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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'm engaged in an email correspondence talking about homosexual role models and how important they are to young people. I am finding it hard to find any role models from the period 1965 to 1975. So it struck me that we might, together, have better knowledge than apart. It would be useful to construct a list, not by research, but from memory, of those whom we perceived to be role models, and i was going to suggest that we do it by decade, starting in the 1950s.
Why not by research?
Anyone can find a list of notable queers! What I want is people you recall as being your homosexual role model, not a Wikipedia page!
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 memory doesn't stretch as far back as the 1950s. however, from the 1960s, James Baldwin the novelist was a very powerful role model for me, both as being gay and for his association with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. It was he who opened my eyes to the value of diversity, and the fact that oppression on grounds of sexuality or race are fundamentally wrong. In particular, "Tell me how long the trains been gone" (1968) was pivotal in my own growth.
From the 1970s, the bisexual period of David Bowie affected many of us both gay and straight, and more widely than that showed that being "different" did not mean being "worse than" or "unacceptable". And later in the 70s, of course, Tom Robinson burst forth with "glad to be gay" (1978)
I think these were the public figures that most inspired me. I must say, however, that it was those I met - a gay couple who were my mother's neighbours in the 1970s, and individuals I met at Uni, and on Pride marches and events - who probably had the biggest influences on me.
"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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... Nick chimed in.
Great question; especially amongst the geriatric-set of which I'm now a board-certified card-carrying member.
I've been out all of my life; no question ever was ever asked about just who and what I was; everyone just assumed. Funny enough they weren't wrong either. How fabulous is that, right?
So to answer the question. I'm supposing that amongst the visible Hollywood celebrities of the time by age-8 or -9 (late 50's, early 60's) I would have self-identified with Tab Hunter (Absolutely phenomenal basket on that one. I fantasized no end about his package) or Rock Hudson (I so wanted to be Doris Day I would have slit her throat to take her place), without a doubt in my mind, most definitely Montgomery Cliff (Lordy how I had super shit-hot wet-dreams just thinking about him! His death hit me real hard.), Troy Donahue (that pout of his got me hard every time, Edd Byrnes (I wanted to run my fingers through his hair non-stop) and Annette Funicello (fabulous boobs on that one, and I wanted a pair just like hers, and it didn't hurt that she seemed to always get the guy either). Sort of ironic that I would much later in life learn that the majority of those I've chosen here were in truth themselves gay although we'd have never known it back then.
The late 60's brought Bobby Orr ... everything in my world was Bobby Orr. I wanted him sooooo bad it actually physically hurt. I literally could taste him.
The 70's I can't recall anyone in particular, although I did sorta obsess a bit about John Turner (a Canadian Politician of no real account; but, sexier than anyone had a right to be) for a short while. As I was at the height of my mannequin career, a minor celebrity in my own right, with my being recognized daily traveling public transit and whatnot and throughout the neighbourhood where Jon and I resided, I really can't say I took notice of what was happening with others. I did admire one or two of the designers I came to work with, one of who was gay; but, not to the point of idolizing him or anything. With close of the decade, Jon's untimely death and my emerging career in the public sector, the late 70's and 80's really is still just a whirlwind for me, with no one individual standing out in my memory.
The late 80's and early 90's saw my success in the field of Market Research Consultancy and through my working entirely from home I was able to devote all my left-over energies to raising two traumatized street youth, Alan and Paul, both of whom (and I continue to bless the day they both came into my world) chose to call me their Dad.
Hope this is of some value to you Timmy.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
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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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Your public figures, Warren, what makes them role models instead of fantasy figures?
[Updated on: Sat, 23 March 2013 19:34]
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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The Hollywood types ... err ... well, we know now just how regimented their lives really were; but, back in the day we really didn't have a clue. As a role model Tab Hunter exhibited a straight-forward no-nonsense approach to getting things done. I remember his being involved with the American Red Cross and he was on one of Eisenhower's commissions, disaster relief or something or the other; but it was never reported in a heavy-hitting or over-bearing manner; but, rather just him lending a hand raising funds or the like. He was masculine without being overbearing about it; he was a man's man without fitting the John Wayne or Clark Gable mold. Too, Montgomery Clift; although Clift had a certain je ne sais quoi about him that the others didn't, being almost other worldly and damn was he sexy. I could then picture myself 10-years older than I was doing my impression of Monty. Rock Hudson, was just Rock Hudson. I slobbered over pictures of him in glossies of the day. I envied the hell out of Doris day. Troy Donahue was plain and simple ... lust. No other word for it. That pout and those shorts he always seemed to be wearing with no apparent basket at all. Lordy how I dreamed about what was in those pants. Must have air-brushed the hell out those images because I've heard he was hung like a horse, he was; and speaking of shorts ... Anthony Perkins in Tall Story opposite Jane Fonda. How I had fantasized about his meat; luckily I actually got to experience it in real time when I encountered him and his package, in a Steam Bath here in Toronto where I was one of the shareholders. This would have been early 70's. He was appearing at the Royal Alexandra Théâtre, I believe it was, in the Broadway play Saturday Night At The Baths. Edd Byrnes was connected. He was "cool" personified and, effortlessly it seemed, moved with grace and charm and as if his shit didn't stink like the rest of us. You never saw featured stories where he had a girl draped all over him; that happened only in the publicity stills for the studios; but, he oozed male sex-appeal, and I wanted some of it. Annette Funicello was "The Mickey Mouse Club" and I soooo wanted to be a part of it; until that is my hormones started to kick in; that's when I noticed her boobs, and wanted some of that for the reason stated. She always did get the boy.
