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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Roger made a short and substantial point. He said:
> Gay boys, (most that ive known anyway) have low self esteme. They for the most part have grown up in hostil environments. boys or girls both gay and straight need role models to look up to. It really doesnt mater if someone is gay or str8t except to show a gay child that anything is possible even for them. that gay men can become heros, world chanpions and acomplished actors and actrisses.
I think the most important words are in the middle of that statement:
> It really doesnt mater if someone is gay or str8t except to show a gay child that anything is possible even for them.
This is a drum, in one guise or another, that I've been beating for a long time, too.
When I grew up, and, since Roger is of a similar age, when he grew up, queers and fags were reviled. But queers and fags didn't have decent role models within the queer and faggy folk. With the best will in the world, Liberace (who won a libel case against a newspaper who said he was homosexual for that "slur") and Kenneth Williams were not role models one would, in general, aspire to be in the least way similar to.
Those people in my view did "us" (if there is an "us") great harm as role models (I argued some time ago for the good they did in a different way in a different field). But quiet and decent role models there were not. Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears were part of an unreachable elite, so they could not count, despite some form of tacit acceptance of their arty farty relationship. For all the rumours, Cliff Richard is celibate and doesn't count.
We needed, I needed, someone to look up to. I didn't have low self esteem. But I was disgusted that I might be queer because of the unpleasant queers I saw in the press and on TV. It would have been good to find an Olympic gold medal diver who just happened to be gay to show that queers could be athletic, too, or an important businessman who just happened to be gay, or a politician who just happened to be gay.
All these folk compete on level terms and sexuality is unimportant in their success or failure.
They are around today. They weren't around back then.
In the UK our first gay Prime Minister will be a matter of course and statistics. We may even have him in post today by some reports. In the USA your first gay President will be assassinated.
[Updated on: Tue, 09 September 2008 07:03]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Yes there were gay role models around back then. All it took was the gonads to go out and find them.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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If rumours are true, we may well have had our first gay prime minister. As he is dead I think I can safely put a name to that - Sir Edward Heath.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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I am not sure that any of the people we have mentioned - or could mention - can serve as role models for anyone. I think this is because the descriptor 'role model' is misleading. None of the celebrities we have mentioned became well-known (and in many cases admired) because they are gay. They became famous because of some level of excellence that they had achieved n their chosen profession - whatever it might be.
Perhaps what we are looking for is an 'esteem model'. But again we must be careful: Elton John can come out and proclaim his gayness because he is Elton John (and because the media hype will certainly not harm him). Tennis ace Billy Jean King could do so because she had reached the pinnacle of excellence in her chosen career.
It might be very dangerous if a youngster in - say - grade 10 were to decide to come out on the reasoning that 'if Sir John Guilgud can do it so can I'. (The same can be said, for instance, of Sir Alec Guiness or Rock Hudson.)
What we need to emphasise is that being gay need not prevent you from reaching the pinnacle of self-realisation. You can be gay and achieve great things. In that sense I would see all these celebrities as exemplars.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Marc wrote:
> Yes there were gay role models around back then. All it took was the gonads to go out and find them.
That is quite belligerent. It appears that you think that I was a wimp (that I had no gonads) for not realising that some people that I could look up to were queer. I could take offence at that quite easily. But I won't.
Instead I'll ask you who they were.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Well, yes, but he was also a nasty old queen!
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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I am certainly looking for quiet role models, people who have achieved whatever they have achieved (Aussie diver, for example) where their sexuality was unimportant to their achievement, or the path to their achievement.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Hey.... you are the one that is always lamenting the fact that you were too scared to make a move on the kid next door.
and
They were some of the adults I chose to spend my time with when I was young.
[Updated on: Tue, 09 September 2008 11:17]
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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I think I was lucky.
From a the age of 12 or 13 I'd been reading the work of James Baldwin, a black* non-violent civil-rights activist and mainly-gay novelist. He woke in me a deep understanding of the fact that what we all have in common as humans is far more important than our differences, but that we should not allow ourselves to be put down for whatever those differences are (ethnicity, sexuality, etc).
