Men's things XXXI: Can Intimacy Be Reclaimed After Prostate Cancer?

The Unspoken Battle

It is the unspoken conversation, one I have barely had with myself and definitely not with others, including my partner, my medical and cancer support teams.

When I was diagnosed with malignant prostate cancer in June 2024, the first physical urge that left me was sexual desire, as though someone had just kicked me in the balls. It wasn't pain, just a numbness of confusion and incapacity.

Preparing for the Obvious

Even for a man with African heritage and no need for machismo, I have been open about the bowel and bladder issues. I was quite read up on them and ready to attend to the matters concerned. I didn't want a catheter insertion for whatever reason, but incontinence underwear? I was ready to model it for men of a certain age and body, if necessary. I do like my underwear, and I have used linings too; the situation is manageable.

However, on the sexual part—the big mammoth in the room—I have ignored its presence and viewed it as part of the weight-bearing structure of that space, insignificant if it played dead and never moved. But 17 months after radiotherapy, with all things looking good, the mammoth is awakening from its imposed hibernation.

Weighing the Options

If I wanted sex, and I enjoyed sex, this diagnosis exacerbated and crystallised the ideas of sexual dysfunction in my mind.

In choosing the option for treatment, I first spoke to the consultant surgeon about the radical prostatectomy procedure. A year before, a men's advocate who had undergone it explained that the expert surgeon was able to save the nerves necessary to retain some sexual functions.

The surgeon was quite candid with me: my prostate gland was so enlarged that he couldn't guarantee anything could be saved of my nerves until he was in there conducting the surgery.

Imagining the Aftermath

As this procedure is conducted under general anaesthetic, the prospect of waking up to a surgeon trying to express happiness and sadness in the same facial expression was one I was not intent on seeing.

His professionalism and years of experience might have given him the skill as a comic piece, but it would have been a joke at my expense. “Mr Akintayo, we successfully removed the prostate gland. However, your sex life is gone; you're impotent. But we can make some interesting toys for you, to have some sensation and other elements of pleasure.”

I'd be crying tears of joy for being free of cancer, catheter inserted as there is no urinary control for months, finding where my pelvic floor is, and living happily ever after.

Then I ask, even if this smacks of medical paternalism: should surgeons be more proactive in discussing sexual health outcomes?

Learning from Others

Another friend had undergone the procedure a few years before. He, a straight man, came to me to seek advice about the kinds of sex I know. Much as I could have helped, I felt he needed to join a men's support group to appreciate the experiences of men in similar circumstances before thinking of this, because his views were explorative to my hearing, rather than developed.

From that surgery discussion, I knew it was not for me. At the same time, I needed that cancer excised because, whichever way you look at it, dead men do not have sex.

Another question arises: how do cultural expectations of manhood affect seeking the essential prostate health check-ups first, before considering the treatment decisions and recovery?

Radiotherapy and Its Consequences

As I took radiotherapy, the immediate and enduring side effects have been bladder related, with a few bowel issues. My sex drive is depleted by being unsure of ability and compounded by lacking confidence. It is also not something that can be addressed with bravado.

As you can read, I am tackling this issue alone because I do not understand this vulnerability enough to appreciate the kind of help I need.

The Medication Dilemma

Yes, I can get erectile dysfunction medication and pop pills like sweets, but that not only becomes a prop; it does not address the emotional and mental issues. Rather, it becomes a legalised version of chemical sex, getting a prescription from a pharmacist instead of illicit drugs delivered by a dealer.

The question then becomes, how many highs can I have before drug-induced priapism or severe hypotension with the risk of death is the danger?

Furthermore, because it has been offered, is the medical establishment over-reliant on pharmaceutical solutions rather than psychological support?

Rethinking Intimacy

As men, we are fixated with erection and penetration as the full expressions of sex; the absence of either or both feeds a kind of sexual frustration for the person and their partner. Does sex become a distant memory rather than a present experience with a hopeful better consummation, or are damaged goods being repackaged for a partner with different expectations?

For gay men, where physical intimacy and sexual expression often form central parts of identity and connection, the loss can feel particularly acute. The dynamics of same-sex relationships, where both partners understand male sexuality from lived experience, can create a unique space for empathy and shared problem-solving.

Yet it can also mean both partners acutely feel the absence of what was, and the uncertainty of what might be possible. The fear of being seen as “broken” or inadequate in a community that sometimes prizes sexual vitality can compound the isolation.

For straight men, the challenge often involves navigating conversations with partners who may not fully grasp the psychological weight of erectile dysfunction on male identity. There's the added pressure of traditional gender roles and expectations around male performance.

Meanwhile, bisexual men face both sets of pressures, depending on the gender of their partner, alongside navigating healthcare systems that may not fully recognise or address their specific concerns.

Regardless of sexual orientation, the fundamental question remains: how do you maintain intimacy and connection when the language of physical expression you once spoke fluently becomes halting and uncertain?

