DISPARITY BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE SAME AGE
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Disparity Between Boys and Girls of the Same Age”, is the third part of “The Outlets”, the final section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.

The main cause of all these unpleasant, harmful and sometimes even dangerous imbroglios is that boys and girls, during the years of their sexual maturation, have characteristically such different attitudes about sexuality that they simply don’t make suitable partners for each other.^[1] 

In general, boys come into puberty and start to be able to ejaculate fertile sperm later than girls begin to menstruate. Nevertheless, when we compare the behaviour of both sexes, boys, on average, become sexually active earlier and indulge in a great deal more sexual activity.^[2] This behavioural difference may be due to biological factors: the sex glands of pubertal and adolescent boys continuously secrete substances which accumulate in the various vesicles and ducts and must be voided one way or another. Once a boy has consciously experienced and brought about this evacuation, repetition at regular intervals becomes an urgent need. Girls, perhaps because they don’t have to endure a comparable process, seem to be able to tolerate the absence of overt sexual activity far better than can boys.^[3]

Thus with boys, a phase of sex-for-the-sake-of-sex normally precedes the phase wherein love relations become possible.^[4] Their thoughts are often involved with sexual activity of one kind or another.^[5] Girls masturbate much less than boys, for in order to become erotically aroused they need some kind of personal relationship to focus upon; with boys, images of naked bodies are sufficiently exciting to put them in the right mood for masturbation.^[6] As boys in general are more imaginative than girls, they develop their fantasies and use them with greater ease and frequency.^[7]

According to stereotype, boys are supposed to be more aggressive than girls in the sexual arena, but it is hardly exceptional for a girl to make the first move.^[8] Girls, however, often don’t realise how very willing boys are to engage in virtually any kind of sexual activity^[9] and they are certainly not aware of what raging erotic storms they can cause by even a light touch to a boy’s body.^[10] During sexual intimacy, a boy is usually the more willing of the two to strip naked and, with a naked girl, he pays more attention to her genitals than to her breasts, although girls tend to enjoy breast-fondling more than touching her sexual aperture. But 75% of 15- to 16-year-old boys said they were more attracted to the latter: for 45%, touching it was “nice”, 30% “very nice”.^[11] “Boys traditionally note overt sexual features and value these more than do girls, who often say that personality – character and a sense of humour – count more.” “Boys, when talking about what attracts them, put much more emphasis on the physical features seen in isolation from each other (breasts, face, buttocks, legs). Girls tend to see the whole person, body and ‘personality’, together.^[12] 

The boy is always salacious, “on the make”, and wonders just how he can make this known to the desired partner: for no less than 73% of 15- to 17-year-olds, this is a serious problem.^[13]

For the boy, more than for the girl, sexual intercourse is an opportunity for getting to know a person better, and perhaps through it, to grow to love her or him.^[14] Sex can cause a boy to fall in love rather than the other way around, while for girls love may lead to sex but is seldom its consequence.^[15] It is interesting to compare the motives for first intercourse Schofield^[16] found among English young people (see Table 7).

Table 7. Motives for First Intercourse.^[17]

Boys are more eager for sex than for girls; girls are more eager for boys than for sex.^[18] We shouldn’t, of course, be dogmatic about such a truism: we find “recent studies indicating that girls are not as disinterested in the sexual aspects of a relationship with a boy as was previously thought.^[19] But certainly here the exception proves the rule, as can be seen in lesbian and other women’s anthologies which rarely touch “the direct, descriptive, explicit subject of sex, in utter contrast to gay (or even straight) men’s anthologies.^[20] In sexual intercourse the girl strives less for the heightening and satisfaction of lust than for feelings which transcend physical sexuality.^[21] As Nancy Friday^[22] puts it: “By the time young girls and boys meet in adolescence, they have entirely different masturbatory / fantasy histories. A boy may enjoy the idea of strolling in the moonlight with his girl, but when the touch of her breast on his arm gives him an erection, he doesn’t want to prolong the moonlight walk. He wants to satisfy that erection. But the girl wants the moment to last forever, to melt into his arms in a romantic kiss, to keep the feeling she got the last time her vagina got moist – which was when she saw Robert De Niro kiss Liza Minelli. What has this lovely feeling got to do, with Johnny here, who is grossly putting his hand up her skirt? He’s ruining all her lovely feelings! ‘what kind of girl do you think I am, Johnny Brown?’ ”

