Attractive female sexual abusers and heterosexual male victims.

[Machjo]

Our society seems to think that when an attractive woman who sexually abuses a heterosexual boy or who coerces another heterosexual man into sex, he should thank her for it even though evidence shows that these child and even adult male victims often suffer real trauma, depression, and sometimes later addictions and other mental-health problems of their own.

Why is it that our culture is so accepting of attractive women sexually abusing heterosexual males on the assumption that the man or boy must necessarily appreciate it and that this violation of their boundaries causes no harm?

Worse yet, while it's generally accepted that a girl or woman may experience orgasm as a natural sexual response when being sexually assaulted, we treat a male erection and especially orgasm as the ultimate proof of consent while ignoring that even a man who physically resists can still get an erection or orgasm, that a man can orgasm while asleep, and a man can orgasm even when passed out drunk. We ignore that a man can get an erection even when experiencing a traumatic experience.

Our culture seems to accept female coercion as harmless, and that's when it even accepts and acknowledges that women do engage in sexual coercion themselves.

What is it in our culture that makes it so acceptable for an attractive woman to sexually abuse straight men and boys?

[Goddess]

2 hours ago, Machjo said:

Why is it that our culture is so accepting of attractive women sexually abusing heterosexual males

 

2 hours ago, Machjo said:

Our culture seems to accept female coercion as harmless,

Who says it's acceptable and harmless?

The fact is the overwhelming majority of sexual offenders are men, so most programs for abusers are geared towards men and most victim services are geared towards women/children.

I'm seeing more often than in the past - programs and advertising acknowledging that women also offend and there are more and more programs specifically geared for men who are abused by women.  I expect this will continue, as I don't believe the general public agrees with you that women abusers are "harmless" or "acceptable."

[Machjo]

9 minutes ago, Goddess said:

 

Who says it's acceptable and harmless?

The fact is the overwhelming majority of sexual offenders are men, so most programs for abusers are geared towards men and most victim services are geared towards women/children.

I'm seeing more often than in the past - programs and advertising acknowledging that women also offend and there are more and more programs specifically geared for men who are abused by women.  I expect this will continue, as I don't believe the general public agrees with you that women abusers are "harmless" or "acceptable."

Maybe you're right. I hope you're right. That said, I've come across more than enough comments (ironically mostly from people who present themselves online as male) expressing how lucky a man is commenting about another case of a female teacher or babysitter abusing another child for example, though I've also read comments from people presenting themselves as women expressing a belief that it doesn't affect a boy.

Perhaps ironically, the ones most outspoken against it are usually women, which I don't get seeing that one would think men would better understand the harm that it could cause. All I can speculate is that men are less aware of their emotional being and so are less able to recognize the trauma that it can inflict combined with societal expectations about boys in sexual relations with an older woman being seen as 'lucky.'

 

But could you imagine reading online comments about how handsome a male abuser was and so how lucky the female victim should consider herself? People would go mad over such a comment because we understand that the male abuser being handsome does not diminish (or at least not by much) the fact that he would have violated a girl or woman's boundaries. Yet many people (ironically especially men apparently)somehow give attractive female abusers a free pass on her looks alone.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Machjo

[paxamericana]

YES!! where are these attractive female and can they abuse me now please. I'm all yours, nuff said.

I think you are conflating the real issue of abusive relationship and gender identity. Abusive relationship of all types exist and are detrimental to anyone. It doesn't matter if its a hetero or homo couple of any gender. 

I find that men who are physical abusers are often victim of mental abuse by their spouse. It takes two to tango (dance) as we say here down south. 

Edited July 18, 2018 by paxrom

[Machjo]

3 minutes ago, paxrom said:

YES!! where are these attractive female and can they abuse me now please. I'm all yours, nuff said.

I think you are conflating the real issue of abusive relationship and gender identity. Abusive relationship of all types exist and are detrimental to anyone. It doesn't matter if its a hetero or homo couple of any gender. 

