In this article, we take a look at the answers that Manfred sent me from Bavaria in Germany, a boy in Squaw Camp on a pony, dreaming of riding with the male warriors. The self-help questionnaire is a quick and efficient way to pinpoint psycho-sexual identity issues which lay at the core of Same-Sex Attractions. Sadly, gay pressure groups spread disheartening political spin, claiming: “no sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression constitutes a disorder, disease or shortcoming of any sort”. If this were to be true, then there would be no difference between the answers written by a person with exclusively Opposite-Sex Attractions (OSA’s) and someone with SSA’s. That is not the case, however. Almost invariably with men who experience SSA’s, there are discrepancies between the usual development into experiencing OSA’s and theirs.
First we show what Manfred filled out. Then we review what this means for (1) the role of his father, (2) the role of his mother, (3) the role of his peers, and (4) how all this contributes to the development of Same-Sex Attractions (SSA’s).
The Questionnaire:
“The normal psycho-sexual development for a boy exists of the following: At birth every child automatically identifies with the mother, but at age 18 months babies begin to understand that there are men and women. With boys, this is what usually happens:
a) At age 2-3: he starts identifying with Dad (Dad is who I am, or who I will be, and who I want to become).
Manfred:
“At this age my family had moved from my home country, Bavaria in the south of Germany, to the USA, where we lived with my aunt and uncle who had moved their years earlier. When I think back to that period of my childhood, I have memories of all of my family, EXCEPT my dad! I remember my mother, brother, aunt, uncle, neighbours, the friends I played with, and my uncle’s mother and father (whom I called Grandma and Grandpa, because my own ‘real’ grandparents were back in Germany). Yet I cannot recall one memory of my dad. Where was he?”
b) At age 3, you start creating distance to mother, knowing you are different.
Manfred:
“At this time we lived in my aunt and uncle’s home. My aunt had had a miscarriage when first married and so was unable to have children after that. She doted on me from age 2 to 4, because I was the little child she never had. Her maternal instincts were fully employed. My mother also doted on me, perhaps because my older brother, her only other child, had a heart condition and had almost died. One way in which both my mother and aunt kept me busy when I became too much for them (probably because they were trying to care for my frail brother), was by letting me watch them put on their make-up. I cannot remember that my father or uncle played with me or kept me busy, or really had much part in my upbringing at this time. I think it was not possible to distance myself from my mother because who else could I have identified with back then?”
c) At age 4, you start feeling good about the distance to mother, because identifying with dad feels good and right.
Manfred:
“As mentioned above, I have little memory of my dad so how could I feel good and right about identifying with him? I feel there is a big blank space in my memories and emotions about him. And so my attachment was still towards my mother as the main source of love and companionship at the time.”
d) At age 5-10, you start having fun with other boys, who are all like I am, we are all ME.
Manfred:
“Unfortunately, during this time, as immigrants to the USA, my family developed a sense of separation from most of the other people we lived around. “WE” were German, while the rest of “THEM” were American. As I was only 2 years old, I had no memory of my life in Germany before that. I identified with my brother, 6 years older than me, and we both tended to keep away from other boys who dressed, played games/sports and talked in American ways which were totally different to ours. Because my brother had his heart problems, he couldn’t play sports very much. We spent a lot of our early years doing things which were usually rather intellectual or artistic, in isolation, getting company only from each other. There were, of course, other friends for both of us. They were either children of other German immigrants or those who could accept us, and were not usually ‘tough’ or sporty types. Most were girls.”
e) And we all create distance to girls, we feel “girls are stupid”, boys are great, we are kings of the world, we play games in which we are kings, we have sword fights, we play cowboys and Indians, we fight because we are tough, and we try to be tough.
Manfred:
“As I said, many of my friends were girls. I didn’t play many rough games. My brother was too weak physically to play these ‘rough-housing’ games as they are called, and when I was getting too rough with him and hitting him, I was punished verbally. Later I was punished by smacking, for hitting my brother. My father never ‘rough-housed’ with me. I felt frustration at not having an outlet for this rough side of me, but was taught that such roughness was inappropriate and grew up thinking that good little boys don’t act that way, which is of course, a total fallacy.”
f) We learn to feel good with boys, to love boys and to love being a boy. We are great.
