Finding Love on the Internet: John Hopkins

I went to a conference.  Came home with that poster.

John Hopkins, indicted last week on 62 counts, allegedly tied a woman to a radiator, raped her for days, made her his sexual slave.  She says he bought her a one-way ticket to New York, picked her up at the airport, took her home to torture her.  This almost sounds like human trafficking.  He bought the ticket, deceived her.  But he didn't sell her.  If the story is even true.

He has a plausible rebuttal.  He says that  theirs was a consensual dom/subdom relationship. She wanted this, to be tied up, handcuffed.

And the Craig's List ad wasn't his, Mr. Hopkins tells us, it was hers.  She was looking for this type of sexual relationship.

Jurisprudence will decide if anyone is guilty, but there is a world of difference between sexual slavery and a consensual dominant/subdominant  relationship.

As the poster implies, modern-day human trafficking used to be about kidnapping women and children from other countries for the purposes of prostitution here.  I got the sense, at the conference, that it is also about moving people from place to place for the purposes of other types of exploitation. They  passed out the poster in the last five minutes, didn't define it very well.

But we know that children and adults are persuaded every day to follow other  people to places they would never go otherwise, to do things they don't want to do.   They are typically beaten, raped, blackmailed, drugged, and photographed, and the timing isn't necessarily immediate.  Victims are sometimes groomed for abuse, slowly convinced that the job, whatever it is, is in their best interests.  Financially and emotionally dependent, unable to leave, they are vulnerable to whatever the "job description."

Some predators target immigrants looking for work, offer salary and opportunity they couldn't find anywhere else.Once a person is dependent upon someone else for a job, it is hard to leave.   

Some victims, not necessarily immigrants, but children, or lonely people looking for relationships, are found in the safety of their own homes, online either in chat rooms or social networking sites.  They might be photographed from webcams, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. The predator's objective may or may not be to lure the victim somewhere else.

They look for the vulnerable, the gullible-- unhappy people, especially kids-- who can be persuaded, coerced into relationships.  It's all exploitative, sometimes for porn, sometimes voyeurism, sometimes rape or prostitution.

Dangle the prospect of easy money, the hopes of a modeling or acting career, and if you're young and pretty you might believe it, believe in yourself and your prospects.  It all sounds very exciting, certainly to people who don't know the ways of this country, don't necessarily understand English. Sometimes the offer is a safe place to hang out and party.  Kids can't buy alcohol and drugs without help.  Make them a home away from home.

A predator or a trafficker will try to be a friend or a mentor, will slowly build the relationship, get closer and closer, more and more intimate to gain trust.  Stalking with digital technology, the computer, the phone, an empathetic predator listens to problems, consoles, grooms the relationship.  Sexting may become a part of it eventually.  It starts with a little shoulder.  You look great in that shirt.  Unbutton the top button.  Every kid has a webcam these days.  Sometimes a predator will wait a year before suggesting a meeting.

Victims have often been abused before, may even have sex addictions. Sex is life, why not be paid, voluntary participants.  They become runaways, but they are running to.

Or they are kids who post on Facebook or blog about being depressed, misunderstood.  Ironically, kids who are lured to meet a predator often think they are going to a party. Alcohol and drugs in exchange for your attendance.

Room and board in exchange for housekeeping, cooking.

The story about Mr. Hopkins, whether any of it is true or not, brings the whole concept of sexual slavery and predation, too, to public consciousness.  As an interstate or international crime, these are concerns of the FBI and state's attorneys offices.  The poster above, for mental health professionals, makes us aware of the problem. We're supposed to tell you:  Watch out-- people are not always what they seem.

People who answer ads looking for consensual  dom/subdom, or dominant-subdominant relationships are usually old enough to know what they like. They trust that they will not really be hurt.  Theirs is an intimate, misunderstood population. They are looking for love.

"Why did she do this to me?" Mr. Hopkins is said to have asked when the police apprehended him, took him to jail. We would have to do a complete psycho-social medical evaluation to provide the answer.

But we can tell him, and anyone else who will listen, that finding love on Craig's List might not be the safest way to go about finding a long-lasting, fulfilling relationship, or even a short-term, happy relationship, although maybe it's possible.

Just get to know the person first,  before getting too close, before having a sleep over, even.  Take a few weeks, maybe months.

To really know someone, it can take years.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Childhood Abuse and Senator Scott Brown

After Lara Logan's recent sustained sexual assault in Egypt (Feb 11) and the publication of Bill Zeller's suicide note last January, I had hoped that we would have a break. If you talk about this kind of thing non-stop, it loses its shock value and nobody cares.

But today, Scott Brown, junior senator from Massachusettes, came out as a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

When respected people come out with stories of childhood abuse, the effect is to de-shame.  They're telling us: It's Okay.  Talk about it.  This is common.  Self-disclose.

Or Be aware, be proactive.  Keep an eye on children, not only your own children.  Have an ear to the ground.

Mental health professionals have known for decades that victims do better given a safe place and an opportunity to talk.  It takes courage to do this, to talk about trauma to anyone. How hard that must be, especially telling the world! Public disclosures are humbling to the millions who can not do it in any context.

We should try to create these contexts.

Maybe it is easier for public figures. They are desensitized to paparazzi and negative press. But it can't be that easy, even for them. Truthfully, we would hear a hundred stories a day if every celebrity who had been molested or raped came out and said,

It happened to me.

That won't happen, no worries, because just because a person is a celebrity, doesn't mean he or she doesn't still suffer, doesn't want privacy.  When they opt for publicity, when they do speak out, some of us are rightly jaded, a little suspicious.  As soon as an actor or a newscaster or a singer or a politician discloses childhood abuse, there is a book to follow. Or an election, or both. The public sympathizes because the public has been there.  Vote in hand.  Ka-ching at Barnes & Nobel.