In particular, "Tell me how long the Train's been Gone" (which I read, aged 13, when it came out in 1968 ) profoundly influenced me, being a powerful story of how our early feelings of difference persist into adulthood, despite the main character rising from ghetto boyhood to international respect.
As a role model, Baldwin taught me that sometimes one just has to stand up and be counted. That it is important to do the (creative)work that is in you, and that doing bad work is in some sense immoral. His unique and expressive use of English (" I hazard that the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro speech - and something of Dickens's love for bravura - have something to do with me today; "), he once said) profoundly influenced my own writing style. His well-publicised disagreement with Eldridge Cleaver (who said of him "“many Negro homosexuals... are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by a white man,"), even, showed me how it was possible to handle strong disagreements over tactics and heavy personal abuse with dignity and respect, and to bear in mind the sharing of common goals.
James Baldwin was not - for me - an "easy" role model, like a rock star or a comedian. He was far more valuable than that: he showed both showed me the importance of being true to myself, and that it was possible to find the strength to do so. He was not "well-known because he was gay", but he was well-known, and his sexual orientation was an open and admitted part of what made him what he was.
* he self-identified as such and it was vital to his work - the term "African-American" was not then in use.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy wrote:
> I am certainly looking for quiet role models, people who have achieved whatever they have achieved (Aussie diver, for example) where their sexuality was unimportant to their achievement, or the path to their achievement.
I think in that case you're almost certainly not going to know that they are gay, except by accident! Unless the person achieves prominence in a field where their personal relationships are heavily scrutinised even if they don't wish it (sport, of course), there's no reason for you to know if they are gay or straight. If they "come out" to the media, it is ipso facto a political statement (though I wish it weren't), and their sexuality achieves an often-unwarranted importance.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Yes NW,
You were lucky and so was I and for similar reasons. We read and the books helped.
But I was doubly lucky as I didn't awaken sexually until I left home to do national service and so didn't have the problem of hiding it and because my parents hadn't drummed 'Christian' morality into me when I started I had no feelings of guilt. And I certainly didn't have low self esteem. I was a GOOD boy and I knew it.
But people go on about role models and how boys need fathers and all that and I think it isn't the celebrities that we need to be role models it's the uncles or the guy down the street - what I guess I might have needed was, in effect, reassurance that I wasn't the only one and that it wasn't the end of the world.
And actually I had one very unsatisfactory example: my headmaster C. S. Walton was homosexual and (I think) very repressed and the year after I left school he committed suicide. And although I can't put my finger on anything I'm fairly sure that *everyone* knew about him.
Love,
Anthony
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There's a passage in Book 3 of "Working It Out" by Don Hanratty (on the mailcrew site and elsewhere) that always reminds me of Heath:
"Those first steps in coming out of hiding can be pretty uncomfortable, and I speak from personal experience. Some people never take that step, and that's certainly their decision to make. Nobody has a right to knowledge about another person's sexual orientation, and a gay person isn't obligated to come out to just everybody he or she knows, either. > The reason it's important to wrestle with this issue is that the big secrets in our lives get harder and harder to keep as we get older. Eventually it takes so much energy to hide what we are that we don't, we can't, accomplish what we'd like to in life. And most of the basic joy and pleasure we should be experiencing in the course of living just withers away."
It probably isn't true for everyone, but that last line for me explains so much about Heath.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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acam wrote:
(snip)
> But people go on about role models and how boys need fathers and all that and I think it isn't the celebrities that we need to be role models it's the uncles or the guy down the street (snip)
In that sense, too, I was blessed. A gay couple moved into the cottage next door to my Mum in 1977, when I was 22 and still closeted. She became very good friends with them, after a rather hesitant start. That was part of what gave me the confidence to come out, some eighteen months later.
