Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

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Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Spoonbill »

I'm entirely heterosexual, me. Not even slightly bicurious even, which I realise makes me rather unhip. So you'll appreciate that the idea of stuffing my head between another man's hairy thighs doesn't possess an enormous appeal, any more than the idea of lying at the bottom of a heap of writhing, sweaty male bodies does. And yet the sport of rugby required us to engage in precisely those kind of activities....and playing rugby was compulsory.

Now it makes sense to me to assume that all heterosexual men would immediately stop playing rugby the moment it was no longer compulsory for them to do so. And yet some male persons doggedly continue to engage in the entirely perverse sport of rugby for years thereafter - and most of them would, I'm certain, attempt to knock one's teeth out if one suggested to them that they might consider stepping out of the closet.

So it would appear that compulsory rugby gives rise to a sub-race of violence-loving closet homosexuals. Was that, then, the fundamental idea when certain schoolmasters at Rugby seized on William Webb Ellis's spontaneous act of lunacy to create the game? After all, in any other school Webb Ellis's act would have been rightly seen as wantonly disruptive behaviour and his legs would've been soundly slapped. One can only assume that there was some kind of sub rosa gay agenda at Rugby amongst certain masters, who sought to create a larger gay sector of society than then existed.

At CH Horsham, everything was ratcheted up a further notch by combining rugby with doorless toilet cubicles, communal showers, baths with no screens around them and the preservation into modern times of a uniform which Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp might just as well have designed on a rainy afternoon in a public convenience.

I consider the fact of my having emerged from CH Horsham heterosexual to be largely due to my having been fortunate enough to have been a spazz at sport, thereby escaping rugby by the age of 14. As for the partitionless, doorless facilities, I never used the doorless crappers, only took baths at 2.00 a.m. and was only in a communal shower once in my entire CH career.

Has anyone tried suing the school for messing with their head?

And was the man who designed the doorless toilets ever brought to justice and hanged from a lamppost?
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by midget »

Oh Sir,you would'nt be trying to stir things up, would you?
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Mid A 15 »

Welcome back Spoony!

Fom a father of 3 who played rugby into his thirties :wink:
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Spoonbill »

Mid A 15 wrote:Fom a father of 3 who played rugby into his thirties :wink:
See how determined they are not to step out of the closet?

You poor wounded thing. I feel your pain.

Award this man two-and-a-half million pounds in damages.
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Mid A 15 »

Spoonbill wrote:
Mid A 15 wrote:Fom a father of 3 who played rugby into his thirties :wink:
See how determined they are not to step out of the closet?

You poor wounded thing. I feel your pain.

Award this man two-and-a-half million pounds in damages.
The name's Miller not Mills :)
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by J.R. »

There is absolutely no such thing as 'straight' or heterosexual. 99% straight are straight. 99% homosexual are homosexual. There are varying degrees of sexuality in between.

A little know interesting fact - If you enclose female dolphins without enough males to stimulate them, they will quite happily engage in same-sex relations. Bonobo chimps aren't bothered which way they 'swing' either.

So taking legal action against a school for instilling any form of homosexual feelings seems absolutely stupid. After all, we were all boys together during our time there before the integartion of Hertford. The sap rises and without any female stimulation, curiosity takes over.

I'm sure that if some of the more senior female posters on here are brave enough, they will confirm my observations.

By the way, for those of you that don't know, I have been married for well over 30 years - We have two daughters and four grand-children, and just for the record, I don't even own a closet !!!!
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by blondie95 »

Im sorry but i just dont understand how your arguement could stand? Could you not apply it to all so many things in life?

I honestly dont think boys/men who play rugby think of what they are doing as anything like you have described-its a game that requires skill, fitness, a drive and ability to play as a team! Nothing more in my opinion
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by sejintenej »

Spoonbill wrote:
Now it makes sense to me to assume that all heterosexual men would immediately stop playing rugby the moment it was no longer compulsory for them to do so. And yet some male persons doggedly continue to engage in the entirely perverse sport of rugby for years thereafter - and most of them would, I'm certain, attempt to knock one's teeth out if one suggested to them that they might consider stepping out of the closet.

