Most literature on the gay adolescent deals with the causes and treatment of homosexuality. This chapter, however, will address itself to the process by which the gay person in general and the gay adolsecent in particular are stigmatized within our society.
It is my contention that homosexuality is a normal variation in both sexual orientation and sexual behavior. Negative attitudes toward the homosexually oriented are primarily a result of homophobia, a prejudice similar in nature and dynamic to all other prejudices including anti-Semitism, racism and sexism. Continued exposure to the prejudice results in a stigmatization of the homosexually oriented through which their social and personal identities are, to us Goffman's (1963) term, "spoiled." As a result, gay people become members of a minority group, a term defined by Allport (l958) as any segment of the population that suffers unjustified negative acts by the rest of society. These acts may range from mild discrimination to scapegoating. Gay people often demonstrate those traits that have been found in other minority groups, including obsessive concern with their stigma and state, denial of membership within the hated group, withdrawal, passivity, and aggression against their own group.
Most major differences between gay people and members of other minority groups occur because the gay person becomes a member of the group during adolescence rather than at birth. I am speaking here of the beginning of personal and social identity as a homosexually oriented person rather than of sexual orientation per se. Evidence indicates that the latter occurs much earlier than adolescence. As we shall seem the ensuing isolation creates unique problems for the gay individual.
Ideally, the gay adolescent should be able to reach what Troiden (1979) has called a "gay identity," the fusion of homosexual sexualitky and emotionality into a meaningful whole. However, society's traditional view of homosexuality as a stigma prevents the easy attainment of such identity. Pain and suffering are inflicted on the very young, whom society is supposedly protecting, under the guise of preventing the spread of homosexuality or of treating the homosexual. For example, one author (Socarides 1978) stated, "Homosexual behavior through adolescence in the absence of anxiety, guilt or conflict together with perverted fantasies is an alarming sign. It is imperative to initiate therapy in order to create a conflict for the patient...." In other words, conflict, guilt, and anxietky most be created where none existed. This is the essence of the stigmatization process.
Allport (1958) defined prejudice as a negative attitude based on error and overgeneralization and described the acting out of prejudice in three interdependent stages: antilocution, discrimination, and violence. Antilocution, verbal attacks against the group, can range from denigratory terms to elaborate pseudoscientific theories and research which serve as a foundation for descrimination and violence. Examples of pseudoscience as support for prejudice can be seen in the past use of physiognomy, phrenology, and anthropometry. In the nineteenth century, they provided "objective" evidence of the basic inferiority of Jews, blacks, women, and the homosexually oriented (Haller and Haller 1974; Mosse 1978). As part of this support, pseudoscience creates stereotypes. Thus, gay men are described as effeminate and lesbians as masculine, characteristics which make them unsuitable for the "hard" professions (Voth 1977), as "predatory" (Gilder1979, Kardiner 1954), and as having overwhelming sexual appetites that interfere with the ability to have mature nonerotic relationships (Pattison and Pattison 1980). All of these charges, including the effeminacy of the male, were applied in the nineteenth century to groups considered to be racially inferior.
The most important antilocutionary themes are those that impute danger from the group. One of the more impressive indications of the intense antipathy toward gay people is the range of dangers attributed to them. As blacks and Jews were seen by racists to be dangerous to the purity of the race, criminals, or seducers, so too gay people are said to be a danger to the survival of the race (Socarides 1975), criminals, and seducers (Rupp 1980). They are accused of causing anorexia nervosa (Stearn 1962), crime in the streets (Christian Anti-Communism Crusade 1981), the Second World War (Podhoretz 1977), and even Western civilization.
These charges do not come solely from a lunatic fringe. Respected professionals often contribute to belief in the dangers of a hated group. Just as the pseudoscience of racism was an important part of the intellectual life of the nineteenth century (Mosse 1978), so too the underlying ideology supporting the stigmatization fo the gay adolescent comes from all levels of society. One of the most destructive charges brought against the homosexually oriented is that they are somehow a danger to children. Voth (1977), a psychiatrist, states, "Homosexuality is as much a public health problem as any of the major diseases which have concerned public health officials and the medical profession. It is contrary to nature....Little good can come to children from exposure to adults who are so disturbed as to become overtly homosexual."
