Jamie film

Oh and I'm forgetting the iconic Jimi Somerville. Yes he sang about homophobia, but he was out and proud in the mid-80s and was successful.

I don't accept it was all AIDS, being stuck in the closet and negative portrayals. Bad things happened, just as they did and still do to women, ethnic minorities and so on, and I hope it's better now but most young people from the 80s onwards were completely used to seeing successful, out gay people in the media, pop industry, arts etc. Many more men than women at least initially, but the teacher is a man. (Well possibly, as that means nothing now but it sounded like he was male.)

That's terrible about Justin Fashanu. Reading the story, it seems that an American teenager accused him of sexual assault in Maryland, and he feared he would not get a fair trial because gay male sex was illegal there.

He did face a lot of homophobia coming out, but the reason for the tragedy is more complex, since he was in the US, where homophobia has always been stronger & in the case of that state, was so strong as to criminalise sex between men. So I think his suicide was more caused by US homophobia, though the prejudice he faced here was also horrible.

It's also possible he may have been guilty of sexual assault. We will never know. Obvs if he was, the treatment he faced was still completely wrong.

I definitely agree gay representation was better in the 90s and early 2000s though, but obvs there were still issues, as you say.

Yes, I live with my 93yo grandmother & she's a big fan of Carry On stuff & that kind of sitcom. I agree it was a step in gay representation, but I think people are overstating its influence on this thread a bit, since arguably the camp behaviour was the butt of the joke, and gay men were mainly only allowed in this kind of role for quite a while : sexless so therefore unthreatening, and with their camp behaviour making them the butt of the joke, or at best putting them in the 'court jester' role.

Liberace was obvs gay ofc, but he famously sued and said how upset he was when a paper said he was 'fruit-flavoured'.

Larry Grayson was always private, as he had a right to be- my mum was a big fan of the Generation Game & always had twigged him as gay.

Small note on It Ain't Half Hot Mum : the character who does drag is not meant to be gay. David Croft, the writer, says he was a 'transvestite, not a homosexual', and he expresses interest in women. That kind of performance was quite common in army bases then, though often hushed up. Sometimes the drag performers were gay, but sometimes they weren't.

books.google.com/books?id=3W97f5u9ZZEC&pg=PA77

Exactly. I read a magazine article a while back where a man raised by lesbian mums in the early 2000s said Carol was the only media representation for a family like his, and he still appreciated it. But he also acknowledged it had a lot of issues.

From what you say, it sounds like Carol herself was portrayed as a nice person? But people counting her as positive are ignoring the horrible attitude from the other characters : presumably Carol is the butt of the jokes you mentioned, not the fetishising men?

I saw a few episodes of Friends while injured on a skiing school trip. That was all there was to watch on the TV, so I had a look. I'm Gen Z & a lot of my friends liked it, but it seemed poor overall : simplistic humour & it didn't feel very funny when two of the female characters kissed to get the male characters to do something for them. I suppose that ties in to the fetishisation of Carol you mentioned.

Tbf I only saw about 4 episodes, but it sounds like one of the sitcoms which didn't age well , unlike some others of that era

Hint - if your list of prominent gay people includes someone who lost her main tv show after coming out and someone who killed himself after a negative reaction to coming out, it rather suggests that the teacher had a point.

Also it’s almost certainly not the case that he was claiming there were no prominent gay people in 2009, but rather there was no or very limited positive depiction of gay people in 2009.

How can you give Earnest as an example of a gay character? Jack and Algy show sexual interest in women, and while you could argue they also like each other romantically, it would be subtextual at best

Carol in Friends was not a positive depiction of gay people.

The entire plot for the character was centred through her (ex) husband and the gags centred around how he had ‘turned’ her or the fetishisation of her and her female partners sex life.

Lots of posts on here demonstrating a really facile view of gay representation in media. The message seems to be ‘here is a gay person who is allowed to exist and not be actively vilified’ and therefore that person is an example of a positive gay role model.

There was a long history of camp and effeminate performers who were seen as entertaining and the hints of gayness were part of the fun - but they were not officially "out". So Kenneth Williams, Larry Grayson, the drag performer on It Aint Half Hot Mum, Liberace etc.

But I was completely unfazed by gayness when at school in the 80s, had openly gay friends, by the 90s and 00s loads of well-known people were out. Boy George, Jeanette Winterson, Chris Smith, Holly Johnson, Ellen degeneres, Elton John, lesbian kiss on Brookside, Justin Fashanu, Labi Siffre etc etc. Not that life was always easy for them and homophobia hadn't vanished, but to say there was nothing like that around at all is bonkers.