The reason i specified attractive female abusers and heterosexual male victims is because many do seem to give the woman a free pass in such a situation.

[paxamericana]

1 minute ago, Machjo said:

give the woman a free pass in such a situation.

because they are conflating the difference between abuse and mutual consent. 

[Machjo]

Just now, paxrom said:

because they are conflating the difference between abuse and mutual consent. 

Or they just assume that when the woman is attractive and the man heterosexual, that he must have wanted it. That's what I think is really going on with this. The fact is that not all heterosexual men will agree to sex with any attractive woman, but some men and some women too seem to believe that that's in fact the case.

[paxamericana]

3 minutes ago, Machjo said:

Or they just assume that when the woman is attractive and the man heterosexual, that he must have wanted it. That's what I think is really going on with this. The fact is that not all heterosexual men will agree to sex with any attractive woman, but some men and some women too seem to believe that that's in fact the case.

nah, I'm pretty sure it's his buddy busting his balls about it. 

[Machjo]

19 hours ago, Goddess said:

 

Who says it's acceptable and harmless?

The fact is the overwhelming majority of sexual offenders are men, so most programs for abusers are geared towards men and most victim services are geared towards women/children.

I'm seeing more often than in the past - programs and advertising acknowledging that women also offend and there are more and more programs specifically geared for men who are abused by women.  I expect this will continue, as I don't believe the general public agrees with you that women abusers are "harmless" or "acceptable."

I guess this is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

 

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/male-rape-no-joke—-pop-culture-often-treats-it-way

 

Making a joke of the female sexual assault of males in film and pop culture. Just imagine the outcry if the roles in those films were reversed!

Edited July 19, 2018 by Machjo

[Goddess]

9 minutes ago, Machjo said:

I guess this is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

 

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/male-rape-no-joke—-pop-culture-often-treats-it-way

 

Making a joke of the female sexual assault of males in film and pop culture.

And males have made a joke of assaulting females since time immemorial......

Remember "grab 'em by the pu$$y"?  And I can't tell you how many jokes I've heard over the years about smacking and beating wives who just won't listen.....

It's wrong coming from either side, completely agree with you.

I think we are coming closer to agreement between the sexes, but still some work to do.  Female aggression is also an important discussion that needs to happen.  I'd rather see those discussions take place here than on INCel sites.

I was thinking of this topic earlier this morning as I read this article:  (let me know if you'd like to read it and the link doesn't allow you to - it's a site I subscribe to, so the link may not work for you.)

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/04/ill-tell-you-where-all-the-good-men-have-gone/

[Machjo]

On 7/19/2018 at 12:34 PM, Goddess said:

And males have made a joke of assaulting females since time immemorial......

Remember "grab 'em by the pu$$y"?  And I can't tell you how many jokes I've heard over the years about smacking and beating wives who just won't listen.....

It's wrong coming from either side, completely agree with you.

I think we are coming closer to agreement between the sexes, but still some work to do.  Female aggression is also an important discussion that needs to happen.  I'd rather see those discussions take place here than on INCel sites.

I was thinking of this topic earlier this morning as I read this article:  (let me know if you'd like to read it and the link doesn't allow you to - it's a site I subscribe to, so the link may not work for you.)

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/04/ill-tell-you-where-all-the-good-men-have-gone/

Thanks for the article; and yes, I could access it.

 

I imagine that probably many women who turn to feminism do so as a reaction to abuse that a man had inflicted on them at some point in the past. I imagine that many men who turn to the men’s rights movement do so in reaction to abuse that women have inflicted on them too. In that respect, they are mirror images of one another.

 

Having gone through the stages of abuse, learned vulnerability escalating to contributory negligence (which increases the risk of re-victimization), and abusiveness in turn (to which I admit and which I very much regret), and finally the withdrawal and recovery stage, I reject the idea that it stems from patriarchy or male privilege or toxic masculinity. Instead, it stems from the exact same source as the female abuse of men and boys stems: trauma.

