Read Online Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest by Unknown - Free Book Online

in which the city boy lives, apply to every avenue of human activity, including the sexual (p. 449).”
    Among males, Kinsey’s group reported, “sexual relations with animals of other species are, of necessity, most often found in rural areas” (p. 459). Several of the men whose stories are presented here engaged in sexual relations with farm animals and pet dogs. That several other men chose not to reveal having had sexual contact with animals became evident in conversations subsequent to their interviews. In most cases, these incidents of bestiality appeared to be isolated, experimental events of adolescence. However, animal contacts were a major sexual outlet for David Foster until he reached his early twenties.
    Kinsey’sgroup reported slightly lower frequencies of both total sexual activity and homosexual activity among rural males compared to urban (p. 464). In contrast, Silverstein stated that the greater freedom and privacy of the farm lead to a degree of sexual activity among rural boys that equals or exceeds that of urban boys (p. 262). In regard to the boys whose stories are presented here, it appears that the combined effects of social isolation and sexual ignorance and prudishness could have only served to restrict sexual activity.
    A number of these boys had no sexual outlet throughout their teen years, with the exception of wet dreams. For others, masturbation was the sole sexual outlet. Nonetheless, many of these boys did have sexual relations with other males during their preadult years, most often with peers from neighboring farms or from school. In some cases these relations were naively exploratory and experimental, while in other cases they consisted of complete sexual acts engaged in repeatedly. Several boys had sexual relations with brothers; several others had sexual contacts with adult males, related and unrelated. None reported having sexual relations with his father.
    Approximately one-quarter of these men married. One of these men, still married, arranged to be interviewed at a public library in Indiana. He talked about his intention to come out to his wife and adolescent children in the next several years. Several of these men, as adults, engaged in extensive psychiatric therapy or psychological counseling related to sexual identity issues. Cornelius Utz, born in 1909, stated that his Victorian upbringing led him to repress expression of feeling in general, and this repression was reinforced by several years of sex-focused psychiatric therapy in the late 1930s. He was married for nearly forty years, and came out shortly after his wife’s death. Several of these men had seriously contemplated suicide, and one had attempted to kill himself in the midst of his marriage. The older men in my group were more likely than the younger men to have been married, to have engaged in extensive sex-related therapy or counseling, and to have contemplated or attempted suicide.
PRESENT LIFE
    The men whose stories are presented varied greatly in the degree to which they were open about being gay, and in the extent of their involvement with their local gay communities. While some assumed an activist orientation, most tended to be more conservative in their attitudes toward gay politics. Tactics that were seen as rocking the boat were generally disdained. Some disapproved of gay pride parades or other highly visible events, andof gay men who are drag queens or who behave in flamboyantly effeminate ways. Tom Lewis stated that he has had difficulty accepting men who don’t act like men did on the farm—”where men were men.” Richard Hopkins described his view of being gay as a very private thing.
    I don’t want to wear it on my sleeve. It’s not open for discussion, and I don’t ever intend it to be—with people I work with, the next-door neighbors, the family even. If you know me, you’re either going to like me or you’re not going to like me, but not because I’m wearing a banner up and down the