The message should be that there is a better time, really, to come out as a victim of abuse. (One is only a survivor after coping with the effects of the trauma, integrating the experience into a positive sense of self.)

It's called childhood. Schools, churches, synagogues, and community centers have to address the problem, slip it into the health curriculum, the early childhood (yes, early) nursery programs and elementary schools, using language that little children understand.

Many organizations do this using language that parents understand, talking mostly to parents, avoid addressing children at all.  This is a beginning, but PTA attendance is sparse, and we're preaching to the choir.

But still.  Have the meetings with parents and tell the parents who go to the meetings regularly to invite their  friends.  And at these meetings teach parents to invite children to their tables, especially the shy ones, the fringe, to get to know them as people.  Do you see how much work we have to do?  And work on those educational efforts for children.

The kids get it. They see it on television. They hear about it in recess. And they experience it. So why not bring it to them in a way that normalizes help-seeking. Save society millions in abuse dollars.

Scott Brown? He's a survivor, an example of how some people make it through. For every Scott Brown,  there are millions who don't, who never talked to anyone, kept the "toxic" secret to themselves.

The public will get tired of hearing this stuff, these stories, already is. It is up to the educators, the community action groups and community organizations to find resources, safe contexts for kids and adults to talk about sexual abuse.  We shouldn't desensitize, not care.

Because most kids won't have a microphone and don't want one.

Lara Logan: Gang Rape

A brutal sexual assault on February 11, the day President Hosni Mubarak steps down.  Lara Logan, covering the story for 60 Minutes,  is separated from the camera crew in the melee of celebration.  A group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers save her.

It takes twenty soldiers.

What happened there? How does what could have been a gang rape happen in the middle of a celebration?  In the middle of all this feel good, Hurray for democracy! suddenly, there is a very, very

feel bad.

We want to know who attacked Lara Logan (we assume, could be wrong, raped, if it is a brutal sexual assault) , but her nemesis is a faceless mob-- faceless to us, not to her, for Ms. Logan will remember faces.  To the world they will be anonymous, like-minded men, unknowns, who made her into a symbol, a something that needs to be stamped out, hurt, taught a lesson. Why?

Reporters tell us that the journalists in Cairo were intimidated, thought to be spies for the West, for Israel.  The police rounded up the members of the foreign press and jailed them, interrogated and harassed them before finally letting them go.  Go get your story now.  See what happens. 

Intimidation, jail, one thing.  Rape, or sexual assault, quite another, a special type of intimidation, a different type of violence, one that symbolizes dominion.  But there are different types of rape, different motives, and this is as good a time as any to discuss them.

Mental health professionals used to think of rape as a generic angry act, an act of defiance.  But ignorance and power underscore acquaintance and date rape, acts associated with rape myths.  One such myth might be believing that nice girls say no when they mean yes. A man thinking this way might force sex, thinking he has permission-- when really, he doesn't. Rape, if it's forced.  No means No, in all fifty of the United States of America.

Acquaintance and date rapes can also be about anger, coercion, blackmail, harassment-- wielding power with sexual aggression.  None of it benign.  And alcohol is usually in the picture, yes usually, when it comes to acquaintance and  date rape. A victim is incapacitated, incapable of fighting, sometimes unconscious.

Jailed rapists, perpetrators of individual stranger rapes, have a different modus operandi, and are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  These individuals are considered sociopaths, people who defy authority, who take what they want, who want to hurt others.

Gang rape differs in that it is a crime of passion, but all about the need to bond, to be a part of a group. If there is anger, it is difficult to determine who is angry.  Weaved into the psychology of gang rape is  group think, a need to find favor from a leader, a person who is influential, charismatic, encourages the crime.  The group believes, or wants to believe, what the leader believes, and each member likes the feeling, being a part of something bigger than himself, and follows along.

Gang rape is of one mind, a group cognitive process of coercion. Participants deny their own sense of right and wrong, their own individuality, to do what the rest of the group tells them to do.

Men convicted of gang rape tell us they were afraid not to join in.  They were afraid of being left out, afraid of losing status. Sometimes the rape is an initiation into the gang, or the club, the fraternity, even the team-- a way to become a part of something.  If you're not with us, you're against us.  Becoming one of the gang, male or female bonding, feels good.

In Cairo last week, becoming a part of something, pleasing someone, needing to attach to other men, impressing a leader, enjoying the feeling of power-- all of this mixed into the psychopathology, the sick thinking of every man in that fringe group.  And the subsequent conclusion, the sexual assault of Lara Logan.

The politics are unclear, do not matter.  What matters is need: the individual need for validation and a universal need for power and control.  And unfortunately, one way to achieve that validation is to join in, even when the group corrupts, behaves in ways that are psychologically, physically, and sexually abusive.  

One way to power is to show others how vulnerable they are.

Surely, had the Egyptian women who intervened not been there, Ms. Logan would be dead. And we would be watching funeral services on TV.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Congressional Role Models

I had his picture up, but didn't want it on my blog, took it down.

Photo of Rep. Christopher Lee, New York Daily News

Governors, Congressmen, Presidents-- important people-- get caught in scandals every day.

Well maybe not every day, but it happens. We should be used to it, but there are so many ways to get into trouble, we're almost looking, unconsciously, for something new, every time we open our browsers to catch the news.

Sometimes the scandal goes away quickly, as this one might for Rep. Christopher Lee (NY). The congressman resigned immediately. But we won't forget his picture, a risk he took as soon as he emailed it to a young woman he met on Women Looking for Men. Craig's List classifieds.

That's the lesson, obviously. Mail the picture? You can lose it forever.

Sometimes the scandal, the reputation, lives on. Who doesn't remember the Monica Lewinsky affair, and President Clinton's defense? It wasn't terribly convincing, and his cover insulted the intelligence of the American people.