So it would appear that compulsory rugby gives rise to a sub-race of violence-loving closet homosexuals.


But of course; it was legitimised groping carried out in public and arranged and supported by the male members of staff.
Spoonbill wrote:One can only assume that there was some kind of sub rosa gay agenda at Rugby amongst certain masters, who sought to create a larger gay sector of society than then existed.

At CH Horsham, everything was ratcheted up a further notch by combining rugby with doorless toilet cubicles, communal showers, baths with no screens around them and the preservation into modern times of a uniform which Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp might just as well have designed on a rainy afternoon in a public convenience.
The intentions of those masters at Rugby should be discussed in their presence - a bit downhill after you cross the Styx

In Col A we did have doors to the loos* - the outside ones (extremely cold in winter as opposed to round things falling off) were reserved for the younger boys and were less public; this made it easier for older boys to make their approaches. The downstairs showers never worked in my time - we had to use the bowls in which we would sit in our shorts when necessary. One bath was hidden by a screen - the other was entirely open allowing those interested to check out the talent.
The lav-end crapper didn't have a door but nobody could see in.
Spoonbill wrote: I consider the fact of my having emerged from CH Horsham heterosexual to be largely due to my having been fortunate enough to have been a spazz at sport, thereby escaping rugby by the age of 14. As for the partitionless, doorless facilities, I never used the doorless crappers, only took baths at 2.00 a.m. and was only in a communal shower once in my entire CH career.
In my case I came out very anti male homosexual following minor experiences at CH but far more from a determined attempt on my virtue by a doctor (not connected with CH) whom my mother had authyorised to take me into Horsham. Women (lesbians) can do whatever they like because by definition they are not going to try anything on me.
Spoonbill wrote:Has anyone tried suing the school for messing with their head?
In an age where homosexuality is virtually demand? be realistic. Remember the last whitewash when there was a government enquiry into the suicide of that CH pupil; not a chance. They would prove that to even consider sueing them your head has to have been totally messed up in your later childhood..
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Jo »

Spoonbill, you are the taxi driver who drove me home a couple of months ago, and I claim my five pounds :D

For some reason best known to himself, he turned the conversation to sport and opined that footballers were "real men" but all rugby players, having been to public school and all that, were obviously closet homosexuals. He then went on to share, somewhat conspiratorially, that he had embarrassed himself by sharing this view recently who turned out to have been at public school. Didn't know where to put himself when he found out, he said.

I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have - he was just too easy a target - but I couldn't help it.... "Would this be a good moment to let you know I went to public school too?" He went strangely quiet for the rest of the journey. He didn't get a tip :lol:
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

Oh gosh, reading and replying to this thread is far more interesting than getting on with what I came in to do (Uni on good Friday - well that's what happens when you don't save the final version of the presentation you have to give in UK next week, and just as you are about to leave home you find that half the slides are missing).

Ummmmm, sort of lost the plot - just persuaded two recalcitrant printers to behave themselves. Now, where was I?

Oh, yes. Welcome back Spoonbill - and in such style :wink:

My take on thugby is that it is more about bullying and other forms of testosterone tossing than homosexuality.

JR - are you there? Do you have any statistics on the occurence of homosexual male rapes v heterosexual males committing the crime?

Gotta go and find those slides ..................................

xx
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Angela Woodford »

J.R. wrote:A little know interesting fact - If you enclose female dolphins without enough males to stimulate them, they will quite happily engage in same-sex relations.
Terrific style, Spoonbill ! :lol: :lol: :lol: even despite my things-to-do-before-daughters-arrive Easter list.... :x

Your theory is most interesting! However, when I think back to the Hertford years, I must honestly say that the opposite was true.

