"Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid": Discourses of the Sexual Abuse of Boys

Introduction

The popular portrayal of male children who have been sexually abused depicts them as inevitably growing to be abusers themselves, and this may have more to do with maintaining the cultural taboos both against male victimization and against males having sex with males than with elucidating the experiences of the children.¹ More significantly, the circular narrative, which Montreal therapist Michel Dorais calls the myth of "the bite of the vampire," is so thoroughly naturalized that it has become the de facto official discourse and, as such, even appears in the reactions of some therapists (59).² Not only do therapists such as Dorais feel the need to address the myth, but it is also so widespread in popular discourse that the American Medical Association devotes a portion of its manual on the topic to dispelling prevailing myths about male victims of sexual abuse because the mythic story often repeats in responses from professional therapists and social workers (26, 28).³ The circular narrative reflects the primacy of what prominent Australian sociologist Robert Connell calls "hegemonic masculinity," which is the preferred gender formation in a given cultural site and which assures (some) men power over women, and over homosexuals and other minorities (131). Ultimately, the dominant popular discourse is not so much for males who have been sexually abused as it is about them. As leading British cultural theorist Stuart Hall explains, "every discourse constructs positions from which alone it makes sense. . . . Anyone deploying a discourse must position themselves as if they were the subject of the discourse" (author's emphasis; "The West" 202). It is little surprise, then, that the abuse that former NHL star Sheldon Kennedy and other, unnamed, hockey players suffered morphed into stories centred on their coach, Graham James, and on the resultant impact on hockey (Kylie; Fusco and Kirby).⁴ As well, Brandon Nesler's abuse becomes a mechanism to tell The Ellie Nesler Story, which details Ellie's revenge killing of her son's abuser and positions her as the star, the source of identifications. In short, she is the subject of the story rather than Brandon. Thus, the stories that are told have little to do with the individual in question—call him a "victim," a "survivor," etc.—and everything to do with the rest of the audience; the stories serve to dissociate audiences from those who have been abused.

These dissociative discourses, which reassure the audience that it is outside of the story loop, most resemble the discourse of death, the elegy: they voice a rationalization of a subject unfathomable for those who have not experienced it; they speak in terms of the loss and the grief of those close to the victim; they seek to console those who were not lost. What becomes apparent, as well, is that the circular narrative contrasts with what French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes describes as the typical operation of the classic narrative. According to Barthes, the narrative process does not just lead to, but also relies upon, the achievement of the end of the story for one of its central motivations. The purpose of this arrangement, Barthes writes, is to "articulate in various ways a question, its response, and the variety of chance events which can either formulate the question or delay its answer; or even, constitute an enigma and lead to its solution" (17). Regardless of the generic location of the stories considered in the course of this paper, the problem being solved is not that of the child who has been abused. In fact, as I will show, the most frequent solution offered for the child who has been abused is death. In this way, the cycle has an elegiac function that provides a means of understanding the narrative, but this suggests that death is the only way to break the cycle. This is the solution offered in a docu-drama like The Boys of St. Vincent; in a dramatic whodunit like the Academy-Award winning Mystic River; in episodes of TV cop shows Law and Order—a plot-based show...