PARENTS OF GAY SONS

Dialogue between parents and sons

 

In order to create a form of mutual respect and genuine affective contact between parents and sons, parents have to set aside all the predetermined roles and have to play without hiding behind comfortable attitudes that actually prevent their cons from really knowing their own parents.

 

Generally speaking, for a gay boy, perceiving that parents play a role, even in a positive way, but are not themselves and are not sincere, is equivalent to a refusal. And that perception is objectively correct.

 

In a serious dialogue, and especially if it is about sex or even homosexuality, there can be no a priori presuppositions. If the answers to give to your son already exist before each comparison of ideas, dialogue is only apparent. Whenever a parent tries to talk to his homosexual son aiming to convince him of something, i.e. by taking for granted what he will say to his son, regardless of the dialogue with his son himself, that parent is offending the dignity of his son and is creating a false dialogue.

 

With sons, and in particular with gay sons, it is indispensable to be 100% honest. In most cases, sons do not speak to parents about their homosexuality, and I would add that in most cases they do the right thing.

 

What I’m saying is that sons are often afraid of the reactions of their parents, and when fear comes into the relationship between parents and sons, the relationship between them is strongly spoiled. The guys I met through Gay Project, and with whom I often meet in chat, want to hear from me the confirmation that being gay means having a dignity, a morality, a high human dimension, not less than that of any other condition of life.

 

Often the less informed or less seriously informed parents have a completely prejudicial view of the gay world, identify it with the most striking and spectacular stereotypes seen on television … but no! Gays, the real ones, they have nothing to do with these things, I know so many of all ages and are people very reliable who work, who try to believe in what they do and who often live in conditions of non-liberty because where they live homosexuality is not accepted.

 

There are people hiding (the great majority!), I call them “the invisible people,” and hiding because they are afraid, not because they have something to hide. I’ve seen gays living very deep forms of love, with or without sex, no matter who gave them a serious affective response. I saw young boys literally destroyed by their parents’ misunderstanding and a thousand times repented of having come out in the family.

 

Coming out  to parents usually causes anxiety and big hesitation in boys because very often the relationships between parents and sons are formalized and are reduced to relationships between roles rather than between people.

 

Parent’s role of support.

 

What must a parent do if he/she comes to know that his/her son is gay (from the son’s coming out or otherwise)? The answer may seem trivial, but a parent who realizes that his son is gay, if he/she loves him, must help him to be gay. A boy told me: “After all, I had had a lion’s courage to talk to them … but they just took it in a strange way and said I had to cure myself.”

 

Such a kind of attitude for a gay boy is equivalent to abandonment, a non-acceptance. Accepting does not mean trying to change the situation and not even hope for it to happen if there is an attempt to change things or the hope that things change, this means that acceptance is not there.

 

Being gay is not a choice but it is a basic quality of a person about which there is nothing to decide but everything to accept. Rejecting the fact that your son is gay means refusing your son from every point of view. Loving sons means loving them as they are!

 

Parents and sex education of gay sons

 

Gay-friendly parents, generally, often in good faith, believe they have nothing to say about affective and sexual education of their sons, but they are completely wrong. A gay boy must learn from his parents to be a serious gay, to consider sexuality a fundamental thing and to live it in an affective dimension characterized by honesty and respect for himself and others.

 

But apart from moral principles, parents can also play a major role in directing boys to responsible sexual behaviors in order to put aside any risky behavior. The parent’s insistence on this point is generally considered by the boys as a form of positive interest and, in essence, as something rewarding. A twenty-year-old gay guy, who had a good relationship with his family, told me an episode that I quote for you here below through a passage of one of his mails.

 

At a certain point, I had quarreled with my boyfriend or maybe I was just a little tired of him, and although I was still in touch with him, I had begun to attend gay clubs and look for guys to have fun, without him knowing it, and my dad did something for which I will never stop thanking him. One night he waited until I went home, in practice until the morning, and he clearly told me that between loving a guy and going to be crazy to have fun there was a huge difference but if I wanted to get along with him, I had to do things seriously, he said to me: you must respect your boyfriend, because he is a boy like you and you are now cheating him, and if you behave in a less than respectful way toward the guy you say you are in love with, you lack of dignity. And he concluded like this: a gay guy must be a guy as he ought to! I think I will not forget such words anymore!

 

With this example I mean that a parent can and must play a role in relation to the gay sons and that role is to convey to the son the sense of dignity and respect for himself and for others, which are fundamental values for everyone.

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If you like, you can participate in the discussion of this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/showthread.php?tid=131

GAYS AND GAY PRIESTS

Dear Project,

I have seen that lately the activity of the forum is very low. I hope you have the opportunity to answer me because in your forum I have read many interesting things about gays, things that are very different from what I had heard for years and that I still hear.

I’m 23 years old, I’m a gay guy, I have no doubt, in practice I always knew, at the beginning I did not know that my way of being was what people call homosexuality, I was aware of it a few years ago, more or less at 15. Currently I study Engineering, studies are fine and I’m not very far from graduation. Finding work will be a problem, but in my sector, luckily, there are few people and some possibilities still exist, but these are all things I will have to face later.

I am not publicly out, in fact I would say that I am not out at all and this affects me a bit. Anyway, I cannot risk either at university or at home. At the university it is only about study or girls (but little), I have never heard anything gay, not even jokes, the argument does not exist. In my course we are really few, at most a fifteen, and it is not the right environment to look for friends, the collaboration among students is only formal, although no one explicitly admits it, there is a race to stand out and everyone has its unspoken but evident aims because the environment of our faculty is very much tied to industry and professors are in fact an excellent launch pad for high-level work. We study a lot, faculty is considered among the best and it is really, but the human environment is competitive and in essence very unfriendly.

