How do you know your daughter is gay
Book Excerpt: Is Your Child Gay?
Excerpted fromWhy Is the Penis Shaped Like That? … And Other Reflections on Being Human, by Jesse Bering, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (North America), Transworld Ltd (UK), Jorge Zahara Editora Ltda (Brazil). Copyright © by Jesse Bering.
We all understand the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy's step, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses and dresses, and a formidable distaste for tough play with other boys. In petite girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, and an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate trappings of femininity.
These behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of senior homosexuality. It is only relatively recently, however, that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies to identify the earliest and most dependable signs of senior homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of gay adults,
First the stereotype. People often think of lesbians as having short-hair, their upper lips unwaxed, their clothes manly, their behaviour closely resembling a man. While this is genuine of some lesbians, it is not true for others. Think Portia De Rossi. Think Cynthia Nixon. Sorry I don&#;t have any Indian examples for you. If you&#;ll take my pos for it, I can tell you that I grasp desi lesbians that are feminine and girly and I know desi lesbians that are boyish and I recognize some that are in between.
So if your daughter does not wear saris and salwar kameezes or wears baggy jeans with flannel shirts, don&#;t assume that she&#;s a lesbian. On the other hand, if your daughter does dress in a very feminine manner and has a beauty parlour appointment every 2 weeks, that doesn&#;t denote she is straight.
Not very helpful, I know. What can I say &#; there is nothing really that makes someone a lesbian other than their attraction to women. The culture in India makes it even harder to guess one&#;s sexuality, because there is so much affection between people of the same gender.
Inside:Is my teen daughter a lesbian? Maybe or maybe not, but here’s how to handle this sensitive teenage sexuality topic
This verb was contributed by Jill Whitney, LMFT
So much about teen sexuality is distinct from what it was a couple decades ago.
Where once it was awkward, if not risky, to be anything other than straight, we now converse openly about a spectrum of orientations and genders. Sexual diversity has broken out of the closet—to the show where being LGBTQ is kind of cool.
So don’t be surprised if your teen or even tween daughter announces at some gesture that she’s a lesbian. It’s more common than you might consider these days.
But you may wonder whether your teen daughter is a lesbian for real, or whether it’s just a phase. Maybe she’s just experimenting; maybe she’ll increase out of it. Or maybe not.
How do you know?
Acceptance Needs to Be Unconditional
Unfortunately, there’s no way to inform. Some girls who experiment with same-sex partners verb up happily straight. Other young women
As I relayed in When Your Youngster Is Gay: What You Need To Know (Sterling, ), I found out that my son was gay from a note with our son's call entwined with another boy's, surrounded by a heart. I accidentally found that note in his room when I was cleaning.
I never questioned him about the heart I found on the sly. How would I have brought it up? Think I was wrong? After all, he had a crush on a miss in his class.
I had suspected at times that he was gay. He only had girls to his thirteenth birthday party. He preferred gentler sports. He was always concerned about how he looked and followed fashion. Were these stereotypical thoughts from a straight mother? You bet, but it was ingrained through the culture's binary system and ideas about how males were "supposed to" behave.
As it turns out, our son didn't come out until he was 17, was on his own, and brought a boyfriend to visit. Had I asked him if he were gay when he was 13, he probably would hold defensively said "No!" He had to work it out and work through his denial. I'm glad I muzzled myself.
Susan Berland, the mother o