What we hate most, much more than the deception, is hypocrisy. We don't like important people purporting to be other than they are. Yet to be elected, everyone has to do this, exaggerate their wholesomeness. So some of us don't even mind the lies, the hypocrisy, in fact, we find it kind of cute. Expected.

Mr. Lee resigned because the woman he wanted to hook up with doubted his veracity and sent Gawker copies of his emails. She then cut off the relationship.

He apparently lied about:

(1) his age, shaved off seven years to a more virile 39,

(2) his profession, claimed to be a lobbyist, and

(3) his marital status, divorced. He's married with a young son.

"A very fit fun classy guy" who would not "disappoint."

He surely disappointed someone, many.

You should know that the cut off, should a man be looking for younger girls, is 39. A day over 40 and the chances of finding her diminish.

You have to wonder,

Who needs this much excitement?

That is at the core of this type of behavior, a need for excitement.

Now Mr. Lee will have to figure out another way to find it. Maybe his wife will stick with him, perhaps they'll work together on it. People used to play golf, cards, play tennis, go to marriage counseling to liven up the commitment, make it feel less of a trap.

Cheating on a spouse, having someone on the side, is nothing new, not really. You would think, however, that with all the exposure of electronic media, the immediacy of a public profile, knowing (he must know!) that privacy is truly a thing of the past, that a person who depends upon positive exposure would be more careful. You would think a person could resist this.

Obsession, addiction, Mr. Lee will call it something, offer an apology to his family, his constituents, an explanation. But it's a hard essay to write,

Why I Couldn't Resist Having an Affair with a Woman I Found . . . 

                  on Craig's List

without admitting that at heart, you're not quite ready to represent your constituents.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Bill Zeller

If a person only lives for one reason, to share a story, one that will change the lives of millions of others . . .

then how can we hold him responsible for taking it?

Bill Zeller took his life on January 5, 2011. His lengthy suicide note tells us why. He says he is sane, knows what he is doing. Sane does not mean he was not mentally ill.

We generally refer to sanity as orientation times three. Knowing who we are, where we are, and the date. It is an old definition, time, person, place. What we really mean is that we are in touch with who we are, really, and others, that we can sense the feelings, understand the words of others, that we aren't detached to the degree that the voices in our heads, or one voice, a lone voice, is all we hear.

Every therapist reading the letter (below) wonders, Could I have helped this man?

His description of his therapy: busy doctors scanning treatment notes before saying hello, as if maybe this is a gall stone; not engaging him, looking into his eyes to see the pain, not expressing some concern or even small talk about the weather, sports.

This should be a huge wake up call to professionals everywhere who aren't tuned in to people, who see their jobs as drudgery, who can't distinguish one patient from the other, or won't take the time to read those notes before the patient walks through the door, takes a place on the leather couch.

It is scary that many professionals operate this way, that it is can be standard procedure. Remain aloof, detached. Maybe this way sick people won't come back, the ones with the real pain. I don't know. When you read Mr. Zeller's history, you can't believe it, poor man, his luck of the draw.

The job of the therapist is to engage the patient, not the other way around. We're supposed to sow a therapeutic relationship, trust, confidentiality. We diagnose based upon a history, most of us get it asap, and develop a treatment plan together with the patient, if at all possible.

For sexual abuse, the plan is complicated, includes group therapy to de-shame. Most survivors feel they are surely the only ones to have suffered so much pain, but they aren't. It's fairly common, sexual abuse, and incest is the most common sexual crime of all.

Had Bill Zeller had that relationship, maybe he wouldn't have had to tell his story and book. Leave us.

He could have told his story, and lived to deliver yet another program, another patent.

Below, Gizmodo's reprint of the suicide letter that Mr. Zeller requested be reprinted, and remembered.

The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller

Bill Zeller was a talented programmer whose work we've featured on Lifehacker. He took his own life on Sunday and left an explanation that I think it's important you read.

Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It's clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the world in any way that didn't leave him feeling he was too sullied to have the same experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described "darkness", which despite his prostration it's clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized.

Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere.

I think a person has the right to live or end their life as they choose. If Zeller really felt that suicide was his only option, so be it. But as someone who has had similar experiences in my own life, I want to say to anyone else who feels the way Zeller felt: You can't escape your past. Not completely. But you can deal with it. You can contextualize it. You can learn how to prepare for the times when you feel like it's not even on your radar and then it totally broadsides you.

And you can talk to people. You really can.
Bill Zeller

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn't feel "right". The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn't apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one more person in a long list of people I've hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.

So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

—-

I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us, "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

"I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist." - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it's tiring.

Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

—-

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

—-
Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

Thanks to Ella for reminding me to post on this and Gizmodo's Joel Johnson for publishing the letter

Read more at 1000 Memories. Here's the bio.

William Paul "Bill" Zeller (October 26, 1983 – January 5, 2011)[1] was an American computer programmer who was best known for creating the MyTunes application until his suicide in 2011. After his death, his suicide note[2] began circulating widely, launching a public discussion on the long-term ill effects of child abuse.
[edit] Education and career

A native of Middletown, Connecticut,[3] Zeller was pursuing a doctoral degree in computer science from Princeton, having earned his master's degree in 2008.[4] He received his bachelor's degree from Trinity College, Hartford in 2006.

His best-known software project was MyTunes, an enhancement for Apple's iTunes software that enables users to copy music between computers on a local network.[5] During his undergraduate years he also created Zempt, an enhancement for the popular Moveable Type blogging platform.[6] Zeller continued creating innovative software in graduate school. His most recent hit was Graph Your Inbox, an extension to the Chrome browser that allows GMail users to analyze patterns in their own email traffic.[7]

Zeller also served for more than two years as the computer science representative to Princeton's Graduate Student Government, advocating the interests of his fellow graduate students in housing, campus transportation, and other issues.[4]

He co-authored an influential paper, called "Government Data and the Invisible Hand"[8], that explained how governments can release public data in ways that will be useful to programmers. The paper has been influential both in academia and government.[9][10][11]
[edit] Death

Zeller posted a 4000 word suicide note on his website, explaining why he had decided to take his own life. He also emailed the letter to several friends. Zeller was found in his University apartment early on Sunday, January 2, 2011, by officials from Princeton University. As a result of the suicide attempt, he suffered brain damage due to oxygen deprivation, and was in a coma at University Medical Center at Princeton. He died following the withdrawal of life support, on the evening of January 5, 2011.[4][12]

One in 33 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, according to the Rape, Assault, Incest National Network (RAINN). Survivors are four times more likely than others to consider suicide.