My parents are under 55, they married young. But I do not have much dialogue with them. In practice, I keep them afar off, when the opportunity to talk a little comes I prefer to talk about stupid things or university things that do not matter to me at all. I do not know if they ever wondered why I never had a girlfriend, since all my so called friends have a girl.

Anyway, my parents don’t ask questions. From a bit of phone conversation between my mother and my aunt I can deduce that according to my mother I have postponed after graduation the idea of catching a girl, however, this means that she noticed something abnormal but not only, that also means she talked about me with her sister, which makes me really bother. My dad is a bit different but he is succubus of my mother and, maybe I’m wrong, but I thought this was one of the reasons for my homosexuality: I do not want to be succubus of anyone. My father’s dependence on my mother, in my opinion, has something excessive, pathologic. Nevertheless, it does not make sense to try to make a clear speech neither with my father nor with my mother, so the problem does not exist at all.

I have passed my phases of interest in pornography, even exaggerated, but then interest has dropped. More than sex I needed a true friend looking a bit like me, I’m talking about a gay friend, if it was not just friendship, it would certainly be better, but it did not seem to me an indispensable condition. At the university I do not even try, because the risks are too many and there we are just reciting as in the theater. I tried the chats, those a bit hard but they were really a squalid.

After a while, practically by chance, on a Sunday morning I accompanied my parents to Mass. Time ago, let’s say up to three years ago, I was in the parish circles and the environment was quite familiar to me. My parents have known the parish priest for years and were talking to him. I sat on a step waiting for them and saw a group of guys playing football, more or less a dozen guys, but they were not kids, they could have had more or less my age. One of those guys immediately caught my attention, he smiled, indeed laughed very directly, was a handsome, tall, thin guy with light brown hair, smooth, short but not too much short, for a moment we crossed eyes and for me it was like a lightning strike. He had beautiful eyes, just looked like a happy guy. But the thing ended there, my parents came and we went home, but I kept thinking about that guy. Then the study week resumed and I ended up thinking about something else.

On the following Sunday I offered to accompany my parents to Mass, just because I was hoping to see that guy again. After the Mass I looked into the yard and the guy was there, he was sitting on a step talking to other guys, he saw me and gestured with his hand, I responded the same way, he obviously remembered me. Then I left and another week passed.
In short, I went every Sunday to Mass and after a few weeks I started exchanging a few words with that guy, whom I will call Luca. I was comfortable with him, he was very direct and at the same time non-intrusive and then he was a smiling guy. We started to greet us with a handshake, and he held my hand tight and it was a nice feeling.

One Sunday, and I will never forget it, we had to go to Umbria at my grandmother’s house and went to Mass at 7am at the first Mass. I almost got a heart attack when I saw him come out of the sacristy with the dresses on him, coming to say mass. Luca is a priest, I did not suspect it at all. There were few people in the church and Luca made a brief sermon that I still remember. The basic idea was to not judge because we just see the appearances and not the heart of people. That preaching, however, applied to Luke, led me to wonder what the appearance was and what was in his heart.

Of course, seeing that Luke was a priest I was shocked. I kept going to Mass but I avoided looking for him. In the end, after a few days, he was looking for me. Frankly I was afraid he would try to take me back to the sheepfold, but I did not have the impression that the purpose was such, slowly, very slowly, a true friendship was born, of course I carefully avoided talking with him about personal matters but I realized he was comfortable with me and was looking for my company. He lived in the parish, cared for the activities with the boys, and the parish priest trusted him very much but also kept him under control, he told me he would like to have a pizza with me one night but that he could not because he felt controlled and it was a strange speech.

One day he calls me and tells that his grandmother is very bad and he has to go to see her in a country in the province of Varese. He asks me if I am willing to go with him to Milan. I tell him yes and I tell him that we had to get there by car, because getting to Milan by train is easy but getting from Milan to the village could be very difficult. I told my parents that I could stay away for a couple of days and left with Luke at eleven in the morning. The journey was long and in the car we were alone, and so it was almost inevitable that we came to talk about our private. He did not ask me if I had a girlfriend. I just told him: “I have to tell you that I’m gay.” And he replied, “Me too.” Then followed a long silence. We talked a lot, he told me about his life, that he wanted to do something good and that he was not a priest to escape from something but to find something, he told me that he was happy.

In seminary he had talked about homosexuality with his spiritual father who encouraged him to move forward and do not abandon the road undertaken. He also told me that he was very happy to talk to me and that for him it was like a liberation, because he could be himself as never happened to him. I refrained carefully from telling Luca that I had fallen in love with him, because I would have put him in serious trouble, within me I do not deny having experienced some bitterness and I asked myself many questions. Was Luke really thinking what he was saying or was he saying that things because somehow he ought to do so? Certainly he seemed happy to be a priest and I think he was really, but sometimes even having a close friend or something more can be crucial, especially when the years begin to pass. I told him about me, practically everything, just omitting that I had fallen in love with him and I think he also told me pretty much everything, omitting that he had fallen in love with me. But in a similar situation what could we do?

We arrived in Varese in the evening, we did not go to the village because his grandmother had been hospitalized in the city. We went to see her. Luca brought her the Holy Communion, but she was better and the doctors thought she would leave in a few days. We had to come back, I would have liked to stay at the hotel to talk a little and start the next morning, but I ended up proposing to leave immediately because I did not want to create problems. We left. The journey was very nice, we looked like a gay couple, we were fine, but in the end we both chose to omit the fundamental thing, that is, the “I fell in love with you” that could have upset our lives. I drove all night and early in the morning Luca was back in the parish. The parish priest saw that we were back right away and now he trusts me.

