PREPUBERTAL SEX PLAY: SOCIALIZATION
Discussion of prepubertal sociosexual activity is incomplete without some reference to general social relationships with other children. We ascertained from our interviewees the quantity and relative proportions of boy and girl companions they had at ages ten to eleven. A tabulation of those reporting numerous companions of both sexes provides only a few items of interest. The homosexual offenders rank second, third, and fourth, constituting a socially successful unit. The control group is intermediate. Lastly, there is a trend for the sex offenders against female children to concentrate in the upper half of the rank-order.
A similar picture is seen when one makes a rank-order of those with numerous female companions (regardless of the number of male companions). The three homosexual-offender groups head the rank-order, and the offenders and aggressors against female children again fall in the upper half.8The prison and control groups are part of an intermediate area. Few of the peepers and the incest offenders vs. adults reported numerous girl companions. There is no correlation between having had many girl companions and incidence of prepubertal heterosexual play.
The homosexual offenders’ social success with girls should surprise no one. Around age: ten there is the tendency for boys to disdain (or pretend to disdain) female companions—only “sissies” play with girls.
Taking the obverse of this picture, those who reported no female companions, we find heading the list the incest offenders vs. adults (52 per cent, by far the greatest figure) and in third rank the peepers. Any expectation of linking adult inhibition or maladjustment with the absence of girl companions in prepuberty is, however, shattered by the fact that second rank is occupied by the heterosexual offenders vs. adults and fourth rank by the heterosexual offenders vs. minors. The presence of these two groups so high in the rank-order is probably the result of the common tendency for boys nearing puberty to achieve social status by avoiding girls and claiming a distaste for them—the attitude of what one might call an active, energetic extrovert. Aside from the fact that the control group is central in the rank-order, about the only additional thing that may be said is that two of the three incest groups and two of the three homosexual groups occupy the lower portion of this rank-order—that is, relatively few of them lacked girl companions. While incidence of prepubertal heterosexual play does not correlate with having numerous girl companions, it does correlate with having none: the three groups with the lowest incidences of such play rank first, second, and fourth in the proportions of those who lacked girl companions.
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