 

1.      The abuse stage.

I'd suffered female sexual abuse (not from my mother and neither of my parents know anything about it to this day) at the hands of my female babysitter as a child for over a year at around the age of seven and eight. My dad raised me strictly so I feared telling anyone what the babysitter did (which I guess allowed her to continue on). When the school proposed that I receive counselling (since I was forcing kisses on a girl my age and acting abnormally sexually for my age in the schoolyard and my schoolwork was hurting), my dad refused and decided instead that I just needed more discipline and needed to learn to respect girls. My dad essentially raised me through fear to shut up and obey and to always respect a girl’s boundaries. What I never learnt was to respect my own.

 

2.      The learned helplessness stage.

By my late teens, I understood more consciously that I’d never learnt how to adequately defend my boundaries against coercion. As a result, while I could befriend a woman, I could do so only within an organized group and would refuse to meet a woman alone and especially in private at least until I knew her well enough to know that she would respect my boundaries. As a result, I tended to befriend women who professed a religion (though I was indifferent to which specific religion) and avoided those who didn’t based on a belief (whether correct or not) that a woman who professed a religion would more probably respect my boundaries so that I wouldn’t need to defend my own. I didn’t fear that she’d make a false rape accusation against me (though I’d not yet heard about rape-shield laws then either mind you), but rather that she could try to coerce me into sex or a relationship and that I wouldn’t know how to defend against the coercion.

 

On one occasion, I did let my guard down and agreed to meet a woman around a year my junior at her home for dinner when I was nineteen. I didn’t profess her religion but it didn’t matter: she gave me the impression of being practicing and so that gave me a false sense of security (though even then I made a point of not flirting with her and keeping any sexual attraction I might feel towards her to myself so as to not encourage her for my own protection). She decided that she wanted me to spend the night at her place. I froze emotionally and experienced a panic attack at the slightest coercion, resisted at first and finally gave in just to escape the emotional discomfort of it and then felt guilty for not having defended my boundaries afterwards, but it happened many times. The first few times, she didn’t coerce me into sex but rather to just spend the night at her place. It still felt like a violation as she begged and pouted for me to stay and I’d just resist, she’d raise the pressure, I’d freeze emotionally, and then I’d finally give in.

 

I reacted to the coercion in the worst possible way: I started making unwanted sexual advances towards her not because I actually wanted sex with her but as a way to try to scare her into pushing me away or to at least dislike me. Public media had led me to believe that a woman feared or at least hated a man who could violate her boundaries more than anything else. She pushed me away sexually but still coerced me into sleeping at her home and I gave in each time while just bottling the anger inside me. She’d come from a war zone in her past and so in hindsight, I think she might have suffered trauma of her own. On one occasion when she stopped resisting my advances, I broke off to leave and then she started making unwanted advances towards me. The more I tried to leave, the more she pushed herself onto me. I don’t think either of us wanted sex: I think she was trying to pressure me into sex based on the false belief that that would keep me in the relationship with her. That and my not knowing how to defend my boundaries made for a very toxic combination. She might have misread my initial sexual advances towards her as genuine and my then trying to leave as being motivated by her refusing my advances. On the contrary, her ceasing to resist my advances and then making advances of her own only made me want to leave even more. The coercion gradually escalated over time to sex, a relationship, and more. The more I resisted, the more she raised the pressure. At one point, she’d threatened suicide as she held a knife to her body with tears gushing to make me stay.

