doubt i'll ever know the truth in my case. was on the verge of puberty at time of rape. all i know afterwards was that puberty seemed to last a long time - about seven years. even my body didn't mature and i didn't have to shave daily until early 20s. was that prolonged period the result of body/emotional/mental trauma...or was it just the path my genes were suppose to take?

what angers me more, to be honest, is that we all are asking these questions. a rational, sane, humane society (which we do not have) would openly discuss male sexuality from early age....and thus not only lift the veil of secrecy that clearly plagued our lives, but never leave boys and men feeling weird for simply wanting to know about our own bodies.

It seems evident that CSA (child sexual abuse) messes with our endocrine system. In most cases there seems to be a slowing of production of HGH (human growth hormone), the master-hormone of our body. The effect is that we mature later. It may be that in some cases this causes us to retain some childish features. It might even be that our body size is somewhat smaller than it would have been otherwise. This is hard to determine for sure since lots of CSA survivors also had incomplete nutrition as boys.

For "early bloomers", there must have been a different or additional causation. In cases where CSA seems to have caused in increase in rate of reaching puberty, there must have been an increase in production of male hormone, testosterone. Apparently, early sexual activity can in some cases cause premature stimulation of production of testosterone by the male reproductive glands.

Since testosterone is also made in other places in the body there must be another link. In other words, I don't know whether this (premature onset of puberty) was a direct effect or whether it was mediated through a mess-up of the pituitary gland (adenohypophysis).

The explanation may be that in the case of early CSA the HGH is inhibited and there is a delay in growth and puberty. Without early CSA but when CSA occurs close to puberty the result is the "early bloomer" effect.

I don't think this is in any of the medical literature.

Puffer

interesting thoughts Puffer - I know I was able to ejaculate before the age of 9 - yet I hardly had any hair down there till I was well into high school - it makes me wonder if there really is something in the abuse that caused those 2 seemingly opposite puberty related traits to happen in me

OK

I've found documentation of the idea of CSA affecting growth, maturation and onset of puberty.



The book cited is:

Psychological Trauma And the Developing Brain, by Phyllis T. Stien and Joshua Kendall. 2004.

http://www.amazon.com/Psychological-Trauma-Developing-Brain-Neurologically/dp/0789017881/

Puffer

Don't know whether one is worse than the other to live with... I envied those who were less developed. I even trimmed my pubes to look less mature. And this was way before it was the cool thing to do. That just drew more focus to that area. Either way - early or late - we draw attention to ourselves by standing out from the crowd. Either way, we attract unwanted attention. Either way, we feel like freaks.

Lee

One thought leads to another - I think this is related: My trimming was an attempt to look younger or less mature or developed than I was. I thought it would deflect the interest of my peers. Makes me wonder if the current trend in favor of shaving is an effort to appeal to older pedophiles by making guys look pre-pubescent and under-age and therefore more attractive to that variety of pervert?