My Views On Sexuality And Its Effect On The Representation...

I feel there are many works of LGBTQ writing out there that, although innovative for their time, could benefit from being extended with a stronger queer lens. Savin-Williams Memories of Same-Sex Attraction was one of these, although I enjoyed the stories and concepts he brought forward. What I missed, however, was an emphasis on the concept of attraction on multiple levels that extend beyond sexuality and a stronger discussion of the reoccurring traits seen in gay male youth. I know we’ll be touching on homosexuality and masculinity later in the semester, so I will try to avoid breaking into that. Instead I will focus my interests in the idea of attractions and what effects this could have on the representation of masculinity. My goal is†¦show more content†¦Others found themselves struggling to even act like a boy, trapped outside the binary stereotypes while culture attempted to label them. Some acted like boys just fine, fitting in, but never-the-less found themsel ves feeling different from their peers. The writing as a whole speaks volumes of not only the experiences of gay youth but of the pressures all men face to conform in society. The rigged structure they are expected to follow is unaccommodating to the human experience, a unique object which can’t be understood under the one-size-fits-all structure imposed on it. Yet even with this fantastic analysis on the pressures of childhood for gay men, I felt there was something even beyond what Savin-Williams talked about – something beyond homosexuality. Homosexuality is a word that immediately invokes ideas of sexual attraction for me, and not just because it has the word ‘sex’ written inside of it. It has been defined to me countless times, from queer studies to the field of psychology, as being the desire for sexual interests or relations with someone of the same sex. All immediate branching identities of homosexuality, such as gay and lesbian, almost automatically receive this same sexual definition. The history of the word pressures the sexualized connotation, having originally been used to identify a mental disorder based solely in the