Avoided topic now dealt with

I really wasn't going to add to the "Ian Thorpe comes out" brouhaha [now there's a word I don't use often], but then I read this column that's more about [some of] the public's "unhelpful" reactions to the story, and thought it was pretty good.  This part, for example:

So you didn't say this was disgusting - but did you go with, say, "Pfft, like we didn't already know!"

Well, aren't you Captain Gaydar! You totally knew Thorpe was gay! And it's people saying helpful things like that publicly that helped prevent him coming out earlier.

Ideally, we'd all know and be comfortable with our sexuality nice and young. I lucked out, discovering mine when I was about eight and first saw the Divinyls' video for 'Boys In Town'. Oh, Chrissie Amphlett, you're too good for the afterlife…

But Thorpe had people calling him gay since his teens, when he claims - perfectly plausibly - that he still wasn't certain what his sexuality was. He went to an all-boys school, a dangerous place for people to come out at the best of times, and was quizzed in the media about it when he swam at the World Championships at the age of 16.

He said he was straight, because what serious choice did he have at that point? And then it was a matter of public record and he didn't want to look like a liar. The very brilliant Rebecca Shaw explains this very point, teasing out why a young person might not want to come out under a barrage of constant questioning from people.

So having folks go "but you're gay, really, right? Seriously, I know you said you're not gay - but I totally know you're gay" did a lot to keep making him think this was a matter of public interest.

The writer then goes on to point out the inherent contradiction in people saying "But nobody cares!" when both the media and the public kept the question alive for about 14 years.

Sure, part of this weekend's disdainful reactions might be because some genuinely think it was distasteful that the topic was being played up yet again by the media (certainly, that was my attitude), but I still think this Vine article is right:   a huge number of people are clueless if they don't realise that the questions/jokes/rumours were not in themselves intimidating no matter how much they claimed to be in the context of  "mate, it doesn't matter, just tell us."

And one other thing:  how many people have forgotten this from a 2002 interview he gave (I certainly had, although I think I may have seen the interview at the time)?   It shows that matters of his sex life were putting him under much pressure back then: 

IAN THORPE: You know, reading between the lines in the letters, through my knowledge of what was happening in all of those situations, in a way where it was just going to compromise myself in terms of either publicly, financially. There’s a number of ways and a number of reasons and certain level of intent that I think was behind those letters that actually seconded my feelings and the police agreed with me. The police thought the same thing.

MONICA ATTARD: Do you think they were out to blackmail you?

IAN THORPE: I think that was a strong possibility

MONICA ATTARD: And did they have anything with which to blackmail you?

IAN THORPE: At that stage, no.

MONICA ATTARD: Because when police searched their house they found a video labelled “Thorpe sex”. Do you have any idea what the contents of that tape might be?

IAN THORPE: I know that I’m not involved in it but, I mean, I have not seen the tape but that was one of a number of things that was found.

MONICA ATTARD: And when you say that their intention was to get you into a compromising situation, what do you mean by that? What do you think?

IAN THORPE: Well there’s a number of different things that it could be.

MONICA ATTARD: What? What?

IAN THORPE: Looking at “Thorpe sex” tape I think gives a strong example of what one of the possibilities may have been, and then there’s other things. There’s a number of ways that anyone that has either a high profile or a certain level of wealth can be blackmailed into a position that compromises them.

Finally:  the whole episode illustrates that modern popular attitudes are still, to an enormous degree, entrenched in seeing sexuality as a simple dichotomy instead of a scale like Kinsey argued, and people like Thorpe actually help this by treating "gay" as an inherent identity that they finally have to admit to.   This emphasis on identity elevates in importance aspects of personality which some previous societies used to accept (probably not always, in the case of "third sex" men, but often) as being more or less just matters of taste and potential variance over a lifetime.

In fact, I took it when reading reports of the interview that Thorpe's opening words on the topic - "I'm not straight" - might have been carefully chosen, and that he might have followed it up by taking the line that perhaps he could have been called bisexual (as he clearly still claims to have had heterosexual experiences), even if he was now satisfied that he enjoyed intimate relationships with men more than with women.  But no, it seems he went with the full on "I've come out as gay" in the subsequent parts of the interview, and once again reinforced gay identity as being an all or nothing thing.  Bit of a pity, really, if he is interested in defusing the issue for future teens in his situation.

Update:  what I think was my very first post on sexual identity in the West back in 2007 still seems very apt.   This post from 2009 on what can happen with young teens when there is rather intense concentration on the matter of sexuality in High School was worth re-reading too.  And there's another post around about young adults and sexual identity that I was re-reading last night, but I can't find it again right now.  The mystery of why Google search works poorly in my own blog remains....

Update2:  OK, here it is.