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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out
We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70313] Mon, 12 October 2015 07:24 Go to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



As long as we tell people about our sexuality for our reasons, and we are clear on those reasons, then using Youtube or school assemblies is fine. Using the internet to do so may make it harder to get a job or to gain promotion or to keep a job because search engines have long memories and employers use them.

If we do it because it is simply fashionable to do so then I have my doubts about the wisdom of doing so.

The It Gets Better Project has just shared this retrospective on one gentleman's early life. It made me think.



Some, perhaps all, of you are aware that I have come out using Youtube, using a previous and now deleted blog, and using a voice blogging service, iPadio. Come to that I also came out in my old school alumni magazine! I have not had a poor reaction from any of these things. I think that is because I did it for my reasons, and did it with the viewer, listener or reader in mind. I believe that coming out must take the audience along, lead them to understanding that we are normal, a different normal facet of society.

I have been congratulated by heterosexual friends who have told me, out of the blue, that the video made them view homosexuality in a new way, and that they now understand that no child should be in fear of discovery of something inherently normal.

I have been told by a friend who I expected to be homosexual both that he is and that he wonders if the video is a sensible thing. We have discussed it, and I think he is more closeted than I. That does not say that either I or he are worse off for our actions or lack of actions. We are at different points in our lives, despite his being older than I, and despite his having shagged his way around his school, majoring on the senior prefects while he was a pretty little boy! Lucky sod to have been brave enough!!

A High School Assembly may be right or may be wrong. If the speaker had been bullied or saw the school environment as terrifying, why not use a judicious speech to tell them all that he or she is not heterosexual? That speech might be unacceptable to the school authorities, but might change the environment for the better later.

[Updated on: Mon, 12 October 2015 20:15]




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
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70318 is a reply to message #70313] Tue, 13 October 2015 01:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mark

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In relation to the high school graduation I mentioned in the other thread, it would depend on how it was done (the article itself, unfortunately, never specified what the kid's exact wording was going to be).

I could almost understand if he was going to say something along the lines of, "Hey, I helped some of you study so that you could pass the needed classes in order to graduate today with the rest of our class - I won't name any names, but you know who you are.  Well, I just wanted you to know that I'm gay.  So the next time you want to be mean to a gay person, I hope that you'll first remember that you're only sitting here as a graduating student today because a gay person was nice enough to help you out when you needed it the most."

However, if his plan to come out was to say something more along the lines of, "I'm here, I'm queer, I'm fab-u-lous!  Nyah!  NYAH!  NYAH!!!!", then that's totally the wrong way to go about it, and the school administrators were well within their rights to nix it.

So public announcements (or on-line announcements, etc.) aren't always a bad thing, but like anything else in life, there's a right way and a wrong way to go about them if you do take that route, and just because the spirit of the idea is right doesn't automatically make the specific method of expressing it right.
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70319 is a reply to message #70318] Tue, 13 October 2015 02:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ChrisR is currently offline  ChrisR

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Part of the issue with a school graduation or other public forum is that it can turn a speech for an assembled group into a speech that's all about ME ME ME and the hell with your high school memories. If properly written, the speech can actually "celebrate" everybody in the group for his/her differences. The jocks, the bandies, speech club, daredevils, nerds, drama, whomsoever. Even those who merely quietly survived. And perhaps save the gays for last and simply say "and WE know who WE are, don't WE?!" No need to hammer people with it.

Emotional responses are natural, and some folks will definitely be displeased.  So why go on and on with the, shall we say, "flamboyant" persona which is as much a caricature as anything else? Mention it if you feel you must, but let it drop gently among your listeners. The true success or failure of your message won't really show itself until some future reunion. And by then, who really cares?
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70320 is a reply to message #70319] Tue, 13 October 2015 09:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



"ChrisR wrote on Tue, 13 October 2015 03:57"
Part of the issue with a school graduation or other public forum is that it can turn a speech for an assembled group into a speech that's all about ME ME ME and the hell with your high school memories. If properly written, the speech can actually "celebrate" everybody in the group for his/her differences. The jocks, the bandies, speech club, daredevils, nerds, drama, whomsoever. Even those who merely quietly survived. And perhaps save the gays for last and simply say "and WE know who WE are, don't WE?!" No need to hammer people with it.

