CONTINUITY BETWEEN PRE- AND POSTPUBERTAL ACTIVITY
Having discussed how prepubertal contact with adult males and females correlates with postpubertal homosexuality and heterosexuality, we should also examine the continuity of prepubertal sexual activity with other children with subsequent postpubertal behavior.
First of all, we limited the study to those who had prepubertal physical sexual contact, omitting those who had none or whose prepubertal sex play consisted only of genital exhibition. Secondly, we omitted those with only one experience either before or after puberty. We then defined continuity as the presence of a given type of sexual activity beginning before puberty and continuing past puberty without a break (a period without such activity) of more than one year. Thus a boy who had petted from, say, age nine to puberty at age thirteen would be considered to have shown continuity even if he had stopped petting during age fourteen but resumed it at age fifteen. This one-year leeway we feel is not excessive, particularly in view of the factor of memory error. We know from comparing the histories of siblings that people are prone to forget early sexual activity, and our interviews with children bear this out.
In continuity of heterosexual activity the prison group and the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults lead all others. The least continuity is displayed by the peepers and the control group.
When the heterosexual activity is divided into petting and coitus, roughly the same picture is seen. In petting, the prison group occupies third rank with a figure of 69 per cent having continuity. The heterosexual offenders rank first, second, and eighth (56 to 81 per cent). At the bottom of the order are the homosexual offenders vs. adults (44 per cent), the control group (41 per cent), and the peepers (32 per cent). The three groups with the largest continuity percentages—the prison group and the offenders vs. minors and adults—are groups with above-average premarital heterosexual activity in adult life. In continuity of coitus the same three groups lead: the offenders vs. minors with 78 per cent followed by the offenders vs. adults and the prison group. The three groups with least continuity are the peepers and the incest offenders vs. children and minors.
There does not seem to be much correlation between the incidence of prepubertal heterosexual activity and the percentage who continue it beyond puberty. If we had adequate frequency data, some strong correlation might well be found. However, one interesting correlation did come to light. The heterosexual offenders vs. adults and minors, who had the largest proportions of individuals with coital continuity, also occupy first and third ranks in the percentages with prepubertal coitus and again first and third ranks in the percentages whose first prepubertal orgasm was derived from coitus. In other words, substantial involvement rewarded often with orgasm tends to promote continuity.
In view of the power of conditioning and early experience, the question is not why continuity exists, but why it does not exist more often. Examining the groups with the least heterosexual continuity—the peepers, control group, and incest offenders vs. minors—we see that the peepers seem to have been handicapped sociosexually from the start; not many had prepubertal petting, very few had prepubertal coitus, and a large proportion lacked female friends. We can only surmise that whatever caused these deficiencies also adversely affected continuity of activity. The control group’s relative lack of continuity appears to us to be largely a matter of their generally greater conformance to the mores of the middle and upper-middle class to which more of them belonged than was true of the sex offenders and prison group in general. The incest offenders vs. minors’ lack of continuity is an enigma. They suffered from some acute temporary repression of heterosexual activity around puberty and the average individual did not become active again until quite late—just past sixteen, the same age at which the average peeper began adult heterosexual behavior.
Turning now to the continuity of homosexual activity, one finds that it characterizes 75 per cent of the homosexual offenders vs. adults, 67 per cent of the homosexual offenders vs. minors, and 63 per cent of the homosexual offenders vs. children. All other groups had many fewer individuals (7 to 50 per cent) whose homosexual activity ran from prepubertal life into postpubertal life. Discontinuity of homosexual behavior is easier to explain than discontinuity of heterosexual behavior, since the former is subject to stronger social disapproval. Furthermore, society openly encourages heterosexuality although it bounds the encouragement with restrictions; society does not encourage homosexuality except indirectly through its restrictions on heterosexuality.
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