Reclaiming My Ass After Rape
As a male rape survivor, I felt alone in my healing journey—but found salvation with sex toys and intentional pleasure practices.
Trigger Warning: This article includes graphic discussion of sexual trauma and violence.
Reclaiming my ass After Rape
By Taylor Ellwood
I felt like no one cared when I was raped. As a boy in the 80s, and man in the 90s, I got the message to stay quiet about my sexual trauma. I felt so isolated in my pain.
In my fumbling attempts to find healing on my own, I sometimes found myself in dangerous situations that only made things worse—including more sexual violations. It wasn’t until I found a Men’s Sexuality Course that I found a path to recovery that worked for me.
“When we explore our sexuality, we give ourselves the opportunity to heal ourselves of the trauma we’ve experienced.”
I was stopped cold by these words from the course presenter. It gave me the courage to do something I had never done before: explore the site of my sexual trauma, my ass, in a caring, safe, and sensual way.
I certainly hadn’t expected butt plugs to be integral to my bodily and spiritual healing journey. And I want to offer my story to support other men who may be feeling alone in their sexual trauma, who may be looking for ways to reclaim their bodies after being violated.
* * *
Part I: A Family Member Violates My Body and My Trust
I had woken up from a dream feeling scared. I was a kid, after all.
We—an older family member and I—were in a hotel. Frightened from my dream, I asked him if I could sleep in the same bed. Little did I realize, I was about to experience a nightmare.
He told me I could sleep in his bed. But, I had to let him put his penis inside me. At age 10, I didn’t really understand what was happening. I was feeling alone and I wanted to feel safe. I trusted him. So I agreed.
He told me to lay on my belly. He pulled my pajama bottoms down and spread my butt cheeks. He lubed himself up. And he started pushing himself into me. I complained that it hurt and he hissed at me to be quiet. He kept going and I don’t remember what happened after that.
The next day, he told me not to say anything to anyone else. And for a long, long time I didn’t. But I didn’t forget either. And during my teenage years, that same family member would molest me—masturbating in front of me—yet another violation.
* * *
Part II: Confronting My Rapist and Finding Forgiveness
These childhood experiences were formative for my sexuality. This family member forced his desires on me and violated my childhood sense of safety. Still, I didn’t confront him until I was 20 years old, when I had a vivid dream of the rape experience.
When I confronted him, I remember the look of shame on his face, and his words, “I hoped you wouldn’t remember that.” But it was an experience I couldn’t forget.
I did eventually forgive him, in no small part, because of the work he did around his own sexual trauma—I saw him transform his life. But that forgiveness didn’t wipe away the stain of the trauma that lived in my body.
I also struggled with self-doubt and a sense that I was dirty for what had happened. I wondered if it was my fault somehow, even though realistically I knew that it wasn’t. I knew he was older than me, knew what he was doing, and, on some level, had to know that it was wrong. And he had still chosen to use his power over me and to force himself on me. And he did force himself, even after I told him it hurt and to stop.
But how was I to heal from this? As my first sexual experience, it caused me to feel disconnected from my body, alienated from my ass in particular. I lost something that I couldn’t get back. And that disconnection was further compounded in my early 20s, when I was violated again.
* * *
Part III: My Search for Sexual Healing Ends in More Abuse
In my early 20s, I met a man I’ll call Bill (name changed for this article) with whom I got into a relationship of sorts. We weren’t romantically involved, and it wasn’t a boyfriend relationship, but it was an intimate relationship.
Bill and I had actually gone through a psychology class together when we were both freshmen, but I hadn’t remembered him. He had been intrigued by my spiritual beliefs. He was studying to become a shaman himself.
When he first asked to meet up, I was 21 and a hot mess. I was living with a drug dealer who was mentally unstable. I had just barely survived a car accident. So when Bill asked to meet, it felt like a chance for something positive amidst the chaos, and I said yes.
When we met, he shared more about his spiritual practices and then asked if I would be open to doing sex magic with him. This is a practice where one focuses and directs sexual energy toward spiritual or material purposes. He felt like it would empower him spiritually.
Confronted with this, I felt drawn to the possibility of healing the trauma my 10-year-old self had experienced. I thought that having sex with another man felt like it might be a corrective experience. So, I said yes. Over the next month we’d meet every so often and end up having sex. I was his bottom. We’d just get together, do a ritual and then fuck, or fuck and then do a ritual.