"We hear every day on our sexual assault hotline that this is the first time they have talked about this," said Jennifer Wilson Marsh, director of RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotlines. "When someone is able to speak or type aloud or share the emotional narrative relating to the trauma, there is some distance and it takes it out of the darkness and into the light."

"It's less scary and less shameful and puts those feelings into perspective because it's so overwhelming," she said.

If you have been sexually abused, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline by going online to their instant message format or call 1.800.656.HOPE for free and confidential help, 24/7.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT 







4EP28CR77ZDP

A Noose in a Black Man's Locker

The headline says, Black man suing FDNY for race discrimination finds noose in his locker

An FDNY electrician who filed a race discrimination complaint against the department in December says a noose was left in front of his work locker last week.

Gregory Seabrook, an FDNY communications electrician for nearly 20 years, found the noose Thursday at the FDNY facility at 87 Union St. in Brooklyn, his lawyers said yesterday.

Lovely. Nothing hurts more than this, an assault on a person's heritage, color. In fact, any assault upon our identity hurts. We work hard at being who we are, and take pride in who we are, those of us with self-esteem, and those of us who had an upbringing that emphasized the good in all of us.

This is why, in 1964, the United States passed the Civil Rights Bill, and included in the rights, Title VII, freedom from discrimination in the workplace. Included in the freedoms from discrimination were race, color, religion, national origin, and sex. The Southerners in Congress added sex hoping that Northerners would not vote for a bill that gave women the right to compete in the workforce, but it backfired.

Over the years, amendments were added to free us from discrimination over age and disability.

Forty-seven years, and still people find nooses in their lockers. The noose had a knot, they type used to flog slaves

And they wonder why we keep saying, more education, more education, more education.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

PornSunday the anti-porn video and the NFL

Craig Gross, the pastor of XXXchurch, a sex addictions program, is preaching to the world.  He's on his own stage on Superbowl Sunday.

And as a preacher, there's lots of talk about confession, biblical references.  Very much a

Jews and Muslims and anyone else who isn't Christian need not apply

video. I don't know what I expected.

But it's been recommended, highly (by me, actually) because quarterback Josh McCown, Eric Boles of the New York Jets, Matt Hasselbeck of the Seatle Seahawks, Miles McPherson of the San Diego Chargers, Jon Kitna, quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys,  all star in it.

And we love it when an athlete comes forward, speaks to people about relationship safety. Laced within Craig Gross' words is the message, You play. You pay.

So let's say you don't want to sit through a 35 minute video about coming clean with a sex addiction, but you want a review.

Three Steps to Sobriety:

(1) Confess to the Higher Power that you have zero self-control when it comes to looking at pornography. There may be a few reasons to do that, watch pornography, but in the process, whoever has posed for the films, the pictures, is exploited.  She/he is stolen.  And the person who objectifies is taken away from flesh and blood relationships. These are threatened, they are less exciting.  Nothing compares.

It is an addiction, an obsession.

So it's recommended, as it is in 12-Step programs, that a person somehow connect with spirituality.

A lot of people stop right here, which is why it's recommended (by therapists) to consider the next two steps. Perhaps these are more important.  Although if you can connect to the spiritual piece, no question, the support system, a community, will follow.

(2) Confess to someone. A real person. A spouse, rabbi, pastor, friend.  Maybe think of getting accountability software that shoots an email to him or her listing internet sites visited each day.  The software is for phones and other gadgets, too. The idea is that people who are addicted to pornography have a healthy sense of shame. Kudos to this idea.

(3) Clean up. Get involved in a sex addicts group, or a program at a house of worship, someplace in the community.  Easier said than done.  But it beats losing a marriage, a partner, someone who loves you but is tired of being second best.

We like the approach, love the attention to the problem, only wish it weren't so incredibly exclusive. But all that means, really, is that leaders of other religions, other groups, have to step up to the plate, develop their own support services. Forgive the pun.

We just have to get out of the dark ages with this one.

National PornSunday

Oh, you thought it was Super Bowl Sunday. And you're right. But this might be more interesting. Certainly as interesting.

Sex addictions are varied, but no question, pornography addiction takes over people's lives. It's not that hard to find a support group, depending upon where you live, but it is hard, sometimes, to connect with people and to commit. And the initial fear of humiliation keeps so many people away.

Sex Addicts Anonymous, that would be one group. Sex and Love Addictions would be another.

Because of the incredible disruption of an addiction, because needing to get on line, for example, to go there, to see a video, a picture, whatever it takes to satisfy the obsession, many people are starting to say No. People are trying to give it up, but it's hard.

Luckily we have leaders, heroes, really. NFL stars.

Take a look at this video sponsored by XXXchurch. If NFL stars can make the break, then finally, finally, it's cool to disavow pornography, to see it for what it is, degrading, humiliating, distracting, and like any addiction, an obsession that threatens a person's success in life and surely, intimate relationships.

National PornSunday Teaser from XXXchurch on Vimeo.

That's the teaser. You'll be able to see the whole video on Sunday at PornSunday.
Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Ben Roethlisberger Changing

Music to our ears that Ben Roethlisberger made peace with Terry Bradshaw. The elder quarterback didn't approve of Ben, thought the rape accusations against him egregious, unbelievably crass, proof of the younger quarterback's character deficits. The very idea that someone could do this, rape a woman in her early twenties, turned his stomach. Mr. Bradshaw has two daughters, one twenty-one, the other twenty-three.

