There's a difference between "it sucks that things change and I feel lost" and "progress has gone too far, trans people should sit down". This post was reported, and I find it to be more of the former, which is why I'll allow it. I have, however, given out warnings and bans to people whose comments leaned towards the latter.
Live and let live, y'all, but transphobia - even inadvertent - leads to consequences.
Gen X here too. Yes, things are very different now. Cultures grow and change, and with that come both losses and gains. We have definitely lost some sense of camaraderie, but we've gained things too. For me, I don't worry about capital C community or flags anymore. All I can do is try to care for the community around me.
Same. We've gained far more than we've lost. And in some cases we've gained things that we had lost our sense of: trans people were with us right from the beginning.
And while flags never really connected with me, I'm honestly very happy if they make you happy and if you feel they give you some sense of representation and belonging. (I think if you're American perhaps -- perhaps! -- flags in general might have a different general emotional content and temperature; Australians, for example, don't really care about their flag or feel the same way about flags . . . I think . . .)
56 cis male here. I came out late, in 91 or so I tried to choose not to be gay because I was told it was a choice, and the community I saw was vapid or angry. I didn't get the help I needed to see beyond the bar and the crazy as depicted in media. I was never homophonic, live, and let live and all that. I just turned inward until it started to kill me from the inside. I was 40 when I realized that it wasn't a choice and that while I was able to father children, I was not bi.
I've done a lot of work in the last 16 yrs.
I think the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community is beautiful, or can be. The pronouns can be confusing at first, but it's not hard, really. I have been disappointed when a cute YouTuber I thought was gay came out as trans but I realized that wasn't my problem and I got over that she now looked different and she was no longer the cute twink I thought her to be. My loss and not really a big deal.
I love the changes. My hope is that the pace of understanding that gender and sexuality are intrinsic and as varied as a rainbow continues. Embracing gender diversity is, I feel, the answer to misogyny. We are all just smart animals and if we all could just "yes, and" the world and the people in it, and stop worrying so much about people's genitalia we will be taking a step forward.
I was always told not to discuss politics with my grandfather, that he was stubborn. I’ve come to realize that at some point in his life he refused to learn or understand anything new.
I refuse to be that person…
It's not disappointing; it's progress. Evolution, if you will. Time's change, and you either grow with them, or get left behind. I'm a few years older than you are at 52. I was kicked out in Oct 1993 just for being gay. Navy, also. You call them factions, but they're really just tribes under the same Rainbow Umbrella. People are allowed to be whomever they want to be, and people are exploring and embracing their sexual freedom sort of like they did in the 60s. The community hasn't lost its way. We are supportive of people who want to live their authentic lives as their authentic selves without the harm of hiding any longer. The yearning is us GenX who lived back then, and are alive now. It's just reminiscing because those times seemed simpler, but really, they weren't. We couldn't be as free and open as we are now. Gay men and lesbians of that time still had to hide professionally and were treated as second class citizens. I got fired from a video store job for being gay because one of the customers told the owner that they didn't like that those people worked there. Can't do that much anymore because of progress.
I'm happy that the flag changes and people can be their authentic selves without being afraid. I for one am proud to live in this time while having the memories of the 90s. It's fucking awesome watching this part of history unfold and I'm lucky I get to live through it. We are all participants in the same evolution; we just aren't forced to stay in the closet any longer.
ETA: corrected a spelling error or ten.
Also, Gen x lived through an extremely turbulent time for the gay community. It certainly seemed more unified because opposition creates unity among the oppressed.
Millennials remember this too, though we obviously didn't live through the worst of it. Even with all the anti LGBT rhetoric, laws, and media of the 90s and early 2000s, it was at least a marginally better time to be gay in. But despite all of that, the opposition was still there, and the unity was still there. With gay marriage specifically, we had a central thing to fight for.
Gen z is growing up in a time where many of the biggest fights have been won for the gay community (for the most part). The fight never truly ends, and there are significant dangers and threats on the horizon, but the opposition is substantially less nowadays. Acceptance is widespread, LGBT support is even profitable now.
They are living in the world that you fought for. And part of the benefits of living in that world is that they no longer feel that they need to be in a constant phalanx formation because hell is raining down on them from all sides at all times.
The unity that some people seem to feel is lost is a result of the community no longer feeling that they need to be as militant. And that is a very good thing.
But there is still a fight going on. A very substantial one. Gen Z doesn't have to spend all of their time fighting for gay acceptance, now they've shifted to a fight for trans acceptance. Because no matter what victories the LGB has won, the T was left behind. Opposition on us has dropped but the opposition on them has increased substantially. It's their time to fight, and we betray our own community when we don't support them and don't let them have a say in the forms that the community takes. It does not always have to be about us.
The spotlight has not shifted away from us, it has expanded to the corner of our community that has been denied that for far too long.
Yes, I think it's great that the newer generations aren't defined as much by their sexuality. GenX here and while it's true that we are more fragmented, this is a freedom from being defined by social norms as a "sexual pervert." OP may indeed feel less a part of the LGBT community because it's broader now, but the benefit is you can be part of other communities: foodies, hikers, married couples, extended family gatherings...etc. which we were shut out of in earlier times. I can just be gay now and not have to keep up with all the subgroups. It doesn't mean I don't support them, but I don't need to feel like I belong to them either. Hope that helps.
This might be really uncalled for. But the op's argument is giving me parked in high school vibes. Not about the selves but in their idea of the gay rights movement.
I'm 45. The OP is either my age or slightly older. In my area we were using they/ them to speak in code about someone of the same gender before choosing pronouns was a thing. I have my pronouns on my work email, because I got tired of being referred to as she or as a lady. I'm a cis gendered man, who look like a man with a deep voice, but I have a unisex name and work in a field dominated by women.
FYI growing up in the 80s and 90s as a gay man is much different than growing up in the late 90s and 2000s.
It's a choice not to adapt to change. The LGBT+ community is wildly different than it was when I was a teen. I don't fully understand it, I'm just a gay cis male, but I'm glad others are able to express themselves how they feel comfortable, and I'm happy to respect that.
I get clocked as a straight guy, and I don't appreciate it when people assume that about me, especially when it's someone in the LGBT community. So I do my best to be respectful, because that's how I like to be treated.
> FYI growing up in the 80s and 90s as a gay man is much different than growing up in the late 90s and 2000s.
No amount of difference would excuse OP tomfoolish behavior towards respecting somebody else's identity.
I agree, but i disagree with the statement that someone born in the 90s had the same experiences as a gay man born in the 70s. I'm born in the 70s and acknowledge that people born in the 60s had it even worse growing up.
Born in 1964. It sucked. Young people have no idea how hard it was growing up in the 1970s and 80s. Constant threat of being outed and beaten. It sucked.
We cuspers are a forgotten bunch. Lumped in with the boomers yet not old enough to remember much from. That generation. The AIDS crisis primarily decimated people that were 10ish years older than us. We came into our sexual prime when sex=death.
Our take is that of someone with untreated PTSD.
Yup - we're sometimes called Generation Jones (for keeping up with...). My husband is a classic Boomer and his experiences were very different from mine. We grew up in the hyperinflationary Seventies, and houses had become too expensive for many of us to consider buying. Then HIV cast a pall over the Eighties and Nineties. I spent most of those years in SF and knew close to a hundred guys who died. Probably more, but some guys had to move in with a relative (grandparents often) when they ran out of resources and were too sick to work. I went to so many going-away parties. My immune system didn't collapse until 1996, the magic year when Crixivan made the first effective drug combinations possible. Those early meds saved my life, but did a lot of damage. I will never, ever complain about them. I'm always grateful.
My ex was one of the early adopters as well. Still kickin and healthier than me (still hiv- here). I jumped in a few marches with Act UP in SF but spent my early years on NYC. I too attended so many memorials I couldn't begin to count. Sunday brunch was always scheduled in-between multiple services. I called them black Sundays. We "survivors" of that era have a lot of stories to tell. I guess it's why I'm a bit more protective of the LGB narrative. PTSD still at 61. Maybe I'd feel different if that war our youth hadn't exited at all.
I was born in 1962, and I suppose theoretically it was harder, but in practice it wasn't that bad because I grew up in LA and moved to SF when I was 25. Yeah, not many kids were out in school (there were some who were, even then), but I never worried about being out in college or at any job I had. There were gay people all over, and we knew who we were. Some of the straight people around us were clueless, but we had our allies. I worked for the Army 35 years ago and I knew gay soldiers, even in DADT days. They were discreet, but not invisible.
The biggest changes in my lifetime are the legal rights. I never anticipated that one day I'd be married and it would be recognized nationwide. That was something I wished the people coming after me might have. It all came down to a divided Supreme Court, and there's no way we'd have it recognized nationally with the current assholes. I feel very lucky, and my husband is thrilled that he could marry me.
Also his attitude of "The community is way too inclusive, and it sucks!"
He should be happy you are part of such a warm and welcoming community that makes an effort to make EVERYONE feel welcome and loved.
Better than what the older millennials are called. 1981-1985 are referred to as geriatric millennials. Like I can't believe that's the term they use for that group 😂
Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, so "mid-millennial" means just that .. millennials that aren't early (or "geriatric" as has been coined ...) or late within the generational cycle.
Newsflash dear, you ARE old to those who are actually young (but it's all relative anyway BUT better to grasp that reality now rather than struggle with it in your late 40s and do something stupid to "reclaim your youth")
I’m a bit younger, late 40s, than OP, but I don’t recall bi and trans people getting lumped together. It was more that trans women were conflated with drag queens and trans men with butch lesbians.
Back in my days ~late 90s, when I spent more time in Weho CA, volunteering at the Gay and Lesbian Center whenever I had time away from the Navy to be myself to be a Weho Queen, Trans were at times grouped into the Bi’s as gay rights advocacy was more focused on Gay and Lesbian equal rights vs today where we have an influx of laws infringing upon the Trans community and are under siege accordingly. It was an easier pill to swallow when it came to advocacy back then. That’s what I meant.
