Absolutely no idea. I’m 34.
I think I was 7-8 when I heard my stepfather and his brothers planning to go to the bus station and beat up some queers. I was told they were filthy, disgusting, child rapists that deserved to die as they were godless, diseased, and dangerous.
Yeah, I eventually grew out of that “education” but I was in college before I heard anyone say anything in a good way about them.
Growing up in East Tennessee in the 60’s was hard.
There’s actually a story my family is fond of retelling that relates to this. When I was very little (around five years old) we were with a family friend of ours who’s gay. We had just taken a trip to Toys R Us, where the friend had been very enthusiastic about checking out the Barbie House (or whatever Barbie exhibit was there - I honestly remember almost nothing about the trip). Anyway, at one point I turned to him and said, “I’m very confused about something.” He asked me what. I said, “Well, you look like a man. And you sound like a man. But you act just like a little girl!”
Of course, everyone burst out in hysterics and I had no idea why. At that age, I was pretty much as aware of gay people as I was of heterosexual people - I vaguely knew it was a thing, but I never thought about it that much. I think the major confusion came later in school, when I discovered homophobia.
I can’t pin down when the playground terms acquired meaning; we were certainly tossing around “fag” and “queer” in elementary school. I’d guess around 6th-7th grade before there was an understanding of what it really meant. This would be around 1970.
Part of that came from some episodes of show-me-yours around maybe 9 or 10. There was a kid that age in the neighborhood who knew - and told us - WAY too many details about what boys could do together. Some of it made no sense until years later, but his clinical details proved to be quite accurate in retrospect. He was also the neighborhood bed wetter and his father was a strange, rigid and creepy person. It all added up when I was about 15 or so.
The earliest time I can remember homosexuality coming up was when I was about 5 or 6, and saw an episode of The Golden Girls in which a friend of Dorothy’s who was a lesbian came to visit. I asked my mom what that meant and she said something along the lines of “It’s a girl who likes girls instead of boys.” The episode itself went on to make this pretty clear, as the friend developed a bit of a crush on Rose.
The Golden Girls actually dealt with gay issues on several occasions. This was done in a lighthearted manner and some of the jokes haven’t aged well, but gay characters were depicted sympathetically if rather stereotypically. Blanche had a brother who was gay and appeared in a few episodes; he even had a commitment ceremony which prompted a pro-gay marriage speech from Sophia! All this seems kind of surprising to me now considering that this was a mainstream network sitcom in the 1980s. Plenty of families with young kids watched the show, but I don’t remember ever hearing any controversy about how the show was corrupting us with its gay agenda or anything like that.
From the time I was 9 or 10, we always a gay couple over for Thanksgiving. (Around 1964) My dad worked in publishing in NYC, and, as industries go, it was a pretty progressive one. Not too much discussion about it as I remember.
I found out about it when I was 5 or so and my parents tried to explain the subtle intricacies of Three’s Company, and why Jack was lying to Mr. Roper.
I was 12 or 13 before I actually believed really existed though. I thought was made up for the show.
When I was in grade school my mom used to talk about someone being “queer as a three-dollar bill” or “a little light in his loafers,” but I don’t think I quite realized what that implied (this was in the '70s). I was pretty clueless about the whole concept of sex as a child, though (until I got hold, with permission, of my dad’s books “The Rape of the A.P.E.” by Allan Sherman, and “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask”) around the same time. Even then, though, I don’t think I got anywhere near all the implications.
I do remember one kid using the word “Fag” in grade school. I pictured it in my mind as “Phag” (I do that–I see words spelled in my mind when I hear them) and had no idea what he was talking about.
I wonder if the answer to this question is different based on whether the respondent is gay or not.
I knew I was “something wrong” in 2nd grade. I knew I was very interested in boys and not in the usual way, and that it was strongly frowned on by society and by other kids (this was in 1956 or so).
On the other hand, there were things around me that I didn’t get in the context of the time. I remember PSAs on TV warning boys not to hang around public restrooms, which I completely didn’t get. I remember my father one time calling a woman across the street what I thought was a “Lizzie” which I didn’t understand at all because that wasn’t her name. I certainly never had any idea what two men might do together until I was an adult. And I didn’t know there were others like me until at least high school, by which time I think the word “gay” was starting to be in use to mean homosexual, and there was public comment about gays among the hippies, and “free sex” including sex between men.
So it was a gradual realization, but apparently by the time I was 7 I knew something about what it was and what it meant. I am pretty certain I never discussed anything about this with my parents.
Roddy
I had my first fantasy at the age of 5. And in all the years since, I can’t figure out how it got into my head. It was undoubtedly homosexual and somewhat sadistic, and involved a scenario that fits very well into my adult interests. It even involved a kid who, as an adult, would be very much my “type.”
So I obviously was one that far back, but didn’t know the word “homosexual” until I was around 13.
And I didn’t know that meaning of the word “gay” until I was in college (mind you, this was 1963).
Me neither. I was in upper elementary school, I guess. This was in the early 1970s.
A couple years before that, some kids on the playground were telling everyone that these two girls were lesbians, but nobody seemed to know what that word meant except that you had to have two girls to be that way, KWIM?
:eek: :mad:
So, how did your stepfather, etc. know who the “queers” were?
In her wonderful book “The Child Who Never Grew”, inspired by her mentally retarded daughter, Pearl S. Buck discusses people who were higher functioning (and, we know now, probably autistic) who would say things like “I know I will never get married because I’m queer.” But that word did not mean the same thing in the 1950s, when the book was written, as it does now.
Which reminds me: A while back, I read a commentary from a man who believed that people chose to be gay or straight until he became a Special Olympics volunteer. The man with Down Syndrome who functioned at the level of a preschooler, and spent all his time ogling other men while his friends checked out women, convinced him that people are indeed born that way.
Born in 1986, I started fooling around with another male friend by the time I was in 4th or 5th grade. Had no idea what we were doing, honestly, just that he told me it was “sex” and I had no idea what that meant until sex ed. Of course we weren’t having actual anal sex (and never did), but lots of oral and touching.
I was bisexual at first, finding myself equally attracted to lesbian porn as I was to gay porn. I had access to the internet growing up so I knew all about it easily by the time I was 13 or 14. Bisexual feelings faded with time and I found myself more and more attracted to men.
So I knew about it by elementary school for sure, since I was taking part in it. And I knew growing up that it was a Very Bad Thing because Gays Burn In Hell, as my dad and our church we went to told us regularly.
quim?
10 years old. Billy Crystal’s character on Soap.
12 years old, which would have been 1973. Funny thing was, people at school had been calling me gay for years and I had had no idea what it meant, and when I found out, I just thought “boy, are those guys dumb…”
About 5.
A lesbian couple lived next door and I asked one of them where her husband was and she laughed and told my mom. My mom was embarrassed and explained the “basics” of being gay.
I must have been in junior high before I became aware of homosexuality.
Heck, it wasn’t until seventh grade sex ed that I learned how a man got a woman pregnant. That description of sexual intercourse in our book made some scenes in some novels I’d already read a LOT clearer. And then I thought, ewww, that means mom and dad…
Perhaps I was thirteen, close to fourteen. I was babysitting and there was a copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex at the house where I was babysitting. However accurate or inaccurate some of the book was, I couldn’t put it down, and I think there were chapters on homosexuality in the book.
I don’t recall. It seems I’d always known, but obviously that’s not true. I’m thinking maybe 10 years old; that sounds about right.
I do know that my dad told me from a very young age that some people are born that way, and it’s not a choice, and from that point forward I completely accepted homosexuality. I did not participate in the same gay-bashing language as my contemporaries.
Thanks dad.