Chapter 5
<< Homosexuality >>
What Being Lesbian is All About
What Being Gay is All About

Homosexual behavior is sexual behavior between people of the same sex, as I’m sure you know. To understand it better, though, you need to remember that for behavior to be sexual, it has to involve something more than just physical contact. It must result in some change in the body — deeper breathing, a warm skin, a rapid pulse, or some other symptom that can be identified as sexual. By this measurement, two girls walking arm in arm, or with their arms around each other, or kissing, aren’t necessarily involved in homosexual behavior, although they could be if they have sexual feelings for each other while they’re doing it.

Let’s define homosexual behavior more exactly. A woman who has sexual relations with another woman, or who is aroused sexually by one, is known as a lesbian. The word comes from the Greek Islands of Lesbos, where in ancient times the poet Sappho lived and wrote of the joys of lesbian love in glowing verse that has become part of classical literature.

When many people consider the subject of homosexuality, they’re confused by thinking of it as something separate and distinct from heterosexuality, which means sexual relations or attraction between members of opposite sexes. Because a girl is sexually aroused by another girl, or even has relations with her, doesn’t mean she can’t have relations with boys. Girls who like ice cream may also like pie. If a girl is exclusively heterosexual, it means that she’s never had any sexual contact with another girl or been aroused by one. She can also be exclusively homosexual. Probably 2 to 3 percent of girls fall into that category. About a quarter fall between the two extremes, having some combination of heterosexual and homosexual behavior in their lives. Such girls or women are called bisexuals. I should add that the same categories apply to boys.

It’s a common experience for a girl growing up to become very fond of another girl and have warm, affectionate feelings toward her. Your grandmother called it “having a crush.” Sometimes it’s hard to draw the line between this situation and a sexual feeling.

I’m thinking now of fourteen-year-old Jane, who is constantly in the company of her girl friend Betty. They spend hours together, talking abut their experiences, their plans for the future, other girls, school, and the thousand things all girls find to talk about. They often put their arms around each other, and if they’re separated during summer vacations, they think about each other’s company. This is a typical picture of an attraction between girls, of the kind millions have known. Most girls experience it to one degree or another.

Up to this point, there’s nothing homosexual in such behavior. But suppose that one night, while Jane is sleeping over with Betty at her house, they embrace each other in their customary warm, affectionate way, and something happens that hasn’t happened before. Sexual feelings are aroused. They begin to stroke each other’s bodies, especially their breasts and sex organs, and experience sexual excitement from the contact. They may or may not have an orgasm as a result of their sex play, but it’s exactly at this point that a warm, ordinary relationship turns into a homosexual response.

Many girls who aren’t lesbians have had that kind of experience. Their response was no more than a sexual extension of their past relationship. It may have happened only once or have been repeated infrequently. But there are some girls with strong feelings for other girls, sexually and emotionally, who may become so absorbed in their sexual relationship that they exclude physical and social contact with boys. That may turn out to be their life preference. Not all girls who become lesbians ignore boys, however. Many have warm and enduring friendships, even sexual relationships, with the opposite sex throughout their lives.

Clearly it isn’t just sexual behavior with someone of the same sex that indicates a girl is a lesbian. What appears to be the determining factor is the amount and intensity of the time she spends relating sexually and in other ways with members of the same sex.

The important thing, in my view, is that girls approach whatever sexual preference seems right for them in a positive way and not for negative reasons. If a girl relates to other girls because she’s afraid of boys, or because she wants to avoid going out with them so she won’t have to face the problems they may bring, the development of her homosexual life will be taking place for the wrong reasons. It’s equally true, however, that if she deliberately relates to boys because she’s afraid of what others will say about her as a lesbian, the development of her heterosexual life will be equally wrong. All relationships, whether sexual or nonsexual, can be sound only if they’re based on positive foundations.

It’s important to learn to love, no matter what the sex of the loved one may be. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Without loving and caring, it would be hard to sustain life in any satisfactory way. That’s much of what life is all about. People who happen to love someone of the same sex are having the same kind of necessary experience as those who love in a heterosexual way.