Manfred:
“Comments above show this was not the case. Unlike my older brother, I liked to sing and dance. I had an artistic side which was manifested in desires to design dresses, bake and decorate cakes, sing, dance and act. Boys often didn’t identify with these activities of course and I was excluded by them and/or bullied at times. I was not physically strong and not sporty. I wasn’t picked to be on teams at school and felt inept and weak doing masculine activities or games. I didn’t think I was great. I was taught that it was wrong to show-off or try to be Number 1 at competitive sports, which were all about ego.”
g) In all these moves, in all this becoming a boy, Mom and Dad approve. They like it, they affirm it, they respect it.
Manfred:
“Approval from Dad was not often. I guess he wasn’t around or I didn’t do so many things he approved of. Sometimes he was there and approved, but mostly when I was older. My mum approved of many things, but not of me acting in masculine ways. On the contrary, she often said she always wanted a little girl. She also didn’t want babies and small children to grow up because she liked to fuss over them as little ones.”
h) Dad is proud of his little boy, this replica of himself, this offspring, this chip off the old block
Manfred:
“I never heard or was aware that he felt this. In fact, my mother told me that he didn’t want children.”
i) The little boy makes him feel good because in him he recognizes his former self and loves the boy to become like him, including having sex with women some day.
Manfred:
“I never heard him say this or became aware that he thought this. He himself had a stepfather and I now wonder if he did not feel close to his own (step) dad and if he really learned how to relate to a father figure, as well as how it feels to be loved by a father. My father was rather ashamed of himself because he had been born illegitimately, which was unacceptable when he was a boy.”
REVIEW:
In these answers we see how honest and vulnerable Manfred dares to be when filling out the questionnaire from behind a computer. The questionnaire gives him the chance to write whatever he feels like, without a therapist sitting opposite him and in whose presence he may perhaps feel embarrassed or ashamed, even though that is not the therapist’s intention. He can ponder at his own speed, perhaps delaying answering the questionnaire for a few days, and then starting to write, and ultimately going with the flow.
Modern ex-gay therapy is all about asking the right questions. There is no magic or coercion involved, as radical gay-lib slanders on the Internet. Neither does it entail hypnosis, inducing shame, dishing out punishment, drilling a client into desired behavior, having fun with electricity, dungeons, and cellars. (Sounds more like a good old gay-bar darkroom to me, whoops! Down slave, down!)
Those are merely paranoid fears, induced by a deliberate disinformation and ignorance campaign to make you look as bad as possible, at the same time hacking Wikipedia and constantly deleting all non-gay-lib publications, and marketed by the old twentieth century anti-psychiatry movement, an outdated world-view which sadly still lingers on.
1. The role of the father
It is surprising to see how Manfred has come to realize his emotional distance to his father, and how he actually shows understanding for this man’s predicament. Let us look at Manfred’s dad. He says his father was born illegitimate, which understandably must have entailed a major psychological blow at the time of the man’s upbringing. It has ruined Dad’s self-concept, making him feel inferior and worthless. It made him no doubt a needy and emotionally neglected child, who took it upon himself to acknowledge that he was the cause of family shame.
His neediness was presumably shamed filled too, and he may have been bullied. In his life, the boy roams around, hoping someone will take him on (this happens very often with illegitimate and orphaned children). His stance would have been one of a lonely wolf, cowering to the wolf-pack, desperate for approval.
No doubt Dad marched around feeling that he had no right to just be himself, but that he had to beg and modestly whine to the superior men who were legitimate and had a right to exist. (These are things that a therapist could immediately elaborate on if Manfred were to go into therapy. The questionnaire leads instantly to the relevant hot spots of acquiring SSA’s).
If this was indeed the deeply ingrained feelings that Dad had about himself, what else are we to expect from Manfred’s upbringing? Could it be that sensitive Manfred saw his father indeed for who he was, someone who has no right to exist, males have no right to exist, and that Manfred ended up identifying with this state of the male mind? I wonder. Sure sounds like it.