Emotional responses are natural, and some folks will definitely be displeased.  So why go on and on with the, shall we say, "flamboyant" persona which is as much a caricature as anything else? Mention it if you feel you must, but let it drop gently among your listeners. The true success or failure of your message won't really show itself until some future reunion. And by then, who really cares?

--
The future reunions are amusing. I go to my old school reunions, though not because I feel much in common with the school at all. I go in case I meet again someone I was once in lust with.

I have found that most folk only see what they want to see. I suspect, apart from the instant sensationalism of "We're here, we're queer, get over it!" that would be the same with a high school assembly speech. In real life folk only seem to notice that which is within their own frame of reference. Or, perhaps, they are 'too polite' to mention it.

Those lads I was once in lust with? Met a couple, and it was always a disappointment. After the bloom of their youth faded they seem to have lost their appeal, both as eye candy and as people. That which was once a bright eyed youth has become a dull eyed adult.



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
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70323 is a reply to message #70320] Wed, 14 October 2015 14:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ashdaw is currently offline  Ashdaw

Toe is in the water
Location: Sydney Australia
Registered: October 2014
Messages: 46



I don't know that "coming" out is such an important thing today? there are SO many who are doing this and admitting that they
have been a gay for so long and bla bla bla, that it is almost a shock when someone you suspected was gay comes out and admits
he is a closeted heterosexual? Smile

I don't tell people I am Bi sexual nor do I walk around like I have a pogo stick implanted in my arse or, for that matter, I don't mince
and lisp like so many I see. I am over the talk from guys who say darling and sweetie and basically talk like some 40yr old female.
If guys think it is so important to show and tell (like Jenner) then, so be it but, if you don't want to, that also one's choice, no one
has the right to tell another person who are what they can be and, as long as no one harms another or breaks laws, I don't see a big issue.
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70338 is a reply to message #70320] Thu, 15 October 2015 08:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ian John Copeland is currently offline  Ian John Copeland

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Messages: 33



High School Reunions, loaded with memories and stuff.  I went to one, not at the school which I attended with my one true love but at a later school.  There out of a year of about 100, about 50 former boy and girl pupils attended.  It was 20 years later, most were now firmly embedded in their careersa.

What was most interesting was how success is measured, it was not money, it was those who had achieved their life's ambitions career wise or raised kids.  The other defining 'success' were the two boys who had since come out, one was involved in theatre, the other was an evangelical Christian.  Everyone was happy for them.  Looking back, it was a shame I never fancied either one!

Ian




Visit my Blog: http://thepaintheagony.blogspot.co.uk/
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70347 is a reply to message #70319] Sat, 17 October 2015 05:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mark

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Registered: April 2013
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Quote:
ChrisR wrote on Mon, 12 October 2015 20:57Part of the issue with a school graduation or other public forum is that it can turn a speech for an assembled group into a speech that's all about ME ME ME and the hell with your high school memories. If properly written, the speech can actually "celebrate" everybody in the group for his/her differences. The jocks, the bandies, speech club, daredevils, nerds, drama, whomsoever. Even those who merely quietly survived. And perhaps save the gays for last and simply say "and WE know who WE are, don't WE?!" No need to hammer people with it.

--

I think that's why such things (some high school student trying to come out in a forum like graduation or the school yearbook, only to get shot down by the school admins) tend to get negative backlash - generally, at things like a graduation, the speakers are supposed to be giving talks filled with some final words of wisdom for the entire group about how the graduates are supposed to be going boldly forward into the world (and not getting too specific about any one individual or subgroup within the graduating class).  These particular students, on the other hand, instead try to turn this chance into an "It's all about me!" situation, which was not what they were supposed to be doing; they are supposed to follow the format stated in the previous sentence about giving general words of wisdom to their peers, and announcing personal details like sexual orientation doesn't contribute to that.

