The chemistry teacher’s question
“Why are you wearing a boy’s uniform?” That question has stayed with me since it was first asked by my chemistry teacher in front of a packed class when I was just 13 years old. The year was 1989, Thatcher was in power and had passed Section 28 the year before and it was the year that Stonewall was founded…
I often look back on that moment, in that class in front of my classmates, and wonder why it has stayed with me more than everything else about that dreadful time at that dreadful school. Over the years I’ve battled with my mental health, most of it due to trauma of living through the homophobic abuse I got day in day out when I was just a young boy struggling to come to terms with his sexuality and who was mercilessly picked on by his peers because he wasn’t boisterous or violent, because he preferred the company of girls, because he wasn’t into football, because he did crazy things to his hair, and because he liked Doctor Who.
The much more overt and disgusting stuff his classmates did to him has not haunted him in the same way.
Up until that point my 13-year-old brain was able to rationalise, as best it could, that my classmates were just common bullies, and that what they were saying and what they were doing was borne out of a childish need to hurt people. It was a distraction from their own insecurities, an acting out of what they had seen elsewhere, or just something that they did because it made them feel a little more in control of their own lives. When my chemistry teacher asked that question, and the entire class all laughed, it hit hard because it was coming from a different place, and I perceived that it had a truth that only a position of genuine power and authority could give it.
It triggered in me a period of intense dysphoria where I struggled with what I thought was the truth. A truth that spoke directly to my insecurities. The truth that I was damaged and broken, and that there was this terrible mistake and I had been born in the wrong body. The terror of that perceived truth stayed with me until I fully came to terms with my sexual orientation.
But the truth for me after that teacher’s question was for a time, what if I really was a girl? Was that why I was getting crushes on boys? Is that what my peers knew but that I up until that point was not aware of? The actual reality was that the question was spiteful, red hot and dripping with homophobia, but to 13-year-old me it was confirmation of my worst fears, why was I wearing a boy’s uniform?
But now, somehow, it has become the enlightened and “kind” thing to do – to assure people that they really are the other sex since they’re so clearly not comfortable with the conventions of their “assigned” sex.
I share this story to give context to why I am so deeply angry with the way Stonewall has betrayed its founding principles as it chases money and a reason to continue to exist. When Stonewall was formed the message that we as gay men are not broken, and there was nothing wrong with us, eventually filtered down to me. It was a light that I could cling to, being shone by adults who understood what I was going through because they had been through it themselves.
Stonewall ultimately helped me overcome my dysphoric feelings while I did the work I needed to do to come to terms with who I am.
Stonewall said that I was not a freak, or broken, or born in the wrong body, they said that I had every right to wear a boy’s uniform as the next boy in my class, or even wear a girl’s uniform, it didn’t matter as I was still a boy – I didn’t need fixing, as I was perfect just as I was.
But now Stonewall says the opposite.
The way that gender ideology has metastasised into every area of public life means that things for children today struggling with sexuality has gotten worse in recent years. It’s Stonewall now asking: “Why are you wearing a boy’s uniform?” I wonder if Stonewall would congratulate my chemistry teacher for being progressive and inclusive? It is Stonewall after all who now seem to look down on homosexuality as something to be ashamed of, something to be belittled, to be redefined, to be brushed under the carpet as an inconvenience to their gender identity homophobic pseudoscience.
It’s horribly sad and destructive.
The homophobia in the gender movement is incredibly blatant. It is not liberating to tell a teen that their gender non-conformtiy is due to them being female under their skin at all. Nor is it liberating for girls to be told they are really boys if they are masculine. No wonder they seek quick resolution in changing their sex to match their gender! They are made to feel like freaks and changing sex is the presented solution. All their problems will go away! Except for a lifetime of maintenance and drugs, of course.
A former friend told me that she can’t be friends with someone who is “Homophobic, Racist, Sexist, or Transphobic.” I told her she has to make a choice, and haven’t heard from her since. And this was after I had explained why I see transgenderism as being both homophobic and sexist.
As someone who felt genuinely out of place in my body (I still do), I empathize with the young boy. My teachers mocked me on all fronts. I was poor in a rich town. I went to the wrong church. I wore clothes from the thrift store. I began to believe there was literally nothing right about me. My therapist worked with me to help me see that I wasn’t wrong, and that being different is not something to be ashamed of, but something to embrace. I didn’t have to be like all the “other girls”. I could be me.
What would have happened to me now? Would I become trans rich, trans male, trans Christian? I shudder.
A brilliant, moving article. Lesbian and Gay News gets better and better. Any comparison with the off-red comic would be such a glaring category error that it would blind us all from space.
I have much sympathy with the author. I was bullied in much the same way, relentlessly, by kids and teachers alike. Every single day, from around the age of four to when I left school at 15. While I had a few friends, I don’t remember a single day that wasn’t hell. At first, my family didn’t seem to notice. After I had an enormous, violent explosion one night, they most certainly knew about it, but did absolutely nothing. For that, I can never forgive them.
I was constantly called a girl by kids, teachers and family and while I never thought for a moment to actually question my sex, I knew I was a broken kind of boy, not a boy like any of the others.
I was so vulnerable in other words, to grooming of virtually any kind. Thank goodness, that didn’t happen. After a period of homelessness, I went back into education and achieved the towering success I enjoy today. But as I’ve said here before, I could so easily have been seduced by a cult – any cult – that told me there was nothing wrong with me. I don’t think I’d ever have believed I was a girl, but I’m damn sure I would have gone along with it anyway, for a while at least, if I thought it might have given me some respite.
I think mine is a fairly extreme case. I was a very strange kid, have a remarkably uncaring family and it was a very rough school. But then, transing was not an option back then and acceptance of any kind of gender or behavioural nonconformity was unthinkable. Now that new genders are available off the peg it is no wonder that children – and especially girls – want to wear them like a costume. Or a suit of armour.
If only it could remain a costume, I’d be delighted. But groomers like Mermaids, institutionalised by organisations like Stonewall, are grinding children to pieces with their zealotry and we haven’t even begun to see the carnage, yet.
It has to stop.
[…] a comment by latsot on The chemistry teacher’s […]
Jesus that’s awful.
I thought of myself as not exactly bullied, but shut out, as a school kid. I realize now it was partly just a matter of some kids whose parents were friends and the like – non-overlapping social circles, along with the fact that I hated all gym activities and was bad at them – and the school was stupid enough to have the kids pick teams, so I was invariably last. That burned, but when we got old enough to have thoughts I did have friends, so in short I got off lightly. It was a girls’ school though – I shudder to think how bad a mixed-sex school would have been.
Relentless bullying, desperate conformity to gender roles among children far too young to actually have any skin in the game, snide misgendering by adults who either knew better or didn’t care.
My male childhood in the 60s. Strangely, or not so strangely, I’ve never been ‘read gay’ by gay men. Women, and straight men, have policed my sexuality so often I forget what it might be like not to have this. And I’m an utterly ordinary ‘Kinsey zero’ white male. I still tend to view other men as threats and have never really bonded in any male group or society.
And today, it’s far, far, worse. The Xtians are still policing children, and porn culture, MRA/PUA crackpottery, and trans-imperialism are all running simultaneously.