I highly recommend you check out Law and Sexuality is a blog by Chris Ashford, a reader in Law and Society, that “seeks to explore law and sexuality in a broad socio-legal framework” if that kind of thing interests you (for what my recommendation is worth anyway). He has an interesting post up about Chris Birch (I hate the fact that I’m linking the the Daily Mail again on this blog, but they were the ones who broke the story, I’m sorry to say), a 26 year old lad from a small town in Wales who, while trying to impress his Rugby team mates by attempting to perform a back flip, fell down an embankment and severely brroke his neck and putting him into a coma. He remained in that state for days until he finally pulled through, only to announce to his family and his fiancé of 3 years that he was now gay, having lost all interest in women. He went on to lose 8 stone, quit his job as a bank teller, call off his wedding, retrain as a hairdresser and move in with his boyfriend.
Yeah, maybe I should just take a moment to let all that sink in before I carry on.
He was recently the focus of a much-hyped BBC documentary called I Woke Up Gay, the focus of Chris Ashford’s piece, which followed how his life had radically changed since the accident. I suppose the obvious question to ask in all of this, that the post does a great job of trying to answer, is whether the whole thing was an elaborate lie, as there are some very dodgy aspects to Chris Birch’s story. I can’t say for certain nor is it my place to make such an accusation but assuming that he is indeed lying I think it’s pertinent to ascertain why someone would choose to go through such an elaborate ruse. I didn’t need to look far to find the answer.
See, I grew up in an environment quite similar to Chris’s small Welsh town saturated with sports culture: you stand out in any way, well, you were basically ostracised. That was fine for me, as I had no interest in joining their big burly trad man club and I was never really that good of an actor anyway. Trying to fit in with that culture would have been pointless, not that it was in itself an easy task to be different in that environment– even at 28 a lot of those memories, especially from my high school years, are still pretty painful. However, a lot of guys find the allure of being part of that dominant culture irresistible for whatever reason, but once you’re in there there are strict rules you need to follow in order to not get blackballed.
You can’t just brazenly go against the status quo like that: who do you think you are? What makes you so special? You are, after all, just a man. So you try to play along. You play along so much that the more you become ingrained in that culture the more you start to feel like you’re losing vital pieces of yourself. You neglect it so much that it becomes impossible to break out: the repercussions would be too severe so the only thing you can do is hold out for some random intervention, a kind of deus ex machina, that will free you. To quote Mark Simpson who also wrote a fascinating piece on the situation:
Maybe Mr Birch simply resolved, albeit unconsciously, to be about Mr Birch from now on, not what his family, friends and fiancée expected of him. Maybe he chose to reject heterosexuality because it made too many demands on him.
Being a bloke’s bloke isn’t always as much fun as it looks. And being honest, it usually doesn’t look that much fun anyway. You don’t have to be a ‘secret gay’ to find it miserable and oppressive. And more often than not you’ll be punished if you try to escape.
To Chris, or Kris as he prefers to be called now, that escape came when he found himself laid up in hospital after a stunt performed to impress his fellow blokes went harrowingly wrong and saw a chance to get out scot free without having to answer to anyone.
Schala, you took the words right out of my mouth. Metaphorically speaking.
Thanks so much for the kind mention Marc.
QuantumInc: Lisa Diamond, perhaps?
“or is it my place to make such an accusation, but assuming that he is indeed lying”
Sure, let’s not accuse, let’s just skip right over the accusation process and assume we’re right.
I get Marc’s point, but off hand, if you met the guy, I would trust that he’s telling the truth. Unfortunately we have no idea what determines sexual orientation. There’s evidence that even this concept of a hard-wired sexual orientation is wrong (with women anyway, google “Sexual Fluidity”). Actually I did attend a special lecture by one of the top researchers in the area of Sexual Fluidity (not a huge field, so that’s not really saying much but still). At the time all her research had been on women, though she planned to study men soon. Unfortunately I cannot remember… Read more »
The “quit as a bank teller, retrain as a hairdresser” bit comes off as wanting to appear as “gay enough”. Because everybody knows gay men are into dancing, show tunes, cosmetics, hairdressing, flowers, interior decorating, fashion and everything femmy, right?
Also, along Rhubarb’s point, aren’t there several cases of traumatic brain injuries resulting in significant personality changes?
Why would sexual orientation be special in that respect?
People also have this tendency to attack and deny real peoples’ experiences and preferences when it doesn’t suit their worldview. See “pray the gay away.”
We are, but people have this tendency to lie to fit in.
I thought we were supposed to believe people when they told us about their sexuality…