Sorry, another Philip Schofield one...

[UnaCorda]

I really couldn't care less about Philip Schofield's sexuality (or anyone else's) and good for him for finally being true to himself. But what makes me quite cross is all this talk of honesty and bravery, and the self-indulgent, tortured confessional in front of the nation when really it's of no importance to anyone who doesn't know him personally.

In the clip of his chat with Holly he asks repeatedly, "When is the right time?" In my opinion, the right time is before you get married to someone who believes you are straight. It's not brave, or honest, to make someone unwittingly provide you with the benefits of a heterosexual relationship, including children, so you can be viewed by the public as a "respectable family man". It's actually rather selfish.

I had a brief relationship with someone who I later discovered was gay. He didn't even have the balls to tell me directly, and it seriously screwed me up for a long time. I can't imagine what it must be like to find out your husband of 27 years is homosexual.

I'm not gay, so perhaps I am being unreasonable as I don't know what it is like to come out to friends and family (although I imagine it is easier now than it was thirty years ago) and I don't know whether PS really believed that he was in love with his wife when they got married. But I do think that leaving a duplicitous life which affects other people is not a kind or honourable thing to do and I feel very sorry for his wife and daughters who I think really have been brave.

Actually YABU

Like a few have said, many people don’t have a teenage ‘I’m gay’ realisation and it takes years to admin and reconcile. I thought the interview with Holly was awful but I don’t judge him for coming out when he did.

I wonder how long his wife has known
In his interview on TM he said theyd never had any secrets. Seems a strange choice of words under the circumstances

I haven’t RTFT yet so I apologise if this point has already been made as nauseam:

Coincidentally I was listening to Lena Dunham on her (exceptionally good) podcast The C Word this week. In it she and her cohost talk about famous women that society has deemed “crazy” and deconstruct why that is. There’s been a great two-parter on Judy Garland and they were talking about how much her self-image must have suffered when she found out that Vincent Minnelli was gay. Dunham has apparently been through this herself and talked about what an impact it has on your sense of self as a sexual being.

I kept thinking about it when I was considering Schofield’s wife. She’s already of an age where her “stock” is down, for a woman in her fifties, society already deems her a lesser sexual being, and now she’s the most famous beard in Britain. It’s fucking shitty for her and I feel really awful for her from this point of view as much as anything else. Schofield will be fine- men don’t suffer from that lessening of sexual power on the dating market to the same extent, especially not gay men, AND he’s a star. Meanwhile she’s left totally neutered. I hope she divorces him and claims half his daytime telly fortune to be honest, whether their relationship is amicable for not.

There are lots of people on all of these threads who are still unaware that you can be gay and not aware of it (ie., you are not covering it up).

I think it can be hard to understand how someone cannot know who they are sexually attracted to. It's such a strong physical response that it is hard to understand how people just can't be aware of it, at all. That there would be no doubt at all in your mind that you are straight, no doubt at all to the degree where you build a life and marry someone. We'll say you got married at 27, up to that age you have never felt sexually attracted to anyone. Maybe I was unusually sexually charged but I just presumed everyone(except maybe those who are asexual), especially when you are young and horny feels sexual attraction at some point before then.

when i saw the advert with him and his dog, i thought he was gay. i didnt know he was married and had children.

What I've taken from the entire situation, is that if a man leaves his DW because he falls in love with another woman, he's a shameful lowlife for betraying his marriage.

But if a man leaves his DW for another man, and never loved & desired his DW in the way she deserved in the first place, he's a brave hero.

A lot of teenagers are confused about sexuality and the brain doesn't mature until mid-20s. He was married by then.

No he wasn't. He was 30/31 when he got married.

It seems there are people who genuinely believe they are straight and enter into marriage in good faith, but I strongly suspect they are in the minority and that it's more common to have a good idea which sex you're attracted to at a much younger age than 30.

He got married at 29 according to wiki, that's a few years after the latest cut off for brain development. Had he been 21, I'd have understood your point a bit more.

@Donkeytail - I totally understand that people still think like this. But it's because we're all assumed to be straight. So, if you are straight, it all feels really obvious.

Say you're straight - everything in your life confirms that's perfectly normal. Long before you feel any sexual desire at all, you know that there are mummies and daddies, princes and princesses, etc. If you feel a passing attraction to someone of the same sex during your teens, people will fall over to tell you it is 'just a phase'.

It's very unlikely a straight person will try, persistently, over years or decades, to see if they're attracted to the same sex. It's not often they'll go on lots of dates to see if there's a spark, or try sex lots of times in case it was 'the wrong person'.

When everyone around you describes what feeling in love is like, it's so easy to believe you've understood them.

These days I know I'm gay, but still, I can meet a lovely man who's on my wavelength and really enjoy a good chat. I can come away thinking 'oh, what an absolutely great person! I so enjoyed that!' and it's easy to mistake that for attraction if everyone is telling you that it must be attraction.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/jun/14/comedy.artsfeatures

Jackie Clune was a lesbian for 12 years then met a bloke, married him, had kids. Got a lot of flak, called a 'hasbian' at the time, writes about it in the article above. Does not identify as bi.
If sexuality is fluid for some then it might well be that you know when you meet the one you are attracted to at the time.