“Ask the girls in ‘domestic science’ training school why they sleep with their boyfriends and the answers you get will nearly never be that they like it so much themselves. They do it because their boys want it, because they are afraid their boys will start going around with another girl if they refuse; they will lose their boy-friends. (…) Girls are a little frightened of fucking; they always hope that some boy they know very well will be a bit more considerate. For boys it’s another story altogether. They would rather have their first fuck with a girl they will never see again, so that if something goes wrong they don’t have to be afraid of maybe being laughed at.^[23] In any case, after getting acquainted with a possible partner, boys need less time than girls do to want to proceed with having sex.^[24]

Thus one can understand why first intercourse is more often disappointing for girls than for boys. The boy simply takes it for granted that sex is physically wonderful; he doesn’t perceive that his girl-friend may feel otherwise.^[25] This is admirably shown by Iris Murdoch in her novel The Nice and the Good. Fifteen-year-old Pierce is very much in love with Barbara. She scorns him, and he suffers for weeks on end. Finally she gives in, and after their intimacy they have this conversation:

100  “Was that really it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you did it right?”

“My God, I’m sure!”

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“Girls never do the first time.”

“Perhaps I’m a lesbian.”

“Don’t be silly, Barbie. You did like it a little?”

“Well, just the first bit.”

“Oh, Barb, you were so wonderful. I worship you.” (…)

“You were so heavy, Pierce.”

“I felt heavy afterwards. I felt I was just a great contented stone lying on top of you.” 

“Are you sure I won’t have a baby?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think I’ll get to like it more, to like it as much as you do?”

“You’ll like it more. You’ll never like it as much as I do, Barbie. I’ve been in paradise.” 

“Well, I’m glad somebody’s pleased.”

“Oh, Barb, darling –”

“All right, all right. Do you think we’ve been wicked?”

“No. We love each other. We do love each other, don’t we, Barbie?”

“Yes. But it could still be wrong.”

“It could. I don’t feel it is, though. I feel as if everything in the world is with us.”

“I feel that too.”

“You don’t regret it, you don’t hate me?”

“No. It had to happen to me and I’m glad it’s happened like this.”

“I’ve loved you so long, Barb –”

“I feel I couldn’t have done it with anyone else. It’s because I know you so well, you’re like my brother.”

“Barb!” “Well, you know what I mean. Darling Pierce, your body looks so different to me now and so wonderful.” (…)

“Pierce –”

“Yes?” “Do you think we’ll either of us ever go to bed with anyone else?”

“No, well, Barb, you know we’re quite young and –”     

“You’re thinking about other girls already!”     

“Barb, Barb, please don’t move away, please bring your hand back again. Darling, I love you, good God, you know I love you!”     

“Perhaps we could get married after you’ve taken your A levels.”    

“Well, Barb, we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry – Oh, darling, please –”     

“When are we going to do this again? Tomorrow?”     

“We can’t tomorrow. I’ve got to go to Geoffrey Pember-Smith’s place.”     

“Can’t you put it off?”     

“Well, no. You see there’s this chance to have the yacht –”     

“What about me? I thought you loved me!”     

“I do love you, darling Barb. But yachts are important too.”^[26]

Since lust is of such overriding importance to the boy, he will try to satisfy it in a great variety of ways; he is thus much more open to homosexual activity.^[27] The urge, the need to have an orgasm, is felt much more constantly than the need to love another person.^[28] In the typical boy-girl relationship, many boys want to have full sexual intimacy right from the start, while the girl is not yet ready for it; once intercourse begins the boy wants to repeat it more frequently than does the girl. Among Hass’s 15- and 16-year-olds, 68% of the girls and 41% of the boys felt that romantic involvement should be a prerequisite for coitus.^[29] Hass found that boys and girls varied widely on the conditions they felt suitable for having intercourse (Table 8).