Confronting the Fear

Yes, I have literally thought through all this with a clear indication that I probably need to re-engage with a support system that would address many of the pertinent issues after treatment for prostate cancer. The questions are not abstract; they are real issues in existing relationships.

You might wonder, if I have managed the bowel and bladder issues that well, why am I struggling with the sexual one? Whether we like it or not, it defines, to a certain degree, manhood, manliness, performance, and self-esteem. Maybe, just maybe, this is part of the fear that stops us black guys from talking about men's things.

One last question: are Black men receiving adequate support and information about sex, sexual health, and sexual expression after cancer treatment?

Moving Forward

Yet we need to talk. Prostate cancer cannot be the last story, and navigating a way to fulfilled sexual satisfaction after prostate cancer treatment must not be greeted by the shock of the experience, but by the hope of new possibilities through therapy, support, and understanding.

How intimacy changes in relationships is a journey that has no clear answers for both parties, and that might not be the prospect a partner desires in what looked amazing before cancer struck and stole our virility.

Check your Prostate Cancer risk in 30 seconds.

Blog - Men's things XXX: Let's talk Prostate Cancer

Blog – Photons on the Prostate - A year from starting radiotherapy

Blog - A prostate cancer diagnosis, one year on

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Men's things XXVI: Let's avoid the stigma of prostate cancer

A stigma on the prostate

Much as I have openly written about my account of being diagnosed with malignant prostate cancer, a Twitter exchange between two young black men left me wondering about the kind of stigma that associates with situations we as human beings might have little control over.

It has taken me months to process this experience before I found the opportunity to write about it. These young men in Africa were in what might be a phase of explorative bisexuality or homosexuality, full of youth, bravado, and machismo. One should not deny the youth their virility, vigour, and vitality.

Rather a living older man

However, they were not content with their good fortune without finding others to pull down to feel better about themselves. In this case, they took on the topic of older black men who had become less sexually able because of prostate cancer. The exchange was in jest, levity, and mockery; it cut quite deep.

Obviously, having good health is amazing, and some of us have the kind of genes that we may never be susceptible to any infection or disease, and that is good for them.

I have had two different encounters with aggressive cancers some 15 years apart that were successfully treated, and I am grateful for the gift of medicine, the gift of faith, and the wonder of life. I have been very fortunate.

Youthful delusions of invincibility

Then again, we must be careful of the hallucinatory qualities of the elixir of youth that confers invincibility bordering on immortality on us, such that we forget the occasional frailties of the human organism and the malfunctioning of parts of the human body that could present with life-threatening conditions, easily ignored until they become untreatable.

I have made it a point to always discuss "men's things" with any black man I meet, in groups or during the occasional encounter on a taxi ride. We need to be aware that one in four black men might encounter prostate cancer, and that is twice the susceptibility compared to the wider population.

Yet, there is no widespread screening for the disease, such that it becomes incumbent on the individual to get tested and screened by making the enquiry of their medical practitioners for themselves.

Health trumps sexual prowess

Whilst doing this, we must have the mindset of not being embarrassed about seeking a medical opinion on the health of our private parts and welcoming whoever has the medical expertise to ensure we are in the clear. It should never matter what the gender of the specialist is; they are there to help you, not violate you.

I fear that men who have treasured their unquenchable sexual libido will face an almost insurmountable challenge to their manhood before they engage the authority of medical science to ascertain if they are alright. The time wasted in addressing this personal battle can be quite costly.

I faced up to my doctor to address out-of-range results of blood tests, insisted that whatever it was be seen to, and tacked on the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test because I fell in the cohort of those who might be susceptible. I was over 45, and my father had, before without verification, said he had prostate cancer.

Be a man, get checked

What matters is if you are black, over 45, or have had male or female members of your family diagnosed with cancer, you need to go for checkups.

Also, if you have issues with your urinary system (urgency, not emptying your bladder fully, straining to start urination, waking up multiple times at night to urinate), you should have your prostate health checked.

Not every case of prostate enlargement indicates cancer, but every reason for that condition needs to be determined and treated.

Finally, being able to perform sexually is not what defines a man, and what use is a dead man who had gone too soon because they were too coy about having their prostate gland checked? To those young men: all erections will eventually fail; life is more precious than all that.

References

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - A year from starting radiotherapy

Blog - A prostate cancer diagnosis, one year on

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - XVIV - I Just Can't Wait

Blog - Men's things XXV: Prostate cancer under control

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

The Supreme Court judgement on WOMAN

An impassable terrain

The issue of access to women’s intimate spaces and the participation of natal males who have identified as female by gender reassignment in sport has been a controversial and sometimes impossible issue to discuss.

There are activists in what had become gender wars who had taken such implacably entrenched positions on either side of the debate, making those who even had the simplest, most innocent, or possibly naive questions feel silenced, for fear of being labelled phobic, exclusionary, bigoted or even worse.

Any opinion that appeared to go against the grain of the most liberal view of inclusion was an invitation to censure, ostracism, punishment, loss of status or livelihood, persecution, prosecution, and even death threats. I dare say, to the silent and quite likely reasonable majority, it was like the world had gone mad.

