Lesbian banned from gym class.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Actually, my youngest sister went to school with a kid who started to act flamboyantly gay in the fifth grade. He wore lipstick and would constantly comment on how attractive the other boys in class were, etc. I wouldn’t say it’s common, but it does happen, just as some heterosexual kids begin to act overtly sexual at a young age. It’s often (as it was in this boy’s case) related to childhood abuse.

That said, you’re absolutely right that 99% of gay kids aren’t going to act like that, and this girl probably has a terrific case against the school district.

As for the gay male perspective on the locker room situation: I had a gay male friend in high school who informed me about what all the guys in our class looked like naked. He’d checked them all out surreptitiously in the locker room. But he wasn’t standing there ogling them. I think he was curious but definitely not turned on, even by the guys he was interested in, as locker rooms are inherently unsexy environments. And yes, most people knew he was gay.

42

I haven’t seen any reference to the girl being sexually active.
I’m sure you knew what gender you were attracted to at 12-13.
Just because you know who you want to fuck doesn’t mean you have done it.

43

I agree with the-get undressed without actually getting NAKED routine, and I’m a straight chick. It was pull your suit on UNDER your shirt, wrapped in a towel, then hurriedly back into a corner, and if you looked up at someone, you immediately looked down. DON’T LOOK AT ME!!! I’m so UGLY!!!

We were lucky-we didnt’ have to shower or anything. We only did so after swimming to wash our hair-still in our bathing suits. And to warm up-that pool sucked!

We were more worried about our stuff getting stolen than we were people being gay. Although there was a rumor (false) going around that my best friend was gay. I have no idea why.

44

andygirl,

Thanks for the info. I had to go by my friends and they mostly came out around 17-20.

If the report at 365gay.com is correct then the school admins need a swift kick in the butt as they are thrown out of their jobs.

At the same time I’d still like to hear what the school has to say but I doubt that is going to happen until this hits court. I hate stories where you only get one sides view.

Slee

45

1.) I’d say the majority of girls who went to camp know how to undress without getting nekkid. I was able to put on and remove my bra with my shirt on, and change into a bathing suit without taking off my underwear first.

2.) Men are, on average, more apt to be visually sexually stimulated then women are. At least, that’s how my media psychology text explained why men are more apt to watch and get stimulated by porn. THEREFORE, the comparison of a gay woman and a straight man being the same in a women’s locker room is not valid. The difference is that the man is more likely to get turned on by nekkid ladies then a woman is. Nevermind that we’re not dealing with MEN and WOMEN in this case, but oldish children.

3.) This would never happen with a gay man. The kid wouldn’t get complained about, he’d simply get the crap kicked out of him until he learned to change in the bathroom on the 3rd floor. It’s such a middle-school girl way of torturing another girl. As Elaine on Sienfeld described how girls torture each other: “We just teased her until she developed an eating disorder.” The real crime here is that the school went along with it.

I hope Ashly gets enough to go to college on. And when she wants to get civil unionized, she’s welcome in MY state. :smiley:

46

I just looked at the school’s website. Not only does their search engine NOT work at all, but they have barbed wire as the graphic on the frames. I assume this means they’re a ranch/farming community. Which would lead me to believe it’s not the most progressive-thinking town. I’m gaining more respect for the Massey family, and the bravery it took them to sue the school by the second.

47

According to the gay.com article one of the girl’s “friends” shouted that she was a lesbian in the lockerroom. The next day she was sent to the principal’s office when she showed up for gym.

48

shriek I’m an auxiliary Gay Guy!! Yay! fans self

Anyway. Have to echo andygirl’s comments. I came out to myself immediately prior to the last semester of high school. When I changed for gym class, scoping out the other guys was the last thing on my mind, believe you me.

It went something on the order of i don’t want to take off my clothes i don’t want to take my clothes o god help me don’t let anyone look at me or comment about me o god i don’t want to take off my towel to shower ok i’ll just run QUICKLY through the shower okay here goes GO! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHokay towel ON, retreat to bathroom, breathe, breathe, breathe, clothes BACK ON QUICKLY NOBODY LOOK AT ME PLEASE GOD okay clothes are ON - RUN!

I didn’t have time to leer at anyone, without even taking into the effect that if my eyes ever would have gone anywhere except directly in front of me, I would have been beaten into a bloody smear on the floor. It is just not happening.

Does that clear it up?

49

I was more concerned about our dirty old man gym teacher, Mr. Phelan, walking into the locker room than I was about any possible lesbian classmates.

shudders at the memory

God, that guy was creepy. He used to wear white swimming trunks. WHITE. Imagine what happened when they got wet.

Okay, I need to go scrub my eyeballs with clorox now.

50

Impressive! No one in my class was brave enough to actually shower. That would require true nakedness! AAK! No, we were second last period of the day, so as far as I know everyone just went to class disshevelled and stinky for the final period of the day.

But good to know that we’re all prety much on the same page:

Hear ye! Hear ye!

High school officials, please take note: The gay folks are – and have always been – entirely too busy wishing we were invisible to be leering at you! The lesbian may now return to class.

BTW, when’s the next PoutineDope?

51

To all the gay folk who have responded to my questions on this thread, thank you for your input.