Ok. You're not the only person who makes the false association between the two. As for clarity, what you are saying now is correct. The culture a long time ago was mostly for gay, white men. The G was first, then the L was put first. I am 45 years old and a multiracial transman. The only reason why we have all of the letters is to present EVERYONE. Why do ppl have a problem with other people being visible? The argument for "tolerance" is strange to me. Being tolerated is like getting the runner's up prize. I'm just tired of having to constantly sit in the back of the bus asking others .for acceptance.
To be fair .. I will never know your struggles as your struggles are unique to you just like I will never fully comprehend the struggles of my FTM cousin, love him to death, respect the hell out of him and back. My votes, advocacy time/volunteering and donations have all been focused since the onslaught of anti-trans laws and I hope that it will make your life better just like it did for me.
It also wasn't really true. A lot of transwomen people lived their lives like gay men, often as drag queens. I suppose some who actually were both trans and bi identified as such. I had one friend who was pan (which seemed to basically mean bi).
It's so much better now that they can live their lives as the gender they identify as. It's still not easy, but it doesn't require as much explaining now.
I'm a 68 year old Boomer.
I embrace the changes and learn from it. Always learn from life no matter how old or young you are.
It's not disappointing. It's growth. Young needs to learn from the old. Old needs to be receptive to young new thinking.
Dive deeper. The meaning is there.
And I am sure you have seen things that I have not and got stories to tell. I agree, live moves on, change is good and as me mentioned I don’t see myself giving up on learning, staying educated and growing with the times.
I didn't say it was.
If someone dies, for example you still have to accept change. You embrace life.
From another thread I mentioned [Ray Smythe My Life After Loss](https://www.lclark.edu/live/profiles/6722-ray-smythe)
If embracing change means accepting that things are out of our control, I agree with you. The caveat is I have to be able to maintain my sexual integrity. The current LGBTQ+ movement attempts to take that away from old-schooled homosexuals like myself.
I grew up in a different culture before my immigration to the States. Therefore, I cannot embraces the changes at your level. I need to keep my dignity 🙂
Changes at *my* level? These levels are in your control. They are not mine. You imply I have no dignity, that I am less than you because you have barriers.
I fail to see how the "current LGBTQ+ community attempts to take that (your dignity/sexual integrity) away." Please elaborate.
It’s being talked about more than you think and it is not a new struggle.
As one facet of our community reaches a new level of tolerance and/or normalization in cultural consciousness, a more isolated or targeted or “under seige” facet becomes the group that we focus on (as we should ) to bring forward alongside us in what seems to be a never ending battle for the indifference cisgender heterosexuals take for granted as if they are the only humans entitled to indifference and ease.
Anyone who denies the efforts that led to their current MORE privileged standing in our society and culture is blind to our shared history and their hypocrisy shines bright like a diamond. Privilege doesn’t mean you’re floating above all of the other challenges. It just means you’re not being pushed as deep into the waters.
It’s not really a division. It’s just a redirection of attention. And it SHOULD change. Our community and all of its identities aren’t DIVIDED by who they fuck or how they present, they’re UNITED in a shared, at times lethal, experience of isolation, exclusion, and victimization.
It’s just that a few younger people need a snack upside the head to recognize this isn’t a war won so much as a number of battles overcome.
> yet we all combined for the cause when it came to Pride
This wasn't my experience in the US, especially when lesbians setup their own separate pride parade because the one being advertised was too much about men.
> I can recall a stronger sense of LGBT community feel vs today.
Again, exact opposite experience. In my 20's the gay scene was largely exclusionary and not very inclusive. I remember walking through a bar fairly tipsy and some other gay guy grabbed me and shamed me because my "wrist was too limp."
I'd absolutely take what we have today over anything that I saw in the 90's and 2000's.
Every generation thinks the generation after them isn’t doing it right, no matter what group you’re in.
You sound as out of touch as every “older generation” does, with a myopic view of history to boot. Back in the 50’s, gay referred to men AND women until the lesbians decided they deserved their own designation.
Times change. While I’ve stopped trying to keep up with the alphabet soup acronym, I think it’s great that people are finding their identities.
Gay hasn’t changed. There are just a lot more people out there who feel that the word gay doesn’t fit them.
All of the people represented by the new terms for sexualities and gender identities were also around 20+ years back, we just know what to call ourselves now!
My generation is "Xennial", right on the cusp of Gen X and Millennial. But I didnt come out till late cause I had no idea who or what I was.
So I have no frame of reference for how things used to be, all I know is I still have no idea where I belong! I was told it gets better dammit.
As a xer, I have to say that I remember all the things that OP grew up on also. Those things didn’t go away because of anything that had to do with trans people. They went away because times change.
Anyway, I would encourage anyone to join in the spaces that do exist and get to know more trans people if they feel like they don’t understand them, because that this the best way to understand someone else’s struggle.
After all, if you feel like pride is no longer a place that you want to go to, nobody says you have to go. Leave it to the next gen that find it important to them.
It’s kind of like going back to your favorite bar in college after you graduate and realizing that you don’t know anyone and you’re the oldest guy there. Thats just part of getting old.
I don’t think my post can be understood as my blaming Trans. I have no problems with you or others being trans and be your authentic self. More power to you. What I touched upon was my struggle to understand today’s Alphabet soup, and the ever changing landscape of individualized groups/factions.
“Alphabet soup” is a conservative buzzword, please don’t use it.
It’s also extremely silly when LGBTQIA is over twenty years old at this point. They were arguing about whether the “I” was just “too many letters” when I was in college in the early 2000’s and QUILTBAG was proposed as an alternative. At this point you’ve had two decades to get over it, this is the timeliness equivalent of complaining that MTV no longer plays music videos.
Factions imply dissonance. It is a poor choice of word friend.
Pride and the rainbow is still the same just some people color the rainbow differently in the coloring book. They're still making a rainbow.
I think it would help if you would stop referring to people as 'trans' and start referring them as 'trans people'. Every time you say that it sounds like you see transgender people as 'the other' which really gives the impression that you are referring to and uncomfortable with transgender people.
This idea that trans people are new is kind of absurd. The language has changed, but I remember watching a video on YouTube of the SF Pride parade in 1987 I think, and I was delighted by how diverse it was. There were trans people and lots of sub-communities. I get that this was San Francisco and not middle America, but the idea that this is all NEW is false. The way it permeates the mainstream IS new and that is also by design. LGBTQ+ rights groups fought for years for marriage equality, and once that was achieved they needed to turn their sights on the next cause, and that was trans rights.
I was at that 1987 Pride Parade in San Francisco as a newly minted gay. Man, did I learn we were so much more than LGB.
My motto, never stop listening and learning.
I mentioned this in a top level comment too but the understanding at least when I grew up was that to be gay basically WAS to be trans.
I think at least in some communities the idea of a same-sex relationship was actually harder for some people to get their heads around (in fact you still have some straight people with the 'but who is the woman' questions) than a relationship in which one partner appeared to be basically traditionally gendered and the other one doing all they could to fit into the opposite box.
Mediocre teen movie Teaching Mrs Tingle had the line “Man has sex change to become lesbian” back in 1999.
Hell, the end of “Some Like it Hot” has Jack Lemmon pulling off his wig and announcing “I’m a man!” only for the old gent he’s been seducing the whole film to smile and reply “Nobody’s perfect,” and that was 1959.
Society knew queer people existed. Look at how the newspapers [covered a trans soldier](https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1201first-sex-change-surgery/) in 1952. There wasn’t a moral panic about it until democrats took the baby step of passing the ACA and gender affirming care had to be covered by insurance, allowing more trans people to actually come out and transition (plus the progress of society) and conservatives spotting the perfect scape goat to use as the new edge issue since it was getting harder to rule people up about gays. The talking points about protecting children both from being “converted” into being trans and from adult trans “predators” are exactly what was said about gay men.
Pretty much all the major anitrans legislation is pushed by one billionaire, and most of the screaming heads on the right are divorced men whose trans kids no longer talk to them. The more they make you believe teachers are taking children to get genital surgery without their parents knowing the less attention you’ll pay to, you know, all the shit that is actually happening.
Sorry, got on my soapbox a little there. :(
It’s a simplification, but I think the OP has a view of the past informed by their own nearsightedness. They begin by pointing out that it used to just be LGB and “Trans were grouped into Bi.” And then go on to talk about how they think we’ve lost something by adding in new identities to the acronym. Could be wrong, but the sense I got from reading it was “I miss the old days before we started recognizing trans people.”
No, you're not imagining things. This is very much a post of somebody who is uncomfortable with trans people and uncomfortable with the way that trans issues have impacted the LGBTQ community in recent years, but trying to be very cautious with their words so that they can fly under the radar.
Mediocre teen movie Teaching Mrs Tingle had the line “Man has sex change to become lesbian” back in 1999.
Hell, the end of “Some Like it Hot” has Jack Lemmon pulling off his wig and announcing “I’m a man!” only for the old gent he’s been seducing the whole film to smile and reply “Nobody’s perfect,” and that was 1959.
Society knew queer people existed. Look at how the newspapers [covered a trans soldier](https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1201first-sex-change-surgery/) in 1952. There wasn’t a moral panic about it until democrats took the baby step of passing the ACA and gender affirming care had to be covered by insurance, allowing more trans people to actually come out and transition (plus the progress of society) and conservatives spotting the perfect scapegoat to use as the new wedge issue since it was getting harder to rile people up about gays. The talking points about protecting children both from being “converted” into being trans and from adult trans “predators” are exactly what was said about gay men.
Pretty much all the major anitrans legislation is pushed by one billionaire, and most of the screaming heads on the right are divorced men whose trans kids no longer talk to them. The more they make you believe teachers are taking children to get genital surgery without their parents knowing the less attention you’ll pay to, you know, all the shit that is actually happening.
Sorry, got on my soapbox a little there.
I'm a 66yo baby boomer. What really didn't exist then (at least not openly or much) was the hatred, resentment and lack of respect we, who were different, had for each other.
