Numerous studies have shown that children who eventually come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual—scientists call them pre-homosexual, or pre-GLB kids—demonstrate more childhood gender nonconformity in their speech, body language, and choice of activity than their pre-straight contemporaries do. These reports have also produced evidence of a “dosage effect”: The more gender nonconformity someone shows in childhood, the more likely they will identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual as an adult.I am not surprised at what the studies say - it fits in anecdotally with what a lot of parents and gay adults have said about recognizing they were "different" from a young age - but I didn't really know it had been studied much.
“The link between childhood gender conformity/nonconformity and adult sexual orientation is one of the strongest relationships between a childhood trait and an adult ‘phenotype’ that’s been demonstrated in all of psychology,” Richard Lippa, a psychology professor at California State University at Fullerton, told me via email. While the link is not foolproof––not all tomboys will be lesbians; not all boys in dresses will be gay––Lippa says it is “quite strong.” (The scientific calculus for transgender people, he says, is “more complex.”)
Kids—especially pre-GLB kids—need room to explore their own identities. Yet because society presumes queerness to be inherently sexual, adults think that a preteen who plays up his gender nonconformity could not possibly be doing so voluntarily. Critics instead see adults in and aligned with the LGBTQ community as sexualizing children by exposing them to what a National Review writer calls a “deeply and perversely erotic subculture.” Conservative media have accused Wendy Napoles of endangering her son. After news reports indicated that Desmond’s performances had caught a convicted pedophile’s eye (as if it’s a young boy’s fault that pedophiles exist), some people called child protective services on her. But the people who have deemed drag too risqué for preteens have yet to support alternative ways in which queer kids like Desmond can publicly express themselves without fear.
I think those paragraphs I quote help illustrate why sexuality/gender is a pretty confusing issue to understand for a lot of us: it's not just a matter of which gender people might sexually respond to - it also brings up whole puzzle of why some gay/queer folk might be very gender conforming in most respects other than their sex life, and others aren't. In particular, I find it hard to understand the drag queen thing - a combination of something like a transexual who is happy to stay in their male body, but likes to act not just female, but as a particular version of the opposite gender - the dramatic diva. Not sure I will ever get my head around that. And because I think a lot of adults have trouble understanding it in adult form, it feels strange seeing a pre-pubescent boy acting out that way too.
So sure, I don't want kids who feel different to suffer unduly if they don't want to follow "traditional" gender behaviour; but on the other hand, don't particularly feel that it is a good idea to encourage kids to do what feel likes attention seeking behaviour.
I might write more later...
Your comments about drag queens seem somewhat strange to me. It is well known - or used to be well known - that kids love dress ups, and for some people the habit sticks. And this may be completely heteronormative of me to say so, but men - especially young men - can be amazing mimics or parodists, and there are plenty of opportunities for that in drag queening. Look, you could argue drag queening is about the most western thing ever! It goes back to Shakespeare, way back before then, to (at least) the times of Ancient Greek theatre!
ReplyDeleteFar stranger, it seems to me, is undergoing drastic surgery - at some risk to one's life - to actually have the body of the opposite sex!
Well, I take your point, especially if the cross dressing is (at least in part) for parody.
ReplyDeleteBut there is the thing about the apparent emotional appeal of the diva to many gay men too - how they love the dramatic songs, and the troubled lives of (say) Judy Garland. A fair few drag queen acts are about mimicking that, in a respectful fashion, no?
But you get no argument from me on the last point: as I have suggested before, it's odd that in some societies prior to modern surgery, men who wanted to be women just got into the "third sex" role from a young age and (I am assuming) didn't spend the rest of their lives fretting about still having a penis. When safe surgery became available to remove it, however, it seemed to create its own market for mental suffering for many that they could not be happy until it was removed.
There are still people who may as well be living in the dark ages because they think gender is binary and is a matter of chromosomes. Like they never heard of the SRY gene or how small shifts in hormone concentrations can have large consequences for fetal development.
ReplyDeleteI think the current situation is overboard though and agree with Steve that making it such a public issue may well promote teenagers to declare themselves to being in that special group. We have copycat suicides and I worry that may also be happening in the current debate about sexuality.
Reassignment surgery? Should we allow the person the illusion they have become the other sex?
True, mimicry and parody have different ends, but they draw upon essentially the same skill. And at the very least the parodist takes the thing they are parodying seriously - otherwise they wouldn't bother parodying it. I think this is why some feminists - Germaine Greer for instance - don't even like drag; they view it as a serious attack.
ReplyDeleteI love some divas myself - jazz divas especially. Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, etc - wonderful singers.
Perhaps it would be better if we simply acknowledged a 'third sex'. I am happy to take it for granted that sex is more complicated than, say, MRAs or extreme conservatives would like to portray it as - but I also take it for granted that sex is no way as weird as some queer activists make it out to be.
If after all alternative efforts are taking, it turns out that being gay or carrying some other development disorder, amounts to being the best person that this individual can be, well so be it. But the natural way to happiness is boy meets girl, they work as a team, they have children, and when they are older it dawns on the kids to be grateful to their parents and now the parents become much beloved grandparents and so forth.
ReplyDeleteI had a developmental disorder that damaged my capacity to have a family and that was ADD and then later various other problems. Should a fat girl have fat pride and stay fat? An ADD person have ADD pride and not work with diet and other methods to not overcome this? Should a person with Tourette syndrome not attempt to work around this problem?
So much pain and suffering has come about by not calling this problem what it is. Its a developmental disorder. If it cannot be fixed or ameliorated then maybe you've got to take on the life-style that goes with it. But this pretence that its not a disorder is the heartbreak of millions.