As for frequency, Kinsey concluded that “the average adolescent girl gets along well enough with a fifth as much sexual activity as the adolescent boy.^[30] The boy’s displeasure over his girl’s refusal to grant sexual “favours” is the most common cause of quarrels between young lovers. De Boer investigated the attitudes boys and girls had about coitus (Table 9).

Table 8. Conditions Thought Proper for Intercourse.^[31]

Table 9. Attitudes about Intercourse.^[32]

For girls it is more important to have a personal relationship than for boys. A boy wants girls in general; a girl wants a particular boy, a special boy. In girls desire may be erotic, often romantic, but it is directed toward tenderness and doesn’t demand the immediate coupling of the sexual organs. “Their own sexual feelings remain rather weak and unfocused. Instead, they tend to fantasise in a general way about their future roles as brides, wives, and mothers. At other times they dream vaguely about some ideal lover or some romantic situation. In short, they are less concerned with the physical aspects of sex than with its social implications. In contrast, the sexual fantasies of boys are much more specific. They are mainly interested in the sexual activity itself. For most of them, sexual desire and satisfaction are immediate physical experiences quite unrelated to any particular social setting. Their sexuality is detached, private, and personal. Thus, for a while, the two sexes are out of step in their personal development.”^[33]

We might say that girls arrive sooner at procreational maturity, boys sooner at sexual maturity.^[34] With females, puberty brings with it a gradual development of sexual consciousness, starting with complex romantic fantasies which are still somewhat remote from any directly sexual sensations. The pubertal boy, on the other hand, is confronted rather suddenly with a vastly more sensitive penis, one, moreover, which varies capriciously in size and hardness, swelling and stiffening in response to nearly every erotic stimulus, often without his having any control over it whatsoever.^[35]

“This suggests a different evolution of sexuality in women. Girls are evidently in greater need than boys of external impulses in order to take sexual initiatives. Often they only become sexually active themselves after a partner has helped them discover their own capacity for being stimulated through their genitals. The reason may be that, in the male, sexuality is highly age-dependent – put more precisely, its drive is strongly increased at puberty – while for the female it is much more dependent upon loving experiences.” Giese and Schmidt.^[36] from whose book the above passage is taken, quote the confirming opinion of Simon and Gagnon^[37]: “One might say that for females the ‘discovery’ of love relations precedes the ‘discovery’ of sexuality, while the reverse is generally true for males.”

The girl thinks of lasting companionship, and the future; the boy lives for the moment, and in the present.^[38] Little wonder, then, that 13- to 15-year-old girls show so little understanding of boys of their age and prefer to socialise with partners some three years older.^[39] What the thirteen- to fifteen-year-old boy wants seems to them indecent and perverse. The boy complains that his girl-friend doesn’t want to touch his penis, play with it, take it into her mouth.^[40] Kentler describes the dilemma of working class girls: “If they give in to the demands of the boys they feel guilty and think of themselves as perverts; if they don’t comply with the wishes of the boys they risk losing them. They find themselves in this terrible situation because the boys, once they have a girlfriend, exploit them rather brutally to satisfy their own needs and are totally unable to empathise with the girl’s feelings. (…) A boy in my class at an industrial school asked, ‘Are there pills to turn women sexually on?’ How many frustrating experiences lie behind such a question! ‘I always have to run around looking for a girl that’s willing. And if one does go with me she just lies there, stiff and cold, doing nothing. It’s me that has to do everything.’ His dream was to find just one girl who would be spontaneously active with sexual desires like his own, a girl who, for once, would be out to seduce him.^[41]

We are generalising, of course. We are speaking of tendencies. But the problem is real enough to make life difficult. One of Dr. Janus’s subjects, Michael, said, “The very first time I had intercourse, I was fifteen and the girl was fifteen too, and she was a virgin (…) My mother found out shortly afterward and started asking me about it – she just wanted to make sure that I was using something. She wasn’t angry or anything, but she was kind of concerned.” His mother said, “Michael and Anne, his girl friend, were having troubles, and one day Michael came to me in anger and said that adolescence and sex just didn’t go together.^[42]