Bobby Orr was a different kettle of fish entirely. He was (and to some extent still is) a Renaissance Man; a sportsman, a man-about-town, a ne'er do well; I could tell you stories about him and his hometown and a local Bar called the Chicken Farm that would curl your short hairs. My family (on my mother's side) had a vacation home just down the street from his family. That boy was a god naked, and I loved looking at him thusly; but, to his credit he never seemed to capitalize upon it either. He simply moved through life effortlessly whether in thong or tuxedo, or vêtements in between.
John Turner, well he was lust, and nothing more. Enough said about that. A side-bar, Bobby Richardson, Pierre Elliot Trudeau's RCMP Body Guard until his death (appears directly over Trudeau's right shoulder in just about every crowd photo ever taken of him, and my first cousin on my father's side); relative or not, I'd have done him in a New York minute if he'd have let me. He and his youngest sister Cêcile (a then Canadian LPGA contender) were idols of mine. They had it all ... fame, position, status, glory and I wanted to be just like them.
In many ways, because of my family's position in the overall scheme of things (our town home was in the Town of Mount Royal, in the heart of Montrêal, located doors away from Trudeau's and a block or two from Paul Martin's) I didn't want for much growing up and my place at the table was assured, be it The Montrêal Squash and Racket or St. Lawrence Yacht Club or The Arts and Letters Society or whatever; as a consequence it's with great difficulty that I separate idolatry from fantasy.
Truth be told, likely my greatest role model was my elder brother Brian, who tirelessly (or so it seemed) would tailor his day around my needs as a pre-pubescent youngster, never, ever, complaining and always willing to teach me how things were done. Memories of his stoicism under duress is what taught me how to cope with my own adversity most recently in coping with the aftermath of my open-heart surgery. I have no memories of the brother, who in adult life, would threaten to kill me; and with whom my only contact was a 1-800 Number for nearly 20-years until his recent death. I refuse to remember him that way. It never happened is all.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Sat, 23 March 2013 21:48] |
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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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Either I am missing something, or you are. For me a homosexual role model is a man who is homosexual, avowedly so, or at least apparently so, and whose example I choose or wish to follow because his life is a life I feel shows me something I wish to emulate.
You say of the Hollywood types "We didn't have a clue" and that, to me, makes them to be outside the set of potential role models in every way.
I drooled over Björn Andrésen but he was absolutely not a role model. He was a masturbation fantasy.
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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Pehaps it is I who am missing something.
Of the Hollywood types I mentioned only Edd Byres, Annette Funicello and Doris Day have in retrospect not turned out in reality to have been Gay, and seriously I have my doubts about Doris Day. So my very young Gaydar must have been particularly well tuned.
Whether they were, or were not, Gay didn't (and doesn't to this day) matter to me, and all lust aside, each of these men when divorced from the media handlers we now know they each had was an individual whose life appeared to be worth emulating. That in part is why I admired them so; but, may also account for why I lust after many of them as well.
You live in the United Kingdom, so I'll forgive you Bobby Orr; but, trust me very early in his career he lived for a number of years under a constant cloud of homosexual innuendo and flirtation; and he deserved every bit of that attention. Every square inch of his body was perfection. Every blessed inch; and whether the young boys who idolized him ever knew or accepted that their adulation was akin to homosexual infatuation, or not, we'll never know because as sure as God made shooting sherry that particular topic was never going to be discussed in sport circles.
My cousin Bobby was chosen for his role in life simply because he was who and what he was. I'll say no more; although I certainly lusted for him; but then again, I admired him and would have given my left nut to have been able to be the man I knew he was, and was destined to become.
There were any number of Gay literary figures from the 50's that during the 60's I could say I knew who they were; but, frankly I couldn't have waded my way through much of what they had written, let alone enjoyed it. Kerouac and Ginsberg held no attraction for me. It would another 30-years before I would even remotely take an interest in theirs and their contemporaries lives. The same would have held true for artistic or literary talent during the 60's and 70's with perhaps one exception, the Front Runner authoress Patrica Nell Warren, who I might add is still going strong today with several sequels to that wonderful first novel and a passel of others to her credit.
My problem I guess is that I lived too insular an existence; one where I was never uncertain about who, or what, I was; and therefore, not at all likely to look to outside (of my family) sources for affirmation and reassurance.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
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