I
N S I G H T
Youth
attitudes in
rural
America
by Jim Hunger
Another school year has begun, and again
I have been compelled to make the startling
transition from summer student to autumn
instructor, from city sissy to backwater book-
pusher. As I experience a constraining of my
sexual being in deference to my position as
an educator of the young, as well as in re
sponse to my relocation to a low population
area, I am drawn to consider the possible
effects of growing up in a rural environment
upon my students who may someday be gay,
if they aren’t already. Fourteen years after
Stonewall the lifestyle of urban gays has
become relatively open and less vulnerable
to victimization and humiliation, though
much progress has yet to be made. Younger
gays in the metropolitan areas, while still suf
fering from unenlightened responses to their
developing homosexuality, particularly
censure by peers or even efforts to modify
their sexuality by authority figures,, still have
greater opportunities to interrelate with
kindred spirits than they would have in pre-
Stonewall days. But what about the young
men and women who grow up in minute
farm ing and ranching communities and visit
the city only occasionally, if ever? Has their lot
been altered appreciably by the urban gay
renaissance?
As I welcome my students back to the
classrom each year I try to be sensitive to the
possibility that some of these young people
may be experiencing an inordinate amount
of anxiety due to a developing sense of sexual
alienation from the norm. While my options
for rendering assistance are limited, I feel that
these unfortunate young people may be able
to feel better about themselves if they sense
that someone in their environment is sympa
thetic to their perceived problem. As a gay
m an who is not attracted to boys, and more
over who feels the necessity for teachers to
m aintain some degree of professional
decorum , I believe I possess the proper per
sonality traits for having a positive influence
on these young people’s lives. Additionally,
there is an ample number of sexual role m od
els in our culture for unquestionably straight
students, but few if any for potentially gay
students, and though the bigotry of our soci
ety does not allow me to be openly gay in the
classroom, I can at least attempt to make
homosexuality less of a bugbear for them,
and perhaps even shed some light on it as a
viable, even positive, alternative lifestyle.
O ne major post-Stonewall1?hange which
has been experienced even in the most re
m ote hinterlands of our society is the visibility
of our gay subculture to the general public.
Growing up in little towns of 5-10,000 and
graduating from high school in 1969,1 don't
recall people talking seriously about homo
sexuality, although I could count on a violent
12
Rural culture lags far behind its
urban counterpart
in granting its gay members
their basic rights as
human beings and
felloiu citizens.
response if I called my brother a queer. Like
most people in those days, I knew vaguely
what the words signified, but they were
meaningless without any concrete examples.
My students, coming from two very small
com m unities of 600 and 800, have a much
m ore developed sense of what a homosexual
is than I did at their age, but unfortunately the
im age has improved little, if at all. Gay
characters may be seen infrequently in
movies and on television, but often they are
negative examples, and invariably their
appearance is unpublicized unless the repre
sentation is particularly repugnant When
M a kin g Loue and Personal Best were shown
at a Klamath Falls (the "big city” twenty miles
to the north) cinema, one of the men of the
trio in M a kin g Love was cut out of the tiny
picture in the newspaper advertisement pub
licity was kept at a m inim um , and the length
of the movie's engagem ent as a double fea
ture, was unusually short On the night when
a friend and I viewed the two films there was
only a tiny handful of people in atendance,
one of whom came in drunk and asked the
audience where he was, presumably to feign
ignorance of the subject matter. Although no
one answered, he sat down and watched
both features.
The image young people from the country
have of gay people is that which for them is
the most alien and unpleasant: drag queens
'
*
and leather freaks. My purpose in mentioning
this is not to disparage these membes of our
gay subculture; many of the heroes of
Stonewall were drag queens, and certainly
the goal of gay liberation should be to attain
sexual freedom for a ll members of society,
provided that the rights of the individual aren’t
infringed upon. It is a sad commentary on the
m orality of the media, however, that little if
any effort is made to present to the public a
m ore conscientiously representational pic
ture of gay people.
Perhaps it is the alienness of the few gay
models which young rurals are exposed to
which makes the hurling of epithets implying
homosexuality a comparatively rare occur
rence among south Klamath County students.
O f course, it could be that they sense my
gayness and hence avoid making derogatory
remarks about homosexuals in my presence,
but I doubt that would have such a thorough
ly censorious effect In over two years at Lost
River High School, I can’t recall one occasion
when a student seriously accused another of
being gay, behind or in front of the other
student’s back. There are periodic innu
endoes, though; recently I have heard stu
dents talking about a newly-arrived transfer
student’s earring, but my impression was that
their ridicule was directed at the new boy’s
adoption of what they perceived as a gay
affectation, rather than at the student’s own
possible homosexuality. Students, especially
male students, are liable to having their ac
tions denigrated as homosexual appearing,
but the accusers stop short of actually label
ing the student as gay. Incidentally, the term
g a y is now in comm on usage even in the
most isolated areas; however, in the mouths
of nori-gays it is usually not a term that con
notes honor and respect for the gay sub
culture, but rather another expression of deri
sion, perhaps less vicious than some of the
older insulting words, but uncomplimentary
nonetheless.
A friend of mine likes to point out that ten
percent of my students are or have the poten
tial of being homosexual; why then are there
no gay students in evidence within the
student population? If there are students at
Lost River who have already recognized them
selves as being gay (and I have doubts that
there are any who have achieved this realiza
tion) they have learned to hide it well in order
to escape what would surely be almost uni
versal excoriation. Homosexual men I have
met who grew up in the area have related to
me that they were basically ignorant of their
true sexuality until after they had graduated
from high school, or at the earliest, shortly
before this time. The students who follow
them appear to have made little, if any,
progress toward self-understanding, despite
the general liberalizing of attitudes subse
quent to the gay rights m ovement arising out
of Stonewall. There are students who betray
symptoms of possible gayness, but even if
these young people do have homosexual
tendencies, they have so sublimated them
that when homosexuality is mentioned they
will often express vehement disgust
For my part I don’t condone inhumane
behavior of any kind in my classroom, and
when the opportunity arises for me to help
my students to develop a sense of the basic
right of all people to live their own lives with
out censure, provided that their activities
don’t harm anyone, I make the most of the
situation. Last spring two of my science
fiction students rushed up to my desk in
shocked disgust to point out to me that the
archvillain in the novel the class was reading,
Dune, by Frank Herbert, is a homosexual.
After calming them down, I suggested to
them that their outrage at the Baron Harkon-
nen should not be in reaction to his sexual
preferences, but rather at his cruel malevo
lence and bloodthirsty mania for power. This
wasn’t the response they had expected, but
after they had considered it for a moment
they seemed to accept it
Obviously, rural culture lags far behind its
urban counterpart in granting to its gay
members their basic rights as human beings
and fellow citizens. The circumstances which
young gay men and women develop under in
the country is disheartening, and no doubt
result in a higher number of psychological
problems for these people than they might
have had to endure in a more enlightened
urban environment However, rural civilization
invariably trails behind urban progress,
though it is inexorably drawn along toward
the com m on goals of society in general, like
a heliotrope following the path of the sun.
While all disenfranchised members of soci
ety must work toward our com m on goal of
equal rights for everyone, it is almost inevi
table that any initial evidence of progress will
become apparent fifst in the m ajor metro
politan areas. The work of rural gays is not
only to work for the achievement of equality
for all people, but also to ensure that those
gains earned through hard struggle by urban
gays also become the inalienable rights of
country folk as well.
Just Out. Oct 28-Nov 11,1983