Terry Bradshaw in his playing days.

Ben Roethlisberger has either found religion or he's in a 12-step group. Or maybe anger management. Or it could be that he's getting really good therapy. Either way, he charmed the media in Dallas and seems to have a new calm. He made peace with his old nemesis, Mr. Bradshaw in what was touted a media event. The two met alone in a locker room, however, before meeting with the press, had a heart to heart, and apparently hugged in the end.

If fans seek signs of progress, of maturity, then maybe this is a small one. Last summer Ben Roethlisberger wouldn’t shake Terry Bradshaw’s hand, too much anger getting in the way of reconciliation. Tuesday, the two Steelers legends ended their discussion with a hug.
“We just both came to the conclusion that we’re Steelers, we’re part of that family,” Bradshaw said. “And I encouraged him that yesterday is yesterday and that I have his back and I support him 100 percent.
“But if he screws up again … ”

What excited this therapist is the new language associated with Mr. Roethlisberger's change. He's becoming a role model.

You're reading me, sir, or someone is. Now make up with the young woman you hurt.

That's C.J. Johnson, Mississippi's top college football prospect.

Young Mr. Johnson, a formidable linebacker, makes the news because (a) he's switched his college pick from Mississippi State to Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi.

and (b) he's tired of being harassed on Facebook. He quit the social network.

A rumor started on Facebook that his mother worked as a domestic for Mississippi State, to the tune of 100 K a year. Mr. Johnson tells us that if that were true, he wouldn't be driving around in an old truck.

The price of fame is high, and Mr. Johnson is only beginning to feel it. He understands how important it is to challenge the rumor mill, to be a role model, and to say No to harassment.

Here's hoping, C. J., that you'll have a new car soon, and thanks for setting an example, tightening up your settings to the degree that no one can bother you under the cover, social networking.

Sexual Racism

Sounds ugly, and it is.

Once we thought that women of color were sexually harassed to the same degree as other women. We have come to learn that because they are often marginalized, less powerful, female minorities are harassed more and with greater severity.

More than the marginalization (lack of power in the workplace) of critical importance is having race/ethnicity and minority group status. Being a minority exerts unique and direct effects upon the likelihood of being sexually harassed or assaulted.

This is why it is called sexual racism. The punishment is sexual, and it is meted out due to race, more-so than gender. The inequalities of race and social class are sexualized in the workplace, and perhaps everywhere else as well, i.e., the family.

The roots reach back to times of slavery, when rape of black women wasn't something to argue about. Perhaps, sick as this sounds, white "masters" thought it welcomed. That and using sex as a way to maintain superiority, hammered in the status quo. Again, a way to hurt, to intimidate. Anything to make a group tremble.

So sexual harassment and assault is a way to hurt people you wanted to hurt anyway.

Audrey J. Murrell, in an early essay on sexual harassment and women of color, reminds us that stereotypes die hard. In the workplace minorities have always occupied powerless positions with unlikely opportunities to change jobs. Mothers, aunts, and the women in the community warned younger black women, for example, about the threat of sexual violence in the world. Even post-slavery, stereotypes persist about the black female as hyper-sexual, wild.

Asian women are still featured in pornography as submissive, tortured, wanting to serve.

Latina women are thought to be "hot-blooded" and passionate, yet submissive, for Latino men are dominating.

Sexual racism is how the stereotype is played out, how myths shape aggressive attitudes and sexual behavior.

Has any of this changed since the eighties when Ms. Murrell wrote her essay?

We can only hope so. But I am confident, based upon the stories women tell me, that sexual racism is alive and well. It is still rationalized by perpetrators and isn't outed or confronted by victims, not nearly enough, for fear of losing employment that is hard to come by.

So nothing new, not really, under the sun.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Women in Sports

We just have to share this one, that University of Connecticut's women's basketball team won 90 straight games before Stanford broke the streak. Ninety games, however, is amazing. The Huskie's coach, Geno Auriemma, is surely a hero, and this is the best college team performance since John Wooden led his UCLA team forty years ago.

And what kind of news coverage did they get? Two lines on ESPN. And a post by CNBC.COM's Darren Rovell.

Mr. Rovell explains the phenomena: Women's basketball is a different game, and the advertisers, those who drive the networks, recognize that we like watching men play a man's game, a lot more.

The reason why a second tier bowl game was on ESPN and the Huskies were on ESPN2 on Tuesday is not because the women didn't deserve to be on the mothership, it's because more people were going to watch Louisville and Southern Miss in the Beef O' Brady's Bowl. And they did—twice as many people watched the bowl game.

The NFL doesn't have billions of dollars in television deals because their players are strong men. It's because more people watch and the advertising is worth more, so the networks pay more in upfront rights fees.

Which is all good, fine, but as Mr. Rovell suggests, give credit where credit is due. These female athletes are spectacular and should be in the sports limelight.

We need them in the limelight because women (and men) need to participate more, watch less. If we admire female athletes, maybe we'll do that, get out and bounce the ball.

Women of all ages worry about body image, and obesity is something many will tell you they fight their entire lives. Self-esteem hinges for so many of us, on looks. Doctors are always telling us to exercise, but the truth is that most of us get into the habit when we're young, develop our skills as children. We don't have to become stars, but if playing competitively becomes valued for women, more of us will simply want to play for fun.

Just learning the rules, putting together pickup games, enjoying the play should be something women value, too. Get away from the computer, get out and play.