What is sex?

I awaited with anticipation and trepidation the judgement of The Supreme Court in the UK, framed in the context of what the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010 explicitly referred to, was it biological sex alone or did it include certificated sex?

The section, as per what the Act refers to as sex, is Chapter 1, Section 11 shown below:

Sex

In relation to the protected characteristic of sex—

(a) a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman;

(b) a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same sex.

The Supreme Court in its 88-page judgement with 268 paragraphs exhaustively reviewed historical and superseded acts and laws that fed into the Equality Act 2010 and concluded that the definition of man and woman given in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 had not been changed in either the Gender Recognition Act 2004 or the succeeding Equality Act 2010. [The Supreme Court – Judgement - For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent)] PDF

In Part 1, Section 5, Subsection 2, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 declares.

(2) In this Act—

" woman " includes a female of any age, and

" man " includes a male of any age.

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that in 1975, woman and man referred to biological sex. Every assertion and consequent interpretation derives full context from here.

An appeal to predictability

The Supreme Court was at pains to stress a particular point in Paragraph 12:

Lord Nicholls’ important constitutional insight in Spath Holme, that citizens with the help of their advisers should be able to understand statutes, points towards an interpretation that is clear and predictable.

In other words, there is a need for consistent, clear, and predictable interpretation of words, contexts, meanings, and intention, when citizens read statutes as promulgated by parliament.

That means, if a woman or a man had not been explicitly redefined in a subsequent Act, the precedent definition remains.

Another crucial point made is that the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment remains valid by force of law in the Equality Act 2010, none of the rights of those persons who have undergone, are undergoing, or are in the process to undergo gender reassignment are impugned, they are protected against discrimination, victimisation, or harassment, as a matter of course.

The difficult question

However, the practical consequences of this situation and judgement will definitely leave people with certain protected characteristics who have had access to spaces of their acquired gender identity in a kind of limbo, possibly requiring a third space.

I would think, this is a matter for The Equality and Human Rights Commission to address, in terms of the changes to rules, regulations, notices, texts, and policies, along with the kinds of accommodations and exceptions that will continue to safeguard the protected characteristics of those whose biological sex has by gender reassignment acquired a certificated sex.

Knowledge is power

It is incumbent on every activist and advocate to study The Supreme Court judgement to appreciate the rationale behind their summation and conclusion.

At the very least, read Section 22, Summary of our reasoning, which contains Paragraph 265 on Pages 84 to 86; the attendant paragraphs informing their reasoning are suffixes to the respective subsections.

While I am not a lawyer and obviously not as emotionally invested in this situation, my reading of the judgement is that it is sound, based on unimpeachable legal precedent, and argued with due consideration of all parties involved, that they have stated, it is not a victory for either side.

It provides clarity that would roll back some unfortunate and extrapolated interpretations of the law that have both advantaged and disadvantaged certain groups with common characteristics; that would always be the result of a petition for interpretation made to the highest court of the land.

The fight for exclusive and/or inclusive places for protected characteristics as per the Equality Act 2010 must advance beyond protest to provision. I also do not believe the slippery slope argument is relevant to this case.

References

The Supreme Court – Judgement - For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) [PDF]

BBC News: Five key takeaways from Supreme Court ruling

Observer Editorial: The Observer view on Equality Act ruling: A dignified compromise that respects the rights of everyone

Beyond queer theory to the experience of living

Exploring our humanity and expression

Reading of the death of Professor Leo Bersani which occurred a few weeks ago at the age of 90, got me thinking of an area of study defined as queer theory that I have not before explored, yet on perusal suggests many of us of a homosexual persuasion might have lived. To codify the lives of homosexuals and sexuality in academic terms definitely makes for an essential area of research. [Advocate: Leo Bersani, Author on Gay Identity, Dies at Age 90]

Only recently, I was reading up on Anti-LGBT rhetoric which to many extents has been to those of the LGBT persuasion lived rather than rhetorical, in discrimination, in ostracism, in queer bashing, sometimes resulting in death, in legislation that delegitimises and dehumanises our person in the pursuit of some nebulous family or culturally based ideal that seeks to set us apart for repudiation and castigation.

The corruption of conformity

Obviously, at once in our suffering and then in our understanding, we are caught in a situation where our difference from heteronormative structures set us up in conflict with family and relations, in community and society as we seek to have a human voice to exist in a humanity is more diverse than the conformity that is expected of us.

For instance, sex to me has always been utilitarian for the simple reason that my first experience of it was from the age of 7, the innocence I lost has had consequences and it would not have mattered whether I grew up for be heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual, once that childhood naivety was given the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, my eyes, as much as anyone else exposed to child sexual abuse were opened.

What at first seemed coercive became immersive and the pleasure it provided was natural and untainted by philosophy, religion, or morality. Sadly, the criminality of such was rarely prosecuted, rather, it was hushed up in shame and embarrassment with the hope that the child would outgrow the memory of it. They never do.

