Hoo boy…tighten those seatbelts, boys. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride…
What an apropos user name.
"…have made a very clear distinction–time after time after time–between homosexuality and acts of homosexual sex. "
For instance, lots of men in prison have sex with other men. They aren’t GAY men…they just need a sexual/emotional outlet. These guys go back to having hetersexual sex when they are released from prison. Same thing with women. It happens ALL the time. The sex part is an important part of any relationship, but by no means is it the defining part of a relationship.
Can someone be banned for lying about their location?
I have been reading through this with some interest. I told my family that I was going to marry a man I saw on tv when I was 5 years old. They told me that is how fags talk. I wasn’t ever interested in girls that way. I knew at the time that I would definately marry a man when I was able. I knew I was different before that but then I had a word for it and in all honesty never thought about it. Since it was brougth about negatively, I knew not to talk about it so I kept it inside even after having my first “boyfriend” in 7th grade and series of random crushes throughout that time. I was out of the closet by 9th grade.
Pervert, the attachment for friends and love interests is not the same. If you were not able to tell the difference at that age defined, it doesn’t mean everyone could not. There is a large variety of precociousness of love interests. I developed earlier than most. I have some friends who lacked a sexual identity into their 40s(!) and others, like lissener, who realized they were gay young and were willing to come out. I think the problem is that you are trying to provide too narrow a description of sexuality and when it comes about into too broad an area.
I understand and agree with everythin you said. I am not arguing that people can’t know at an early age their sexual orientation. I never meant to imply it is impossible. Also, I have acknowledged that every branch of sexuality is not limited to sex. IOW a person can be a <blank>sexual without ever having <blank> sex.
My problem relates directly to the OP. If I am to support my child, I must look out for his interests. As such, I take it as self evident that sexual activity at such an early age is not in his best interest. If I am to support a child who is homosexual, I must be able to identify him as such. In order to do that, I need evidence. I am struggling to understand what that evidence could be.
I understand the difficulty in expressing things like this. In discussing relationships between males and females, there is an unstated assumption of sexual potentiality. That is, most people do not assume that a boy and girl of 11 years out together at a movie or something, are about to “do it”. But most people would realize the potentiality. That is they would recognize the “date” as a young attempt to delve into that potentiality. But make the two youths the same sex and almost no one would ascribe the same potentiality.
The problem that I see is the unstated nature of this potentiality. This habit of our culture has lead to a pronounced dirth of words for describing romantic relationships in non sexual terms. Thus my questions regarding how to support an 11 yr old homosexual without being explicitly sexual.
pervert, a big way you support your hypothetical 11 year old son who might be homosexual is to not teach him that being gay is bad. That way, if he does turn out to be homosexual, at least he won’t be facing an uphill battle at home. Waiting for your child to show evidence of being gay before protecting him from antihomosexual propoganda is like laying landmines in a road that your child might take, and then waiting for you to notice that he’s stepped on the road before putting out flags.
If you are going to teach your children that being gay is bad, you’d better be sure before you start that they’re not actually gay. Which you probably can’t be sure of until they’re in their mid-forties. And it’s very unlikely that you’ll know that your child is gay before he does (although you might realize it before he tells you).
You want evidence? What, third party evidence? a urine test? a panel of experts?
None of that matters. What will you do when your son casually says, at dinner, “Me and Bobby are gonna get married some day”? or Bobby’s over playing GIJoes or whatever, and you come into the room to see the two boys holding hands: will you explain to him how that is wrong?
Excuse me, lissener and KellyM, I don’t think I ever said that homosexuality is bad. If I did and have forgotten, then I ask forgiveness. I did not mean to say that. I do not believe that, and I have no intention of teaching any of my children that.
I am struggling to understand the issue raised by the OP because relationships between peers who might someday (even if it is years from now) have sex, and relationships between peers who will never do so under any circumstances are different. Not better or worse, not evil and good, but undeniably different.
In order to teach and guide my child into a well adjusted adulthood I must be able to teach the characteristics of this difference. Obviously the two types of relationships have similarities. But they also have differences.
