Slightly related, but for younger children: parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/643/…

If he's gay, he's gay. Offering support is better than trying to change him.

Also, volleyball is hardly exclusively a female sport.

Nor is owning a diary girly. Ernest Hemingway surely had a diary.

The movie "My life in pink" deals with this issue from the perspective of a boy who identifies as a girl,

So he chooses female characters in games (a LOT of guys do...), he plays volleyball (is this gay now? since when?), has a journal (as do I, and a lot of other men)...what part of this is gay or girly again? And even if it all were, so what? Sure, encourage masculine things but even if he is gay (and at 11 y/o thee's no way to know), accept it, accept him, and encourage that too. You're a parent. Unconditional love and acceptance are your job.

Oh, and having more female friends (which I always have had more of myself) could just as likely be about as far opposite of gay as not...

people should really think why acting like gay is a "bad thing"

"He plays mostly with girls at school". Why do you object to this? Maybe it is because he likes girls?

What does it mean to "walk like a girl"?

"We want to him to grow up to be normal" - then your best course of action is to let him develop and figure things out, and support him. He's approaching the age where he starts to figure out his sexual and gender identity and what they really mean; telling him that what he feels is wrong is a sure way to harm this development and prevent him from growing up "normal" (whatever "normal" means). He needs to work this out, so as parents your best course of action is to support him - your concern here shows that you love him, so make sure he knows that and he'll be fine.

I'm a man, very much straight and cis, and I don't like playing "boy" sports, I prefer(red) hanging out with women(girls) and like diaries and things. So it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

I'm the gayest straight guy you may never meet. I usually play girl characters. I sew. I cook. The most complimented coat I own is actually a woman's dress. Almost all my friends are girls. I lived in San Francisco in the gayest neighborhood for 8 years. Know what it means? Nothing. Maybe your son just doesn't like football and whatever else guys tend to like. If you try to correct him constantly you may find out he actually is gay 20 years later because he didn't think you would accept him if he was.

You need to let him grow up to his kind of normal, not the normal that you need him to be. If you aren't pushing him to be "girly" then it must be his own nature that is doing so. Your job will be to learn to love who he is and worry less about how you can shape that.

Somehow this old thread is on the front page now, and 4 years passed. I wonder how it turned out with the kid. Maybe Chelle notices and updates the question :)

he's 11 freaking years old, he's not gay. how can he be gay if he hasnt even hit puberty....

@Iwrestledabearonce. 11 years might be old enough to be starting puberty. That's the age where I started getting interested in people, so he might already be experiencing the same thing.

About the gaming avatars - a bright man once said this regarding videogames: "If I'm going to look at someone's butt for hours, I prefer it to be a pretty woman". A lot of people play with avatars they think are pretty.