If a boy finds himself involved in some kind of sex play with boys while he’s growing up, as many do, that doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in girls, or is much more interested in boys. Nor does it mean that these boys can’t or won’t have intercourse with girls and eventually get married. Homosexuality is much more a state of mind than it is actual behavior. It’s simply a matter of sexual preference. And the same thing can be said of the straight ones, the heterosexuals.

Some boys never have any homosexual experiences and are never aroused by other males. And then there are those at the other extreme, and the great majority in between. But it isn’t that simple. Many boys are aroused by or have physical contact with both boys and girls, ranging from the boy who has had sex only once with another male and has had a lot of sex with girls, to the boy who has had sex only once with a girl but has had a lot of sex with boys. Only a relative few have had a fair amount of sex with both boys and girls.

Homosexual commitment is not the inevitable, or even the usual, result of the kind of homosexual play that is common before and during adolescence. The situation is familiar to everyone. Johnny’s friend George comes to stay overnight with him, either because they have been playing together (at earlier ages), or because they intend to study together. Sometimes, in bed, their natural curiosity and sexuality lead to mutual masturbation of one kind or another. This is so common among boys as to be banal.

Among girls, the situation is a little different. There is just as much, perhaps more, staying overnight, but probably fewer sexual contacts as a result of it. In any case, it means no more in most instances than it does among the boys. Another element is introduced when adolescent girls develop “crushes,” as they used to be called, on each other or on a teacher. The relationship, which may or may not involve sexual contacts, is one of mutual love and adoration for a time. But these usually disappear in the onrushing tide of heterosexuality, and it may be added that they are far less common today, when the children of a more sophisticated era have heterosexual contacts at a much earlier age.

Girls sometimes find themselves having an overwhelming interest in older woman. They find it extremely flattering to have an elder woman take a special interest in them. Many girls have had this experience to one degree or another. These relationships can be happy and helpful ones to a girl growing up, and they rarely lead to sexual activity as parents or other adults may fear.

If sex does become the aim of the older woman, whether or not she’s a teacher, the situation is quite different than in the case of an older man making a sexual approach. The older woman’s approach is almost sure to be more gradual and gentle, and may never become any more than just that — an approach.

It’s also easier for a girl to say no to an older woman than to put off an older man. If she’s confronted with this problem, the girl should ask herself the same question she did about the man: Why does this older person want to be involved with a young girl?

I believe boys have sex with other boys for a variety of reasons, some positive and some negative.

Why does it happen? Because, for instance, a boy may be afraid of girls, and be so timid and shy he can’t join them socially. Consequently, if he’s going to have any sex at all, aside from masturbation, it will have to be with boys. There are others who don’t want to have sex with girls because of a hatred for them, real or imaginary. This may have arisen from a bad experience with a girl in which the boy’s pride was badly hurt, so that he was deprived of his self-confidence and he reacted with hostility and anger.

Sometimes, too, boys get started in sex with other boys for no better reason than because it’s the easiest thing to do, and boys are much more available. If a boy asks his mother whether Jimmy can come over and spend the night, she’ll most likely be pleased he has company and make no objection. Staying overnight, for both boys and girls, is such a common practice that parents don’t give it any thought. But imagine what the same mother would say if her son asked to have his friend Mary spend the night!

There’s one fundamental fact both boys and their parents should remember. Only two sexes exist, and if a boy (or a girl) wants to have sexual relationships with another person and can’t learn to develop the ability to do it with the opposite sex, he has only one alternative. That doesn’t mean every man who fails to get married or doesn’t go out with girls is certain to be homosexual, as so many people believe. But the way to homosexuality is much more open to such a man, and he may slip into that pattern of behavior simply because the other way isn’t available.

Boys see a lot of each other — in gym classes, on hikes, in the clubhouse, in swimming, and in a hundred other activities. They are often alone with other boys when they’re undressed, and that’s an opportunity they don’t have with girls. Obviously, boys are much more easily available for sex experiences.

