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The
Need for a Gay Youth Identity
Michael
Guzman
Department
of Linguistics
University
of Massachusetts - Amherst
(Estados
Unidos)
Ritch Savin-Williams's book
The New Gay Teenager is a reaction against the need to
affirm a gay identity in new generation gay youth through
a clinical psychology lense. Certain aspects of his
research prove to be quite problematic, from his treatment
of same-sex sexualities as primarily developmentally
psychological to his lack of conclusive evidence for the
reasons why same-sex attracted (SSA) youth reject these
"sexual identity" labels.
Savin-Williams leaves out
the role of power politics in "The New Gay
Teenager", concluding that gay youth who are in the
closet, for example, freely make that choice. He doesn't
grapple with other disciplines such as anthropology,
history, sociology, and cultural studies to name a few. He
has even suggested a new trend in clinical psychology,
which implies that is is possible that the advice given to
same-sex attracted young people has been wrong, and that
perhaps we should be encouraging them not to identify as
gay.
This question poses a
dangerous threat to gay identities, gay communities, and
gay histories. The mainstream straight and gay media are
telling gay youth that asserting one’s differences is
unnecessary because we live in a world that claims to
value the humanity of all people. The trend among some gay
youth to reject sexual identity labels and claim that
their sexuality cannot be adequately labeled rejects and
may slowly erase the very existence and concept of a gay
community. If the gay community begins to dissolve, its
absence may have monumental effects on gay culture,
mainstream culture, and sexual expression.
Some gay youth are leading
the charge for complete assimilation and thus hurting
their futures of sexual and social exploration and
experience. What, then, are the cultural and social
implications when sexual identity labels are not
reflective of sexual orientation? Is this disjunction
culturally, socially, and politically disadvantageous when
one cannot describe men who have sex with men as gay? Why
are people ashamed of defining the sexual in their sexual
identity? Why are they ashamed of sexual difference? Of
difference altogether? What can't be denied is that gay
youth are inescapably connected to a history that is, for
some, disgraceful and threatening rather than liberating.
What may be lost when the younger gay generation begins to
ignore and erase gay culture or the older gay generations
do not pass down knowledge of a gay past to the younger
ones? The reality is that resisting labels is equally a
political move and one that may have dire consequences—which
may ultimately be deadly for gay culture. Sources:
Savin-Williams, Ritch. The New Gay Teenager. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 2005.
About Michael Guzman
Michael S. Guzman is a
graduate student at the University of Massachusetts -
Amherst, specializing in Applied Linguistics and Second
Language Acquisition. He received a BA in Spanish and
French from Dartmouth College, and he now lives in
Northampton, MA. |
