Paul Bakalite Emotional intelligence
In the recent film Me and You and Everyone We Know there’s
a scene in a shoe shop where a young woman helps an elderly friend choose
trainers. As the old man steps gingerly around the store in his new Nikes,
the male assistant asks the woman if the shoes she is wearing are comfortable.
“I guess so. They kinda rub my ankles, but all shoes do that. I have
low ankles,” she explains, removing one shoe and exposing a sore.
The assistant looks at her swollen ankle and, in this private moment between
them, says: “You think you deserve that pain, but you don’t”.
The woman is surprised and their eyes meet. “Well, not consciously,”
he adds.
This little scene perfectly illustrates how people often accept an uncomfortable
situation, or even avoidable physical pain, because they believe it is an
inevitable fact of life. We continue to tolerate it because unconsciously
we do sometimes think we deserve it: that we aren’t worth more or able
to attain better.
Why do some of us feel this way, perhaps without even being aware that we
do? One place to look for answers is in all the stuff that happens to us when
we are kids.
Many gay men, for instance, grow up intensely ashamed of their sexuality.
We are told, either overtly or in more insidious ways, by families, schools
and society at large that what we are, what we will become, is wrong. I grew
up in the 1970s. I was confused during my adolescence, but knew I was different
and knew I was attracted to other men. Everything around told me that gay
sexuality was unacceptable. My parents had great difficulty even talking openly
about sex, but made it clear homosexuality was, to them, at best embarrassing
and at worst repellent.
Preachy educational films about road safety and alcohol abuse had gay-shaming
shoe-horned in. One said the reason not to drink heavily was that you wouldn’t
be able to maintain your erection and “your girlfriend might think you
are queer”. The playground was a daily hell of homophobic taunting.
This was often a thin disguise for some boys’ insecurities around their
own burgeoning sexuality and fascination with mine. And all I recall from
television of the time are stereotypical, mincing queens, happy to demean
themselves for their tittering public.
Seventies comedian Dick Emery’s impression of a gay man made me wince.
Not because he wasn’t funny, but because somehow I knew I was going
to become a version of this character, and there was nowhere and no-one I
could turn to for understanding or support. 
Today, homosexuality seems more widely accepted. But, like racism, homophobia
is alive and kicking. It just isn’t fashionable at the moment. Many
boys still grow up in extremely homophobic households and many gay men and
women will have their own version of this story. Many people in ethnic minorities
will have their version too: how the ugly attitudes of others have damaged
their self-image.
If you are the parent of a gay child, you cannot change your child’s
sexuality. All you would do is risk screwing them up. In my early twenties,
my defiance around my sexuality, my flamboyance and my promiscuity, wasn’t
so much a celebration of my new-found sexual freedom as a reaction to a deeply
inhibited upbringing; a dysfunctional and unsupportive childhood. Superficially
I was ‘liberated’ but unconsciously I was still in chains. I acted
out the homophobic revilement I was subjected to throughout my teens. I didn’t
even know I was doing it. Gay men are perceived by some as sexual outlaws.
If you have already broken a social law simply by being yourself, where’s
the incentive not to break some more? No wonder some of our sexual behaviour
is extreme.
Under our display, some of us hurt. Under our bravado, some of us have low
opinions of ourselves. That’s how we were taught.
Becoming conscious of this stuff is not easy when patterns of thinking are
set up at an early age. Understanding fully what happened, and what it means,
takes time. For years, many of us will deny fiercely anything is wrong. Our
minds protect us from truths we find too difficult to bear. We may continue
blindly to hurt ourselves and those around us. Yet, in overcoming a negative
self-image at a deep level and in knowing ourselves absolutely, lies a true
and real liberation greater than that achieved in sexual freedom or flamboyant
declaration alone. It is a personal liberation that can give everything in
our lives new lustre.
You think you deserve that pain. But you don’t.
