Haines - The Survivors Guide to Sex: How to Create Your Own Empowered Sexuality After Childhood Sexual Abuse

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Table of Contents

Copyright 1999 by Staci Haines.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc., P.O. Box 14684,

San Francisco, California 94114.

Printed in the United States.

Cover design: Scott Idleman

Cover photographs: Melanie Friend

Text design: Karen Huff

Cleis Press logo art: Juana Alicia 1986

First Edition.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Illustrations copyright 1998, 1999 by Fish.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haines, Staci.

The survivors guide to sex : how to have an empowered sex life after child sexual abuse / Staci Haines.1st ed. p. cm.

ISBN 1-57344-079-5 (alk. paper)

1. Adult child sexual abuse victimsUnited StatesPsychology. 2. Adult child sexual abuse victimsUnited StatesSexual Behavior. 3. Sex counselingUnited States. 4. Sex instructionUnited States. 5. Somatics I. Title

HV6570.2.H34 1999 362.7640973dc21 99-24107

CIP

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the women who agreed to be interviewed for this book. Your stories are vital and courageous, and your creativity in re-inventing your lives is inspiring. Thank you also to the women and men Ive the opportunity to work with in my somatic practice and workshops. I am honored to be a part of your lives.

Thank you to Felice Newman, Frdrique Delacoste, and Don Weise of Cleis Press... Felice, thank you, especially for your commitment to this book. Your dedication made it possible. Thank you to Genanne Walsh for compiling the sexuality bibliography, to Lauren Whittemore for help with the Resource, and to Fish for your fabulous illustrations. I want to thank Aurora Levins Morales for supporting me as a writer and engaging in hours of conversation, on everything from politics to sex and beyond.

To all the folks at Good Vibrations. Thank you for your work and our years together. And to my many friends in the sex positive community, especially to Carol Queen for our at times heated conversations, and Jackie Bruckman and Shar Rednour for who you are. I am grateful and delighted.

My relationships with friends, chosen family, community, and teachers are reflected in this writing.

Thanks to Serge Kahali King, NLP Austin, Loveworks, Lomi School, Suki Mathewes, Peggy Hammes, and Equity Institute, Jessica Murray, and Audre Lorde for your years of learning and dedication that you have so generously passed onto me.

A special thanks to Edie Swan for encouraging my thinking and writing. And many great thanks to Richard Strozzi Heckler and Rancho Strozzi Institute for learning in the field of somatics, your willingness to risk creating a new discourse, and not being afraid of much of anything you find in people.

Thanks to those of you who have walked this road close to me. Your love, courage, and willingness to hang in the unknown with me has made all of the difference. David Moerbe, Wendy Haines, Mary Kay Haines, Clare Huntington, and Ruby Gold. And to my gal, Denise Benson, thank you for all of your love, brazenness, and delight in the shadows.

To my friends, whom I adore, thank you for embracing the delights and the horrors, my wildness and seriousness as one big package. Thank you for being the brilliant people that you are. Akaya Windwood, Maria Gonzales Barron, Beverly Wagstaff, Jen Cohen, Terri Hague, Mary Beth Krouse, Gillian Harkins, Babette Bourgeois, Val Robb, Kim Miller, Kacie Stetson, Penny Rosenwasser, Anita Montero, Donna Diamond, George Harrison, and Ric Owen.

Thanks to my family, each of whom is attempting to courageously walk through the chaos, and do right by their lives and each other. Last, but certainly not least, thank you to Spirit, for everything.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the girls that we were.

Welcome to the rest of your life, and the world you can create.

May it be filled with pleasure and wisdom.

illustrations

1. Safer-Sex Gear, page 19

2. Female Anatomy, page 67

3. Male Anatomy, page 72

4. Anal Anatomy, page 75

5. Vibrators, page 201

6. Dildos and Harnesses, page 204

7. Anal Toys, page 206

8. S/M Toys, page 209

Introduction

A Personal Journey

The Survivors Guide to Sex confronts a double taboo: womens sexuality and child abuse, both subjects our culture would rather have us whisper about behind closed doors or, better yet, deny entirely. Yet for survivors, sex was the very site of attack. Children can be abused verbally, emotionally, physically, and through many forms of neglect. Why, then, sexual abuse? Why were we wounded in our most intimate places? I believe that sexual assault is an attempt to disempower, own, or destroy another. Alice Miller calls childhood sexual abuse soul murder. Many survivors would agree with her. I often felt that my perpetrators were reaching for my soul, trying to take something from me that was long lost in themselves.

Womens sexuality is the other piece of the double taboo. What is so threatening about a sexually empowered woman? A sexually empowered woman is a woman who is embodied, whose sexual expression is a part of herself, and whose sex life is self-defined. A sexually empowered woman is able to make choices for herself; she is able to express consent and maintain boundaries that serve her. She can ask for what she wants. She becomes self-referential, meaning she trusts her own experience and intelligence over external messages. Incest is the ultimate training in not trusting ones self. Becoming sexually empowered restores that self-trust.

The wounds of children victimized by sexual abuse are so profoundly deep that most of us find ourselves turning away in denial or blaming the victims themselves. Yet one in three girls, and one in six boys, are victims of childhood sexual abuse. Few of us can face this cultural dis-ease. Whom might you see if you looked? Someone in your own family? Your favorite soccer coach, your childs music teacher, or your next-door neighbor?

I came to sex education and sexual healing through a very personal route. As is true for many women, my own healing began while I was having sex with a boyfriend. This was my moment of clarity, when I faced the fact that I had been sexually abused by my father and several family friends for much of my youth. I had no idea what was going onI only knew that some internal boulder had rolled away from the mouth of the cave, and my history came pouring out.

Thus my healing journey began. I spent two years running from recovery before I finally surrendered to my healing. Before I finally faced the abuse, I experienced insomnia, an inability to eat, and a thick brick wall of depression that separated me from the world. The years that followed were horrible and miraculous. I found healing, devastation, loss, confrontation, a family falling apart and weaving (partly) together again. If you are healing from childhood sexual assault, you know exactly what I am talking about. You have stories of your own.

During the years of abuse, my survival depended upon a strong spiritual connection, a natural talent for dissociating, and being a high achiever. When I began studying the effects of trauma on childrens lives, I found that survivors usually fall into the under- or overachiever camps. We are the really good kids or the really bad kids. Discovering this was a relief for me. As is true for many survivors, no one ever asked me what was up, because I was doing so well.

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