Rupp (1980), in a text on forensic medicine and psychiatry, offered the following argument: "To be 35 in the 'gay world' is to be an 'old auntie' and many male homosexuals are always on the lookout for young proselytes....When an inexperienced youth is wined and dined, flattered and fawned over, and finally seduced, the sex act itself may seem insignificant and the act repeated until it is finally learned and conditioned. Herein lies the pernicious and insidious evil of homosexuality."
The pernicious equation of homosexuality and danger to children does not emenate solely from the medical profession. Joseph Epstein (1970), a self-acknowledged liberal and an activist for civil rights, wrote the following intruduction to an essay in which he detailed his fear and loathing for the gay person, especially the gay male.
"In the beginning, I felt confusion, revulsion, and fear. I must have been ten years old when my father, who had read me stories out of a children's bible, out of Robin Hood, out of the Brothers Grimm, who carefully instructed me never to say the word "nigger," one night sat me down in our living room to explaing that there were "perverts" in the world. These were men with strange appetites, men whose minds were twisted, and I must be on the outlook for them - for myself, and even more for my little brother who was five years younger. There were not many such men in the world, but there were some and they might wish to "play" with my brother and me in ways which were unnatural....I went to bed and dreamed about a tall thin man...who extended a bony index finger out to touch my little genitals. I awoke screaming."
He concluded his article with the expresed desire to see homosexuality wiped off the face of the earth.
When fears like this are legitimized and accepted without question, once stigma theory justifies it, discrimination against gay people is established. Qualified individuals are denied employment. Homosexually oriented teachers, clergymen, and physicians must hide their sexual identity. Aside from the effect on the professional involved, this discrimination effectively denies suitable role models who can demonstrate to the gay adolescent by example, sharing, and teaching that the prejudices of society are false and that homosexuality does not automatically mean depraavity, criminality, and degeneracy. Heterosexual adolescents have a multitude of role models for all possible social identities which may touch on their sexual orientation, but homosexual adolescents have no constructive models and indeed are led to believe that their sexual identity precludes other roles. This denial of role models is an essential part of the total stigmatization process. The young gay person is forbidden the opportunity to develop that personal identity which Erikson (1963) defined as "the sense of ego identity, which is the accrued confidence that the inner sameness and continuity prepared in the past are matched by the sameness and continuity of one's meanings for others..."
Each person is raised as a member of several in-groups. While difficult to define, the in-group has been described as one in which members use the term "we" with the same basic significance (Allport 1958). In-groups include the family, ethnic identification, religion, race, and so on. Each is a form of social identity and depends on categorization. While an efficient means of organizing and handling the overwhelming amount of information with which we are faced, categorization has within it the seeds of abuse and misuse.
Allport (1958) states: "Man...has a propensity to prejudice. This propensity lies in his normal and natural tendency to form generalizations, concepts, categories whose content represents and over-simplification of his world of experience, but he is able to form irrational categories just as readily. In these, even a kernel of truth may be lacking, for they can be composed wholly of hearsay evidence, emotional projections and fantasy." The transformation from efficient information processing to dangerous oversimplification is an easy and all to frequent step. the moment we categorize people, we have lost important information about the individual while at the same time assigning much misinformation we believe we have about the group.
Goffman (1963) has called this assignment of character or characteristics "virtual social identity." It is based on expectations of behavior according to beliefs about the nature of the group rather than on actual behavior of the individual which Goffman calls "actual social identity." An individual can have a number of social identities, each defined by a single attribute and each carrying a separate virtual social identity. He may be a one and the same time a Roman Catholic, a male, a lawyer, a Nisei, and a husband. Each of these attributes has separate, distinct, and at times even contradictory expectations.
Sometimes an attribute by which an individual is assigned group membership is a stigma so discrediting that it in effect reduces or denies the individual's other social identities. Homosexuality is such a stigma in our society. It is so discrediting that the homosexually oriented person is denied social identities to which he is entitled. Some clerics say that one cannot be a Christian and homosexual. Even a category like one's identity as a full citizen is brought into question. For example, the homosexually oriented are regularly denied employment as "security risks." A U.S. Senate Committee (1950) recommended this action even though the committee was unable to cite a single case in which a homosexual American citizen had betrayed secrets because of blackmail. The denial of the right, some would even say the privilege, of serving in the armed forces is another example of denial of social identity as a citizen.
