‘Help! My husband wants our 12-year-old son to have paid sex so he can be a real man’

DEAR EPPY,

I am a 36-year-old mother of three children.  I love my children and husband.  I have a wonderful relationship with my husband.  However, we would have conflicts at times about child rearing.  There are days when my husband would win and days when I would win.  But there’s this one argument that I’d like to win and am not willing to lose.  

There was this time when I overheard my husband talking to his friend on the phone.  They were planning on bringing my 12-year-old son to a place where there are paid girls for sex when he turns 13.  I didn’t like what I heard and when he got off the phone, I confronted him about it.  At the end of our talk, he still stuck to his opinion that my son goes through it so he can be a “real man.”  He also says that if our son goes through this, we will be making sure that his sexuality will be the right one.  I don’t think this is right at all.

Please help me.  I want to settle this once and for all.  I think that if my husband reads your opinion about the matter he will listen because you are an authority on this.   CONCERNED MOM 

DEAR CONCERNED MOM,

Your husband seems to have issues about sexuality.  It could be because he may be sensing that your son might be homosexual and plans to do something about this or he is of a culture that believes that all men should go through this experience.

I don’t think that your husband realizes that your son is 12 years old and a minor.  That means he is still a child.  Forcing your child to have sex with a woman is a form of child sexual abuse, therefore a crime.  Whatever your husband’s reason, there is no justification for child sexual abuse. 

To give you an example of this kind of trauma, a male child at the age of 13 was brought to a woman paid to have sex with him.  His mother, thinking that she is of the liberated type, did not stop her husband from bringing him to this woman.  Later on in life, this boy became confused about relating with women.  He treats women like objects.  He has difficulty feeling for women and has no respect for them. 

Upon going to therapy, this young man told his therapist that he didn’t like it when his father brought him to the woman who had sex with him when he was 12 years old.  Now that he is an adult, he realized that he is angry at his parents because he felt that they did not allow him to experience sex the way he wanted to.  He felt violated by his own parents.  He wanted to have his first sexual experience with someone he loves.  Now, he feels he lost his chance to experience that. 

This young man definitely was deprived of being a child at the age of 12 years old by his own parents.  He was forced to skip the process of relating with his same sexed peers the normal way and learning to know more about the opposite sex.  Instead, he jumped to seeing females as a source of pleasure rather than knowing females as a whole.  He jumped to seeing all people in a sexual way.  Whenever his male friends talk to their female friends, he sees the males as stopping him from having sex with their female friends.  In the end, he lost a lot of relationships. 

You are right in stopping your husband from bringing him to a paid woman for sex.  We all have to take part in stopping child sexual abuse in our country.  Your husband’s way was how it was 50 to 60 years ago when people didn’t know what abuse was.  Those were the days when children weren’t allowed to be heard.  Those were the days when women were forced to be subservient to men instead of being equal with men.  I hope you will be able to resolve this issue for your son’s sake.

EPPY

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‘Sex is not pleasurable for me. Is something wrong with me?’ 

DEAR EPPY,

I would like to ask you something that I have not discussed with anyone before.  I have been wondering about sex.  I’ve had three boyfriends already and had sex with each of them.  But when I hear my friends talk about sex, it seems that their experiences are different from mine.  Their experiences seem to be pleasurable and wonderful.  I don’t understand what they are saying because sex is not pleasurable for me.  In fact, it is burdensome for me and devoid of pleasure.  Is something wrong with me or are they just making it up?                                            UNHAPPY

DEAR UNHAPPY,

In a 2010 study written by Charlene Muehlenhard and Sheena Shippee in Journal of Sex Research, it is shown that women, one- half to two-thirds of the time, fake or pretend orgasm.  In the Synopsis of Psychiatry by Kaplan and Sadock, it is mentioned that 46 percent of women don’t experience orgasm.  To wit, the probability is quite high that some of your friends are embellishing their stories regarding sex.  However, they may also be telling the truth because it is not impossible for women to experience pleasure.

This brings us to your inability to experience pleasure.  In the Synopsis of Psychiatry by Kaplan and Sadock, they mentioned a female sexual problem called female orgasmic disorder.  This is also called anorgasmia.  This condition inhibits a female from experiencing orgasm.  In the book of Kaplan and Sadock, they mentioned Alfred Kinsey, a scientist who studied human sexuality.  Kinsey discovered that “…only five percent of married women over 35 years of age had never achieved orgasm.”  

Studies show that female orgasmic disorder is associated with psychological factors.  Women who consider themselves decent may not experience orgasm if they believe that decent women are not entitled to sexual pleasure.  Traumatic sexual experiences, fear of getting pregnant, and feelings of guilt about sexual impulses are also factors that result in the inability of women to reach orgasm.  

Chances are you are one of the women who suffer from this condition.  However, this is not a hopeless situation.  Fortunately for you, you can still achieve orgasm by dealing with your unresolved issues.  There are women who go through psychotherapy and are able to achieve orgasm.  It would be best for you to go to a psychotherapist so you can have the pleasurable experience that women talk about. EPPY                                                   

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E-mail eppygochangco@gmail.com.