 

3.      The contributory-negligence stage.

That relationship eventually collapsed as she pushed my boundaries ever farther and I slowly learnt to defend them. It ended in my attempting suicide, turning to alcohol, and then dissociating the physical pleasure of sex from its emotions as a coping mechanism. By then, I’d given up defending my boundaries since I found it to be too emotionally draining and so turned to compulsive sexual behaviours as a coping mechanism for depression. I’d now started to use hooking up for masochistic sex as a drug to distract me from my emotions even though I was only hurting myself even more in the long term. In the process, I negligently contributed to further abuse when on one occasion for example, while I’d agreed to bondage and protected sex, a woman forced unprotected sex and different forms of degradation onto me without my consent, laughed, untied me, and then let me leave in utter shock at what had just happened.

 

That experience only aggravated the trauma and numbed my emotions even more. My sick mind fantasized about being sexually assaulted again in spite of how the last assault pushed me deeper into depression. I even sought out abusive sexual experiences through BDSM hook-up sites in an attempt to re-enact that experience and felt frustrated when a woman would not inflict the same amount of abuse that I’d previously experienced. I didn’t contact the one who’d previously abused me though out of a fear of developing an emotional attachment should I interact with the same person for too long: I feared bonding emotionally with a woman. The fantasies bordered increasingly on the macabre including fantasies about being murdered as they started to blend with suicidal ideas. At one point, it became difficult to draw the line where the masochistic fantasies ended and the suicidal ideas began.

 

4.      The abusive stage.

I won’t deny that after the experience with the woman who’d assaulted me, I felt frustrated at my inability to find a woman who would abuse me to the same degree she had. I then started to become emotionally coercive myself in my sexual relations with women before I finally sought help. My emotions had become totally numbed, I struggled to care about my life, and so I’d essentially lost much of the ability to empathize with another person. I knew that I had a problem long before I’d reached that stage but didn’t know where to turn for help. I honestly believed that I was the only person in the world who was experiencing these compulsive sexual urges, and I blamed myself for them and felt that I was just trying to excuse my behaviour to myself by thinking about seeking professional help. In addition to that, even if I had decided to turn to help, I had no idea what kind of therapist I should look for who would specialize in what I thought was a problem only I faced. I couldn’t even put a name to the problem.

 

I think the main reason I didn’t get help was that I didn’t recognize that I was suffering any kind of trauma. I was aware that I’d been sexually and emotionally abused as a child, that I’d fallen into an extremely abusive relationship in early adulthood that had pushed me to attempted suicide and alcoholism for some time, and that I’d experienced other abuse after that. I had a vague idea about trauma as something soldiers and female victims of abuse suffer from. I’d read about sex addiction as something the rich and famous use as an excuse when their spouses catch them in the act. I never linked any of that to my masochistic compulsive sexual behaviour though. Instead, I just saw myself as a perverted womanising misogynist in denial looking to excuse my behaviour without understanding why I felt such a compulsive need or desire to suffer abuse. Instead of seeking help, I told myself that I just wasn’t trying hard enough to manage my behaviour, that no one but myself could do that for me, and that I shouldn’t be turning to a therapist to excuse my bad behaviour.

 

5.      The withdrawal and recovery stage.

I finally found help in an unlikely way. As my behaviour became ever more compulsive and masochistic, I happened onto chastity devices online. I’d already contemplated whether any kind of libido-suppressant medication existed and whether chemical castration could help me before I’d discovered these devices, so I immediately started to think of them less as sex toys and more as a way to help me manage my behaviour.

 

As I started to look more into them, I came across a site advertising such a device to manage ‘sex addiction.’ I then started to read up on sex addiction and learnt that therapists and twelve-step groups existed that helped with that and that it wasn’t just to provide excuses for the rich and famous. I then discovered that local therapists advertised themselves as specializing in sex addiction and that a local twelve-step group existed too. It was only then that I’d finally got the courage to seek help; yet even then I still felt as though I was just looking for an excuse for my behaviour, a feeling I had to try hard to overcome to get the help I needed.

 

Only after that did I learn about parental-control apps and other apps that could help me too by keeping me off of the BDSM hook-up sites. Therapy was expensive so I later joined a twelve-step group.