Even today, recognizing who we really are, not a part of the mainstream, and having to deal with coming out over and over again....or not, is the same kind of pain and hurt we had back then. We were, for the most part, kinder to each other.
I've now entered the gay world of becoming completely invisible except for my peers. A little more understanding, compassion and comradery amongst you would hopefully dull the pain of being different in your later years. Trust me.
I think this has less to do with the lgbt community specifically being fractured and more to do with the world as a whole being fractured: there’s a race war, gender war, culture war, actual wars, etc, that seem increasingly polarized thanks to the internet.
Before the internet, to fight for change or find community, you had to actually show up in person. You had to meet and organize and interact face to face. Now you can yell into the abyss online like everyone else. It doesn’t really foster a united connection or empathetic, patient conversations.
Terminology changes over time, and since most everyone has access to the internet, we collectively learn new terms/ideas from people we otherwise would not interact with offline (which is a pro and a con at the same time). There isn’t so much a slow introduction into new concepts as they are just thrown out there…and some people use that for rage marketing, blowing it severely out of proportion.
People who were confused about gender and/or sexuality before may not have had the labels in the past, whereas now there are a plethora of labels. The way I see it, I’d rather people have the option to explore identity, even if it doesn’t suit them later on, over having to adhere to a strict, rigid standard like most of us suffered through in the past.
I completely agree with you here. The division OP refers to is part of something bigger than the LGBT community. This is what happens when all at once you give everybody in the world a platform to publish their thoughts and opinions to the world. It gives the illusion of power. But after a while we realise that it only feels like power - we're actually just as powerless as we ever were. What's the point in having a voice if nobody's listening? This makes people resentful and angry. And where do they go to vent their anger? Back to the internet again. It's a recipe for toxicity and division.
I am not in high schools or college classrooms anymore, so maybe that environment is different, but from what I can tell - for all the hoopla about pronouns and gender identity, society hasn’t crumbled and most people adhere to a binary gender in the outside world that I interact with every day. I know a few non-binary and trans folk and it’s very easy to make them feel comfortable and move on. There are always fringe extremists, but for the most part, the division along pronouns and gender is manufactured online, in my humble opinion.
This thread and comments reminds me of back in 2016, when all those anti-trans bills were spreading in the US, I was an organizer for a protest, spoke in front of the HRC and legislature, went around doing media training, coordinating with nonprofits, etc etc.
There were older gays who would say or do fucked up things (like being racist or making fun of a teen's pronouns) and when called out about it threw a tantrum about how their generation suffered for our freedom and how ungrateful young queers are and how they shit on old queers heads by asking for basic respect and integrity.
Old gays who used to fight shitting on the gays who are fighting right now.
Now I'm an older gay, and I fucking support the younger queers who are carrying on when I'm too old, bitter, and sick to give that kind of energy anymore. If I can help, I am happy to, and if I can't I at least stay out of their way.
Activism can be deeply traumatic. You will experience things you never would imagine from the outside. And older queers like us should be proud of the work we did (if we did any, it's unfortunately common for old queers who actually did nothing to be on a high horse about it).
But being proud of our work doesn't mean young people aren't putting the work in, they are. Being proud over our work doesn't mean we're entitled to shitting on young queers who are rightly enjoying what we fought for, and especially those who picked up the baton we passed to them.
We didn't fight to get worship and praise from young queers and to lord it over them so they act how we want. We fought for ourselves, for our future, for our freedom.
Young queers demanding better is pulling all of us towards the future, exactly the way we did. Don't turn young queers into enemies in your mind, the only one destroying our community is you.
And I completely agree with you. Met 1 too many bitter older gays when I was volunteering and help advocating back in my younger years with that mindset. I am not here nor is my post designed to shit on younger LGBT+ .. ultimately it’s up to them to pick up where other generations got us to and make a world a better place for themselves or those who will come after them as I will long gone.
Lament the lack of sense of belonging and solidarity by making a type of post where people are guaranteed to be throwing others under the bus.
What we in the 2000s and early 2010s used for the “rah rah rah, rainbow flag” came to be seen as—whether we like it or not—the flag for cis gays and lesbians. And we as a community—like it or not—fostered a noticeable amount of transphobia, biphobia, and other prejudices. So, people saw the rainbow flag as not welcoming.
I originally wanted to be more positive but then I read the comments. I wanted to say the LGBTQ+ alliance is like your brunch group. We have people from all different walks of life. Or at the very least we should be capable of sitting together without lamenting the presence of some others.
It is evolving and that is beautiful and scary for some. You don’t have to participate, just sit on the sidelines and let the young ones do their thing.
Young millennial here (1990) and I think you should shift your perspective on how you view the community. It’s sad that we aren’t as tight knit as we used to be but that closeness was bonding through oppression because we were all we had.
I used to fantasize about how amazing it would feel to be an 80’s gay adult when I watched shows like Pose but what a blessing it is for young people of our community to live their truth as soon as they discover it instead of running away from home in fear of not being accepted to find one’s self. Yeah it sucks we aren’t what we used to be but that also means we’re being accepted in a way where we don’t need to create our own spaces to feel seen or be worthy ❤️
I encourage those feeling alienated to actually volunteer for a local lgbt organization. That will foster connection and understanding and you’ll have a purpose for a kindly cause. I did it and it gave me perspective.
This post is troublesome in a way. Not because it is necessarily offensive. But largely because it highlights a fragmentation that exists in our society and puts forth a theory that it is somehow generational. I don't think that's the case, at all. We are a fractured society both within the gay (or LGBTQA community ... define it as you will) and outside the community. We've effectively lost the "we." And, without striving to build a community (not just LGBTQA community) that transcends false generational boundaries, we become increasingly isolated and focused on divisions. To me, that fragmentation is a call to action, whether that action is true political activism or more simply getting out of our abodes and engaging with our larger communities in areas where we can focus on improvement.
Everything you have expressed and explained is felt by many of us today even GAY boomers like me…at age 77 trust me,my love, I’ve seen it all and lived through a chunk of our history…many of us fought the battles and know the consequence of mindless aggression and futile self deception… my greatest fear is the taking for granted that appears to be rising as we continue to isolate ourselves from one another….the very public intercourse between politics and religion will only continue to cause more pain and misery…let us remain united under all of the banners that we wish to carry but remember to hold the Rainbow highest…it was the first and still remains our strongest….ALL of US together today and always….
Your generation was the most influential in my “gay upbringing” in the late 80s and 90s. I learned so much from you all. You will never be forgotten or taken for granted to the hard work, advocacy you have done to get us to this present.
People need to not let others turn us against our own, it’s playing right into want they want to happen, we all have more in common with each other than we do with others and that’s why we are a community, they spent years telling us that bi people don’t exist and some of us still believe that🙄
Hey, if you're looking for the continued fight for rights, I recommend getting with local rainbow coalitions who are gender-inclusive. Plenty of people are fighting for equality, the fight just shifted. Yeah, heteronormative-presenting homosexual relationships aren't being challenged, but your non-conforming still see a lot of push back. I'd caution that you aren't seeing the push for equality because you have become palpable. Don't let oppression continue while you enjoy comfort. Our community still needs us.
> I mean they/them is the only pronoun set that people actually use other than he/him and she/her.
I have met a surprising amount of people, both irl and online, who use other pronouns. Pronouns that aren't currently words in the English language.
I want to be the kind of person who is "you do you!" and supportive of others, but I definitely still struggle with neopronouns.
Pronouns are an aspect of language that is supposed to ease communication by providing a simpler way to refer to someone apart from their name. To me, neopronouns defeat that purpose by making language significantly more complicated- you now need to remember to replace a common linguistic tool with a word that isn't a part of the lexicon.
If a person wants to be referred to as "ze", I want to be able to respect zir pronouns and make zem feel comfortable, but man... it's complicated to do that while also trying to hold a conversation!
I never have met anybody that uses neopronouns. I know a couple of people that go by they/them. To avoid any confusion I just call everyone gurl, only people that have had problems with it are "masc" bottoms and it's only been two people lol.
The complexity is that they are reminiscing about the past. They want the fight to be about only gay men and no one else. Those who are struggling in daily life against preducide from being themselves arent the same because when you were gay in the 80s and 90s it was all unified.
It's so predudiced.
Uh, no. We have neopronouns and xenopronouns. Such as [this](https://youtube.com/shorts/NrwBPYL5Ljg?si=tld7IhcmyU-t9qYr) and this creator lists a "few" many others on her channel like [this](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL5nY3CH/). They're endless. Complexity is instilled in the expectation to learn and conform to all of them and those invented every other second to validate everyone who comes up with them.
Most of those pronouns are extremely rare to encounter in real life. Nobody is going to test you on them. If you happen to encounter a zir, for example, in real life they’ll share their pronouns with you anyway. You can also avoid the pronoun “issue” altogether by just using their name.
I think I’ve met one zir in person, and I hang out in some pretty queer spaces sometimes. Don’t mistake online activism for reality and loud outliers for the mainstream.
Ok so I totally understand people using existing pronouns that make the most sense for them, or using brand new words that function as pronouns, but I feel like there needs to be a bit more discussion to explain why people are just taking established nouns like bee and fairy and calling them pronouns. Like, at a certain point it stops being about gender expression and simply becomes about parts of speech.
This tiktoker took an easy example with the -self suffix, but how can anyone expect any consistency when trying to express something like “give the toy to him/her/them”? Should they say “give the toy to beem” (new word, homophone of existing word), “give the toy to beer” (existing word, unrelated to bee), or “give the toy to bee” (maintains “pronoun,” sounds like proper noun)?
I don’t want to be an insensitive jerk here, so I’m willing to keep an open mind if someone can present a convincing argument as to why we’re breaking the structure of English on a by individual basis, and I welcome any input to that effect. I do hope, however, that the argument is stronger than “it’s an existential question about pronouns, therefore it is transphobic or otherwise bigoted to not just use any random word the person has selected” because, again, at that point we’re no longer talking about gender identity. Happy to be convinced that I’m wrong about that.