(Usually the story makes the news because the student and their parents raise a stink about how the student's "rights" were supposedly violated when they were told that the student couldn't bring up their sexual orientation in that particular forum, and there's often some discussion about the possibility of a lawsuit over the issue.)

There is a time and a place and, yes, even a way to bring up any subject out there - people just need to remember that, and not get butt hurt whenever they're told "No."  (Unfortunately, coming out is very much a big deal for some people, to the extent that they allow that desire to override basic common sense, and instead of creating understanding and acceptance they come across as trying to shove it down people's throats.)
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70348 is a reply to message #70347] Sat, 17 October 2015 08:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
NW is currently offline  NW

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Location: Worcester, England
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That's an interesting point, Mark, and I think there's some truth in it. However, such events are also often about "moving on" to the next phase of life, and I do understand that some young people may feel a need to put down a marker for their future life, by coming out. Perhaps it's that the format of such things is geared towards schools congratulating themselves, rather than what the students need?

I came out in a fairly spectacular way myself, three and a half decades ago. Although I'd been gradually admitting to being "bi" (and in practice was such) in my first couple of years of Uni, I'd been starting to feel that I was more 100% gay. When I stood for election to a student officer sabbatical post, running the large ULU building, I decided that rather than having people asking about it, or problems with conservative groups questioning my fitness, I'd better come out fully. So my election manifesto, distributed to a hundred thousand students in London, included the word "gay" as one word out of the five hundred we were allowed. A decision I have never regretted, and my sabbatical year was one of the best of my life.



"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
Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out  [message #70374 is a reply to message #70348] Tue, 20 October 2015 00:39 Go to previous message
Mark

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Registered: April 2013
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"NW wrote on Sat, 17 October 2015 02:51"
That's an interesting point, Mark, and I think there's some truth in it. However, such events are also often about "moving on" to the next phase of life, and I do understand that some young people may feel a need to put down a marker for their future life, by coming out. Perhaps it's that the format of such things is geared towards schools congratulating themselves, rather than what the students need?

I came out in a fairly spectacular way myself, three and a half decades ago. Although I'd been gradually admitting to being "bi" (and in practice was such) in my first couple of years of Uni, I'd been starting to feel that I was more 100% gay. When I stood for election to a student officer sabbatical post, running the large ULU building, I decided that rather than having people asking about it, or problems with conservative groups questioning my fitness, I'd better come out fully. So my election manifesto, distributed to a hundred thousand students in London, included the word "gay" as one word out of the five hundred we were allowed. A decision I have never regretted, and my sabbatical year was one of the best of my life.

--

Usually, the way I see it, a graduation speech is about everyone moving on as a group.  Even though the high school graduations I've seen have at least one graduating senior speaking, and it's generally the valedictorian and/or class president who is addressing the audience, they still speak in a general sense (more often than not, they speak in the collective terminology, i.e. "Let's go out and change the world!"), and rarely speak of just themselves (they don't usually boast of anything of themselves, i.e. "Some day, I'm going to be a Nobel Peace prize winner/president of the United States/the person who discovers the cure for cancer!").  Granted, this just may only be the case particular type of graduations I've been to, where any students speaking don't generally talk of themselves, even though many would say that they would certainly be entitled to (as valedictorian or class president, etc.) - it's more of a group thing ("We made it through school together, and we're going out in the world together!") rather than citing any individual accomplishments (as mentioned above, when talking about oneself too much in such a speech, it runs the risk of becoming an "It's all about me!" speech when the speech is supposed to be about the entire graduating class).

By comparison, running in an election is where I would rather expect that you would talk at least a little bit about yourself, in order to tell me, the voter, as to why I should believe that you're the most qualified individual for the elected position in question.  Here, it does become more about the individual, and so it doesn't come across in quite the same way when you talk about yourself (in that case, you're supposed to talk about yourself).
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