A Whole New Perspective On Things
I had a bit of a strange realisation recently. Regular readers (ha!) will know that I have strong opinions about certain things, the main one being homosexuality. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why and I’ve not exactly been quiet about my sexuality. But then again, I also don’t tend to write ‘diary entry’ blogs because I don’t think they’re that interesting; though I do hope this one is slightly different.
I was always sceptical whenever I read in magazines or internet forums or whatever that somebody knew that they were gay at the age of seven or eight. I never understood how that could be possible: from my own personal experience, I knew about homosexuality, but I had no inkling as to who was what, why or when and the like.
It wasn’t really that important. More important was coming up with excuses for why City had been beaten by Oxford United, or writing interesting stories, or running around the playground play tag. I just didn’t think it was possible for people to have known and understood their sexuality and feelings at such a young age.
To confirm this further, the conscious thought that I might not be straight occurred to me at about age 13 or 14. It took me a while, but by the time I was leaving high school, I was confident of my sexuality and had accepted it. And, off the back of this, I have always rubbished the thought that it was possible to know much earlier than that.
But then, recently, I was reintroduced to a television series I was shown as a child. Whilst in primary school, I, like many other kids, was in a class that would, once a week, sit down and watch a BBC series called Look And Read. The premise behind the show was that it would teach kids Maths and English through story telling: the story would continue until a well placed segment about superlatives or about the past tense or about multiplying by three arrived.
The first story that we watched as a class was called Earth Warp, of which I remember very little. All I could pluck from my mind was that it was about an alien who was living with some kids in their bedroom (I think). But then came along Spywatch, a tale of evacuated children during the war. Again, my memory of the story was sketchy at best, but I did remember liking it more than its predecessor. I don’t particularly remember what happened other than there being a spy in the countryside, a not-very-nice adult, a crashed plane and a bomb.
But then recently I was sent the following two videos – parts one and two of the first episode of Spywatch. It’s probably best you have a quick look than me try and summarise what exactly happened in them (incidentally, you might want to look out for a very young Russell Tovey, who has recently made a name for himself in shows like Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive and Being Human – you should spot him)
Watching those videos took me back to that classroom of my primary school where I saw the show for the first time. And it was then that something occurred to me, as the main protagonist took to the screen for the first time. I remember being a seven or eight year old child, looking upon the actor and finding him attractive – although I didn’t know what that was at the time. I remember being in front of that television in the mid 1990s and thinking that there was something very appealing about him.
At that time, I didn’t know I was gay. I didn’t even know that what my thoughts were towards that guy on the screen. I didn’t understand the concept of being attracted to some people and not others in any more than a friendship way, but, looking back on that with my 23-year-old brain now, it makes perfect sense. I understand the feelings that I didn’t understand back then.
So, while maybe the first conscious realisation of my sexuality came in my early teens, it would seem entirely plausible that the innate knowledge had always been there subconsciously. And suddenly the idea that people would know their sexuality at such a young age doesn’t seem quite as ridiculous as I had thought – perhaps that was naivety on my part, more than anything else.
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This is interesting because it suggests that an orientation which might become sexual at a later age is present but interpreted differently when younger. It also raises some philosophical issues about retrospective interpretation. I have spoken to many people who have said that they realised they were gay from about the age of eight or nine, but then again is it possible that people who don’t consider themselves gay had similar feelings when young but interpret them differently now?
Entirely possible, I guess. I was speaking to a friend of mine who understood exactly what I meant when I explained all of the above to him and he reckoned he experienced something similar. He’s straight and puts what he experienced down to that ‘aspiration’ of wanting to be like somebody on the TV. To him it’s the same thing as the way advertisers now sell products by making the viewer want to be like the person in the ad.