Without being told, a boy knows that what pleases him must be pleasing to other boys. When he masturbates, for instance, it’s easy for him to transfer the knowledge of this pleasure to another boy, but much harder for him to understand a girl’s feelings. He also has much more in common to talk about with other boys, like things they’re both interested in doing.

If it’s all so easy and pleasurable, then, why shouldn’t boys have unlimited sex play with each other? He may find these contacts so pleasurable that he won’t give himself the chance to find out about heterosexual life, which might please him a great deal more.

So boys and girls who feel a strong pull to homosexuality, to heterosexuality, or to bisexuality need to know all the pros and cons of each. Only that way can they feel in the end that their choice has been made freely, knowingly, and positively — a choice made because it’s the way of life they really prefer.

We have built such a mythology about homosexuals, what they are like and what they do, that it is hard to get the facts accepted. But the public is beginning to understand, although perhaps as yet in small numbers, that the popular conception of the homosexual man as effeminate and the woman as masculine or “butch” is quite wrong, and that there are no physical characteristics common to all homosexuals. People just can’t place the homosexual stamp on every frail or passive man, or aggressive or robust woman.

There’s a common misconception that “some boys are born queer.” No study has produced any solid evidence that this is true, but the researchers still aren’t absolutely sure. When an individual is born, he has the ability to do anything sexually. What he does depends on what experiences he has. So it’s safe to say that if he isn’t born homosexual, he isn’t born heterosexual, either. He’s simply born as a sexual person. Similarly, if a boy is "sissy boy" ? quiet, unathletic, interested in the arts but not in sports and the same things most boys are ? it has nothing to do with his sexuality.

We call some girls “tomboys” and sometimes think they’re potential lesbians, but they usually have no homosexual inclinations at all. In a great majority of cases it’s impossible for a girl to tell whether or not her friends or acquaintances are engaged in homosexual behavior. About 15 percent of homosexual boys are obviously so, which means that a girl in most cases won’t be able to tell among the boys she knows which ones are involved in homosexual behavior. As a matter of fact, only about 5 percent of the women can be easily identified by their appearance as homosexual as well.

Many very masculine men and feminine women lead homosexual lives. With some shock, people are beginning to grasp the idea that the doctor who treats them, the salesgirl who waits on them, the businessman with whom they deal, almost anyone at all quite possibly could be homosexual in his private life. As they accept this fact, one hopes, they also come to understand that these people are not “queer,” or “perverted,” or shadowy figures living in some kind of half-world, but are, by and large, human beings who are no different from other people.

Homosexuality isn’t completely separated from heterosexuality. If it does, consider the question of how much homosexual experience a person must have before he (or she) can be called “a homosexual.” Is it one contact, or two, or a dozen, or an exclusive pattern?

About one out of every ten married men, according to Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, reported homosexual relations while they were still married. These men continued to have intercourse with their wives. Some were more homosexual than heterosexual, but others were the opposite.

Few people, unfortunately, are able to accept the fact that everyone is potentially capable of doing every act imaginable, including having homosexual relations, given the proper circumstances, conditioning, and background. Everyone has homosexual tendencies to one degree or another, but that doesn’t mean we’ll ever actually do anything about it or even be aware of it.

Another popular belief is that a person who is aroused physically by a member of the same sex and suppresses that feeling is a “latent homosexual.” Actually, this phrase can mean several different things. To some it means that homosexual desires are repressed — that is, they’re not allowed to come into consciousness — but since they don’t go away, they come into conflict with conscious heterosexuality. To others, the phrase means that if a person is aroused psychologically by someone of his own sex but doesn’t have any actual physical contact, he’s a latent homosexual.

The truth is that all of us are capable of doing every act imaginable. Under the proper circumstances, conditioning, and background, we could even murder someone, commit arson, or perform any kind of sexual act, illegal or not. You could say that we’re all latent murderers, arsonists, or whatever. But that doesn’t mean anything in terms of what we actually do. Similarly, all of us have latent homosexual tendencies to one degree or another, but that doesn’t mean we’re ever going to do anything about it.

