I acted the best way I knew how to; I just wish I knew more. I wish my empathy muscle in high school was strong enough to fight against the norms to stand and say something, but it wasn’t. While I would never accept myself or people close to me saying the things that I said in high school or keeping quiet while other people said similar things, I’ve had to learn to accept that I did in fact make jokes about homosexuality in high school.
In high school I couldn’t throw a ball (I still can’t). I can’t talk sports, though I’ve learned how to fact it in my adult years. I’m small guy and though I’m more in shape than I’ve ever been in my life, I’m not physically intimidating or impressive. I never will be. The one thing I do got that fits within the narrow stereotype of masculine expression is that I can dish it out. I can insult people and take them apart and come up with great comebacks quickly and succinctly. This is one reason I’m good at teaching middle school students. While I never insult my students intentionally, when I get attitude from my students, I almost always have a response back that can take that comment apart or move the conversations in another direction.
The boys in my high school talked about sex all of the time, and this is one reason why almost all of my close friends were girls, which I’ll get deeper into in a later post. It wasn’t the subject that I disliked, but how they talked about it. There was bragging, jokes about anatomy, demeaning comments about women, that I knew were wrong. Even then I had a feminist streak. Every guy had jokes that were made about them, like some weird community agreement amongst the guys. Some guys received the fat jokes, other ones got made fun of because they walked funny, and one of the categories of insults I got was around my sexuality.
The logic was that because I didn’t fit traditional male gender roles, I was gay. I knew more Broadway shows than professional sports teams, I played the violin, and I was a sci-fi/comic book geek. Therefore, I was made fun of as being gay. The way I handled this was spitting it right back, and because my comebacks were fast and creative, I managed to deflect these horrible words with insults of my own. For the most part this worked. It worked so well that it actually became a game, and one of my friends Sam, was the master at this game.
My senior year I managed to have an open period, (I don’t know how with all of the music classes I took) We would sit in this table in the center of the library and attempt to do homework. It was me, Sam, Kate, and some other people who would join us every so often. We would got into it with the gay jokes, and Sam took it much further than I did, but I laughed along. I used the word “gay” to mean to stupid, to demean others, Sam used the F-word (the Gay insult). I laughed at it, but even then, it felt wrong so I didn’t go there. This doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything wrong because I didn’t speak up against Sam’s use of it and what I know now is hate speech.
I contributed to a hostile environment toward my peers who were LGBTQ+, and even though I didn’t know anyone who was out, I’m sure my actions contributed to that fact. The idea of “Gay-ness” and homosexual was just out there, not in my sense of my community. Even though I made these jokes, I appreciate people who I knew were homosexuals like Elton John, George Michael and Freddie Mercury who were heroes of mine in high school. It was like I was making jokes about an abstraction, an idea that was not real.
Like President Obama, I have evolved. When I got to Northwestern University, I made one gay joke and I was shut down quickly by people in marching band, and I never made another. It didn't take a lot of explanation for me to understand that there was another way surrounded by a more inclusive norms.
I sang and performed with confident and masterful musicians who were out and proud. I came to understand that my freedom to be a different kind of straight man who did not follow gender norms came from these individuals who created a reality that being a man meant more than what I saw in my peers in high school. More important than what people who were LGBTQ+ did for my life, I came to know and understand that they were human beings like me who deserved the rights as I did. In the same way came to be proud of who I was and not take crap from others who questioned my masculinity, I learned that others, most of all from me, should never hear words that make them question or feel bad for the who they are, and/or who they want to be.
I feel shame, regret, and sadness for all of the horrible things I said in high school. If I could travel back in time and talk to my high school self. I would tell myself to breakup with my girlfriend and more importantly stop making gay jokes, and stand up against people who do. If somehow, I got that message in high school, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time degrading my soul for the laughs of others who didn’t care about me and I would have sooner come to understand the person that I would become.
I have more work to do. I can do more to support the LGBTQ+ community and I have an enormous responsibility to help my children understand the LGBTQ+ experience in America with all of its nuance and diversity. I’ve made progress, but there’s more evolution ahead of me.
I’m so sorry to any of my high school peers who I made feel less than for words that I said. I was wrong to make jokes about homosexuality, and I will continue to spend my life making my family, my school, and my community and more diverse and inclusive space for LGBTQ+ people.
This I promise.
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