Both my daughters have gone (or are going) to all-girls high schools, and I’m curious about how their sexuality is affected by this experience, or if it is. I’m a product of inner-city public mixed-sex education (very little education, actually), and my girls are getting a superior education, no doubt, and are being protected against certain obvious dangers of exposure to boys all day long, for which a father can only be grateful.
I remember my own hormonal levels at their age being revved up WAY too high, and I wonder if it works to deprive teenagers of sexual opportunities.
At an athletic activity this week, I happened to see several of my daughters’ teammates being openly affectionate with each other, which I think is a good thing and all --close friends, teammates, wll often hug each other, pat each other on the butt, sit unusually closely together, etc., and I think I’d have relatively few problems if I learned that either of my daughters was gay, though there’s no particular indication that they are. It got me wondering–do same sex schools have more homosexual behavior in them than mixed-sex schools? If they do, how much more? Do all girl (or all-boys) schools do anything to discourage (or encourage) it? What’s your experience, as a student, as a school administrator, as a teacher, as a parent?
I’d do the obvious and ask my daughters, but they would prefer being boiled in canola oil to discussing sex with their dad, I think.
When I was a freshman in college, most of the new friends I made were girls that went to all-girls Catholic high schools.
They all found boys during high school somehow. I don’t know if it’s just how St. Louis and its billion Catholic schools work, but it seemed like kids from all the Catholic schools hung out, even though a lot of them didn’t live very close to each other. So they were definitely not deprived of boys on weekends and in the summer.
I went to an all guys’ high school and I’m not entirely convinced it was more open to homosexuality than other schools. My school was a HUGE jock school. There were a few known homosexuals (as well as a kid whose last name was “Gay”) and the kids picked on him a little bit. He wasn’t in my grade and I had no classes with him, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what was said, but I can tell you that he got some flak for his sexuality.
Also, for it being an all guys’ school, we still had the reputations for being dogs. If there were females, we found em. As a whole, our school had NO problem finding females.
most of them were very very very rich, which also helps immensely.
I went to a Catholic, private all-girl school straight and left bisexual. I don’t think that the school made me gay, it just made me more open to the subject of homosexuality. There were open bi/lesbians students and intolerance was frowned upon. Even though it was a Catholic school, it was very feminist and liberal, with the priest blessing same-sex marriages. The only prohibition they had was that you couldn’t take a girl to one of the dances. I dressed my then-girlfriend as a guy and took her anyway.
As far as opportunities, I had plenty of dating choices. I was involved in plays and other activites that involved males. My friends and I attended “mixers” which were dances held by the same sex schools which invited students from other same sex schools. We also hung out with group of guys from the school my brothers went to. There were also my friend’s brothers, my brother’s friends, and lots and lots of girls.
On the other hand, my older brother feels that attending a same sex school impacted his ability to date normally. He says that it was much harder to meet girls (and I completely believe him) than for me to meet guys. He was also involved in activities that were mostly composed of males from his school (the school’s band for example). Also, I’ve noticed that girls who attend all girl schools are less likely to “need” boyfriends which makes it harder for the poor guys who attend all boy schools. My younger sister didn’t get a boyfriend until her second year at college. It wasn’t that she didn’t have any guys to date, it was just that she hadn’t met a guy she liked. When I first went to my high school, I felt that I needed to have a boyfriend. I got one within a week but overtime, I was able to seperate my self-esteem from my relationship status. Right now, I am happy being single.
I think that the school impacted my dating habbits in that I don’t tolerate BS from guys as much as some other girls I know. I’ve also noticed that my former classmates and I are more outspoken, career-oriented, and opinionated than a lot of the other females around our age. I’ve seen how some females dumb themselves down when around guys or are afraid to appear more intelligent than the males they are dating. In my school, even the preppy cheerleaders had stopped shaving their legs everyday, wearing makeup constantly and coming to school in immaculate outfits. Some of them said that they wouldn’t have dreamed of going out in public without looking “perfect” before they attended my high school.
Your daughters experiences will be different than mine, my school was pretty unique with the most different schedule I have yet to come across. I absolutely loved my high school and if I have a daughter, I want to send her to one just like the one I went to.
Let me clarify this. She had plenty of guy friends and there were plenty who wanted to date her (she’s a very beautiful girl). She just wasn’t interested in a relationship of that sort.
I went to an all girl’s high school. To be honest, I was so sexually immature at high school that I wouldn’t have noticed the sexual preferences of those around me.
