Gay Youth Comg Out In Middle School : NPR

Contents:

• GAY YOUTH COMG OUT IN MIDDLE SCHOOL
• GAY KIDS COMG OUT YOUNGER, BUT PARENTS ASK "HOW DO YOU KNOW?"
• APPLE APPROV 'ONLY GAY SOCIAL APP FOR AG 12 AND UP'
• THE DIGAL SEX LIV OF YOUNG GAY TEENAGERS
• WHEN DO GAY KIDS START “ACTG GAY”?
• GAY TT FOR MAL AG 12-16
• HOW N I MEET OTHER GAY TEENS LIKE MYSELF?
• MY 14 YEAR OLD GAY SON IS SEEING A 17 YEAR OLD
• I THK MY 14 YEAR OLD IS GAY
• GAY AND BISEXUAL MALE TEENS E ADULT DATG APPS TO FD SENSE OF MUNY, STUDY SHOWS
• IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

GAY YOUTH COMG OUT IN MIDDLE SCHOOL

I read a lot about youth culture and I was talkg to tors and, you know, lears of gay youth groups and they were all sayg the same thg. When realy, if you talk to a gay man, you know, many of them lookg back will say, you know, I noticed my same sex attractn, you know, at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 that ballpark. I mean, one of the tertg thgs that we have to look at is this, is that much of the anti-gay bullyg and anti-gay harassment that's gog on middle schools and high school is more about genr non-nformy than really is about beg gay or lbian.

Is that beg gay or lbian is still enough of a pariah inty that parents want to take off the table as long as they n, or is jt that parents really feel that all kids are sexualized too early the days, and they don't want their kids at this age thkg about, you know, hookg up? So was really - and a lot of parents, when they heard their kid, their 12-, 13-, 14-year-old say, you know, I'm gay, or I'm bisexual, or I'm lbian, they tomatilly went to oh my god, that means he's havg sex, when realy wasn't about that at all.

GAY KIDS COMG OUT YOUNGER, BUT PARENTS ASK "HOW DO YOU KNOW?"

DENIZET-LEWIS: I thk that there's no doubt that sort of as you have more posive portrayals and, I would say, accurate portrayals of gay and lbian life the media, and kids n go onle and fd all kds of rourc, that there's no doubt that that's gog to have an effect on kids, and that they're gog to possibly e out earlier bee of that.

Now, I don't thk that those posive portrayals of gay life is gog to sort of make a kid who's not attracted to the same sex sudnly say, you know, hey, this seems really ol.

What I thk that the more posive portrayals popular culture has done is 's ma a ltle b safer for kids who do feel that they're gay or lbian to be able to e to their parents or school unselor and talk about the issu, which I thk is a real step forward bee for many years, kids who had same-sex attractn or were nfed, they uldn't talk to anyone about . You know, granted I lived San Francis, but none of my iends were gay, or none of the kids my age were gay. So, you know, nsequently I sort of went nial mo, which is what a lot of gay kids have done for many years, and then my early 20s and mid-20s and late 20s, as many gay men do who don't e out until late, we sort of try to relive our gay adolcence that we weren't allowed to live.

APPLE APPROV 'ONLY GAY SOCIAL APP FOR AG 12 AND UP'

And so what's remarkable, now, is I thk we're gog to see, as more and more kids e out younger and are sort of able to have a normal adolcence the sense that, you know, I talked to kids who were havg arguments wh their parents about gog on dat when they're 15 or 16 or 17 or gog to the prom or sort of, you know, havg their normal adolcence, I thk 's gog to create an entirely different kd of gay and lbian adult the next 10, 20, 30 years. Denizet-Lewis wr that when he started workg for the gay men's magaze XY 1998, "we received dozens of letters each week om teenagers the pths of spair. " Three years later, he says, "a new kd of gay adolcent was appearg on the page - proud, rilient, sometim even happy.

" He explas, That's not to say that gay teenagers didn't still suffer harassment at school or rejectn at home, but many seemed ls burned wh shame and self-loathg than their olr gay peers.

THE DIGAL SEX LIV OF YOUNG GAY TEENAGERS

Not only were there creasgly accurate and posive portrayals of gays and lbians popular culture, but most teenagers were by then regular Inter ers. Gog onle broke through the isolatn that had been a hallmark of beg young and gay, and allowed gay teenagers to fd rmatn to refute what their fai or church sometim still told them - namely, that they would never fd happs and to the Inter and to creasg cultural acceptance of homosexualy (an crease marred, we should note, by measur like Proposn 8), kids who might once have waed until high school or even llege to e out are now dog so earlier. At least 120 middle schools the untry have gay-straight alliance groups, and others let stunts observe the natnal Day of Silence prott agast anti-gay harassment.

