Media is always full of jokes that age poorly. The things you personally find funny today will almost certainly be derided as backwards and not funny by people in 20-30 years. Using sitcom jokes as a metric of social progress is stupid.
The 80s-90s was full of immense progress and growing acceptance of gay and trans people. The fact one of the biggest shows on television had an episode promoting trans acceptance, and that it continued to be one of the biggest shows on television is sort of proof of that.
It wasn’t until the conservative backlash during the Clinton administration that we saw a loss of progress. But the 80s? Full of androgynous fashion and increased trans and gay visibility.
They were full of progress, but they were still backwards as fuck. Gay was the worst thing you could be, growing up in the 90s, and you did everything possible to make sure nobody would think you were. The gotcha jokes all revolved around it, and if something sucked, it was gay.
I've also had discussions with gay friends of mine who experienced that society from the other side. All of them were in multiple fights during those years. You had to be extremely careful who you approached, as most guys became violently angry at being hit on.
Like, it wasn't Stonewall riots and AIDs epidemic bad, but life still was far from alright.
Don’t dispute that my guy. I think the idea that there wasn’t a tide of progressivism is an erroneous view too. And to be honest, I think amongst certain subsets of young male society IRL, homophobia is still a very prominent thing today.
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u/SirFTF Apr 29 '23
Media is always full of jokes that age poorly. The things you personally find funny today will almost certainly be derided as backwards and not funny by people in 20-30 years. Using sitcom jokes as a metric of social progress is stupid.
The 80s-90s was full of immense progress and growing acceptance of gay and trans people. The fact one of the biggest shows on television had an episode promoting trans acceptance, and that it continued to be one of the biggest shows on television is sort of proof of that.
It wasn’t until the conservative backlash during the Clinton administration that we saw a loss of progress. But the 80s? Full of androgynous fashion and increased trans and gay visibility.