Young and Gaining?

I know a guy who is quite obsessed by stuff like this and he is only 13.  What to you think about it?

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I have mixed feelings about this. On a cross-cultural level, not all societies conceptualize adolescence the way that we do. In other words, a number of cultures lack a concept of "teenager" and instead have a classification of child/Adult.  Just so, a 13 year old would be considered an adult, and would be respected in terms of making his (or her) own decisions.  A reflection of this remains in the Bar Mitzvah, when a 13 year old declares to his community, “Today I am a man.”  Historically, this was a literal statement.  Other cultures traditionally had puberty ceremonies that recognized a boy had obtained the status of a man.

One of the fascinating changes (to me at least) we're starting to see is a major shift of age in the "Coming Out" process for being gay. Historically, the average age of Coming Out as gay was in the 20's, but in a 2001 study, it was found that the current average age of Coming Out is now 15.

See--it used to be that a guy transitioned to a gay identity from direct physical experience with a same-sex partner who initiated him. This is one reason why so many gay people strongly  identified with Vampire novels...the idea of stalking/cruising at night --the idea of "bringing over" the previously "normal" person into a new identity and community with the "dark gift.". The idea of exchange of body fluids...

But these days, younger folks will self-identify as gay while they are still Virgins. Their identity is not based on their behavior but on their formal intellectual recognition of their sexual orientation.  I have a friend who fell in love with a pre-operative male to female transsexual he met in Honolulu. I urged him to follow his heart (he identifies as straight) and he did--they've been together now for over 7 years...anyway, he told me that he was a “good Italian Catholic boy from New Jersey,” and he didn't keep secrets from his mother. So for Christmas, he flew out with Katherine to introduce her to his mother.

 Katherine is Asian-American and very "passable" as female. My friend said to his mother, "There's something I need to tell you about Katherine." He explained that she's a pre-op MTF transsexual.

You know what his mother said? "Oh, I know all about that--I saw it on Oprah."

And the point of this is that between the Internet, and Cable, not to mention primetime, a younger person can pick up all sorts of information, and become involved in issues of interest at a much younger age than ever before. So it makes sense we're seeing younger and younger kids identifying as Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual,  or coming to terms with their Gender Orientation. Just so, it's logical that they're going to get involved in gaining.  A few clicks on Youtube will uncover many young teens showing off their budding bellies and asking for encouragement and comments. 

I certainly have read remarks from "tons" of adult gainers who share how much they wished they would have been able to start expanding at a much earlier age, since they knew they wanted the weight from childhood.

Incidently, the drawback for this younger generation is that we're also seeing more and more kids kicked out of their homes by homophobic parents. The younger a kid is who Comes Out, the less likely he or she will have the financial independence to be able to survive if he's disowned by his parents.

In studies done in Seattle and in L.A., we're seeing a significant number of street kids who are homeless because their parents could not deal with their sexuality or gender issues. It makes me wonder how their parents are going to react to deliberate gaining. In a worse case scenario, I worry about such parents angrily attacking gaining sites like this one, accusing the site of “seducing children" over the internet into what their parents might consider a "harmful sexual perversion."

Many parents have blamed college/the armed services for “making” their children gay once they left home.  In other words, the parents perceived their kids as “normal” (i.e., straight) and then felt their experience outside of the home “converted” them.  In reality, the kids had known they were gay for a long time, but didn’t feel safe enough to Come Out to their family until they were no longer living with them.  College—or for some—the armed services—gave them an opportunity to interact with others of the GLBTQ community.  Their sexual orientation became “normalized” and this allowed them to finally Come Out to their own family.  Their outside experience didn’t “make” them Gay…but it allowed them to express that part of themselves.

On the other hand, we're seeing such an enormous increase in child and adolescent obesity in general, that it's more likely that the parents aren't going to notice that there's an erotic component for a lot of young chubbies...I look forward to seeing comments from actual gainers out there...encouraging an adult who is interested in gaining seems very different than an adult encouraging someone underage...which feels different than a 13 year old encouraging another 13 year old. As a therapist, I am very ethically concerned with what can be seen as potentially abusive...