Teacher must have been living under a rock or else is just playing oppression olympics and hoping teenagers won;t realise.

Freddie Mercury, ditto.

 EastEnders...the tabloid response was vile , but the characters themselves were portrayed w respect & sympathy. Still should not be forgotten how horrible the Murdoch-led media was. 

Little Britain : it's obvs not wrong to have a gay comic character, but at a time when gay characters were still rare, esp nuance ones, it was hardly positive.

It's definitely odd people are describing people like Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Frankie Howerd as positive gay role models when the whole point was they were not out, but in 'open secret' territory, and certainly couldn't mention partners. Williams and Hawtrey both seem to have had strong internalised homophobia in their private lives ,with Williams remaining celibate due to it & Hawtrey perpetually cruising, unable to form a relationship.

I'm not denigrating the progress they did make by putting camp gay male behaviour on screen, but I think people are overstating how positive the situation w them was.

Tbf poor Freddie Mercury's sexuality was only acknowledged after his death. He would often teasingly hint at being gay, (naming the band Queen, for one thing 🤣) but he certainly wasn't out.

Thinking now, Stephen Fry & Ian McKellen were other actors out in the 90s.

Kenneth Williams - good point, but surely quite a lot of his fans disapproved of his orientation even if they liked his films etc? It's not like he could openly say he was
gay or mention a long-term partner , is it? More in the territory of open secret.

Sorry in my previous posting, I was talking about the 90s, I didn't realise the teacher was talking about 2009.
Op, I know this is an old thread but it's an interesting topic so I wanted to comment, hope that's ok.
I get your point about gay people in media in the early 90s.. But I would add some caveats. Freddie Mercury never felt able to come out. His sexuality was obvious to plenty of people, but I'm not sure if you can call him a gay media role model, at least not in the same way an out celebrity would be. His sexuality was only confirmed after his death, and his partner Jim was ignored by obituaries I think, though need to check.(To be clear, I'm not blaming him for not being out : some such ad Elton John were but it would probably have affected his career adversely, especially in the AIDS 80s height when prejudice was heightened)

Who are the out gay actors you can recall? I find it hard to name out actors from the early 90s- Rupert Everett I suppose was out then?

Musicians are easier : Boy George was out I think, also Pet Shop Boys and Bronski Beat?

It's not just that, lesbian especially and gay representation WAS much less then. There was a lot of controversy and homophobia (in the US esp) about the lesbian relationship in Buffy.

Carol in Friends - I've not seen but good if, ad you say, the character wasn't treated as if being gay was negative. Wasn't there fetishisation of it from the male characters? I think I remember reading that, though it's possible I also read that this attitude was mocked (need to check)

It's important for teenagers to have role models. So it's fair enough for kids to know that a teacher is gay.

If kids ask questions like "have you got a boyfriend/girlfriend?" it's a learning point. "Is he hot" is not usually appropriate. but I might say "you mean: "what does he look like?" and an ordinary picture of boyfriend/husband at work or doing an ordinary hobby such as playing guitar can send the conversation off in another direction. (Obviously sometimes you would say: "not appropriate, do your maths".)

I think it may be that a teenager living in a homophobic community in 2009 might have perceived there were no gay people in the media. However, a drama teacher in particular should have watched many films and series and plays that feature gay or lesbian characters in a positive light, and be able to provide a list to watch.

Being a drag queen isn't a non-traditional career, it's a gig, with a risk of sexual exploitation. If a boy told me that was his ambition I would refer him to the safeguarding team. It's literally the job of the careers teacher to help kids find a way to make a living. The film undermines careers teachers - the scene in the film is not true to life - the teacher wouldn't ask the class their plans in that disparaging way. If a kid said they wanted to go into performing arts they would be signposted to performing arts courses.

Or...

Teacher draws on his own experience to make the point about changes in media representation in the last fifteen years...

Hang on, are you really saying that if a female teacher is teaching about, let's say, a lack of female role models in senior corporate roles when she was growing up, she should not give any perspective of what impact that might have had on her and people like her?

So she shouldn't be able to say something like 'Like many other girls, I didn't actually consider a corporate career because there were so few prominent women in senior business roles'?

I think that is a bonkers interpretation of a red flag, such as to make the term meaningless.

I've been tending to think of this as "teacher opens himself up to classroom management issues".
But I can also see how it might be "teacher implies children should feel sorry for him/agitate on his behalf".
A teacher wouldn't tell his class "my family rejected me because I was gay".

That's a good question; hopefully I can clarify what I meant.