My difficulty is that identifying straight relationships is an unstated assumption. It is easy to simply assume that billy and sally are exploring (not each others bodies), but the relationship between straight men and straight women. I can guide my child (whichever it is) in their respective roles. Give advice on how to deal with the emotions generated by such a relationship without refering to sex. That is, the assumed potential of sex can remain unstated.
How can this be true for a homosexual child when the assumption of sexual potential is never made?
After writing the above, I reconsidered this question. Actually if my son were holding hands with Bobby, I might not object. If he were doing so with Sally in a closed room, I might “have the talk” with him.
The difference, lissener is that assumption of sexual potentiality I mentioned earlier. While you might make the assumption in same sex interactions, I would not.
But you see, I would have made some guidance available to him before any such thing would have happened. The problem I am struggling with is how to provide the same guidance to a homosexual child.
Once again, I have to ask for forgiveness. I did not mean to suggest that some objective test exists. I was more interested in identifying how to discern, from the words of a youth, how I might imply homosexuallity. The point being that I could then provide the guidance such a child needs.
And just so that we are all clear. I do not think homosexuality is evil. I do not think that homosexual acts are evil. <obvious consensual disclaimer>
pervert, I’m just offering advice on how to support a child who might be gay.
The advice you should give your son with respect to exploring relationships with girlfriends is not changed if your son is exploring relationships with boyfriends instead. Gay romantic relationships aren’t that significantly different from straight romantic relationships.
It can indeed be hard to tell if your child is having a romantic (as opposed to platonic) relationship, with either a boy or a girl. Our culture teaches us to assume that cross-sex relationships in teenagers are romantic and that same-sex relationships are platonic. This assumption is wrong, and making it hampers your parenting effectiveness.
The thing to avoid doing is treating your child as “heterosexual by default”. Until you know, assume you don’t. And foster an environment in which your child can feel safe talking to you, which will probably encourage him to talk to you early on instead of trying to hide relationships from you.
Society teaches them that. It’s up to you to actively teach them otherwise.
I appreciate your advice, KellyM.
I understand and agree with everything you said regarding keeping an open mind. That is I agree that we don’t want to mis apply standards. But I’m not sure about the rest.
The problem here is that the assumption is not wrong. It may be mistaken in some cases. But on the whole, it is not wrong. The fact is most people are straight. And I think that to be a good parent you either have to make an assumption from ignorance, or make a descision based on evidence. In the absence of evidence an assumption which favors statistical probabilities is probably not out of line.
But my problem is that the “until you know” is much too open ended. If I must wait until a person can be mature enough to understand the romantic emotions he experiences, then I must avoid giving certain guidance for far too long. I certainly do not want to doom my children to go through puberty alone. There are things I have learned in my life. I would like my children to benefit from these lessons. This to me is the essential virtue of parenting.
I’m not saying that I have to have a “test”, and I also don’t want to impose an arbitrary age at which a person must know. But I can’t see allowing my child to wander guideless through puberty either.
I realize it may sound cruel to you, but I will continue to tell my son how he should treat and be treated by girls in a slightly different context from how he should treat and be treated by boys.
Unless, of course, we can come up with some criteria for making another determination.
I guess that part of the trouble is that it is easy to spot cruel behavior in relation to particular individuals, or against the relationship between two individuals. But it is more difficult to know what advice to give a child in general without making these assumptions. I am probably still struggling under my own misunderstanding. But it seems that this is most definately not a simple subject.
Not when the damage from making the wrong decision is potentially so grave. I also think it’s possible to talk about the sorts of things you’re talking about without biasing for heterosexuality. This may mean teaching your child that homosexuals exist (gasp!), but you can do that without getting into the gory details of sex. Remember, it’s about attraction, not sex, and eleven year olds seem to understand attraction pretty well from what I’ve seen.
Or you need to cast this guidance in a manner that doesn’t bias it to heterosexuality. That’s not as hard as as it seems, unless you are also trying to avoid mentioning homosexuality at all. Either give the guidance in a non-gender-specific way, or openly acknowledge that some people are gay and give it both ways. A bonus to doing this (at least if you do it right) is that your son will learn that you want him to believe that being gay is merely different, and even if he’s straight he won’t get taught (by you, at least) to think less of gays. (Of course, by age 11 he’s already learned to do that, in all probability, from his peers.)
