DARRELL SIFFORD

DO YOU HAVE

A

SENSITIVE BOY?

Here's a question for par- ents: How would you feel if your grade-school-age son ap- peared to be growing into some- thing less than society's defini- tion of The All-American Boy?

What if instead of wrestling, climbing trees and breathing football he wrote poetry, played with dolls and felt more com- fortable around girls than boys? What if he didn't like to get dirty - and what if he preferred frilly clothing to jeans with patches on the knees?

How would you react if the neighborhood kids ridiculed him and called him a sissy?

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Would you accept him as he

is or would you seek profes- sional help to try to change him? In a nutshell, a psychiatrist said, this is a dilemma that today confronts a sizable number of parents, some of whom are being panicked into trying to "fix" their sons because of what he called a deep-seated fear of homosexuality.

Across the land, said Dr. Robert Seidenberg, this "homo- phobia" is being bred and nur- tured by a "handful of . . . edu- cators and high status mental health professionals called 'gen- der experts' . . . Their influence goes beyond their own clinical interventions" because their books and professional articles "influence the training of multi- tudes in the helping professions" and shape public attitudes.

Any indication that a boy is passive, sensitive, gentle or cre- ative is deemed by the gender ex- perts to be undesirable or even potentially disastrous, Seiden- berg said. "Rough and tumble

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is to be the fate of normal males; evidence of any other behavior in the developing boy must be searched out and destroyed It becomes quite apparent that behind it all is a war on any- thing feminine, that is, in a male. We continually hear of the 'fem- inine' boy who might becomeho- mosexual or transsexual, which, if allowed to happen, foredooms the individual to a hopeless, in- tolerable, diseased existence ...

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All of this, said Seidenberg, clinical professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York's Upstate Medical Center at Syracuse, is outrageous and would be downright humorous if it were not being spewed out of 'prestigious medical schools and universities and . . . often finan- ced by (federal) grants." The gender experts, he said, are cre- ating more problems than they are solving and they "have be- come part of our problem."

Seidenberg says that the gender experts want to give "a crash course in masculinity" to any young boy who doesn't measure up to their standards. These experts, he said, believe that male-female behaviors are inherent and that normal males are aggressive and hard, normal females soft and sensitive.

Seidenberg presented what he said were excerpts from con- versations between worried mo- thers and "gendermandering" therapists. In one the therapist told a mother to pull her son out of Cub Scouts and put him into Indian Guides "because that's father and son instead of mother and son. You've got to get these mothers out of the way. Femi-

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nine kids don't need their mo- thers around."

In another conversation a therapist who seemed enthusias- tic about a boy's "progress" to- ward masculinity told a mother:

"

.. I think he's really much dif- ferent. One of the things I had him do today is draw a picture. . Do you remember who he drew the first time? He drew Mary Poppins about three years ago.. And today he drew Frankenstein

Some shift in identity. I suppose another three of four years (and) he'll be pretty straightened out."

In an interview after his speech Seidenberg said that the gender experts "are creating pan- ic in parents . . . who are bring- ing in their young sons to have them 'fixed.' But (the sons) don't need fixing... . because they're not broken As the good old country boys say: If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it."

Seidenberg raised this ques- tion: Why stamp out 'feminine' traits in boys? Would you trade one Tennessee Williams for 10 football players? Would you rather have a middle linebacker than Truman Capote, a little guy they laugh at and call fairy?"

What should parents do if they are upset because a son is less "masculine" than they think is appropriate?

Seidenberg: "Why is this so upsetting to parents? Is it a prob- lem for the son or the prejudice of the parents?"

OK, doctor, but doesn't a boy who is ridiculed by his peers face an extremely rough road?

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"What about a Jewish kid.. or a black kid? What do we do for them? Do we try to change them so they'll be acceptable to more people? Ultimately the an- swer is for the world to accept people as they are not to try to change people . . . We can't change anybody, not really. We can't change behavior in a 'feminine' boy any more than we can change the color of a black or the biological heritage of a Jewish kid... The best thing we can do is learn to be comfortable with it."

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