None of those three individual pieces of information are a problem, taken as stand alone data (assuming that informing the class that he is gay wasnt done in an inappropriate way).

It's the making it personal / political that is a red flag.

When I say red flag, I don't mean 'Omg he's probably a paedophile, sack him!'. Nothing he's done suggests that at all. I am talking about political influence - taken together the things he has said are skirting around the edge of being overly political in the context of teaching a class of children.

This isn't about pre emptively censuring someone for something that they might do in future. It's about keeping an eye, based on what has been said so far.

When safeguarding failures happen it's usually because no one had an overview of each little incident that would have built up a bigger picture. On its own, a teacher noting that Billy keeps coming to school in dirty clothes isn't necessity a problem, but it will be noted and recorded as it could be part of a picture of neglect. Schools have to do this with bullying too - every little incident that on its own may not sound like anything to worry about is recorded, so that if little Johnny says he is being bullied, the school has a complete picture of all Johnny's possible negative interactions and can see any patterns developing that might not be visible to an individual teacher who only has their part of the picture.

Safeguarding procedures and appropriate boundaries are something that teachers are trained to be very aware of. If this teacher isn't, I would have concerns that he hadn't been properly trained or is deliberately prioritising his politics over his training - again, a red flag.

He's a drama teacher. He could have legitimately spoken about gay reprentation in the media in the past - because that's a historical fact. He could even have qualified or with 'some gay people felt excluded by this' etc.

Linking it to his own personal experience is what makes it too much.

In the same way, if I were a teacher, it would be acceptable for me to comment on representation of women in the media. It would be inappropriate of me to qualify this with 'as a feminist, I think that xyz' or to speak about my specific experiences and how it made me feel (unless it was a specific PSHE leading in that subject and I was qualified to teach it). Not because being a feminist is inappropriate or shameful or inherently harmful to kids of course, but because it would be putting an inappropriately personal, political slant on the information I was teaching them.

I too am failing to see where this teacher displayed red flags and I think an overly sanitised environment is not a healthy place for children and teenagers to grow up in.

But teachers often give their personal perspective on their experiences of a particular issue, precisely because by definition they are older and have experienced times that those they are teaching have not.

Let's unpick the information this teacher shared:

(1) He is gay.

(2) He is of an age where he was roughly the same age as his students in 2009.

(3) From his perspective, in 2009, there weren't many positive depictions of gay people in media.

Which of these three things do you think is a red flag for boundaries, any why?

You seem to accept it is OK for a teacher to let their students know, by implication, they are gay if (for example) they were to refer to a partner. I presume you don't object to students knowing roughly what age their teacher is.

And the third is merely a factual statement about his perspective of gay representation in 2009 with nothing to do with his personal life.

So where are the red flags specifically?

I think it's important that all teachers, whatever their sexuality, keep appropriate boundaries. This protects both them and their pupils.

As usual, any comment made gets taken to the extreme, with suggestions that I was only referring to gay teachers (I wasn't) or sexuality (I specifically also referred to religion and politics).

Ofc teachers can mention their lives - no one expects them to be androids with no personality. But going into too much detail isn't appropriate.

I think what he's said verges on too much detail and if I was a parent on a child in his class I'd bee keeping a close eye (just like I would if he had been talking about going to a political rally at the weekend, for instance). That's what red flag means - it doesn't mean this is an awful person, sack them, it means it's a sign that they have approached a boundary which suggests they may overstep them in future.

Given how often this happens and how damaging it is for the kids, why would you not? Safeguarding isn't about demonising people, its about looking at what might go wrong and mitigating it. Its not about giving everyone a free pass until they've definitely done something awful.

Let's just stick to the show/movie for this thread, since that's what we're discussing rather than the real Jamie.

The careers teacher is cast in a negative light for a one dimensional view of what a successful career looks like, and for insisting on rigid gendered dress code for a school event.

The mum is cast as a hero for accepting her son as he is and not seeking to change him - not just from not being gay, but from being very obviously and flamboyantly gay. She is cast as a hero for repeatedly trying to protect her son from the disappointment of an absent and disinterested dad.

The dad is cast as homophobic because that's what the character is. His objection is not just to drag performances - it is to drag in and of itself. More fundamentally, it is to having a son who does not fit his mould of what a boy should be like.

But my comment is more about those dismissing the OP's DC's teacher saying there were no positive gay role models when he was growing up. This thread - where Freddie Mercury, Little Britain, Friends etc are all cited as positive depictions of gay lives - shows why his perspective is much more valid than many posters on here.