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Underage and Gay


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This is a challenging and informative programme about underaged gay boys and girls in the UK and how they are challenging the way they are perceived in society. If you can get access to it it is well worth watching. You can find it at:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/underage-and-gay

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Thanks, Nigel... it was very informative and I stuck through to the end despite the very heavy advertising content.

I can't believe the police weren't able to track those threatening Beckam. The program also addressed transgendered issues the silent T in LGBT.

Thanks again for the heads up about this program.

Mike

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A really worthwhile 45 mins.

It was particularly interesting because its a stage of life that I never went through (and not just because of the six hours of homework). Sixty years ago we just did what we did... it was fun and it was naughty... but it wasn't gay.

I can clearly remember at 15 a few of us found time for girlfriends, open sex between us disappeared... and we found out about homosexuality! That was a shock, to discover that it was something you could be lumbered with for life... that is was illegal, not just naughty but something men got locked up for.

So like I say, we never went through "coming out", we went from naughty boys to the closet all in one summer.

Thanks for this, it was an interesting view of how it could have been... but wasn't

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57 years ago for me, here in Australia, most boys who attended an all boys high school (most common) were indeed most common, with each other. The experiences affected us differently. I was amazed at the way the teachers ignored the natural investigations of the boys into each others' progress in puberty. In one summer it seemed that many boys were busy discovering what each other had between their legs, followed by a winter where sexual appetites hibernated waiting for a spring that would burst into new explorations.

There can be no doubt about the guilt and shame that religion forced upon the boys who were silently, and confusedly confronted by their lustful desires. Some hid in closets, some were unaware of their desires and others explored every opportunity to discover a fluid exchange of their puberty. There were absolutely no academic explanations or discussions about what we were experiencing. The closest we could get was a short lesson on how flowers were pollinated. I wouldn't be surprised if some of us had expected to find that our penises would turn into a stamen and attract bees.

Despite the Victorian prudery covering up anything relating to sex, some information did slowly seep from those kids whose parents actually knew about intercourse. Girls were approached, and it is no exaggeration to report that many a newly wed would look at their spouse and ask, "You want to put what, where?" You see it wasn't just gay people who were in the closet. Many straight people, parents included, had a closet of their own and they hid in them to protect themselves and their children from talking about the flowers and the bees. (The birds had taken flight, or more likely, fright.) The restrictions on actually talking about sex robbed at least three generations of the joy of sex, of love-making, and talking about it, regardless of sexuality.

Censorship of books and movies added to this aspect of denying our cultures healthy sexual relationships. It would take until the middle of the sixties for several stage productions to challenge these restrictions on sexual discussion. The most shocking, the most eye-opening, and the most liberating at that time, was the song Sodomy, from the musical HAIR. Tied to the liberation for women was The Pill. At last women were free to enjoy sex without unwanted children.

HAIR also challenged many of the taboos about organised religion and sex. Even the closet doors were unlocked. Legal homosexual relationships were an after-thought, but nevertheless, a welcome and needed one.

However, it should not surprise any of us, who lived through those years, or the effect of those times, that there are still many who feel the oppression to submit to those old taboos. The Internet awaits with an abundance of information, some good, some not. Here is a version of HAIR's Sodomy song with its sacrilegious introduction. I apologise for the quality of the video, but it's the only one I can find with the aforementioned sacrilegious intro; an intro that was missing from the movie.

For those of you who have not read it, here is a link to my short story Definitions, in which the trip to the library is taken from my own experience at the age of 14, of accepting my homosexuality.

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Thanks Cole, I thought it was relevant to the discussion, especially for those who hadn't read it before, but I am very pleased you found it worth rereading.

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Many thanks for the link to Definitions... Isn't that the nice thing about Awesomedude, we spend so much time saying thank-you?... anyway, thank you. That was indeed how it was sixty years ago. There were no gay men in our village of about a thousand. There were no gay boys in our school of about a thousand boys. Not, that is until I was fifteen and someone discovered that homosexuality existed. Then those that had been sharing fun in the bogs and under the desk... oh yes, and on the cross country course in summer, God bless the person who thought of running on the moors and in the woods in the lightest of clothing. Where was I? ah yes, we had discovered that what we did was illegal, then we discovered about chemical castration... and we were scared. Personally I was certain that I would grow out of it when I was sixteen. Curiously there was no homophobia... and I'm told by an even older old-boy that that was also true of the school ten years earlier. But, there you are, the illogic of it was we were scared that we might really be homo while in a school that exhibited not the slightest homophobia in a mining valley where homosexuality didn't exist because there were no homosexuals. But, times were changing, TV was arriving in our homes and one of the largest personalities would be Danny LaRue a female impersonator. Yes times were changing and Definitions brought it back to me, thanks Des.

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Let me add to the pleasantries and thank you, Jeff, for your feedback, which is much appreciated.

I think there is a whole discussion to be had and examined on human sexuality being fluid and how our cultures have sought to limit the natural human desire to pleasure each other.

The lack of homophobia you mention is a strong indication that we have a lot to learn about our natural expressions of affection which our cultures have condemned if not crucified.

Thanks Jeff.

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