My brother's former roommate is a sad case. We're gonna launch right in here. He'd been blowing guys since the age of 12, but as he got older he started to have thoughts that he might actually be straight. His parents had already basically disowned him so he had nobody to talk to about that, and his boyfriends would, as he once said, just give him pills and things to smoke until he felt better and the doubt and questions went away.
As my brother tells me, one day he comes home to find Keith had blown his head open with a .50 AE handgun, he was in the presence of an image of his father and clutching a piece of paper that showed he was HIV positive. Seems like all the suicide note he needed.
All in all it's a tragedy of the worst kind that can happen to anyone. He experimented in his youth (like many folks do) but somehow those preying on the child had him convinced he was gay just because of said experimentalism. He "came out" to his parents at the age of 13, and they basically eventually disowned him, and he spent the rest of his life searching for a childhood that had been frankly stolen from him.
Creepy child molestors. Also a society so "tolerant" that it seems to look the other way when people find out "at a young age" they're gay when frankly at their age they're still learning and it's horrible to declare oneself ANYTHING at that age. You'd think society would have learned when it was the other way, and gay people were declaring themselves straight at far too young an age to know for sure. Then 20 years later come spinning out of the closet, selfishly destroying the family they'd built on their lie. "Tolerance" means giving kids some fucking room to figure out life. But you know what else is important? The character to point out that a 12 year old shouldn't be sticking his dick in anything, much less something three times his age.
And then the two other big parts; how rather than face their problems people medicate them away. Had Keith been actually able to seek help for his problems he might have matured into.. whatever sort of man he wanted to be. His super-fundamentalist parents were useless in that regard; they shoulda spent less time worshiping their church and more time talking to their God. The people he did talk to, though? The chickenhawk "boyfriends"? Of course they wouldn't help him honestly explore his sexuality. If he ended up straight, then they wouldn't get to fuck the pretty little blonde kid anymore; and Keith simply didn't know anyone else to turn to. All he ever got were super religious sorts who wanted to pray him to heterosexuality but condemned him harshly, or therapists who maddeningly kept miminimizng his doubts and trying to prevent him from going "back into the closet".
Then there's the final part: sex education. Maybe if he knew how safe sex worked he wouldn't have killed himself at the age of 19 finding out he was dying from advanced infection he apparently got 4-6 years earlier.
Now I.. won't get into my feelings on teenagers and sexual play right now, but one thing is for sure. I want teenagers to be able to SAFELY play and explore, without asshole adults touching them, telling them they're evil for being gay, or even locking them into homosexuality at an early age. That last part is just as evil as the first two. Our society is far too eager to cheer for a preteen/early teen who declares himself homosexual. At that age nobody on the face of the earth has ever known jackshit about how the world or even their own emotions work. my brother and I are of genius intellect and always were, and we had no clue. None.
If a twelve year old tells you he thinks he's gay, you should treat it exactly as if he told you he wanted to be an astronaut. Answer his questions but keep your fucking activism to yourself. Children are impressionable, and they need FACTS, not bullshit.
And frankly, the "facts" are that gay people tend to end up extremely fucked up. I'm gonna get some guff for that but.. there are folks who say 10% of the society is homosexual. That sounds high but.. fine. If 10% of the population is gay; I get the feeling that for 92% of those people it is a symptom of a greater problem rather than an actual orientation.