Every now and again, more or less once a month, I’m going to have a pizza with Luca. Of course the situation is strange, but I see him happy and every other thought goes far away from me. We have also talked about gay things, sometimes, but always in a very abstract way and above all we have never talked about us. This story is very strange and I can tell you that among the many hypotheses I had made for my future I never took into account such a situation. Now I go on so, I just need to see Luca serene, even though I’m so afraid that things can change from one moment to the next.

If you want, post my mail on the forum. (Obviously the country was not in the province of Varese!).

C. C.

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If you like, you can participate in the discussion of this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/showthread.php?tid=128

GAYS AND ANAL SEX: FALSE MYTHS AND PORNOGRAPHY

1) GAYS AND HETERO SEX

If we take into consideration the epithets with which homosexuals were and are still now commonly harangued, we realize that the most common and widespread representation of the homosexual world is dominated by the idea that homosexuality is a sexuality devoted to promiscuity and anal sex, dominated by active-passive roles, a kind of substitute of male-female roles, that is, in practice, a grotesque copy of heterosexuality, in which a man assumes a passive role, typically considered feminine, in a penetrative anal intercourse. Such a concept of homosexuality, clearly deforming, derives from the old idea of homosexuality as the vice of the only possible sexuality, the hetero one, or as a pathology and not as a normal variant of human sexuality as defined by the World Health Organization. This deforming vision of homosexuality is unfortunately still a serious obstacle to the recognition of their homosexuality by younger boys. It is awesome to see how many pseudo-scientific studies still today, especially in the United States, associate homosexuality with the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, in particular AIDS, and focus on analyzing the most degraded conditions in which homosexuality can manifest itself, accrediting more or less directly the association between homosexuality and social degradation, drugs, violence and mental illness.
But besides the studies spoiled in the root by ideological assumptions, there is also a serious sociology. In 2007, for the editions “Il Mulino”, come out a book by Marzio Barbagli and Asher Colombo, entitled “Modern Homosexuals – Gay and Lesbian in Italy” (“Omosessuali moderni – Gay e lesbiche in Italia”). The book offers a picture of homosexuality in Italy and, on the basis of scientific research, comes to dispel old myths and new metropolitan legends that paint the homosexual world with the lively colors of promiscuity and free sex, dominated by active-passive roles.
In November 2011, has been published a study jointly conducted by researchers of Indiana University and George Mason University, on the Journal of Sexual Medicine, titled ” Sexual behaviors and situational characteristics of most recent male-partnered sexual event among gay and bisexually identified men in the United States” by Rosenberger JG, Reece M, Schick V, Herbenick D, Novak DS, Van Der Pol B, and Fortenberry JD (Journal of Sexual Medicine (J Sex Med) 2011;8:3040–3050)
The study has been conducted using forms compiled and collected through the internet from a representative sample of the homosexual-bisexual population of 24,787 men identified as gays or bisexuals, of course they are only openly gay or openly bisexuals, between 18 and 87 years old. The sample respects the distribution of the general population by age classes and by ethnic composition. The average age is 39.2 years. 79.9% of the sample consists of homosexuals and 20.1% by bisexuals. The sample is white for 84.6%, Latin American for 6.4%, and African-American for 3.6%. The people involved in the research had been asked to indicate what sexual behaviors they have put into practice in the last sexual intercourse. The most common sexual behavior was kiss on the mouth (74.5%), followed by oral sex (72.7%) and mutual masturbation (68.4%). The anal penetration was present only in 37.2% of the cases and was found to be most common in the 18-24 age group (42.7%). It is important to keep in mind that these data are only about openly gays or openly bisexuals.
The study, in agreement with other recent studies that examined sexual behavior among heterosexual men and women, shows that gay and bisexual men have a repertoire of sexual behaviors that is very different from that of heterosexuals. Joshua G. Rosenberger, professor of the Department of Global and Community Health at the George Mason University, Fairfax, said that “Of all sexual behaviors that men reported occurring during their last sexual event, those involving the anus were the least common,” Rosenberger concluded: “There is certainly a misguided belief that ‘gay sex equals anal sex,’ which is simply untrue much of the time.”[http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news-archive/19977.html]
These conclusions, which refer to the United States, are essentially confirmed for Italy by a study: “The Sexuality of Italians” by Marzio Barbagli, Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna and Franco Garelli published in 2010, for “Il Mulino” editions. This study states about anal sex: “It is likely that in the male homosexual population the use of this practice has decreased in the course of the twentieth century.[Shorter [2005, 129-131]]
It is certain, however, that for some time now, in Italy, this is the less widely used erotic technique in this population.[Barbagli e Colombo [2007-2, 118-119]] It is equally certain that today there are few differences between homo and heterosexuals in our country. 49% of the former had at least one anal intercourse with a man versus 44% of the last who experienced it with a woman.” It is to be underlined that 49% of homosexuals are not said to practice anal sex, but that 49% had at least one anal intercourse with a man over their lifetime, which is completely different. The US study to which I referred also points out other elements that allow to overcome false myths about the promiscuity of sexual relations between homosexuals and bisexuals and their alleged affective deficiency. “We found it particularly interesting that the vast majority of men reported sex with someone they felt ‘matched’ with in terms of love, meaning that most people who were in love had sex with the person they loved, but that there were also a number of men who had sex in the absence of love,” Debby Herbenick [Co-director of the Sexual Health Promotion Center and of the Public Health School at the University of Indiana-Bloomington, and co-author of the essay on Sexual behavior of homosexuals and bisexuals] said. “Very few people had sex with someone they loved if that person didn’t love them back.” ” This “matching” aspect of love, she said, has not been well explored in previous research, regardless of sexual orientation.”[1]   “Given the recent political shifts around the Defense of Marriage Act and same-sex marriage in the United States, these findings highlight the prevalence and value of loving feelings within same-sex relationships,” said lead investigator Joshua G. Rosenberger.[2]
