Gay Teens Coming Out in the New York Times

The September 27th 2009 New York Times Magazine section had an interesting article entitled "Coming Out in Middle School" by Benoit Denizet-Lewis. [I believe he's the same guy who wrote the piece about young gay couples a few months ago, the one with the weird photos that made the guys sort of look like Stepford Wives.]

According to this piece young people are coming out earlier and earlier these days, at 13, 14 or 15. These are not even high schoolers, but junior high schoolers. Most of the boys at that age identify as gay; many of the girls as bisexual. [Are there no lesbians anymore? Of course there are!]

A good point is made that it's offensive to ask a gay kid if he's sure he's gay when nobody ever asks a young person who identifies as straight if they're sure they're straight. No one tells straight-identified kids that they're just going through a phase, so why should anyone say it to gay kids?

Now it was awhile ago -- don't laugh, and you know who you are! -- but I recall having an attraction to men not long after reaching puberty, although by no means did I identify as gay. That didn't happen until I was in my early twenties.

I rigidly repressed my attraction to men all through high school and through most of college. I did not have sexual fantasies about any of my college roommates. It wasn't until I was 19 or 20 that I got a full-fledged "crush" on another male classmate. [Joey, what ever became of ye? He was a hot little guy. What is there about hot little guys?]

If these kids can avoid all the angst and drama and have a secure sexual identity when they're younger, so much the better. And for those who ask if they're "boxing themselves in" with a gay identity, what's the problem if they are? What's wrong with a gay identity? What's wrong with being gay? [Frankly I've had enough of this "sexual fluidity" bullshit.]

According to this article, some of these kids knew they were attracted to their own sex as early as age ten! Now I have on occasion met gay men who say they knew they had homosexual feelings as early as nine or ten, but it does seem a little remarkable as most people don't reach puberty until 12 or 13. Perhaps the "attraction" they felt wasn't exactly sexual in nature -- until the hormones kicked in. As for me, who remembers that far back?

As for the "how do you know you're really gay if you don't try it with women?" -- well, just try saying that in reverse. I tried it with women, and it was no big deal. Definitely not my cup of java. And please don't send me emails insisting I'm really bisexual just because I fucked a few women in my younger days. It certainly doesn't make me more of a man than gay guys who've never slept with a gal. But in our macho American society if you don't fuck women you ain't a stud, which is why so many guys who are -- if they're honest with themselves -- gay keep insisting that they're bi. Get real!

The article was hopeful in many ways. For instance: "Many parents just don't assume anymore that their kids will have a sad, difficult life just because they're gay."

And: "This is the first generation of gay kids who have the great joy of being able to argue with their parents about dating, just like their straight peers do."

Now, more than ever, self-hating homos just seem so ludicrously out of date.

Asexuals United! -- Give Me a Break!

or NO SEX PLEASE -- WE'RE GLBTA!

You may or may not have noticed how some GLBT bloggers are adding "asexuals" to the list of oppressed minorities (Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender). If you have any sense at all, you're probably going "what the fuck?" [Or perhaps "what the no-fuck" might be more appropriate.] Salon and The New York Times both did articles on the (small) number of people who are identifying as asexual and who claim that, like gay or straight, it is an orientation.

No, I'm not making this up!

It's almost becoming -- hell it has become--comical the way that groups are stealing the language of gay liberation -- "asexual and proud" like hell! -- and appropriating it for their own pathetic purposes. Of course, some dim bulbs in the GLBT movement are perfectly happy to let them do it. As I've said before, some well-meaning but intellectually challenged individuals are loathe to discriminate against anyone who might be "oppressed," so they''ll add just about any group imaginable to GLBT (thank goodness that does not extend to pedophiles or bestialists, but in the future, who knows?)

Asexuality has different meanings but for our purposes it refers to people who have no sexual attraction for anyone, male or female. Naturally they have no sex lives, or if they do, don't get any pleasure out of them. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't an orientation -- it's a disability and it does no one -- least of all the asexuals who are missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures -- any good to pretend otherwise.

Frankly, as a gay man I find it deeply offensive to have these "asexuals" comparing themselves to gay people. Sex is the big bugaboo in our society, not a lack of it. I don't know of anyone being beaten to death because they were asexual, or being fired from their job because of it, or any really negative societal response except maybe laughter, pity, or disbelief. The fact that homosexuality was once seen as a mental or medical disorder doesn't change my mind one bit. Homosexuality is not a disability; asexuality is.

David Jay (pictured) founded a group for asexuals called Aven when he was all of 19. Many people don't know if they're gay, straight, bi or what-have-you at 19, but Jay has identified as an asexual for the past four years. Even people at 23 or (much) older often haven't determined exactly where they are on the sexual scale, so it seems a mite premature of Jay to classify himself as anything. But the asexual movement -- pause for a big guffaw right here -- is just the kind of stupid thing that an immature mind would conceive of and post on the Internet.