Understanding how different we are

Then within the conflicts of appreciating, understanding, and accepting one’s sexuality against the requirements to present as ‘normal’, in that one should subsume sexuality for the heteronormative and fulfil all the necessities of such.

This morning, on my walking exercise, I thought about the many males from adolescence with whom sexual relations have been explored who now deploy their heterosexuality in marriage, procreation, and the profession of faith and creed that supports that existence in their collective amnesia of the past. Grandfathers they are today even as some preach the gospel in various forms.

Yet, as Leo Barsani wrote in his 1987 essay, titled, Is the Rectum a Grave? he lambasted as quoted in the Advocate article referenced above, “the tendency among some gay activists to respond to AIDS by downplaying their sexuality and emphasizing the need to replicate bourgeois heterosexuality.” The point, we are not heterosexual, we have never been, we have to define ourselves as who we are, not in the context of others who have no idea of our lives. [Amazon: Is the Rectum a Grave?: and Other Essays] Ordered today.

Having sex without angst

In that is the tendency to rail against the apparent promiscuity of homosexuals, but fundamentally, once we begin to understand that homosexuals are not governed by heterosexual constructs and norms, we can also deconstruct the viewpoint of seeing homosexuals only through the lens of sex, lifestyle, and inclination, for we are just as valid an expression of our humanity that has existed from the beginning of humankind.

What seems to dog the homosexual is the tendency to want to ape the heteronormative, and so we read personals that include straight-acting, moralising the concept of monogamy, even though polygamy has defined many human relationship until it was morally and legally constrained by recent Judeo-Christian hegemonies seeking to decide the use and utility of sex, whilst removing from public knowledge the pleasure and enjoyment of sex.

We are schooled to think sex as nothing to derive any stimulation or pleasure from except for the sake of procreation, yet, in our private places, we all know that sex is considerably more pleasurable than we are told it is not.

A remembrance and celebration of lives

Amongst us homosexuals, the enjoyment of sex cut a swathe of death in our population with AIDS for almost 20 years when we lost men in their prime at never nearly 40 into the mid-1990s and the AIDS Memorial Instagram page speaks of lives of men who we have refused to forget, for What Is Remembered Lives. We stopped enjoying sex, seized by fear and loathing, exacerbated by bad faith actors depicting a human disaster as divine wrath. Yet, it is human progress and advancements in medicine has contained this epidemic.

I lost a partner and many friends, I mourn some still, though for the society I lived in, I mourned alone, because until 1995 we had no effective long-term treatment and therapies for HIV. I also was touched by the scourge of AIDS, I survived, and I am grateful for the gift of life.

My AIDS encounter has however not diminished my appetite for sex, for it is essentially part of human nature and it is only those in denial that would suggest we do not have that need. Our world presents us with exploration along with some caution and care, but to become puritanical about sex is to censure human expression.

We were never the same in outlook

When for the heterosexual, it might define uniquely lifelong bonds, it would for the homosexual be once of tryst to which you do not need to attach any emotion. It is very possible to separate the act which is practically animal expression from the higher human state of intelligence. That ability to compartmentalise the functions of the physical, the body, the mind, and the heart, devoting the right attention to the fleeting from the significant is something that probably takes the mimicry of the heterosexuality out of homosexuality.

It does not mean we do not understand commitment, it is just not predicated on sex, either through objectification or deification, its utilitarian function is just that, and where intimacy between partners is involved, there is a totally different dynamic at play than when there are liaisons with strangers.

Through generations, we have been on the margins of society, the only thing we have ever asked for is not to be persecuted or prosecuted, to be able to live our lives equally as part of our diverse humanity, contributing to the advancement of our civilisation all around the world.

For that, we can be grateful for the likes of Leo Barsani, Paul-Michel Foucault, James Baldwin, and many more helping the discourse about sexuality and its full expression.

Blog - Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime

Blog - Thought Picnic: How do you lose your virginity?

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ...

Cape Town reflections: The sexy things we failed to do

The sun

Leaving the chill of Manchester to the warmth of Cape Town via Paris was one trip I was so looking forward to for almost a year. It was almost scuppered with the advent of the Omicron variant when the Southern states of Africa were put on the red list. Were it not for the fact that I was spending 6 weeks away and travelling through France, I would have had to cancel my trip.

I love the sun and make the most of taking in the sun, as you would regularly see me in shorts, with a half-unbuttoned short sleeve shirt, a seagrass or straw hat, lots of water to drink, walking more than taking a ride to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront or going to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

Obviously, there are times when I need the shade, some shelter from the direct heat or to cool off from the warmth. It is strange that of the things we used to do so often in Cape Town and in Johannesburg, we never visited Häagen-Dazs for ice cream, but Christmas in the sun can never be beaten.

The sand

Probably everywhere we could do was green, with grass or other exotic plant life, the sand could probably be found in the dunes that we once tried to visit but the trip was cancelled. The tourist activity now boasts electric bicycles or buggies, it is not what I would feel that confident to do.

