Chapter 4

Same-Sex Sex Play

Young children play with either boys or girls, and they are not discriminating in their choice of play activity. But they soon learn that their parents have ideas about what activities they should engage in and with whom they should engage in them. Since older children spend much of their play time in segregated boys' and girls' worlds, it is understandable that much of their sexual curiosity, sex talk, and sexual experimentation is played out in association with same-sex peers.

Same-sex sex play is not generally approved of in U.S. society, but this is not universally true in human societies. Ford and Beach (1957) found that the majority (64%) of the seventy-six societies (other than U.S. society) on which data are available consider same-sex sexual activity as normal and socially acceptable at least for certain members of the community or for certain periods of life. For the Keraki of New Guinea, for instance, a man was regarded as abnormal if he abstained from such relations prior to marriage, and the Kiwai had the custom of practicing sodomy in connection with initiation to make a young man strong. Among the North American Crow a few men, called bate, adopted women's dress and mannerisms and lived alone. One of their activities was the oral stimulation of boys' genitals; adolescent boys and occasionally older men visited the bate as well.

Ford and Beach's cross-cultural comparisons led them to three generalizations concerning same-sex sexual activity. First, there is a wide divergence of social attitudes toward it. Second, no matter how it is treated in any particular society, the behavior will likely occur among some persons. Third, males seem more likely to engage in same-sex sexual activity than do females. All three conclusions are applicable to the situation in the United States. Child guidance professionals who give advice to parents on how to react to child sexual experiences recognize that peer sex play does occur, but their acceptance of it is not without reservation (Martinson 1992).
In this chapter, we look at children's same-sex sexual activity for the same reason that we look at all child sexual activity, mainly to understand more about the life of children, not to determine the predictive power of same-sex activity. Sexual behavior of children, either same- or other-sex, has been found to have little or no predictive power. 

Same-sex sexual play in childhood in the United States is usually episodic in occurrence, often being confined to one, two, or a few experiences and only during a short period of life. This is especially true for females. In Kinsey et al.'s study of females (1953), which included a review of earlier studies, females reporting same-sex contact varied from 4 percent in one study to as high as 26 percent in several studies. Only a fraction of I percent of females recalled sex play with girls as having occurred as early as three years of age. Six percent recalled such play by age five, 15 percent by age seven, 25 percent by age nine, and 33 percent by the onset of adolescence. Most of the same-sex play had been confined, as had girl-boy sex play, to a single year and one or two experiences for the majority of girls with same-sex experience. About half of older males in the Kinsey et al. study of males (1948) and 60 percent of boys who were preadolescents at the time they contributed their histories recalled same-sex activity. Twelve percent reported that such behavior occurred at five years of age and 17 percent at age ten. 

In the Ramsey study (1943), approximately half of the boys who had been involved in preadolescent same- sex play had confined their relationship to one other boy. The remaining boys with such experience reported from two to ten partners. The partners were, except in rare instances, boys of approximately the same age. The frequency of same- sex play ranged from a single experience to a maximum of over 400 experiences. 

Exposing, exploring, and manual manipulation are the most common same-sex activities among children. For both sexes, genital exhibitionism is by far the most common, with approximately 99 percent of females and 99.8 percent of males with same-sex experience reporting it (Kinsey et al. 1948, 1953). Exhibition appears mostly among the youngest children. Much of it is incidental, casual, and fruitless as far as erotic arousal is concerned (Kinsey et al. 1948), as in the following three cases.

My friend and I were behind the furnace in the basement. He dropped
his trousers, bent over, and spread his cheeks for me to get a good look.
I exclaimed. Then I did the same for him and he exclaimed.

At the age of six or seven my friend and I had a great curiosity for exploring the anus. It almost seemed more like scientific research.

Normal play took up about 90 percent of the play of my constant play mate and me, but we also had an intense fascination with each other's bodies and their functions. Elimination was a constant source of interest and we would take turns watching each other urinate and defecate. There was no sexual fascination that I remember, simply a tremendous

With boys, same-sex activity often has a tinge of competitiveness attached to it; for example, a mother reports that she saw two boys giggling excitedly while having a contest to see which one could. "wee wee" the farthest (Sears, Maccoby, and Levine 1957). Such activity is likely both low in erotic intent and satisfaction. At older ages the competitiveness sometimes involves competition around physical maturity.

I was invited to an all-boy slumber party. We were all in the seventh grade. Someone suggested that we play strip poker. A couple of fellows, including myself, protested but finally the majority ruled. (I was embarrassed because of my obvious lack of any signs of physical maturity.) I was one of the losers. About two of us ended up stark naked, while the others were in various stages of undress. No sex play resulted at this juncture, except for the obvious visual effect. We all hurriedly got dressed when we heard the host's mother coming.