Sometimes the denial of the concomitance of a stigma attribute and another social identity is patently ludicrous. Howard Brown (1976), a physician and Public Health Administrator in New York who publicly announced his homosexuality, reported the following: "Shortly before I entered the army, in a moment of panic I took a train up to Cleveland to discuss my sexual dilemma with the aging chairman of the department of psychiatry at the medical school. He told me I couldn't possibly be a homosexual. I was going to become a doctor, wasn't I? Homosexuals didn't become doctors; they became hairdresers, interior decortators, that sort of thing. He explained away my urges as 'delayed adolescence.'"
The denial of other in-group memberships is more often tragic, especially when it involves the most basic societal in-group, the family. Discovery of an adolescent's homosexuality can cause guilt and fear in the parents, bring about the assignment or denial of blame, and result in a number of actions against the child ranging from enforced treatment to expulsion from the family unit. Many teenage prostitutes, male and female, are youngsters who have been disowned and evicted by their families because of homosexuality.
Every child learns not only what is expected of the various social identities he or she is being raised to but also what groups society abhors. In adolescence, young homosexually oriented persons are faced with the growing awareness that they may be among the most despised. They are forced to deal with the possibility that part of their actual social identity contradicts most of the other social identities to which they have believed they are entitled. As this realization becomes more pressing, they are faced with three possible choices: they can hide, they can attempt to change the stigma,or they can accept it.
Accepting homosexuality as normal would be optimal since it would make it possible for the adolescent to reach that fusion of sexuality and emotionality described as gay identity. However, acceptance, if it is ever attained, usually occurs ony after much struggle and pain. For most, hiding and attempts to change are the strategies used to cope with their stigmatized status. Society does all in its power to reinforce these two strategies and thus prevents self-acceptance.
The Greek word stigma originally referred to a visual sign of the negative status of the bearer. Generally imposed by the state, it often entailed branding or other ritual scarring. Stigma now can include attributes or signs that are not visible. When a stigma attribute is obvious, as in the case of the black, or even when made obvious by the forced wearing of the Star of David or the Pink Triangle in the concentration camps, the individuals can be considered as discredited. Those who can pass, however, and who choose to do so, become discreditable.
Actions against the discredited individual are usually obvious and direct. For the discreditable, however, the effects are less apparent, occurring within the individual and distorting the nature and depth of interpersonal relationships. The gay person can fall into either category.
A young male or female, seen respectively as too "effeminate" or too "masculine," or the young adolescent who has been caught indulging in homosexual behavior, is discredited with results that can include ostracism, violence, and forced attempts to change.
The presence of the "obvious" youngster can become a source of disruption for others as well. Within the family, the mother may emerge as protective and close binding, the father as distant and rejecting. Recently the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth was called in by a settlement house in Brooklyn to help with the case of a fourteen-year-old black male publicly identified as homosexual because of effeminate mannerisms. Referred to the center as a consistent truant, he refused to attend school because of the verbal and physical abuse to which he had been continously subjected. While at the settlement house the young man designed, directed, and executed a fashion show. What some saw as a real talent to be encouraged others saw as an example of effeminate behaviour to be discouraged. Disagreement as to how to treat the young man caused much dissension among the staff and created further problems for the adolescent himself.
Most adolescents are not that obvious and, as Goffman points out, the rewards for being normal are so great that those who can pass will. The gay adolescent who has opted for the "closet," a term derived from the "skeleton in the closet" metaphor, knows that in order to remain in certain settings and to maintain certain relationships, the fact of sexual orientation must be hidden. This strategy of deception distorts almost all relationships the adolescent may attemp to develop or maintain and creates an increasing sense of isolation. The adolescent realizes that his or her membership in the approved group, whether it be the team, the church, the classroom, or the family, is based on a lie. This reinforces the belief that one is not truly a member of the group, even while membership within it is maintained.
Even in their homes youngsters are forced to act a role. Contrary to the current antilocution that argues that the homosexually oriented individual and homosexuality are a danger to the family, it is the fear and deception resulting from the need to dissemble that disrupt the family's integrity as a unit. Most adolescents, as their emphasis shifts from the home to peer socialization, feel a normal distancing between themselves and their parents. However, this distancing becomes abnormal for gay adolescents with the fear that their parents will discover their secret.
The socialization of the gay adolescent becomes a process of deception at all levels, with ability to play a role assuming primary significance. Techniques developed by the adolescent in this desperate attempt to hide are as varied as the individuals themselves. One young Roman Catholic male chose to date a young woman he knew was going to become a nun. With her, he could make an occasional obligatory sexual overture with the knowledge that she would say no. A young lesbian reported indulging in heavy petting as part of her hiding process, even though it frightened and disgusted her. She foundt bearable only by fantasizing she was doing it with another girl.