Another good view of the sand can be seen from paragliding and there are many who go tandem paragliding from Signal Hill to the fields of Sea Point between the main road and the promenade. Much as Brian would threaten for us to paragliding, I know it would near happen with his vertigo and fear of heights, to get him on the balcony takes much Dutch courage, I was surprised when he offered that we go on the waterfront Ferris wheel after my birthday dinner.

Sometimes, we go to Camps Bay and walk on the beach, though when we went to the Victoria Bay Beach near George, it was windy with ferocious white horses, anything but beach weather. Then we missed out on a place we do love to visit using the City Sightseeing tour bus, Hout Bay where we could walk in the sand, though we have not.

The sea

I suppose we now gravitate towards staying near the sea with easy access to the V & A Waterfront, we are surrounded by water with much to see. The marina there is occupied with idle yachts, probably a few get to wield their sails if ever, more they move under motor power.

The fascination is rarely with the boats but the seals basking in the sun or popping out of the water, beyond that it is the draw bridge or the swing bridge that lets the boats out and cuts off passage to the jutting out landscape of the waterfront and the quays.

For one, we took an apartment with no obstructive views of the sea where ghost ships might have cruised at unbelievable knots of speed, but the more glorious view was when MSC Orchestra came into Cape Town and could not be moored because of the wind, so it loitered in the bay. What it also heralded was the idea that the pandemic was being put behind us and what a crowd of passengers we saw trying to board when you saw her close by, at the passenger’s terminal.

I did not get my feet wet, not once. How could I have had the pleasure of sun, sand, sea, and sex, in Cape Town but missed out on ample opportunity to take advantage and commit to memory the amazing things to cherish. We love Cape Town.

RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Angelic babies, we were not

When we were sent to boarding school, it was presumed we were innocent, unaware, unspoilt, and undefiled. Yet, nothing to be further from the truth about the kind of knowledge we all had as adolescence and puberty had hormones raging in our bodies that the more precocious and adventurous amongst us found outlets for.

Rumours abounded of boys meeting girls, seniors finding impressionable girls to exploit in the dark classrooms late at night, there was even one instance though unconfirmed of penis captivus where the parties could not be separated after intercourse for a while, the male participant allegedly the son of the principal.

Denial and hypocrisy around us

Sometimes, the girls disappeared for a while, recorded as ill with apparent tuberculosis whilst most definitely, a pregnancy was terminated. The female teachers in school were matrons of ovulatory expertise, they could tell if a girl was pregnant from the whites of her eyes, her continual spitting, and some other natural sign of divination before inquiring wether the pregnancy was caught by contagion if no name of the sexual partner was forthcoming.

I do not think any male got called out for sexual intercourse except in our last year when two girls were gang-raped by a group of boys with whom at least one had provided times of intimacy years before.

All ready to do something

For those of us who were not daring enough to approach the opposite sex, we were not entirely sexless. My first exploration was when a classmate during a moment of being alone together asked if we could copulate. I did not know what copulate meant even though from an earlier age I seemed to have some excitement looking up words that began with sex. I had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from 7 and after that, pederasty did occur at home with people employed to care for us.

He soon left the boarding school as he just did not cope with the environment. In terms, it was harsh for many of us leaving home for the first time, but we found ways to adapt. Being one of the youngest of my class, I was quite developed for my age, taller with pubic hair that others thought I had acquired by the application of methylated spirit. I do not know where the idea of hair growth by methylated spirit came from.

The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Soon, there were partners my age mates were in a lower class but full of sexual needs and seeking some partnership in which I found a few to fumble or frot. Later, there was one, a classmate, with whom fumbling led to fellatio with the experience of ejaculation, he called fluid. That even went on until two or three years after we left school.

I never met with the ones who had homosexual inclinations, at least, not until I began seeing them in pubs, clubs, and parties in the UK. I cannot speak for their experiences as they all seem to want to avoid engagement even as it was quite obvious, they did not miss their way into those places of encounter.

All the others are married, the ones I still remember and are even grandparents. We can agree that those days of our youth were just experimenting in practical fluid mechanics; the physics, the chemistry, and the biology of it, the subject of memories of old mischief.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime

Caught in a body of lustful desire

Lasciviousness is a word I first saw in the Bible, and I could only wonder what it meant and why especially in the Pauline epistles, it had consequence on church building and church discipline.

The gospel had been taken to heathen nations with completely liberal and sometimes abusive human relationships along with the absence or lack of moral restraint. People just did what they tended to do until someone came with the message, that was all wrong and not how to behave as Christians.

Until a moral code was introduced through Christianity or some religious instruction, human beings were just themselves to live, strive, maybe thrive and die.

I never had a virginity

That I had to answer a question, ‘Are you so loose?’, left me pondering the many things that I have covered on my blog many times which pertain to the consequences of child sexual abuse and how I have hopefully used my experience to help others who might have had even more debilitating outcomes in life than I have been fortunate to have.

