insight about gender atypical behavior

[meridannight]

i'm reading a book by Richard A. Isay, called Being Homosexual -- Gay Men and Their Development. the author is a psychoanalyst. i've never really been interested in the subject, and not sure how much i buy it all, but i started reading him because he writes on gay men, and he makes a lot of sense with a lot things.

there's this interesting idea that he put forth, namely that some homosexual children will take on characteristics of their mothers (i.e. feminine traits) in order to attract their fathers. whether you believe we are attracted to the parental figure of our preferred sex as children or not, is beside the point. assuming we are (and in my own case i'd have to say it was true), the way Isay argues gave me a new point of view on this. the logic here is that the child wants his father's (or whoever the father figure is) attention and emulates his mother in order to get it. and that some of the childhood gender atypical behavior and traits have this root to them.

i didn't have this. but i had it in exact reverse, in fact. i did want the attention and company of men as a kid, i remember that very clearly. i yearned for that attention and loved interaction with men. i also had sexual/erotic feelings towards men ever since i was five. but in my case it was the reverse, how i went about achieving the attention/company of men.

i grew up in an environment where there was a lot of camaraderie between men, and male friendships stood out in that environment. that was the ideal to me from the start, that interaction between men. and in my case, i was aware that when i was being my young boyish self there was something in the way men looked at me that felt rewarding to me. it was like a light had gone on in their eyes, and i loved it... i still remember all of that to this day. and once i figured that out, that men loved me acting like a boy, that strongly reinforced the traditional masculine behavior in me.

at the same time, i don't think i could ever have become anything other than what i am, environment this or environment that. but when i look back on it in this perspective, it makes a lot of sense. i was simultaneously also aware that feminine behavior and traits were unrewarded, maybe i suppressed some type of behavior in me as a result of that, i will never know. but this fact that i wanted the company and attention of men from an early age, and that i felt rewarded when i acted masculine, this is something i realize i did back then, that i didn't really consciously admit to myself when i was doing it.

now, Isay doesn't claim that this gender atypical behavior (if it's there) lasts beyond childhood years. he actually mentions that as the boy enters adolescence he usually forgoes these tendencies as peer influence starts to dominate over the parental.

this isn't a thread trying to qualify or explain feminine/masculine behavior and traits in men. my opinion on this subject is known, and i am not trying to make any judgment with this. i was just reading this book, and this one chapter was very interesting, and i wanted to post this insight here. it might make sense to someone else, or maybe you have experience that agrees/disagrees with this speculation.

it does make sense to me in my own case, albeit in reverse. at least i realize some things about my childhood that i didn't think about before at all.

[Emiliano]

Its an interesting insight that you post. I think my own childhood experiences are more like yours than what the author you mention described as gay men taking on feminine traits as a way of attracting the attention of their fathers. I was very close with my dad and I followed him around everywhere and mirrored his behavior. I definitely grew up in a neighborhood where the masculine was praised and rewarded too. I like glitter and I find people who blur gender lines, or how different cultures and different times defined gender interesting, but overall I consider myself a very masculine man. Maybe that is shaped by my early childhood interactions. Certainly after my father died, my family treated me as the man of the house so to speak, so its a role I think I grew further into as I got older. Its interesting though.

Have you ever read Androphilia by Jack Donovan?

It seems like something you might be interested in too. He basically puts forth the idea that male homosexuality is an expression of hyper masculinity that over time has been more or less manipulated to be less threatening, less sexualized, and thus inferior or submissive to heterosexual masculinity.

Its been a while since I read it, but I think his main idea about atypical gender behavior in gay men is a result of the way gay men are represented in the broader culture:

Typical jobs associated with gay men would be the arts, entertainment, fashion, rather than seeing them in more powerful or physical roles. (I guess it would be a whole other topic of discussing why historically and across many cultures gay men are drawn or are more likely to be accepted in such positions). But we see more representations of effeminate gay men than masculine men. He argues that because a young gay boy feels outside of the broader straight society, when he sees those limited representations of what it means to be gay, he adapts those group signifiers as way of finally feeling part of a community larger than himself.

So rather than wearing a certain brand of shoes or carrying a certain type of bag like other kids might do to identify themselves as part of a certain group, he would adapt the gay voice or a limp wrist, or be more likely to discuss certain topics over others - as a way of asserting his identity to others, and again, to further identify himself in his mind as a member of that group.

Anyway, that whole book is basically about recreating the gay identity to be the hyper masculine, sexually powerful thing it once was. Its interesting to read at least, but I also don't think that there is anything wrong with a man who isn't super masculine or even a little bit masculine. He seems to be throwing them under the bus a little bit, or portraying masculine gay men as being more self aware, less influenced by society than effeminate gay men. In general, i think its important to broaden representation, not limit it to one thing or the other.