 

Through a combination of makeshift therapies that I could afford, I finally stopped at least the more harmful behaviour. Over the next few months after that, I started to feel again, which was an extremely painful process that made me want to return to numbing my emotions again. Others reassured me that it was normal to experience that pain and that it did go away over time so I stuck to it. It did improve and I feel much better and more able to manage my emotions than before even if still not perfectly. I’ve mostly recovered but I can’t deny that whenever I broach the subject, a latent pain returns to remind me that it’s still there. It probably will always remain there but just ever weaker as I allow myself to heal.

 

I can't undo my past, but I do wish that I had learnt about sex addiction much, much sooner than I had. Once I'd learnt about it, I could finally find the help I needed to stop hurting others and myself too. Had I learnt about sex addiction, its causes, its symptoms, and its remedies in high school, I could have recognized its symptoms much sooner than I had, taken the appropriate actions to remedy my compulsive behaviour before it escalated, and so begin the healing process much sooner.

 

There is little anyone other than my abuser herself could have done to protect me from being abused as a child; but through sex-addiction education in the high-school sex-ed curriculum, I could have prevented myself from contributing to allowing others to abuse me more in my early adulthood and from perpetuating that abuse onto others even without my teacher knowing what had happened to me. In fact, had my own abuser learnt about sex addiction as a child herself (given that she faced a statistical probability of having suffered abuse and trans-generational trauma in her own right), she might have then been able to prevent herself from abusing me too. The fact is that police officers can’t be everywhere at all times and sexual offences are hard to prove (especially when they involve cases of emotional coercion leading to coerced consent which was the most common form of abuse that I’d experienced both as a victim and as an abuser); so at the end of the day, the most practical step might be to provide students who may have suffered abuse with the knowledge they need to know where to turn for help.

Edited July 20, 2018 by Machjo

[dialamah]

Great OP and question.  

On 7/18/2018 at 10:48 AM, Machjo said:

What is it in our culture that makes it so acceptable for an attractive woman to sexually abuse straight men and boys?

I think that part of the answer is that our society expects men to be physically and emotionally "strong" - they can be angry and they are expected to be horny.  They can't be vulnerable, scared, uncertain, confused, or disinterested in sex.  The idea that a woman could force a disinterested man into sex is anathema to this view of a strong man.  

A woman can "trick" a man into sex, using his pervasive horniness against him, but this still protects the image of a strong male because everyone knows that a "real" man always wants sex and only turns it down in pursuit of higher ideals.  A woman who uses "tricks" to subvert a man's efforts to remain chaste or faithful is in the wrong while the man can be forgiven for succumbing to her temptations.

Certainly the issue of female sexual, mental and physical abuse of men and boys is not addressed nearly as well as it could be in our society.  Men often don't report women who are physically abusive because too often the response is disbelief that he would "let" a mere woman do this to him.  Equally, a response that assumes a man always wants\enjoys sex makes reporting sexual assault challenging for a man.  His "manly" strength is questioned and in our society male weakness is not acceptable.

Edited to add:  I posted this before I read the article linked by Goddess, which says something very similar.

Edited July 20, 2018 by dialamah

[Goddess]

Wow, I am so sorry that you experienced all that in your life.  Truly.  I have nothing but respect and admiration for the difficult work you have done to heal - and it is very hard work to recover from such abuse.  That you did it, likely without the supports and programs available to women victims, is even more impressive.

You very eloquently express how this type of abuse affects both men and women.  A male perspective on female abusers is a much needed voice on this topic.  You should consider working with survivors.

I have volunteered extensively to work with survivors of high-control religious cults and for many, leaving came after suffering abuses like your's.  And they were shut down and silenced by the group, as you were by your father.

14 hours ago, Machjo said:

Instead, it stems from the exact same source as the female abuse of men and boys stems: trauma

Absolutely - hurt people have a tendency to hurt others.