For instance, I was introduced to sex a lot earlier than I should ever have been. There were probably signs in my character and personality that something had happened to me, but only the trained eye might have been able to notice. On that point, this was at the age of 7 and who it was will not be revealed to anyone except if I decide to put it in a book. My first reference in January 2007 covers some of that experience.

Blog - My Sex Post (January 2007)

Then, I wrote a blog about virginity with the conclusion that I never knew I even had one. There are people who later in life got to experience sex for the first time in a place and manner of their choosing. What does a child know about those kinds of choices?

Blog - Thought Picnic: How do you lose your virginity? (August 2011)

And I am one of the lucky ones

I went to watch the film Spotlight in 2016, it was about the investigation of clerical child abuse in America. I was the last to leave the cinema theatre when the film ended, it was not only distressing, but I was also weeping because I knew what those children had gone through. Many victims of child sexual abuse do not even know they are being groomed, programmed, and abused.

The people who exploit children for sexual pleasure are good at winning the confidences of both parent and child that by the time the child has been violated the odds are so stacked against the child that they have no one to run to in time of need as the abuse is perpetuated.

Blog - Shine a Spotlight on child sexual abuse (January 2013)

The impact of indirect action

My father was a strict disciplinarian in every sense of the word, he probably meted out his most violent punishments on his youngest sister. I hate to think of the ways she might have sought revenge against her brother, inadvertently, I was a casualty a few times.

As a child observer of what was happening, my father became unapproachable, even an ogre of sorts, when we began to have our disagreements in my teenage years, we were long past a place of useful reconciliation and confidences. Yet, he had this seething displeasure with me for so long, with the view that I was constantly disrespectful of him as I did not subscribe to the obsequiousness that others had towards him. I am a son; I would scream within myself, but a relationship did not thrive.

“When our parents confused our fear of them with our respect of them, they lost the many times we could have confided in them.”

Blog - Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians (May 2013)

We talked about sex once

Time does not heal the loss of innocence; it simply compounds the experience to the inability to either discriminate or make the right choices about something as intimate and serious as sex. I do wonder how many of my generation ever had a conversation about sex with their parents.

I know I never did and the first time that topic ever came up was when our housemaid fell pregnant. She, under interrogation of my mother, my mother asked her if I was responsible for it.

Well, whilst the houseboys and sometimes gateman had taken sexual favours off me from the age of 8 into my teens, I doubt I gave the house-girls a third look. As I would not have initiated anything.

It was recently that I learnt a whole new truth about that sordid event because all the while, I remember returning home from seeing my mother at the hairdressers with my cousin to see her dishevelled and apparently roughed-up, I asked no questions, but I thought whoever I thought was responsible was apparently not the person who violated her. Anyway…

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ... (May 2013)

I can’t speak evil of my parents

There are two episodes in my childhood that mark out the relationship I have had with my parents and the sad reality that they might only learn some things for the first time out of reading my blog.

I was taken ill and sleeping in my bed when a female family friend of ours came into my room and sat on me. I knew who she was because of what I said to her, “I will tell your husband.”

My mother was in the next room nursing my brother when she called out to me to determine what was going on. I completely drew a blank, it was as if the memory of who assailed me had been erased, eventually out the recesses of my memory, I now remember who she was.

However, this began a number of ritualistic and religious activities apparently contracted to save me from harm, the extension to that is how my mother bought my silence many years later after a visit to some spiritual figure by threatening with that kind of experience again.

Then, my aunt, my father’s youngest sister was chatting to our houseboy one day about paranormal activity in the presence of my utterly impressionable mind. That night we had visitors and I was called to clear the dishes to the kitchen, though the washing area was in the garden in the dark.

When I returned to the kitchen with the dishes, my aunt adjured me to take them to the washing area and as I stepped up to the table and before me, I saw a tall, big red-chested beastly apparition, that I heard later that night and saw again in the presence of my mother, I believed was the devil and screamed in terror. Everyone ran out and I told my tale, well, my dad dismissed it, the burden fell to my mother to deal with and that was one of the things I was threatened with if I revealed where we had been.

Blog - The damage done when parents fail to listen (February 2015)

If anyone touches you: A parent talks

I wonder if there is much to say about the need for parental involvement fully in sexual education. It should not be ignored first in the view that the child is innocent or secondly in the fear that it might corrupt the child.

Just imagine for one if a parent as the child was growing up had said, “If anyone touches you there, run to me and tell me, do not think twice about it, I am here to protect you.” It is speculation, but I think a lot of child sexual abuse might have been nipped in the bud.

Then, who knows?

Blog - Sexual Education and Parental Naivety (August 2019)

I write to help myself and others

I am not looking for anyone to believe me or even pity me for what I have experienced, but what I will not allow to be taken away from me is my own story in my own words. What my blog has done fore me and to help me come to terms with many things is immeasurable.

Fundamentally, I hold nothing against anyone including my parents, but that does not obviate the essential necessity to bring these things into the open so they can be discussed privately, if that opportunity comes up or publicly with others who might find that what I have written resonates with them.

