Steffen's "outing"

STEFFEN'S OUTING (A posting to alt.support.boy-lovers, written on Friday 24th November 1995)

Hello everybody,

As I noticed from many grateful replies to my last posting "What's wrong..." it seems this helped a lot of people to cope better with their feelings towards young boys.

Now, as the title says, I'd like to share some of my own experiences with people I told about my orientation and who aren't boylovers themselves (of course!). There are a lot of these people now, some close friends who already knew me since years, my parents and also strangers I met at the net or IRC.

First question should be the "why" - is there really the need to tell other people about yourself? Guess not, it's not really needed, but after all I would say life is much easier if you don't have to care about every word, everything you do, every book or piece of paper at your desk and every picture on your wall, or get "caught" at an IRC channel - in other words to hide parts of yourself.

I started with this about 2 months ago, right after the first visit from the police I got. This was of course one reason to do so, thought it's better to tell my friends about it myself than they have to read it at the newspapers perhaps or see some of my postings at the usenet.

A very useful help was the FAQ of this newsgroup, I used this one often to bring friends into contact with that topic. Most of this friends I know since years, and they know me also that good and know that I really take care more about other people than myself. So it was not a problem that they might think perhaps I'm a child-molester. There was absolutely no negative reaction every time, but of course a lot of questions about the "what, why, how". We talked always a few hours about the topic.

So I was right with my thoughts: most people who are able to think themselves about such things don't have the prejudices about us like it looks in common. There is only a lack of education about this topic, well it's in the interest of the "chiefs" of our society that there isn't that much education about the truth of boylove, it doesn't fit into commercial and religious interests that much.

The most difficult thing was how to tell it my own mother. I never wanted this, but every good mother feels it if there's something wrong with her son. It was after the second police-raid when she felt that I'm kinda depressed, only from talking to me at the phone. So I told her about the raid, and the confiscated computer. Her first question was about the "why", which brought me into a difficult situation - telling her over the phone that they had a search-warrant because of possible possessing of child-porn probably wouldn't be a good idea, I thought.

So we made a date day and I prepared myself to tell her all about. I took Brongersma's "Loving Boys", a copy of the a.s.b-l FAQ and two pictures of my young friend into a bag and started the "way to Canossa". Also I prepared at the way some words to best start my conversation.

The "force" was with me - she was in a very good mood because B.Becker just won the world-championship (she's a real Tennis-fan) in Frankfurt.

Because I wanted to tell her first without my father we went to the kitchen and started talking.

The "main part" was then done with three short sentences I had "prepared" at the way to her house:

First I said to her "I'm in love."

"That's something beautiful," she said.

"With a boy." (boy and man often means the same thing to her)

"That's also something beautiful."

"He's 12 years old."

"That's not so good."

My answer was of course "That's also something beautiful".

She didn't know that much about this topic, only things she had read in magazines and newspapers, and you all know what those reports are all about. So as I knew it from before, we had a long talk and she asked me to lend her the books I brought with me because she wanted to know more about this and try to find her opinion, and of course offer me her support whenever I'm in need of it. She also said he would try to explain it all to my father, who is some years older and might possibly have some problems to understand it. As I showed the photos to her she said to my surprise "I think I would also like this boy"...

This all is now about one week ago, and I can say that I feel much better than before, like someone has taken a rock from my shoulders.

Also it showed to me that the friends I chose are real friends, who don't judge about things they don't know about that much.

Some days later I asked an total stranger from Austria, who I met at IRC (and who isn't a BL or in other means related to the topic) about his opinion.

He wrote back to me about two days later saying that the only acceptable opinion also for him is that all relations in which both partners really love each other are okay and "normal". Everything is normal as long as it's normal for all involved persons, and nobody should think that something is not normal just because it's not of interest for himself.

I couldn't have said it better myself :-)

That's all for now: I don't know if this posting makes any sense, but I hope so.

Steffen