The implication of the OP seems to be that homosexuality is situational (if there are no opposite sex partners available nearby, people will chose a same sex partner) which I disagree with however I’m no expert.
Not really. I’m just wondering if same-sex high schools do anything to encourage or discourage gay activity. I forgot to mention that this is a boarding school (with some day students who live at home), so they don’t have much contact with boys, which strikes me as unusual.
I went to an all girls HS, and I WISH I knew of any lesbians while I was there. There was no lack of dating opportunities (of the opposite sex, that is.) All together, a great education, without all that distraction around.
Uh, well, it has to count for something that when I saw the thread title I automatically thought of gay people in high school. Never went to one, but have been good friends with girls who have. The more liberal and independent a girl is, the more they seem to have encounters with other girls. Whether or not they become bi, gay or LUGs is in the air, but it happens.
I went to a single-sex (male) High School, and I’m heterosexual (and always have been). I had no real interest (sexually) in girls until I was 15, and almost overnight I was all about the ladies.
I’ve never been sexually attracted to guys, and never went through that awkward “confused” phase a lot of adolescents apparently do.
All my friends at High School were straight (we used to buy, sell, and trade girlie mags and porn mags with each other), and whilst we were all aware there were guys who were “Poofters”, and that given the school’s size (around 1200 students or so), there were almost certainly some at our school, it never bothered us or really had anything to do with anything, any more than it mattered whether you had a pie for lunch, or ate sandwiches instead.
All that changed in 1998, when the Principal stood up at Assembly and said something that paraphrased to this:
“So what?” I can hear you saying. “He’s right” (and Idiot Principal was right, and made some very valid points). “What’s the problem?”
The problem was, Idiot Principal had just bough to the attention of 1200 teenage males the fact that there were “Fags” and “Poofters” at their school. Sure, everyone had suspected, or even known that there were gay people there, but they paid it no mind.
What happened over the remainder of the school year was referred to as The Inquisition.
Initiated by the Sports Jocks (and seized upon by many others), The Inquisition was a witch-hunt on a grand, yet subtle scale.
Anyone with a girlfriend was, of course, Not A Fag. Anyone with a decent collection of (straight) Porno Mags was Not A Fag. And, of course, anyone on the Sports Teams was Not A Fag. (Hey, I didn’t say it made any sense- I’m just telling you how it was.)
As someone who had a lot of female friends (and yes, I was having sex with them), a collection of porno mags, and an Air Rifle (guns being another “Not A Fag” thing), I was never under even the slightest bit of suspicion.
But I heard stories of those that fell afoul of The Inquisition. Vicious wedgies, being cast into the Swimming Pool fully clothed, and the dreaded Pummelling With Heavy Schoolbags. Absolutely nothing compared to some of the stuff that happens in the Real World, but still unpleasant nonetheless.
Anyway, the point of this (besides giving me a chance to share an anecdote I so rarely get to use) is to say that if you’re gay, being in a same-sex school isn’t going to make you turn into an extra from Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, and if you’re straight, being in a same-sex school isn’t going to make you turn into an extra from Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, either.
Although, I have to say, it is less distracting for guys to not have the petty boyfriend/girlfriend bullshit to deal with at school (and we had no trouble meeting girls outside school- after all, your mates have sisters and cousins and nieces, who have friends). But a lot of the girls I knew said that all-girls schools were hotbeds of catty bitchiness, raging hormones, and lesbian/bisexual experimentation. And that they were also completely normal, with nothing unusual happening besides the sort of thing that happens at High School anyway.
Of course, your results can and probably will vary…
This of course touches on the unanswered question that asks if sexual preference is learned of innate. It is such a loaded (but important) question that we may never really get an answer.
That being said, if I had a daughter, she would go to a female high school and if possible college. I want her to have a chance to be in charge of the yearbook, the school paper and all the rest. Young women defer to men, and so rarely get a chance at mixed-sex schools.
It took me 16 months to get the Catholic school I went to to kick me out. Damn they were persistent. Hated that place. Never met as many sadists in my life as I did there. Guys suspected of being gay were beaten. Hated that place.
But…a little slice of heaven existed over at St. Mary’s all-girl HS. Oh yes. Them’s was fine times. I was in theater so I would be there often, meeting all the nice girls. As Steven King says in Hearts in Atlantis (I think that is the one) “…nothing better than a Catholic girl oh-so-slow handjob.” Good times were had by all.
I then went to the local HS and got laid the first day there, so that wasn’t bad either.