There are different reports as to the number of members in AVEN, everything from 100 (which seems reasonable) to 4000 (which is pathetic). I've no doubt that a lot of sad, sexless people who for one (bad) reason or another have zero sex drive have happily signed up with the group to validate their dysfunctional lives. Some of them may be people who couldn't get laid if they showed up in hooker heaven with a pile of thousand dollar bills in their fists. Many therapists [unless they're politically over-correct assholes] agree that these are people who need therapy and counseling, not to be told that their asexuality is just another "orientation."

Comments that Jay makes to reporters make it clear that he has a very negative attitude toward sex, which is either the cause or result of his "asexuality." He literally doesn't seem to understand what it is that he's missing.

It's appalling that some GLBT people would take the asexual movement seriously. Again, I can only assume its very young or at least very immature people who have no real sense of the long-time gay movement, the struggles before and after Stonewall (and still on-going) and really don't understand why comparing asexuals to homosexuals is blatantly ludicrous, inaccurate, and even, as I said, offensive.

And there's something else that's troubling about this. In a New York Times piece written by Mary Duenwald, she writes about a 32-year-old man who got married hoping that it would "fix" his asexuality. Unfortunately, it only resulted in divorce. Duenwald then writes: "now he is living with a younger man in a relationship that he described as loving and romantic but free of sex."

Frankly, this guy sounds more like someone who's gay and in denial, someone who desires men sexually but is too hung up for whatever reason to act upon it, then a genuine (if there is such a thing) "asexual." [Asexual may merely be the opposite of bisexual and just as trendy, if not yet as political.]

And how many more of the men and women attracted to AVEN are in this category, how many more will fall victim to Jay's childishness and irresponsibility. Even if one believes that some people are "oriented" to be asexual (that's like not liking food, as one therapist puts it), it doesn't mean that many people who classify themselves as such don't need counseling and sex therapy and help of some kind to discover why there is this abnormal gap in their psycho-sexual make up. GLBT activists should not and hopefully most will not enable these people in their delusion.

Sure, there may be people who are not sexually active and may be happy in spite of it. You can be deaf and blind and still be happy -- but you're still disabled. Just like deaf people who refuse to get cochlear impants, "asexuals" have the right to refuse treatment or advice. But they are not an oppressed minority group, and I believe -- despite all the pc fools out there -- if they continue to insist that they are it will only backfire on them.

Now I'm going to have some safe sex. The rest of you -- jerk off!

Stepford Husbands at the New York Times

A couple of weeks ago [4/27/08] The New York Times ran an article in their Sunday magazine section about gay men in their twenties who are getting married ["The Newlywed Gays!"], contrasting them to gay men years ago who --while they may have entered into long-term relationships -- weren't neccessarily interested in the whole white picket fence, monogamy, supposedly straight boilerplate marriage contract business (not that straight marrieds are necessarily monogamous! I'll have more on this whole business in a future post.)

Looking at the somewhat grotesgue cover (pictured) I didn't expect much from the article; the supposedly liberal Times has published some surprisingly homophobic stuff in the past. However, I actually thought the article -- written by a Benoit Denizet-Lewis (I swear) -- was rather good and interesting (with some reservations), but I could have done without the idiotic photographs that accompanied it. Although the piece and some of the men interviewed tried to debunk a few gay stereotypes -- such as the stupid notion that in a gay male marriage one man is the "husband" and the other is the "wife" -- the kitschy, silly photos seemed to be trying to undermine it all (and I don't care if the photograher, Erwin Olaf, or the prop stylist, Jeffrey W. Miller, may be gay or not; I have no idea). The photographs seemed to be mocking the very men who were profiled in the article, making them seem like dizzy, infantile clones -- the unbelievably old-fashioned image of gay men as backward children. The poses were ridiculous. In a photo inside the magazine one poor guy was made up to resemble some kind of Stepford Wife (no, he wasn't in drag; again it was the pose).

It just seems that when it comes to gay men some people just can't get past the "camp," silly "fashionable" gay-men-are-boys (or, worse, girls) aspect no matter how many butch bears come out of the closet.

There were some aspects of the article itself that gave me pause as well. [I started my Ask Gay Dr. Bill online column for the very purpose of countering the dumb things said and written about gay people even by other gay people.] Deniset-Lewis writes that "like most gay men my age and older" he grew up thinking "happy gay men in a long-term relationship is an oxymoron." Why on earth should he think this when there have always been long-term gay couples, even in pre-Stonewall days and certainly after? The only conclusion I can reach is that he assumes just because he's had trouble maintaining a solid relationship that all gay men must be having the same problem.

Which says more about him than it says about gay men.