What matters the most is that the old mistakes are not repeated in the generations that come after us. If anything, that it is the most important thing.

Blog - A survivor does not owe you a convincing story (July 2019)

Back to the question

Lasciviousness: unrestrained sexual behaviour, or a habitual inclination to such behaviour; lustfulness: [Dictionary.com]

So, the question was, Are you so loose (sexually, morally, whatever)? How would I know, if I lost my innocence at 7? Sex became utilitarian and I was already sexually active from 8 and it is from sexual activity that I contracted HIV almost 19 years ago, and all the things that emanated from that.

I am thankful for what new love has given me in preserving and preparing myself for intimacy that has value, I cannot escape from my history, but I can refuse it let it define me.

Am I so loose? Go figure!

The toys have been delayed

Bitter to sweet

In other news, Evergreen’s Ever Given, the super container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for 6 days was dislodged and re-floated this afternoon. It heads for the Great Bitter Lake for inspection before it is sent on its way to Rotterdam, all things being equal. [BBC News: Suez Canal reopens after giant stranded ship is freed]

There is cause for great sweet celebration for moving the ship out of the way would soon address a pressing need that the pandemic and lockdowns placed on us. As without partners and companionship for intimacy, some people have sought alternative avenues to fulfil human expression, even pleasure for self or with some company.

Escape your inhibitions with toys

Wending its way to The Netherlands, a shipment of 20 containers contain toys of a titillating and excitable variety which on usage, application, and play can or could bring orgasmic heights or spasmodic climaxes, or some feverish expression of body, soul, and escape that is currently absent from my vocabulary. [iNews: The Suez Canal crisis is now blocking a huge shipment of erotic toys from reaching the Netherlands]

Where people absent themselves from a Puritanical view of sensual pleasure, they might find a fuller experience of the essence of their being human and humanity, for which the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Germans might be considered quite ahead of those of whom it is known, No sex please, We’re British. Any wonder that consignment is not bound for Liverpool.

The village girl is a sex doll

When they decide for you

The village girl made an appearance again in the documentary of the continuant present, beautiful, naïve and unsophisticated, homely, nubile and fertile, presumably pliant and like clay ready to be moulded and sculpted to the desired image or idol that worships you.

The village girl is vehicle of low expectations offered in the failing of decisions you were expected to make that you did not. The assumption that you are lacking in both capacity and audacity, an eye is out there having decided on your behalf that this would work for you.

They got you sex doll

The village girl is an intrusion an expanse of denial of choices you have already made. In some cases, they will enquire of you but are never satisfied by how you respond. Your sexuality being an issue you may not be at liberty to discuss, for it is expected that a heteronormative expression is the only game in town.

The village girl is a doll, plastic to the feel and dressed as you will. Mute that she cannot talk back, though they forget that she is also deaf that she cannot hear. There is nothing sensory in her adoption than to fulfil a predilection. They seek a grandchild, and any would do, you just need to play with the doll and let nature do the rest.

A wife never by your side

The village girl is a slave, a non-person without autonomy or ambition, the calling is to serve and deign eternal gratitude for being rescued from no expectations to great expectations. Rarely do you hear of her for her mission is defined and non-negotiable. Her lot is sealed in the contract that will eventually invite abuse for the union was imposed to satisfy a whim.

The village girl is behind the veil, a woman in purdah that you can’t afford to show. The distance to be bridged in that relationship is probably too great, it would take more than many are willing to give to grow into companionship for display. As you grew up in radically different environments there is no guarantee that things would work out. They do not care for those intricate issues; the fulfilment is in issue and the troubles you must resolve yourselves.

Used and abused for others

The village girl belongs elsewhere where she can be fulfilled in the things she understands. Indeed, her horizons can be broadened, and so should she have prospects, but not at the behest of others interfering in your life to fulfil dreams they have of you at the expense of the destiny of another co-opted into a Machiavellian ploy.

The village girl will leave the village, the village of your grasp, the village of your pact, the village of the grand plan and the village of subservience, when she does, she will go to the city and in that city, even the village of your mind will not survive. I plea, stop sacrificing village girls to machinations of getting your sons into engagements and marriages, they never wanted, ever.

Childhood: Early 1976 in Mushin, Lagos

Experience to new experience

A piece of childhood history has just been triggered by a Facebook friend request that I am ambivalent about honouring. In early 1976, I was sent from the north in Kaduna where we lived to stay with relations in the South West, and this was to attend common entrance examinations to secondary schools in the region my parents came from.

I was picked up from the airport in Lagos and on our way to where I was to be staying, I was sick in the car. Everyone was gentle with me, I survived and recovered well after that.

In Ibadan, there was a rite of passage, probably what put me off learning to drive when the driver distracted and attending to other activities asked me to grab the steering wheel just short of careering into a ravine. Though it did not appear I passed the examinations having flown from Kaduna, it was the time that I had a full sexual experience with a 16-year old.

