Betydningen av seksuell erfaring, tiltrekning og identitet for ...

From homosexual to gay
Michael grew up in a very small place in rural Norway, with his mother,
stepfather and younger siblings. He knew that he was sexually interested in
adult men from the time he was 11 years old, when he wanted to make
contact with adult men he met at an indoor swimming pool in the big city
where his biological father lived. On the first time he agreed to any sexual
contact with one of these men he met by the pool, he went with the man
behind the swimming pool building. They touched each other sexually, but
12 year old Michael ended up being raped by the man. A year or so later, he
was back by the pool, again making contact with adult men. Although he
was still only 13, the sexual experiences were more pleasant for him. At 14
he was certain that he was gay, and he was open about his sexual orientation
to family, friends and others. Michael grew up well aware that his
stepfather’s brother was gay, and had seen him kissing his boyfriend in his
childhood. Thus he had ‘always known’ what being gay was, long before he
started to think of himself as gay, which he did at 12 years old.
In his mid-teens, Michael had constant conflicts with his family, which
according to himself was rooted in his wish to rebel against his ‘perfect’ and
‘dutiful’ image and to ‘freak out’. At one stage he moved to his mother’s
sister’s house in a neighbouring town in order to complete compulsory lower
secondary education. However, his aunt soon gave up on him and it was
agreed that he would be better off at a youth institution. At this time, he used
marihuana regularly and would frequently escape from the institution.
Finding and making contact with other gay boys or men was difficult in
his small home town, but Michael found out that the Internet and chat
networks could be a good communication channel to get in touch with gay
men all over the country. He told us: ‘Mirc was installed at the youth club
[in 1995]. When I was alone on the computer one day, I typed homo into one
of the search engines, you know, but nothing came up. I think I found a page
called Homosexual something or whatever. It wasn’t really very interesting.
But then I tried gay. 1400 pages or something came up, and I just went “Oh,
my God!” I was really thrilled! It was fantastic! I surfed a lot of those
pages!’ Michael also used his adult gay internet contacts to escape from the
youth institution by offering sex and making the men he ‘picked up’ pay for
his bus, train and plane tickets. At age 19, he was persuaded by social
workers to press charges against these men, resulting in 12 of them being
convicted for having had sexual contact with a minor. However, during our
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– NOVA Rapport 1/07 –