From the time my third kid was a little tacker, I was convinced he was (going to be) gay. It didn’t worry me in the least because I had so many years preparation so to speak. I was just waiting for the day when he ‘came out’…but in the meantime he got a permanent girlfriend and got all macho and I had to rethink my prejudices.
And in the other meantime, his older brother, who I thought was all hetero and all was as gay as all getup. HE came out a couple of weeks ago (to my utter astonishment) and now I am just gobsmacked about everything.
How can a mothers’ gaydar go so wrong? How come the really gay one turned out straight and the apparently straight one end up gay?
So what exactly about your third child made you think he might be gay? Was it a gentler personality, or an interest in things traditionally considered feminine, or what? How did the two boys’ personalities differ?
Heh. You might be right there, and I still have my reservations!!
Quite the opposite really. He had a totally irrepressible personality with a penchant for exhibitionism! He was not in the least feminine, but he had some character traits that were distinctly different. On the other hand, my older son DID have a gentler personality and an interest in things less macho and more intellectual. I still didn’t get the ‘vibe’ from him that I did from my younger kid.
Wasn’t there some Navy study or publication or something a while back that said that only about 10% of gay men exhibit stereotypical “gay” affectations? Anybody else recall this?
I’m not a big believer in the reliability of gaydar. It tends to go horribly wrong like this.
Honey, if that was so, there wouldn’t have been a single gay man in Spain for at least the 40sh years of Franco’s rule, since everybody thought that gay happened only to furriners. No lesbians around either; people didn’t even know what “saphic” meant.
Gaydar doesn’t work on family members, especially your kids. That’s because (so I’ve been told) IT’S THEIR JOB to surprise you, keep secrets from you, and occasionally shock the hell out of you. Without that, where’s the fun of being a parent?
For a long time I thought one of my younger brothers was gay, since he went through all of high school & college without a single date. Then I took him out to a strip club, and during the evening he mysteriously vanished from the table – I found him in the restroom stall, standing up, and…umm, to say more would be TMI. Bottom line, Not Gay. Shy perhaps, but Not Gay.
(And he really enjoyed the lap dance I bought for him!)
Yeah, but what I was trying to say, the gaydars of the Moms of every gay person who ever existed under Franco’s rules were pretty wrong. Well, not of every single one butttttttt…
I know several gay guys whose mothers are perfectly ignorant. It may be willful denial, though.
My parents knew long before I told them, as did many of my friends. Made me feel silly for keeping it under wraps for so long. To this day I wish I had come out years earlier.
kambuckta, all your kids sound lucky to have you. Be prepared to be a substitute mother for some of their gay friends who are less fortunate in the parental “hunky-dory”-ness department.
I have a feeling that my parents think I’m gay, or going to be, or something. As far as I know, I’m not.
They’re reasonably sly about it, though. They don’t ever come out and say it. They just make comments about friends of mine who they think might be gay. There were comments about a cousin who might be gay (I think they’re right on that one), but could never come out, because his parents are so closed-mindedly conservative. The obvious implication being that they (my parents) would be much more accepting.
Good for you for being a Cool Mom about it all, though.
(This seems like a good time to mention that I routinely get your screenname mixed up with kanicbird’s, which has led to no end of cognitive dissonance for me until I remember which of you is which.)
I certainly won’t be mixing your name up with kanicbird’s after this thread, kambucta.
Kudos to you again for being cool about it. Family understanding and support is so important for people living in a hated minority, especially in this, the last rabidly religious developed nation. America needs more mothers like you.
There were several children my kids knew as toddlers/elementary age that I thought were gay. I wish I could find them now that they are adults and see how accurate my gaydar was, but being military families we are all scattered to the winds, and I didn’t keep up with many folks after the divorce.
But there was one little boy in particular that the entire neighborhood had pegged as “Most Likely To Be Gay” for probably stereotypical reasons: he was, at age 5, a fussy, delicate, nervous little thing who was obsessively neat and tidy about his clothes and toys, having hissy fits if toys were moved from their positions. He disliked playing with the boys, unless there was an opportunity to dress up in a costume or a uniform…and then it had better be perfect. Now I realize these are more the traits of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but he really was the boy we could never imagine getting married to one of our daughters. Wish I could recall their last name, then I could Google him…he had an unusual first name…Shelby.
I had a brief period of time with my son when I had to entertain the idea he might grow up to be gay. But then I caught him waking up extra early (without an alarm clock) to watch Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because he had a crush on Alice, and I figured he was straight. Precociously horny for an eight-year-old, but lusting after girls. So sometimes Mom gaydar can get sidetracked.
I grew up with a guy who was very smart and very quiet and a little too effeminate for our rural Louisiana area. Although he had a slight build but nobody picked on him especially much because his father was a big mean redneck. He worked at the supermarket with me a couple of years in high school and the only girl her ever mentioned was his best friend who was really kind of cute. One day he walked in with her and presented her to me because she had a crush on me. That was very short lived but she was a nice girl. He went off to college and that was the end of it for 14 years.
I was talking to my SIL a little while ago. I don’t see her often at all but she is a distant relation of his and she mentioned his name. I asked about him fully expecting some New York, New Orleans, or San Francisco hijinks and exploits. She told me that he has been happily married for a number of years and has two kids. Now that doesn’t prove anything but it is good enough reasonable doubt for me.
I said" “I thought he was GAY!” She replied: “I know. Everybody else did too.”
My GAYDAR is normally impeccable but it returned the rare false positive on the same target many times.