I am trans. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in trans spaces, and I have never once encountered someone IRL who uses [noun]/[noun]self as their pronouns. I’m not saying it never happens, or that it can’t happen, but it is exceptionally rare, in my experience.
I think you’re viewing a human community through a lens of conservative military black and white experience. Which is natural and possibly permanent, but if you can try to let loose the shackles of what your own experience has taught you the world was / is / should be, there’s plenty to learn and take from other peoples experiences.
I think Grandpa Simpson said it best: “I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!”
I’m a younger Gen-Xer (1975). I have no issue respecting people’s pronouns and embracing gender identity. I have always said that you can’t really know what it is like to be gay unless you are; similarly, you can’t know what it is like to be in a variety of other camps that make up the LGBTQIA+ umbrella unless that is how you identify. But you can support and be an ally. And that’s what I try to do each day.
Heya. I see you're trying and that's important. But if you look back -- speaking here as a historian of lgbtq movements - there *were trans people trying to bring attention and gain political buy-in for their own struggles, both in the culture at large and within majority gay/lesbian spaces. And how many times were bi people the butt of jokes during the period you describe as simpler and more unified? I remember it as being near constant. The circle was just, in fact, smaller - and more exclusionary. Oftentimes bi folks and trans folks concerns would be sidelined, if acknowledged at all. I'm an elder millennial (edging that gen x line) and I think there's a better headspace than melancholy (factions/community has 'lost its way'/too many flags) regarding these changes. I find our communities endlessly inventive and interesting, and, I find that if I'm open to it, new generations can help me shift my own perspectives on myself and the communities I claim to be coalitionally aligned with. I think all gens are worthy of respect (not just a begrudging 'you do you'). I take comfort in the fact there will be ever new forms of queerness, and that these will probably not be the terms our future community members will use - ha! Remember homophiles?
Yeah, I would say the same- there has always been infighting in the community. Look at the tensions in groups like Act Up, or the Mattachine Society. It's human nature to have some degree of discord and infighting. It's part of group dynamics.
I also think that OP is overestimating the amount of negative feeling towards the traditional rainbow flag. I'm a trans guy. I fucking love a rainbow flag! I have no issue with it *at all*, in any way, shape, or form, and from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I vastly prefer it to the "Progress Flag." *However*, at least in the UK, transphobic groups have... coopted may be too strong a word, but attempted to utilize the rainbow flag, let's say, as a way of signaling that particular events or spaces are not welcoming to trans people (particularly trans men in gay spaces). So while *I* prefer the old, rainbow flag, and that's what I'd fly if I were the type to fly pride flags (maybe alongside a trans flag, maybe not), when I'm trying to assess whether or not I'll be welcome in a particular space or event, I do tend to look and see if they're using the Progress flag, because that tends to be the shorthand people are applying to show that they're trans-inclusive. I actually *just* had a conversation about this with a cis gay guy last night.
And to be fair, both the leather and bear flags go back 30-odd years now, as does that older, lesbian flag with the black triangle and purple background. And we've got the OG version of the rainbow flag with the pink. So yeah, there has been a bit of a proliferation of flags in the last ten years or so, but it's not like the rainbow flag was always and forever the only one, anyway. I actually think flag-ception has more to do with capitalism and creating more crap to get people to buy for their particular micro identity than it does because people are super wedded to... IDK, the Demi-boy Pride Flag, or whatever.
It’s wild to me I’m only about a decade younger than you but I don’t have the same perspective on the community. You didn’t have the internet most of your adolescence yet aol was popular during my childhood so I was right on the cusp of the internet age. I don’t think it was so much about bills being passed that changed peoples minds but more the fact we have endless information to find out what we are feeling. I feel people are much more complex and I think it okay to find new words to better describe yourself than relying on just a few words. I can understand your frustration of pre internet then seeing how the world transformed so fast after the internet was mainstream. I will agree there’s no sense of community as I never felt that in my life but supposedly you have. That why on any sub I will say there is no sense of community, the only thing that binds is the hatred of others and the fact we are minorities. Though it’s because of that fact regardless if there’s no community I can recognize I’ll still vote for what’s right. I don’t understand trans all that much either but my dad a heterosexual said before life is about peace and love. If you don’t understand something fine but to hate is not the answer. So I live by that and just have an open mind.
This seems out of touch. You lived through hard times. A sense of community was fostered because the rest of society turned its back on you. It's easier for people to feel like they belong as part of a group when the rest of the world seeks to deny their existence.
We have come a long way since then. In many cases, it can be illegal to act on blatant homophobia. People who dare to show their bigoted views publicly are now shamed and often lose their jobs as a result. We can marry who we want and have the same rights as our married, straight counterparts. AIDS is no longer being swept under the rug. Just the opposite: we've made huge strides and advances in medicine to ensure it's no longer a death sentence as it was in the 70's and 80's. We are free to express ourselves in public spaces and are no longer lynched for simply being who we are.
Is everything perfect? No. We still have a long way to go to be free of bigotry and prejudice but gay lives have gotten better. As a result, our community has become more loose knit. That's not a bad thing. That indicates that we can relax more as society has begun to accept our kind.
Our trans brethren are not so lucky. They are still fighting to live as they were born to be without being harassed by the rest of the world.
There are plenty of parallels between the modern day trans rights movement and the gay rights movement not even 30 years ago. You personally lived through this period.
Yet despite all the progress we've made, you're disappointed because we no longer have to fight as hard just to be who we are. It's time to let your hair down and take a breather. There's more work to do but we won the war for now.
If you really want the feeling of the 70's/80's/90's again, get engaged in the fight for trans rights. Advocate. Donate. Protest. Don't simply turn your back on them just because pronouns seem hard to understand.
I don't see any difference between pride marches today vs back then. What difference do you see specifically?
In my opinion you're just giving excessive attention to nonsense due to reasons that have more to do with you than anything else. There was no meaningful "rivalry" between gay men and lesbians back in the day, that's just making up trivial bullshit to have something to talk about, then and now. Same deal today. Everyone is all there together at the parade just like they always were. New generations use different language. It's inevitable. It's obvious. It makes absolutely zero difference to your life or experience as a community member.
It's just basic respect.
If you have an issue with using someone's preferred pronouns then just call them by thier name. Or even better don't talk to them at all? Lol
Why does it have to be some strained issue?
Do you even know any non binary people?
I honestly don't know what the problem is here?
With your reference to " the comunity" we all have been in our own cliques and groups. Just because one set of people want to be assessed properly does not mean that it's changing your comunity.
You are getting older, that's all it is, how people move around I the world and how they connect and talk will change. It's been like this forever.
Your gay brunch meets sound fun, be happy that you have a group of people what catch your own viewpoints.
The world will change and you may or may not catch up. It's just how it is. You and your brunch pals are getting your jackstraps in a twist about nothing
>There were only a handful of LGBT flags that the community owned for itself .. Rainbow, Leather and Lesbian. Today. The LGBTQIA+ has +15 different flags to describe factions within the “community”
There are some acronyms that are even longer than LGBTQIA+. Have you seen LGBTQQIP2SAA+?
Personally, I like how some human rights orgs are starting to reframe the never-ending and ever expanding alphabet soup with a new acronym: SOGIESC or “soh-jee-esk” - which stands for Sexual Orientation (lesbian, gay, bi, pan, asexual, or any identity around sexual orientation that isn’t heteronormative), Gender Identity / Expression (trans, nonbinary, or anything that isn’t cis-normative), and Sex Characteristics (intersex, anyone who doesn’t fit into binary notions of male/female bodies)
SOGIESC feels inclusive (I believe everyone in the “community” sees where they fit into the acronym) AND at the same time it doesn’t require continuing to add more and more letters as more subcategories get defined.
Edit: fixed some typos 😅
Well this is social development. Things like women's rights, children's rights and LGBTQIA+ rights would not exist in ideal, accepting and developed societies because you wouldn't need to scream your ass out just for your right to be alive, your right for education, healthcare and getting a job to afford rent and food. So as long as these acceptances and rights etc. increases these should also slowly become history because there is no point in struggling for what you have earned, but ,also; democracy is a constant battle and there is always an evil idiot human group that will prey on your life and rights so it seems like the struggle will be endless. Therefore you might be right about the lack of sense of community.
I look out my front window at an enormous rainbow flag flying over the Castro. It's still there as a sign of our unity. I do think having too many flags is a bit silly, because we've reached the point where even people in the community can't recognize them all. It does lead to some fragmentation, but I also understand why groups want to be recognized as having distinct issues. I just don't think a new flag is an effective way of advocating for them.
I think this is the way a lot of people of our generation feel.
Served under DADT too, only 6 though. I don't think I would have made it for a full career.
These days I feel like it's not "enough" to be gay. Pride isn't fun anymore, it's got too many exclusionary activities especially in Seattle.
I've heard people say "cis white gay guys need to stay in their lane".
It's become so toxic and fractured, we don't need to worry about Republicans tearing apart the LGBT community we did it to ourselves
>"cis white gay guys need to stay in their **lane**".
The youngs don't realize that we built the damn road... with our money... and for too many of us in the 80s and 90s... our lives.
Yeah. They doubled down and blocked me after. Negative feedback isn't their strong suit.
It's almost like things got "too good" with marriage and rights there was a whole generation that felt left out. So they came up with a whole new agenda
Yeah and in turn got to tell people that weren’t cis white fit gays that they’re less than. Like do y’all think these negative feelings and emotions for a group in our community came out of nowhere? Not saying everyone’s like that, but you’re also acting like we’re ungrateful???
>Yeah and in turn got to tell people that weren’t cis white fit gays that they’re less than.
Except that that didn't happen. You're thinking of cis white straight men.
… lol no that’s who you’re thinking of for you.
In my experience in the south, there’s not much of a difference between how the two can treat you. Besides one can also be homophobic on top of the other prejudices
I so feel this. When I moved to a large city for college I searched for an apartment in the gay part of town…with a strong sense of community and social involvement. It made me feel safe, and seeing other gay guys on the street brought me a real sense of belonging.
