Letters to the Editor
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please keep your child safe
I agree with Cary completely, but PLEASE educate your son about the dangers of chatrooms, myspace, etc. Kids who feel different or isolated are much more likely to go looking for "friends" like them on the internet, and it can end very badly.
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Who can say what's normal?
When I was 13 I was curious about sex, but had limited avenues to get answers to my questions. I grew up in a strict Catholic household and my sex education was pretty much "don't do it, boys only want one thing from you and if you give it up before marriage your life will be ruined and we your parents will hate and disown you."
I found my dad's Playboy buried in a dresser drawer. I found my mom's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask." I went to the library and looked at every book with sexual content. I found a stash of gay porn magazines in the neighborhood boy's clubhouse (I figured out how to jimmy the lock - poor guy, I often wonder what sort of fear of discovery I prompted by my theft) I bought adult books from the skeevy truck stop that sold them, enduring the looks and comments of the cashier - at least she was a woman, I can't imagine what a guy would have said about a young teenage girl buying "Swap Around Pammy" and "Hot Jailbait Lesbians"
I wanted to learn about sex. It was sort of irrelevant if the players were males or females, or who was doing what to whom. If my parents had found out what I was looking at they would have branded me a slut. If my girlfriends had found out they would have called me a 'lezzie' - which at the time was indubitably a pejorative though none of us really understood what it meant.
Fast forward: I'm a hetero sexual woman whose early curiosity probably saved me from having a lot of confusing experiences had I simply internalized my parents' fears about sex in general and my sexuality in particular. I don't think any of the directions my sexual curiosity took were indicative of any proclivities - I was too tabula rasa for that. I simply looked at whatever was availalbe - my curiosity had no biases. Sex is sex, that was my poisiton, and it didn't matter if the players were male and female, all female, or all male. I just wanted to figure out what to *do* when the time came. And try to understand the strange feelings I was suffused with when I came across anything sexual.
So - saying it's not 'normal' for a 13 year old boy to look at gay porn..well, I don't agree. It's totally normal for any kid that age to want to look at anything sexual. If it turns out he's gay, his actions aren't any less 'normal' than if it turns out he's straight. Dad needs to be careful to this sort of unintentionally censorious, judgemental language - it's not for him to decide what is normal for his son, or anyone else for that matter.
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13 year olds
This letter makes me laugh, especially about the people outraged that the child's privacy has been breached. This is a great lesson for the kid! If you do something, anything, on a computer that others have access to, what you do is not private. Not at school. Not at home. Not at the library. Not on your own laptop, if it is stolen.
My 13 year old stepson was looking at porn. I told him to stop, because it loads a bunch of spyware onto the computer that I have to take the time to clean up. That was the conversation. Zach, you have been going to sites that aren't safe, including porn sites. These sites cause problems with the computer that we all use. It takes my time and effort to fix. Please don't do it anymore.
End of discussion.
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More than just love
I'm a bit surprised by all of the responses here that represent some version of "this may not be anything, just idle curiosity, he may grow out of it, not to worry...."
Get real. There's a 5 to 10% chance that any random kid is going to be gay -- I'd say that those odds skyrocket among 13 year old boys who are actively seeking out gay porn sites. All of these letters -- even from some gay posters -- seem to suggest backing off, letting the kid figure out the next step, just letting the kid know he is loved. I think there is a strong undercurrent of feeling here that actively promoting or supporting your child's gayness is wrong, even perhaps the unstated hope that if you don't promote it maybe it will go away. We don't do that with obviously straight kids -- we proactively support their straightness.
The problem for most gay teens, the reason for the depression and the isolation, is exactly that -- there isn't "neutrality" in society. There isn't the utopia that Cary seems to envision where everyone is celebrated for who they are, no matter where they fall on the sexual spectrum. The same parents who are waiting silently, supportively, patiently (and, yes, lovingly) for their obviously gay child to get through this early adolescent phase and come back to talk them about being gay (an event which may not occur, if ever, until years of unhappiness have passed), are driving their straight kids to movie dates and junior high school dances and cooing over their young romances. Why don't gay kids get that kind of support from their parents?
Kids pick up on this horribly uneven playing field. I think it's very easy for even the most loving parents to emit signals that they hope their kids turn out not to be gay. The problem is, by the age of 13, all of the genetic input and most of the environmental input that go into whether your child is going to be straight or gay is probably already in the bag. The challenge to parents is to try their best to level the field for their kids. This is hard stuff folks. It isn't just about giving your kid an extra hug.