Paternal Absence As The Strongest Factor Of

Male Homosexuality Essay, Research Paper

Absence of a Father Figure as the Strongest Factor in Male Homosexuality

The condition “homosexuality” commonly evokes a negative impression from most people, especially in conventional societies as the Philippines. For many years most psychiatrists presupposed that homosexuality was a form of mental illness, until 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) decided to define such condition as a normal behavior. Homosexuals, as described by APA, are “individuals whose sexual interests are directed toward people of the same sex and who are either bothered by, in conflict with, or wish to change, their sexual orientations.”

As aforementioned, traditional societies consider homosexual relationships illicit and immoral. However, what these societies have not taken into account is that there is a deeper reason than merely having carnal desires toward the people of the same sex underlying the causation of homosexuality among men: a cause rooted in the family.

Homosexual orientation depends on the difficulties in the parent-child relationship, especially in the early, formative years of life. When the child suffers from an unmet attachment-need to the parent of the same-sex, the child seeks affection from a member of the same-sex. In the case of the son, the deficit in the relationship with the father is the one being compensated. This theory is what Dr. Elizabeth Moberly holds, John F. Harvey noted.

To further understand how do difficulties in the relationship with the father causes male homosexuality, it is important to know what is the role of the father in the overall sex role development of the son and why does the son resort to a homosexual relationship to be able to adapt in the absence of the father, physical or psychological.

The father is the main masculine model in the family. “…the father is the head. He is the strong masculine figure to which the boys inevitably identify with,” Pura Medina Flores noted, quoting Estefania Lim. He is the parent who provides a different element in the overall development of the son. During the son’s infant years, he is much attached with his mother. Beginning at about the age of three, the son starts to search for a masculine model on which to build his sense of self. He slowly withdraws himself from his mother and femininity. At some point, he might feel he is encountering a dilemma of losing his mother over identifying himself with his father. The father help lessen such struggle by gently drawing away the son from an overdependence on his mother and into interaction with the world at large.

As the son grows into a young adult, the presence or absence of the father will either solidify or confuse his sense of identity, most especially his sexuality. If this is the case, depriving the son of the availability of the father will leave him in a vulnerable position of not having a confident and rich model of manhood, not having a clear and understandable model exemplifying culturally accepted male traits.

Many would argue that paternal absence would not necessarily lead to the homosexuality of the son because brothers, male relatives, and peers can also be quite influential in the sex role development of the boy. However, it should be understood that what the boy absorbs primarily from them is psychosexuality, the awareness of being male and masculine, which is often forged by the boy through the messages he perceives from their behavior and attitude. It should be noted that gender identification, which is much deeper than the imitated psychosexuality, is a crucial part of the sex role developmental process. This process requires the nurturance of the father. The physical, as well as the psychological absence of the father would impair this phase of identification, an impairment that could possibly lead to the distortion of the son’s sense of sexual orientation.

Others may also dispute that detachment from the father may only lead to the effeminacy of the son, and effeminacy need not lead to homosexuality. Harvey noted Richard Green who cites several retrospective studies linking boyhood cross-gender behavior, characteristic of effeminate, with late adolescent and adult homosexual orientation. Studies have shown that a large percentage of the boys who exhibited a “gender non-conformity” turned out to be homosexuals when they grow up. From this, it can be inferred that most, if not all, homosexual men exhibited a cross-gender behavior during their younger years in life.

Why would the son seek homosexual relationship when he experienced such difficulties in his relationship with his father. As defined by Moberly, Harvey noted, homosexual relationships are based on the drive to fulfill the unmet attachment-need of the son with his father. “What the male homosexual seeks is what he should have received from his relationship with his father,” Moberly stresses. Having referred to Bieber’s major study of homosexual males, Moberly noted that where the man’s father has been detached or hostile to the son, the homosexual partner was “invariably identified with the father who had been hated and feared.” This only confirms that a male homosexual chooses a partner who is characteristic of his father. From this, it can be noted that there is an attempt to complete the process of identification with a masculine figure.