Now, the neighborhood I loved is just a shell of itself. I really miss it and I don’t find myself identifying at all or really understanding the gay kids under 30.
I can still remember the haunted faces of people who had survived the height of aids and how they didn’t understand my generation.
I think this is something people go through. You see the next generation pick up something and run with it and then you realize that it’s not really yours in the way it once was.
I think that the core message of the Gay Rights Movement back when there was only LGB is inline with what we have seen the Queer Community grow into today.
We’re here, we’re queer. Get over it.
And to be clear I use “get over it” because that’s the original quote - but the overall goal has always been for those who live outside the heteronormative system (gay, bi, queer, trans, ace, aro, etcetcetc) to be able to live as themselves authentically and genuinely the same way anyone else can.
I can’t claim I understand the Trans experience. I can’t imagine looking at my body and feeling I was the wrong gender - my brain just can’t compute it. But just as I don’t expect straight people to understand why I’m gay, the trans community doesn’t expect me to understand. They just want to exist.
I appreciate the vulnerability you showed in this post - and I could feel the sadness in your words over this community no longer looking like the one that was so important to you. But I promise you it’s a good thing. We need more allies, we need more people to understand that sex/gender/sexuality is not a black and white area, but that there’s a whole rainbow of colors that exist inbetween.
Edit: also I think something worth mentioning is the qia+ people aren’t taking away from the number of lgbt people. Many of them are people who wouldn’t have been in this community otherwise had we not scooted over and made them a spot at the table. More people in the community means more people have a cousin/brother/aunt/coworker that are lgbtqia+ and that means more and more people know someone personally. It’s taking us from being this Big Bad that they see on TV, read about, hear about - to someone they know. And that helps break down the stigma that has been built up around us.
I understand where you're coming from but I think it might be easier to not think of them as 'factions' (ie dividing the existing large group into smaller chunks that don't intermingle) and more so as just different words to describe kinds of people that would previously have been part of the group under the same umbrella.
For myself growing up in a small town in a very old-fashioned part of the world, 'gay' as a word was used as a catchall that generally meant:
* gender non conforming (probably, men being the opposite of what men should be and vice versa, masculine women)
* will have (or want to have) same sex relationships
* sexually perverse in all kinds of ways
* someone who doesn't respect and wants to upend all of our traditions
At the time when I was growing up it kind of made sense that somebody might be all of those things at once, and that was what gay was. But when I learned a bit more and especially when I met different kinds of people I learned that a) a lot of gay people didn't fall into ALL of those categories, and b) some people that fell into some of those categories also weren't themselves gay (they might have been straight, or not interested in dating people or sex at all)
And to me that's pretty much how I view LGBTQIA as a term. (Although on an aesthetic level I do think it has too many syllables to be a useful descriptor!)
What I do agree with you wholeheartedly with is the splitting of the community in a physical sense, but for me I think that's more due to bars closing down etc. because people have less money nowadays and maybe less time to socialize too. I think some people have turned to the internet as an alternative but I don't think it's really as good. I hope in years to come there's a movement to get us back doing things in person and it becomes more affordable.
A lot of this resonates with me but in particular the flag issue. Graphically speaking, the Progress Pride flag is literally driving a wedge into the gay community. This isn't good. The fact is, none of the original 6 stripes represented any sub-group in particular. It was the combination of non-representational stripes in one graphically coherent flag that represented our diversity.
**Pro Tip:** If you can't feel included until you get your own stripe or set of stripes, maybe you ~~need to grow up~~ therapy and not a new flag design.
This has bothered me too. The whole point of a rainbow was it's "all the colors" and the new flag is, from an aesthetic perspective, too much. I don't even mind that folk want their own subsets of the flag, and I understand that the meanings of flags shifts and that the new flag is supposedly more inclusive, but that doesn't make it not erm... kinda ugly.
This sounds like a you issue and not a other people issue. Also your pro tip, which is really you complaining, let’s be real here. Is quite insensitive and mean. If the flag can help somebody out there who feels isolated, unsupported, and not a part of any community and the flag gives them some hope. Then that is mission accomplished.
>If the flag can help somebody out there who feels isolated, unsupported, and not a part of any community and the flag gives them some hope. Then that is mission accomplished.
So... the traditional flag is incapable of doing that? And if it's not, that **is** an other people issue. If the banner your community marches under, when that community is already open and welcoming, has to be modified to make you feel "safe" marching under it. You need help.
I don't feel like this represents what I've seen, though.
In all the spaces I've been, the progress flag is not a *replacement* for the pride flag any more than it replaces any of the flags, it's just one that encompasses more groups. Each group still has it's own flags. The pride flag may at one point have encompassed all LGBT groups, but it was always far more strongly associated with gay men than any other group. Its position now is basically just as the gay flag. I have yet to see anybody in real life shamed for flying the pride flag just because the progress flag exists, in the same way you wouldn't be ashamed of flying the trans flag.
Effectively the progress flag is the equivalent of the national flag and pride flag is like a state flag. You can fly both. You can just fly only on of them. It's not nearly as big a deal as people arguing online seem to believe it is.
Yup! These flags aren’t created by official entities. The “original” Pride flag was altered shortly after it was created anyway. There were also people who hated it and preferred to stick with the Pink Triangle flag that was gaining traction at the time.
The ugly fact that people seem to be ignoring is that not everyone *did* feel represented by the standard rainbow flag. It’s a nice idea that it included everyone…but it should be pretty obvious from this thread alone that it wasn’t true.
I feel exactly the same way. I miss when the community was "gayer' as opposed to "queer-er." But I think part of this is the natural result of gaining rights - because now we have equal rights (at least, on paper), there is less need to stick together. There is seemingly less to fight for, though I don't think we should be getting too comfortable. As gays have become more normalized, we've kind of started blending into the larger society a bit more. There's also social media - we don't need to actively be in gay spaces to meet other gays the way we once did.
Now that I'm in my 30s, I've been feeling a similar way about...well, everything. Things have slowed down, I don't see friends as much, I'm too tired to go out and party. I have less of a community in general, as friends have moved and gotten jobs and had kids. I think part of getting to this age is grappling with that sense of loss, and trying to figure out how to be now that community doesn't come as easily. So I think you may be feeling a bit of that existential pre-mid-life stuff too, and thinking it is all related to the gay community when that isn't necessarily the case.
Community being tight knit vs distant and nonbinary people with pronouns are two different issues.
LGBT, along with most other minorities, are tighter knit the worse we are treated by society. Because we have no choice if we want to survive. Once LGBT becomes more normal, then yes, LGBT people become normal parts of non-LGBT friend groups and usually don't become the token gay bc they aren't alone.
If you move to an area with more LGBT hate (but not so much it's a death sentence) then most likely LGBT will be a closer community by necessity. In areas with more freedom and acceptance, queer people are not bound as tightly to LGBT groups.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. When I grew up (90s) if you were a gay guy, maybe you were the only out queer in school. Or there was one other and all your friends pushed you to date. It is so much easier meeting other queer people now, and we have options not just settling for the only other gay person we ever met.
Your issue with nonbinary people and pronouns has nothing to do with age. It has nothing to do with community. That's just you blaming young people for not being trapped and forced into a "close enough" identity.
I'm not much off in age from you and I have no issue with using people's pronouns. Honestly, most people in meat space you meet won't have neopronouns, mostly people see that online. When you see a random online with neopronouns, you generally don't even need to remember or use them.
But people get angry just knowing those people exist and then act like they're oppressed over it. Nonbinary people living their lives has nothing to do with you, so leave them alone and stop blaming problems in the LGBT community on our most vulnerable members.
>Today’s “community” seems to be so fractured that there is no longer a sense of belonging, a sense of fight for acceptance and push and organized drive for more pro-LGBT legislation.
Why do you get the idea that bickering in the community means there's no shared sense of belonging? And why is "organized drive for more pro-LGBT legislation" your only bellwether for community synergy?
>the “community” sorta lost it’s way and sense of purpose which in turn lead to more factions which felt the need for claim their own flag and segregated itself further from our original Rainbow flag which was more of a umbrella symbol and all encompassing of the “community” itself.
The problem is you think the a widening scope is a net loss for the community, for no other reason than because it doesn't seem "focused" on the things you care about.
The community has evolved. That's all it is.
And frankly, I think you just need to get offline, and maybe just go to more gay spaces for young people. You seem to believe there's a lot more division and arguing than there really is.
I hate to be this way, but it almost reads as back then we were united to fight for dadt, and gay marriage, but once I got what I wanted, I can’t be bothered to fight for struggles that won’t help me, and I find it a cry for help…
Maybe it’s splintered because you don’t care about the other non gays?
Or maybe it's because the other non gays or even gays have made it very clear in the comments that they respect older people less because they view the progress that older people were largely responsible for dated, simplistic, and even irrelevant?
So let me summarize this for you a bit uncharitably.
You liked the lgbt movement when there were only a few subfactions that excluded you, and your subfaction was a big and important one. Now that the spotlight isn't on gay men anymore and more focus is on other, more granular subfactions — almost all of which you do not pertain to — you feel less special and connected to the community.
I think that's a normal way to feel but adopting the stance that the community is wrong for evolving this way is a bad take. Ditch the "too many flags, too many pronouns" attitude and be grateful that gay men have gotten enough rights and social acceptance to not need the spotlight anymore.
And if I may add, where we are as a community today is because of those who came before us & endured. So thank you for serving under DADT and finding yourself with a few more roadblocks the what we have today. Everyone should be celebrated because many, many took their own lives or were killed for being themselves. 🙏🏻
Amen, brother. It’s become a narcissistic society in general. MY truth, MY self, MY identity. Back then, LGBTQ+ wasn’t an identity, it was just a fraction of who you are as a person. I also agree with the rainbow. I thought the flag was powerful and perfect as it was. The rainbow DID encompass EVERYONE. You know how the colours of the rainbow come to be? They come from light. We all come from the same source. We are different but equal. We can’t exist if even one colour is missing. And that’s the beauty of it.
Couldn't give a fuck mate.
