Just remind yourself that article was published over 40 years ago. But that was also shortly after a couple of fictional ranch kids came together on top of a mountain in Wyoming. Goes far to illustrate the attitudes that were pervasive back in those days.
I was going to mention earlier -- though it seemed a tiny bit frivolous to worry about fictional people (even those two!) in this context -- that anyone who says "Why didn't Ennis just
get over it?" should be forced to read this.
You're right, Roland. This makes me even madder than yesterday's installment. And once again, I would love to pick out especially egregious examples, but I don't know where to start, there are so many idiotic assumptions in here.
Oh, OK, I have to mention two that happen to be personal pet peeves. One is the fact that scientists, who we are taught to think of as unbiased and objective authorities, whose methods are supposed to be so careful and reliable, are often as stupid and incompetent as anyone else. A study finds that two groups of men, one gay and one straight, are equally mentally healthy -- so rather than consider the possibility that that might actually be the case, many scientists
just assume the tests are faulty?
And the other is about the mothers. As a mother, I have long taken issue with the idea that if there's something "wrong" with a kid -- in this case, of course, it isn't even something wrong, but you know what I mean -- it's because the mother screwed up somehow. In the 50s and 60s, autism was attributed to "refrigerator mothers" who didn't love their kids
enough. That theory obviously has since been seen as hogwash, but it was widely accepted and caused untold suffering for both kids and mothers. Meanwhile, scientists assumed that boys "became homosexual" because their mothers loved them
too much. How can you love your kids too much? Where exactly were you supposed to draw the line? No matter what mothers do, it's wrong. Parenting "experts'" have changed a little today, but only in degree, not in the underlying assumptions.
One reason the refrigerator mother
appeared to have validity was because mothers really did have a hard time being as affectionate with autistic kids who had problems responding to them emotionally. So the researchers really were seeing a correlation, but their bias caused them to interpret the cause and effect backwards (which constantly still happens today, BTW). And it occurs to me that gay men's mothers might actually have appeared more loving, the father more distant, because when it became apparent the son was "different," the father
became "uninterested," "actively hostile," "given to disparagement and ridicule." (That pattern would certainly fit Jack's family, and apparently Ennis', too!) Once again, what might actually have been an empirical fact was just interpreted backwards because of the researchers' bias.
Aaaarrrrgggghhhh. The frowning smiley doesn't look mad enough to express my reaction.
