Personal mythology

[fpb]

Everything I find written about practicing homosexuals intimates that they were aware of their "difference" from an early age, and certainly from their teens. But in my own experience, the two homosexual men I knew best only turned to their own sex in their mid-twenties, after considerable experience with women. And I would like to be sure that this business of young teens being already gay is not a matter of retrojection and personal mythology. After all, there has hardly ever been a teen-ager who did not feel "different".

Comments

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

My closest friend who is gay seemed to lean that way from the very beginning...this has led me for years to theorize tha there are two paths to homosexuality--biological and psychological. The biological ones may have a physical imbalance that resembles the body chemestry of the other sex. The others seem to chose this lifestyle after having the concept of "experimenting" presented to them. That sounds...suspicious to me.

On the other hand, I just read a story of a fellow who came to this decision in his twenties, but felt he had always known it and hadn't realized it. So, maybe my theory is wrong.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Granting, of course, that there is such a thing as homosexuaity - which, as a concept, hardly existed until Havelock Ellis - the idea of a single path and a single causation seems to me fairly nonsensical. And yes, I have known a butch lesbian who really and truly never had any interest in boys and who did not deviate from her teens onward; but what bothers me is the increasingly hardening orthodoxy about homosexuals being such from junior high, especially given the dangerous and equally orthodox notion that they are in danger of "bullying" and that such "bullying" must be prevented at all costs. Politicians are using this to drive any vestigial remain of Christianity and sexual morality from schools.

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

One of my fears is that teens like to rebel and take up the underdog's position. I wonder how many people are choosing to be gay because its "in".

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That doesn't bother me so much. Sexuality can be moulded by early experience, but not, I think, just by wishing. A person is much more likely to become homosexual, in my view and experience, by being initiated by an older member of their sex, than just because being gay is cool. I think they would lose interest pretty fast.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the chance of becoming homosexual by being "initiated" is zero.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

What nonsense. If there is one thing that is certain about any person's sexual development, it is that early experience tends to mold it. But as you are sold on the rubbish that homosexuality is inborn, changeless and ineradicable, you are forced to deny the obvious.

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter whether a kid is gay or not--they're often bullied because of perceived homosexuality. I was bullied for being gay in junior high, and I'm straight as an arrow. To say that bullying isn't an issue is ridiculous.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I was bullied for other things than being gay, and I guess some teachers thought I was the bully. Psychological and physical pushing and shoving between kids is inevitable, and, in the bad sense of the world, natural - meaning that it is part of fallen human nature (and one of the millions of ways in which children prove that they are anything but innocent of evil). To single out one of the squijillions of excuses that kids will come up with to prod and boss other kids and make it something special is a very, very dangerous error. And not only because it pushes the issue of sex where it is almost irrelevant, but because it makes the real issue - the instinct of children to bully each other - vanish. I saw it within a few minutes of being put in charge of my first class, when I was a trainee teacher: children, unless kept under control, WILL bully each other. That is the issue. if it wasn't about homosexuality, it would be about hebraism - as a child I was called a Jew, more than once - or something else. There was a situation once when a particular pop song would start a fight. Are you going to ban pop songs?

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

My point wasn't that one should single out homophobic bullying for particular censure, but that children will be bullied on the grounds that they're gay regardless of whether they are or not. Noncomformist children are always at a higher risk of being bullied, and this should be unconscionable no matter what the basis. I personally would be happiest seeing anti-bullying initiatives that made it clear that there are no "acceptable" targets for bullying, but the parents of a white, middle-class, thin, male child who is bullied for being "gay" are of course going to focus on that aspect.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think anti-bullying initiatives are a waste of time. What has to happen is to empower teachers to enforce discipline in and out of class. To make it a special problem instead of a part of the socialization issues of pretty much all children means to fail to understand what you are dealing with.

[stahlhelm.livejournal.com]

Pretty much my thoughts on anti-bullying legislation/policy. Making an "anti-" campaign is a recipe for disaster. No amount of awareness seminars, benefit concerts and guest speakers will fix what is ultimately a symptom of the American public's disgusting lack of self control and discipline.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

children will be bullied on the grounds that they're gay regardless of whether they are or not
If this is your point, this means that your whole strand has nothing to do with what I was trying to say in the original post.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you really want to know what children's bullying is really about, read Lord of the Flies, in which a gang of bullies left to their own devices in an island practically re-invent satan-worship from their own imaginations and collective brutality. That is what it is about. Homosexuality is an excuse.

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

I have read it, multiple times, and have no quarrel with your assessment. If they'd known the words, Piggy would have been just as dead for being a faggot as for being fat and slow.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So why do you insist on treating the symptom as though it were the disease?

[stahlhelm.livejournal.com]

Lord of the Flies pretty much illustrates youth problems today.

"If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man."

- Tom Waits, "Misery Is The River of the World"

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"the two homosexual men I knew best only turned to their own sex in their mid-twenties, after considerable experience with women"

One common reason for that is trying to deny or suppress one's homosexual nature, or even being unaware that being homosexual is a thing. "Men go with women", so one tries, even without much desire, to fit in, or to avoid the social punishment dished out to gays.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I suggest you don't try to apply your cliches to my experience. I have known a lot of gay men, but in this case I am speaking of two people I knew for years, who were intimate friends of mine, and with one of whom I shared a house for four or five years. They were not "trying". In both cases, they turned to their own sex because they could not, one way or another, cope with the implicit demands of a relationship with a woman. But that at least one of them was clearly in love I can tell you for certain. In fact, when he met Debbie (whom I was trying to court at the time), he remarked on how like his former partner she was. (I saw their handwritings, and they were almost identical.) But it is exactly what drew me in - her strength, her immense courage, the way she lived - pushed him out. He frankly admitted to me that he couldn't cope. Both of my friends had serious mother issues, and in the case of this man I am pretty sure that he felt himself being destroyed by his girlfriend's inner strength - although she herself wasn't trying - because he had never got out from under the shadow of his mother's immense and excessive personality. The homosexual relationship in which he eventually settled was, to my eyes, unwholesome, with strong features of domination and submission - his partner was a pretty, petulant and submissive lad, who however slept around behind his back - and a ruinous habit of drink. Oh, and he had been raped by a priest when he was about twelve. All these things form a pattern, but as you start from the nonsensical principle that homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable, you will never accept that they do.

I have known another man who turned from women to men in his mid-twenties, but in his case the thing was simply that he was a sociopath and a swine. After fathering two children on two different women, he consciously decided - he actually told me so - that men were less trouble, and, typically, the first young man he seduced was none other than the brother of the last girl he had impregnated. He was the most selfish human being I have ever met - though superficially charming and extremely handsome - and brought ruin wherever he went.