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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedGay and bisexual men's age-discrepant childhood sexual experiences
Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2004 by Jessica L. Stanley, Kim Bartholomew, Doug Oram
Despite a proliferation of research on the impact of child sexual abuse (CSA), minimal effort has been directed toward understanding gay men's experiences of CSA. According to the best available prevalence estimates, 27% of women and 14% of men in both college and community samples have experienced CSA (Rind, Tromovitch, & Bauserman, 1998). Initial investigations indicate that CSA rates in gay and bisexual men may be at least as high as prevalence rates found among women. For example, Doll et al. (1992) found that 31% of gay and bisexual men attending sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics reported sexual encounters before age 16 with an older or more powerful partner. Similarly, Lenderking et al. (1997) found that 36% of the gay and bisexual men participating in a health clinic study reported a childhood sexual encounter before age 16 with an older person.
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Although relatively high rates of CSA among gay men have been consistently reported, little attention has been paid to the nature of these experiences. Considerable research indicates that boys' and girls' experiences of CSA differ with regard to the nature of the sexual activity, perceptions, and effects (e.g., Dhaliwal, Gauzas, Antonowicz, & Ross, 1996; Rind et al., 1998). Evidence that gay men report higher rates of CSA than heterosexual men (Coxell, King, Mezey, & Gordon, 1999) and the suggestion that their sexual encounters are more likely to be with older male partners indicate that gay and heterosexual men's experiences of CSA also may systematically differ (West & Woodhouse, 1993). Further, the development of young gay men's sexuality differs from that of heterosexual men, given the lack of social support for their sexual orientation and the lesser availability of same-age sexual partners (Fisher & Akman, 2002; Savin-Williams, 1998). Thus, it cannot be assumed that the study of CSA in women and heterosexual men is relevant to the experiences of gay men, leaving researchers and clinicians alike with little information to guide their work. To address this gap in the CSA research, we examined gay and bisexual men's experiences of CSA and the impact of those experiences.
This research incorporated the conventional definition of CSA and a modified definition of CSA to evaluate which definition best accounted for problems in adjustment. CSA is typically defined as a sexual interaction between a child or adolescent and a person who is at least 5 years older (Rind et al., 1998). This age-based definition maps onto moral beliefs and the American legal criterion of CSA (Kilpatrick, 1987; Nelson & Oliver, 1998; Okami, 1991). However, the age-based definition aggregates all children's sexual activity with older persons and thus masks the degree to which experiences can vary. For example, incestuous and coercive sexual activity that involves a young child is not distinguished from consensual sexual activity between an adolescent and an unrelated adult. Focusing solely on whether an age-discrepant sexual activity occurred, as directed by the age-based criterion, diverts attention away from examining the nature and context of the sexual activity. However, the characteristics of a sexual encounter appear to better explain adjustment than the occurrence of a sexual encounter. Notably, the relationship with the perpetrator and the degree of coercion are related to intensity of negative effects (e.g., Constantine, 1981). For gay men, negative perceptions of their sexual experiences are related to age at the time of experience and to the presence of coercion (Dolezal & Carballo-Dieguez, 2002; Doll et al., 1992). Thus, nonsexual factors such as assent and age of the child and the older person may better explain children's adjustment to CSA than simply whether age-discrepant sexual activity occurred.
The age-based definition of CSA is based on an implicit assumption that USA invariably leads to harm, an assumption that has limited empirical support. A recent meta-analysis revealed that only a small minority of men (unweighted mean = 9%) and women (unweighted mean = 13%) with CSA histories report lasting negative effects (Rind et al., 1998). Although on average people with CSA experiences are slightly less well-adjusted than those without such experiences, CSA accounts for less than 1% of the variance in adjustment (Bauserman & Rind, 1997; Rind et al., 1998). Furthermore, young gay men who described an age-discrepant sexual experience between the ages of 12 and 17 were found to have equally well-developed self-esteem and sexual identity as young gay men without such experiences (Rind, 2001).
Although it is commonly assumed thai CSA is invariably an intensely negative experience, research consistently shows considerable variability in retrospective perceptions of CSA experiences. Moreover, these perceptions predict associated outcomes. For example, individuals who described negative childhood sexual experiences were more likely to report difficulties (such as decreased sexual satisfaction, poorer general functioning, and suicidal ideation) than individuals who described positive or neutral experiences (Okami, 1991). In addition, among inmates (Fondacaro, Holt, & Powell, 1999) and among Latino men who have sex with men (Dolezal & Carballo-Dieguez, 2002), cognitively appraising an age-based CSA experience as abusive was found to be associated with worse psychological outcomes than not appraising the experience as abusive. Among college men, those who labeled their childhood sexual experiences with older persons as abusive reported psychological distress at levels nearly double those reported by men who had age-based CSA experiences but who did not label these experiences as abusive (Steever, Follette, & Naugle, 2001).
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