unfortunately, i think every one of us with a decent age has met people who have been subject to some sort of sexual abuse. and in here, i have noticed that i missed pedophily in my enumeration. maybe freud would have something to say about it. because it is actually the kind of sexual abuse that most shatters me.
and i would dare to advance one hypothesis about that in here. maybe it is because we cast upon this kinds of sexual abuse some sort of interdiction to be talked about, that many of them take place. when i talked to persons who passed through this sort of traumatic event, they were quite puzzled about talking about what happened because no body had ever before talked to them about such things. it is more like an implicit condamnation of it, but rarely an open one (even if this situation seems to change lately). i think that as long as we are served very stereotyped views on sexuality, people will be attraced to what is unsaid. everybody talks about pre-marital sex or things like that. but i did not hear anybody talking about rape along with "common" subject on sexuality. and it remains some sort of forbidden territory that inevitably lures some people. i have not thought about this very thoroughly, but my feeling is that if we talked more about such things before they happen, we would take off a good deal of their attraction. i mean i can very well imagine someone reading sade and then finding what he describes very attractive. since readers have hardly met any alternative view on the subject expressed openly and clearly. i agree that the situation is more complicated than that, and that we could enter into a very long discussion about what influences deviant sexual behaviour, but i still think that talking openly about these matters would deprive them of their potential power. even if Sade's work is a rather complicated form of revolt against sexual taboos, i appreciate him for what he did inhis time.
as about his life, by now i have read many faked biographies. and it is not hard to imagine how people would come up with a story of his life to match his writing since the subjects of his works are very uncomfortable.