boy and a girl." This attitude of the girl did not appear to be normal for the parents and that is what scared them. They were scared because they were not pleased with the possibility of raising a gay. This underlines an important tendency in our society. Most of the people are still uncomfortable with gays. They tend to associate gays only with negative things such as AIDS and other diseases. Gays are not allowed to serve in the army and to occupy high decision-making positions. That's why, it is not surprising that parents are concerned with the problem. They are trying to protect their kids from the society, large portion of which does not tolerate "deviations" from the established norms of behavior. The assumption that when such kids grow up, they inevitably will be gay. This paranoia was further expanded by studies which appeared to be dealing with the problem. The results from them were striking, 25% of all "tomboys" will inevitably be lesbian when they grow up, and 35% of the "sissies" will be gay. The parents were trying to prevent that to happen by every mean. Some of them even went extreme and oppressed their kids by using punishment. However, as later was discovered, the studies were conducted on extreme cases. For example, all of the participants in the study on "sissies" were boys who not only played with dolls, but dressed themselves as girls. Most of them were raised by single mothers and in an environment where their contacts with men were limited. Recent studies discovered that you do not become a gay, you are born one, contrary to the assumption that sexuality is formed in the childhood. In this case, the parent's desire to fit their children into the stereotypes backfired and resulted in harming their children. The parents were a victim also, by following the rigid path of stereotyping they wounded the one...
