The millennials spearheaded the LGBT rights, but we’re also the ones who had been trans- and homophobes growing up in 90s and 00s, with or without realising it.
Character development, I guess?
Spearheaded the LGBT rights?
Some of us literally battled it out in the streets in the 80s and 90s. People fucking died. We were expelled from our families.
It’s hard not to take offense to your comment. Millennials did not spearhead shit. You were GIVEN the opportunity to be yourselves.
edit: Don’t think that I don’t appreciate that we still have boundaries to push. The war against sexuality isn’t over, and the old warriors are still here. We just don’t make as much noise these days.
It’s hard not to take offense to your comment. Millennials did not spearhead shit. You were GIVEN the opportunity to be yourselves.
As a Millennial hard agree there. The old guard had to deal with mobs running the bars, institutions letting them die and in select places forming militia to prevent people from going out and beating queer people for fun. Millennials aren’t the spearhead, we’re like mid shaft of the spear at best.
That being said we’re all gunna have to go back to the hardcore roots if we want to uphold the civil rights wins of the past. This all is gunna get messy.
Yea, as a millennial, it’s kinda depressing to hear some of us take credit for being the spearhead when previous generations were the ones who went through things like the Stonewall Riots and started Pride.
We absolutely were not the spearhead. We were supposed to be the bulwark to prevent it from backsliding and we failed.
My talent as a homophobic millennial knew no bounds in the 2000s
I’d unironically call some straight girl a raging lesbo for wearing old burkes, then jump on the GSA forum and tell some teenager “it’s okay to be gay, it gets better, when I first came out you’d get bashed so things are improving” like I wasn’t part of the ongoing problem…
What was wrong with us back then!?
(I was definitely transphobic AF back then too! I have no excuses for it, especially because it turns out I tick that box as well)
We Millenials consumed Gen X made media and Gen Xer’s pop cultural was very “Its fun to be cruel to weaklings and weirdos, be against consumerist modern life dweebs, and swear in front of old ladies. We’re so punk.”
Gen X 90’s culture being all about being a renegade nihilistic slacker as a reaction to the 80’s culture which was a lot more colorful, consumerist, and earnest at an almost saccharine level, even when it was trying to “rebel”.
EDIT: To clarify, Millenials consumed edgelord stuff from Gen X, and homophobia was edgey.
The “not that there’s anything wrong with that” episode of Seinfeld kind of summarizes the attitudes at the time. I don’t think the majority of millennials ever were against gay people (I’m sure there were exceptions regionally) but there was heavy stereotyping, which of course was a form of othering. And yeah the 90s were very no filter in general. At this time people viewed poking fun as a form of acceptance. But it took some time for the stereotypes to die down.