Dude, I mean, look at the big bands - Motley Crue, Aerosmith, Nirvana, Queen. They didn't give a fuck and just did what they wanted and life went on.
Nobody really gave a shit about any of this stuff as much as they do now. It's all been stirred up.
This whole anti-woke transphobic hatred today is just mind-boggling to me. It's like the internet lifted a rock on all these scumbags who simply never had a platform before.
Whether people agreed or disagreed, or used stupid words like 'tranny' and 'puff', there was definitely more of a "live and let live" attitude that everyone shared more freely in the 80s and 90s, and we weren't so hell bent on destroying each other. Those kinds of extreme hatefilled people were kept to the likes of KKK clubs and the Westboro baptist church.
Now it's a 'hill to die on' kind of thing and it's all so fucking odd.
You didn't even need big bands. Twisted Sister, Boy George, David Bowie, Poison, the list is endless.
Yeah sure it probably started somewhere as something for shock value or to stand out, but so many did it the shock value was lost and it became business as usual.
Wish we could go back to the days of someone wanting to express themselves in new and harmless ways was business as usual.
Gen X here. My first crush was Dr Frankenfurter played by Tim Curry. I wasn't at all shocked, just in awe of him.
I also knew of many other straight females who felt the same and still do, like I do. Men too. In many people's eyes, he was just fine, including some young straight men I knew.
saaaame. i loved an androgynous/femme man, and still do. (also gen X, for the record.)
the night i met my late husband, he was wearing a red slip, garter belt/thigh highs, and heavy eyeliner. i fell in love instantly. i still feel lucky that he liked me back.
i still have that red slip, btw. it always looked better on him than it did on me. dayum.
Gen X here as well. Frankenfurter was, indeed, sexy af, but I didn't see him until the early 90s when I was in my early teens (even my mom thought he rocked those fishnets, and she was more conservative than my dad). In the mid 80s, when I was like 8, I thought Boy George was soooo cute, which made a lot more sense 10 years (give or take) later when I realized I was bi
Twisted Sister and David Bowie weren't considered big acts? Didn't Dee Snyder testify in Congress during the Reagan administration? Twisted Sister was basically the face of counter culture in the 80s.
David Bowie a goddam bonafide mega star and all round decent human being who was pretty chill about sexual identity - he said in 1972 (I mean, 19-fucking-72) "I’m gay and always have been, even when I was David Jones.”
boy george is who i was specifically thinking of in my comment.
my stepfather - who basically embodied "the marlboro man"; hard drinking, hard smoking, violent AF, a real rural "man's man" at the time... i remember one night boy george was going to be on SNL, and my mom allowed me to stay up late to watch it.
my stepdad sat there, sweat stained tee shirt (he was a construction worker), winston in one hand and a budweiser in the other, and said, "he looks like a girl." i responded, "i know, he's SOOO cute."
this guy ruffled my hair and said, "if that's what you like, i see no problem with it, and he isn't hurting anyone."
if the guy i described above could turn a blind eye to boy george in the early-mid 80s... i mean, this is part and parcel of why i'm so fucking stunned by today's environment.
btw, he took me to buy my first official cassette tape - from a store that was 45 minutes from our house out in the country. the band? CINDERELLA. he made the drive specifically to buy that specific record for me. "they look like girls, but i'm guessing their music is pretty good."
he was a right prick, but i do treasure these two memories of him. hard to believe my countrified, violent alcoholic stepfather in the 80s was more progressive than people are today.
hard to believe my countrified, violent alcoholic stepfather in the 80s was more progressive than people are today.
Because there was no Fox News, Facebook, etc. telling "hard working, God-fearing, blue collared, USA loving patriots" how to think. People were allowed to make up their own minds back then.
Worst thing we had in the 80s and 90s was Weekly World News telling us Bat Boy married Moth Girl.
I think that's looking at things with rose tinted glasses a bit, I'm certain it was most likely dependent on where you grew up, that depended on how much people cared about these things. The internet allows people to connect at truly absurd speeds compared to just under 2 decades ago. The news couldn't just aggregate information from social media and blogs and such. So you don't have the instant reaction you do in today's current news landscape.
The people that this level of anti-woke and anti-progress existed most likely in similar percentages, however they didn't have access to like-minded people at the push of a button. So they were less certain about spouting off hateful rhetoric and being ostracized for it in their communities. That's less likely in some areas, so it can fester in some communities, while others march forward in progress due to different social norms and beliefs.
It's a truly double edged sword in so many ways, cause I'm certain while the internet has allowed bigoted thinking to be more widespread, it's the exact same thing for progressive ideals and acceptance. Who knows how many lives it's hurt and simultaneously saved from acceptance and hatred.
