Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (7 page)

The force of religion and the lack of alternatives in the heartland have unquestionably prevented many gay men from experiencing their homosexuality and in some cases prevented them from awareness of it until later years (pp. 324-25).

Many of these men believed that growing up on a farm hindered the development of their understanding of human sexuality in general. And no matter when they began to sense something different about their own
sexuality, many of them believed that their farm upbringing hindered their ability to recognize, understand, and come to terms with their homosexual orientation. “In that farm environment, it’s like I was in hibernation as to who I really was sexually,” Robert Peters observed. Lon Mickelsen elaborated on that idea.

This invisibility of homosexuality is not unique to farm communities, but it was probably enhanced by isolation, religious conservatism, and sexual prudishness. Further, the mixture of antipathy and fascination with which many farm people regard urban life seems to foster the belief that homosexuality is an unnatural phenomenon of the city that has no relevance to rural life. The silence surrounding homosexuality was compounded for a large majority of these boys by the fact that they were not aware of knowing any homosexual person throughout their growing-up years. Silverstein stated his impressions of a rural-urban difference.

As with information about sex in general, access to information about homosexuality varied greatly, with generally greater access for those who came of age in more recent decades. For example, the June 26, 1964, issue of
Life
magazine carried a ground-breaking feature story, “Homosexuality in America,” that was an important source of information for two of these individuals, one as a teenager and the other as a married man. Magazines, newspapers, and books appeared to have been most significant, with television having great importance for those who came of age between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. Nonetheless, many of these boys made no particular effort to obtain information about homosexuality, and many who did make an effort tended to come up short. Dale Hesterman perused a health book that his parents had in the house. “The section on
homosexuality talked about studies that had been done, and one had found that men whose right testicle hung lower than the left were more prone to homosexuality. I looked at mine and, doggone it, the right one
was
lower than the left.”

For some, their ignorance was likely to have increased the chances that they would believe, as David Nordstrom did, that “to wind up being a queer was the worst thing I could think of.” However, it’s unlikely that much of the information that was available before the 1970s would have led any of them to a more favorable conclusion.

Some of these men, as boys, did not seem to need information about homosexuality in order to feel okay about themselves. Although Harry Beckner did not think of himself as homosexual during his adolescent years, he accepted his attraction to other males as a natural thing because he felt it to be so central a part of who he was. Nearly all of these men believed that they were essentially born with a homosexual orientation. The few who diverged from this perspective believed that their attraction to other males was fostered, at least in part, by receiving too little affectionate attention from their fathers and other males. Several men speculated that their fathers may have had strong but conflicted homosexual tendencies. More than one man wondered if his father’s distance and lack of affection was the result of discomfort at seeing “gay” characteristics in his son.

The assumption that farm people are more comfortable and freewheeling about sex had become apparent to some of these men in their connections within the gay community. Clark Williams said, “Sometimes when I tell someone that I grew up on a farm, he’ll ask if I had sex with the animals—or if there was a network of country boys who got together for circle jerks. God, I wish!”

In 1948, Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin wrote: “The city boy’s failure to understand what life can mean to a boy who is raised on a farm, and the farm boy’s idea that there is something glamorous about the way 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’s
group 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.

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, and
of 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.

In their approaches to socializing, these men tended to favor get-to-gethers among relatively small groups of friends rather than the more public and densely populated socializing that prevails in bars and clubs. Similarly, many of these men believed that they needed more solitary time than gay men from urban backgrounds required. Considering that many men seem to have a “loner” tendency—regardless of their sexual orientation and whether their upbringing was rural or urban—it is not surprising that a number of these men felt they lived on the fringes of their gay communities. It is likely, however, that the origin of these feelings goes beyond the typical male loner impulse. Most gay communities are urban phenomena, and although many of these men lived in or near relatively large cities, they were not
of
the city, as many of their gay peers were. Wayne Belden, who has lived in Chicago for about twenty years, said, “Here in the city I’m kind of out of my element. I just have to get on as best I can, gaining some things and losing some.” Larry Ebmeier had a similar reaction to getting acquainted with the gay community in Lincoln, Nebraska, once he started to come out in his late twenties.

Allen Victor, who has been with his partner Jeff since 1979, ruminated on their efforts to create and sustain gay as well as mainstream community connections in a small city in southern Minnesota.