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This Morning. Phillip comes out as gay.

Always wonder why some people are surprised/annoyed/confused when people come out later in life. It's not like they suddenly "decide" they're gay or bi etc. It's something that some of us struggle with for years. The amount of times I had to keep calm and quiet when I'd hear "jokes" and gossip about who's gay or bisexual. Listening to some people come out with ill-informed statements like "they're on heat all the time", "how can they be bi and married, surely they must be at it all the time" etc.

You get grief from some because you remain in the closet, you get grief for coming out and "shoving your sexuality in my face", you get disbelief because you "never mentioned it before, I don't believe you" and so on and so on.

Ideally, it shouldn't matter. But with bigotry ever present, maybe it's a good thing to remind some people that sexuality isn't as straightforward or easily labelled as they think.

I'm not a huge fan of PS, but it's clearly something that he felt strongly about. And it's not a "shit thing to do". If his relationship with his wife and family is a loving one (which I imagine it is), don't worry. They will be fine.
 
Count Cuckula said:
I just think it's cowardly and stupid to come out so late in life. He says he's proud to be gay but he can't be that proud if he hasn't had the balls to come out in all these years, decades infact.
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And then some wonder why more people don't come out?

There's nothing cowardly or stupid about it. It can lead to mental health issues, suicidal feelings and a huge adjustment that some of us just aren't up to, at a particular point in life.
 
Celyn said:
Yes, I'm often a bit flummoxed by people deciding that they're gay or bi after lots of years of heterosexual marriage and offspring. Still, quite a lot of people do, including one of my brothers. Luckily, any slight befuddlement I might have is not their problem, really. I should imagine television is not the most challenging industry in which to come out, but good luck to him anyway. We have only one life to live, after all.
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I only worked out i'm bisexual at the age of 47 - not sure why that should flummox anyone. For me it says more about attitudes to LGBT in the UK, where we constantly default to straight (& if not straight, then gay) and many of us who aren't straight (or gay) really struggle to know ourselves. If the information about bisexuality had been available to me as a teenager I'd have probably worked it out then.
(previous to that I assumed i was gay btw, not straight)

pseudonarcissus said:
How do you know? Those of us in engineering are just more wary of coming out.
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Agree. I've worked in engineering most of my career, in London too, and homophobic bullying is a big issue. I used to hear of many cases, and I was never out at work until a few years ago. Hope that doesn't make me a coward. I just didn't see the point in wrecking my career when i didn't have to. If I still worked in engineering on the front line I would still not be out. It's only because I work in the nice safe head office now that I feel able to be out and open.
 
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Count Cuckula said:
I just think it's cowardly and stupid to come out so late in life. He says he's proud to be gay but he can't be that proud if he hasn't had the balls to come out in all these years, decades infact.
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This says more about you than Philip Schofield.

He stayed the course of his marriage and reared his kids. Probably because he didnt want to hurt the people he loves. That's far from cowardly. That's pretty selfless if you ask me.
Now he has come out. His children are adults and his family supports him in this.

I think your view is narrow and particularly unkind.
 
Reno said:
cyril_smear gave almost exactly the same answer as me a few posts later. They can’t have seen mine.
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I was only joking - I don't have you on ignore.
Count Cuckula said:
He could have come out when it mattered, when the gay community needed him, but he was too much of a fucking coward.
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Fuck off. It's an entirely personal thing as to whether or when an individual 'comes out' - and no other individual has the right to expect them to (or when).
krtek a houby said:
You get grief from some because you remain in the closet, you get grief for coming out and "shoving your sexuality in my face", you get disbelief because you "never mentioned it before, I don't believe you" and so on and so on.
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My all-time favourite homophobic whinge is 'stop shoving it down my throat' :D
 
My mum didn't come out till late in life because, like Schofield, she had a family and kids. Marriages aren't all about sex and parenthood definitely isn't. I'm heterosexual but outside of my bedroom (and occasionally living room if the kids are out) my sexuality is completely irrelevant because I'm monogamous. If it is the case that he commited to a marriage and children for nearly thirty years before deciding to come out I don't think he can be condemmed for coming out late in life. No more than any other divorcee anyway and his wife's support suggests that it's not based on infidelity.
 
