How my mother made me a gay sex addict and other devious developments

Sometimes I forget that for the past few years in both Brooklyn and San Francisco that I'e been living a sort of fantasy reality where everyone incessantly dresses up in outrageous costumes, assumes multiple made-up performance names and progressive parents bring their children to events like day-time guerilla drag shows and Folsom Street fair.  It often takes a reality check to remind me of the increasing prevalence of sex-negative discourses, particularly those revolving around sexual development.  Thank you, Judith Levine, for bringing these issues to light for me!  In reading her illuminating manuscript, "Harmful to Minors," I had to take a step back and retrospectively interrogate the 'intimate' moments of my youth which most assuredly impacted my own sexual development.  I was most struck by a survey cited by Levine of mental health and child protection professionals stating the interventions were necessary against mothers in particular who either kissed their children on the mouth, presented themselves nude to children before the age of five and hugged their children too much before the age of ten.  It's a wonder then that my family's doorstep was never overcrowded by child welfare workers.  

Yes, my mother frequented bathed with me as a child: it was the beginning of a sexual education and lifelong appreciation of women's bodies.  Yes, my mother hugged me many, many times a day before and after the age of ten: it taught me the importance of touch and strengthened my ability to love.  According to some child developmental theories, this behavior should be defined as sexual abuse.  Geez, now I know why I'm so messed up!  Thanks child psychology!  Ironically, too, my mother received her education in child developmental psychology and teaches pre-school students.  She must have missed that class about mothers' sexual abuse; I'm sure she was too busy hand-cuffing herself to the student union for some reason or other.

So yes, my mother obviously sexually abused and by logical inference, I too am now prone to positioning myself as a sexual abuser.  I used to think that all those sexual health clinicians who pronounced me a sex addict were just having a bad day, but NOW I finally get it!! My mother made me sex addict by showing me too much love, and now I'm in the position to not only abuse others, but to abuse myself (I guess mutually pleasurable experiences are criteria for self-harm these days....)  I use to harbor a theory that mother made me gay by showing me too much affection.  It took me years to realize that my decision to suck cock was a political act.  But by my first logic combined with said developmental theories, as if gay sex weren't bad enough, now I'm a gay sex abuser!!  

I've also recently realized that I frequently use my status as a graduate student in Sexuality Studies to get me laid.  There's a certain light that goes off in people's eyes when I tell them that I study sex.  Generally, I'm either asked one of two questions: 1) "so, what are your thoughts on sex?"......(um....) or 2) "so, do you wanna study me?" Clearly, I've found the tools for sexual coercion that has now become instinct due to my pathological sexual upbringing.  I feel so relieved to now know that the entire time I thought I was really enjoying my life, I've actually only been playing out a sordid tale of the consequences of my mother's inexcusable sexual behavior.  Thanks, Mom! Love you lots!!!