Comments on: Busted (Part Two): You SO have NOT read my book….

By: Damn Straight » Blog Archive » Busted (Part One): You SO have NOT read my book…

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:49:00 +0000

[...] Check back tomorrow for Busted (Part Two) [...]

By: Earl

Earl — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:16:41 +0000

Don’t be such a priss. Just be glad someone was willing to pretend to read your book. That is as much attention as anyone deserves.

By: Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms » Blog Archive » Raising Boys without Men

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 22:21:20 +0000

[...] Another major flaw is that Drexler spends a lot of time assuring us that boys raised by moms won’t become “sissies” or be anything less than “all-boy.” She says “Current research suggests that many of these fears about boys not being sufficiently masculine when raised without a father in the home are groundless…I found that boys from less conventional families were ‘all-boy’ being raised in a predominantly female environment appeared to have no effect on their sense of themselves as male,” and “A good parent, whether mother or father, will enable a boy to develop to his full potential as a young man, as long as his individuality, his manliness [emphasis mine], his courage, and his developing conscience are respectfully and fully supported.” Again, this is good news for boys who are straight and being raised by moms, but also implies there’s something still not quite right about boys who are less “manly” or fall more towards the female side of the gender identity spectrum. Drexler does affirm that sexual orientation is innate and these boys will find their own way, whether gay or straight. She also found that the moms in her study made it clear to their sons that they could choose from whichever masculine and feminine characteristics appealed to them, and were more open in this regard than moms in traditional households. My sense is that if confronted directly about these issues, Drexler would agree there’s nothing wrong with being a “feminine” boy–but she’s gone on such a crusade to prove that lesbians and single moms can raise “masculine” boys that she comes across as saying they always will. (For counterbalance, read Abigail Garner’s incisive post on assuming heterosexuality among children of LGBT parents.) Drexler doesn’t seem blatantly homophobic, but she’s clearly writing this book to convince those who might be, and shies away from issues of sexuality and gender identity that might scare people. [...]

By: Lenore

Lenore — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:02:49 +0000

Do read the book, Jim. You already have one important message: that queerspawn share many of the same questions of when to be out that GLBT folks do. In fact by the time they go to college, queerspawn may have had more experience with these questions than their glbt peers, having spent their entire childhood in a same sex family. Heterosexual queerspawn most often want to be accepted/welcomed as members of the GLBT community, not ejected when they leave the queer family nest.

An extended Italian family would never tell a child who left town to go to college, perhaps marrying a non-italian, “You’re not Italian anymore! You are not really one of us!’ Children growing up in the queer community may always want and deserve to have their identity validated.

By: Jim Burroway

Jim Burroway — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 21:01:43 +0000

Count me as one who has not read your book — yet.

But obviously “your story” (”your” in the collective sense ;-) ) are those which are not told often enough. I guess I never thought of how many closets (or boxes?) queerspawn must find themselves in throughout their lives. LGBT folks (like me) often assume they know all there is to know about the implications of identity. Obviously not.

And I guess that’s the real problem perhaps: “implications of identity.” Good gawd!

So now, I have a book to go read…