| Yawning
Bread. 4 March 2009 What really happens when gay boys get intimate with men
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This subject is usually shrouded in myth and moral disapproval. The taboo
surrounding it is so great that even enquiry into it is met with
resistance. "You're promoting paedophilia" is the accusation
immediately hurled at anyone who questions prevailing beliefs.
That taboo has led to a situation where the general public really don't know very much about the subject. They think they know, but that is little more than extrapolation from their beliefs about what happens when adult heterosexual men have sex with underaged girls. I'm not even sure whether those beliefs (about men and young girls) are grounded in evidence, but they take the form, again, of disapproval, wrapped up in images of seduction, exploitation, loss of innocence and unwanted pregnancies. The girls are seen as damaged. The men viewed as predators. In the absence of any real information whatsoever about sexual relationships between gay teenagers and gay men, people assume that such encounters are analogous to men-girl relationships. On top of that, there is widespread panic that boys will be turned gay as a result of the seduction. Fear of evil meets fear of contagion. Not only is this belief contradicted by the rapidly accumulating scientific evidence about the biological origins of sexual orientation, there has never been any convincing body of anecdotal reports that support seduction-as-conversion. But no matter. The panic is too good to allow it to be contradicted by reason. All this might be funny if not for the fact that public policy is built upon this foundation of ignorance. The police, the courts, school teachers, etc, have to deal, from time to time, with cases of age-discrepant sexual contact, involving gay boys. What value is their response if they don't even know the first thing about such situations?
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The Bruce Rind study
There is an interesting study by Bruce Rind, a professor of psychology, published in 2001 [1]. He re-analysed data collected in an earlier research work by Savin-Williams (1997), a Cornell University psychologist, who had set out to examine gay/bisexual identity development in young adult gay and bisexual males. For the objectives of the earlier study, Savin-Williams had two samples. Sample 1 had 43 male subjects while Sample 2 had 86. Both samples comprised mostly college students recruited from Cornell University, other colleges in the area, bars, bookstores and through advertisements. They were majority White with a mix of religions (over one-third said they had no religion). Their ages ranged from 17 to 25. In their study, Savin-Williams had obtained details of the subjects' childhood and adolescent sexual experiences, data which Rind found useful. Out of Samples 1 and 2, Rind could identify 26 subjects who reported having had age-discrepant sexual relationships (ADSR). An ADSR was defined as "a sexual encounter or relationship involving at least genital contact between a gay or bisexual boy aged less than 18 with a man aged at least 18 and at least 5 years older than the boy." Rind reported that "no statistically significant differences emerged [when comparing] ADSR and control subjects in their demographics." For example, sexual orientation:
The reported encounters varied considerably, from those with strangers to those with friends. About two-thirds of the relationships involved multiple sexual contacts.
Rind reported that:
The boys - puberty and awareness
Rind pointed out that this finding contradicts the myth that boys become gay after being seduced. The subjects in this study were already aware of their sexual interest; in fact it was because of that sexual interest that they sought sex. They didn't feel they were seduced; see next section. The study asked what level of consent they gave to their ADSR experience, offering 5 levels to choose from: Forced; Obligated; Acquiesced; Mutually consented and Encouraged. None of the respondents reported being forced or obligated to do it.
Rind noted that younger boys were just as consenting as older boys, and that "contrary to age difference posing a problem for the boys, their willingness and interest in participating in sexual relations increased as the difference in ages between them and the men increased, and as the ages of their partners increased." A large majority -- 77% -- considered the experience positive or very positive. 15% rated it negative or very negative.
Rind reported that "Positivity of reactions increased with a greater degree of familiarity with the men, multiple as opposed to single sexual encounters... and greater willingness and interest in participation." There was another interesting observation: Younger boys did not react more negatively (or less positively) than older ones. "One 12-year-old said he 'practically had to force sex' on the man, which he thought was great when if finally occurred.... A 13-year-old, who had a sexual relationship with his adult brother, said he liked it and wanted to do it again and again." Reading the above, I wondered whether the older brother was gay or straight and what effect all this pestering had on him. Alas, the report doesn't say. "Another 13-year-old was glad to have engaged in mutual masturbation with a man he met in a shopping mall, and tried unsuccessfully to meet the man again for a repeat." On the whole their narratives contradict the popular image of "a frightened child, powerless to resist, coerced into a traumatizing sex act," Rind pointed out. Were these boys psychologically damaged by their experiences? You can guess from the above that they were not. However, there are objective measures of psychological health, one of which is the Rosenberg self-esteem rating, with a 30-point scale (30 representing highest self-esteem).
Rind concluded that there was no significant difference between the boys
who had ADSR experiences and those who did not. All of them were quite
well adjusted. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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