Gender in homosexual boys: some developmental and clinical considerations

Each of the homosexual men I have worked with has described gender-discordant traits during childhood that made him feel "different." In this article I illustrate that early parental admonitions and interventions to curb or replace these traits with more typically male behaviors may be harmful to the child's development, particularly to his emotional resilience. As a result, some gay adults have lost their capacity to recognize and express a variety of affects, and some attempt to avoid intimate relationships that evoke these and other repudiated "feminine" traits.