Reflecting on childhood experiences is not easy, but sometimes it makes us stronger.
Homosexuality and ‘Poofters’ in the Sunshine State
Even at quite a young age, I knew I was attracted to men. I realise this is not the case for every gay man, that’s just how it was for me. It felt quite natural to be interested in men’s bodies but I knew it was something I could not talk about. I thought it would not be considered acceptable to those around me – my family, friends, teachers, neighbours – in fact an unacceptable thing to mention generally to anyone. And I was right. My childhood and adolescence was spent in Brisbane, the third largest Australian city, in the 1970s and 80s. For these 2 decades, homosexual sex was not only a taboo topic, but outright illegal. No one was talking about it, few were prepared to listen and men expressing love and desire towards each other risked 14 years imprisonment.
Not only was homosexual sex a criminal offence throughout the state of Queensland up until 1990, there were also no mainstream representations of what we might now call gay identity. Those in my extended family, the other kids at my school and characters in the tv shows we watched, referred to ‘poofs’ and ‘poofters’. As a young boy I heard these expressions almost daily. They were insults shouted at those who had cut in front in traffic, taken too long in a conversation at the bottle shop or dropped a pass in the State of Origin rugby. They were also terms of contempt for men who did not dress according to gender norms or wore an earing. They were used to describe both Frank Spencer, the central character of one British comedy series ‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em (a heterosexually oriented man with mannerisms considered feminine) and Mr Humphries, a character in another called ‘Are you Being Served?’ (a homosexual man whose sexual orientation is conveyed through innuendo and never explicitly confirmed). There were also the many ‘poofters’ who reputedly hung out in toilet blocks or isolated beaches. My teachers, parents and the Courier-Mail continually warned me that these men ‘preyed on young boys’. So homosexuality and child sexual abuse were conflated as a singular reviled form of evil.
Coming Out of a Sexuality of Shame and Loneliness
As a young man, I didn’t identify with either Frank Spencer or Mr Humphries and tried to avoid public toilets whenever possible. I had read the explicit and enlightened advice about sexuality in my sister’s Cleo magazines (thank you Ita Buttrose!) and knew there was nothing physically wrong with me because I was attracted to men’s bodies. But at the same time I had no way of describing my sexuality or who I was. Somehow I knew I was not the only boy who felt the way I did but I didn’t imagine having much else in common with those other boys or men. It felt quite lonely and shameful.
All this started to change when I was 18-19 and began university. There I met other students and academics who referred to themselves as ‘gay’… and ‘bi’ and ‘queer’ and ‘pansexual’ and the list goes on. Previously I’d had no words to explain who I was and no way to connect with others similar to me. The change in my sense of self was sudden and wonderful. Some might describe this as my Coming-Out but I would say that is ongoing. Being ‘gay’ was different to being a ‘poofter’. It gave me access to a new language of identity, an identity potentially free of shame.
I know that this is just my story and other men have different experiences of their sexuality and identity in youth. Do you have a story you would like to share about growing up gay? Contact me
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