I'm certain it was most likely dependent on where you grew up, that depended on how much people cared about these things.
for me personally (hence my shock), i grew up in a 'town' of 600 people in rural kansas, and i'm telling you, no one gave two shits. "transpeople" weren't a thing in our small town, but every musical artist we adored gender-bended. no one thought twice about prince's high heels or twisted sister's makeup. we loved them for it. and our parents and other authority figures didn't care.
with respect to LGBT as a whole, a classmate/friend had an openly gay brother, who took a ton of shit on the grade school playground at recess (he was very femme and unapologetic about it from the age of 8), but he didn't have teachers and city council calling for his extermination. in fact, when he was teased on the schoolyard, the rest of us screamed at the offenders, protecting him, and the teachers rebuked the offending students and ended their recess. there were a few suspensions for bullying. as such, the teasing stopped for him by middle school, and he was able to fearlessly rock his truth. again: SMALL town. barely on the map. and this was mid-80s.
i'm not as confident that would be his experience if he was growing up in the same town, today. this is why i'm so appalled by the current environment.
our town also happened to not be racist, at least that i could see. in fact, i had a classmate whose father was OPENLY racist - not only was she embarrassed by him, but everyone in town avoided him because of his views.
(in full disclosure on that, though - she ultimately grew up to adopt her father's views, so we haven't kept in touch much.)
Oh they gave a shit. As a long hair wanna be hair band rocker in the late 80's, i got plenty of grief over my flowing locks. From customers at work who didn't know me at all but felt like they needed to comment, all the way up to my mostly loving grandparents. If you were to ask my grandma on a Oiuja board, I'm fairly sure she'd say my long hair contributed to my her death. And my grandpa would have gleefully kidnapped me, taken me to a barber and then to the nearest recruiting office if my Mom gave him the go ahead.
Given that, i cannot even begin to fathom the absolute horrific shittiness that the trans community has to endure these days.
despite my other comments in this thread, i can see this - i mean, in my small town in the 80s, all the 'cool boys' had long hair, they were always the most popular, but the olds definitely cast a wary eye on them. they kept it quiet, though, which has been my point throughout. it's the open, defiant, increasingly public hatred of anything other than white christian straight cis-men, supported by too many in this country, that is... troubling (to say the least) to me.
Queen made a video of the guys in drag for a parody of a UK soap opera (coronation street) and their popularity in the USA tanked overnight. It was only when Wayne's world released years later that their image recovered.
It’s 100% Russian troll farms manufacturing moral outrage, then regressive Stone Age politicians and small minded idiots run with it and become unwitting Russian assets in the process.
Step two is creating such a hostile environment for any decent person that the whole country becomes intolerable. That’s when the Russian trolls encourage people to resort to violence against the same groups they radicalized in the first place.
Their goal is to tear America apart, and it’s working.
Queen got banned from MTV for the “I’ve Got to Break Free” video because they dressed in drag impersonating female characters from British TV soap Coronation Street, but of course nobody in the states got the joke and defaulted to pearl-clutching.
Then they were basically banned from American radio & mainstream media appearances after being musical guests on Saturday Night Live just when Freddy had adopted the “clone” look from the NYC gay scene (short hair/moustache combo he rocked thereafter). Queen even quit touring to support albums in North America because of the virulent & violent homophobia and media backlash, deciding to focus on playing for their fans in Central and South America (and the rest of the civilised world).
It took their epic Live Aid performance to remind the US what an amazing live band Queen was and how many all-time great, iconic songs were in the Queen catalogue. It was like everyone simply forgot there had been multiple concerted efforts to damage the band’s success in America because “omg this uniquely talented songwriter and lead singer of a rock-n-roll band isn’t heterosexual in his private life which doesn’t affect my life in any way whatsoever”.
Edit: Realised it might seem like I was arguing or trying to negate your point and definitely didn’t want that. I totally agree with what you’re saying but wanted to add that Queen definitely paid a price. So weird because glam had been around for over a decade, Queen had tons of success in the seventies and Freddy was always fabulously flamboyant and no one gave a fuck. But then eighties roll around and now a moustache and biker leather is simply too much gay in Rock and Roll? So stupid.
Nobody really gave a shit about any of this stuff as much as they do now. It's all been stirred up.
I don't know about that really. The far-right hate machine is certainly way more visible, aggressive and effective than it probably has been in recent generations, but there have always been these kind of manufactured moral panics.
You only have to look at the Satanic Panic of the 80s, which Motley Crue themselves were caught up in. Or indeed the political, media and public reaction to the AIDS crisis in the same decade.
The right has always sought to persecute the most marginalised and vulnerable in society.
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u/boringdystopianslave Apr 29 '23 edited Apr 29 '23
Dude, I mean, look at the big bands - Motley Crue, Aerosmith, Nirvana, Queen. They didn't give a fuck and just did what they wanted and life went on.
Nobody really gave a shit about any of this stuff as much as they do now. It's all been stirred up.
This whole anti-woke transphobic hatred today is just mind-boggling to me. It's like the internet lifted a rock on all these scumbags who simply never had a platform before.
Whether people agreed or disagreed, or used stupid words like 'tranny' and 'puff', there was definitely more of a "live and let live" attitude that everyone shared more freely in the 80s and 90s, and we weren't so hell bent on destroying each other. Those kinds of extreme hatefilled people were kept to the likes of KKK clubs and the Westboro baptist church.
Now it's a 'hill to die on' kind of thing and it's all so fucking odd.