Great topic, thanks for bringing it to the forum.  Great reply from Dia, too.

[Machjo]

5 hours ago, Goddess said:

Wow, I am so sorry that you experienced all that in your life.  Truly.  I have nothing but respect and admiration for the difficult work you have done to heal - and it is very hard work to recover from such abuse.  That you did it, likely without the supports and programs available to women victims, is even more impressive.

You very eloquently express how this type of abuse affects both men and women.  A male perspective on female abusers is a much needed voice on this topic.  You should consider working with survivors.

I have volunteered extensively to work with survivors of high-control religious cults and for many, leaving came after suffering abuses like your's.  And they were shut down and silenced by the group, as you were by your father.

Absolutely - hurt people have a tendency to hurt others.

Great topic, thanks for bringing it to the forum.  Great reply from Dia, too.

Thanks for that. I found that the most painful part is not what is done to us but how we react to it. I was able to forgive the woman who abused me as a child and even the woman who dragged me into an abusive relationship as a young adult more easily because I could rationalize it as something that was beyond my control.

When in early adulthood I gave in to pressure into an abusive relationship, even though to defend my boundaries against the coercion subjected me to an excruciating panic attack, nothing physically prevented me from saying no and walking away and the panic attack wouldn't have killed me. Instead, I gave in as a way to escape the panic attack in the moment. Since that was a decision I made, that inflicts feelings of guilt and only aggravated the trauma.

When I started to turn to sex as an analgesic, again, I could have refused, tolerated the distress and depression it would have caused for a while and then let myself heal from it. Again, I chose instead to essentially medicate myself first with alcohol and later with sex as a way to avoid the pain in the moment even if it would only aggravate it later.

When I started to become emotionally coercive myself, again it was a decision I was making. I could rationalize that I was trying to find a way to numb the pain of the moment, but I was doing so to my own harm.

I think it's easier to forgive others than to forgive oneself. We can't heal without forgiving ourselves, and yet we have no choice but to learn to do so if we want any chance of healing.

I think the most important first step is to find ways to stop the behaviour, since that's what aggravates the feelings even more. Stop drinking, keep alcohol out of the home, install a parental-control app if necessary to control compulsive internet use, and anything else that can help to immediately reduce the risk of repeating the compulsive behaviour.

I think the second most important thing after that is to learn to forgive ourselves. It's easy to forgive others, because it's not our own actions but theirs that we're forgiving. We have an awareness that we are not responsible for those actions. But then when it comes to forgiving ourselves, we have to come to terms with our own actions and behaviours, and that's the most painful part of all. Ironically, that guilt fed my behaviour as I strove to numb my emotions by hurting myself ever more along a vicious cycle of violence and mostly self-violence. And yes, I do consider even emotional coercion a form of violence. I've experienced it and I've inflicted it on others on occasion, and the latter is the most painful of all for the reasons described above.

Given how our own behavour can traumatize us more than the behaviour inflicted on us, I think it it important to schools to teach children how to defend their boundaries and how to manage compulsive thoughts and behaviours at an early age before they escalate. Maybe role playing or more systematic teaching of how to defend our boundaries in recognition that some school students may have already had their boundaries violated in different ways.

[Goddess]

20 minutes ago, Machjo said:

I think it's easier to forgive others than to forgive oneself. We can't heal without forgiving ourselves, and yet we have no choice but to learn to do so if we want any chance of healing.

Very true.  Often people develop coping mechanisms to get through traumatic experiences, but those coping mechanisms are also often dysfunctional and don't serve us well in life afterwards.  They need to be changed later on, and that's hard, too.

To forgive myself, my therapist taught me to honour those coping mechanisms, because in a lot of ways, they saved my life.  Once you make peace with that, they are much easier to change when they no longer are serving you.

I like your thoughts on teaching children to defend their own boundaries.