Somehow I never discussed this kind of issue with my best friend (Colette, a lesbian who I knew was gay from about the 9th grade on. Colette didn’t really come out until she was 18 or 19. In fact when Colette told her parents she asked me to be there because her Mom thought we were dating. Her Dad took it well, I think he knew, but Colettes Mom took a couple of years to actually realize that Colette was gay. Her Mom kept on thinking that it was just a phase. At the same time Colette had a great family, Mom included) or my other gay friends. My experence in this area is solely through my friends and I guess I was so used their lifestyles that I didn’t think about the problems that they encountered. We just never went there.

At the same time I really want to know the schools side of the story. The reason that I want to know is that the 365gay.com article claims that one girl called Ashly a lesbian in the locker room and the next day she was banned from P.E. This smells wrong to me. It just doesn’t seem to make sense.

Hell, I don’t know. If the story is true it is a sad commentary on our society. If there is more to it I want to know so I can make a valid judgement.

Slee

52

(Personally, I have to say, I would have liked to sit out P.E., but I feel it’s in bad taste to do so now.)

53

Man. Those a$$holes have absolutely no idea.

I’m not a lesbian, but you would think adults, especially school admin adults, who are often seen as mature and intellectual people who understand and love children, would not discriminate. Period.

I am so pissed.

I totally agree with all you other Dopers who posted about young lesbians just trying to stay alive in school. If I were Ashly, I would be scared to even go to P.E. once I knew I was gay. Can you imagine how scary that must have been for her?

At my school, if a girl ever came out of the closet she would suffer the junior-high equivalent of getting strung up and shot.

There was one girl (I’ll call her C) about two years ago, who had a very good relationship with another girl (I’ll call her J). When J’s parents found out J was a lesbian, they rousted out everyone they knew, told them everything in tones of whispered secrets and contemptuous disgust, and then proceeded to throw J out of the house. Of course, this made it back to C. C’s parents were very school-involved (PTA, coaching, cheerleading, the works) and C being a lesbian was pure sin to them.

Three weeks later, C committed suicide.

No one ever actually came out and talked about it. It was a huge, shameful secret. People still deny ever hearing or believing any of it, even though I know they did and still do.

The whole thing happened the year I moved to that school. I had just come from a big city school, where the high school had Gay and Lesbian clubs, and homosexual people were accepted as friends and family. No one at my old school ever had a problem with gays. So when I heard about the whole thing I was ready to just go out there and kill some people.

God, I was pissed. What a waste. C was a beautiful, intelligent person. Sixteen, I think she was. Now she’s dead. I don’t know what happened to J. She just disappeared out of the picture. Still makes me want to cry. The worst part is that everyone acted like it never happened and C and J never existed. :frowning:

54

I came out at 12. I was not sexually active at that age. The locker room after Phys Ed was absolutely horrifying. I would have given anything to be able to change in a separate cubicle. Believe me, I had no interest in looking at the other girls–looking at anything but the floor would have been perceived as a problem by the other girls, and I would have had no end of torment.

I told other people that I was lesbian because it was something important about me that I thought other people would want to know. I certainly listened to enough religious “coming out” and existential angst from them. I was in fact removed from classes from time to time (unfortunately, not Phys Ed) and caused by the guidance counselor to talk about “what you can do so the other girls will like you.” This involved hearing from some of the other girls about how I was “weird” or had a “weird sense of humor,” and I was supposed to thank them for these insights.

I was verbally assaulted, pushed, tripped, punched, and threatened with sexual assault a number of times in middle school. I never reported any of this because it would have meant coming out to my parents, which I wasn’t ready to do. I don’t think my actions warranted any of these responses.

55

I think an important point is also being overlooked here. As adolescents, especially when hormones begin to do odd and frightening things to us, we need to learn to behave in public no matter how we feel.

Example, the smell of dirty gym socks really gets you going, towel snapping = ideal foreplay, and you just can’t get enough of the locker room- What do you do? Nothing, we all need to learn to control how we act in public, and behaving ourselves around nekked folks is absolutely necessary to prevent making asses of ourselves.

Choosing to show your sexual attraction for someone is very situationally dicey thing to do. So, whether you like boys, girls, or garden vegetables, gym class is a torturous experience, but useful in learning stuff you will need to know.

56

The whole thing sucks, of course, especially when it looks like the teens themselves were handling it well but the adults were being idiots. My friend P. (who plays soccer) mentioned that there was an openly bisexual girl on the team who made other girls umcomfortable because they had to shower together, but the administration wasn’t notified. And this is in the deep south!

On an unrelated note, I am thankfully, thankfully done with P.E. now, but when I was taking it, most girls were not too concerned about changing. I wasn’t, anyway. We carried on conversations, even gasp while we were changing! I never learned this special method of changing without revealing skin because it didn’t seem like a big deal. Everybody was changing, and it only takes a few seconds to take off one shirt and put on another. If it was a big deal to you, there were bathrooms and a few changing stalls in the back.

57

You think she’s got problems? I just opened up the CNN link in the OP and because I have several browser windows open, the headline in the taskbar ‘Teen lesbian sues school for bias’ was shortened to just read ‘Teen Lesbian’ and now my girlfriend thinks I’m a dirty letch!

On a serious note, however, I agree that the decision to remove her from the locker room was totally wrong. She shouldn’t be made to feel like she had done anything wrong. I think it might be a good idea to install cubicles in changing rooms for eventualities like this.