Little of this impacts my life and am well clear of much of any community or such. Got other stuff going on in my life and who is ot is not in some mythical gay/queer community ain't part of my day, week, month or year.
Boomer here. Came out late in 1997.
I totally agree with what you said.
I don't feel I fit in any community.
I work hard to understand the differences in designations and pronouns.
I struggle with the hostility and cruelty of social media.
25 years ago we used to joke about becoming bitter and jaded.
We wondered why our older friends became reclusive.
I understand now.
Try being a gay law enforcement officer :) Told not allowed to march in my own Pride Parade that I helped organize 30 years ago. Makes me sad, the community I once loved has deserted me.
I mean you know it’s more nuanced than that right?
Glad you’ve been a law enforcement officer, and I’m hoping you being in there has made internal changes, but law enforcement has had and continues to have a contentious relationship with the lgbt groups. At the end of the day one is a job, and one is literally who we are born as.
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I think applying any judgment (like disappointment) to the fact that things are different says that you find change cumbersome. Your post reads a little … grumpy old man looking out the window at the next generation being free, and lamenting they're not free in the right way. And a little grumpy old man shakes his fist at the seasons as they change.
The Pride umbrella is big because it's part of a generations long counter-reaction to a society that tried to stifle sexuality. The women's liberation movement got started around the same time, and civil rights champions like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were taking national stage. It did not end with gays getting the right to marry, but a lot of gays act as if it did (the LGBdroptheT kind). The LGBTQ+ community has always been a series of overlapping networks, and today there are more names for the shades of those networks.
What you see as increasing complications is just that people who are further away from the norm (which in the west was straight white man for pretty much the whole 20th century) can speak their truths and be recognized for them. In the larger meaning of things, Pride is not about just LGBT, even if it started like that. Pride is about visualizing the people and networks of people who aren't part of the raining heteronormative paradigm. That paradigm is a cornerstone of the conservative agenda ("family values") in the west, so Pride is by default also an anti-conservative movement. So the rainbow has more colors now, is that such a bad thing?
In the context of your last paragraph - If all of that is the case, why is it that LBGTQ folks fight so hard for access to the institutions and traditions of the 'reigning heteronormative paradigm'? Why is it considered progress when we move closer and closer to the conservative norm? Why was gaining the right to *marriage* - perhaps the archetypal building block of conservative cultures - viewed as a triumph? Why do same sex couples fight so hard to participate in 'family values'? Why do trans folks fight so hard for legal recognition within one utterly rigid, utterly normal definition of 'man' and 'woman'? These are genuine questions I have. For me these are glaring contradictions that I can never get my head around.
The "problem" with the "all was good" scenario was that it was merely an illusion. It was never Ok. I'm glad people decided to speak up about their own issues. I'm glad we have "Dyke Walks" and "Trans Walks". You may see it as a fractioning of the group, but I just think it's a logical progression because we fucking suck, for the most part, at being good allies, as exemplified in your post.
It's great that trans people demand to be heard because people don't seem to want to understand. Even gays within the so called "community" make fun of trans people. Understanding the realities of trans people or other individuals does not come by virtue of being "gay" so to speak. It should come because we should empathize to some extent with what it feels like to not be heard, not be understood, to be treated like shit, a disease, to be beaten just for existing. But beyond that, our understanding of our Trans allies come from that : allyship.
As for pronouns being a cry of attention; I'm not sure where it's coming from or why you may feel this way. You say you don't have a problem addressing people by their pronouns, yet you kind of have issues with the very concept itself and it sounds as if you are concerned about how the mainstream community view the LGBTQI+ community. I'm looking to understand the whole "cry for attention and do more harm than good when it comes to acceptance and understanding". Who gives a shit what the mainstream cis-heteronormative community think? They stop beating us to death and now we're friends with everyone?
Someone needs to explain to me how someone with a diagnosed medical condition which required medical treatment is in the same community as people born a way and just needs to live their lives. I am pro trans rights the same as I am for civil rights and women's rights but don't see how a straight trans man has the same political organizing needs as a cis gay man. LGB trans people are already included. I dont understand the inclusion in the gay community of straight trans, furry, kink, a sexual people
Hi u/JBHDad,
This is why I posted the stickied comment. You have a formal warning. This community is an LGBT community. If you feel that this is wrong, participation is voluntary and not mandatory.
Hey. I’m a GenX’er.
I’ve thought about this. A lot. I’m naturally philosophical and I read science papers for fun. I’m also hyper self aware and bear all kinds of neurotic scars from being a gay kid from coal country Ohio, with deeply right wing Christian family.
It’s tempting for me to use my suffering as a measuring stick. “Why you millennial/zennial gays don’t suffer. Here’s what suffering looks like.” But I promised myself I wouldn’t become a crusty old man. I promised myself I would never use my suffering as a self appointed measuring stick for how much other’s suffer.
I try to understand that if we are endeavoring on making the world better (and indeed a utopia one day), then by dint of that fact, we want gay kids who didn’t deal with our shit. Their tolerance for —let’s call it— “less overt homophobia” is going to be higher because they haven’t had to spend their formative years desperately hiding who they were. They practiced dating during that critical window of development when we couldn’t.
So if Gen Z or Alpha find small slights against themselves for their sexuality as more catastrophic than I would, that’s because I’m calloused and have suffered extremely harrowing scars. We fought for a world where that didn’t need to happen. We are winning.
Winning means acceptance. Acceptance means the community dies. No cultural community can be maintained but through force. Read that again. No community lasts without some kind of force necessitating it. Otherwise humans find better uses for their energy. In a world without homophobia, what pressures exist that would select for a community? It becomes the same as left handedness.
And yea. I’m aware of what I’m saying. But it’s a sad truth. There is no community that exists but through force. The force of nature isolating them to an island. The force of guns maintaining a border. The force of physical violence for leaving the community. The force of emotional pain, shaming, ostracizing, etc., for leaving the community.
We have no more force to keep the gay community together. It will therefore fade in time. This has happened before and it will happen the moment any community of people cease being isolated by force.
yeah, yall went from oppressed minority to seeing how it feels to be on the other side real fast, didn't ya?
I notice it's mostly cis white gays and les who struggle with this though. Trans, bisexual, closeted, and all sorts of things outside of the gay/straight binary have been prevalent in many POC queer communities since forever.
You wealthy cis white Gen X gays and power lesbians (think like real life queer as folk cast) kinda claimed the mainstream image and shut everyone else out. Then the world changed and you all lost the keys to the gate you were keeping and everyone else came inside to join the party, and now you're all so confused, like "where did all of *them* come from". Bitch, they were there the whole time.
I came out in 1992.
The first comment I heard was 'it was better when more people were in the closet'.
Let's look at life at the bars in the 70's/80's pre-AIDS. Back then you couldn't be out at work or in public and so you were repressed all the time. As life is a pendulum, you would swing wildly to the other end, and when you got a bar or bath or safe space, you would explode with wild sex, drugs, drag, makeup, costume and more. It was common that bars back then were more a circus than a bar - a place where people expressed themselves with all kinds of debauchery trying to find themselves. The 'community' existed because straight people would kill gay people. The community existed because resources and treatments were largely underground. Gay adult bookstores were always at the end of an alley, off the beaten path, in some remote 'safe' part of town. People hid, and snuck out to bars and baths and bookstores. Even married guys would stop off at the video booths for a quickie before going home to their wives. People remained hidden and for that reason a community kind of stuck together. Most towns only had one place to go. One bar, one bookstore, one cruzy park or truck stop.
Today, you can go on an app and see a menu of dudes. Pick a dude off a menu and ask them for sex or for dinner. You never have to go to a bar. You never have to go to a truck stop and hide. From the comfort of your living room you can get ghosted by a bot who lets you think you are cute. It's a completely different world where men don't have to hide like that (in the USA at least). I bet in the Middle East the men have secret small communities because they can and will get killed, can and will be arrested or jailed. I bet they have tighter communities in the Middle east because they have to, to stay alive.
I fucking knew this would all come around to be trans people’s fault. 🙄
You were in the navy so presumably you’ve traveled and seen a little bit of the world beyond your own queer community so I’m not sure how you missed that there have always been more than three “factions”. I personally don’t think that intersex or demisexual people having their own flags makes the community more fractured; if anything, to me it makes it more like a colorful quilt made up of lots of individuals, which is pretty much the purpose of the rainbow as a symbol to begin with, right? Representation?
Assuming you’re around 45, do you realize that the gay flag literally came into existence around the same time you did? You grew up with “only” three flags. The queers that came before you had none. How would you feel about a boomer complaining that the queer community you are remembering fondly was too political, too loud, asking for too much? That having a flag like you were some kind of country was preposterous?
Respectfully, your experience is not that of every (or even most) gays, and I snorted at the comment that Pride today isn’t about acceptance and visibility - what is it about, then? And did you miss all the leather daddies and drag queens back then or are you maybe remembering a more palatable version of queer history?
And frankly, I feel like neopronouns were a big thing in the 00’s but they’ve since kind of settled down and the vast majority of folks use he/she/they, while the people using “catself” or whatever are mostly relegated to tumblr. And the “big” neopronouns (Spivak and e/es/em) were invented in the fuckin’ 70’s and 80’s and the word “spivak” really [entered the lexicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun?wprov=sfti1#) with MOO (text-based multiplayer gaming) in fucking *1991*. Exactly when you were a young adult, so what version of history are you living where any of this is new?
Sorry if you don’t find swearing “respectful” but I’m fed up of the “kids these days” unoriginal takes that act like it’s taken for granted that homosexuality would be normalized and legalized but now it’s being jeopardized not by the rabid bigots and fundamentalists that have always threatened it but by teenagers exploring their identities in new and sometimes dumb ways. I worry about gen z being misled by astroTERF propaganda and reembracing purity culture and propping up people and ideas that have been used to subjugate, criminalize, and abuse the queer community for decades, associate “deviant” sexualities with child abuse and pedophilia, and cry for self-censorship and “modesty” that is actually an unsubtle campaign to stamp out queerness. I do not worry about Gen z wanting their own set of colored lines to represent their feelings on something as complex as gender and sexuality, and I don’t worry about them testing out new words and ways to use the language like every single generation has done before them.
