How to know if your daughter is bisexual
Inside:Is my teen daughter a lesbian? Maybe or maybe not, but here’s how to handle this sensitive teenage sexuality topic
This publish was contributed by Jill Whitney, LMFT
So much about teen sexuality is diverse from what it was a couple decades ago.
Where once it was awkward, if not threatening , to be anything other than direct, we now speak openly about a spectrum of orientations and genders. Sexual diversity has broken out of the closet—to the signal where being LGBTQ is kind of cool.
So don’t be surprised if your teen or even tween daughter announces at some show that she’s a lesbian. It’s more common than you might reflect these days.
But you may wonder whether your teen daughter is a womxn loving womxn for real, or whether it’s just a phase. Maybe she’s just experimenting; maybe she’ll mature out of it. Or maybe not.
How do you know?
Acceptance Needs to Be Unconditional
Unfortunately, there’s no way to declare. Some girls who experiment with same-sex partners cease up happily vertical. Other young women
Book Excerpt: Is Your Youth Gay?
Excerpted fromWhy Is the Penis Shaped Like That? … And Other Reflections on Being Human, by Jesse Bering, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (North America), Transworld Ltd (UK), Jorge Zahara Editora Ltda (Brazil). Copyright © by Jesse Bering.
We all understand the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate wind in a little boy's step, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses and dresses, and a robust distaste for rough engage with other boys. In little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, and an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate trappings of femininity.
These behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality. It is only relatively recently, however, that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies to identify the earliest and most reliable signs of adult homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of gay adults,
As I relayed in When Your Child Is Gay: What You Need To Know (Sterling, ), I found out that my son was gay from a note with our son's call entwined with another boy's, surrounded by a heart. I accidentally found that note in his room when I was cleaning.
I never questioned him about the heart I found on the sly. How would I contain brought it up? Suppose I was wrong? After all, he had a crush on a girl in his class.
I had suspected at times that he was gay. He only had girls to his thirteenth birthday party. He preferred gentler sports. He was always concerned about how he looked and followed fashion. Were these stereotypical thoughts from a straight mother? You bet, but it was ingrained through the culture's binary system and ideas about how males were "supposed to" behave.
As it turns out, our son didn't come out until he was 17, was on his own, and brought a lover to visit. Had I asked him if he were same-sex attracted when he was 13, he probably would have defensively said "No!" He had to function it out and work through his denial. I'm glad I muzzled myself.
Susan Berland, the mother o
How Can I Support My Year-Old Who Says She&#;s Bisexual?
By Shafia Zaloom
January 13,
Dear Your Teen,
Recently, my year-old daughter became interested in all things LGBTQ. She came out to me a few weeks ago as bisexual. She is not sexually active in any way but feels, in her words, that she mostly crushes on girls.
I support my daughter percent and always will. Who she loves makes no difference to me.
I told her that sexuality can be very fluid, and that she should not become too attached to who or what she feels she is. Later when she is more sure of her identity, and she wants to possess it front and center or to get deeply interested in a movement, by all means do so. But right now, I think it&#;s in her benefit to take her time.
Can you give me any advice, especially on my suggestion that there is no rush to identify as anything just yet?
EXPERT | Shafia Zaloom
Dear Supportive Dad,
It is a testament to your association with your daughter that she feels safe to share how she’s feeling about her sexual individuality. I encourage all parents to communicate t