Close Menu
Honi Soit
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Trending
    • UTS elects new Chancellor
    • Out of the Deep: The Story of a Shark Kid Who Dared to Question Fear
    • Prima Facie: Losing faith in a system you truly believed in
    • Jason Clare seeks replacement for ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop after $790,000 expense report
    • ‘If you silence someone or shush someone, you can get out’: SISTREN is an unabashed celebration of black and trans joy. Is Australia ready?
    • Mark Gowing waxes lyrical on aesthetics, time, language, and his new exhibition ‘This one is a song’
    • NTEU wins wage theft case against Monash University
    • Turning Kindness Into Strength in ‘A Different Kind of Power’
    • About
    • Print Edition
    • Student Journalism Conference 2025
    • Writing Comp
    • Advertise
    • Locations
    • Contact
    Facebook Instagram X (Twitter) TikTok
    Honi SoitHoni Soit
    Wednesday, July 9
    • News
    • Analysis
    • Culture
    • Opinion
    • University
    • Features
    • Perspective
    • Investigation
    • Reviews
    • Comedy
    • Student Journalism Conference 2025
    Honi Soit
    Home»Perspective

    A Place To Call Homepage

    By William EdwardsMay 6, 2015 Perspective 4 Mins Read
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    If a straight schoolkid can stop giggling at reproductive diagrams long enough to hear their PDHPE teacher out, they might learn something useful. After all, sex education in NSW is literally made for them.

    Their gay counterpart isn’t so lucky. Rather confused by talk of urges they’ve never felt, that student’s first relevant sex education will probably be pornography. If you’ve both watched porn and had sex, you’re aware of how loosely I just used the word education. But don’t worry, some of us found another way to learn.

    For two and a half years, I frequented an internet forum for gay teenagers. Peer-conducted sex ed—gay boys with some experience patiently answering questions from those with none—easily beat not-for-us presentations by awkward PDHPE teachers who’d rather be playing touch footy. And that was the least the forum did for me.

    Young and closeted, I didn’t know anyone like me when I joined. Of course I was aware they existed, but knowing conceptually that people exist and actually knowing someone are poles apart. To finally meet people who shared my struggles, struggles I’d never spoken about, struggles I tried not to even think about, felt indescribably comforting.

    Younger still, I believed in God and the eternal Hellfire he prepared for the “intrinsically disordered”. What fun thoughts for a child to have! By the time I joined the forum, God and Hellfire had left my belief system, but the sense of brokenness they helped inspire hadn’t.

    It would be nice to say I learned self-acceptance through rational contemplation in a marketplace of ideas, but it would also be a lie. It was by meeting people like me but who’d succeeded, and who offered a bounty of advice, that I realised I could succeed too. And it was by having my sexuality loudly and often accepted by others, when it had never even been acknowledged before, that I grew comfortable enough to accept it myself. Gays, despite some claims to the contrary, are people too, and people as a rule crave validation by others. And what the fuck does “intrinsically disordered” even mean?

    Yet I could only ask so many questions about gay sex and relationships before changing topics, and I could only be told to have pride so many times before I got the point and wanted to be told something new. So it isn’t surprising that I started using the forum for more.

    While it was always a self-help tool—when you’re constantly surrounded by people unlike yourself, immersion among your own kind is wonderfully therapeutic—I also made a number of intense friendships over my years there. Attending a small high school I had little choice of offline friends, so I handpicked my online ones.

    I chose well. The best of them became wells of obscure common interests and indispensable sources of entirely unqualified counselling. To this day my most devoted supporter and confidante is a friend I met there. It’s almost scary to think that one day, years ago, if I hadn’t Googled what I did and clicked the right link, I wouldn’t have met them. Who else haven’t I met? Who haven’t you met?

    As it happens, someone else I met was my first date, also my first kiss. And he would have been my first boyfriend, had he not moved to Melbourne where, I suspect on reasonable grounds, he probably started eating quinoa. Fuck trams.

    I left the forum—a confraternity helping each other because no one else would—when I’d already gained all I could from it. My questions were answered, I learned to accept myself, and I met some of the most wonderful friends I’ve yet had. It was an unparalleled support network to my younger and more vulnerable self, and a resounding success precisely because I no longer need it.

    And I hope for a future when no one needs it. When gay youth receive proper education, are accepted by their offline communities, and needn’t search across oceans to find anyone they can relate to.

    Until then, I’m just grateful some of us can find solace in online communities.

    forum gay teens highschool homosexual teens internet PDHPE school Sex-ed

    Keep Reading

    The Music of Memory

    Turn Away Your Mirrors and Close the Doors

    What Was Your Name?

    Do you dream with your phone?

    Authenticating My Authenticity to Inauthentic Authenticators

    Red-Haired Phantasies: The So-Called Manic Pixie Dream Girl

    Just In

    UTS elects new Chancellor

    July 8, 2025

    Out of the Deep: The Story of a Shark Kid Who Dared to Question Fear

    July 8, 2025

    Prima Facie: Losing faith in a system you truly believed in

    July 8, 2025

    Jason Clare seeks replacement for ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop after $790,000 expense report

    July 7, 2025
    Editor's Picks

    Part One: The Tale of the Corporate University

    May 28, 2025

    “Thank you Conspiracy!” says Capitalism, as it survives another day

    May 21, 2025

    A meditation on God and the impossible pursuit of answers

    May 14, 2025

    We Will Be Remembered As More Than Administrative Errors

    May 7, 2025
    Facebook Instagram X (Twitter) TikTok

    From the mines

    • News
    • Analysis
    • Higher Education
    • Culture
    • Features
    • Investigation
    • Comedy
    • Editorials
    • Letters
    • Misc

     

    • Opinion
    • Perspective
    • Profiles
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Social
    • Sport
    • SRC Reports
    • Tech

    Admin

    • About
    • Editors
    • Send an Anonymous Tip
    • Write/Produce/Create For Us
    • Print Edition
    • Locations
    • Archive
    • Advertise in Honi Soit
    • Contact Us

    We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. The University of Sydney – where we write, publish and distribute Honi Soit – is on the sovereign land of these people. As students and journalists, we recognise our complicity in the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous land. In recognition of our privilege, we vow to not only include, but to prioritise and centre the experiences of Indigenous people, and to be reflective when we fail to be a counterpoint to the racism that plagues the mainstream media.

    © 2025 Honi Soit
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms
    • Accessibility

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.