Then, I happened to be in Sagamu in February, at the time that the Head of State, Murtala Mohammed was assassinated. Then also for examinations and another 16-year old finding his pleasures with me. I might well have been a catamite.

A Lagos of a dream

Returning to Lagos, I was in Mushin on Araromi Street, number 29 if I can recall. An older cousin of my father with adult children, the last, just about my age. He worked in the same company as my father but in a slightly junior capacity. His wife worked at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in the catering department and his mother-in-law lived just up the road, we called her Ma Mije.

His father was a lay reader of our old St. Jude’s Anglican Church in our village, known to all with the corrupted version of his honorific title, Lerida. A friendly and jovial man who entertained with hot sweet and milky tea and loaves of bread. He was the tea connoisseur of our village and well-liked.

One of his sons was in his twenties, he had finished secondary school, two others were close to the end of their secondary education. The December before, their big sister got married, remnants of the wedding cake kept on top of a cupboard. She put to bed soon afterwards, but her husband was abroad studying whilst she lived in the newly developing suburbs.

Surely not a negative

She sometimes visited and helped with my lessons, that was when I learnt of negative numbers in Mathematics for all I knew before then was Arithmetic, the concept of negative numbers were so alien to me and questions of that sort featured a lot in the common entrance examinations.

She had just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lagos and when we visited her, I drank Tennant’s Light Lager, it is strange a 10-year old was allowed such leeway.

In the Easter of that year, we went to Bar Beach, the big boys picked me up and threw me in the raging surf. That experience probably informed my fear of water and so my inability to swim until this day.

Representing them to some

During my stay, there was a visitor to the company from Japan, they worked for a textile company with my father being the chief accountant. In Lagos, I was the one wheeled out to converse and engage with the guest as everyone else was shut away. We went over maps of the world in an atlas and when he was leaving, he gave me lots of Yen.

I returned to Kaduna late in the month of May, but it is very likely that was last time I saw the eldest son of the family, who has now asked to be a friend on Facebook. There are so many things I remember, the star clock on the wall in the living room, the scent of Oil of Ulay that was quite off-putting.

The incomplete third storey roof where the big boys went to smoke cigarettes, the girl in the ground floor apartment that won a place to Mayflower School, Ikenne when I ended up down the road at Remo Secondary School, Sagamu.

My tenth-year harbours much to remember about childhood and some things I would rather forget as I touched on my 11^th birthday. It was both an adventurous and scary time, I sometimes wonder, what were my parents thinking when they made some decisions from 1975 into 1976?

Sexual Education and Parental Naivety

Unforgiveable parental naivety

This would naturally be a taboo topic, but thinking this afternoon, my mind wandered off to a distant past of my childhood where I concluded that by the age of 10, I knew a good deal about sex without having received any sex education, at least from a formal perspective.

This issue of parental naivety is still rife, the feeling that good sexual mores is acquired by some osmotic transference from a nondescript place. The way parents play with childhood innocence with the view of keeping their wards ignorant of the basics about sex can at best be criminal.

You have to wonder

For instance, the only time my sexual organs were examined by any parent was when I think I was 8, my father was checking if my balls had descended, I was however clueless about what he intended, it might well have been concerns about my development having been a pre-term baby.

Yet, unknown to either parent, I had already had my first sexual experience at 7 and was growing in the knowledge of it through those years. I remember going through a dictionary and looking up every word that began with sex-, which included sexagenarian, sextant, sexual and sexy. A form of titillation of the mind for my age.

Has any parent even wondered, what does my child at their age know about sex?

Enlightenment is protection

The truth is, my parents never discussed sex with me, the first time that subject came up was after our house-girl had been raped by our driver, the enquiry of who might have been responsible for her pregnancy asking if I was responsible. I was mortified, the thought just never crossed my mind, but the sad narrative here is that many parents get to talk about sex with their children the first time, usually after the consequences of bad, risky or unsafe sex have become impossible to ignore.

Just imagine if by the age of 5 I had been told, if anyone touched me in a funny place, I should scream and run to a responsible adult to report my ordeal. I doubt many parents broach that subject out of fear, ignorance, foreboding or hope that everything is fine, when things are not.

Teach or they’ll be taught

The truth is if you do not take on the onerous responsibility to teach your child about sex, sex abuse and the way paedophiles gain sexual favours of unwittingly innocent children, your child would get their lessons from people, places and circumstances you have no control of and you not hear a pip about it for years because the abuser would have put in threats and dares that would prevent your child from running straight over to you.

In the end, you as a parent would ultimately responsible for the ignorance is bliss approach to the sexual education of your child, whilst the poor child is already recruited as a pleasure unit of the abuser, terrified into silence and damaged for life.

You have to decide how you manage this subject, what you cannot do is pretend it is not important, moralise about bad influences and then down the line threaten hell, hell and brimstone on the child has not done what should have been done long before you found yourself caring for a mental illness, treating an incurable sexually transmitted disease or holding an unexpected grandchild.