Michael is probably right: the difficulty is rooted in the nature of adolescence; it may not exist during the pre-pubertal years. Janus quotes a thirteen-year-old girl: “The relationship that meant the most to me was one that I had last summer. We only spent about three weeks together, but I learned a lot from it. When I met him, he was very independent – not shy, just kind of slightly aloof – but he was very innocent. He hadn’t ever had sex before, and he was two years older than me – I was twelve and he was fourteen. I really loved teaching him. It was beautiful. I learned an awful lot about people, about myself, and even about boys from him, and I love him for this.^[43]

In the ensuing period – puberty and early adolescence – such harmony between sexual partners becomes very rare. In later adolescence, however, with the approach to adulthood, differences and incompatibilities lessen. It remains an open question as to how much of this is biological (gender-dependent) in origin and how much cultural. Lesbians, from the very beginning, are more interested in having an intense and long-lasting “relationship” with a partner than are homophile males.^[44] In any case, the girl in our society tends to fall in love with a boy and only gradually, out of love for him, becomes willing to permit him the sexual activity he wants, while the boy, having just passed the threshold of puberty, is wholly dominated by his desire for naked coupling and the genital satisfaction of his lust. The voluptuous experience may gradually, or even suddenly, open his heart to love. As a fifteen-year-old boy said to Hass:^[45] “Sometimes after sexual contact you feel like you are romantically involved.”

Thus for boys more than for girls sexual activity is a means of exploring their own sexual makeup. In one study as many as 46% of homophile boys (against 20% of lesbian girls) were made aware of their sexual preference as a direct result of homosexual activities, while falling in love with someone of the same sex had the same result with 48% of homophile boys – and 80% of lesbian girls.^[46]

101  In one French gay magazine, “Philippe,” a 16-year-old Parisian grammar school boy, told how he always felt disappointed in his father (”the only thing that matters is your marks”) and his teachers (who knew nothing about solving problems unless they were math problems). There was no one he could talk with about the problem that was uppermost in his mind: sex. One day he saw a man selling gay magazines on the street. The man had a nice face, so Philippe went up to him and invited him into a café for a beer. Afterwards they went to the man’s home, where they undressed and had sex. “It sounds stupid,” the boy reported, “but now I think I’ve fallen in love with him.”

In one NISSO investigation, 15- to 17-year-old boys were asked which of the following were worrisome problems for them: 

“How well do you have to be acquainted with a girl before you can have sex with her?” – 80.6% said yes. “How do you make the first move without frightening her?” – 73.3%

“How do you behave towards a girl once you’ve done it to her?” – 65.0%

“When you’re going to fuck her, should you undress her immediately or caress her for a little while first?” – 58.3%

Comparing the concerns of 15- to 17-year-olds with those of 18- to 21-year-olds, we see an increasing preoccupation in older boys with the feelings of the girl:

“Do I ejaculate too quickly?” – mounts from 38.2% to 55.6%

“What do you do if the girl has no orgasm?” – mounts from 50.6% to 65.4%

“What do girls actually feel?” – mounts from 60.8% to 79.4%

“What do you do when a girl is afraid of fucking?” – rises from 54.7% to 65.1%

More than 50% of all the boys complained that they weren’t deriving enough pleasure from coitus because the girl wasn’t participating actively enough. This mounted from 50.3% to 58.7%.^[47]

All in all, this is hardly a picture of unmitigated joy and pleasure. Many boys are so disappointed that they refuse to have sex even when a girl is quite willing and the opportunity is there. Kirkendall^[48] said that no less than 45% of the boys he studied had at some time in the past declined an invitation for intercourse.

Boys come through sex to love, girls through love to sex. Younger boys and girls, those just past puberty, are ill-suited as sexual partners for each other. Since the boy urgently needs sexual experience, he can often better get this first with partners of his own sex and wait, for heterosexual coupling, until he finds an older woman willing to help him or until his female contemporaries are more open to physical approach.