But overall, its fascinating to think about the different things that shape who we are and how we act. I think we would all like to think we are individuals and are the primary influence on ourselves and are true to our authentic selves... but I dont think we should ever underestimate the power outside forces have on shaping who we are as well.

[meridannight]

[MENTION=21558]Emiliano[/MENTION],

i hadn't heard of that book but it does sound like something i'd be interested to read.

it's interesting that you bring this up, because i have always thought that men's attraction to other men was a masculine trait/expression, not a feminine one (as it's stereotypically made out to be in our time). this is a point of view that seems to have also been present in the ancient Greece, at least.

Plato was the one who wrote these lines:

Those who are halves of a male whole pursue males, and being slices, so to speak, of the male, love men throughout their boyhood, and take pleasure in physical contact with men. Such boys and lads are the best of their generation, because they are the most manly.
/Symposium

it's interesting that other minds came to the same conclusion. and it strikes me odd why men's attraction to men has been linked with femininity at all. it seems to me, to be a conclusion arrived at from ignorance, that is, by heterosexual men, who don't experience this attraction themselves, and who can connect it in such a way as to seem logically sound to them from the outside, without there actually being experimental evidence/knowledge backing it up. it is possible to draw a multitude of such connections that you could theoretically explain away, without actual first-person knowledge. (it is, after all, adequate to claim that the Sun revolves around the Earth just as it is to claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun, when you don't have any astronomical knowledge/experience on the subject).

i don't know why it seems this way to me. it just feels that that's what it is. men who love other men is as masculine as you can get (regardless of whether they act in a masculine or feminine manner).

[Thundanton]

Both books seem very interesting, I must say, one concept i find very interesting is that many straight men say they find the company and attention of other men more warming than the attention of females, I think this makes a lot of sense though as we are of the same gender and mind; but then I am gay and I love being around females mostly but I am sexually attracted to males, I guess things vary depending on who we are and where we come from at the end of the day.

[Emiliano]

I have many traits like my mother

I had 3 father figures

And I have 4 sisters

Am I not gay enough... apparently according to some dicks who write stuff

What about what was shared here led you to that conclusion?

[himself]

I was never that interested in getting my daddy's (as in my father / dad, not my gay daddy - I say daddy. I always thought 'dad' was an Americanism) attention. I'm not saying I dislike him - it's just that getting his attention was never a thing for him. I wanted to have more 'feminine' traits when I was younger because I thought there was something dirty / shameful about being a boy. I started backtracking on that when I got a bit older and I wanted to be more 'masculine'. But I think I am still more inclined to see women as role models than I am to see males as role models.

[Cuddly]

I don't know... I don't really see myself fitting in with that theory at all, nor the opposite.

I love my parents, but we have few similarities. Obviously there's the physical appearance. My father's fuzzy legs and my mothers rounded face.
Of traits the only thing I can come up with is that I walk like my dad. As for comaraderie, I talk and act as I feel I should, anywhere, to blend in. I'll talk creative stuff with my mum and machinery with my dad, as an example.

I really don't feel that I've tried to emulate my mum or dad and I find the concept offensive in the sense that it depicts all gays as having been in love with their own dads. I know I haven't been. Just like I was never in love with my best friend, roommate, brother, teacher or whatever other dirty little secret you can imagine.

[RainV]

I found meridannight's insight intriguing. In my personal experience, I took on some of my mother's and sisters feminine traits, but more as an attempt to get men attention in general rather than getting my father's attention (Never felt attracted to him or even got along with). During years I didn't understand why I took a liking and interest in feminine stuff or why did I got feminine traits, but with time I came to one conclusion: as a child I perceived that the only way to get a man's attention in a romantic way was to be a woman (Never saw a gay character until I was 16). When I realized that I was able to identify more with the male role and the feminine stuff/trait diminished in importance. So, nope, in my case I don't think I got any kind of inverted complex of Edipo. I know all of use grow up in different circumnstances and the theory of that guy sounds possible to me, tough.

[Insertnamehere]

I dunno, my feelings towards my dad range bewteen annoyance and aversion. The single most horrible thing about holidays like new year is that he feels the need to hug me cause, hey that's tradition right....I tend to avoid that like a plague.

Never been feminine nor masculine (at least masculine like one is supposed to be here)

feel free to deconstruct me if you want

[Beaux]

My father was physically abusive. He is a very large man, and I lived in mortal fear of him growing up. He often came home drunk and would try to "beat the sissy out of me". It didn't work, but I certainly tried to be more masculine so as to avoid his abuse. In reality, I an not really very feminine, nor do I feel feminine, but for whatever reason my father precived me as such (at least when he was drinking..).
~Beaux