A major aspect of the closet is the ever-present need to self-monitor. Unconscious and automatic behaviors, especially those relating to gender, are brought to the forefront of conscious attention. The way one walks, stands, talks, holds the wrist or hand become possible sources of disclosure. Clothing must be carefully considered, not just for style or group homogeneity but for the possibility that it may give something away. For years many gay men would not wear green and lesbians would not wear signet rings because each was considered to be a sign of homosexuality.
Possibilities for disclosure lie in the most prosaic situations. For example, many young males try to avoid gym class, not because of the sports involved but because they are afraid that they may get an erection in the showers. The heterosexual male adolescent can laugh off such an occurrence and can joke or even brag about it. The young gay male, however, must fear that it will reveal his stigma.
The process of deception may hinder the development of nonerotic friendships between members of the same sex. During this transition between childhood and adulthood, when it is difficult to separate feelings of friendship from erotic feelings, the young gay adolescent must be careful not to become too close for fear the closeness will be misunderstood on either side. This distancing from one's friends may be a the root of the belief that gay males are not able to have mature nonerotic relationships (Pattison and Pattison 1980), a belief that is contradicted by the data obtained in other studies (Bell and Weinberg 1978; Weinberg and Williams 1974). These data, however, deal with adult gay people and not adolescents. It is not that the gay adolescent cannot form friendships because of homosexuality, per se, but that stigmatization and the need to hide distort relationship formation.
The maintenance of a facade becomes all-pervasive. Each successive act of deception, each moment of monitoring what is unconscious and outomatic for others, serves to reinforce the belief in one's difference and inferiority. Perry, Gawell, and Gibbon (1956) point out: "The awareness of inferiority means that one is unable to keep out of consciousness the formulation of some chronic feeling of the worst sort of insecurity, and this means that one suffers anxiety and perhaps even something worse....the fear that others can disrepect a person because of something he shows means that he is always insecure in his contact with other people....now that represents an almost fatal deficiency of the self-system."
Like all stigmatized individuals, the gay adolescent needs a "sympathetic other." Centuries of discrimination preclud the prescence of a gay adult role model to whom the adolescent can turn. Fears of ostracism, humiliation, and even violence deter the young person from seeking that other among peers. There are generally two sources open to gay adolescents troubled by fears, anxieties, pain, and especially isolation: they may turn to casual sexual contact with strangers, especially in the case of the young gay male, or they may ask for help from concerned professionals.
Casual sexual contact, at least for the young gay male, is common. For a few furtive moments he can achieve, not just a sexual release, but a lessening of the overpowering tensions of hiding. Forced by his fear of disclosure to have an obsessive concern with sexuality, the casual sexual contact becomes a means of compartmentalizing his life and separating sexual action from all aspects of his development. Rather than encouraging a fusion of sexuality and emotionality, the behavior further separates them. The setting, the danger, often the literal filth of the surroundings reinforce the belief that a homosexual orientation is sick, deviant, and despicable. The young person's sense of inferiority and worthlessness is intensified and, even worse, he grows to view his partners in the same way, further lessening his chances of developing a network of sympathetic others that he can respect and rely on. Hatred for oneself and for one's group becomes a common unifying theme.
Public sexual activity by young males is well known. While condemned loudly and blamed on seductions by older men, as long as it remains hidden in restrooms, movie houses, parks, and beaches, little is done about it. Any attempt to provide the gay adolescent with an alternative is met with an immediate negative reaction. There are even vociferous attacks on sex education classes that present factual information about homosexuality and the homosexually oriented.
Roesler and Deisher (1972) have pointed out much of this behavior is age bound. They found that the earlier a young man "came out," that is the earlier his first sexual experience, the more likely he was to have frequented parks, theaters, restrooms, and other known public meeting places. However, as the young men grew older and became legally able to go to gay bars, their involvement in such public encounters decreased. Since the gay bar is a primary social meeting place for young gay men, the male adolescent is unable to develop a social network of sympathetic others until he is about twenty-one years of age, and then only after he has been conditioned to respond to other gay males on a sexual level only. He often has not had the opportunity to develop courting behaviors other than direct sexual contact. Heterosexual adolescents learn to date and go through a series of societally ordained procedures with sexual contact as a possible end result. The young gay male often learns to start with the end result, sexual behavior, and then attempts to develop the relationship.
