Читать книгу Moving Beyond Betrayal - Vicki Tidwell Palmer - Страница 9

A Word about Pronouns

Addiction in all its forms does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or spiritual beliefs—and sex addiction is no exception. There are female sex addicts as well as gay and lesbian sex addicts. There are female partners of sex addicts and there are male partners of sex addicts. While it’s true that the majority of people who seek help for sexually compulsive behavior are men, women also suffer from the devastating effects of sex addiction.

When speaking and writing about sex addicts and their partners, the sex addict is almost always referred to as a man, and his partner, wife, or spouse is referred to as a woman. Unfortunately, this heterocentric bias has the unintended consequence of excluding many—female sex addicts, same-sex couples, and others—who don’t fit the “norm.”

I remember a day in early August 2015 listening to one of my clients in session telling me a story about a friend of hers. She referred to the friend as “married . . . to a man.” It was the first time I had ever heard someone specifically state the gender of the person a woman was married to. The June 26, 2015 United States Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage has forever altered the way we think, and talk, about marriage and partnering.

In an effort to honor the diversity of marriage and the many faces of intimate partnerships, I originally attempted to vary the pronouns throughout the book by referring to the sex addict as “him” in some chapters while using “her” in others (and vice versa for partners). However, this method led to incongruent or confusing examples of behaviors and scenarios, and generally seemed to do little but distract from the subject at hand. Adding “or her” to every mention of “him,” and “or his” to every instance of “hers,” seemed just as convoluted. In the end I resolved, for the sake of simplicity, to simply keep with “him” and “his” throughout when referring to the sex addict and to “her” and “hers” when speaking of the partner. I ask the reader to stay cognizant of the fact that what is being said of male sex addicts of course also applies to female ones, and that what is true of female partners is equally applicable to their male counterparts.