Who are your Hero's?

Thats a question I ask when I'm working with Adolescents whether they're gay/bi/straight. The usual response I get is "Huh? whaddaya mean, heros". I frequently work with teens and young men who have had no signicant older man in their lives. Often enough the only males they have known are fathers/stepfathers who don't connect with the kid at all. Sometimes a teacher or coach has been important but has had a limited role in the kids life. So a lot of boys grow into men without any man to look up to. No man to be a role model. No man whose life has been so exemplary that the kid wants to be like him.

This scares the hell outta me because I believe we, as males, need healthy guides in our lives. Girls and women seem to have an easier time communicating and setting examples for young females. When I was a kid in the 50's and 60's there were plenty of Heros for us to see. The nation had just gone through WWII and almost every kid had a dad or uncle or cousin who had served. Sports figures were still pretty much "clean" and not all about money. Even movie actors were fair game as heroes. And while its true that many of those "Hero's" were also flawed men they had qualities worth respect.

So my question for young or old is this; who are your hero's and why. It's also very possible that you have no Heros, if you don't I'd like to hear your thoughts about the idea anyway.

 

Personally, me and my dad don't get on that well (not because of my gayness, he's just got high blood pressure and tends to take it out on everyone else), but I guess he's always been there for me. I don't think it's worth asking young people whether they idolise their fathers, because you don't realise that you do until you're older. I guess I take it for granted that my dad will be there for me. I don't think it does any good, when kids worship celebrities in the absence of a "real world" male role model (father or otherwise), to complain about the way said celebs conduct themselves. They're not our parents, they're more like our younger uncles who we occasionally see out on the piss or whatever.

Ramble ramble. I don't know that I really have any genuine heroes. I admire some people I guess, but as above, I'm guessing I won't realise who they are until I'm older. That said, when I was a kid, there was some lesson where the teacher asked everyone who their role model was. Everyone pretty much said who you'd expect - footballers, models, Spice Girls - I said my cat, because it didn't have to do much with its life. I was, naturally, told not to be so silly. In retrospect, about 15 years on and having had a fair amount of Marxism pummeled into my skull, I stand by it.

If you want a famous hero, I'd give you William Burroughs, John Cage, Jonathan Swift, maybe Alan Turing. But I'd rather be someone else's hero than imitate some douchey celeb.

 

Cool on Burrows, the strange old bird was one of my picks too.

 

I guess I empathise with him as a square peg as much as a gay writer. He was snubbed by the "queer" "community" for years pretty much wholly for not presenting a relentlessly positive (to the point of being inhuman) picture of homosexuals. He presented us as human, as modern humans, suffering many "heterosexual" dilemmas rather than obsessing only over our (homo)sexuality until we meet Prince Charming and the credits roll, and to be honest, mosthaven't caught up yet.

 

I had a problem like when I was younger. I would look at my biological moms boyfriend and he would have some cool traits, and I would start to emulate him until he did something that I couldn't ignore or idealize. Then I would look for someone else to "mold my self around".

Not having a strong father figure, someone I could shape my philosophic view around lead to a lot of confusion for most of my childhood and teen years.

I didn't realize this then, and don't pretend to fully understand it now but looking back on it, thats the best I can explain it.

 

i didn't have any heroes growing up but i had a loving family so i guess that was my healthy guide in life. i think to have a hero or some type of person to look up to like that is really important to have growing up especially if your around negative things but after a certain age i don't think it's all that important to have.

 

i did'nt/still don't have heros really.....i get on well with my dad but i hardly ever saw him (i see him quite often now) and he wasn't really a strong figure until recently because of this. but i dont really look up to people to mould myself anymoe.

i guess a hero to me, but again this is recent, would be a girl i used to hate (and who used to hate me) who is now, somehow, my best friend.

i think its just because she doesn't take any shit from people and defends people who need it. she's just generally an all round nice person.

but no, i always looked up to my mum and got whatever i could from her. i have a step-dad kinda but i dont really like him very much

~G

 

Maybe the need for Heros is more in my mind that in reality. Yet I had Hero's as a kid. Some of my uncles who were involved in WWII in incredible fighting and returned home to be warm loving fathers and family men. My Hero's were explorers who visited jungles and mountains remote counrties and fierce people, then wrote of their adventures in National Geographic and other magazines. Men Like that filled me with awe though I suppose wasn't to hard awe a little farm kid in southern Illinois. However some of my current Heros are also explorers. The late Richard Evans Shultes was a Harvard ethnobotanist who travels throughout the Amazon Basin. The guy was fearless and had tons of great adventure...he has also contibuted greatly to modern science in the fields of botany and medicine. Marl Plotkin is also an ethnobotanist who currently works in South America. A personal friend named Patty is maybe the bravest woman I've ever met. She leads groups of doctors into remote jungle villages and teams them up with the local Shamans to provide health care.

I have other Heros as well but for some reason I especially value people who venture into unknown realms. Some of the tough little steet kids I have met in South America also qualify as Hero's because they have survived incredible hardship and gone on to become good men in their adult lives.

Who else has Hero's? Who are they...what do they do?

 

Well, I already put together a list of heroes as it is a section of MySpace profile:

Galileo, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Mohandas Gandhi, Alfred Kinsey, Dr. Jack Kevorkian

All were men except for Rosa Parks and all visionaries of something new, whether a more accurate vision of our place in the universe, our place in the natural order of the earth or a vision of humanity not separated by racial barriers. Some of my heroes exposed the lies of our sexual propriety and others challenge the laws that restrict our freedom of choice in our own passing.

Most of my heroes faced hardships and derision from the backward thinking world of their day (and still today) because their vision challenged the social norms and accepted, tho erroneous "truths."

If anyone wants to discuss the place of Thomas Jefferson in my list, it might be a whole new thread. ​

 

I really must say that I dont have any heroes. If you're looking for people who have done some really good stuff though I'd have to say my parents. Not just average stuff as in "I had 2 kids and one's in uni getting awesome marks, and I have a husband of 30 years" etc etc. Far more commendable things. Not sure if anyone is aware of the history of South Africa so it'd be kinda hard to explain. And I don't get on exceptionally well with my dad (he's not even aware I'm gay (he'd be fine with it though), we're just very different), but I do get on pretty well with my mum, but I wouldn't describe her as my "hero".

I can see the importance of having a strong role-model. One does need some kind of direction in life, but like 87s, I think I get that from my direct family mostly. Or my mom mostly actually...I hardly even know most of my family actually.

And I liked your list of heroes, Shale. I think Nelson Mandela would fit that list too

 

My hero has to be Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. His views on life have shaped me to be the person I am... Which is very sarcastic

 

Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Vercingetorix.

 

my grandfather is my hero in my heart! don't make fun of me! that's the truth , i proud of him so much!






















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In my personal life: My Paternal Grandfather

As for history/celebs: Yeah Charles Darwin has to rate a mention, Da Vinci, Henri Pauli and Thomas Hardy