Manfred has no memories of Dad in his early years. Are they repressed? And if so, why? After all, he remembers the rest of the family very well. Where was Dad? Could it be that Dad was emotionally absent and unable to give, sensing that legitimate people (women) know how to do that, and that he had no right to give or demand reciprocal love from a young boy?
Could it be that Dad had a deeply ingrained feeling of shame, of sadness, of seeing in his sons a new generation of needy children and that he was all too happy that his wife and sister-in-law knew how to fill the gap? Perhaps he encouraged their generous fondling and doting on his sons, knowing that the boys were in emotionally safe hands, at the same time feeling too inferior to contribute, not knowing how to contribute, being clumsy, awkward, hesitant and needy.
Sensitive Manfred saw it all, and pulled back, so as not to put pressure on his clumsy Dad. Manfred started taking care of Dad too, by withholding him his own need for male affirmation, recognition and approval. Manfred was a good little boy, ultimately at his own expense. And if there was anyone who had a full and acknowledged right to sympathy and understanding, then it would have been his frail brother with his heart condition.
Manfred started living behind the curtains too, just like his father had done. He learnt passivity. ‘Don’t mind me, I am just the scenery, I am part of the wallpaper. Don’t let my male aspirations get in the way’.
2. The role of the mother
To make matters worse, Manfred writes that his mother did not approve of masculine ways, did not want children to grow up and that she even would rather have had a girl instead of a boy. How on earth are you going to acquire a healthy, confident sense of maleness at this rate? It has nothing to do with a genetically induced gayness just popping up out of nowhere, as Gay Affirmative Therapists insist. Only a blind fool would reach that conclusion. Look and you will find.
She wanted babies to remain babies, in other words, she rejects the emerging of a virile, proud and, yes, sexual male. Sensitive Manfred knew, and sensitive Manfred complied. What a good little boy in Squaw Camp he probably was. Manfred went into squaw things: watching make-up being applied, baking cakes, decorating, designing dresses, playing with girls.
His “loving” mother was so generous (I am cynical) to inform her child that Dad actually never wanted children. Look who’s talking! Is she the one who wanted a second son? After all, she said she actually wanted a girl! Is she not spreading bogey-man tales behind her husband’s back, enough to scare the wits out of a child, enough to make his distance to Dad even greater? What an inappropriate thing to tell a child. In the period before you conceive a child, you generally have discussions with your spouse on the desirability of conceiving, aborting or preventing new child birth. How ghastly inappropriate it is, to confide to your son these deeply private details from your own marriage life. We call it psychological incest. How dare you drag him in so close!
Manfred’s mother has deeply ingrained border issues, not knowing how to keep strong and healthy borders during the emotional upbringing of children. In what way were the foundations for late-onset depression laid by this lack of healthy distance, one may ask? And has Manfred now come to blame himself too, just like good old Dad, for being born, for being a burden, for being the wrong gender, for being there at all?
How safe was Mother really for Manfred? For the outside world, she may no doubt have been a loving, doting parent sacrificing all for her handicapped child and also for the low-maintenance child she had, the second one, the one who did not cry, ask or demand attention. For her self-image, she may have been the perfect mother doing all she could as she was having two wonderful children, one with his heart condition and the other a gifted happy child, who was gleefully into acting, singing and having a wonderful time in life. An extrovert child to be proud of. A trophy of sorts. He became part of the emigration success story. No better way to prove that emigrating was the right thing to do, than to display a hassle-free young boy, one that you can even dote on when he reaches adolescence and when he becomes a compliant teenager. A great kid.
And boy, did Manfred comply. And boy, did he learn to be an actor.
For underneath the alter ego of the great kid, lies a showman, a man who, in spite of baking cakes and designing dresses, secretly yearns for same sex identification, he needs to ride the ponies, a need that never was fulfilled. There lies this man who has SSA’s, and who struggles with identification issues with the distant male, and who has difficulties when it comes to relating to the opposite sex. But no-one is to know. He is apparently as equally shame-filled as his father, when it comes to being a man. And perhaps equally passive, equally not knowing what to do. Perhaps equally helpless. Perhaps subliminally sad.
