Choice around sexuality is a hot topic at the moment. Cynthia
Nixon had her words blown all out of proportion by the gay media
and she had to clarify that in fact, she is bisexual and has chosen
to follow her feelings for her female partner. Kids often ask us
'when did you turn gay?' or 'why did you choose to be a lesbian?'.
We do not answer this question, or any question for that matter, on
behalf of the entire LGBT community. We answer it individually and
we don't always agree. It's ok, and in fact, useful, for young
people to see that people who have a particular characteristic
aren't always going to agree upon why, nor do they look the same,
do the same jobs, have the same hobbies or the same cultural
background.
The whole point of us speaking to young people with honesty is
to allow them to see us as human, not as predictable clones who
follow a well-worn script. There are as wide a range of LGBT people
as there are heterosexual people and that is what we want the next
generation to understand. Judging people by their sexual
orientation or gender identity is limiting and creates unnecessary
barriers between people who might otherwise relate to each other on
a positive level. We put a human face to an oft-misunderstood and
demonised concept: yesterday a student announced in class 'well,
they kill gay people in Africa and so they should; it's disgusting
and unnatural'. This is the level of intolerance we work with at
times and it is more important than anything to help these students
understand that it is NEVER alright to bully somebody or hurt them
on the basis of their sexual orientation, any more than it was
acceptable for Stephen Lawrence's killers to take his life because
they were offended by his skin colour.
We've been up and running officially for five months now so
we've had a good chance to see how young people respond to our role
models. In the last 9 sessions we've seen 244 students. Prior to
our workshops, 127 of these said they would stop being friends with
an LGBT person. After hearing from our role models, only 15 held
onto this viewpoint. We ask this question as it is a realistic
gauge of how 13 year olds view life and it's also suggestive of the
slippery slope to loneliness and depression that many LGBT young
people disappear down. Why do they change their minds? In every
workshop, without fail, students have unashamedly acknowledged that
they think a gay friend would hit on them. When we tell them that
we as 'proper gays' (as one 12 year old called us) don't view our
same sex friends any differently to our opposite sex friends, they
start to get it. We don't fancy everybody! And they look a little
embarrassed when we remind them that a gentle 'no thanks' usually
does the trick if somebody, regardless of gender, asks them
out.
The recurrent themes of the evaluations we receive are 'you
can't tell someone's sexuality just by looking at them', 'treat
gays like 'normal' people' (!) and 'the word gay can be hurtful'.
It's not all plain sailing; a response to the question 'what did
you enjoy least about the workshop?' was a defiantly printed
'having to be near gay people'. It wouldn't be realistic to get
through to every student straight away; some of these kids come
from violently homophobic homes. But we are encouraging the
majority to think critically and helping them to understand. And
although we won't know this for some time, we will have spoken to
students who end up being LGB or T and we have demonstrated very
clearly to them that there is every opportunity for a happy and
successful life surrounded by friends and loved ones. This in
itself is 100% worth it.