The study about sexual behavior of openly gays and openly bisexuals, just because it refers to openly gays and openly bisexuals, that is, to the emerging tip of gay iceberg, is unfortunately affected by an inherent limitation because its results cannot be automatically extended to the vast majority of gays and bisexuals who are closeted. From the experience of Gay Project, as I have said many times, from what I can point out through a direct dialog with homosexuals of all ages, almost always closeted, I find that about 20% of homosexual couples, including of course couples made up of closeted gays, usually practice anal sex, in most cases with interchangeable roles, these couples are almost always stable and monogamous, so they are less afraid of sexually transmitted diseases. Another 20% practice anal sex because one of the partners requires it and the other does not subtract, even if for him the performance is indifferent or really slightly unpleasant. About 60% of homosexual couples (obviously including undisclosed homosexual couples) do not practice anal sex. I have found that even among gays and bisexuals there is a big difference in the repertoire of sexual behaviors. Bisexuals have a repertoire much closer to that of heterosexuals, because, regardless of their degree of heterosexual propensity, they in most cases practice much more the heterosexual sex than the gay one. An experienced gay man can figure out whether his partner is gay or bisexual on the basis of his sexual behavior, even if the bisexual partner, in an occasional intercourse with a gay, generally does not qualify himself as bisexual but as a gay.
Elements emerging from Gay Project, extended to closeted gays, are not far from the data coming from the aforementioned study about sexual behaviors of gays and bisexuals in the US, and from those reported by Barbagli and others, related to Italy. The US study shows that 62.8% of the gay-bisex not closeted group don’t practice anal sex, while 37.2% practice it. From the Gay Project surveys, the percentages were around 60% and 40%, respectively, but in a half of that 40% of homosexual couples practicing anal sex, only one of the two partners really likes this practice. In conclusion, outside the couple, for example in individual masturbation, fantasies related to anal penetration concern about 30% of gays, for the other 70% anal penetration is not a subject of masturbation fantasies. As it’s obvious, the values measured in the surveys and the values obtained through Gay Project do not define rules without exception, but only tend to provide an undistorted image of the phenomena in their entirety, though local variability can be considerable.
It should be pointed out that at the beginning of the twentieth century there was yet a clear understanding among scholars of the idea that sodomy was not a prevalent dimension among homosexuals. Albert Moll,[Author of “Conträre Sexualempfindung” published in 1891, a fundamental work on sexual inversion. The title itself became an expression to indicate homosexuality.] speaking of the act so often accredited to homosexuals, says: “It is commonly assumed that the sexual intercourse between Urning[3] is this. But it is a big mistake to suppose that this act is so frequent among them.” [A. Moll, of “Conträre Sexualempfindung”, 139.] Krafft-Ebing[4] treats sodomy as a rare thing between the true Urning, albeit quite common among the old vicious men and debauched ones of more normal temperament, those who are not exactly homosexual.[“Psychopathia Sexualis”, Seventh Edition p. 258.] Edward Carpenter [One of the fathers of the homosexual liberation movement.] cites Moll and Krafft-Ebing’s views in appendix to his “Intermediate Sex” and shows that he shares their ideas.[Mitchell Kennerley, New York and London, p. 151-152.] Havelock Ellis, in the third edition (1927) of his treatise “Sexual Inversion” After clarifying that the term “pedicatio” (or pædicatio) is the most widely accepted technical term for the sodomy, intrusion of the penis into the anus, underlines that this term is usually intended as derived from the Greek “pais” (boy), but some authors assume that it comes from pedex or podex (ano). Ellis adds that the terms “pederastia” and “pederasta” are sometimes used to indicate the act itself and its agent, but considers this an undesirable use and recommends limiting the use of the word “pederastia” according to its proper meaning as a name of the special institution of Greek love for boys.
In Chapter V of his treatise, in the section dedicated to “Methods of Sexual Relationship”, Ellis writes:[Studies in the Psychology of sex, vol. 2 “Sexual Inversion” by Havelock Ellis, third edition, revised and enlarged – 1927, cap. V, Methods of Sexual Relationship] “Taking 57 inverted men of whom I have definite knowledge, I find that 12, restrained by moral or other considerations, have never had any physical relationship with their own sex. In some 22 cases the sexual relationship rarely goes beyond close physical contact and fondling, or at most mutual masturbation and intercrural intercourse. In 10 or 11 cases fellatio (oral excitation)—frequently in addition to some form of mutual masturbation, and usually, though not always, as the active agency—is the form preferred. In 14 cases, actual pedicatio—usually active, not passive—has been exercised. In these cases, however, pedicatio is by no means always the habitual or even the preferred method of gratification. It seems to be the preferred method in about 7 cases. Several who have never experienced it, including some who have never practised any form of physical relationship, state that they feel no objection to pedicatio; some have this feeling in regard to active, others in regard to passive, pedicatio. The proportion of inverts who practise or have at some time experienced pedicatio thus revealed (nearly 25 per cent.) is large; in Germany Hirschfeld finds it to be only 8 per cent., and Merzbach only 6. I believe, however, that a wider induction from a larger number of English and American cases would yield a proportion much nearer to that found in Germany.” From what Ellis found in the cases he examined, about 25% of homosexuals practiced anal penetration at least once in the life but only 7 out of 57 (just over 12%) considered it the preferred method of Sexual satisfaction.
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[1] http://info.publichealth.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2014/01/gay-sex-love.shtml

[2] [https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-02-unique-tied-sex-gay-bisexual.html]

[3] German term corresponding to the English “uranist” with which homosexuals were indicated. The term “Urning” was created in 1864 by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, supporter of the thesis that homosexuals were a true third sex. The term “homosexual” is introduced by Karl-Maria Benkert, who was a proud supporter of the full masculinity of homosexuals, and to point out that this is not a third sex, he prefers not to use the word Urning at all but to create a word entirely new.

