Gallery Carre
What makes people gay (Boston Globe Magazine (reg. req’d)
Aug 16th, 2024 by Viviane
The debate has always been that it was either all in the child’s upbringing or all in the genes. But what if it’s something else?
By Neil Swidey August 14, 2005
With crystal-blue eyes, wavy hair, and freshly scrubbed faces, the boys look as though they stepped out of a Pottery Barn Kids catalog. They are 7-year-old twins. I’ll call them Thomas and Patrick; their parents agreed to let me meet the boys as long as I didn’t use their real names.
Spend five seconds with them, and there can be no doubt that they are identical twins - so identical even they can’t tell each other apart in photographs. Spend five minutes with them, and their profound differences begin to emerge.
Patrick is social, thoughtful, attentive. He repeatedly addresses me by name. Thomas is physical, spontaneous, a bit distracted. Just minutes after meeting me outside a coffee shop, he punches me in the upper arm, yells, “Gray punch buggy!” and then points to a Volkswagen Beetle cruising past us. It’s a hard punch. They horse around like typical brothers, but Patrick’s punches are less forceful and his voice is higher. Thomas charges at his brother, arms flexed in front of him like a mini-bodybuilder. The differences are subtle - they’re 7-year-old boys, after all - but they are there.
When the twins were 2, Patrick found his mother’s shoes. He liked wearing them. Thomas tried on his father’s once but didn’t see the point.
When they were 3, Thomas blurted out that toy guns were his favorite things. Patrick piped up that his were the Barbie dolls he discovered at day care.
When the twins were 5, Thomas announced he was going to be a monster for Halloween. Patrick said he was going to be a princess. Thomas said he couldn’t do that, because other kids would laugh at him. Patrick seemed puzzled. “Then I’ll be Batman,” he said.
Their mother - intelligent, warm, and open-minded - found herself conflicted. She wanted Patrick - whose playmates have always been girls, never boys - to be himself, but she worried his feminine behavior would expose him to ridicule and pain. She decided to allow him free expression at home while setting some limits in public.
That worked until last year, when a school official called to say Patrick was making his classmates uncomfortable. He kept insisting that he was a girl.
Patrick exhibits behavior called childhood gender nonconformity, or CGN. This doesn’t describe a boy who has a doll somewhere in his toy collection or tried on his sister’s Snow White outfit once, but rather one who consistently exhibits a host of strongly feminine traits and interests while avoiding boy-typical behavior like rough-and-tumble play. There’s been considerable research into this phenomenon, particularly in males, including a study that followed boys from an early age into early adulthood. The data suggest there is a very good chance Patrick will grow up to be homosexual. Not all homosexual men show this extremely feminine behavior as young boys. But the research indicates that, of the boys who do exhibit CGN, about 75 percent of them - perhaps more - turn out to be gay or bisexual. (more…)
gay, lesbian, queer
The endless search to know whether it’s a choice or pre-determined, as if it really matters. Yawn.
Thanks, though, this is interesting. I’m just cranky about the need to show why people act the way they do, as if it can’t just be who were are.
I grew up with identical twin brothers, whose story is similiar to these two. The more femine brother did indeed grow up to aknowledge himself as gay. Interestingly enough… they both work in the Theater.