It’s a common experience, in fact, to be stirred by a sexual feeling toward someone of the same sex through a fantasy, a dream, or in some other way. Most people are horrified by such thoughts and feel intensely guilty about having feelings they think are “perverted.” Most of these people will never take part in a homosexual act, and the fleeting thoughts they have will never interfere with their heterosexual lives unless they carry guilt and fear into them.

Nevertheless girls and boys as well are curious about lesbianism when they hear of it. They’re both repelled and fascinated. Often they ask, “But what do they do? It may surprise them to know that “they” do what boys and girls do together, except that they don’t have intercourse with a penis involved. Sometimes the sexual contact is no more than kissing or tongue kissing, but it usually includes stroking the body and breasts, mutual masturbation, mouths on each other’s sex organs, or lying together with sex organs against each other, going through the movements of intercourse. They can vary their lovemaking as much as or more than heterosexual couples.

Only about one girl in ten (1/10) ever has specific homosexual contacts. Nearly twice that number are aroused psychologically in a specific sexual way by other girls. For girls who have actual contact, the experience is about once in five weeks, on the average. These experiences usually occur in clusters instead of being spread out evenly — the same pattern as in masturbation.

Girls are generally more tolerant of homosexual behavior among members of their own sex than boys are of male gays. But girls are quick to condemn or reject other girls who don’t do things the way they do, or as the group does. That applies to sexual behavior as well as other matters. Girls who wear a different kind of clothing from the currently approved “uniform” or who act in a different way are often ostracized and rejected by the others. Everyone has to conform to whatever the group approves of or else face being shut out.

Fear is one of the chief reasons we reject other people. We’re afraid of them because they’re not like us and we don’t know what they might do. Another is ignorance of their behavior. I believe people should be accepted or rejected solely on the basis of what they are as individuals, rather than whether they like ice cream better than pie.

A few lesbians develop mannerisms like men, both in their dress and in their actions, and may call themselves “butch” or “dykes.” Most people have the mistaken idea that this is what all lesbians are like, or that one in each couple is manlike. In reality, only about 5 percent of girls with active homosexual lives develop these characteristics. The same is true of gay men, only a relatively small percentage of whom are effeminate.

Heterosexuals think that homosexuals have to play the same sex roles they do — that is, one is dominant (male) and the other is submissive (female). Many believe this even though that concept is beginning to disappear in their own lives. While it’s true that there are some homosexual relationships constructed on that basis, the great majority of lesbians love each other without playing any role at all.

You’ve seen girls who like to dress like boys or as nearly so as they can. There are a few others who dress like males, want to become males, and think they were meant to be males. These people are called “transsexuals.”. In spite of the fact that these women have menstrual periods, female genitalia, and well-developed breasts in many cases, they still want to enact the role of the male. When they put on male clothes, the dressing does not have the erotic connotations of the transvestite, nor is it any kind of gesture toward equality with the male, as in the case of some feminists. It is quite simply dressing as a male because the transsexual female believes she is one, or should be. In some cases they even have operations to remove their breasts and have rudimentary penises sewn to their bodies so they can perform as males. Most girls will probably never meet such a person. They’re much more likely to see males who want to become females, and certainly they’ll read about the more celebrated of these cases in the newspapers. Several thousand men have been operated on successfully to accomplish this transformation. One of those who did was the noted British writer James Morris, who concluded that he was really female and had a sex change operation. He went on to establish a new reputation as a female writer named Jan Morris. These operations are compromises, in a physical and sexual sense, but psychologically they relieve the intense pressures that led to the change.

It is common to confuse transvestites with transsexuals. Transvestites are almost always men, and they have normal sexual organs, but they like to cross-dress — that is, wear women’s clothing — because they feel sexual in the clothing of the opposite sex. Sometimes this behavior is fetishistic, as when the transvestite is preoccupied and particularly excited by feminine clothing in general, or by parts of it, like panties or stockings.