maomao said:
My mum didn't come out till late in life because, like Schofield, she had a family and kids. Marriages aren't all about sex and parenthood definitely isn't. I'm heterosexual but outside of my bedroom (and occasionally living room if the kids are out) my sexuality is completely irrelevant because I'm monogamous. If it is the case that he commited to a marriage and children for nearly thirty years before deciding to come out I don't think he can be condemmed for coming out late in life. No more than any other divorcee anyway and his wife's support suggests that it's not based on infidelity.
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Whilst I agree with this, I am conflicted because I think the same reasoning also leads to the opposite conclusion. What does it actually mean for him to say he is gay? Is he leaving his wife? Is he going to stay with her but start having sex with men? If neither of those things then he is gay in the same way that I’m an out of work actor — I might have a theoretical preference to be paid to be on stage but there’s no action that can evidence it. If your and my sexuality is relevant because we are monogamous, so is his. There are a hell of a lot of people out there that love each other deeply and stay together because their relationship gives them support and love but no longer have sex. It may be a little sad for one or both of them that this is true, but it doesn’t define them. They don’t need to tell the world about their lack of sex and come out as asexual. In short, sexuality literally doesn’t define anything about you other than who you want to have sex with, and if you’re in a sex-free relationship, at that point any status of heterosexual or homosexual is purely moot.

On the other hand, if he is leaving his wife then I’m actually even more confused. It would seem that he loves her dearly. It seems surprising to me that the pull to sex — especially with an as yet unknown person — is so overwhelmingly important to anybody above the age of about 25 that it’s worth throwing away your entire nurtured, loving family existence in order to achieve it. I mean, if somebody wants to do that then I’m not going to condemn them for it, that’s up to them. But neither am I going to congratulate them any more than if it were any 57 year old man who was bored of sex with his wife and seeking a bit of adventure with another woman. Prioritising sexual desire over everything else strikes me as a thing you have every right to do, but not particularly praiseworthy as such.

So the thing I am conflicted on — to the extent that it is anything to do with me at all, which it isn’t, and the extent that I therefore need to have an opinion, which I don’t — is what he really wants from his life as he moves forward into his 60s and beyond, and why this is best achieved by announcing his sexuality.
 
Did he need to come out and say it? Possibly he said it because it makes it more real, more concrete for him. By telling everyone, it's out there, it confirms who he is. Of course it doesn't define him, but maybe there was a (long) period of denial? I guess he's being not only honest with the world, but more importantly, honest with himself.

Christ only knows, everyone approaches it a different way and everyone's circumstances aren't going to be exactly the same. At the end of the day, whilst it's hardly earth-shattering news, I'm guessing it's life-changing or life-affirming for him.
 
kabbes said:
Whilst I agree with this, I am conflicted because I think the same reasoning also leads to the opposite conclusion. What does it actually mean for him to say he is gay? Is he leaving his wife? Is he going to stay with her but start having sex with men? If neither of those things then he is gay in the same way that I’m an out of work actor — I might have a theoretical preference to be paid to be on stage but there’s no action that can evidence it. If your and my sexuality is relevant because we are monogamous, so is his. There are a hell of a lot of people out there that love each other deeply and stay together because their relationship gives them support and love but no longer have sex. It may be a little sad for one or both of them that this is true, but it doesn’t define them. They don’t need to tell the world about their lack of sex and come out as asexual. In short, sexuality literally doesn’t define anything about you other than who you want to have sex with, and if you’re in a sex-free relationship, at that point any status of heterosexual or homosexual is purely moot.

On the other hand, if he is leaving his wife then I’m actually even more confused. It would seem that he loves her dearly. It seems surprising to me that the pull to sex — especially with an as yet unknown person — is so overwhelmingly important to anybody above the age of about 25 that it’s worth throwing away your entire nurtured, loving family existence in order to achieve it. I mean, if somebody wants to do that then I’m not going to condemn them for it, that’s up to them. But neither am I going to congratulate them any more than if it were any 57 year old man who was bored of sex with his wife and seeking a bit of adventure with another woman. Prioritising sexual desire over everything else strikes me as a thing you have every right to do, but not particularly praiseworthy as such.

