Learn powerful techniques for healing the scars of early sexual abuse in gay men! The first book of its kind, Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma: Integrating the Shattered Self addresses the specific therapeutic needs of gay men in recovery. All too often, gay men hide their childhood memories of being sexually victimized, because of fear, shame, and the stigma of stereotypes which equate homosexuality with child abuse. Some gay men may view these histories as “rites of passage” and dismiss other perspectives as betrayals of their community or inadvertant support for the anti-gay agenda of the religious right. Certain therapists and so-called support groups ridicule them as hysterics with false memories. Groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association or the Rene Guyon Society dismiss the source of their anguish as wishful thinking or a healthy, consensual intergenerational romance. Finally here is a book that addresses the unique emotional and psychological needs of gay male survivors of sexual abuse. Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma offers new hope by separating the crime of pedophilia from the consensual intimacy of an adult male same-sex relationship. It provides specific guidance for therapists working with gay men either in individual or group therapy settings, and offers practical treatment suggestions as well as moving insights into the painful conflicts gay men may have in accepting their own sexuality and revealing their status as child survivor of an adult sexual predator. Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma discusses practical ways to help the survivor heal, including: adopting eye movement desensitization and reprocessing techniques to treat traumatized gay men helping gay men to break the old arousal patterns associated with their abusers handling survivors’formidable issues of trust, addictions, depression, and low self-esteem leading survivor groups of mixed sexual orientation discerning the special meaning of HIV to traumatized gay men respecting cross-cultural differences in treating the gay male sexual trauma survivor finding new directions for research This powerful volume offers sufficient technical detail to be useful for the therapist working with gay men, yet it is written with enough clarity and compassion to be used as bibliotherapy for men just coming out as gay, as survivor, or as both. Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma is an essential resource for mental health professionals, as well as for gay men who have themselves survived sexual abuse or who love someone who did.

"With compassion and clarity, Richard Gartner shares insights from years of working with male survivors. Among this book's greatest strengths is the extensive use of examples from Dr. Gartner's clinical practice to illustrate problems and solutions on the path to healing. Beyond Betrayal offers support, encouragement, and useful skills to men in recovery." --Mike Lew, M.Ed., author of Victims No Longer and Leaping upon the Mountains "If you have been sexually abused, this book will give you information, hope, direction, and most importantly, the assurance that you are not alone. Dr. Gartner has written an accessible, compassionate book that clearly lays out the healing process for men who were hurt or abused as children. Whether you were abused by a mother, a camp counselor, a neighborhood boy, or a priest, Beyond Betrayal will give you the tools you need to reclaim your life and move on. If you're going to take one book with you on the healing journey, this should be the one." --Laura Davis, coauthor of The Courage to Heal and author of The Courage to Heal Workbook "Compassionate, insightful, and hopeful, Beyond Betrayal shines a bright light. It is a must-read for anyone concerned." --Kenneth M. Adams, Ph.D., author of Silently Seduced "Beyond Betrayal cuts through the shame, confusion, misunderstanding, and fear that so often accompany the abuse of males and replaces them with clear information. I will begin to use it immediately with my patients and think that other clinicians will do so as well." --Christine A. Courtois, Ph.D., author of Healing the Incest Wound and Recollections of Sexual Abuse "Beyond Betrayal offers men straightforward words of hope and a meaningful way to overcome the invisibility, stigma, and shame they have endured. Many men and their families will find this book a healing aid." --Jack Drescher, M.D., author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man "Dr. Gartner writes in a manner any reader will find accessible. Not only does he understand the topic of males, sexual abuse, and recovery, but he can explain it to those who need to know." --Dr. Mic Hunter, author of Abused Boys and editor of Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse: Treatment Innovations

Jennifer can’t believe it. Just married and pregnant, she discovers that her husband has been meeting Brad for sex. When confronted, Tom doesn’t deny it, but he insists it’s just “a thing” and he isn’t gay. Elsewhere, John’s wife, Karen, discovers that her husband likes to watch gay porn. John doesn’t understand his wife’s reaction. Why does she care what he watches if he’s not unfaithful? In couple’s therapy, Karen and Jennifer raise the same questions: Does this mean my husband is gay? Can my marriage survive? These and other stories illustrate the difficulties inherent when a wife or girlfriend finds out her man has had or wants to have sexual contact with other men. But many times, the man is not gay or even bisexual. Of course, some men with gay sexual interests are gay men in a process of self-discovery; they are “coming out.” These desires may only reflect a different side of a man’s sexuality or some response to childhood trauma or experiences they have not fully processed. Here Joe Kort and Alexander P. Morgan make the distinction between gay men and “straight men with gay interests” clearer to women who want to know how they can overcome these revelations. The authors explain the many reasons why straight men may be drawn to gay sex; how to tell whether a man is gay, straight, or bisexual; and what the various options are for these couples, who can often go on to have very fulfilling marriages. Is My Husband Gay, Straight or Bi? is intended to help couples understand how male sexuality can express itself in ways that may be difficult to understand. Many marriages have been hurriedly terminated when couples (and their therapists) have lacked the information they needed to understand their current situations. This book provides the clarity, describes the choices, and (in many cases) offers hope for relationships and marriages that have been brushed off as doomed.