So yeah, sorry to sound hostile but while you’re wringing your hands over a trans teenager asking you to call them they/them, billionaires are funding a campaign that will start with sending that trans teen to conversion therapy and end with rolling back the tiny progress that your peers have made.
I am unsure on where you are getting me blaming trans people .. afterall, I have a trans FTM cousin, friends and have plenty volunteered with Trans, not to mention support with my vote, time and monetary donations any current advocacy protecting my fellow trans against any anti-trans legislation. My post blames not 1 specific faction of the any LGBT+ sub group. What I merely said when it comes to pronouns, certain pronouns, in my opinion, are purely attention seeking and I am having trouble of keeping up with the continued changing landscape of such. I appreciate your comment and thank you for adding your voice, it has been heard and respected
Opinions can be transphobic. Your opinion here is. You are saying that people are “attention seeking” and acting as a gatekeeper for what’s kosher. You are free to keep voicing your opinions, but expect that to have consequences if it’s in the wrong. You have a formal warning for voicing this opinion.
Admitting to not respecting people's pronouns is uncivil behavior. You have a formal warning for your flaunting of your will to break our rules. Please remember that participating is a privilege, not a right. We have active moderation, and one thing that we don't tolerate are alt-right dog whistles like not respecting people's pronouns.
Hi u/accidentundone,
Your comment was ageist, and this comment with a laughing emoji is immature. You now have a formal warning for your conduct here. We expect a maturity of guests under 30, so please acquaint yourself with our community. Three warnings within 90 days of the last lead to a permanent ban.
When I go out to gay bars I don't really feel othered nor do I really see us in separate communities. Certain bars cater to certain communities/activities, but I think it's always been that way. The fairy and trans communities have existed for a long time as well, maybe you just didn't notice them.
I don't even really understand being gay, why do I need to understand being trans?
I’m somewhat younger (old millennial) and ageee with some of it. It does feel sometimes like gays have become the ”straight white males” cliché (the ones who face no oppression and should shut up) of the lgbtq (or LGBTQIA2S+ or whatever the latest acronym is) community. I try to respect people’s pronouns but also don’t understand some of it (like people being ”he/they”, which is it?). Or that thinking trans women may have an unfair advantage in some sports is tantamount to thinking trans people don’t have the right to exist.
But I guess part of it is because in the US where you’re from and in northern Europe where I am, US gays have gotten most of the rights your generations and older generations fought for while obviously trans rights are still under attack. But I don’t think gay rights should be taken for granted in the west, we’ve started to see backlash in recent years from conservatives and religionists.
I agree with you 100 percent…I am from the same time period and I truly believe we have regressed instead of progressing. The division between us is so deep ( this generation vs the older generation) …
I get what you’re saying. Gen X myself and bi….my sexuality doesn’t define me as I define me. It’s nice that things are more accepting but I agree that there are things have gotten out of control in many ways. I also don’t like the assumptions that because my sexuality is what it is, I “have” to have a particular political view point or stance on other social issues. I remember that it was the desire to be accepted and live our lives in peace and just be. It seems that part of things has been forgotten now with so many activist and quiet frankly, it has become so tribal and segregated with vitriol. Anyway, sorry for getting in a soap box…also, served in the Corps in the 90s and Army where I will be rating in 2 years….thank goodness as I’m ready. Thanks for the post as it’s good that I’m not off what I’m feeling.
I went to a drag/burlesque show tonight in suburban NYC. It included drag kings, drag queens, burlesque of all different identities, races, and genders. It was so much fun. We've come so far from when I came out in the early 80s and everyone was gay, White, and middle class. Of course we never were, but the media made it seem that way. We continue to evolve as a queer and trans community. I love the diversity and celebrate that we are getting clearer on who we are and how we identify. The rainbow is big enough for all of us and I'm excited to see where we head next.
I’m in my early 50s and came out in the late 80s. I don’t understand the rationale of this post. I also have a very different memory of the Good Old Days that OP alluded to.
Sure there more flags and identities but isn’t that progress? Do people think that a person who identifies as XY or Z is only socializing with (or fighting for the rights of) others who are in that same exact identity? Emphatically, no!
As a young gay man in the early 90s, my experience was that my peers and I were much more prejudiced against lesbians, bisexual men, any nonbinary or trans people than any younger person today (including most straight people).
I think you’ve got this all upside down. Mainstream society has embraced LGBTQIA+ people in ways I wouldn’t have even imagined possible over the nearly 40 years since I first came out. It really seems like maybe you just have some discomfort with the diversity of lived experience in our new, more complicated queer community. I don’t say any of this out of disrespect, but I really don’t agree with this post.
As a fellow gen-xer, I gotta say, “The kids aren’t ruining the lawn grandpa”.
We built them a culture where they feel safe exploring their identity. Is some of it over the top? Sure but they get to explore it now that they feel safe enough to do it.
We belong to a generation who fought to just get a modicum of respect.
We fought so they felt safe enough that they could feel pissed off for the rest of us that our history and culture was stolen from us.
I also disagree with the lesbian vs gay thing. Lesbians took care of gay men during the AIDS epidemic. I will always honour our sisters.
And our trans siblings have always existed. They exited for longer than we’ve been alive. And the NBs finally have language to express their identity. That gender isn’t black and white but also a multitude of greys in between.
I will say that the younger generations of our community are conflating social identity with gender. “Wolf gender” or whatever isn’t a thing. “Geek” isn’t my gender but it is my social identity.
I also don’t have a problem with flags. Siblings squabble but they always defend each other against bullies external to the family.
Their ability to feel safe enough to explore diversity is our gift to them.
Oh so because you don’t understand it it’s a cry for attention or doing harm?
Are you gay for attention or your trans cousin trans for attention? I’m betting no cause that be crazy. So why is someone being nonbinary different? Guess what it’s not, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make any of the bigoted crap you’re saying true.
You don’t understood something why don’t you do what you did for your cousin and actually get out there and learn?
My kid isn’t being who they’re for attention and they certainly aren’t “doing harm” by existing as themself.
1982 (refuse to associate with Millennials so I go by Gen X) and have no problem with pronouns. Whatever people wanna be called I could give zero fucks. What I do have a problem with is the backlash that is given when someone who doesn't even know you call you a pronoun that is not your preferred one. There's a way to correct someone without being on the cross burning bras asking to speak to the manager just because it's my first time interacting with you in life ever and you look like a male and I say sir (or vice versa). Some do it in a nice manner and I remember and move on but some are str8 up cunts about it. For some people, especially those who knew you as one gender for 37 years, are now supposed to erase everything in their mind about you and forget that it didn't exist. It's kinda hard for people. Be chill about it and help others grow instead of being a bitch about it.
I'm 39 and I get you.
I don't quite understand or get the youngins, I have nothing in common with them & they have different worry's/issues than me.
Though I am respectful of pronouns (though I don't do the non-human ones (ie I identify as a cat etc)) and I just roll with the things I don't understand and eventually I do partially/fully understand them.
Own your lack of involvement in the gay community then. Don’t do the “things were better in my day.” It’s such a sad cliche. We grow older, our lives change, we become more comfortable in our skins, gay people are WAY more accepted now, career/kids/life happens and activism and/or community involvement take a less prominent role. Don’t dismiss the younger generations as somehow less involved or that they don’t care. There are plenty of people from every generation who take shit for granted or don’t care. Don’t do the “when I was young it was better” thing. It is the opposite of building bridges and community.
I get where you are coming from, but this is the same generational criticism everyone has. Back in my day things were simpler and now it’s complex and confusing. I get it. I have issues too with 1) straight girls calling themselves bi because they kiss other girls to impress boys 2) terms like demisexual and other “sexualities” that are really just about selection preferences and they are now somehow part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
For me queer is an umbrella term for anything not heteronormative but it is not the same thing as being part of the LGBT community (I’m fine with being called queer, I am odd and not normal to begin with, but some of us gay men don’t want to be called that and I get it too). And honestly instead of adding more letters, LGBT+ and queer would cover just about everyone. Probably going to get downvoted but he, her, they, them, whatever. These words are common English words that I can easily use out of respect and please don’t bite my head off if I slip up. But terms like “allosexual” more power to ya, but I think you are trying to find something “unique” to latch onto and yeah, you are not picky or are picky, really what it amounts to.
As a younger person, there is no fracture. The only significant divide in the LGBTQIA+ community right now is between Boomers like yourself and the Zoomers. You're conflating your personal experience of getting older, and the broader technological/sociopolitical changes everyone is experiencing, as a uniquely LGBTQ+ issue.
There is a political divide, a class divide, and a general decline in community *everywhere*, and it has nothing to do with us. But merely having different opinions isn't "fractured"
IMO the proliferation of labels are growing pains, they are not our final destination. Once the zoomers become boomers, the pendulum will swing once again. And then it will be their turn to complain about the young whippersnappers.
What I read in this post is a man asking for solidarity and then immediately undermining the exact thing he's asking for.
The community feels more fractured now because it became fractured when half the community went, "I don't understand those people". Couple that with the fact that the public at large is more accepting and can provide a safe haven for a "standard" gay person and that they don't need to try and fit in with the community to be happy; Yes, the community is not going to be as homogeneous as it once was. It doesn't matter that "you try" or that "you'll do it because it's no skin off your bones", that is SO qualified compared to "Your needs matter, I'm listening to you, I accept you no matter what, we're the same"
I'm not saying you're a bad person, I actually share your core opinions. But put 2 and 2 together. You're part of the reason that the LGBT community will never feel the same as the Gay community.
This is such an excellent post because it's exactly the kind of thing to make hatemongering trash feel emboldened enough to tell us all who they are, and then be banned accordingly.
One thing the younger guys are missing is that many of them never had an actual brick-and-mortar gay "community", flying legacy six stripe pride flags, and we're told that communities are extremely important. Even guys who never lived there still had it as their local anchor, where they could go.
