My mother walked into the bathroom and went absolutely ballistic. I had never seen her have this sort of reaction. Instead of laughing and thinking it was amusing (which is something I think most mothers would do), my mother instead became extremely angry. In fact, she started yelling at me and the boy. She got so angry that the boy’s mother became very uncomfortable and they left.

“That’s disgusting. You’re a boy—not a girl! You should never dress up like a girl. If you like dressing up as a girl you are going to have a horrible life,” she screamed. “And I am not going to have anything to do with you. You’re also going to get beat up a lot!”

I am not going to comment on whether or not I approve of my mother’s reaction. What I will say, though, is that she frightened me a great deal and made the thought of dressing up as a girl, or doing anything mildly “gay,” incredibly distasteful to me.

I thought about this episode recently because one of my daughter’s friends is a 3 ½-year-old boy and he dresses up as a girl (all the time) and even takes ballet lessons with other girls. Although my daughter has been friends with this boy for more than a year, only recently did she learn that her friend was, in fact, a boy.

The parents of this boy are very supportive of their son and allow him to behave and act just as he prefers to. If the child turns out to be gay, or later wants to have a sex change operation, I am confident that the parents will be extremely supportive. Indeed, at this point in his life, they even take him shopping for little girls’ clothes. They are nurturing him and allowing him to be the person he wants to be.

What if my mother had walked in when I was dressing up as a girl and encouraged it?

What if she suddenly sat down and helped put on the makeup and told me I looked great?

What if she subtly encouraged me to do more of the same?

The message I was sent by my mother was that under no circumstances was behaving like a girl at all appropriate. I was expected to be a man. Sometime later, I got in a fight at the park one day after school. My mother learned about the fight and when I told her I lost, she had one of her “tough” male friends come over and give me fighting lessons. The message I was being sent was that I was expected to fight, be manly, and so forth. Within a short while, I was aggressively standing up for myself and fighting anyone with interest in doing so. I was sticking up for myself and most people ended up backing off.

...

One of my closest friends growing up turned out to be a very good artist. He was always encouraged with his art when he was young, and his parents sent him to art class instead of allowing him to play sports. When he was younger, I do not recall him being a particularly good artist—but he was wildly encouraged to be good at art. His mother would ask him to paint her flowers and do other art-related things. If he wanted to take an art class (or anything else that could be construed as feminine) after school, she would always drive him. If he wanted to do a sport, I remember he was on his own. Accordingly, all of the interests he pursued were feminine in nature.

“My mother always wanted a girl,” I remember him telling me several times when we were younger.

His mother dressed him for school each day and encouraged his feminine side as much as she could. By the time he was 14 or 15, I started to hear rumors about him having sexual-type experiences with boys our age. I did not know him after the age of 13 or so because we attended separate schools, but the last time I saw him, he was around 19, gay, and working at Kinko’s, enjoying being around graphic art and so forth. Two years later, when he was 21 years old, he died of AIDS.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4883122&forum_id=2#42821666)

we're turning a whole generation of boys 'gay'

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4883122&forum_id=2#42821683)