102  Bernard, 17 years of age and one of my own research subjects, told me quite openly about his sex life: “When I was a little kid I used to shower together with my father. We were always physically affectionate with each other, and, starting when I was eleven, our fondling became undisguisedly sexual. We made sex in many different ways. I felt very good about this. We continued with the sex for years, and only in the last few months has it begun to taper off. I’m getting too old, too much of an adult male, for the erotic tastes of my father – and for me the interest has lessened, too, because I find myself more and more drawn to girls. I’m now looking for a younger friend for my father, to take my place. Dad has absolutely got to have this – I’ll do everything I can to help him. I love him very much. Our relationship was the great central joy of my boyhood. My classmates began to run after girls when they were fourteen or fifteen. But boys and girls of that age don’t work out sexually together: how much misery and how many tears I’ve seen! And I was saved all these dramas because I was sexually entirely satisfied by the relations I was having with my father. Now I’m 17 and things go better with girls because they’re wiser – and we boys are wiser, too. At last we are in tune!”

Bernard’s opinion, which he quite independently arrived at through his own experience, coincides with that of the Danish psychiatrist Hertoft^[49] who concluded from his research among young males that a boy shouldn’t have intercourse with a girl before he is seventeen.

Continue to Sex With Other Boys: The “Homosexual Phase”

^[1] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, II-3 [Author’s reference].

^[2] Giese, H. & Schmidt, G., Studenten-Sexualität. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968, 263 [Author’s reference].

^[3] Gagnon, J. H. & Simon, W., Sexual Conduct. London: Hutchinson, 1973, 252 [Author’s reference].

^[4] Sanders, G., Het gewone en het bijzondere van de homoseksuele leefsituatie. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1977, 17, 95, 107. Kentler, H., Sexual-erziehung. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1970, 25 [Author’s reference].

^[5] Sanders, G., Het gewone en het bijzondere van de homoseksuele leefsituatie, Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1977, p. 67 [Author’s reference].

^[6] Ford, C. S. & Beach, F. A., Formen der Sexualität. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1968, 261 [Author’s reference].

^[7] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, II-71 [Author’s reference].

^[8] E. Borneman, Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 340 [Author’s reference].

^[9] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, 123-124.  Hannon, G., Men Loving Boys Loving Men Again. The Body Politic 8, 51: 21-27, 1979, 26. Fisch, M., Unzucht mit Kindern. Frankfurt a.M.: Gemini, 1971, 152 [Author’s reference].

^[10] Steen, C. van der, Seksualiteit bij lichamelijk gehandicapten. In: Reader Cursus Seksuologie, deel II, tweede boek. Amsterdam: NIP, 1978, 4 [Author’s reference].

^[11] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, F-2-12. [Author’s reference]

^[12] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence. New York: Morrow & Co., 1981. 46, 264. [Author’s reference]

^[13] NISSO, Onderzoek jeugd en sex. Eerste bericht. Zeist: NISSO, 1973, 36; “Sanders 1971, 68” which does not correspond to anything in the author’s bibliography  [Author’s references]

^[14] Ussel, J. M. W. van, Intimiteit. Deventer: Ven Loghum Slaterus, 1975, 183. [Author’s reference]

^[15] Frenken, J., Afkeer van seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976, 126, 171. Gagnon, J. H. & Simon, W., Sexual Conduct. London: Hutchinson, 1973, 252. Jensen, O. S., Körperpsychologie und Orgasmus. In: Nørretranders (Ed.), Hingabe, Über den Orgasmus des Mannes. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1983, 127. [Author’s reference]

^[16] Schofield (1965, 64) [Author’s reference]. Unfortunately, it is not clear from the author’s bibliography which of two works by M. Schofield published in 1965 is meant.

^[17] Schofield (1965) [Author’s reference]. Unfortunately, it is not clear from the author’s bibliography which of two works by M. Schofield published in 1965 is meant.