Exhibition often leads into manipulation of the genitals. In the Kinsey sample of boys (1948), 67 percent of all those with same-sex experience had engaged in such manipulation. Only a slightly smaller percentage of girls (62%) had engaged in manual manipulation of the genitals.

She dared me to touch her breasts. I was very afraid and repulsed by the idea, but I did it because I didn't want her to see I was afraid. When she touched my breasts, I really enjoyed it. I felt a tingling all over my body that I had never felt before.

During the sixth grade, whenever we stayed overnight we slept in the same bed. We began experimenting and fondling each other's breasts. We tested for size and who could feel the other out the best. We never thought we were "queer"-we were trying to find out what it would be like if a guy did this to us.

For some reason we found that we enjoyed our friendship better than those we had with members of the opposite sex. From the time we met, up until about the time of fifth grade, she and I played a game which we enjoyed very much. We would see older couples holding hands, lying on the beach, swimming, picnicking, etc., and then we would proceed to imitate their actions with each other. She would always play the boy's role and I the girl's. There was nothing physical about our actions other than a caress here or there. This game played a significant part in our friendship, and seemed to provide us with security.

We played these pretending games for hours at a time over approximately two years, but only during the winter months. Our games all amounted to the same basic idea: playing the roles of boyfriend and girlfriend, taking turns being the "boy." It was much more fun to be the girl, to be submissive and have to struggle and protest a bit. (We were definitely not concerned with the Women's Uberation Movement.) Our favorite situation was pretending to be teenagers when one of our homes had been vacated by the parents. I am quite sure that the only cause of my being "turned-on" by sexual contact was my fascination that my partner was a "boy.,'

When I was 10, my friend and I were playing in a house under construction. He was one floor above me; we could see each other through a knothole. I told him to stick his "cock through the hole. I pulled a ladder over below him. After touching his "cock"a couple of times, I told him we should switch positions. He decided to grab my organ and pull, to which I objected. We switched positions again, and he urinated on my hand after a while. This ended the adventure. 

We often engaged in mutual exploration of genitals and anus. We would fully undress and take turns exploring. We both had erections and would masturbate, although we didn't know what it was. He was circumcised and I was not so this caused some interest. During these times neither of us engaged in any talking.

When I was about 12, 1 had a completely different experience. Some of us boys got together one night and had a "circle jerk'; we stood around in a circle each holding onto the boy's penis in back of us.

I encountered a sexual experience at kindergarten age that was confusing. Some afternoons we would meet and lock ourselves in a bedroom and take our pants off. We took turns lying on the bed and put pennies, marbles, etc. between our labia. The other two liked to pretend they were boys and used a pencil for a penis. As the ritual became old hat, it passed out of existence. I enjoyed the sexual manipulation, for it was stimulating. Yet, I never wanted to pretend that I had a penis. 

On the whole, Kinsey et al. (1948) found more same-sex. play in the histories of boys; it occurred more frequently among them; and it became more specific in type of activity than did sex play for girls. This higher incidence depended in part on the greater accessibility of boys as companions in play among boys who belonged to boy's organizations. 

Probably the most misleading sex education I received was in the Boy Scout organization. If Baden Powell knew what perverted acts and latent homosexual tendencies came about on camping trips, he would probably roll over in his grave.

The Boy Scout organization allowed many of my more inclined peers the opportunity for sex play with each other. 

The Project on Human Sexual Development (Roberts, Kline, and Gagnon 1978) sponsored a two-year interview study in Cleveland, Ohio, of parents' attitudes and behavior regarding the sexual learning of their children. Over 1,400 mothers and fathers from dual- and single-parent families were interviewed. Each parent interviewed was the mother or father of a child between the ages of three and eleven. Parents seemed to accept homosexuality as a reality, but for most it was a disturbing reality and one they hoped would not reach their families. Fathers were more likely than mothers to caution their sons verbally not to act like sissies and their daughters not to act like tomboys. They generally began to talk with their sons about acting like a boy or a little man and not like a sissy at about the time they entered school, while there appeared to be a longer grace period for girls, with parents not evidencing concern about their daughters' boyish behavior until right before puberty. 

Too much touching, especially among boys, appeared to cause discomfort for a number of parents. From indications in many families, fear of homosexuality often prevented open and shared affection between fathers and sons and inhibited children's learning about their bodies. Most boys were discouraged from kissing, hugging, being gentle, or even asking for comfort or help. A number of parents wanted to find ways to encourage their sons to be emotionally expressive, but the responses, particularly of fathers, indicated that they had difficulty in modeling the kinds of behaviors they would like their children to learn. Parents indicated a desire to have assistance in dealing with the topic of homosexuality. They were concerned about what to tell their children about it; many were uncertain about the causes of homosexuality and were fearful of it. Consequently, they tended to monitor their own behavior and the behavior of their child lest "something happen" and the child indicate a homosexual preference.

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