The transsexual may be male or female, with normal sex organs. He feels that he is a member of the other sex, and cross-dresses because it is appropriate to that role. Sometimes, by means of surgery and with the help of hormone therapy, he does actually change sex. If he does not, he may still wear the clothes of the other sex, and in fact pass himself off as a member of it, with more or less success.

In their sexual behavior, transvestites and transsexuals are quite different. Contrary to popular opinion, transvestites are not homosexual and they do not usually seek the company of men when they are dressed as women. They are much more likely to masturbate, and to enjoy their cross-dressing by themselves. Transsexuals, on the other hand, feel that they are the opposite sex. But the male transsexual who has not had the operation and still has a penis considers that organ with disgust in a sexual sense, and if he finds a sexual partner he behaves as a woman would except that, inevitably, the penis must be his means to orgasm. He does not want it touched by his partner, however, and tries to pretend always that he doesn’t have one.

Transsexualism begins at an early age, usually before age three. Its origins have not been clearly established, but hormonal imbalances are probably involved, as well as genetic factors, and perhaps neurophysiologic difficulties, although no one is certain.

Transvestism, by contrast, starts in a simpler way, and appears to be associated with a common and usually harmless childhood experience — that inevitable moment in their development when children enjoy dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex, especially at times like Halloween or for costume parties. These are primarily innocent pleasures, and purely transitory. They become something else when a child persists in dressing this way as often as he can find an excuse for it, and when the persistence is accompanied by evidences of an inner drive to do it. Even then, there must be some kind of predisposition, a background in which transvestism can take root, and we are not certain what constitutes it.

These are the warning signals, then, for parents — when compulsive cross-dressing exceeds the customary limits of childhood play, and when a child is having difficulty deciding whether he is a girl or a boy.

Here we encounter a new factor in contemporary life. Girls are encouraged to drive nails, play football, wear trousers, and do anything else that used to be considered masculine if they want to. Boys, conversely, are permitted to play with dolls, to cry freely, and to do what was considered exclusively feminine. I agree, to a point. I am not in favor of rigid role playing, or of the partitioning off of the sexes into prearranged compartments. On the other hand, I believe that a boy who is playing with dolls needs to know that he is a boy playing with dolls. It is the confusion of gender identity we need to worry about, not the confusion of roles.

It is astonishing how fiercely many parents act when they discover homosexual relations in their own children. “I can hear them giggling and laughing in there,” recalls one of my female patients, “and then it’s quiet but I can hear the bed squeaking and I’m pretty sure what they’re doing, so my girl-friend and I think we’d better stop it right now and not let them sleep together at all.” The fear that the child will become homosexual drowns reason, memory, and the facts. The damage such suspicion can do, can be devastating. I know a woman who had a single sexual experience with her roommate in college, one that was brought about only by circumstance and propinquity, was never repeated, and had no consequences whatever. Yet many years later, when this girl was married and the mother of three children, she was still so full of guilt and doubts about herself that she would no longer share a room again with her old friend when they met at reunion time.

Adults often have homosexual experiences that are just as happenstance and just as inconsequential. How they react to them depends almost entirely on the attitudes of their parents toward relationships with friends of the same sex. If there was no agonizing guilt, fear, or suspicion in childhood, it is not likely to occur in adult life.

When a relationship between young people, boys or girls, does show signs that it is truly homosexual — that is, it takes on an exclusivity, and neither party is interested in anyone of the opposite sex — parents usually do exactly the wrong thing. They try to break up the friendship, discourage it completely, and attempt to force their children into more conventional behavior patterns. But the way to discourage homosexuality is precisely the opposite — not to attack it but quietly to make every opportunity available for heterosexual contacts. Of course, this needs to be done at an early age. The mistake parents often make is to regulate their children’s contacts with the other sex so closely that opportunities to develop a heterosexual life are circumscribed and difficult. In spite of such restrictions, even those of extremely limited dating and carefully watched conduct, most children seem to survive and make at least some kind of adjustment to the heterosexual world. But for some the restrictions that throw them constantly into the company of their own sex will lead eventually to a homosexual life, if other factors, known and unknown, are present.