So thank you, the women at UCONN, for giving it your all, proving that sports for women is not only normal, it is wonderful.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Brett Favre's Season

In case you aren't a football fan and don't know what's going on, Jenn Sterger, online columnist and sideline personality, accused Brett Favre, now on the Minnesota Vikings, of sexual harassment. She claims he sexted her, harassed her with explicit photos of himself. The NFL just fined Mr. Favre $50,000 because he didn't cooperate during the investigation.

It is still likely that Ms. Sterger will file suit, and others may follow.

The psychological spin here is that Mr. Favre had his worst season ever following the accusations. He threw 19 interceptions against 11 touchdowns finishing the season with a passer rating of 69.9, the lowest of his career. He also suffered numerous injuries.

Some are saying it's his age, but it could be that he's been a little down, too, never dreamed he would be outed for his overtures to women. When a person is depressed, and we're not saying he is, just hypothesizing here, preferring this to the aging theory, but when a person is depressed, putting out an optimal performance is hard. And if the performance is physical, as it is with athletes, coordination can be compromised. We therapists see people become "accident prone" while depressed and forever are saying, Take it easy. Don't try to do so much. Rest a little more.

At its worst, dissociation is a symptom of depression, and can be pretty scary. You don't control your body as well. You feel apart from it, even while inside your head.

So it's possible this happened to Brett Favre. The wrong kind of attention might have brought him down. Not the kind of way to end his career. We're hoping he rises up from this in any case, owns it if it's true, and no matter, comes out against sexting and models stellar social skill for the fans. It's not that hard, really.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Tyler Clementi's Suicide

Tyler Clementi killed himself. But we could say, if we were honest, that two other people, college kids, pushed him off the bridge.

File this one under diversity education/cyber-bullying/empathy training/and what a waste.

The first time a patient told me about a college roommate who videotaped someone in a residence hall doing something he/she wouldn't have wanted publicized, I was shocked. And it isn't easy to shock a therapist.

The second time, I raised an eyebrow. Similar circumstances, apartment.

The third time it was a high school teacher who had been exposed on the Internet, an angry student caught him swearing at the class. Not the same level of embarrassment, obviously.

But we're all vulnerable. Most of us have dreams of being caught undressed, wake up and say, It was just a dream, a fear dream. Dreams are about fears or wishes. They express our vulnerability.

But there are classes of individuals who are considered to be even more vulnerable than others. Add shame, embarrassment, exposure, humiliation and bullying to a life destined to get used to fighting prejudice, and any sexual minority person might feel life isn't worth living.

Yahoo story:

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The parents of a Rutgers University student who killed himself after his roommate allegedly used a webcam to spy on him during a tryst with another man have filed notice that they're considering suing the school.

Joseph and Jane Clementi, parents of Tyler Clementi, filed notice Friday preserving their right to sue. They have to wait six months after the notice to file a lawsuit over their son's death, which became a symbol in a national outcry over the bullying of young gays.

Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old violinist, only in school a few weeks, jumped off the George Washington bridge.

The suspects left school, are charged with invasion of privacy. There may be charges of bias intimidation.

Is the school really responsible? Probably not. And looking for a settlement won't bring back their son.

We could say that parents have to warn their children, have to prepare them, discuss these things, but the schools should, too. I'm not sure where to start, at what age exactly, but I think diversity education should begin before kids are old enough to use cameras.

Add it to the list. What a waste.

Linda Freedman, PhD

The Sexualization of Teenage Girls

Lea Michele, star of Glee, along with her co-star, Dianna Agron, posed in quasi-pornographic photos for the October issue of GQ magazine. She's supposed to be a high school role model.

We all become acutely aware of our sexuality during puberty. This isn't what sexualization is about. The definition of sexualization, according to the American Psychological Association:

(1) a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or sexual behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;

(2) a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

(3) a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or

(4) sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. (Especially relevant to children).

We therapists tend to see the issues with sex and teenage girls as multivariate, meaning it isn't only one thing, certainly not television that is the problem, when it comes to kids and sex. What we worry about is the trauma associated with sex, the violence, the pain, dysfunctional relationships, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, rejection, family conflict. Not an exhaustive list, but something to discuss with our teenage children.

And yes, sexualization. Ask a teenage girl if she gets pleasure out of performing certain sex acts that she has told you she does with her boyfriend and she'll look at you like you're crazy. Why would she get pleasure? This is what she's told a girl is supposed to do. Why question that?

One of the workshops we're doing at Relationship-Wise, Inc is educating kids about sex in relationships, and another, timely apparently, is about television. We help them think critically about what they see on TV, and talk about what they watch, discuss how dead-on or how completely off programs can be. We even do this with little children, but on their level.

It's good to think about what you're laughing at, sometimes, at all ages.

The parental complaint about television is that it normalizes sex and violence, two dynamics in our lives that Freud talked about a hundred years ago. Our basic human drives come down to these two: love and aggression, meaning sex and violence. We're supposed to tame them both. We can only imagine what Freud would have said about television grooming teens for sex, feeding the soft porn industry.

The Parent Television Council is on it, is disseminating findings of a new study conducted under the auspices of the APA, the American Psychological Association:

Sexualized Teen Girls: Tinseltown’s New Target--A Study of Teen Female Sexualization in Prime-time TV

. . . mass media messages miscommunicate the true definition of what it means to be female. . . . the message is that their sexuality is their primary identity and most valued commodity.

The findings:

Being underage and female, as opposed to being an adult and female, is associated with more sexual content on television. Older female characters are more likely to have sexual dialogue, but younger female characters portray more sexual behavior.

98% of the sexual incidents on TV involving underage female characters occurred with partners with whom they did not have any form of committed relationship.

Only 5% of the underage female characters communicated any form of dislike for being sexualized. (They don't comprehend what this means).

One or several instances of implied nudity and/or sexual gestures (e.g. suggestive dancing, erotic kissing, erotic touching and/or implied intercourse) were in every onscreen scene that contained sexualized depictions of underage girls.

