First of all, let me emphasize that I am not against gays. My sister (deceased 14 yrs now) was a lesbian, and I was friends with her lovers and friends. I grew up informed about it, and never thought it “bad”. I was aware it wasn’t mainstream, and how others felt about it.
Fast forward 18 years. My son has been homeschooled for the last 4 years by my husband. This year he went back to regular high school for his senior year. He had many electives to take, since we had focused on the basics. He chose theater arts as one of them, and joined the club after school to try out for the school play.
My husband (57 yrs old) was a football-playing jock. Our son wasn’t all that interested in sports, but has excelled in bowling, which is my husband’s (and my) current sport. (Actually, son wasn’t allowed to do much of anything, due to a lot of factors, but mainly the no-pass, no-play rule which was strictly enforced. He had lots of school issues, which is why he was home-schooled.)
Last night my husband asked him if he was concerned that other kids might think he was gay for being in theater arts. I couldn’t believe it! He doesn’t think our son is gay, and has told him over the years that he would love him no matter what. But he seems to think that any boy in high school is considered to be gay by the general population! I don’t know if it’s his age, or his jock mentality, or what. Or maybe I’m too liberal-minded and think that that stuff is in the past…
What do y’all think? Is prejudice still alive and well? (BTW, we’re in a big city - Houston - if that makes a difference.)
Nobody in our school flips out about guys doing drama. heck, I’ve been in the schools program for about 6 years now going strong. I’ve never even as much as heard a comment about about being gay for it.
Most of the gay guys at our school are in drama, I guess because drama people are more excepting of that stuff. However, being in drama does NOT label a guy as being gay. There are many, many straight guys in drama.
There was a guy where I went to high school who was somewhat stereotypically gay (as far as I know he was completely straight). Loved acting, showtunes, singing, wanted to be broadway, etc. And he was a little effeminate. And so it was basically the rumor around school that he was actually gay.
Thing is that he was so popular that it was mostly the people who were jealous of him who went whispering it. His friends were fairly confident that he wasn’t gay due in part to his rather obvious attraction to women:)
A year or so ago I was talking to a guy who had been quite the gay-hating, otherwise unpleasant ass in high school. The subject of sexuality came up (with people I know from high school, it often helps me to know their stance on various sexualities) and he was like “Oh, yeah, remember [drama guy]? He was soooooooo gay lol.”
That, fortunately, was neither the prevailing attitude where I went to school nor was the guy marked as gay by many people. The on person we all knew was gay, however … well, things didn’t go as well or him:( I still have no idea if he’s even alive. Google can’t do miracles. Last I heard he was a prostitute in Providence, RI.
Definitely not here. The two most popular boys in school are those who have had a major part in the production of our last play, “Annie”. One of them starred as Daddy Warbucks and the other was a manager, I think. I don’t have any other experience to compare to this school, but there’s absolutely no stigma. I don’t think anybody really cares, except the jealous ones.
However, there was a quite funny slip of the tongue my 9th grade year, made by the teacher doing the morning announcements: Instead of “thespians,” she said “Attention all lesbians…”
Absolutely no stigma in my high school. Most of the people in the club are pretty normal - there’re a few, naturally, that aren’t, but in general, my ook-ook-chugga-lugga manliness is in no way compromised by my being a crappy actor. Now I must go out and kill buffalo with my bare hands.
I think like monica says, it’s not that people interested in drama are more likely to be gay, but that gay (at least the stereotypical flamboyant likes-attention-and- dressing-up) people are more likely to be interested in drama.
Heck, I’ve often wondered about my brother who graduated with a musical theatre degree and so far as I know has never had a girlfriend (or a boyfriend, for that matter). That’s not to say there’s prejudice either way, just a percieved correlation.
I graduated from highschool 12 years ago… There certainly wasn’t any kind of “gay” assumption then. In fact, a couple of the most successful atheletes (inlducing a great, big football player) were leads in the school plays (one of them had an incredible singing voice).
The only social preconceived notions were that male theatre arts students were more “nerdy” – but that had more to do with the fact that they were usually the ones who weren’t big enough for competitive sports so they chose extra-curricular activities that were more appropriate for their physical abilities.
I was a drama person in high school, and dated a guy in the drama dept – everyone thought he was a vampire (he was a mite Gothic), but nobody thought he was gay.
Ironically enough, the one guy who got all the romantic lead parts, and got to kiss the redhead that everyone had a major crush on, actually was gay.