James Kavanagh has opened up about his secondary school experience, explaining how he didn’t want to be in the limelight as he wanted to hide his sexuality.
Speaking on the latest episode of Doireann Garrihy’s podcast ‘The Laughs of Your Life’, James shared that compared to primary school, secondary school was quite oppressive for him.
“I always think about this. I am so close now to what I was like in primary school. I am not what I was like in secondary school. Secondary school was kind of oppressive for me.
“When I was in primary school, yeah, I knew I was gay but it was never really discussed. I don’t think sexuality was a thing. Whereas when I went into secondary school, it was like, ‘Are you gay?’. It was the first thing someone asks you.
“I would’ve never stood up in the middle of secondary school and wanted that attention on me because I went insular. I was like a hedgehog I wanted to be anonymous in secondary school because I didn’t want that attention on me. I didn’t want to be found out.
“I think it took me a while to get over that and kind of, weirdly, go back to the way I was in primary school.”
Continuing, James explained that while he was in school, there were very negative connotations with the use of the word gay.
“I think everything just changed when you graduate [primary school]. It becomes about everything else. It becomes about who you’re dating, who you’re seeing, who you want to be seen with or whatever. I found it quite isolating as well as the only, I thought I was anyway, the only gay in secondary school.
“No one wanted to be seen with me either, really to a point. Now I did make really good friends but at that point, the first couple of years it was like, ‘Oh if you’re standing near the gay then you’re gay as well’. That sort of thing.
“It was like if you got loads of homework, ‘Oh that’s so gay’. If your lunch was s***, ‘Oh that’s so gay’. As a gay [at the time], that word means a bad thing, it’s a negative thing so you don’t want to be associated with it.”
Although James also explained that he doesn’t hold anything against his previous classmates, sharing “I went to three different schools. The first school was an all-boys school and again when I’m talking about this, I’m not blaming the people I was in the class with or anything.
“It was an overall atmosphere that was just [there] back then. It was a societal thing so I never blame the people I was at school with. There was just this homophobic air anyway.”