Conclusion in layman's language

We know from previous research that girls exposed to sexualizing and objectifying media are more likely to experience body dissatisfaction, depression, and lower self-esteem. They look at themselves and think, I'm not pretty enough, not thin enough, not sexy.

It is only a matter of time they'll be talking about breast enhancements.

And "the most powerful medium in the world – television – is exacerbating rather than reversing that trend."

We have work to do.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

AWSM Joins Jets

It is happening, football is changing.

Not the sport, but the players.

In September, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell promised Amy Moritz, president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) that the AWSM would be there when the Jets begin to dialogue about female reporters in the locker room.

Ms. Moritz attended a meeting at the Jets' practice facility this week. We're quite sure the attendees were sensitive to gender and biological sex.

Although some might credit feminists for the rise in women in sports and athletic enterprises, a woman need not be a card carrying feminist to want fair treatment, equal treatment on the job. Most women in the workforce, including, we imagine, the women of the AWSM, don't start out wanting to change attitudes. They just want to do their jobs.

Sexual harassment hurts, is the point, and does make it hard to do the job. It hurts in a way that a sport injury (an elbow to the lip, ask President Obama about those) does not. We'll never stop the sports injuries, but verbal abuse? That players can do something about.

Meetings like these can only bode well for sportsmanship, won't hurt anyone's game.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Tony Parker, Brett Favre, and Gossip

It can't be easy being a professional athlete or a famous actor. Even the smallest details of your marriage, as in who you are texting, sexting become universal gossip. No judge has pounded the gavel, no jury delivered the verdict, consumers of gossip have no idea if the accusations are true, other than spouses leave husbands and the "victims" don't let go of their stories.

Eva Longoria has sent NBA star Tony Parker walking papers, and Jenn Sterger reported Brett Favre to NFL security, lawsuits pending. Journalists, and certainly the blogging community feast on celebrity gossip, and professional athletes are celebrities.

No news, but we expect movie and television stars to

marry and divorce more often,

to live a little on the wild side.

They entertain us acting the part.

We don't need it from our sports heroes. Some of us certainly don't, and our children, especially, need their heroes to bigger than this.

Yesterday's news is that television star, Eva Longoria is leaving San Antonio Spurs guard, Tony Parker. Eva found hundreds of text messages from Erin Barry. Erin is married to Tony's friend and teammate, Brent Barry. The dynamics, how this will affect the future of the team, how teamwork survives that, will be interesting to follow.

Eva, not so ironically, is a Desperate Housewife. This season, her friend, the sexy yet cold Renee, (Vanessa Williams), Lynette's (Felicity Huffman) college friend, has moved to Wisteria lane. Renee has decided to divorce Doug, a professional ball player who has cheated on her one time too many.

Eva Longoria's divorce is likely not life imitating art. We suspect which came first.

The second sexting scandal involves Brett Favre, the Vikings quarterback, in the professional sports hot seat for sending Jenn Sterger, online columnist and television personality, illicit pictures back in 2008. Jenn's television show, Daily Line, has since been canceled, ostensibly due to poor ratings.

Ms. Sterger shared her evidence against Mr. Favre with the New York Jets security chief. Why the security chief? Sexual harassment is a crime, of course. Sending unwanted nude photos, sexting with a cell phone, can be harassment. It makes some people uncomfortable. In this case, the photos were sold by a third party and purchased by Deadspin; Deadspin published them on the Internet.

See, that's the problem. You send an innocent picture, hoping to be romantic, and it is sold, over and over again. We're just making that leap here, that the photos will be sold over and over again. No need, they're online. And worse, you are accused of sexual harassment to boot.

The sexts are the bloody glove, according to Deadspin, meaning irrefutable evidence. Ms. Sterger is still exploring legal remedies.

It's likely that being accused of sexual harassment isn't fun, might even keep Mr. Favre awake at night, perhaps interfere with his game. We hope that the legal remedy against him somehow makes him take back what he did, apologize for upsetting Ms. Sterger-- and for setting a poor example to our country's sports fans. Sexting, just so you should know, is a violation of the NFL's personal-conduct policy. The NFL is not to blame.

We're waiting to see what Tony Parker does to save his marriage, if it is salvageable, which according to the Desperate Housewives script, is unlikely (at least not so far, there's time in the 2010-11 season). One thing's certain, however. Eva Longoria is anything but desperate.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Teacher-Student Sexual Harassment and Abuse

I've always said that sexual harassment is just a point on a line along the sexual abuse continuum. After all, it's about making someone feel uncomfortable with sexual messages, either verbal or non-verbal. And deliberately making someone feel uncomfortable is abusive. Even if it isn't deliberate, it feels violent.

Sexual harassment can be a comment about how someone dresses, or a discussion of size. Sometimes it is a joke. It can be a gesture or a leer. And it can be blackmail.

Have sex with me or you will not get a raise.

Have sex with me or you will not be promoted.

Have sex with me or you will lose your job.

Have sex with me. I'm telling everyone you did, anyway, and this way you'll get a really good bonus in December.

Have sex with me or that grade will be a C, not an A.

Only teachers can do that, threaten students with lower grades, or failure in a course.

We define it as sexual harassment when someone in a school or at a workplace makes someone else feel uncomfortable using sexual props or threats, comments or any other type of sexual behavior. We shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable at work or at school, which is why our enlightened law makers have made this a federal crime.

Defining sexual harassment is a form of sexual abuse, defines it as basically yet another sex crime. Sure, it sounds less damning, harassment, than the others-- coercion, molestation, attempted rape and rape-- but it still hurts, so why not call it what it is, abuse, or assault? It is bullying.

When a school teacher is in trouble for coercions (coercing a student to have sex), or for molestation, attempted rape, or rape, it is usually because he or she intentionally lured a student into an intimate relationship using flattery and emotional intimacy as bait.

Sometimes it is the student who has lured the teacher, but as professionals, teachers are supposed to know better than to initiate or participate in a sexual relationship with a minor.

