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Fun fact: the term was literally invented by the British tabloid press to explain how (football superstar and husband of Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham) David Beckham could wear a sarong without being secretly gay.
I wish I was making it up but that's genuinely the origin of the term π€¦
I watched the Beckham documentary recently and although Iβm not really into football it was deplorable how the media treated DB back then and really does show how sick the media are/were.
It's like you forgot that "queer eye for a straight guy" was one of the most popular shows at the time. Would have been completely unheard of just a decade earlier.
Much of the 2000's was bridge building, many people who had never even seen or met a homosexual was first introduced to the culture by shows in the 2000's. I know I was.
My wife and I watch a lot of sitcoms before bed, often from the 00s. One had at least one anti-gay joke per episode. In one of the middle seasons, they had an episode where a character makes a gay friend and has to deal with their discomfort around gay people. Then the next episode, they're back to gay bashing. Wild times.
Every time I come across forum posts from the 2000s I lose a little bit of nostalgia for that period of time. The casual bigotry was fucking everywhere.
That came about partly because homosexuality in the US was legalized on June 26, 2003. Without the fear of raids, people started talking more openly about sexuality and the tide was turning slowly more positive that movies and TV shows that joined the conversation weren't immediately shut down.
The culture shift is stark sometimes when you watch old stuff.
On the other hand, don't let them turn that into an excuse. You know what dealt with trans rights in a pretty honest, raw, and understanding way, in the mid 1980s? Fucking Hill Street Blues. One of the cops gets together with a woman, he's happy to be with her, and then the other cops start giving him hell for it because she used to be a man. He gets disgusted and angry, goes over to her place, and she lectures him about it and sets him straight, tells him to figure out if he wants to be with her, but don't try to turn who I am into some kind of thing I did to you, or make me feel bad about it. He sort of accepts it, because she clearly has a point, and that's the end of the episode.
Hill Street Blues, man.
Watched Ace Ventura a few years ago for the first time since I was a kid. I remembered the whole trans reveal thing. Never put together as a kid they were implying that it was part of that character being mentally ill and completely forgot about Ace and the cops freaking out after finding out.
Yeah. It's absolutely nuts.
In the 60s, if you were a man in a movie, you could hit women if they were getting crazy, to set them straight.
In the 80s, the heroes of movies could commit rape (Revenge of the Nerds) or child molestation (Indiana Jones) and still be the heroes of the movies.
In the 90s, the simple fact of a character being gay, or God forbid trans, was its own comedic element, without anything additional needing to be added.
Things have changed. Like changed a lot.
I like retrospective threads like this. Puts things in perspective. Growing up under conditions like that, it would have been weird if I hadn't repressed my gender identity. Pity things couldn't have changed earlier, and let me realize sooner.
There's still weird shit on tv. For obvious reasons, I haven't seen much Big Bang Theory, but that show has some weird, casual sexism.
Hell the 2000's were bad - but it was just an extension to decades, if not centuries of homophobia. Watch the first 5 minutes of Eddie Murphy's RAW to see what was socially acceptable to say in the late 70's, early 80's.
In an effort to show my wife the things I loved as a kid, I put on Eddie Murphy's stand up. The intro was brutal.
After about 15 minutes, she asked me if we can stop watching.
I been watching some movies and TV shows from the early 2000s as a nostalgia trip with my wife and man there were some terrible lessons. We talked about the homophobia and transphobia but the misogyny, body image and sexualization of teens. The skin women being called fat with the fashion that only looked good on thin thin thin women. The insistence that there was nothing worse than being a virgin. (While the schools were doing an abstinence only education BTW). The countdown clocks to when every female celebrity turned 18 everywhere. It's surreal to think that message was everywhere.
I used to get called gay because I rolled the sleeves up on my shirt. Also because I worked with a gay guy and occasionally had lunch with him, maybe half a dozen times a year. The odd thing is that I had a girlfriend (same one 22 years later) who these idiots knew about.
The 2000s were about as homophobic as the 90s, 80s, 70s, etc. Everything was just more out of the closet then.
Theres a southpark episode about this.
This is an episode from my favorite podcast to listen to on road trips, Decoder Ring. https://open.spotify.com/episode/73XOUMOeqkFWYrCcaRMJqd This episode is about the term metrosexual.
I love this podcast. They also did an episode on truck nutz! It's just very very deep dives on random pop culture topics. And it's good journalism too, not just the C-list YouTube Video Essayist summarize-the-wikipedia-article type of stuff.
Wait, shorts were gay? Does that include cargo shorts? Cuz there were a lot of cargo shorts at the time.
Source: used to wear cargo shorts back then. I still do, but I used to too.
Can't even wear my chartreuse short-shorts with JUICY printed on the butt without people thinking I'm gay
When I was growing up βf!!!otβ wasnβt even seen as a cuss word, it was just a burn you called your friends all the time. We didnβt really think about it until I was 16 and one of our friends came out as gay. My whole friend group kind of had it click at the same time that 1. We didnβt care that he was gay and 2. It was probably pretty fucking rude to call everything we didnβt like βg!yβ and call eachother βf!gβ as an insult. I think that realization happened for a lot of people who had gay friends in my generation, and itβs part of what helped lead to the level of acceptance and support the LGBT community has now.
I was the gay friend who changed my friend group's language, and I didn't even do it intentionally. After I came out, I had a few of my friends ask if them saying "fag" or "gay" or similar was bothering me as long as they weren't intending it to be a slur against gay people. I just told them the honest truth:
"It doesn't bother me, and I don't think any less of you for using it; but I do hear it every time it's used. It jumps out just as clear as someone saying your name in a crowded room. Every. Time."
And that's really all it took. Just the awareness that those kinds of words aren't entirely meaningless. That maybe if you're only using them to describe something negative in a general sense, then there are other words you can use that work just as well, but aren't connected to an entire group of marginalized people.
It was kind of a funny year or so after that when they were trying to break the habit. One of them would accidentally say something and all that would happen is we would lock eyes for a second and I'd just give a small smile and a nod as if to say "You're fine, I don't think you're a bigot. But yea, I heard that."
Asian dude who went to high school in the 90s.
We were constantly called metro or straight up gay because we dressed like BTS before BTS was born.
But they called us that in a hateful way.
Ya 90s high school sucked for minorities.
Me in the 2000s: No lotion, no conditioner, no umbrella, no scarf. Just ashy skin, nasty hair, and choking on the rain and cold.
Not because I was afraid of being made fun of, but because I was stupid and gross.
You young GenZ homies knowing how to groom are the real champs.