[5] Author in 1886 of “Psychopathia sexualis”, a work that has been vast resonance for decades, in which he identifies various degenerations of sexuality such as sadism, masochism, fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, frottage, nymphomania, zoophilia, necrophilia, gerontophilia, compulsive masturbation and pedophilia, in particular, emphasizes the very serious risks for the victims. It should be noted that Krafft-Ebing does not include homosexuality among the degenerations of sexuality.

2) HETEROSEXUALS AND ANAL SEX

Sexual behavior of openly gays and openly bisexuals, despite its limitations, is somehow easy to analyze, because it is highly unlikely for an openly gay to have hesitancy to admit to have had anal sex. A search of the same kind, with direct questions, aimed at groups of less disinhibited people, such as closeted gays or heterosexuals, who were sampled by the general population, would face significant levels of reticence. Since anal sex is a classic taboo, the data found in this field are certainly underestimated. Women participating in a survey on sexuality admit more easily abortion rather than having anal sex [Smith, Adler, and Tschann, 1999]. Voeller (1991) noted that in the context of direct interview surveys, anal sex aspects never emerged at the first interview, but only later, when the interviewee manages to set aside the reticence. In the heterosexual sphere it is noted that the incidence of anal sex, which is definitely limited in the less recent surveys, tends to increase over the years, the opposite of what happens in the homosexual population. A study by Mosher, Chandra and Jones (2005), conducted on the basis of large-scale surveys, found that 38.2% of men between the ages of 20 and 39 and 32.6% of women of between 18 and 44 experienced heterosexual anal sex in the course of life. It should be noted that since 2005 (Mosher, Chandra, and Jones, 2005) to 2011 (Rosenberg and others, 2011), percentages for men have increased considerably. An analysis of the state of the research on heterosexual anal sex can be found in Kimberly R. Mc Bride’s Heterosexual Anal Sexuality and Anal Sex Behaviors: A Review and J. Dennis Fortenberry of the University of Indiana. Men who have had stories with partners of the same sex relate more easily about anal intercourse (Foxman, Aral, and Holmes, 1998a, 1998b). But I have to underline that here we are talking about anal sex practiced on a female partner by men who have also had homosexual partners, in other words this means that men who feel heterosexual but also have male partners are significantly more likely to anal sex, more likely than the average of heterosexuals, but because the gay propensity towards anal sex is similar to that of the heterosexuals, more likely than the average of gays. These “heterosexuals” who also have gay experiences form the category of so-called bi-curious. So far, the bi-curious category has been introduced in relation to concrete homosexual gay experiences, but the vast majority of bi-curious people do not come to have sexual intercourse with men and are content with the use of pornography that is male nude, male masturbation or sexual intercourse between men.

3) SO-CALLED GAY PORNOGRAPHY

When it comes to pornography, we have to distinguish between heterosexual pornography, or rather pornography with heterosexual content which shows intercourses between a man and a woman, gay pornography, or rather pornography with gay content, which shows intercourses between men, male nude and male masturbation, and lesbian pornography or rather pornography with lesbian content, which shows intercourses between women, female nude and female masturbation. This distinction, which concerns the content, is fairly clear, in principle, although there are certainly situations that cannot be exclusively covered in any of the three categories. This distinction is overlapped by another, based on the users of pornography. Generally people uses the expression “hetero pornography” to denote pornography enjoyed by men and women, uses the expression “gay pornography” to indicate pornography enjoyed by homosexual men and uses the expression “lesbian pornography” to indicate pornography enjoyed by homosexual women. The two classifications, the one on the basis of the content and the other on the basis of the users, make use of the same synthetic terminology (hetero porn, gay porn, lesbian porn) and this leads to wrong convictions, that is, it implies that pornography with hetero content is only to be enjoyed by hetero men and hetero women, that pornography with gay content is only to be enjoyed by male homosexuals and pornography with lesbian content is to be enjoyed only by homosexual women. Let us now consider only the pornography with gay content. Different interesting facts emerge from Yahoo Answers. First of all, many women declare that they normally access sites with gay content rather than sites with heterosexual content, because pornography with hetero content, enjoyed essentially by heterosexual men, focuses on women neglecting the male element, and also because in pornography with gay content there are no women. Thus, a certain percentage of gay content traffic is represented by heterosexual women, for whom penetrating sex is the rule. In Yahoo Answers, especially in the section in English, there are thousands of questions proposed by heterosexual guys who see gay porn and ask if this is normal. The question is put in all possible ways, but it is always essentially the same. There are also a lot of messages from hetero girls who are very worried about finding out gay material in the computers of their boyfriends. From these messages we can understand that men who consider themselves heterosexual but use gay pornography are not bisexuals in the specific sense, because they do not fall in love with guys but only with girls; these guys are the so-called bi-curious. Obviously, bi-curious may stop at the level of pornography with gay content but may also have more or less frequent homosexual intercourses but without real affective engagement, otherwise they would be bisexual. Let us now consider some aspects of pornography with gay content and compare them with similar aspects of pornography with hetero content. Searching on Google “straight site” it is noted that the related results are 506,000,000; looking for “gay site” the related results are 420,000,000; the gay/hetero ratio is about 0.83.
Looking for “straight porn” the related results are 55,100,000; looking for “gay porn” e 43.9 million, the gay/hetero ratio is about 0.8. Looking for “straight porn video” the related results are 45,400,000; looking for “gay porn videos” are 59,600,000, the gay/hetero ratio is about 1.31. These data indicate that the frequency of pornography with gay content on the web is more or less equivalent to that of pornography with hetero content. It is objectively impossible to access first-hand data on the use of pornography that belong to the managers of these sites, and in this area you can only get approximate estimates but it is commonplace that the gay-content pornography business equals or even exceeds that of hetero-content pornography. And here comes the first apparent incongruity. If male homosexuals are about 4% of the general population and male heterosexuals are about 46%, that is, if there is on average a single gay male every 11.2 heterosexuals males, and hetero-content pornography is more or less quantitatively equivalent to gay-content pornography, assuming that gay-content pornography is to be enjoyed only by gays and that of hetero-content pornography is to be enjoyed only by male heterosexuals in large majority (about 72%) it would come to the paradoxical conclusion that gays uses pornography 11.2 times more than an male heterosexuals, which is far less credible. If, on the other hand, an equal propensity to use pornography for gay and hetero people was assumed, we should ask who are the consumers of gay-content pornography not consumed by gays. And here the answer is spontaneous: they are the bi-curious and they are really many.
The fact that bi-curious are the main gay-content porn consumers is confirmed by the fact that gay-content websites, when they represent sexual intercourse, end up almost always with anal penetration, which, as seen, is not a dominant interest in the gay world while it is among the bi-curious. Many gays wonder why gay porn sites give so much room for anal intercourse, and the answer is that the main users of gay-content pornography are not gay but bi-curious and secondly heterosexual women. In this sense, for a gay young man, the image of gay sexuality offered by gay pornography is misleading because it is a pornography created essentially for the needs of a not gay but bi-curious audience. A bit of pornography does not hurt anyone, but if pornography shows an hypothetical gay sexuality that is very different from reality, it becomes deeply harmful. The representation of true gay sexuality would be far less spectacular and therefore less suited to the pornographic market but would allow so many homosexuals to identify themselves in that representation rather than be tempted to imitate behaviors that have nothing to do with reality.

