How to tell if your teenage daughter is gay
First the stereotype. People often think of lesbians as having short-hair, their upper lips unwaxed, their clothes manly, their behaviour closely resembling a man. While this is factual of some lesbians, it is not true for others. Think Portia De Rossi. Think Cynthia Nixon. Sorry I don&#;t have any Indian examples for you. If you&#;ll take my pos for it, I can tell you that I recognize desi lesbians that are feminine and girly and I know desi lesbians that are boyish and I comprehend some that are in between.
So if your daughter does not wear saris and salwar kameezes or wears baggy jeans with flannel shirts, don&#;t believe that she&#;s a lesbian. On the other hand, if your daughter does dress in a very feminine conduct and has a beauty parlour appointment every 2 weeks, that doesn&#;t represent she is straight.
Not very helpful, I know. What can I say &#; there is nothing really that makes someone a homosexual woman other than their attraction to women. The culture in India makes it even harder to guess one&#;s sexuality, because there is so much tenderness between people of the same gender.
Book Excerpt: Is Your Infant Gay?
Excerpted fromWhy Is the Penis Shaped Like That? … And Other Reflections on Being Human, by Jesse Bering, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (North America), Transworld Ltd (UK), Jorge Zahara Editora Ltda (Brazil). Copyright © by Jesse Bering.
We all comprehend the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate breeze in a little boy's step, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses and dresses, and a powerful distaste for rough perform with other boys. In little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, and an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate trappings of femininity.
These behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality. It is only relatively recently, however, that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies to identify the earliest and most reliable signs of adult homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of gay adults,
Inside:Is my teen daughter a lesbian? Maybe or maybe not, but here’s how to handle this sensitive teenage sexuality topic
This post was contributed by Jill Whitney, LMFT
So much about teen sexuality is different from what it was a couple decades ago.
Where once it was awkward, if not dangerous, to be anything other than straight, we now talk openly about a spectrum of orientations and genders. Sexual diversity has broken out of the closet—to the indicate where being LGBTQ is courteous of cool.
So don’t be surprised if your teen or even tween daughter announces at some point that she’s a homosexual woman. It’s more common than you might reflect these days.
But you may wonder whether your teen daughter is a lesbian for real, or whether it’s just a phase. Maybe she’s just experimenting; maybe she’ll grow out of it. Or maybe not.
How do you know?
Acceptance Needs to Be Unconditional
Unfortunately, there’s no way to narrate. Some girls who experiment with same-sex partners end up happily straight. Other young women
As I relayed in When Your Child Is Gay: What You Need To Know (Sterling, ), I found out that my son was gay from a note with our son's name entwined with another boy's, surrounded by a heart. I accidentally found that note in his room when I was cleaning.
I never questioned him about the heart I found on the sly. How would I have brought it up? Suppose I was wrong? After all, he had a crush on a girl in his class.
I had suspected at times that he was gay. He only had girls to his thirteenth birthday party. He preferred gentler sports. He was always concerned about how he looked and followed fashion. Were these stereotypical thoughts from a linear mother? You bet, but it was ingrained through the culture's binary system and ideas about how males were "supposed to" behave.
As it turns out, our son didn't reach out until he was 17, was on his own, and brought a boyfriend to visit. Had I asked him if he were gay when he was 13, he probably would have defensively said "No!" He had to work it out and work through his denial. I'm glad I muzzled myself.
Susan Berland, the mother o