So it is the teacher who is responsible for the boundary, in the eyes of the law, not the student. Minors, as works in progress, people still maturing, are off-limits when it comes to sex with adults. It is hard enough for them to make their own choices about these things, we shouldn't be making the sexual ones for them, making them offers that are difficult to refuse.

The effort that is spent making a child feel special, different from the other students so that the child will trust the adult, is called grooming. Children want this sort of attention. We all need it, but when a child receives special attention from a mentor, a teacher, the positive attention feeds the beast, the emptiness, the wholeness of self that hasn't been filled, not yet, not by childhood. Add the impulsiveness of childhood, the omnipotence of adolescence, and the gaps that should have been filled at home beg for fulfillment.

It is called exploitation when an adult poses as a parental guide and is really positioning himself as sexual mentor.

Adolescents, especially, feed into this relationship because they often want to differentiate from their families. Beyond having been neglected (if they were) they want to reject what their parents represent, to become their own person. This is the process of identity formation. Some adolescents have had enough lecturing, ranting from their parents, and are looking for new and different people in their lives to coach them.

There are, unfortunately, people in the teaching profession who wish to fill that job description, who recognize that individuation, look for it, and exploit the need, take little hands and young lives, lead them to sexual relationships if they can. Children of all ages are very sexual, will play out their psychological soft spots with psychological candy. This is why we call kids vulnerable.

To complicate our parsing out of terms, if the goal is to have sex with the student, then positive, seemingly nurturing behaviors that lead to a seduction are really coercive, technically assault, not harassment. Harassment, remember, feels bad. Coercion feels good, although it can be very confusing. But if a teacher is skilled a the art of seduction, then he or she knows how to make the student feel good, not uncomfortable, not harassed. This can start with an email relationship, progress to texting, even sexting, then meetings alone.

Most students don't get it until they find themselves alone with the teacher, in an uncompromising position, perhaps in the teacher's apartment. Alone, soon to be over-powered, this becomes terrifying, traumatic. Sex with a minor is rape, whether or not the student consents, and coercion, attempted rape, is just as bad in the eyes of the law.

And even if the student is ready and willing, minors do not have the right to informed consent, to say they are willing participants. A teenager wanting sex with a teacher doesn't help that teacher's case. It is still statutory rape.

Sexual harassment, on the other hand, isn't a seduction, although the intent may be to coerce a student into sex. Harassment makes the student uncomfortable. It might be a comment on the student's clothes, how a tee shirt fits; or her about the teen's body, how well-developed he or she is for that age.

The teacher might make direct comments about how the student makes her/him feel, might share dreams about the student, erotic dreams or fantasies, with graphic descriptions of these dreams, fantasies. The teacher might share sexual stories or pictures, porn, even suggest that they watch porn together, or that the student write an essay about porn. If words, gestures, suggestions, make a child feel uncomfortable, it is harassment.

Teachers have an inordinate amount of control and can damage young lives, change them irrevocably. They hold real power in ways that no one else can. By virtue of their profession, they can manipulate what students read, literally assign novels that message sex between older men, younger women, or older women, younger men. And the way the teacher interprets it, of course, is the right way.

The power goes beyond merely holding grades over a student's head, the most obvious form of sexual harassment, the one that tends to be the red flag, threatening non-sexual compliance with failure. If a student has been outed as willing, social castigation follows. The damage of the harassment/abuse can follow a student beyond his or her school years.

And might we add that the lessons of this relationship influence values, the communication that love conquers all, that age, station in life, should not matter.

Could I give you specific examples of sexual harassment? Sure. But it isn't necessary, you get it.
Same with coercion, molestation, sexual assault and rape, the other sex crimes. We don't need pictures, videos to understand these relationship processes.

Our imaginations ache when we associate them with a teacher/student relationship.
That's why they are crimes.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Bishop Long and Spiritual Authority

It could be any ministry, really, or any clergy-person of any fold; any teacher, for that matter any mentor, or family friend; any advisor, psychologist or social worker, doctor or dentist-- supervisor at work--

pastor, bishop, rabbi, "friend"

any older person, usually older, who has authority, who by virtue of position, owner of the unquestionable last word, one in a position of leadership (especially by consensus or community charge), any older person, really, who has psychological power, who knows more or can persuade, make suggestions in a hypnotic, reputable way; or coerces in a threatening fashion, who takes advantage of a younger person's innocence or fear;

anyone who has the respect of someone else who is naive and impressionable, sometimes a much younger, mentally younger person, one who cannot see, cannot fathom, who does not want to see, sexually coercive intentions of another, a man or a woman (women do this, too) in authority or a position of psychological power.

This time it is a spiritual person, a member of the cloth, who is accused of the sexual abuse of young men who participated in a church program for 13-18 year olds to learn financial and sexual responsibility, ironically, a masculine mentoring initiative. Real men are respectful, I imagine is the point, and self-disciplined.

CNN

The Yahoo story

Bishop Eddie Long's response to his congregants.

So this time it is a Bishop, and as such, one of the crimes he is alleged to have committed is taking advantage of his spiritual authority. These things happen, of course, in other venues. The same thing happens when a teacher surreptitiously makes a student feel like a special friend, only to initiate a seduction at an opportune moment, or a boss, or a supervisor, with an employee who wants desperately to please.

The law, when we talk about abuse, is all about consent, the age for consent, and it seems that those filing complaints against the Bishop may technically have been adults at the time of the alleged seductions.

Sexual assault, on the other hand, as opposed to sexual abuse, is a lawful charge in which age is immaterial.

So you should know, those of you who think, ah, the lad or lassie is of age, twice.

We have laws against this sort of thing and no longer are churches protecting their shepherds. We just have to educate the kids, is the truth, and their parents-- teach them to recognize the warning signs. Because they're there.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT