By Ilyse Kramer
Charles M. Blow, who writes a visual Op-Ed column for The New York Times, came out as bisexual in his recently published memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Another personal truth that he reveals, and is careful to distinguish has not caused his bisexuality, is that he is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his cousin.
In his interview on Fresh Air, Blow stated:
“What the data shows us indisputably is that people who will later identify as LGBT have disproportionate rates of having been victims of child sexual abuse. So there are two ways to think of that — one of which I completely disagree with and one I agree more with. On the one end, the abuse is making these young people LGBT. The science for that is completely flimsy. I completely disagree with that idea.
On the other side … children who will eventually identify as LGBT are more likely to be targets of sexual predators. If you think of it that way, it changes our concept of how we need to nurture and care for children who are different….
If you look at it that way you realize that in some cases, not all of course, in some cases the predator is targeting children who they already see as kind of having some kind of characteristics that will later be different. And that difference means they’re isolated. That difference means that they are already outside of the social mores, that the predator behavior is now somehow justified because this person is already outside the norm.
Blow begins his memoir by describing his internal confrontation of how his victimization had shaped him–After years of suppression, as a young adult the sound of his cousin’s voice sent him into a sudden “irrepressible rage” and desire to kill his abuser. Yet he was able to dig past his anger to find forgiveness for his cousin and for himself.
He forgave himself for the shame he carried because of his conflicted feelings, and landed on a realization set him free. “In addition to being attracted to women, I could also be attracted to men. There it was, all of it. That possibility of male attraction was such a simple little harmless idea.”
To listen to Blow recount this moment in his own words, here is a link to his interview with Sirius XM News, and essay published in The New York Times, which was adapted from Fire Shut Up in My Bones.