" They were not, however, silent: "Good luck gettg middle-schoolers not to talk, " the school unselor youth of the Webster kids and other gay middle-schoolers is a sign of how far gay rights have e — but 's also the kids' biggt obstacle to acceptance.

WHEN DO GAY KIDS START “ACTG GAY”?

The irony of a parent spectg her kid is gay and then refg to believe he uld know his own orientatn highlights how much more difficulty some parents have wh burgeong gay sexualy than they would wh a straight kid's of this may have to do wh the misnceptn that you have to have gay terurse to be gay, or that homosexualy is somehow a more "sexual" orientatn than heterosexualy. 'Eileen Ross, director of a Mounta View, CA program for gay youth, says that when a 12-year-old boy says he lik girls, "No one says to them: 'Are you sure? A lawyer Florida argued that gay-straight allianc promote the "premature sexualizatn of the stunts, " and when At started a gay-straight alliance, his Michigan school ma him ll somethg "ls ntroversial" (he chose "Peace Alliance").

Denizet-Lewis reports the hopeful words of velopmental psychologist Rch Sav-Williams: "This is the first generatn of gay kids who have the great joy of beg able to argue wh their parents about datg, jt like their straight peers do. And maybe today's gay kids are slowly startg to receive via New York Tim Out In Middle School [NYT Magaze]. The fe urban studi theorist Richard Florida has offered that ci thrive when they attract a dynamic gay populatn.

So they've created This, they claim, is "the only gay social app approved by the iTun store for 12-year-olds and olr.

GAY TT FOR MAL AG 12-16

" Implic this ro marketg speak is the notn that gay people know where 's at before, you know, other sorts of people do. " He wants "the good-taste part of the gay stereotype to ga tractn wh advertisers and cross the mastream divi. What is surely ol, however, about this iative is that promis to be your "well-nnected, -the-know, VIP gay iend.

They have failed to protect mors, who simply have to subtract a few years om their birth date to create a om the Centers for Disease Control and Preventn and a new study The Journal of Adolcent Health together suggt that roughly one four gay and bisexual boys aged 14 to 17 the Uned Stat are on gay hookup apps signed for adults (Grdr, Scff, Jack’d, Adam4Adam). But this brgs up nfintialy risks for gay men who don’t want to be uld also e algorhms to tect nversatns between mors and adults.

HOW N I MEET OTHER GAY TEENS LIKE MYSELF?

Parents also need to stay lm, so that the kids feel fortable g back to them if they ever end up a bad suatn, like if a sry stranger won’t stop a society, we have failed to create enough spac for gay youth to thrive, phg them onle and unrground.

MY 14 YEAR OLD GAY SON IS SEEING A 17 YEAR OLD

A versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 27 of the New York edn wh the headle: Young, Gay and Vulnerable Onle. A Mnota school district is facg a Department of Jtice vtigatn and a private lawsu over s alleged failure to bat antigay bullyg.

I THK MY 14 YEAR OLD IS GAY

A hefty pile of rearch shows that boys as young as 3 years old who break om tradnal genr rol have a high likelihood of beg gay adults.

GAY AND BISEXUAL MALE TEENS E ADULT DATG APPS TO FD SENSE OF MUNY, STUDY SHOWS

) The relatnship isn’t one-to-one, however, and ’s certaly not the se that all boys who love Barbie dolls will later intify as gay.

The rrelatn is much weaker the other directn: A disproportnate number of boys who don’t nform to genr stereotyp turn out to be gay men, but lots of gay men played wh G. Thirty of them beme gay or bisexual adults while jt one child om a 34-member genr-nformg ntrol group turned out to be gay. Gay 3-year-old boys n’t verbalize their sire to be wh a man when they grow up—although many such children exhib cshlike behavr toward adult men—but they may be tryg to learn the behavr that will later attract a male partner.

I mean I got straight I'm not surprised tho I do got a girliend if I me out gay I would break up wh her and don't matter if your gay or not your still special. me out 70% bi 20% straight 10% gayi was spectg that as i have taken 5 tts all say bi apart om 1 which says straight. If you’re terted learng more about gay-straight allianc or even startg one at your school, you n fd lots of helpful rmatn and guidance on The Gay-Straight Alliance Network webse.

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

There's a great scene where Simon ponrs why gay people have to "e out" and imag how would be if his iends had to announce to their fai that they were straight.

Havg feelgs about or havg a sexual experience wh a person of the same sex do not necsarily mean you are homosexual.