That sounds rather sexist and heterocentrist to me, actually, and if your son is actually gay, your instruction will likely be harmful to him: the contexts you are asking him to apply will make no sense to him. At best he will ignore you; at worst he will either rebel against your instruction, or submerge his own feelings in order to comply with it.
I think maybe my choice of language has tripped me up again. when I suggested that the assumption was not wrong, I meant only that it was likely not incorrect. That is I was not implying any moral value judgement.
I am not opposed to offering my children a wide ranging sexual education. I specifically want to make sure they understand the principle that one man’s pervsion is another’s ultimate joy.
But I’m not so sure. Its about sexual attraction. Otherwise we would treat platonic and romantic relationships identically. And this difference 11 yr olds do not understand very well at all. Go back and read what other have posted about their experiences. They used phrases like “new and scary” to describe the experience of early attraction. My point is that puberty is a black void of new experiences, emotions and sensations. I simply can’t see waiting until my child has crossed it to decide how to help him cross it.
I’m sorry, I have not been clear on the problem I have. I don’t mind acknowledging different sexualities. I am concerned about referencing sex at all. Not from any puriant mores, but simply from a desire not to jump the gun. I’m sure you aware of the story of the child who asked her mom how she “got there”. The mother launched into a long and technical treatise on the biological mechanisms of sex and childbirth. when she finished, the daughter said “No, moma, I wanted to know how we got here from our old house in Chicago.”
Of course, how harmful would depend on exactly what I mean by “slightly different context”. And it may be a risk I have to take.
I realize you have not stated anything like this, but it seems like you would rather I neglect my straight children so as not to offend my gay children. Just an impression.
This isn’t about “offending” your gay children; it’s about not hurting them, possibly severely. Nor do I think that you have to neglect your straight children to do so. I’m not asking you to wait until your child shows sexual awareness to prepare them for sexual awareness. I’m just asking you to prepare them in a way that doesn’t prejudice them to believe that they are expected to be straight. Help your child cross that void, but don’t force him or her to any specific destination.
Nobody said parenting was easy. I don’t have good answers on how to do this; I’ve never done it myself, my parents didn’t exactly do a good job preparing me for it, and it’s hard to say how much of my problems are tied to my gender dysphoria, which might have been hard to catch even with perfectly attentive parents.
On the other hand, I think that your willingness to consider these issues makes you a far better parent than most.
I’m confused by your confusions, pervert. This is no qualatitive difference in the the advice you should give. Teach your child to respect others. Treat others with kindness. If they want to kiss Billy or Jane, or both, then it really shouldn’t matter much.
OK, despite this being GD, I can find nothing to object to in your last post.:dubious:
I agree, that the guidance I am talking about should be with as few of my expectations as possible. For instance I certainly would not want to say things like you should only “like like” girls. Any more than I would say something like you should only be attracted to blondes. But I may have to say things like “when you like a girl” when talking about romantic kinds of things. Unless* I have a reason to say “when you ‘like’ a boy” in the same context.
*Couldn’t quite bring myself to say until. My own little homophobia batle I guess.
The presumption that mixed-sex pairs are necessarily romantic ones irritated me when I was a kid, and it irritates me now. It’s a bad presumption, a wrong one, and it causes damage even to some heterosexual kids.
Advice about how to deal with boys that differed from advice on how to deal with girls under that presumption would have been actively harmful to me. I’m not attracted to the vast, overwhelming majority of the human race, whether or not the individual in question has a penis (being taught a mode of interaction specific to people with penises that presumes that sexual interaction exists makes my assault-survivor damage just cringe). Also, most of my strongest platonic relationships have been and are with people who are not female-identified.
If there’s a need to teach separate contexts, why not pick a route that isn’t laden with presumptions about how the kid lives and stick with “This is how to interact with people” and “This is how to interact with people you’re attracted to”?
Really, though, I agree with Homebrew.
Why? What obligates you to say ‘when you like a girl’ rather than ‘when you like someone’, which conveys the same thing and covers your bases?