Anonymous person: An excerpt from the NY
Times article:
| "Someday I want to get beyond being that gay football captain," Johnson said, "but for now I need to get out there and show these machismo athletes who run high schools that you don't have to do drama or be a drum major to be gay. It could be someone who looks just like them." At 5 feet 8 inches and 180 pounds, Johnson had to make up for drama-club size with the speed and brutality of his blocking and tackling. |
Well, this kid is doing his part for equality. He proves that gays can be just as pompous and ignorant in stereotypical thinking as straights can.
My take on it was that the point he was trying to get across (somewhat inarticulately, but that's understandable for a kid his age) was that an awful lot of straight people express disbelief when a kid who doesn't match The Stereotypes comes out as gay, and that this denial is not healthy for such kids. The mainstream press has recently started publishing stories about gay teenagers, stories which almost always seem to include something along the lines of "Even when I was a little kid I knew I was different. I always wanted Barbie for Christmas." It's as if Mattell was doing product placements.
Now the big problem here is that if teenagers come to understand "gay" as meaning "wants Barbie for Christmas," then the teenage boy who's feeling attractions to other males, but never wanted Barbie for Christmas and has interests typically associated with boys rather than with girls is going to have a hard time regarding himself as "gay," not because there's anything wrong with being a fem boy, but because his frame of reference for "gay" simply doesn't include himself. This can lead him to conclude that his feelings are Just A Phase (and remember that there are plenty of people who have a vested interest in him believing that) and will go away once he finds the Right Woman.
IOW, non-fem gay boys are particularly vulnerable to the "I've got
these feelings that nobody else has; there must be something wrong
with me" illusion, which is not psychologically healthy.
Therefore, they need role models too.
