Sedgwick's "How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay" and Joon Oluchi Lee's "The Joy of the Castrated Boy"

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's "How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay" makes an interesting statement in saying, “[some] books, and associated therapeutic strategies and institutions, are not about invasive violence. What they are about is a train of squalid lies. The overarching lie is the lie that they are predicated on anything but the therapists’ disavowed desire for a non-gay outcome. Friedman, for instance, speculates wistfully that—with proper therapeutic intervention—the sexual orientation of one gay man whom he describes as quite healthy might conceivably (not have been changed but) ‘have shifted on its own’.” This intriguing idea suggests that the therapy some parents brought their children to in order to change their sexual orientation focused more on lying about it and covering it up. This could not have gone well, as it would have just built up the negative idea in these boys’ heads that their sexual identity was something to be ashamed of and hidden. I also found it interesting that the beginning of Joon Oluchi Lee's "The Joy of the Castrated Boy", the exact opposite of this is explored in that Lee does not lie about his desires and the so-called strategy used seems to be the invasive violence rather than the lies, because the mother uses a looming threat of castration, saying, “If you don’t stop acting like a girl and start being a boy, then we’ll have to take you to the hospital and get your pee-pee cut off so that you can become a girl.” Lee notes that “[t]his was not—is not—an easy way of living in a heteronormative world, with its hatred of effeminate boys.” However, encouraging a life of lies to cover up who you really are is not a good way to handle this. It is only enabling the idea mentioned in Sedgwick's article about people wanting a world with no gays. Sedgwick expands on the original point by explaining that “He encourages predominantly gay young men to “reassure” their parents that they are “bisexual”…and to consider favorably the option of marrying and keeping their wives in the dark about their sexual activities.” This further builds up the idea that deception is the only way to survive in this situation. This is most likely an emotionally harmful idea to propagate among homosexuals whose parents forced them into such therapy. Just as the “terror of castration” in Lee’s does not change his sexual identity, this introduction of lying would only create problems, not change anything.