OUR MARITAL HEALTH/SEX AND PROBLEMS OF DAILY LIVING: MOVING THROUGH LIFE AND KEEPING SEXUALITY MOVING – PRE-ADOLESCENCE: BI-GENDER COMFORT OR GENDER FEAR
If you listen carefully to pre-adolescents today, kids about nine or ten years old, you will hear the word “gay” used quite frequendy. We all have sexual feelings about both genders, and all the men and women I interviewed had clear memories of their first sexual encounters and feelings about the opposite- and same-gender friends. We learn to accept our sexual feelings for both genders and the strong ones most of us feel for the opposite gender, or we learn to fear them. In all of my interviews, the stronger the fear of homosexual concerns, the stronger the underlying fear of sexual interaction with the opposite gender. These feelings develop in tandem, and when we or our culture imposes sanctions against same-gender and/or opposite-gender sexual feelings, our natural flow of sexual development becomes disrupted.
Most research indicated that by this age gender orientation is pretty well developed anyway, so fears that same-gender interest will cause “homosexual tendencies” or “perversion” or promiscuity are unfounded. If we cannot accept a range of feeling about everybody, we will always have trouble accepting any feelings about a special somebody.
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May 18, 2009 - 12:55 PM