Why ... ?

It's lunchtime in the library. The usual gang of boys is hanging together, now at the far end of the library so I don't have to hear them. They will occasionally erupt in boy noise; they are draped across the furniture that probably is big enough for them, only they don't realize it because they don't get yet how big they themselves are now. I see t-shirts and sweatshirts, jeans, and big, big sneakers. I see hair that needs a trim, faces and hands that need to be washed. The whole teenage boy thing.

 

And then a group of giggling girls comes in, and as they settle down at a table, I see that one of them is actually a boy. He's wearing black slacks and a garnet colored button down shirt, buttoned up all the way. He wears geeky glasses which he pushes up on his nose every few minutes. He's wearing black shoes, not sneakers.

 

Gay.

 

He has all the mannerisms that one would associate with the gay stereotype, which is not to say that all gay people fit this stereotype, or even that all kids with these mannerisms are gay. Really, do you know if someone is gay unless s/he says to you "Oh, btw, I'm gay."?

 

Yes, sometimes you do.

 

The boy is at the table behind me now, reaching into a large Nordstrom shopping bag he has with him and showing things to the girls, his friends. Seems to be parts of a project he has for some class; I'm not watching closely. He stands with one hip higher than the other, a hand on that hip. He reaches into his backpack for his phone and a pinky stands apart from his other long, slim fingers. He holds the little phone in his hand with his fingers pressed flatly against one side, not clenched in a paw or handled carelessly. He laughs, high-pitched.

 

What I want to know is this: how does he know to do this? Why? It's unlikely that these are behaviors he learned from his parents, yes? Perhaps it's what he's picked up from TV even before he knew he was gay -- for all I know, he doesn't know yet -- that this is how gay people are. Maybe he saw people on TV, knowing nothing about them at all, and adopted their mannerisms because they felt comfortable to him. This has always been a curious thing to me. How ... why ... do children take on behaviors associated with being gay? It's not as if it's a requirement. There are gay boys who know that they're gay but no one else knows unless they're told, because there's nothing overt about them.

 

One of my daughters had a friend in high school who was obviously gay to everyone but himself. No other boys would share a room with him on the senior class trip, so he didn't go. He went away to college and after about five minutes there, he looked around, and suddenly realized "Oh! I AM gay!" One of my other daughter's best friends from high school knew he was gay from childhood, but no one ever gave it a thought; he hung out with the same guy friends he'd always had, he was the same kid he always was. No one knew he was gay unless he told them.

 

It's something I wonder about, how kids grow up the ways they do, how they make choices, or if there are no choices. It seems strange that someone would pick up a kind of behavior that's generally frowned upon, but it seems even stranger that this happens all over the place, boys developing stereotypical gay mannerisms regardless of where they grow up, or in what circumstances. I do agree that whether or not someone is gay is not learned behavior, it's just the way they are, like hair color, but the behaviors I would think would be acquired. Maybe not. Maybe it's part of the born-that-way thing. But then, why some and not all?

 

I got no answers. Just wondering.