^[18] Frenken, J., Afkeer van seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976, 25. Regt, W. de, Meisjes en jongens en hun seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1982, 43, 46. [Author’s reference]

^[19] Wilson, P., The Man They Called a Monster. North Ryde: Cassell Australia, 1981, 55 [Author’s reference].

^[20] Wadsworth, A., Felice Picano “A True Likeness - Lesbian and Gay Writing Today” Reviewed. Fag Rag 30-39: 125-127, 1982, 127 [Author’s reference].

^[21] Frenken, J., Afkeer van seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976 126 [Author’s reference].

^[22] Friday, N., Men in Love. New York: Dell, 1981, 37 [Author’s reference].

^[23] “Van der Veer 1983, 70-71” [Author’s reference, which unfortunately does not exactly correspond to anything in his bibliography].

^[24] Zetterberg, H. L., Het seksuele leven in Zweden. Den Haag: NVSH, 1969, 31-32. [Author’s reference]

^[25] Camilla, Toward a Feminist Position for Boy-Lovers. Nambla Journal 6: 7-9, 1983, 7-9 [Author’s reference].

^[26] Murdoch, I., The Nice and the Good. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969, 348-350. [Author’s reference]

^[27] Gagnon, J. H. & Simon, W., Sexual Conduct. London: Hutchinson, 1973, 37, 252. [Author’s reference]

^[28] Barrington, J. S., Sexual Alternatives for Men. London: Alternative Publishing, 1981, 219. [Author’s reference]

^[29]  Hass, A., Teenage Sexuality. New York: Macmillan, 1979, 23. [Author’s reference]

^[30] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 223. [Author’s reference]

^[31] Hass, A., Teenage Sexuality. New York: Macmillan, 1979, [Author’s reference]

^[32] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, Regt, W. de, Meisjes en jongens en hun seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1982, [Author’s reference]

^[33] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, 163- 164. [Author’s reference]

^[34] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 964 [Author’s reference]

^[35] Pietropinto, A. & Simenauer, J., Gonado (Beyond the Male Myth). Katwijk aan Zee, Servire, 1979, 31. [Author’s reference]

^[36] Giese, H. & Schmidt, G., Studenten-Sexualität. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968, 266-267. [Author’s reference]

^[37] Simon, W. & Gagnon, J. H., The Lesbians: a Preliminary Overview in Gagnon & Simon (Eds.), Sexual Deviance. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 251 [Author’s reference].

^[38] “Matzneff 1977, 55” [Author’s reference] It is not clear from his bibliography to which of two works listed there as by Gabriel Matzneff and published in 1977 this refers.

^[39] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, D 1-4. [Author’s reference]

^[40] Pietropinto, A. & Simenauer, J., Gonado (Beyond the Male Myth). Katwijk aan Zee, Servire, 1979, 55. [Author’s reference]

^[41] Kentler, H., Sexualpädagogische Aufgaben bei Jugendlichen der Unterschicht. In: Pacharzina & Albrecht-Désirat (Eds.), Konfliktfeld Kindersexualität. Frankfurt a.M.: Päd-extra, 1978, 143. [Author’s reference]

^[42] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence, New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 306 [Author’s reference].

^[43] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence, New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, pp. 292-3 [Author’s reference].

^[44] Siegfried, C.-F., Gesellschaft und Homosexualität. Burckhardthausverlag, 1979, 72. West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, 170. [Author’s reference]

^[45] Hass, A., Teenage Sexuality. New York: Macmillan, 1979, 18. [Author’s reference]

^[46] Sanders, G., Het gewone en het bijzondere van de homoseksuele leefsituatie. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1977, 80. [Author’s reference]

^[47] NISSO, Onderzoek jeugd en sex. Eerste bericht. Zeist: NISSO, 1973, 36. [Author’s reference]

^[48] Straver, C. J., Jeugd-seksualiteit. Verbum 44, 6: 256-267, 1977, 263. [Author’s reference]

^[49] Hertoft, P., Unge mænds seksuelle adfæd, viden og holdning. København: Akademisk Forlag, 1968, I-133. [Author’s reference]