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I would like to add that parents shouldn't encourage their children to "experiment and explore" as you put it. They should encourage their children to be children, and teach them that they have an entire lifetime to explore after they're married. Children should have fun and do childish things while they still can. Who wants to worry about boys/girls until they have to? The reason of dating is to find someone to marry and if you're not going to be married until you're an adult why bother wasting yourself on people you're never going to marry? People change so much once they become adults that I wouldn't take any relationship seriously until you reach age 20 or so, so why bother before then? Kids will be adults soon enough, dragging themselves into a job they hate every day just to make enough money to pay the bills on the house/apartment they have that they have to maintain, upkeep, and clean all by themselves. With all that eventual stress why make it worse for them by forcing them into even more stress at a younger age by making them have to obsess over other people? As teenagers they should use their free time (which is considerable compared to the amount they'll have once they're adults) to focus on bettering their future. Saving money, gaining education, practicing whatever they need to do do better in the world once they're adults, or just having fun. Playing video games, reading, taking walks, camping, fishing, whatever. I love angst, but why waste your teen years angsting over boys/girls when you know you'll spend your adulthood doing so? And parents should be the ones to teach and show their kids this. My mom did for me and I happily spend my teen years preparing for my future and lazing about reading. I'm glad I didn't have to worry about boys. I knew once I was an adult and on my career path I'd stumble across some guy and that would be that. And hey, that's just how it happened and I have all my happy stress-free teen years to remember and nothing (except for one boy I had an online relationship with for a few years and I regret every second of that and hate myself for basically destroying my future because now I'm 24, yet the way I envisioned my lifetime acheivements based on age puts me at 21) that I regret because, hey, I didn't feel the need to tear off chunks of myself to feed the wolves until there was nothing left but a shallow husk of a used body who had nothing special to offer anyone. And I thank my mom for this because she taught me well. I knew that like everything else in life you have to wait until the right time. 16 is the min for a driver's license, 18's the min for being an adult and gambling and smoking, 21's the min for alcahol and some other thing I forget, and these sorts of rules are in place because of people who came before us who lived their lives and made their mistakes so that we wouldn't have to. If my mom tells me it's best to enjoy beind a child before you become an adult who am I to not listen to her? She was right, wasn't she? Didn't I try to tell Emily to enjoy childhood and not try to grow up so fast and not to rush into having a job? Didn't I know from experience in that regard? Why make the sacrifices and mistakes of our elders mean nothing by repeating them? Being a good parent is everything. If you can, be a good role model, if you've lived a life you wouldn't want your children to live then explain to them why your choices were wrong. Before you act, think to yourself, "Would I want to confess this to my children and hope they don't follow in my footsteps? Would I want to confess this to my grandma and hope she doesn't break down crying because all her teachings were for naught?" Anyway, point is, parents should teach their kids the definition of "shame" and that there's more to life than sex.
ReplyDeleteTo the commenter who posted here:
ReplyDeleteSpeak with respect and tolerance or you are not welcome here.
A difference in opinion has nothing to do with level of intellect. I don't think less of the commenter's intelligence for differing opinion, but his need to resort instantly to ad hominem attacks? That casts doubt.
ReplyDeleteIf you wish to be treated as an intelligent adult, act like one.
I was merely pointing out how unsavoury it is for someone to disparage an entire group of people based on a few events that don't even have anything to do with that group of people. You want an ad hominem attack? You only have to read this entry to see all gay people (or at least 90 percent) were compared to child molesters and the mentally disabled. But I suppose that point was lost on you. I never expected to be treated as an intelligent adult here, based on the unapologetic ignorance that was posted. People such as the above are akin to Nazi geneticists claiming how superior white people are to other races. The writer spoke of tolerance, but didn't see a single note of it in his post. You speak of respect, but did you find any for the gay community above? I couldn't.
ReplyDeleteYou need to work on your reading comprehension. I clearly stated that I believe that teenagers should be left free to experiment without adult intervention beyond teaching safe sex rules. My entire premise was that nobody's teen years should be considered to lock them into any sexuality. You hear far too often how a potentially homosexual teen kills himself due to confusion and society (rightly) thinks it is sad.
ReplyDeleteSomeone tells one single story of a straight kid locked into a gay world, however, and people flip out and assume the person relating the story is homophobic for doing so. You're not the first and you won;t be the last, but I'll try to talk to you like an adult anyway. The thing is, that is equality, mistakes are made by everyone. Society is, in fact, too tolerant of sexualizing teenagers as if they were already adults.
As to the other points, Out magazine in October 2003 published results of their own informal survey that 23% of all polled homosexual males had experiences with older men before they were of legal age. Over practically the next year the letters to the editor section exploded because of that. This sentiment has been repeated several times in my experience, however that is anecdotal and lacks bibliographical evidence, so not valid here. The chickenhawk problem is _nowhere_ near as bad as the truly intolerant would have you believe; but to deny that it is a significant problem is to cherry pick facts blindly to support your agenda.
Regarding geniuses, point was that at 13, even geniuses don't know jack about emotions or their own views on love. if you think you weren't an idiot at the age of 13, then you've yet to mature beyond that age.