Thanks so much for the kind words! I had to put this series aside for a lot longer than I thought I would, but I am hoping to get back to it this summer.

FCH, to respond to your comment about publishing: I have tried publishing this essay, and parts of it in the past, and had very little luck. But maybe it’s time to try again. We’ll see…

I want to encourage you to publish this because it is a story that is not told often enough. I remember, in 1987 or 1988, sitting in a therapist’s office and uttering to someone else for the first time that I’d been raped as a young teen. Back then, I don’t think I could have found any texts on male survivors of sexual abuse, so I turned to writers such as Dworkin and Brownmiller.

Fast foward to 2000 and my mother, who is now dying from ovarian cancer, is trying to make peace between me and the brother who was the first to sexually abuse me. She was the only person in the family who had the moral authority to attempt such a thing, but her approach wasn’t to condemn his behavior, and his repeated attempts at avoiding responsibility, but to instruct me that I wasn’t to blame his actions for my decision to change sex years earlier. It wasn’t as if that thought had never crossed my mind — my therapist and I had discussed it over several sessions — but if “maleness” is defined as “taking” and “femaleness” is defined as “taken”, how can any male who’s survived sexual abuses not have that question etched in their mind?

My guess is that a lot of men wrestle with that question.

Thank you.

christina b: The problem with calling this a collection of short stories is that it’s not fiction, and I say that not just to be picky about genre. Were this essay of the I-was-sexually-abused-and-here’s-how-I-learned-to-love-myself-and-live-a-happy-and-fulfilled-life (and I am not knocking this kind of memoir at all), it would be easier to sell as well. But the point of the essay, I hope, is not to tell the story of my own recovery; rather, what I hope I am doing is exploring issues of male heterosexuality, etc. through personal reflection, less to propose “solutions” than to raise questions. (And I am willing to admit that my own perception of what is going on in this essay is skewed.) And every response I have gotten, from the time I had an agent trying to sell an early version of this work till now, when I simply describe the book to people, is that this kind of material, coming from a nobody like myself, is very, very tough to sell. Almost all the people I have spoken to in publishing are convinced there is not enough of an audience of people who want to grapple with these issues to justify the cost of producing the book.

r@d@r: I thank you, really, for that vote of confidence. The problem is that I am not writing a self-help book.

I hope I don’t sound ungrateful, or that I am simply nay-saying your very sincere suggestions. Once I am done posting the essay here, I do intend to try again to find a publisher for the material, but I am at a loss, for now, as to what new strategies to try.

when I tried to get this material published before (though in somewhat different form), there was not a lot of enthusiasm for it. Editors of commercial publishers didn’t think it would sell; editors of university presses found it not scholarly/academic enough.

It would make a great book of short stories.

Hmm. The only feminist press I have ties to is sci fi. But I wonder if you could query there anyway?

but since when this is done I imagine you’ll publish this elsewhere

I hope. I know I wrote about this in a comment in one of the other parts, but when I tried to get this material published before (though in somewhat different form), there was not a lot of enthusiasm for it. Editors of commercial publishers didn’t think it would sell; editors of university presses found it not scholarly/academic enough. I hope I am not sounding whiney, but I do think–especially based on some of the responses I’ve gotten posting the material on this blog–that this material would find a readership, and I think it should be out there. It’s frustrating.

I’m really enjoying this series; thanks for posting it.

Again, thank you so much for your honesty. It is so very refreshing.

I’m really enjoying this series - sorry I’ve not commented before.