Health News Blog. Lots of resources and information

It has often been suggested that prehomosexual boys’ mothers tend to be dominating, powerful persons who are the chief or sole authority figure in the family. In such a circumstance, it is believed, the father appears insignificant or despicably weak to the boy, so he identifies primarily with his mother. When that happens, particularly in conjunction with a warm and rewarding mother-son relationship, the outcome for the boy may be an uncertain masculine identity and, eventually, a homosexual orientation. This view receives support from several studies in which homosexual respondents described their mothers as more dominant than did the heterosexual respondents. A similar finding was reported among clinical samples as well.

It has also been theorized that prehomosexual boys are likely to perceive their mothers in relatively negative ways and to transfer such perceptions to other women once they reach adulthood, anticipating similarly negative qualities in the women they meet. In this regard, one study reported that the homosexual males described their mothers as less likable than did heterosexual males, and another study found the mothers of the homosexual patients to be demanding and dependent.

*2/158/5*

Terminology and definitions

Gender identity/role is a relatively new term in sexology. Obviously sex and gender overlap, but the two are not synonymous. Gender encompasses sex but conceptually is more all-inclusive. That is to say, gender extends beyond genital sex to include those aspects of male and female dimorphism, behavior included, that do not pertain directly to the organs of generation and the erotic and procreative process itself. Thus, gender dimorphism applies to male/female differences in legal status, vocation, recreation, grooming, manners, and cosmetics, but it does not exclude sexual status, psychosexual status, sexuality, erotic practice, and erotic imagery.

Gender identity/role signifies the unity of gender identity and gender role. According to Money (1965), gender identity and gender role are defined as follows:

Gender identity is the sameness, unity, and persistence of one’s individuality as male, female, or ambivalent, in greater or lesser degree, especially as it is experienced in self-awareness and behavior; gender identity is the private experience of gender role, and gender role is the public expression of gender identity.

Gender role is everything that a person says and does to indicate to others or to the self the degree that one is either male or female, or ambivalent; it includes but is not restricted to sexual arousal and response; gender role is the public expression of gender identity, and gender identity is the private experience of gender role.

The differentiation and development of gender identity/role is best conceptualized as a program that involves diverse variables interacting sequentially during critical periods of prenatal and postnatal development.

X and Y chromosomes

The program of gender identity/role commences with the sex chromosomes. Nature’s plan is that the X or Y sex chromosome of the male parent, when added to the one X sex chromosome invariably supplied by the female parent, determines the genetic sex of the offspring. Should a Y chromosome be added, the chromosomal pattern is XY and, provided prenatal development goes according to plan, male differentiation occurs. Should an X chromosome be added, the chromosomal pattern is XX and, provided all goes according to plan, female differentiation occurs.

Nature’s regular plan for the X and Y chromosomes is not always the one carried out. Among human beings, the known chromosomal anomalies include the loss of either the X or Y chromosome, the addition of one or more, or the combination of more than one chromosomal pattern in the same individual. The term for this latter type of genetic anomaly is mosaicism. When mosaicism occurs, one or more supernumerary chromosomes may be present or a chromosome may be missing in some cells but not in others. An example of the latter type of mosaicism is the 45,X/46,XX pattern found in some girls with Turner’s syndrome.

Concerning chromosomal loss, it is possible for one of the X chromosomes from the XX pair or for the Y from the XY pair to be lost without lethal effect. When either occurs, the result is a phenotypic female, minus fertility, with a 45,X chromosomal pattern (Turner’s syndrome). Girls with Turner’s syndrome have gonadal streaks in the place of ovaries. Consequently, hormonal replacement is necessary for them to have a feminizing puberty. Psychosexually, they are assigned and reared as girls, and they develop a stereotypically feminine gender identity /role. By contrast, the loss of an X chromosome from the XY combination is lethal, whereas the addition of one or more X or Y chromosomes is not. Examples of two chromosomal patterns with an extra sex chromosome are 47,XXY (Kline-felter’s syndrome) and the 47,XYY. Individuals with Klinefelter’s syndrome are morphologic males who have a small penis. The testes are small and sterile. Such individuals are greatly susceptible to severe mental retardation or psy-chopathology which may be of almost any type, including the sexual psychopathology of tran-sexualism or transvestism. The occurrence of psychopathology and mental retardation is sporadic and not a consistent concomitant of the supernumerary X chromosome.

