Dissatisfied with their sex
Anthony Storr
THE 'SISSY BOY SYNDROME' AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOMOSEXUALITY by Richard Green
Yale University Press, £30.00
Conventional wisdom affirms that little girls who want to be boys usually develop into 'normal', heterosexual women; where- as little boys who want to be girls are much more likely to be emotionally disturbed. If male homosexuality is considered to be either 'abnormal' or undesirable, conven- tional wisdom appears to be right.
Richard Green, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, has studied the sexual development of two differing groups of boys over a period of 15 years. One of the reasons why this study is important is the length of time involved. Long-term studies of human growth and development are notoriously difficult to carry out, because both researchers and their subjects move elsewhere. Richard Green is to be congratulated in having managed to secure data on two-thirds of his original two groups from start to finish. If more studies of this kind were available, we should know a great deal more about the huge number of variable, complex factors which go to form adult personality.
The first group consisted of 66 boys whose parents reported that they showed `feminine' characteristics. That is, they preferred girls as playmates, and dolls as playthings, and avoided rough games with other boys. Very often, these boys enjoyed dressing as girls, and overtly expressed the wish that they had been born as girls rather than as boys.
The second group of boys were conven- tionally 'masculine'. They dressed only in boys' clothes, enjoyed rough-and-tumble games, played with trucks rather than dolls, and were content with the sex assigned to them by nature.
Dr Green interviewed the boys and their parents on many occasions, and a great part of this book consists of such inter- views. He supplemented these with a battery of psychological tests and question- naires, playroom observations, and videotaping of outdoor games. His most important finding is a very high correlation between 'feminine' behaviour in early childhood and later development of homosexuality. Seventy-five per cent of the group of boys who exhibited girlish tastes and behaviour became either homosexual or bisexual in early adult life, whereas only one of the control group of the conventionally masculine children did so.
The complexity of human sexual atti- tudes and behaviour is still largely a mystery. Since reproduction is the main biological goal of every species, one might have expected that sex would be a straight- forward business, and that each sex would develop an identity and follow behaviour patterns which were determined by anat- omy and physiology. Instead, sex is a principal cause of human emotional diffi- culties. A surprisingly large number of human beings are dissatisfied with the sex allotted to them. Something like one in twenty prefer their own sex to the opposite sex, thereby discarding the basic sexual aim of reproduction. Many others find people of either sex less exciting than fetish objects or elaborate symbolic scenarios. As Dr Green observes: 'What string of fanci- ful sexualities promotes erotic arousal to the handlebars of a ten-speed English racing-bicycle (as with a patient of my colleague)?' The more one studies human sexual behaviour, the more astonished one becomes that the human species has been so biologically successful.
Why do these feminine boys behave as they do? How early does the behaviour start? Is it determined by genetics, or the result of parental attitudes? Is such non- conformity necessarily undesirable or a source of unhappiness? If it is, can such behaviour be altered by treatment?
These are some of the questions addres- sed by Dr Green. One of the most interest- ing findings is how early in an infant's life behavioural differences between the sexes appear. During the first year, infants rec- ognise members of their own sex as being more like themselves than members of the opposite sex. Differences in styles of play appear before the second birthday. In subhuman primates, females show interest in playing with newborns, whilst males do not, when only nine months old. As these differences in behaviour occur in animals which have been reared in isolation, they cannot be attributed to monkeys having stereotyped ideas about differential rearing of the sexes! There is convincing evidence that prenatal levels of male hormones influence behaviour 'such as timidity, aggressivity, participation in rough-and- tumble play, and interest in newborns (and perhaps in their surrogates, baby dolls).' We do not know why hormonal levels vary in this way; but these findings strongly suggest that biochemistry is a powerful determinant of how 'masculine' or 'femi- nine' a boy turns out to be.
If these differences are determined at such a basic level, it may explain why psychotherapy is ineffective at preventing the progression from 'feminine' boy to homosexual or bisexual man. Of the 12 boys who entered a treatment programme, nine became homosexual or bisexual in spite of it.
However, parental expectations and atti- tudes are also important. A boy showing feminine behaviour is likely to become more and more alienated from his father, and also more and more rejected by his male peers. This 'male-affect starvation', as Dr Green calls it, may make any homosexual advances which are later made to him appear particularly attractive.
This is hardly a book for the general reader, though many will find the case- histories and interviews of considerable interest. Professionals in the business of mental health will learn much, although unequivocal answers are still a long way off.
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