Puzzled - Philip Schofield

[howwillthispanout]

Sorry if this has been covered already but I’ve been offline all day - has there been any discussion re PS’s announcement today on this board? Especially in relation to wife and daughters

I think he's probably not a nice man I think that's probably true but many people in the media are as hard as nails.

I'd assumed he was gay anyway. A bit shocked that he'd married a woman and fathered two children. Sorry and for them.

I felt a bit queasy when I heard this on my tea break earlier! There has been a lot of squabbling at ITV recently and this puts philip up on the cross nicely.

I'm sure his wife has known he was gay for about 20 years, but still, it is a shitty thing to do, marry somebody straight and come out as gay in your fifties. That's her life too.

I think if his wife was aware of his sexuality before they got married and they both had reasons this relationship worked for them for a time, then wonderful for the pair of them.

Who knows maybe she has met someone she wants to spend the rest of her life with and that's the reason for this.

However I think it's more likely she was deceived and has found about about this more recently. Which ofc would make him an awful shit. Either way I hope she has real life support

It's actually fairly common (well, not unheard of) for middle aged married men who have fathered children to come out as homosexual.

Perhaps it's because of the times and the prejudice that they grew up with when much younger? Perhaps it's the fear of disappointing or alienating family? Perhaps they really do fall in love with women but never feel truely happy?

Imagine feeling as if you had to suppress who you really were, for everyone else's sakes?

Perhaps his wife and daughters actually knew, but somehow the tabloids got hold of it and so he wanted to announce it himself?

I guess we'll never know.

I suspect that this may be a public announcement but that it's not been a revaluation to Schofield's wife. I didn't even know he was married as she has kept a very low profile. Maybe it was a sort of arranged marriage where they both had something to gain from it?

I like all the posts saying it was impossible to come out in the 80s/90s if you were in public eye!

If you think they would allow a children's tv presenter to be openly gay in the 1980s you are deluded!

George Micheal was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s and beyond yet didnt come out until forced to in 1996

Also, what IF a man doesn't actually accept or really believe he is gay until much later in life?

What should he do? Just lie to his wife and family? Honestly, I would be devastated if my DH told me he was gay but I would be pleased he told me rather than live the rest of his life unfulfilled or deprive me of happiness too

Weather PS is a Tory Bastard or not, It does seem a bit weird in this day & age to make such a mountain out of a molehill though no?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GNIbb-52lGU

'Do we ever hear about famous women coming out as lesbians and the supportive husbands and children who stood by them?'

Interestingly there is another thread going with a married woman who thinks they may be gay. It seems not uncommon for women to realise in middle age. And they get a lot of support on MN.

So I'm thinking, even as a regular fwr poster, that I may be applying double standards.

I don’t think it’s homophobic to feel that it’s a shit way to treat your spouse to basically dump them publicly, announce to the world that the marriage was a sham, you’d basically duped them into being a beard, and then garner praise for how ‘brave’ you are to do all of this. It smacks of her just being a bit-part in his life story for him, doesn’t show her any (public) respect as a complete independent human whose life he has massively changed by doing this.

Cwenthryth and others - did you read his statement? It’s pretty much ALL about his public apology to his wife and daughters. It’s very respectful of her, and his family.

I have great sympathy for anyone in the situation she finds herself in, and made worse by the publicity of course, but I think it’s a bit much to accuse PS of ‘dumping her publicly’ and treating her as a ‘bit part’. Or speculating about theur marriage being a sham etc.

No one would want to be in his wife’s position but he can hardly be accused of making it all about him, even though he’s the celeb. He’s been up front about his family whilst trying (one hopes) to shield his wife somewhat.

A friend of mine who is a gay man and was a child in the 80s/90s tweeted today that it would have meant the world to him if any children's TV presenter back then had been openly gay. I found that very poignant.

Chris Smith MP was the first openly gay MP in the UK. He came out in 1984. There were plenty of rumours about other public figures but not many were brave enough to go public during the section 28 years.

Wikipedia: The amendment was enacted on 24 May 1988, and stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".[2] It was repealed on 21 June 2000 in Scotland by the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Scottish Parliament, and on 18 November 2003 in the rest of the United Kingdom by section 122 of the Local Government Act 2003.

Evil, pure evil, to make life so difficult for lesbians and gay men.

Goddammit site jumping around. Couldnt edit or finish!
1998.
Can you imagine the uproar of a gay male children's presenter?
Hell look at the backlash Cerrie Burnell received for not hiding her arm in 2009 onwards!

Also, what IF a man doesn't actually accept or really believe he is gay until much later in life?
This, he might not have admitted it to himself properly, it's not necessarily lying or whatever.
Could have been something he's grappled with internally for years and wanted to finally be true to himself.

On almost every thread about Philip Schofield on MN over the years someone has posted about him being gay - maybe his wife has covered for him over the years and has been happy in their arrangement as best friends but now the kids are older she wants a real life, maybe she has met someone - who knows, It's not for us to speculate. All I see is people using prime time TV for their own agenda, their own personal blog, but Loose Women do that all the time

I am more surprised to discover he is married than that he is gay.

Hell look at the backlash Cerrie Burnell received for not hiding her arm in 2009 onwards!

Had forgotten all about that
I think it was another big parenting site, not here that I remember being truly sickened by a thread how she was scaring the kids.
Fucking horrible.
We're definitely more accepting nowadays and this is a good thing.

Re. famous women coming out as lesbians - there are a couple of'well known' people I can think of. Mary Portas came out; her husband was apparently supportive. In the US, the food blogger/writer Molly Wizenberg writes about her husband being supportive when she came out.

I do agree the asymmetry tells us a lot about misogyny.

@NoSquirrels but the point is that people are claiming that anything negative written about him is homophobic. We don't don't know all the details and maybe she is ok/has know since before the marriage. But I don't think it is wrong to openly talk/speculate about the ramifications his actions have caused his family.

I have noticed in work, been working since mid 90s, that there has been a steady increase in out gay men

But it's still rare to come across an out lesbian

I had a manager who was a lesbian and my male colleagues found her unsettling, I mean not in an obvious way, but they would occasionally say odd things. And none of them liked her.

I can see advantages to marriage to a gay man.

Name one

He might have announced it because someone else was about to.

Why do people assume he lied to his wife, maybe she accepted to live with his sexuality and was happy to enjoy their relationship as it was, until he felt the need (for his head) to publicly announce it.

He doesn't have to be bi, they may never have had a sexual relationship, he could still father children with her, without doing the deed.

My first ever bf was gay. We were as emotionally close as any straight bf ive had but there was no sex so that was weird

As a kids tv presenter, he was not under pressure to marry or make a statement about his sexuality either way - the whole point of kids tv presenters is their non sexual, non threatening persona. He chose to marry and have kids, when he could have remained single - it's the deceit and using his wife that I find disturbing. It's not like he was a politician whose persona relied on being a family man.