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Author Topic: Physical Contact  (Read 5611 times)

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Offline cleveland

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« on: June 06, 2005, 05:18:00 PM »
OK, MGG dared me to post on this topic...so I will.

Physical contact/sexuality...

Guys and girls strictly segragated...Art made sly sexual jokes (Evie being 'healthy' - large breasted. Seed kids being celibates - whoops, celebrants! etc.) Anyway, we were all sexually pent up. I think guys to some extent and probably girls even more so got some of their sexual energy released thru same sex contact. Not sex, but touching and cuddling if you were a girl, and rough-housing if you were a guy. I wasn't very sophisticated at 19 but I knew some people were gay, even though I hadn't had a lot of knowing contact (any gay kid at my high school would take pains to hide it, except for one or two flamboyant kids who I didn't know at all well, and kind of embarrased me) but I knew there were gay kids at the Seed but it appeared that they were trying to be 'straight' sexually too. It must have been weird. But the straight kids were banned from all contact with the opp. sex except for: A. high status kids, who could date and marry with Art's permission and B. football. Ooh, football! The girls wore skimpy little bikinis which they made themselves. It was torture to see them, and play on the line against them. High status seed kids had other opportunities to hang out with the opp. sex, esp. if you were on staff or jr. staff. For the rest of us: saying 'hi' to the girl who served the warm coollaid and frozen PBJ sandwiches; once in a great while helping some girl carry something in or out of her car or maybe apt.

Masterbation - not supposed to do it, really. But...whoopsie.

And you were supposed to confess 'everything.' I found this to be a horror for me. Especially because you weren't supposed to have your head in the gutter...and because I did...

So yeah, girls and guys did some same sex touching/cuddling/hugging/kissing even, I remember...but no contact with the opp. sex. Lots of guilt, shame, confusion...

Although I have to say that being able to hug another guy w/o shame was a definite plus for me - maybe helped me be less homophobic.

There you go, MGG.
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2005, 05:24:00 PM »
Your not suposed to masturbate?

NOW YOU TELL ME!

 :grin:


Serious, it must have been torture for you long timers. I know I hit puberty while in the seed and that wasn't any fun...but years and years of this sexual isolation?

Holy shit, I don't envy you guys at all.
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Offline Nihilanthic

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« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2005, 05:49:00 PM »
Good ole conservative upbringing!

Pent them up, but keep them with the same sex, then make gay marriage illegal.

The plans of true believers for our lives may well be better than our own when judged against some abstract official standard, but to deny people their personal struggles is to render existence absurd.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/6n.htm' target='_new'>John Taylor Gatto

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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2005, 09:37:00 PM »
Exactly!
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Offline marshall

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« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2005, 02:25:00 PM »
I'm not positive about this...but I think I recall Art making jokes about 'fags' on a regular basis. This was the mid 70's. I understand he may have changed his views on the issue though. For some reason I got the impression that the seed was supposed to make gay people straight. A few years after I got off my program a friend of my father's asked me about sending his son to the seed. His son used drugs and was openly gay. The guy wanted to know if the seed could help him. I assured him that it would make his son 'straight' in every sense of the word. Looking back, I'm not sure where I got this idea. Maybe the fag jokes or maybe the general emphasis on traditional sex roles or maybe some other factor.

Just after I became an oldcomer one of our newcomers confessed that he'd had a homosexual experience. He was wracked with guilt and pain over this due to the seed's emphasis on confession. We were at a loss as to how to respond to this confession and tried to assure him that it didn't mean he was homosexual.

The prohibition against masturbation was especially sad as this tended to make everyone that engaged in this act feel as if they were screwed-up or full of shit, etc. Someone mentioned Art's catholic background in connection with this rule. I tend to agree. The prohibition resulted in most of us carrying around chronic guilt for a perfectly normal, healthy activity. Much like the guilt I felt for years for drinking an occasional beer or glass of wine.
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Offline Stripe

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« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2005, 03:15:00 PM »
I see from these posts and others that it was not just the emotional imprisonment - the whole "follow the rules" or be stood up routine that screwed me up.  