A good many of our conflicts about homosexuality, I think, rise from the fact that we tend to put things into pigeonholes. People are “good guys” or “bad guys,” even though common observation tells us that the good guys have flaws and the bad guys aren’t all bad. Moreover, most of us seem to be more gray than black or white. Consequently, a boy or girl is not necessarily “queer,” rather than “straight,” if they perform one or more homosexual acts. They may be interested in the other sex as well. It is a good thing to remember, once again, that being a homosexual is more a state of mind than it is actual behavior — just like heterosexuality.

In many cases, it would be hard to say who is homosexual and who is heterosexual. I remember a boy who sat in my office and told me bluntly, “I’m a homosexual.” After that, he told me that he had had three sex experiences with another boy, but had also had intercourse with four different girls and had petted with about twenty others. He sometimes thought about males when he masturbated, bur more often his thoughts were of girls. I pointed out to him that he wasn’t “a homosexual.”

Freud believed that a homosexual interest in the same sex was a developmental phase and that children who became arrested at that point in their psychosexual development were likely to become homosexual. Today most clinicians, including me, do not believe in this period of homosexuality. Among the thousands of boys and girls, men and women, I have talked to about their sex lives, I have seldom seen this progression develop. People have sex with others of the same sex for a variety of reasons, some positive and some negative. Nor do I believe in Freud’s period of “latency,” during which children were supposed to have virtually no sexual activity. The plain truth is that no one knows why some people who have the same childhood sex experiences as others develop totally homosexual lives. In fact, not many do. A great number of others lead lives in which there may be one or more overt homosexual experiences and a good many others that are suppressed while they are only thoughts, out of fear and shame.

Homosexual contacts, as we know, are common among children, especially boys, and may continue with widely varying incidence all their lives. Heterosexual contacts are common, too, and constitute the substance of most people’s sexual lives. If a child develops an abiding interest in someone of the same sex, the last thing that will help him is to be told that he is doing something wrong or nasty or suspicious. Without attacking whatever homosexual element may exist, the wise parent will encourage the child’s heterosexual contacts in every way he can, and nine times out of ten that with prove to be the life pattern that is followed.

A great deal of misery would be saved in the lives of both parents and children if parents could learn to express their thoughts about what is happening to their children when it is happening. It does no good to bottle it up, to wait until a better time, or a time when the child is presumed to understand better what the parent intends. The time to talk about the shape of a child’s life is when it is happening to him. He understands the immediate, and often it is a relief to be able to talk with an understanding parent, because children may well find it extremely difficult to talk about their sex problems with a peer.

I know how hard it is for many parents to do that kind of talking, and it can be done. Parents ought to play a dual role in a boy’s life as he begins adolescence. They should encourage him to be interested in and to feel at ease with girls, and at the same time they should encourage him to be “one of the gang” where other boys are concerned.

I wouldn’t want you to get the idea from reading what I’ve said here that if you have close friendships with other boys it implies any homosexuality in the relationship. Such friendships have always been an important part of growing up — look at Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer — and there may be nothing sexual whatever about them. You should never shy away from friendships because something you’ve heard or read makes you afraid homosexuality could be involved and you fear of being thought homosexual. We ought to banish that fear as though it were any other unreasonable dread. Does anyone really doubt that we’d live more healthy, fulfilled lives if we could?

Finally, I want to emphasize that homosexual relationships can be as pleasurable, as deep, and as worthwhile as heterosexual ones, even though society still has strong feelings against them. But because there are so many variables to consider and so many nonsexual factors involved, girls and boys ought to be very sure of themselves and how they really feel about their sexual preference before they make such an important decision about how their lives will be lived.

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