But that was a long time ago, and I wonder how much things have changed. I think that the prevalence of porn (Internet) has changed many attitudes towards sex in teens. In my school no one talked about lesbians being cool or ok or admirable or if they even existed. Same with anal sex, masturbation, S&M, etc. It was fairly vanilla sex where I came from.
Nowadays…I think all-girl schools could have more of an accepting atmosphere to bi-/lesbians solely because society as a whole has become more accepting. Girls didn’t masturbate when I was in HS (yeah, right, but that was the attitude), now it’s encouraged. I’d say that combining these changing attitudes with an all-girl boarding school and you got yourself a breeding ground for circle-jerks and daisy-chains…or at least that is what I would hope for if reincarnated as a girl.
But that is just going with what we hear about the current view of things. We constantly hear about the statistics of women that fantasize and/or actually do the bi-thing. So, yeah, I’m sure that if girls are a little inclined to experiment in that direction, they will. But if they fall in the “Sorry girls, I do dick.” category, then that is where they will gravitate towards, regardless of same-sex school attendance.
I went to a co-ed high school (some single-sex activities). In college, I was in an all-girls dorm (not owned by my co-ed college).
I know a couple of my HS classmates are gay, one bi. All male. Don’t know of any female HS or college-dorm mates who are lesbian/bi; a couple who experimented. And it’s not that we didn’t have the notion… This was during the first years after Franco’s death, movies that would have been considered X in any other country were being shown at regular theaters.
I can tell you that us girls were a lot more open/careless about touching each other when there weren’t boys around. If there were guys around, we would be afraid to hug or pass an arm over each other’s shoulders for fear of what the guys would think. We didn’t fear this from the other girls. This was much more noticeable the more pants-centered a girl was: those who would meet a boyfriend every sunday and break with him the next saturday (about 25%) were the worst, then the ones who had a steady or were in the process of getting one (60%) and then us weirdos (for those who can’t do math, 15%) who would still touch each other when there guys around (but less than if there hadn’t been) and who didn’t jump away if accidentally touching each other in front of guys.
I went to an all girls’ Catholic high school for one year, and it seemd to me that there were at least a few “lesbian” relationships that weren’t really between girls who were lesbians or even bi, they were just doing it because that’s who was available at the time. There was also a lot of hugging/kisses on the cheek/holding hands nonsense that I didn’t like very much, not being a very physical person.
Just wanted to point out that at the mixed high school I went to 4 years ago, girls dominated every extra-curricular activity. Was this just my school or is it many?
I went to an all-boys Catholic High School. I found that there were plenty of opportunities to get together with girls, but you had to look for them. Obviously no one was going to allow even the least intimation that he was gay or bisexual, and most of the guys I went to school with were fine with the idea that there was secretly a gay guy in the shower with us. I have since found out that our “sister school” had a number of lesbian students, and that it was really an open secret. I was kind of proud of the fact that we had an openly gay teacher, but years later I got a letter from the school informing me that he had molested some of his students.
It was the same way at my high school. Boys didn’t want to do things like work on the yearbook, and a girl had just as much a chance at being class president as a boy. My cousin was class president all four years of high school, from 1982 through 1986. She was also president of or leader of a bunch of other clubs. The yearbook leader, student council president, SADD president, FBLA president, and the ski club president were female for at least one year while I was in that school, and I was captain of the academic team for three years (every year but frosh).
If I had my life to live over again, I wouldn’t do it differently. I wouldn’t opt to go to an all girls school and compete with only girls because the real world isn’t populated with only girls. I wouldn’t have had a chance to compete with boys and learn that I could beat them on a non-handicapped playing field if I had been put into a situation from which everyone with a penis was removed. Sooner or later your hypothetical daughter will have to learn that the competition is male and female, because when she would enter the world of careers, it will be. Unless you’re planning to raise her in Saudi Arabia where she won’t be able to work anyway?
I think you’ve been out of the US a long time if you believe that women in mixed-sex environments don’t get a chance. Girls in the US are routinely outperforming boys from elementary school on up, and now graduate college in higher numbers than men. Maybe your hypothetical daughter wouldn’t have a chance in a mixed-sex school in Saudi Arabia, but given the legal and cultural treatment of women there, she wouldn’t have much of a chance no matter what kind of school she went to.
Never went to one, but have been good friends with girls who have. The more liberal and independent a girl is, the more they seem to have encounters with other girls. Whether or not they become bi, gay or LUGs is in the air, but it happens.