So the thing I am conflicted on — to the extent that it is anything to do with me at all, which it isn’t, and the extent that I therefore need to have an opinion, which I don’t — is what he really wants from his life as he moves forward into his 60s and beyond, and why this is best achieved by announcing his sexuality.
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Being gay is a social identity as much as it's a sexuality. There are large numbers of men who have sex with other men who don't identify as gay or bisexual and there are also large numbers of openly gay men who are not having sex with men on a regular basis. Loads of people are bisexual to some extent but commit to one or the other. It's not just a case of us being interested in his sex life because being gay clearly isn't just about sex.
 
kabbes said:
Whilst I agree with this, I am conflicted because I think the same reasoning also leads to the opposite conclusion. What does it actually mean for him to say he is gay? Is he leaving his wife? Is he going to stay with her but start having sex with men? If neither of those things then he is gay in the same way that I’m an out of work actor — I might have a theoretical preference to be paid to be on stage but there’s no action that can evidence it. If your and my sexuality is relevant because we are monogamous, so is his. There are a hell of a lot of people out there that love each other deeply and stay together because their relationship gives them support and love but no longer have sex. It may be a little sad for one or both of them that this is true, but it doesn’t define them. They don’t need to tell the world about their lack of sex and come out as asexual. In short, sexuality literally doesn’t define anything about you other than who you want to have sex with, and if you’re in a sex-free relationship, at that point any status of heterosexual or homosexual is purely moot.

On the other hand, if he is leaving his wife then I’m actually even more confused. It would seem that he loves her dearly. It seems surprising to me that the pull to sex — especially with an as yet unknown person — is so overwhelmingly important to anybody above the age of about 25 that it’s worth throwing away your entire nurtured, loving family existence in order to achieve it. I mean, if somebody wants to do that then I’m not going to condemn them for it, that’s up to them. But neither am I going to congratulate them any more than if it were any 57 year old man who was bored of sex with his wife and seeking a bit of adventure with another woman. Prioritising sexual desire over everything else strikes me as a thing you have every right to do, but not particularly praiseworthy as such.

So the thing I am conflicted on — to the extent that it is anything to do with me at all, which it isn’t, and the extent that I therefore need to have an opinion, which I don’t — is what he really wants from his life as he moves forward into his 60s and beyond, and why this is best achieved by announcing his sexuality.
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This all seems to assume that sexuality is solely about who you want to fuck. Gay people live in sexless relationships too. I could quite see Schofield staying with his wife for all the things that form a long term loving relationship other than the shagging. Sex isn't the sole factor in relationships. Maybe not even the primary one.
 
I'm afraid my first unworthy Maily thought was '57, wife and two kids: not all that gay then'. But when that rather hasty, if not plain nasty, reaction was given very little time I more or less thought 'Poor bloke has perhaps been unhappily struggling with this for decades; he may have got married before his sexuality settled down, or he may have resisted his sexuality at the time. Any number of possibilities He seems relieved any how. I wish him well'

The other thing is that presumably somebody can be one sexuality (to the extent that anybody is completely one anything, that is) and then realise that they aren't any more, either relatively suddenly or dawningly.

'I didn't know I was gay until recently': perhaps you really weren't to any great extent.

My cousin Jo decided they were gay after a marriage and children; they didn't realise that they had been gay all along. It was 'So I'm gay now'. I got no sense they felt that they had been 'living a lie' until that point.
 
maomao said:
Being gay is a social identity as much as it's a sexuality. There are large numbers of men who have sex with other men who don't identify as gay or bisexual and there are also large numbers of openly gay men who are not having sex with men on a regular basis. Loads of people are bisexual to some extent but commit to one or the other. It's not just a case of us being interested in his sex life because being gay clearly isn't just about sex.
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If it’s a social identity (which it is, although this raises questions about whether it’s a healthy thing for the future for society to continue to place sexuality at the core of identity, but that’s another issue), it is an identity that he doesn’t have. He’s not in a gay relationship, after all. Identity is performative and relational, not just something you feel. This is what I mean when I say I don’t really understand what an announcement like this really means.
 
Spymaster said:
This all seems to assume that sexuality is solely about who you want to fuck. Gay people live in sexless relationships too. I could quite see Schofield staying with his wife for all the things that form a long term loving relationship other than the shagging. Sex isn't the sole factor in relationships. Maybe not even the primary one.
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Then in what way is he gay?
 
kabbes said:
If it’s a social identity (which it is, although this raises questions about whether it’s a healthy thing for the future for society to continue to place sexuality at the core of identity, but that’s another issue), it is an identity that he doesn’t have. He’s not in a gay relationship, after all. Identity is performative and relational, not just something you feel. This is what I mean when I say I don’t really understand what an announcement like this really means.
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You can't know what he feels and how he has dealt with his sexuality up to now. I'm pretty sure there are things he isn't making public and that's his right.
 
Reno said:
You can't know what he feels and how he has dealt with his sexuality up to now. I'm pretty sure there are things he isn't making public and that's his right.
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Yes, it is his right. I think I’ve made it pretty clear that the reality of his life is not my business. Doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the concepts involved, though.
 
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