It seems to me that long timers and people who tried to stay true to the Seed's philosophy without maintinaing direct involvement with the program after graduating had many of the same expereiences.  Lots of confusion over sexulaity -almost forced homosexuality as a means of meeting our human needs.

Is this kind of sexual segregation still happening to kids in current programs ? Or are  we the lucky ones who "benefitted" from these glorious experiments of 30 years ago?  

When you put the sexual issue in the mix, it's pretty hard to deny that The Seed and it's successor program Straight, were anything but cults.  There was no free will excerised by any Seedlings, no matter how loudly they protest and claim it was a good place. If there had been exercises of free will, we could have come and gone as we pleased, gone to the bathroom when we needed to, been able to wear the clothes we wanted to wear, have the friends we wanted to have, flirt with members of the opposite sex and, GOD FORBID sneak a kiss.  Obvioulsy, that behavior never occurred when I was at the SR 84 COMPOUND.

Geeze, a few months ago I was just trying to wrap my head around the whole idea that my folks were duped and the program was abusive.  Now I see even more clearly how the programming has effected me on such an intimate level.  

I suspect those folks (Art, staffers, etc.) have absolutely no remorse for what they did - if they even know what it was they did. But I would guess their sex lives have been pretty twisted, for lack of a better word.

I take solace in the fact that a person cannot be an abuser and be unaffected by the acts they perpetrated on their victims.[ This Message was edited by: Stripe on 2005-06-07 12:18 ][ This Message was edited by: Stripe on 2005-06-07 12:19 ]
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2005, 03:26:00 PM »
It doesn't surprise me that some of those that intimately built their lives around this lie still believe in it.

But when these stories are freely told, they are creepy beyond belief to people who weren't subjected to this warped childhood.

That is one barometer for me..when "normal" people cannot even believe the stories because they are so outrageous.

Don't you find if you tell someone out of the loop that they give you that lopsided look like you are exaggerating are lying?
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2005, 04:30:00 PM »
I enrolled in college at age 26 after 7 completely celibate Seed years (or almost completely! The ban on masterbation wasn't always worth living up to). Anyway, I remember how I felt in the presence of a woman, on a casual 'date' - my heart pounding, excited, scared, ashamed...

No wonder I 'fell in love' with the first woman who seemed vaguely interested. I remember trying to explain to her what I had been doing for the past 7 years, which seemed like forever then...

"Um well, I used to belong to this sort of religious group, but kinda more like AA...anyway, we weren't supposed to have sex or anything like that on our program...which sort of never ended. It was kind of a cult but we could 'leave' whenever we wanted to, but if we did, it was a betrayal and personal failure and proved that you were fucked up...so no one ever wanted to leave...uh yeah, it was weird...oh no, I'M not weird, the program was..." Um, hello, call me?

I tell you, it was a conversation stopper...
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2005, 04:42:00 PM »
Stripe, I've often read reference to strict gender segregation and other funny mind games from vets of various programs. I think all of the Synanon based ones carry on that method.

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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #9 on: June 07, 2005, 06:41:00 PM »
after seven years, I would probably just whipped it out, begged and cried.


 :grin:
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #10 on: June 07, 2005, 08:54:00 PM »
Wow dude, way more complicated than that...

But to each his own!
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #11 on: June 08, 2005, 12:24:00 AM »
twas only a joke my man!
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #12 on: June 08, 2005, 09:28:00 AM »
What! No joking in this group!
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Offline Ft. Lauderdale

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« Reply #13 on: June 08, 2005, 12:39:00 PM »
Damn: Its really hard to type with my hairy palms. :rofl:
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #14 on: June 08, 2005, 11:07:00 PM »
Quote

On 2005-06-07 13:30:00, cleveland wrote:
Anyway, I remember how I felt in the presence of a woman, on a casual 'date' - my heart pounding, excited, scared, ashamed...


Well...duh, that's kind of the process ain't it? I'm 50 and I still experience those feelings sometimes on a 'casual' date (sans the scared and ashamed)
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