[Machjo]

1 hour ago, Goddess said:

Very true.  Often people develop coping mechanisms to get through traumatic experiences, but those coping mechanisms are also often dysfunctional and don't serve us well in life afterwards.  They need to be changed later on, and that's hard, too.

To forgive myself, my therapist taught me to honour those coping mechanisms, because in a lot of ways, they saved my life.  Once you make peace with that, they are much easier to change when they no longer are serving you.

I like your thoughts on teaching children to defend their own boundaries.

I'm sorry you've had to go through that too, and I like your idea about honouring those coping mechanisms. We do need to learn to let them go.

As for what could have been taught me in school, I could see schools teaching more broadly about addictions. When a person suffers trauma, many things can become addictive: gambling, gaming, surfing the web, even sex along with many other things we turn to as coping mechanisms.

I was raised irreligiously and, however strict my dad was with me on so many other fronts, the only rule he had for me regarding sex was to use a condom. I never got into any sexual relationship while I lived with my parents since I was just too afraid of emotional bonding, but that was still the only rule my dad stipulated. The only rule I'd really learnt in sex ed class was similar: use a condom and make sure the sex is consensual and respect another's boundaries. Beyond that, we learnt that anything went.

One problem I see with that is the lack of education about compulsive sexual behaviour. Having been taught that pretty well any consensual sex was 'normal,' I just couldn't conceptualize that sex itself could become addictive and so I couldn't understand what was happening to me. Add to that that I wasn't even aware that I was suffering any kind of trauma at the time. To take an example, imagine an adult compulsively hooking up with other adult strangers for consensual unprotected sex. On the surface, it might seem normal:

Adults. Check.

Consensual. Check.

No money exchanged. Check.

According to modern sex ed, all is fine with that. But there would be one part missing:

Compulsive. Check. The person might care about their health under normal conditions but effectively uses sex as a drug, a coping mechanism, an analgesic for trauma and so may sometimes not care. The person might be smart, know that there is something very abnormal about taking such a risk, but just not be able to understand why he is behaving the way he is and why so compulsively. According to modern sex ed, he must be either religious or at least a prude.

I could imagine schools teaching all students about addictions for a 40-minute lesson at the age of eleven and one more at the age of fourteen. That would make 80 minutes total throughout his time in elementary and secondary school combined. The addiction course could include making students aware of the different types of behavioural addictions that exist, their potential causes, their possible symptoms, and their possible remedies. Given the high percentage of children who do suffer emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, it would make sense to make them aware of the existence of twelve-step groups. Given how web-surfing itself can become addictive for some and how some use the internet as an enabling tool to feed other addictions, it could make sense in such a course to make students aware of the existence of parental-control apps and how they work and other cost-effective remedies for different addictions.

The purpose of the course would not be to make them addiction scholars but just to give them an overall view so as to ensure that they know where to turn for help if ever they need it. Sometimes initial symptoms of unhealthy sexual behaviour for example can involve nothing more than compulsive masturbation as distinct from non-compulsive. Unfortunately, even though much research has been done on sex addiction in the last couple of decades, I think many still suspect a religious motivation behind it and so avoid discussion of compulsive sexual behaviour at all cost or, if they must present it, present it as just religion in the guise of science.

I think such religiophobia does us a disservice since it causes teachers to avoid any subject that could remotely raise suspicion of any religious agenda. A simple solution would be to teach students that masturbation and any non-coercive sexual  act between two people is fine and that that is not to be confused with compulsive behaviour. At least that way a person who does experience compulsive sexual behaviour doesn't find himself at a total loss as to what the hell is happening to him. Even if he's not yet aware of his trauma, he would at least know that he's not the only person in the world who has experienced compulsive sexual behaviour and would know that help does in fact exist for it. If he can't even conceptualize it as a problem that others have experienced and thinks he's the only one in the world who's experienced it, then he won't even look for help since he can't even imagine that help could possibly exist for something only he has experienced.