INCIDENCE OF HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVITY
The homosexual offenders naturally have the largest proportions of individuals who have ever, since puberty, had sexual contact with one or more males, the proportions ranging from 98 per cent (the homo sexual offenders vs. adults) to 81 per cent. The fact that the incidence for all homo sexual-offender groups is not 100 per cent is due to our excluding the offense from the incidence calculations. There is a gap of 14 percentage points between the two groups just mentioned; thereafter each successive group is separated from contiguous groups by only a few percentage points (or less) until near the bottom of the rank-order where a second “break” (of 11 percentage points) occurs, segregating the last three groups from the others. These last three, the heterosexual offenders vs. adults, the incest offenders vs. minors, and the incest offenders vs. adults, have but 12 to 23 per cent of their members with homosexual experience and, moreover, expressed the most disapproval of male homosexuality of any of the comparative group. In brief, we have three prohomosexual groups at one end of the scale. Three antihomosexual groups at the other, and the remaining groups form an intermediate continuum. One third of the control group and three fifths of the prison group had had homosexual experience; this gives us bench marks for the delinquent and nondelinquent lower socioeconomic level.
This rank-order is changed very little if one measures what we term more than incidental homosexual activity: six or more partners or 21 or more homosexual experiences. Again the three homosexual-offender groups head the rank-order and the three “anti” groups come at the end. Note that the differences in the proportions of those with any homosexual experience and those with more than incidental experience are less at the upper end of the rank-order and greater at the lower. For example, the figure for the homosexual offender vs. adults falls from 98 per cent (ever experience) to 93 per cent (more than incidental), but the percentage for the incest offenders vs. adults drops from 12 to less than 4. By and large, the two rank-orders agree nicely, but there is one curious exception: the incest offenders vs. children, who fall from 52 per cent to 13 per cent, and consequently go from an intermediate position in the rank-order of ever experience to a low position in the rank-order of more than incidental experience.
In the preceding two paragraphs we have been concerned with homosexual experience either in or out of penal institutions. However, a rank-order based solely upon experience outside: institutions is essentially a duplicate of that based upon total experience, save that the percentages arc slightly smaller—usually by two to ten percentage points. This simply means that there are correspondingly few individuals who confine their homosexual activity to periods when they are incarcerated. In only two groups, the aggressors vs. minors and adults, did a substantial number of those with homosexual activity restrict it to prison (28 and 21 per cent respectively).
Behavior, like most sexual behavior, appears early in postpubertal life. Roughly speaking, half (or more in the case of the homosexual offenders) of those who ever engaged in homosexual activity had done so by age fifteen. The percentages of experienced individuals nearly attain their maxima by age twenty-six. As we have pointed out in our earlier books, one’s basic sexual pattern has not only been established, but practically ossified, by one’s early twenties. The rank-orders of the percentages in each group with homosexual experience by given ages are remarkably stable; one does not find a group radically changing its position. Consequently a sampling taken early in life has a real predictive value. Some groups show lower figures at age fourteen than at age twelve; this is because additional boys reach puberty and thereby become eligible to enter our calculations.
Within the rank-orders one can discern a trend for the heterosexual aggressors against postpubertal females to rank in the upper half whereas those groups whose postpubertal female partners were cooperative or acquiescent (i.e., the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults and the incest offenders vs. minors and adults) rank in the lower half and often near the bottom. Heterosexual aggressors, it would seem, often ignore not only the partner’s feelings but the partner’s gender.
The age at which the average (median) individual of each group had his first postpubertal homosexual experience is related only slightly to the average age at attaining puberty. True, the three homosexual-offender groups began their postpubertal homosexuality earliest and also tended to reach puberty early, but this seeming causal relationship is spurious. Actually the early homosexuality in these three groups represents a carry-over from, and continuity with, their unusually extensive prepubertal homosexual experience. In all groups with the exception of three the median individual participated in his first postpubertal homosexual activity at fourteen or fifteen. The three exceptions were cases where the activity was begun at a considerably later age: about nineteen and one half for the heterosexual aggressors vs. children, eighteen for the incest offenders vs. minors and nearly seventeen for the incest offenders vs. children. The former two groups not only had relatively little homosexual play before puberty, but revealed very little continuity between prepubertal and postpubertal homosexual activity.
Whether the first postpubertal heterosexual activity preceded or followed the first postpubertal homosexual activity is a question of considerable interest. In all three homosexual-offender groups the homosexual preceded the heterosexual by from 0.6 year to 1.5 years. While this is not surprising in view of the amount of homosexual play in their childhood and their pronounced tendency to carry the activity over into postpubertal life, it is at first a bit surprising to find that the average (median) peeper had his initial homosexual experience 0.8 year before his first heterosexual experience. This, however, can be explained by their strong homosexual component, coupled with their marked difficulty in making a heterosexual adjustment. (Note they have the poorest adjustment in terms of female companions at ages sixteen to seventeen.) Omitting the incest offenders vs. adults, since only three cases are involved, no other groups show the homosexual clearly preceding the heterosexual. In a few groups, including the control group, the experiences were essentially at the same age, give or take a few months.
*324\161\2*