I was fairly passive about the experience, drawn by curiosity and a desire to heal, but willing to let Bill lead the way. I didn’t know if I really wanted the experiences I was having, so much as I wanted to escape from the trauma of the car accident and my abusive living situation. The truth is, I didn’t know how to heal my trauma. But I did know that I needed help, and that left me vulnerable.
It turned out that sex with Bill didn’t really help me with my earlier trauma, and I started to feel used. He wasn’t trying to help me heal or connect with me as a person. He just wanted to use me sexually as a spiritual battery for his magic. I broke off contact with him.
A couple of years later, Bill appeared again, when I was feeling devastated from a breakup and disillusioned with my career. He seemed to know just when to appear. Out of the blue, he emailed asking if I wanted to reconnect and perform some sex magic with him. I was feeling lonely, hurt, and needy—the perfect combination for being manipulated. We set up a meeting.
When we got to his place, we briefly discussed the ritual and then he gave me a reddish liquid and told me to drink it all. He led me to his bedroom and we got undressed. I was lying on the bed when I started tripping. He hadn’t told me that he had given me a hallucinogen.
I asked him what was happening to me and he told me not to think about it. I told him to stop. He told me was going to fuck me. All I remember is a sense of dissolving, of losing all sense of myself and feeling penetration, but not in any way that I could make sense of.
* * *
Part IV: No Accountability, No Empathy
I started coming back to myself in his car. I had thrown up and Bill was pissed that I had made a mess.
“What have you done to me?” I asked him. Bill told me that I had chosen to come over and have sex with him. That I was responsible for my choices.
He dropped me off at my place and I barely had any control of my body. He helped me get in the door and then left me there. I somehow managed to make it down the stairs to my room without breaking my neck. I fell asleep and woke up later in my vomit, lucky to not have died. Yet, I felt utterly violated and cast aside by someone who had his way with me on every level of my being.
Adding to the devastation was the response I got when I sought support. That next morning, I worked up the courage to tell my roommates what had happened to me. But I got no sympathy or concern from them about what had been done to me. They told me it was my choice and my responsibility to deal with it.
I was a 23 year old man at the end of the 1990s, after all. What did I expect? I felt like there was no one I could go to and say that I had been raped. I was taught that if you were a man, you didn’t admit to or talk about being raped, at least not in rural Pennsylvania where I was living.
It was many years before I really tried again to process this experience fully.
* * *
Part V: My First Attempts at Butt Play Leave Me Numb
Even as I got older, I still felt uncomfortable with having my butt touched, or touching my butthole myself. I treated it like an alien part of my body.
I eventually tried some somatic work with my butt to try and get more comfortable with it. I learned to be open to the sensitivity of gliding my fingers against my butt cheeks, feeling how my skin reacted. I would carefully touch my butthole, just feeling it on the outside.
But even with this gentle approach, I would often end up feeling a tension and disassociation with that part of my body. I would either feel too much sensation down there or I would feel myself go numb. Neither felt good.
And I still felt distressed when other people touched me there. When my then-wife would grab my butt, I would jump in discomfort. I would feel violated just by her touch. However, being so disconnected from my body, I didn’t say anything most of the time. Instead, my response was to freeze and endure the touch until it was over.
Eventually, I forced myself to tolerate people touching my butt. But I remained acutely aware of just how uncomfortable I still felt with that part of my body. I needed more support.
In my late 40s, I attended a Men’s Sexuality Course and I had a realization. If I chose to sexually explore my ass myself, I had an opportunity to reclaim my butt on my terms. And I had never had an experience with my ass that felt like it was fully on my terms.
I wanted to explore my butt in an empowering way, giving me the control I hadn’t had when I’d been violated. When I had tried in my 20s to have a corrective experience, it ended up just being worse when Bill turned out to be someone I couldn’t trust. But this, I could do myself.
* * *
Part VI: Reclaiming My Butt with Butt Plugs!
I decided on butt plugs so that I could re-experience penetration. I prepared myself by spending a couple of nights thinking about what I wanted to get out of the experience, and how I might navigate the possibility of prompting traumatic memories during butt play.
