Gay adolescent? No, normal teenager, says Cornell Professor Ritch Savin-Williams

Professor Ritch Savin-Williams displays his new book, The New Gay Teenager. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Susan S. Lang

The so-called "gay adolescent" soon will disappear, predicts a Cornell expert on teenage sexuality writing in a new book. These adolescents will still have the same desires, fantasies and attractions, he writes, but they no longer will need or want to identify themselves as gay.

"The new gay teenager is in many respects the non-gay teenager," says Ritch Savin-Williams, professor and chair of human development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, in his new book, The New Gay Teenager (Harvard University Press, 2005). Savin-Williams is an expert on issues concerning gay, lesbian and bisexual youths and is a licensed clinical psychologist who works with gay youths and their families.

Savin-Williams argues that the majority of young people who engage in gay sex consider themselves heterosexual and that the majority of youths with same-sex attractions do not call themselves gay.

Such labels as "gay" no longer work when describing young people's sexuality, he says, because some teens have same-sex crushes but don't act on them or call them "gay love affairs." Some believe they are gay for a while and then not gay for a while. Still others might consider themselves gay only in certain situations.

"Most same-sex-attracted young people engage in sexual activities with both sexes. Some are homoerotic in some sexual domains and not in others. Similarly, one can be little or greatly same-sex attracted, in varying degrees and in varying ways," says Savin-Williams. In fact, he says, between 15 and 20 percent of adolescents have some degree of same-sex orientation, yet only 3 to 4 percent embrace a gay or bisexual identity or report same-sex activities. Most young people don't link their sexuality to their identity.

"Teenagers are increasingly redefining, reinterpreting and renegotiating their sexuality such that possessing a gay, lesbian or bisexual identity is practically meaningless," he says. "In fact, the new gay teenager disdains sexual categories."

In the 10 chapters of the 288-page book, Savin-Williams explores the definition of who is gay and how this definition has changed dramatically over time; discusses gay adolescence and its diversity and complexity; critiques current models of gay adolescence and offers a new model, which he describes as a "differential developmental trajectories perspective"; presents numerous developmental histories of young people with same-sex attractions; and concludes with a discussion of how same-sex-attracted young people are more diverse than they are similar.

"They are living ordinary adolescent lives. And they're adapting quite well, thank you," says Savin-Williams. He also is the author of Mom, Dad. I'm Gay. How Families Negotiate Coming Out (American Psychological Association, 2001), ... And Then I Became Gay: Young Men's Stories (Routledge Publishers, 1997) and co-editor of the first college text on lesbians, gays and bisexuals, The Lives of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals: Children to Adults (Harcourt Brace, 1996).