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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 a reason that most people consider the squeal to be the better movie.
David Milch the creator of the Deadwood series wrote and produced several episodes of Hill Street Blues.
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.
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 🤦
I watched the Beckham documentary recently and although I’m not really into football it was deplorable how the media treated DB back then and really does show how sick the media are/were.
Metrosexual 2033, Metrosexual Last Light, and Metrosexual Exodus
And the VR title, Metrosexual Awakening
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
When I was growing up “f!!!ot” wasn’t even seen as a cuss word, it was just a burn you called your friends all the time. We didn’t 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 didn’t care that he was gay and 2. It was probably pretty fucking rude to call everything we didn’t like “g!y” and call eachother “f!g” as an insult. I think that realization happened for a lot of people who had gay friends in my generation, and it’s part of what helped lead to the level of acceptance and support the LGBT community has now.
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.
the shorts part makes no sense. everyone wears shorts
Well the term originated in Britain where they weren’t that popular at the time, and like the post says it was only if you wore short too much.
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Can’t even wear my chartreuse short-shorts with JUICY printed on the butt without people thinking I’m gay
I think it depended on if your shorts were above or below the knee. Cargo shorts, I want to say, are okay. I want to say that because I used to wear cargo shorts.
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.
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.
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.
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Before we had been introduced, my wife’s BFF told her I might be gay because I like opera.
Oh, and rape was funny. We were supposed to laugh at victims of rape, especially men being eaped in prisons, but occasionally women being raped as well.
I just watched some show from the 90s where the punchline is that the character was going to get sexually molested in a dark room. I can’t believe that got a thumbs up.
Was a mid 2000s hipster wearing skinny jeans and bright colors. Non hipster girls thought I was gay. Honestly frat bros were generally more pleasant and if they thought I was gay never said anything and just handed me a beer.
y’all remember what they called white people who enjoyed hiphop
That was especially hilarious when I learned about the “whig” party in early US history.
“Holy shit! They were saying that back then??”
Oof I watched a clip from clerks 2 the other day where they drop the hard R multiple times and wow I did not remember them going that hard.
That take seems a bit inaccurate.
Metrosexual meant going above & beyond in male beauty care (a pretty low bar): going to a salon to get manicures & pedicures, maybe apply foundation & eyeliner, manscaping. Possibly wearing those low-heel shoes that show the ankles without socks.
I also remember the words fag and like being ambiguous such that in written contexts I’d sometimes see the clarification good kind of fag to mean homosexual in contrast to an insult directed at someone the insulter dislikes (for being pretentious, aggravating, annoying or whatever). In speech, the distinction was often understood from tone & context, so someone could be a fag (homosexual) yet not an effing fag (detestable), and their company might be absolutely welcome for that reason. An insulter would usually pile on imagery of the subject performing homosexual acts as the recipient of such insults typically disapproves portrayals of themselves that way. The insult was a way to puncture egos & authorities claiming a traditionally masculine image. It wasn’t particularly effective against out & proud homosexuals or people who weren’t homophobic. While fag wasn’t always an insult, however, bigots & religious zealots often drew no distinction, either.
That’s my recollection too.
Men in the 2000’s new about grooming. That was nothing new. “Metrosexual” referred to men who took it to extremes. The opening scene of “American Psycho” was held up as perfect example of metrosexual behaviour. It left open the possibility that of homosexuality but could absolutely apply to people who were seen as 100% straight. It was more synonymous with “dandy”, “fop” or “narcissist”.
In my mind, gay or straight is secondary for a metrosexual. Their first love will always their own image.
That said, there was crazy homophobia back then. Ya’ll don’t even want to hear about what kind of shit was going on before people had cell phones that recorded everything.
That said, there was crazy homophobia back then.
Yes, not to understate it. Though it was a few years earlier, Matthew Shepard’s murder was prominent, and similar homophobic killings continued into the 2000s. Nightclub shootings took headlines this decade & the last, too. While parts of society seem more tolerant nowadays, regressive parts of society have hardly changed at all, so it’s hard to gauge.