In morphologic phenotype, 47,XYY individuals are male. They are usually tall, many over six feet. Sterility is not uncommon. Money and associates (1974) compared 47,XYY individuals and 47,XXY individuals for behavioral disability, sexuality, and social interaction. Those

47,XYY individuals with behavioral disability often were found to be characterized by impulsive acting out (e.g., destruction of property) and poor long-term planning. By contrast, 47,XXY individuals often were found to be characterized by deficiency or inhibition of action (e.g., phobia). With regard to sexuality, the 47,XYY individuals showed a diversity of sexual experience, whereas the 47,XXY individuals were sexually rather inert (hyposexual). Socially, both 47,XYY individuals and 47,XXY individuals preferred being alone to being with a group.

There also exists a 47,XXX condition which occurs with a female morphology and a female gender identity/role. Fertility may or may not be diminished in this condition, and there may or may not be behavioral disability.

*1/187/5*

Much has been written about the ways in which a woman may influence her son’s sexual orientation. Psychoanalytic theory depicts all young boys as competing in the “Oedipal struggle” with their fathers for their mothers’ exclusive attention. According to this model, the competition is usually unsuccessful, and boys’ failure to gain “possession” of their mothers leads them to reject them as suitable sex objects, to identify with their more-powerful fathers, and eventually to seek sociosexual relationships with more-acceptable “mother-substitutes.” In this view, the development of a heterosexual orientation in boys requires a mother who is warm and accepting toward her son and yet encourages him to grow increasingly independent of her, and whose respect for her husband encourages her son to identify chiefly with his father and not with her.

Opposite circumstances have been thought to predispose boys toward homosexuality. These include mothers who have close-binding and unusually intimate relationships with their sons, who make their sons their confidants, whose relationships with their sons are marked by an unusual interdependency, and who are over-protective.

Such mother-son relationships have been portrayed as facilitating the development of male homosexuality in several ways. For example, it has been suggested that an unusually intense mother-son relationship could produce antagonistic feelings between father and son that could result in the son’s identifying with his mother instead of his father. It has also been hypothesized that a mother’s dependence on her son could make him less likely to become involved with another female. On the one hand, he may feel he is abandoning his mother; on the other, he may fear that a close relationship with any other female could lead to the same kind of engulfment he experienced with his mother. Similarly, it could be argued that a boy who feels victorious in the “Oedipal struggle” might then feel guilty for having displaced his father and thus withdraw from any future competition for another female’s affections.

One author, ridiculing the way in which theorists have cited almost any kind of maternal relationship in “explaining” the development of male homosexuality, rightly cautions investigators to refrain from adding to a long list of post hoc “explanations”. Nonetheless, a number of empirical studies have suggested that pre-homosexual boys and their mothers often relate to each other in relatively atypical ways.

One study reported that homosexual males are likely to have had unusually close and strong relationships with their mothers. Other studies describe the mothers of homosexual males as having been excessively affectionate with their sons or as having fostered an undue dependency on the part of their sons. It has also been reported that homosexual males were more likely than heterosexuals to say that their mothers were more involved with them than their fathers were. In still another study, psychoanalysts described their male homosexual patients as more likely than their heterosexual patients to have had mothers who demanded their sons’ chief attention, were over-protective and seductive, and were easier than their husbands for their sons to cope with. These clinicians also described their homosexual patients as more likely to have been excessively dependent on their mothers, to have been babied by their mothers during childhood, and to have been their mothers’ favorite child. While any study based on psychiatrists’ descriptions of a “typical” homosexual patient is likely to be seriously biased on several counts, similar findings have been reported by other investigators using both clinical and nonclinical samples.

A quite different picture emerges from still other investigations. One study compared nonclinical samples of homosexual and heterosexual males and found the mothers of the homosexual subjects to be more rejecting and less loving than the mothers of the heterosexual subjects. Another study found that homosexual males were more likely than heterosexual males to describe their mothers as nagging. And still another investigation concluded, on the basis of reports provided by prison inmates, that overly aggressive and hostile mothers are an important etiological factor in male homosexuality. (Prison inmates, however, are also a seriously biased sample on which to base any conclusions about homosexual development per se.) Finally, another study found the mothers of homosexual males to be sharply condemning of their sons in certain areas but overindulgent and permissive in other areas.

In the light of such findings, it is little wonder that so many mothers of homosexual males have been led to believe that they are primarily responsible for their sons’ sexual preference.

*1/158/5*