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GAY PROJECT FORUM

A very important news: Gay Project has finally reopened the Forum in English.

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/index.php  

On this forum you can read many posts, many of which have not been posted on this blog, on topics of interest to gay people, but you can also participate in the discussions, expressing your positions and judgments. Of course, comments and criticisms are always welcome.

Registering on the forum is easy and requires no more than 5 minutes.

I wish you a good reading and good participation also in the Forum.

Project

MANUAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY

Gay Project has just published in Italian a “Manual of homosexuality”:http://gayproject.altervista.org/manuale_di_omosessualita.pdf, that is a guide to know and understand the real problems of gay guys. The manual has 22 chapters. I present here the first chapter in English, in the coming weeks I will publish the next chapters.

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CHAPTER 1 – UNDERSTANDING TO BE GAY

Let’s start with a concrete example.

A boy 12 year old (seventh grade) experiences for the first time the spontaneous swelling up of his penis (erection) while he is in the locker room along with his mates and while concentrating his attention on one of them who is undressing. The experience is pleasant, the guy comes home, sits back to think about his mate, goes quickly erect, the feeling is newly nice, the guy starts a long manipulation of his penis (masturbation) at the end of which he feels a strong contraction of the testes (orgasm) that makes a white substance (semen) squirts up from his penis (ejaculation), immediately after the guy experiences a strong feeling of relaxation, as if all the tension caused by sexual arousal had been discharged (post-orgasmic phase). Throughout all this procedure, the imagination is concentrated on the image of the mate undressing in the locker room (masturbatory fantasy).

Let us now analyze this example. It is the discovery of masturbation, that is the first real sexual experience. In this experience, there are two different components linked together, the physical one (erection, masturbation, orgasm, ejaculation, post-orgasmic phase) and the imaginative one (masturbatory fantasy).

It is usual to call masturbation also the whole physical-imaginative process we have just described. During masturbation the guy brings to mind the images that had caused the erection spontaneously, because focusing on those images (masturbatory fantasies) he can easily get an erection (sexual arousal through masturbation fantasies) and the erection is more vigorous and all the process of masturbation is strongly addictive. If the masturbatory fantasies of a guy are directed towards other guys  we use to say that masturbation is gay oriented, if masturbatory fantasies are directed towards girls we use to say that masturbation is hetero oriented. When the masturbatory fantasies are really spontaneous, they represent the fundamental indicator of sexual orientation: a guy who masturbates in an exclusive and consistent way with gay fantasies is to be considered a gay guy.

Now we go further with exemplification.

The same guy that we talked about before, listening to his mates about masturbation becomes aware that they experience something similar to his own experience in the physical aspect but different with regard to the masturbatory fantasies, and realizes that his mates, during masturbation, don’t focus attention on other guys but on girls. Back home, the guy tries to masturbate focusing on a girl, that is, using the same masturbatory fantasies used by his mates, but those fantasies do not produce results and are on the contrary experienced as something alien and not really exciting. The guy then comes back to masturbation fantasies focused on his mates and the physical response is rapid and convincing.

Let’s analyze the example.

This is the first perception, by a gay guy, of the fact that his sexuality is not similar to that of other guys. The thing in itself would not cause any problem, but the guy, speaking with his mates, becomes aware, with a growing awareness, that his sexuality is considered by his mates as an object of ridicule and as something quite offensive to joke about and begins to connect to his sexual orientation words like gay, fag, queer, fagot and so on, that people use as an insult. This way the guy perceives for the first time the discomfort of being gay, which is not caused by the fact of having a sexuality different from that of the other guys but by the contempt shown by other guys.

But let us proceed with the examples.