I felt terrified. Could I really touch myself in that way? Would I end up re-traumatizing or harming myself? Waiting seemed like it would just continue the dysfunctional pattern I’d been in. I decided I was ready to try to heal my connection with my body, and reclaim my ass.
I bought lube and a couple of butt plugs. I laid down on my back and spread my legs. I put some lube on the smallest butt plug and touched it cautiously to my butthole. Gradually, I pushed it into my body. I felt a vague sense of filling up in my anal cavity. It felt uncomfortable and for a moment, I wondered if this is how a woman feels when a dildo or penis penetrates her. I opened myself to feeling the sensation further. It felt both awkward and intimate to put something into my body. I was penetrating myself, giving and receiving at the same time.
Then I felt a surge of fear. For a moment, I was back with the memories that I had pushed down. The frightened 10-year-old boy and the young man in his early 20s hadn’t disappeared; they were just waiting, wanting some validation for what they had endured. I remembered the ungentle touch of both men—and all of the anger, fear, sadness, and shame came rushing up. I kept pushing the butt plug in, slowly, steadily, moving through what was coming up mentally and emotionally, using my body as the gateway to my own healing.
A soft groan escaped my lips. It wasn’t of pleasure or pain. It was a groan of remembering.
I wanted to disassociate, but I knew I was safe. I kept reminding myself of that, grounding in my safe environment. I stayed present with the physical experience and let the memories wash over me, relaxing into the experience so I could release them.
My body. My experience. My empowerment.
Adding more lube, I started manipulating the plug inside me so I could feel how my body responded. I touched my prostate and felt a pressure there that made me want to urinate. I had never touched it before. It felt odd, but I allowed myself to be with the experience.
I continued sliding the plug out and in, and moving it around. The memories started to fall away and I allowed myself to just feel the sensations. It didn’t feel pleasurable exactly, but it felt powerful. I felt like a vacuum in me was filled up. This “filling up” was a balm to the wound there, filling an emptiness, and healing the trauma I had been carrying for so long there, in my body, in my ass.
Over the next few days, I continued exploring with butt plugs, focusing on the sensations as a way to stay present, rather than going into my past. Each round helped me embrace my ass and start loving it as a part of my body.
If memories came up, I would acknowledge them and then let them go. It was more important to me to be with my body then be with those memories. My butt play helped me accept every aspect of my butt instead of avoiding it, like I had for so long. I paid attention to how my butt felt when I touched it and even when I defecated.
Occasionally, the memories still come up, but the more I play with myself, the more I liberate myself from those memories. They may always be there in the background, but I am choosing to turn them into fuel that motivates me to heal my connection with my body and explore my sexuality.
I honestly don’t know if or when I’ll be open to someone else playing with my butt, but I feel like even taking this step has been a powerful reclamation of my body and my spirit from the sexual trauma that has weighed on me my whole life. May my story inspire you to explore your own butt, and perhaps find your prostate or even a path to healing!
Discussion Questions for Readers:
Our whole purpose is fostering conversation on vulnerable topics, and growing a culture of healthy integrated masculinity. We encourage you to reflect on these questions, or ask them to other men in your life. You can use our Story Discussion Guide to walk you through how to facilitate a ~90 minute group discussion.
Have you heard many other narratives about men being raped or sexually abused? What messages did you receive about men being sexually violated? Do you think you would have sought help or stayed quiet?
What comes up for you when you read about the author’s specific scenarios of sexual abuse? Both men abuse his trust—one is a family member abusing a child’s trust, and one is a “healer” manipulating a susceptible wounded man. Even if you haven’t experience sexual abuse like this, have you seen men be taken advantage of by men they trust?
What relationship do you have with your ass, with butt play, and with your prostate? What did you learn about your anal anatomy and pleasure? What messages did you receive about exploring your ass?
Has mindfulness of sensation or other somatic practices helped you or anyone you know in processing physical or sexual traumas? Is there anything you learned from the author’s explorations that you might want to try?
The author grew up in a somewhat different world, but found a path for healing that worked for him. What other paths to healing might there be for men seeking to process sexual trauma?
Have reactions, questions, or similar stories that you want to share with the author? You can email us at editors.realmenshare@gmail.com and we’ll forward your message to them. Thanks for engaging on these vulnerable topics!