Excellent, absolutely true. But your ------- spam filter won't let me comment. My comment here wasn't any different from my usual comment so I can't figure out what it's objecting to. I'll try to get past the damn thing.

I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted:

What do men's men have to do with Oz?? L. Frank Baum's Oz stories, all 16 of them -- beginning but by no means ending with The Wizard -- were female dominated, not only featuring heroines like Dorothy and the Patchwork Girl, but the whole land of Oz was ruled by Ozma, who was assisted by Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, and there there were numerous other Witches, both Good and Wicked, and Queens scattered throughout Oz and its environs. There were plenty of eccentric male characters, and lots of talking animals, but the Oz milieu as a whole was dominantly female. Baum wrote other stories about girls outside of Oz.

I can see that a budding man's man might well like stories about boys. Not being of that persuasion, I never liked such stories myself. I always liked stories about girls. Another was Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Lewis Caroll positively hated boys.

As for TV, what I loved most were heroines in perilous situations.

I don't know what it means to be "validated".

See if this gets through. I'll omit a word you used in your original post:

I don't conform to that stereotype either. What I love above all is a woman's face, hair, neck, and shoulders.

"Validate" it through the marriage vow? I don't know if I ever will. But Jesus and Nietzsche never did either, so that fate must be good enough for me. Though Nietzsche loved the Ring of Eternity, and, in Catholic theology, Mary the Queen of Heaven is also the Bride of Christ. Holy Dawn is married to holy Norma, and wicked Wanda has her 69 women. I shall have to validate myself through them.

Sorry to have to send that comment in pieces like that, but I had to experiment a great deal. Still can't figure out what was blocking it.

Steven thanks for hanging in there. It's obviously the damned spam filter, and I need to figure out what words are being rejected, so let me know. It is tits? I'll find out when I post this. (It automatically adds things whenever I block spam.)

Anyway, I will not tolerate blocking of any of your words!

I think it was a synonym for that. The one that starts with a "b" and does not rhyme with "tube". But even after I deleted that word, it still kept on rejecting my comment. Was it "sexuality"?

Sexuality. Heterosexuality. Homosexuality. Androsexuality. Gynosexuality. Breasts? Yes, breasts are beautiful, distinctively feminine. I prefer to see them clothed rather than nude, suggestive rather than explicit.

Hmmm.... That went through.

Bondage? Captivity? Masochism? Sadism?

I went through a long period of my life in looking for validation from others. I see it has having been primarily due to having what they call "father issues." I only finally shed myself of the last vestiges when I stopped caring if other bloggers said nasty things about me--which I guess would mean it's comparitively recent, except as I said that was mostly a last vestige of it.

I understand the young gay man's confusion and need to fit in in many ways, but I also understand that some people never have that feeling, or don't have it very strongly anyway (I suppose it would be utterly psychotic to never care what anyone thoght of you).

Some people's identity is very much wrapped up in their sexuality. Think, for example, of transexuals. It's tempting to dismiss them all as simply needing the ultimate in a certain form of validation, and yet if you've talked to or read about a few of them in-depth you realize the need to be something different is something that's burned into them at a very deep level.

If I seem to be rambling it's because I am. I suppose what I'm saying is that I see a spectrum here of people who self-identify by their sexuality and some who don't. So it would be intersting to ask which type is more prevalent.

Whether for sexuality or anything else, I don't think there's anything wrong or unnatural about seeking validation from people you know and respect, but to expect it to come from anonymous and impersonal sources such as the TV strikes me as a bit unreal, and possibly unfair. Sexuality is such a highly individualized thing that what one person might find "validating" another person might find just the opposite. There's something quite arbitrary about defining things like "gay culture" that I have to ask why. What's being defined, and who gets to define it?

I'm uncomfortable with self-appointed "role models" deciding that the sexuality of total strangers is their business. And even if the goal is the altruistic one of "validation" -- what does this suggest to the unvalidated?

When I think of "validate" I always think of a ticket or a bus pass.

My god, what a beautiful post. I could not agree more strongly.