The guy that we talked about in the previous examples starts to feel the presence of the guy who is the object of his masturbatory fantasies as something very pleasant, he is happy while being beside that guy, talks to him for as long as possible, appreciates his voice, his physical presence and smile and tends to create a relationship with him. At first that relationship seems to have the typical characteristics of friendship but really differs from friendship because that guy is also the subject of masturbatory fantasies.

All the process described above represents a typical gay love affair, in which there are two components: one affective, which consists in creating a relationship of proximity and affection with the other guy, and the other strictly sexual, which consists in being sexually involved by the other guy assuming him as object of masturbatory fantasies.

For the other guys, who leave similar experiences, but oriented towards girls, the natural outcome of being in love is the declaration of love to the girl they love, that statement is usually taken by the girls like something  however flattering. The gay guy understands on the contrary that, for him, declaring his love for another guy carries the risk of being identified as gay and thus being branded with offensive epithets by his mates and also by the guy he is in love with. In essence, the gay guy realizes that he’s a gay guy in a group of guys who have a different sexual orientation and concludes instinctively, that not to be labeled as gay by his mates, he has to pretend to be straight.

So far we have presented a very simple model of getting aware of being gay applied to a 12 year old gay. In reality, this scheme can be complicated by many disruptive factors. Let us therefore examine the most important factors that interfere with the awareness of homosexuality. Consider an example.

A guy 11/12 year old is involved in sexual games with a girl slightly older than him, his first erections are not really spontaneous but are induced by the interplay of sexual manipulation by the girl, which is especially rewarding because allows the preadolescent to perceive himself like a man. The guy will repeat on his own the handling of the penis and will arrive at the discovery of masturbation and, at least apparently, his masturbatory fantasies will be oriented toward girls, but in this case during the masturbation the spontaneous sexuality cannot emerge just because the first erections are not spontaneous but are induced by a girl through explicit sexual advances (the manipulation of the penis or the intimate caresses). The sexual imprinting , that is the first real sexual or para-sexual experience, in this case, has been experienced by the guy “in a straight atmosphere” due to external elements (the girl) and thus was not the result of the sexual spontaneity of the guy, but nevertheless such sexual experiences are not superficial. The hetero imprinting can induce quite easily masturbation fantasies related to the imprinting, i.e. hetero fantasies, rather than to spontaneous sexuality. Following an hetero imprinting, even a guy who, if he could spontaneously develop his own sexuality, would manifest a gay sexuality, can present  a straight masturbation for years. Gay guys sooner or later come certainly out of the constraints that derive from the hetero imprinting because in the long time spontaneous sexuality comes always afloat.

Much more complicated and problematic is the situation of guys who have been subjected to violence or sexual abuse. I would simply point out that sexual abuse can leave on anyone who has suffered it very heavy consequences, particularly if it was committed with physical or psychological violence or by a close family member.

Let us consider now much more common disturbing elements that can interfere with the process of getting aware of being gay. We start here with an example.

An 8 year old guy is part of a larger group of friends and hears them speak with great interest about pornography on the Internet. For him, 8 years old, genital sexuality is still something to come, but he is induced by what he heard to go and see what it is. In this way, the guy discovers pornography, which means, in the vast majority of cases, heterosexual pornography, before having sexual maturity to understand the real meaning of sexuality. In this way, the guy gets a form of pre-orientation toward sexuality almost always towards heterosexuality, which tends to stabilize the guy because using pornography he feels integrated with the group of older guys. Over the years the tendency to imitate the sexuality of the older guys leads that guy to the discovery of masturbation that takes place in a straight atmosphere and therefore manifests a heterosexual orientation. This not spontaneous hetero orientation, precisely induced by the described mechanism, just because it is not spontaneous, may not coincide with the deep sexual orientation and therefore, also in this case a young guy with an exclusive hetero masturbation may be, with the passing of time, having to deal with the subsequent emergence of a spontaneous gay sexuality.

We come now to another important point, namely the education that a guy receives about sexuality, and as usual we consider a concrete case.

A guy has been accustomed from childhood to attend Catholic circles, typically the parish. In that environment he feels comfortable, the family has confidence in the priests and is happy that the child attends that environment because even the parents grew up in that environment and feel it as safe and suitable for the growth of the child. Gradually, from childhood on, that guy has assimilated the values ​​typical of a Catholic environment that are related to the idea of ​​family (father, mother and children), seen as the center of the life of an individual. This model does not create any problem to the guy before his first contact with sex life and indeed is regarded as quite natural because, before discovering sexuality, a guy identifies himself only in the role of child and not in a possible role of father. But there are also other things to take in account, a guy, before discovering sexuality considers as natural the idea that sexuality, which he still does not know concretely, is aimed exclusively to the procreation and that any other use of sexuality is wrong. When the guy discovers masturbation and the horizon of real sexuality, he is brought automatically to suppress the new feelings and to feel guilty about the fact of not being able to do without what he believes to be absolutely to avoid. Up to this point the conditioning of sexuality operated by the religion is practically the same for both gay and straight guys, but for gay guys there are also other problems. In religious circles in general people tend to take for granted that all the guys are heterosexual and the existence of homosexuality is considered as a manifestation of disease and sin. The priests who care for older kids only talk about relationships between guys and girls and these behaviors lead gay guys to stay as far as possible away from homosexuality, considered like a very serious sin but avoidable. Let us pause to reflect on the situation we have just described.

