History of Sexual Abuse
The American Psychiatric Association stated: "...no specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse. Sexual abuse does not appear to be more prevalent in children who grow up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, than in children who identify as heterosexual."
According to an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, "Much has been written about a possible connection between abuse in childhood and sexual orientation in adulthood" and "Existing cross-sectional research suggests associations between physical and sexual abuse in childhood and same-sex sexual orientation in adulthood." For instance, one study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that "Abused adolescents, particularly those victimized by males, were up to 7 times more likely to self-identify as gay or bisexual than peers who had not been abused." Another study found that "Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation. Twenty-two percent of lesbian women in contrast to 1% of heterosexual women reported homosexual molestation."
Read more about this topic: Environment And Sexual Orientation
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or abuse:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“But I’ve heard mankind abuse thee;
And perhaps it’s rather strange,
But I thought that I would choose thee
For encomium, as a change.”
—Charles Stuart Calverley (1831–1884)