A blessing, but also a powerful obligation: because I remain so aware that it had been important to me in younger days to know these gay guys and how they had good jobs, fitted in well to the village community etc, I have consciously tried to be an equally good model in the eyes of the assorted kids, trainees and others (gay and straight)who have crossed my path over the last 3 decades.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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I don't quite see why this had to become personal. I'm glad you had decent, gay friendly adult role models nearby. Not everyone did.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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You made your luck by following through on it. I made mine differently by stubbornly refusing to follow through on it. Marc tells me elsewhere that this was lack of gonads. If so I suspect I share that lack with an enormous number of my generation, and quite a number of today's generation.
I do remember a positive role model at university. He got on with life with his boyfriend, gaining a decent degree and an MSc. He was an active member of the university motor club, as was I. And yet I never perceived him as a role model. He was just another student, a few years older than I was. And he was gay. I, by contrast, had convinced myself that my homosexuality was just a phase that was lasting rather too long.
Thus he could not be a role model for me because he was what I was refusing to be - a homosexual man and content in that self knowledge.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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I never wanted a gay role model. At least not of the type you guys seem to be talking about. I guess if anything I'd rather be a gay role model. I'd rather be a "first gay prime minister" than look up to one. But even then I'm happy to keep role-model and sexuality distinct. Being gay doesn't make someone a better person, or a worse person. I don't really see the need for gay role models at all, just people with the moral fibre to stand up for gay rights, regardless of their own orientation.
What I think is more important than gay role models is gay representation. The idea that "you're not alone" is more important than the idea "you can become president, even though you're gay". Books, music, movies that cover gay themes as a matter of course, not making them a major part, but just having them be incidental (like Dumbledore's sexuality- though I wish it had been mentioned in the books, at least). I don't want it to be great to be gay, I just want it to be normal. I want my sexual behaviour and relationship behaviour to be seen as valid, if not "normal"- in the same way being left handed is valid, if not "normal".
That is more important to me than having a diver say he's gay.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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timmy wrote:
> I don't quite see why this had to become personal. I'm glad you had decent, gay friendly adult role models nearby. Not everyone did.
No.... Not everyone did... But is that my fault or theirs?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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No Message Body
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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Allen Ginsburg was my saving grace so to speak. As I have said some of us did luck out. I really wasn't exposed to stereo types, for which I am thankful, it was all about the freedom to be who you were for me thanks to the likes of Ginsburg.
Other than that I think all I can do is try to be as loving and compassionate a human as I can and treat others as I would want to be treated.
Desiring the company of men over women is really only a small part of who I am and really only important to me and any one I might want such a relationship with.
[Updated on: Tue, 09 September 2008 17:05]
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Where has this argument come from? There was nothing controversial in the initial thread; there is nothing controversial in the answers; there is nothing to argue about that I can see. I don't understand why it is personally aimed at me.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I dont understand the argument either. You were no different than any other gay boy growing up in the times you did. My point was that it didnt mater if a person was gay , except to another gay person who needed to understand that being gay did not exclude them from achieving greatness. One of the fellow teachers at University taught anchient history. I never heard the word gay come out of his mouth even when he was teaching about Alexander the great. I ask him why and was told that it would be inappropriate. The greatest Military mind the world has ever seen (even today his tactics are taught at military schools). The man who conquored the known world, was queer as a three dollar bill. The fact that he was gay didnt make him a genius or a great soldier, but to a gay boy who has been told how wrong it is and that he will always be trash and worthless or that he is an abomination befor god, to look at Alexander and see that being gay didnt make him less of a man or less capable of something great.
A role model doesnt have to be someone great. I would have been happy with an uncle or cousin or even a neighbor who cared and would answer questions. I understand that there are persons who would take advantage of someone young, IM not talking about that. What im talking about is someone who really cares about how our youth is coming up, someone who wont judge, or show anger. Someone who can sit down and ease a hurt feeling or tell a youngster that the world didnt end because someone called him faggot. Someone who cares and just listens.
