Can this cause sexual trauma? TW sexuality

There's a lot of sexual trauma in my known system. We do not know why. Age 12 seems to be meaningful with that.

I've tried to think why. T also asked the question why is that. I don't know.

What I can think about, is that my puberty started very early. My sister was 4 years older, but she wasn't that much ahead of me with puberty than you'd think. It was awful. I remember my first periods, I remember my panties with strawberry figures in them, and I remember crying, because it felt overwhelmingly bad. I remember crying, because I didn't want to be an adult yet, but having my periods meant I would be. I was 9.

Years later my mom told she called pediatrician to ask if it was normal in that age. Doctor told it's early, but not impossible. I was having all signs of growing up years before anyone else in my class at school and I was embarrassed. I still don't get why would anyone want to have large breasts willingly. I was not ready to grow up, and I was not ready to be different in something like that. Luckily I was never bullied because of it, and boys weren't making comments about me either. I always kept my back stooped, so no one could see me.

My dad had porn magazines at home. They weren't actually his, but his little brother's (same one's who asked my sister to pull down her pants and show herself when my sister was 4 or 5 years old), and I don't even know why I know that they were his. I think he discussed it openly when we were around. He also had porn movies and talked something about them sometimes. I don't know if it's true or do I remember right, but I have shady memory of him watching porn from TV when his parents (my grandparents) and our whole family was in the same room. I can't ask from my mom, because I know and she knows she doesn't remember many things she should, or she remembers them wrong ways. And my dad certainly doesn't remember anything.

I looked at the porn magazines with my sister several times. I can't remember how old I was, but what ever my age was, I was still 4 years younger than she was. She didn't make me, there was no forcing. There was no touching. I think it stared before I got my periods, but I can't be sure.

I remember masturbating a lot when I was a kid, from very early on. Well I don't know how much is "a lot" for a child, and I don't remember how often actually, but I felt very much ashamed of it. I always made promises to myself I'd stop, but I couldn't. Even prayed for that, but it didn't help. There can be a gap somewhere when I didn't do it, but it can also be my mind altering time. I feel like there could be same kind of gaps without having periods, but I don't think there actually were. Sometimes when I did it, or had periods, I just wasn't able to remember when it happened last time, and it FELT like ages ago. I was probably dissociating those things.

I don't remember anything special happening when I was 12. This is all I can come up with. I don't know if it's enough to cause so much sexual violence in the system.

I know trauma is not an event, something is traumatic if it caused trauma. But I don't know did it.

I never grew up to be a woman. I don't like that word. I identify as female, but not as a woman. Woman sounds too sexual and too adult. Adult wrong way.

Being exposed to sex-related things, specially like porn (which isn't really a healthy depiction of sex) from a young age, without any (healthy) explanation about what all of those things mean + with insecure people around, to me it seems enough to be traumatic, or at least cause issues.


***TW : sexuality in children ***


Also, it's totally normal for a child to masturbate. It becomes pathological only when it takes the shape of an addiction, the only way the child has to feel good and the only thing they want to do, or when they start to hurt their body by masturbating too often (which can happen because of intense stress and/or anxiety, abuse, ADHD, OCD...)

Normal infantile masturbation starts as soon as children begin to discover their body, so around 1yo, sometime earlier, and it's usually a way to comfort or calm down (specially true for children with a tendency for stress/anxiety), or just to feel good. They need to be taught that it's something they should only do in the privacy of their room, not in public (as a child doesn't really understand social rules before the age of 6-7, it can take some time for them to learn this one...).
It peaks around 2-4yo, then slow down (but doesn't necessarily stop) until the puberty, where hormones and body changes will make the behavior peaks again.

It shocks a lot of parents, because there is a general belief that young children don't have any interest into their private parts as they aren't sexually mature. Well, the basic function of pleasure already works, even if the child doesn't understand the "adult" meaning of it. For the child, it's like sucking their thumb : a way to find comfort and to calm themselves. Nothing more. The sexual meaning come after, during the teenage years.
So yes, infantile masturbation is a thing, a very common and normal thing.

Hi Dwelt,

Thank you for answering about this. We know you are in college studying to be a T, right? And you write a lot of stuff here that helps people.

When we were in the first grade I (Hannah) saw a boy in the class do this when he was sitting at his desk. Our body was 6.5 then but I have always been 10. At least since I knew I was me. Anyway he didn't know anyone could see him doing this. But I saw it and thought it was really gross. Because anything about boy parts was gross. I really don't like that this is the earliest thing I remember as me.

I don't really know if Christine saw this happen or she just knows the memory that I have. Christine is 8.5. She used to be 8 and was around for anything about our body feeling good with stuff like that. But by the time we were 8.5 we knew that that stuff was also about doing it with other people. And that's when it became gross again. I mean it was always gross to me but wasn't gross to Christine until we learned what it was.

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining this right. And I never knew how much it bothered me or some of the others until now. So thank you for writing about it here.

Hannah

PS to Floralie....we don't want to ignore you. We are sorry about what those people in your family did.

Hi Hannah, and everyone else reading this.

As I told there's huge amount of sexual violence and trauma in our system, although I don't know why and where it comes from. Not knowing the reasons, doesn't cure the trauma others have. For us it's boys who carry those traumas within them and for them it's all true. Especially for Fourteen, he's the one with most triggers. If you find all men bad or male genitalia gross even in little children, please put a trigger warning before just saying it out loud. It's emotional abuse to call other people's most private parts gross, and extremely hurtful. They didn't choose their gender, they didn't choose to be born gross without any way out of it ever. They've been hurt enough by bad people, and it's so sad they end up being hurt by people who they think would be on their side too.

This should be safe place to everyone, but no peer support has ever been safe for Fourteen. He has huge guilt because of his gender and there are several self harming parts starting from age 3 in his system who will get triggered every time their trauma is repeated by someone and their traumatic ways of viewing their body is proofed to be true, not just trauma, but how people actually see him.
As long as he's male, nothing he does won't change the way he is. It doesn't mater how he behaves or how he feels. Having boy parts is what defines him.

We've tried to help him and make him see there's nothing wrong with his body and nothing wrong with him. But what we try to tell him will never come true, when world proves us wrong every time, and once again he was randomly attacked, although he didn't do anything. Having gender is crime enough. I can see why he doesn't believe in getting help. Help won't change his gender and it won't change the world, so he can never be cured or safe.

Someone little got upset. I can't name who, but he wants to cry and hold a small fire engine in his hand. Fire engines are for saving people from bad places. It's someone little from Fourteen's system, because this was the second time fire engine was needed for something that upset them.

Boys should have rights too.

TW for talking about boys and girls and body parts

Floralie wrote:If you find all men bad or male genitalia gross even in little children, please put a trigger warning before just saying it out loud.

Okay thank you for telling us. We are sorry that we triggered Fourteen and any of your other
people.

Sometimes it's hard to know what triggers someone but we never want to do it on purpose. And also you had a TW in the subject line and we thought the boy and girl body part of it would be okay under that TW.

Hannah and Christine