From New York Times bestselling author Naomi Wolf, Outrages explores the history of state-sponsored censorship and violations of personal freedoms through the inspiring, forgotten history of one writer’s refusal to stay silenced. Newly updated, first North American edition--a paperback original In 1857, Britain codified a new civil divorce law and passed a severe new obscenity law. An 1861 Act of Parliament streamlined the harsh criminalization of sodomy. These and other laws enshrined modern notions of state censorship and validated state intrusion into people’s private lives. In 1861, John Addington Symonds, a twenty-one-year-old student at Oxford who already knew he loved and was attracted to men, hastily wrote out a seeming renunciation of the long love poem he’d written to another young man. Outrages chronicles the struggle and eventual triumph of Symonds—who would become a poet, biographer, and critic—at a time in British history when even private letters that could be interpreted as homoerotic could be used as evidence in trials leading to harsh sentences under British law. Drawing on the work of a range of scholars of censorship and of LGBTQ+ legal history, Wolf depicts how state censorship, and state prosecution of same-sex sexuality, played out—decades before the infamous trial of Oscar Wilde—shadowing the lives of people who risked in new ways scrutiny by the criminal justice system. She shows how legal persecutions of writers, and of men who loved men affected Symonds and his contemporaries, including Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and the painter Simeon Solomon. All the while, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was illicitly crossing the Atlantic and finding its way into the hands of readers who reveled in the American poet’s celebration of freedom, democracy, and unfettered love. Inspired by Whitman, and despite terrible dangers he faced in doing so, Symonds kept trying, stubbornly, to find a way to express his message—that love and sex between men were not “morbid” and deviant, but natural and even ennobling. He persisted in various genres his entire life. He wrote a strikingly honest secret memoir—which he embargoed for a generation after his death—enclosing keys to a code that the author had used to embed hidden messages in his published work. He wrote the essay A Problem in Modern Ethics that was secretly shared in his lifetime and would become foundational to our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and of LGBTQ+ legal rights. This essay is now rightfully understood as one of the first gay rights manifestos in the English language. Naomi Wolf’s Outrages is a critically important book, not just for its role in helping to bring to new audiences the story of an oft-forgotten pioneer of LGBTQ+ rights who could not legally fully tell his own story in his lifetime. It is also critically important for what the book has to say about the vital and often courageous roles of publishers, booksellers, and freedom of speech in an era of growing calls for censorship and ever-escalating state violations of privacy. With Outrages, Wolf brings us the inspiring story of one man’s refusal to be silenced, and his belief in a future in which everyone would have the freedom to love and to speak without fear.

How are sexual abuse survivors to overcome the challenges they are sure to face? Finding strength in community with other survivors is one key to recovery. In Not Quite Healed, two survivors join forces to share insight and encouragement on the issues that challenge them most. After a candid discussion about each issue, the authors provide a self-affirming statement that men can study, memorize, and recite on their darkest days.

Healing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys: Treatment for Sexual Abuse, Assault, and Trauma is the new authoritative source for treatment of sexually victimized men and boys. Male victims and survivors of sexual trauma lived in shadow until the turn of the 21st century, when scandal after scandal about the sexual abuse of boys and men shed light on their suffering. These men and boys require different treatment roadmaps than their female counterparts. Yet there is little in the professional literature to help a clinician work with sexually traumatized boys and men. Richard B. Gartner is a seasoned psychologist/psychoanalyst who has worked therapeutically with sexually abused men for over three decades. He is a clinician, advocate, teacher, lecturer, and nationally and internationally recognized expert on the subject. Dr. Gartner’s classic book, Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men, is one of the few written to guide clinicians. Now, nearly two decades after writing that groundbreaking volume, he follows up on his earlier work. Healing Sexually Abused Men and Boys, together with its companion volume, Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men, is a thorough, comprehensive guide to learning about and healing male victims and survivors. Dr. Gartner has invited a group of experts to write about specific problems faced by these boys and men. Specialists from the psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, trauma, and legal worlds fill in the details about a wide range of interconnected subjects related to the complex reverberations of male sexual trauma. Healing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys covers such diverse topics as: therapy with young sexually traumatized boys; the aftermath for men who were raped as adults ; covert seduction of boys and its aftereffects; treatment for substance addictions and sexual compulsions; couples work with male survivors and their partners or spouses; bodywork with male survivors; treatment for male veterans who suffered sexual trauma in the military; profiling sexual predators and working with survivors who have also been sexual predators. This book is a valuable resource for clinicians at every level of training. With strategies for how survivors can build support networks and descriptions of clinical, familial, and community-based treatments, Healing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys is essential reading for clinicians of all theoretical persuasions who work with male sexual abuse survivors. Filling in gaps in the relatively scant literature on the subject, it will also help sexually abused or assaulted men themselves understand what is available to them.

This book offers a detailed road map for overcoming sexual and relationship impasses originating from painful childhood experiences. Large numbers of adults with histories of childhood trauma and neglect suffer persistent relationship and sexual difficulties. Unfortunately, most have failed to receive adequate help with emerging from these deep and complex problems. Coming Home to Passion: Restoring Loving Sexuality in Couples with Histories of Childhood Trauma and Neglect explores the enduring impacts—physiological, psychological, and behavioral—of childhood trauma and neglect. Author Ruth Cohn, drawing on 25 years of experience working with trauma survivors and their partners and families, lays out a practical and actionable course for recovery in clear, accessible language. This book provides direction and hope to those with trauma backgrounds while also serving as a unique resource for professional readers. Integrating in-depth information on attachment and relationship, trauma and neglect, and sexuality, Cohn details a practical, hands-on treatment approach for revitalizing love, health, and passion.