3. The role of peers
When acquiring SSA’s, we see almost inevitably a distancing from same-sex peers during childhood. Sometimes this is due to the sensitivity gap one feels with them, but in Manfred’s case it clearly has to do with a great cultural gap. People from Bavaria in the south of Germany are very soft-spoken, gentle, warm and friendly. American male teenage culture is very much into outspoken toughness, the all-American kid, the competitive sports jock, the guy who successfully dates from age 15. Being successful is a big American thing and can be quite daunting. Manfred’s mother even explicitly looked down on it. There are then not many ways in which Manfred could learn to feel one with his peers with the lack of an approving mother, or lack of an encouraging father who as a role model could have showed him how to feel welcome in the world of men.
4. The development of SSA’s
The child yearns for identification and oneness with the same sex at all odds, and this genetically induced drive is very persistent. It is what makes us social beings, and what guarantees the reproduction of the species. Through millions of years of evolution, this drive has become hard-wired in the genetic make-up of every human being. Manfred is not a loner due to a genetic disorder called the gay gene as gay-lib endlessly insists (in spite of overwhelming scientific proof to the contrary that they refuse to acknowledge), Manfred is a loner and feels insecure in his masculinity due to the way his psycho-sexual development just happened to have taken place during the very short period of time in his early years. That is nothing to be ashamed of, and this insight does not constitute an anti-gay prejudice. The proof is all there, at least if you are willing to see. (In this series, we will look into many more men).
Manfred is not “other”, he has come to FEEL other. But basically he is normal, and he can learn to explore his full sexual potential, a potential that everybody has, merely by asking the right questions and being prepared to process the things he finds there. Therapy will no doubt get him on the move, giving him the freedom to come to grips with sad affairs in the past and the freedom to experiment with new behavior. It is the ultimate gay liberation. The ridiculous idea of being “born that way” will bog you down for ever.
As he showed us, Manfred did not connect with his father, nor did he emotionally connect with same-sex peers. He has lived in Squaw Camp all his life, and his self-concept was defined by women, not by men. His mother was close, too close, so he writes, and this was reinforced by her sister who also deeply connected to him at a very early age. Could Manfred learn to feel safe with women? We read him stating that his mother punished rough-and-tumble behavior, dreaded a child becoming number one or growing up to become a sexual male, the alpha male; Manfred says she wanted boys to stay babies. I call that a castrating mind-frame, and this experience with women is therefore scary for boys growing up.
With women, so Manfred came to feel, you cannot be your genuine self, you cannot be a sexual male being, nor ever will you. A great feeling of uncomfortableness with women no doubt set in, a fear even of losing your soul yet once again when you date women. He knows all about women, and has had an overdose even. His longing to be with men became sexualized when at age eleven the sexual hormones kicked in. His natural yearning became a sexual longing.
Can Manfred change? Of course he can. He will feel good about himself in the near future. He will regain the pride and the right to exist that all Bavarian boys share. He will never defy his roots, and may he never defy his rights to understanding his full sexual potential.
This is all not rocket science. Mind you, though, gay-lib has done all they can on the Internet to discourage him and everyone else, just like his mother did. They even discourage therapists and politicians, and these people will then stand around, just as powerless and passive as his Dad did, just gazing on and leaving gay-lib (=Mother) to it. Home again, Squaw Camp for ever. Gay-libbers manage to collectively reproduce their upbringing situation, with all the powerlessness and depressions that go with it. And short sexual encounters which would be the ultimate solution, wear off in a day.
Gay-lib will insist that men and women who experience SSA’s are “born perfect”. Well, you may pat yourself on the back in this way, but this narcissistic self-concept doesn’t then guarantee a smooth and hassle-free perfect life. In this series, we will analyse more answers to the questionnaire and then go on to show how easy and liberating it is to understand yourself, and from there learn to experiment with new behavior. It isn’t over till the fat lady sings (the last aria in the Wagner opera “Die Götterdämmerung”, an opera which lasts for 5 hours and 30 minutes until she does her thing, which then takes a full twenty minutes!)
Ride ’em , cowboy!
To be continued.
Job Berendsen, MD.