There are two possible outcomes to this depersonalization of sexual encounter. The gay adolescent who has learned to despise his sexual orientation may transfer his self-hatred to those who share his stigma. An alternative reaction may arise from the presence of concomitant emotions such as relief from the tension of hiding, pleasure at being about to "be oneself," the feeling that one is truly close to someone for the first time because one does not have to hide. These feelings may combine in a young adult who has not had the chance to socialize with other gay people to give an impression of intense closeness and involvment that is mistaken for love. This, too, is age related and may be a major factor in what appears to be the transitory nature of many homosexual affairs. Recent evidence indicates that there are many gay couples who develop deep and abiding relationships (Bell and Weinberg 1978). However, such attachments usually develop later for gay person because he or she learns at a later date those social interactions with peers that the heteroxexual adolescent had the opportunity to learn during the teenage years.
The young gay adolescent will often turn to a clergyman, physician, or other professional for help. Too often these professionals share society's stigma view of homosexuality and see the resolution of the problem as the changing of sexual orientation. In so doing they exacerbate the sense of inferiority and increase the need and aptitude for self-deception. This is especially true when it is believed that sexual contact with the opposite sex, or even marriage, will be the answer to the adolescent's problems. Such mistaken advice only intensifies what Troiden (1970) has called the dissociation or signification stage of attaining a gay identity. In this stage, the presence of the homosexual attribute is so ego dystonic for the individual that even overt homosexual behavior is interpreted as being something other than evidence of homosexual orientation. Typical examples are seen in the explanations that the behavior was "something I would ourgrow," "due to loneliness and lack of female companionship," or "sexual experimentation and curiosity." Such dissociation is encouraged by people in the helping professions who believe that homosexuality is just a bad habit (Kelly 1975) or a lack of "commitment to heterosexuality" (Pattison and Pattison 1980).
This dissociation stage may last late into adulthood, in fact may never be overcome, sometimes with tragic results. Humphreys's (1960) finding that the majority of men who indulged in public sex in restrooms were married is probably best understood as a carryover of the adolescent's inabilty to form a social network in which sexual partners can be found. Recent reports concerning public officials who, though caught in illicit homosexual behavior, denied their homosexuality and cited their marriages as evidence of a hetersexual orientation are further illustrative of this dissociation.
Troiden (1979) has described a four-stage model for the attainment of a gay ildentity. A consideration of this model may help us to understand how we may help the young gay adolescent achieve the hoped - for fusion of sexual identity and emotionality.
The first stage is sensitization, usually occurring before the age of thirteen and between thirteen to seventeen. While Troiden sees this as primarily the period in which one gains the experience that retrospectively is interpreted as homosexual, I propose that this is the period in which the young person learns the virtual social identity of the homosexual. The second stage, dissociation and signification, arises from the need to reject the idea that the negative virtual social identity assigned to the gay person applies to oneself. Stages 1 and 2 must be overcome before going on to stage 3, coming out, which is divided into three parts: self-identification as homosexual; initial involvement in the homosexual subculture; and redefinition of homosexuality as a positive and viable life-style. Each part of stage 3 may be reached separately and an individual may stop at any one. All three parts are essential to achieve stage 4, the fusion of sexuality and emotionality.
Negative sensitization and the resulting dissociation can be changed only if young people are exposed to alternatives to the present prejudicial attitudes toward the homosexually oriented.
The young person must have access to accurate information about homosexuality and to the possibility of maintaining one's personal, social, ethical, and professional integrity with the homosexual attribute. Greater attention should be paid in sex education curricula to discussions of homosexuality as a normal variation of sexual orientation. In addition, suitable gay adult role models must be provided. To achieve this important need, those who are homosexually oriented must have the courage and strength to be open and public about their sexual orientation. In addition, all professionals must work against those discriminatory practices which make it necessary for the gay adult to hide.
Equally important, there must be a concerted effort to provide gay adolescents with the oportunity to have meaningful social environments in which they can develop their personal and social skills free from fear of exposure and censure. These environments can range from rap groups to ordinary social activities.
Gay adolescents themselves have identified their major problems as arising from the need for secrecy and the disapproval of the straight world (Roesler and Diesher 1972). The only way to eliminate the resulting pain and damage is to change the basis for the stigmatization process, the prejudice of homophobia. Stigmatization of the gay adolescent has evolved from centuries of misinformation and fear. Education through direct teaching and the example of role models will be the best way to attack discrimination at it root.