There was the no nudity rule. Dressing and undressing in the dorm was to take place only under a nightdress. In the gym changing corridor everybody turned towards the wall whilst removing their aertex gym blouse, so the back of anyone's bra was the only bit visible. Linings and blues of course were worn during games and gym, then back into uniform and never removed. I was reminded of this, whilst reading Louie Angus' "Blue Skirts into Blue Stockings".

"Our legs never saw the light of day, they were swathed in thick ribbed black stockings of wool. We wore them all the year round, no matter how hot it was; no heat-wave...no sports or gymnastics... relieved us of them."

That was in 1916. We were lucky really!

In all those seven years, I never saw another girl fully undressed. Funny, I was going to type "naked" but didn't! Hmm.

Particular friendships - between girls of another House, and girls older or younger in the same House were frowned on. It was fine to gaze at a crack as an official goddess though. One could be cracked on a Senior in another House - ideal, because it made her even more remote and goddess-like.

There was no demonstrative behaviour, really; I can remember kneeling by a smaller girl's bed to console her (sob, sob, behind-with-needlework, want to go home, sob). Getting out of bed for this purpose was just about OK. But there was so little emotional or physical contact between us that this seems astonishing nowadays.

I hated, hated, hated having to admit I was "off-swimming" and having this recorded in a notebook! As more of us began to use Tampax, this embarrassing list procedure died away. I dreaded making that surreptitious pilgrimage to the down-the-end loo (frosted glass door) clutching something in one hand and hoping that the loo with the incinerator would be free.

There was confrontational behaviour during hockey of course, and for those who were good at hockey I suppose this was cathartic? Oh yes, an odd memory - not long after leaving CH, a friend announced she was getting married. The future husband, a Brittas-style man, announced pompously that "when a girl gets married, the first thing to go has to be her best friend..." I felt so furious that I imagined grabbing my favourite hockey stick from the Pav and thwacking his shins. (That stick was the Indian head clomphy one with the blue handle.) So all that hockey had got under my skin after all!

I suppose that our most intimate moments were the life-saving classes with Nellie?

So, referring back to JR's dolphin theory, I must admit that dolphins in an all-female environment must lead a far more girlie-exciting life than we ever did!

Love from Munch
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CH Hertford Designed To Be Asexual

Post by Angela Woodford »

Angela Woodford wrote:
J.R. wrote:A little know interesting fact - If you enclose female dolphins without enough males to stimulate them, they will quite happily engage in same-sex relations.
Terrific style, Spoonbill ! :lol: :lol: :lol: even despite my things-to-do-before-daughters-arrive Easter list.... :x

Your theory is most interesting! However, when I think back to the Hertford years, I must honestly say that the opposite was true.

There was the no nudity rule. Dressing and undressing in the dorm was to take place only under a nightdress. In the gym changing corridor everybody turned towards the wall whilst removing their aertex gym blouse, so the back of anyone's bra was the only bit visible. Linings and blues of course were worn during games and gym, then back into uniform and never removed. I was reminded of this, whilst reading Louie Angus' "Blue Skirts into Blue Stockings".

"Our legs never saw the light of day, they were swathed in thick ribbed black stockings of wool. We wore them all the year round, no matter how hot it was; no heat-wave...no sports or gymnastics... relieved us of them."

That was in 1916. We were lucky really!

In all those seven years, I never saw another girl fully undressed. Funny, I was going to type "naked" but didn't! Hmm.

Particular friendships - between girls of another House, and girls older or younger in the same House were frowned on. It was fine to gaze at a crack as an official goddess though. One could be cracked on a Senior in another House - ideal, because it made her even more remote and goddess-like.

There was no demonstrative behaviour, really; I can remember kneeling by a smaller girl's bed to console her (sob, sob, behind-with-needlework, want to go home, sob). Getting out of bed for this purpose was just about OK. But there was so little emotional or physical contact between us that this seems astonishing nowadays.

I hated, hated, hated having to admit I was "off-swimming" and having this recorded in a notebook! As more of us began to use Tampax, this embarrassing list procedure died away. I dreaded making that surreptitious pilgrimage to the down-the-end loo (frosted glass door) clutching something in one hand and hoping that the loo with the incinerator would be free.

