fierceawakening:

anaisnein:

fierceawakening:

anaisnein:

anaisnein:

fair, fair, very fair

there used to be fewer winning zip codes though; I grew up in an extremely liberal post-hippie town in a blue state and it was still pretty much like “if this then best move to SF or maybe NYC fucking asap, maybe up to and including running away from home as a minor” wrt being gay in the late 80s and I do feel like that’s changed quite a bit for sexual orientation stuff

gayness in the late 80s

there were 450 people at my grades 9 through 12 high school, and I can think of 4 that I was aware were gay at the time, and not because they were all proudly out of the closet

one was a super obvious, really sweet guy who cultivated a highly vocal crush on Madonna and we all liked him so we just let him do that because that’s what felt kind. one kid was What? I’m a Theater Kid, Theater, Also It’s The 80s I Can Have A Forelock If I Want, one there was just heavy rumor, one was my friend P who was a nice sad closeted preppy boy I wouldn’t ever have clocked if I didn’t hang out with him and even so we never talked about it, not once. no girls at all, although looking back now I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots wrt one

basically? nobody came out till they went away to college. that was just how that was. you wanted to get out of the immediate social and family crucible first. we didn’t have internet yet, the couple hundred people around you were the only world you had. at some point in my thirties I found out my old high school now had a gay/straight alliance and I think I literally cried

again: this was a small sheltered private school in a lefty hippie town in Massachusetts

Do any other 80s kids (or older, but I think kids got a lot of it) remember the basic health information type brochures on HIV/AIDS and how intensely heavily they blamed the epidemic on bisexual men?

Because I sure do remember feeling suspicious of bisexual men and wondering why they would be so terribly irresponsible and so hurtful to all the rest of us as to spread the plague in ways even gay men didn’t.

If anyone is wondering why I immediately shut down someone the other day for telling a bi man to shut up about homophobia because wlw have it worse?

That shit is why.

Do not try to tell me, someone born in 1979, that homophobia and biphobia against bi men wasn’t as bad as anything else because I will pee in your cereal bowl.

“bi men are responsible for spreading HIV” totally yes, but it was actually worse than that

it was “actually there’s no such thing as a bi man and anyone who says he is one is lying because he doesn’t want to admit to being gay, therefore he’s exactly the sort of terrible deceitful person who would selfishly spread HIV”

with a hefty side of “oh and bisexuality doesn’t exist period, it just extra specially doesn’t exist in men, in women it’s sort of a thing but only in a totally fake immature phase bullshit way”

and both of those messages were coming from the gay community just as much as or maybe even more than from the straight oppressors

tea.gif

Yep, that’s true.

Also there was a heaping spoonful of racism mixed in, at least from what I remember. People did a lot of sensationalist talking about black men “on the down low.”

Reblogging again to add that I also remember too well when bi women were supposedly bringing Filthy Diseases to unsuspecting Decent Lesbians. At least partly thanks to proximity to bi men, I can only assume, though I don’t recall hearing it outright. Any men were bad enough.

(That would of course be besides the health threat to straight men, because assumed promiscuity and lack of selectiveness. Plus likely the association with plague-carrying bi men, again.)

It was a total fucking mess well up into the ‘90s, that I saw directly.