[Updated on: Tue, 09 September 2008 19:11]
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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I'm not sure whether I have come in at the right place. No doubt I'll be told if I haven't.
Perhaps my schooldays (late fifties early sixties) were exceptional. As I am sure I have written before my own school was very gay tolerant although the word gay was never used in the homosexual sense in those days. We had bachelor masters who were gay. Okay, we commented on the fact. It was no big deal. Two of them taught me extremely well and as good teachers they became role models for me to the extent that I would copy parts of them in my own teaching career.
My modern languages master was one of them. How did we know? He reserved an indefinable attitude towards certain boys - I suppose you could say they were his favourites - who were popular in the school's gay underworld. I remember the time when he said to one of them in class "I would like to marry your sister", a dead giveaway. Looking back I only have one reservation and that is the way he dealt with (or didn't) the theme of homosexuality.
One set book was Thomas Mann's 'Tonio Kröger' which dealt with the hero's adolescent crush on a fellow pupil and of course there were cross references with 'Death in Venice'. Another was André Gide's 'La Porte Etroite' which if we had been taught that Gide was homosexual would have made much more sense to us. Critical references for background reading were few and far between in those days. In fact Mann's bisexuality only came out with the publication of his diaries and they were not available at that time.
The point I am trying to make is that my teacher selected two set books which dealt with homosexuality and he refused to entertain the subject. We jejeune youths certainly detected the theme and discussed it amongst ourselves in an atmosphere of ignorance, but in those days none of us dared to broach the topic, especially as our master had a very prudish veneer.
I compensated for this in my own career by teaching Thomas Mann and making the homosexual nature of certain characters explicit.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Yes, Saben,
Yes, Yes , Yes!
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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"Start at the very beginning, a very good place to start"
I think you must be at the right place. What made you think possibly otherwise?
I read the English translation of DinV without even considering that Mann was not entirely heterosexual. Shows how blinkered my own upbringing was, I think.
Alexander the Great (Roger's point) is too remote for me to consider as a role model for myself, though he was one heck of a warrior. So I "get" the point about him yet can;t make it personal.
Perhaps that's the point about role models, and the one Marc is trying to get me to understand: they have to mean something personally.
[Updated on: Tue, 09 September 2008 22:53]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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I am on board with the point you make. I believe we need a variety of role models, some "local" others celebrity.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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I don't see an argument at all.....
If there is one I am pleased you pointed it out to me.....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Timmy, let me misquote the Bard of Avon:
O most pernicious man!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables - meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain —
At least I am sure it may be so in IOMFATS.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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Timmy wrote:
>I read the English translation of DinV without even considering that Mann was not entirely heterosexual. Shows how blinkered my own upbringing was, I think.<
I don't think you were blinkered so much as a product of our times. I don't know which translation you read, but the traditional ones into English are by Mrs H T Lowe-Porter. Although generally well regarded, at places they can be appalling. For instance in 'Tonio Kröger' some American students are referred to as 'verstopft' which Mrs Lowe-Porter translates as 'congested' when the obvious meaning is constipated. Congested didn't really make sense, but it did avoid a rather ungenteel word.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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I read the slim paperback which I no longer have with a picture of Bjorn on the cover. I only bought it for the picture, the story was incidental, though faster paced than the film because I can read fast!
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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While I think I understand your motivation for making that post, I feel that it is a thinly veiled attack on someone. May I draw your attention, please to the following:
> Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving!
While not strictly appropriate, since you are not 'giving advice', such posts are outside the spirit of this forum and are better not made. I was surprised to see it when I woke this morning, and can only conclude that the mystery moderator missed it.
I'll be asking him to leave this one in plain sight together with my thoughts. I am sure he will remove any subsequent ones at his sole discretion, since he does not answer to me over his actions.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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My apologies to you and everyone else.
JFR
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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(expletive deleted) Now I will handle it another way.!
[Updated on: Thu, 11 September 2008 11:00] by Moderator
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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