The Catholic Church considers heterosexuality as the only natural form of sexuality and considers homosexuality as a pathological tendency, something against nature, which must be repressed. The Church considers a grave sin every homosexual act, that is, all forms of sexuality shared with someone of the same sex and also considers masturbation a grave sin. The World Health Organization has recognized for several decades homosexuality as a “normal ” (i.e. non-pathological) variant of the human sexuality and homosexuals has been recognized in many states the right to join together to form a family, a family formed by same-sex partners,  in some states, it is also granted to homosexual couples the right to adopt children exactly as it is granted to heterosexual couples. The same World Health Organization has explicitly acknowledged the value of masturbation not only as a fundamental element for the formation of sexuality in adolescence but as a positive element that produces pleasure, accompanies the entire sexual life of an individual and also involves married man and women, who clearly have also a sexual life as a couple. The World Health Organization has included education to masturbation as part of sex therapy aimed at the well-being of the person as an individual and as part of a couple.

The teachings of the Catholic Church in matters related to sexuality and especially homosexuality and masturbation, are not only not universally shared but are completely incompatible with what the scientific community says about the same subjects.

Sexuality education in accordance with the dictates of the Catholic Church or other religious groups with similar attitudes, promotes feelings of guilt and leads to the repression of sexuality and especially homosexuality, which is seen only in the dimension of sin and not as a natural and spontaneous behavior.

What are the consequences of all this for a homosexual guy? The guy tries to force himself toward heterosexuality and considers homosexuality as a vice to be eradicated, seeks to create a relationship with a girl that can reassure him by giving him the illusion that his homosexuality will disappear if he will be able to resist temptation particularly avoiding masturbation, so in fact the feeling towards a girl will grow “pure” that is not tainted by sex. In repressing masturbation, which would inevitably be gay oriented, and in building a relationship with a girl chastely, that is, without any trace of sexuality, the guy sees a merit, a victory over himself and the sign that his “heterosexuality” is true love and not vice because it is not contaminated by masturbation. In fact the apparent “pure” falling in love with a girl is not really falling in love because is missing entirely any sexual involvement. That apparent falling in love allows the guy to pretend to be straight, relegating homosexuality to the rank of marginal vice that will pass easily, over the years, when he will go to the wedding. It is in essence a problem of removal of homosexuality that is denied and minimized. In some cases, starting with these concepts, when the first attempts to couple sexuality with a girl are successful, the guy can get easily even at the wedding.

The expression “sexual imprinting”, in the strict sense, is used to denote the first sexual or para-sexual experience (nudity, physical contact) that induces, through sexual arousal, the initial orientation of masturbation towards guys or girls. It is quite common to speak of sexual imprinting also about the discovery of pornography and even about the educational pressures. While the discovery of pornography, particularly if very early, can effectively determine the initial orientation of masturbation, and therefore can constitute a real sexual imprinting, the educational pressures act mainly through deterrence. In general, the removal of homosexuality as a result of education does not lead a gay guy to hetero masturbation but to abstinence from masturbation, in this case we can speak of sexual imprinting only in very general terms.

Here it should be clarified that as a guy who lives a straight imprinting can masturbate, for a period of time at least, with heterosexual fantasies, even if he is not straight, so a gay guy, in situations of particular emotional involvement, can have a sexual intercourse with a woman. It should be borne in mind that the true sexual orientation is the “spontaneous” sexual orientation of a person, therefore a guy is gay if, without any conditioning, his sexuality is focused on guys, and similarly a guy is straight if, without any conditioning, his sexuality is focused on girls, but that does not mean that a gay guy, that is a guy who, without any conditioning, focuses his sexuality on guys , cannot, under specific conditions, i.e. with strong constraints, respond to heterosexual stimulation. Similarly, a straight guy, who is spontaneously led to a hetero sexuality, in some particular situations, may also respond to homosexual stimulation. It is precisely for this reason that, in the presence of strong environmental constraints, when the orientation of masturbation does not coincide with that of couple sexuality, the true sexual orientation is what emerges from masturbation because during masturbation the weight of the constraints is enormously less and there  is no expectation to satisfy on the part of the partner. The fantasies that accompany masturbation are, for these very reasons, the fundamental index of sexual orientation.

It should be noted that, given that 92% of the population is composed of heterosexuals, environmental pressures that push toward heterosexuality are very strong, while those that push towards homosexuality are virtually nil. That’s why there are many gays who have problems, even for long periods, about their being gay, while it is very rare to find a straight guy who has problems about is being hetero.

About 30% of the guys who end up recognizing themselves exclusively gay have had before periods in which they considered themselves to be heterosexuals and some of them, and not a few, also had sex with a girl and also with more than just one. Those guys are not heterosexuals who have become homosexuals but they are homosexuals who have been induced to pretend to be heterosexuals by environmental pressures or by an education for nothing respectful of sexual spontaneity and typically have lived long and troubled periods of uncertainty about their sexual orientation. It is significant that most of these guys, even when they have a girlfriend and have sex with girls, continues to practice masturbation with gay fantasies.

Let us now deal with elements that can appear but are not indicators of sexual orientation. Let’s consider an example.

A 11 year old guy goes for swimming and compares his penis with that of his peers. In this case it is true that there is an interest in the penis of other guys but it should be clear that for the guy this is only an element of comparison for assessing his own sexual maturation in relation to that of other guys, the same is true when considering physical development, height or strength in relation to the similar characteristics of other guys. All this has nothing to do with homosexuality.

Let’s move on to another situation which is incorrectly related to sexual orientation or gender identity, that is the feeling of being a man or woman. A child about 5 or 6 year old sometimes puts on mum’s shoes, plays with dolls with girls and not at soldiers with his male mates, is at ease with the girls better than with his male mates, does not like to play football and so on.

Such situations are not indicators of sexual orientation or gender identity (feeling of being male or female) but can sometimes express forms of discomfort to integrate into the peer group, often caused by a very rigid education or simply by shyness. Adults should avoid to negatively emphasize these behaviors with attitudes amazed or worried that can really cause insecurities that are likely to remain unexpressed and unresolved.

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