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We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out [message #70313]

Mon, 12 October 2015 07:24

timmy

Has no life at all

Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13778

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

		We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: timmy on Mon, 12 October 2015 07:24
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: Mark on Tue, 13 October 2015 01:51
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: ChrisR on Tue, 13 October 2015 02:57
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: timmy on Tue, 13 October 2015 09:22
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: Ashdaw on Wed, 14 October 2015 14:03
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: Ian John Copeland on Thu, 15 October 2015 08:07
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: Mark on Sat, 17 October 2015 05:31
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: NW on Sat, 17 October 2015 08:51
		Re: We old farts may not always/often be right on Coming Out By: Mark on Tue, 20 October 2015 00:39

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