There was confrontational behaviour during hockey of course, and for those who were good at hockey I suppose this was cathartic? Oh yes, an odd memory - not long after leaving CH, a friend announced she was getting married. The future husband, a Brittas-style man, announced pompously that "when a girl gets married, the first thing to go has to be her best friend..." I felt so furious that I imagined grabbing my favourite hockey stick from the Pav and thwacking his shins. (That stick was the Indian head clomphy one with the blue handle.) So all that hockey had got under my skin after all!

I suppose that our most intimate moments were the life-saving classes with Nellie?

So, referring back to JR's dolphin theory, I must admit that dolphins in an all-female environment must lead a far more girlie-exciting life than we ever did!

CH Hertford was designed to be asexual.

Love from Munch
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by jhopgood »

I thought a couple of moments before getting involved in this thread as I couldn't work out whether it was about homosexuals produced by Rugby, CH, toilets with no doors, nudity or whatever.
I ought to show my interest as I have a homosexual brother in law (died of AIDS 12 years ago), homosexual sister in law, and homosexual nephew on my wife's side. (He owns and runs an artists colony in Costa Rica). My brother and sister in law came from a family of 9, never played rugby nor were any way near a single sex educational institution.
I am a father of 2, grandfather of 2, and to be honest, whilst I knew that there were some liaisons at CH, it never really crossed my mind to get involved. It is possible that my first Housemaster, Cherniasky, stopped being a housemaster after some boys were found in the same bed when he was on watch, but he was replaced by someone we all thought was more likely to be homosexual, so we couldn't see the rationale. Certainly in my time in Barnes B, I can't remember any relationships, but then I wasn't looking out for them.
As far as I was concerned, Rugby was just a formalised version of British Bulldog, which we used to play on the asphalt at my junior school. It had the advantage of being played on grass but other than that had no sexual connotations.
Toilets without doors were exactly the same as those in the outside playground at my junior school, so that was no shock.
What was a bit of a shock was the trough after the game, but then we were all in the same state of undress and you would have to be pretty stupid to try anything on there.
From my limited experience, it is highly unlikely that environment creates homosexuals unless they are that way inclined anyway.
So forget about rugby, CH, nudity or whatever, I just don't buy it.
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by J.R. »

I'm, totally with JH on this one. I think it's in your genetic make-up, (not rouge, girls). Out of 11 surviving cousins, I have i gay male cousin and one lesbian, so I suppose that goes with the national average of 10%.

I can fully understand that a really traumatic experience as a child such as a young girl being abused by an older male might make her inclined to lesbianism in later life.

Rugby is a non starter as far as a reason is concerned.

There are and always have been gays in all professions, though more obviously these days as it has become fashionable to 'come-out' and male homosexuality is no longer a crime.
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Re: Was CH Horsham Designed to Be Gay?

Post by Spoonbill »

Now don't get me wrong - I'm neither anti-gay nor so idiotic as to imagine for one second that a person can be moulded into being gay by circumstance.

But I do believe that the world is full of dormantly-bisexual persons, so to speak, who for the most part go right through life without even thinking of exploring their non-straight side, for the simple reason that they've never found themselves in circumstances liable to awaken their bicuriosity.

I can't help feeling that a combination of compulsory close-contact sport, doorless khasis and screenless baths and showers must surely go some way towards putting thoughts into heads which might otherwise never had experienced those thoughts.

I can't help noticing that American Football is played in a suit which covers the entire body....which makes a certain amount of sense to me, as long as the teams don't adjourn to a doorless toilet block for an all-nude pooping session immediately after the match, followed by unbridled communal showering and ogling.

Like I said, it's the messing with one's head aspect I have misgivings about. Gay persons are fine by me, because heaven knows, they have no say in the fact that they're gay. Only a caveman would actually be anti-gay. A spoonbill would never be.
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