His close circle have known he is gay for decades.
His wife will have known for a very long time.

I'm surprised his DW didn't leave if she did know - their DC left home years ago.

I was 30 when I left my husband.

I was on MN before I married him, and I when I left him, I had MNers telling me I couldn't possibly be gay, don't be so silly, you would know if you were.

A friend of mine, whom I now know in real life, was absolutely sure I was kidding myself about wanting to date women. She was quite blunt about it. I don't blame her, but it made an impression on me. She was quite sure I was straight. I wasn't sure at all either, but I was unsure enough (by then) to feel I ought to find out.

Oh and Clune was 23 when she decided ''to become a lesbian'' (interesting choice of word there) and 35 when she ''went straight'' again.

This is very cynical, but I wonder whether he intentionally lost weight in preparation for yesterday's revelation.

I assumed he's been short tempered off screen and had these reports due to this conflict he had
Well, yes, that was part of the point of the interview. Not to apologise for being a bully because God forbid he take responsibility for his actions - but to explain he was a bully because he was stressed because of his sexuality.

He seems to think that coming out is a get out of jail free card for bullying your colleagues; and having inappropriate relationships. The surprising thing is that lots of other people seem to think that too. It never fails to amaze me the many, many ways people will excuse famous men their bad behaviour.

@Linning
I am aware of intersectionality and recognise that this is a really complex issue. I think it is really awful that men harass and threaten you and your dates/partners on the street because of your sexuality. I get more street harassment because of my sex than my skin colour these days because of where I live. Very different story in my uni days.

The discrimination I was describing was in terms of housing and employment. Every time I look for a place to live, every job I apply for, I have very real concerns that I will be denied because of my skin colour. My white lesbian friend, as she hid her sexuality when it suited her, could never understand, and was, in fact, completely unaware that she could never understand the problems I face. When she would cavalierly equate our minority statuses, it was infuriating because there was no equivalence.

I would be particularly disgusted by PS if I were an out gay person, because he has been so cowardly. He has lived the life of a straight man and benefitted from the privileges thereof. If I chose to live an honest gay life and faced setbacks and discrimination while he coasted on straight white male privilege and then chosen this moment in the world and in his life to reveal that he is gay, I would be wondering why. The sudden crisis of conscience appears disingenuous and opportunistic.

As a lesbian woman with an ex husband, I'd advise against confiding that in your male spouse. That way only lies "ooo, threesome" lightbulbs, imho

nowadays I actually get harassed WAY MORE for being a lesbian than I do for my skin color ... I can’t remember last time someone said something nasty to me about my origins but harassment for being gay AND femme is semi-constant. I date other feminine girls and guys who follow us, try to touch us, proposition us or threaten us either to rape to show us what a “good dick” can do or become aggressive because we aren’t interested and they can’t wrap their head about two women not being for their personal entertainment

The first extract above, IMHO, gives some explanation on Linning's below. I'm not gay but I do hang around spaces and places that members of the gay/queer communities frequent and I have been assured by lesbian women that they face a whole range of discrimination and harassment that gay males or other members of the queer community do not and that much of this is sexualised and fuelled by porn, and popular categories of porn that display pseudo-lesbian sex as being about men's pleasure as a viewer, about threesomes between a lesbian couple and a hetero male and about 'concerting' lesbian women to dick. This is as much about misogyny and sexism as it is about lesbophobia and discrimination against lesbian women.

Also, comments about appearance are not restricted just to more 'butch' lesbian woman - such abuse is hurled at women generally who fail to meet men's ideas of how we should please their pricks with our bodies. I got harassed a couple of days ago by a row of young males in school uniform outside my train station. Again, a lot of this is fueled, I think, by porn.

Yes, sarahandquack!

Why was I able to have (good) sex with men when it turned out that I was gay all along? That’s what everyone asks me. It’s fairly easily answered actually: When I lost my virginity to my first long term boyfriend sex felt pretty crap. This is normal for most women - I knew this because Just Seventeen told me it would be. I decided to be proactive and read everything I could about how to make sex enjoyable for me. I put it into practice, learned within a few months how to orgasm during sex and away I went. I guess it was a bit like using a giant man sized vibrator. So I had good sex with orgasms with men, and when the emotional connection was there, I had orgasms and that lovely closeness that you get when you love someone (because you can love someone of the opposite sex whether you are gay or straight).

It didn’t occur to me for many years that the reason I would get turned on when sex was likely to happen was that my body had got used to it being something that gave me orgasms - a bit like the response from Pavlov’s dog. My body knew an orgasm would be along shortly so it obliged by getting turned on enough to allow that to happen. It wasn’t the men that turned me on, it was the promise of an orgasm. That was a bit of a shock once I’d worked it out.

twitter.com/ddd03498840/status/1226255572972036097

I can't believe he's advertising for that webuyanycar.com, now they're a load of crap. Crap Price they offer to buy cars from public is ridiculous.

I may be way off here, but I always thought Phil vickery was gay and he and fern were an odd coupling. Less than a week before Schofield announcement they are separating? Coincidence? I think not.... just throwing it out there!