., a sort of celibate pederast priesthood.
Upon release from prison, support and comfort should be immediately at
hand. Remember, these are individuals who have never lived as
adults outside prison. As with all such persons, one can expect
them to be pathologically mistrustful, lacking in age-appropriate
social and relational skills, and combining excessive external
toughness with abnormal internal vulnerability. In addition to
all of this will be found the self-deprecation and confused sexual
identity resulting from years of brainwashing and indoctrination.
What has just been described is indeed a labor of love, and not without
its risks. America has always been a nation of social and
political movements, of groups and classes and races struggling for
recognition of their basic right to exist. The difference between
the nineteenth-century civil disobedience of Emerson and Thoreau, and
twentieth-century civil rights movements, is that nowadays nobody wants
to take the consequences of his actions. One must stand up to
laws and policies that are unfair or morally wrong. This is war;
it is no different from the previous generation's fighting to remove
the blight of Nazism from the world. One need not volunteer to
fight in every war, but in the Army which one has joined, one must be
prepared to suffer, bleed, and possibly even die. Activists can
and should provide as much protection as possible, both for those who
are already "out," and for those who are "not yet out." However,
it should be understood that there is no perfect protection, that there
is no benefit without risk, no growth without pain. These are our
children, and they are being destroyed.
A young man in his twenties walks `round and `round the prison
yard. With him is a gay man ten years his senior. They
glance about furtively at the guards, then clasp each others'
hands. Some say they are lovers, when they get the chance.
They say they just talk. What do they talk about? Not about
kids, that's for sure. The young man has been imprisoned for
several years; he will soon be going home. Home? Well, not
really; after all, he was a child when he last lived there. He
has "grown up" in prison. He and his friend/lover promise to
write each other frequently, but because of parole, that will have to
be mediated clandestinely through a third party, hoping not to get
'caught. Someone has talked to him about a group of organized
boy-lovers, but he doesn't need them, because he "won't be doing that
anymore." No, he doesn't want to come back to jail. So what
will he do? Well, he'll work very hard, maybe buy a house, maybe
open his own business eventually.... His friend will surely look him up
when he gets out....
_________________________
Notes:
1. The author employs a
ten-point rating scale for global
attraction to each of four types of "sex-objects" (man, woman, boy,
girl) thus producing a "Sexual Orientation Profile" of the form
m:w:b:g. A rating of 10:1:1:1, for example, would indicate a
person attracted exclusively to men, and not at all to women, boys, or
girls. The author's SOP is 1:5:8:7. The SOP gives a measure of
overall subjective sexuality, as well as of its distribution. This
will, G-d willing, receive separate treatment in a future
writing. It is interesting to note that of all interviewees, only
one reported sexual attraction to boys only, and not to girls.
After further discussion, his SOP was found to be 8:4:4:1, so
attraction to children was for him in general a secondary
eroticism.
2. His SOP is 1:6:8:9.
3. SOP 5:2:6:4.
4. It is the author's
belief that sexual orientation in
life is biphasic, with a "childhood hierarchy" involving attraction to
other children and/or adults in varying degrees; and an "adult
hierarchy" which emerges around puberty plus or minus two years.
See above, note 1.
5. Remember that
sixteen-year-olds most often are regarded
by children as "grown-ups," and they certainly regard themselves as
fully mature and worldly-wise!
6. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to
Authority, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1963.
7. This process is called by
psychologists "reduction of
cognitive dissonance," and is responsible for the well-known phenomenon
of "no fanatic like a convert."
8. This may be accomplished
through such organizations as the Gay
Community News Prisoner Project, 25 West Street, Boston, Massachusetts
02111 USA.
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