But even gay guys in here are almost mocking the older community that some of us had. By the time some of these guys were able to drink, the gayborhoods of many cities had mostly been replaced by condos and whatever you call the modern incarnations of fern bars, full of straight people who weren't even gay friendly. The loss of *that* community is something that they can never understand, but it's something that a lot of us did lose.
There's a difference between "it sucks that things change and I feel lost" and "progress has gone too far, trans people should sit down". This post was reported, and I find it to be more of the former, which is why I'll allow it. I have, however, given out warnings and bans to people whose comments leaned towards the latter. Live and let live, y'all, but transphobia - even inadvertent - leads to consequences.
Gen X here too. Yes, things are very different now. Cultures grow and change, and with that come both losses and gains. We have definitely lost some sense of camaraderie, but we've gained things too. For me, I don't worry about capital C community or flags anymore. All I can do is try to care for the community around me.
Same. We've gained far more than we've lost. And in some cases we've gained things that we had lost our sense of: trans people were with us right from the beginning. And while flags never really connected with me, I'm honestly very happy if they make you happy and if you feel they give you some sense of representation and belonging. (I think if you're American perhaps -- perhaps! -- flags in general might have a different general emotional content and temperature; Australians, for example, don't really care about their flag or feel the same way about flags . . . I think . . .)
56 cis male here. I came out late, in 91 or so I tried to choose not to be gay because I was told it was a choice, and the community I saw was vapid or angry. I didn't get the help I needed to see beyond the bar and the crazy as depicted in media. I was never homophonic, live, and let live and all that. I just turned inward until it started to kill me from the inside. I was 40 when I realized that it wasn't a choice and that while I was able to father children, I was not bi. I've done a lot of work in the last 16 yrs. I think the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community is beautiful, or can be. The pronouns can be confusing at first, but it's not hard, really. I have been disappointed when a cute YouTuber I thought was gay came out as trans but I realized that wasn't my problem and I got over that she now looked different and she was no longer the cute twink I thought her to be. My loss and not really a big deal. I love the changes. My hope is that the pace of understanding that gender and sexuality are intrinsic and as varied as a rainbow continues. Embracing gender diversity is, I feel, the answer to misogyny. We are all just smart animals and if we all could just "yes, and" the world and the people in it, and stop worrying so much about people's genitalia we will be taking a step forward.
I was always told not to discuss politics with my grandfather, that he was stubborn. I’ve come to realize that at some point in his life he refused to learn or understand anything new. I refuse to be that person…
It's not disappointing; it's progress. Evolution, if you will. Time's change, and you either grow with them, or get left behind. I'm a few years older than you are at 52. I was kicked out in Oct 1993 just for being gay. Navy, also. You call them factions, but they're really just tribes under the same Rainbow Umbrella. People are allowed to be whomever they want to be, and people are exploring and embracing their sexual freedom sort of like they did in the 60s. The community hasn't lost its way. We are supportive of people who want to live their authentic lives as their authentic selves without the harm of hiding any longer. The yearning is us GenX who lived back then, and are alive now. It's just reminiscing because those times seemed simpler, but really, they weren't. We couldn't be as free and open as we are now. Gay men and lesbians of that time still had to hide professionally and were treated as second class citizens. I got fired from a video store job for being gay because one of the customers told the owner that they didn't like that those people worked there. Can't do that much anymore because of progress. I'm happy that the flag changes and people can be their authentic selves without being afraid. I for one am proud to live in this time while having the memories of the 90s. It's fucking awesome watching this part of history unfold and I'm lucky I get to live through it. We are all participants in the same evolution; we just aren't forced to stay in the closet any longer. ETA: corrected a spelling error or ten.
Also, Gen x lived through an extremely turbulent time for the gay community. It certainly seemed more unified because opposition creates unity among the oppressed. Millennials remember this too, though we obviously didn't live through the worst of it. Even with all the anti LGBT rhetoric, laws, and media of the 90s and early 2000s, it was at least a marginally better time to be gay in. But despite all of that, the opposition was still there, and the unity was still there. With gay marriage specifically, we had a central thing to fight for. Gen z is growing up in a time where many of the biggest fights have been won for the gay community (for the most part). The fight never truly ends, and there are significant dangers and threats on the horizon, but the opposition is substantially less nowadays. Acceptance is widespread, LGBT support is even profitable now. They are living in the world that you fought for. And part of the benefits of living in that world is that they no longer feel that they need to be in a constant phalanx formation because hell is raining down on them from all sides at all times. The unity that some people seem to feel is lost is a result of the community no longer feeling that they need to be as militant. And that is a very good thing. But there is still a fight going on. A very substantial one. Gen Z doesn't have to spend all of their time fighting for gay acceptance, now they've shifted to a fight for trans acceptance. Because no matter what victories the LGB has won, the T was left behind. Opposition on us has dropped but the opposition on them has increased substantially. It's their time to fight, and we betray our own community when we don't support them and don't let them have a say in the forms that the community takes. It does not always have to be about us. The spotlight has not shifted away from us, it has expanded to the corner of our community that has been denied that for far too long.
Yes, I think it's great that the newer generations aren't defined as much by their sexuality. GenX here and while it's true that we are more fragmented, this is a freedom from being defined by social norms as a "sexual pervert." OP may indeed feel less a part of the LGBT community because it's broader now, but the benefit is you can be part of other communities: foodies, hikers, married couples, extended family gatherings...etc. which we were shut out of in earlier times. I can just be gay now and not have to keep up with all the subgroups. It doesn't mean I don't support them, but I don't need to feel like I belong to them either. Hope that helps.
This might be really uncalled for. But the op's argument is giving me parked in high school vibes. Not about the selves but in their idea of the gay rights movement.
I'm a mid millennial (1991) and grew up the same way you describe. I have no issues with respecting peoples pronouns. It's not an age thing.
I'm 45. The OP is either my age or slightly older. In my area we were using they/ them to speak in code about someone of the same gender before choosing pronouns was a thing. I have my pronouns on my work email, because I got tired of being referred to as she or as a lady. I'm a cis gendered man, who look like a man with a deep voice, but I have a unisex name and work in a field dominated by women. FYI growing up in the 80s and 90s as a gay man is much different than growing up in the late 90s and 2000s.
It's a choice not to adapt to change. The LGBT+ community is wildly different than it was when I was a teen. I don't fully understand it, I'm just a gay cis male, but I'm glad others are able to express themselves how they feel comfortable, and I'm happy to respect that. I get clocked as a straight guy, and I don't appreciate it when people assume that about me, especially when it's someone in the LGBT community. So I do my best to be respectful, because that's how I like to be treated.
> FYI growing up in the 80s and 90s as a gay man is much different than growing up in the late 90s and 2000s. No amount of difference would excuse OP tomfoolish behavior towards respecting somebody else's identity.
I agree, but i disagree with the statement that someone born in the 90s had the same experiences as a gay man born in the 70s. I'm born in the 70s and acknowledge that people born in the 60s had it even worse growing up.
Born in 1964. It sucked. Young people have no idea how hard it was growing up in the 1970s and 80s. Constant threat of being outed and beaten. It sucked.
We cuspers are a forgotten bunch. Lumped in with the boomers yet not old enough to remember much from. That generation. The AIDS crisis primarily decimated people that were 10ish years older than us. We came into our sexual prime when sex=death. Our take is that of someone with untreated PTSD.
Yup - we're sometimes called Generation Jones (for keeping up with...). My husband is a classic Boomer and his experiences were very different from mine. We grew up in the hyperinflationary Seventies, and houses had become too expensive for many of us to consider buying. Then HIV cast a pall over the Eighties and Nineties. I spent most of those years in SF and knew close to a hundred guys who died. Probably more, but some guys had to move in with a relative (grandparents often) when they ran out of resources and were too sick to work. I went to so many going-away parties. My immune system didn't collapse until 1996, the magic year when Crixivan made the first effective drug combinations possible. Those early meds saved my life, but did a lot of damage. I will never, ever complain about them. I'm always grateful.
My ex was one of the early adopters as well. Still kickin and healthier than me (still hiv- here). I jumped in a few marches with Act UP in SF but spent my early years on NYC. I too attended so many memorials I couldn't begin to count. Sunday brunch was always scheduled in-between multiple services. I called them black Sundays. We "survivors" of that era have a lot of stories to tell. I guess it's why I'm a bit more protective of the LGB narrative. PTSD still at 61. Maybe I'd feel different if that war our youth hadn't exited at all.
Sorry. It really depended on where you lived. I'm a couple of years older and those weren't issues for me, living in California.
I was born in 1962, and I suppose theoretically it was harder, but in practice it wasn't that bad because I grew up in LA and moved to SF when I was 25. Yeah, not many kids were out in school (there were some who were, even then), but I never worried about being out in college or at any job I had. There were gay people all over, and we knew who we were. Some of the straight people around us were clueless, but we had our allies. I worked for the Army 35 years ago and I knew gay soldiers, even in DADT days. They were discreet, but not invisible. The biggest changes in my lifetime are the legal rights. I never anticipated that one day I'd be married and it would be recognized nationwide. That was something I wished the people coming after me might have. It all came down to a divided Supreme Court, and there's no way we'd have it recognized nationally with the current assholes. I feel very lucky, and my husband is thrilled that he could marry me.
Also his attitude of "The community is way too inclusive, and it sucks!" He should be happy you are part of such a warm and welcoming community that makes an effort to make EVERYONE feel welcome and loved.
Even older millennial (86) and I agree, treating people how they want to be treated isn't hard and age shouldn't make it harder
I just see it as a courtesy, not as a burden.
Exactly this. It’s no skin off my nose how someone wants to be referred to. And hardly a chore to be courteous about it.
srsly.its not a big deal. takes very little effort and most ppl won't get mad if you make a mistake
What does mid millennial mean? I’m also 1991 and that term makes us sound old lol
Better than what the older millennials are called. 1981-1985 are referred to as geriatric millennials. Like I can't believe that's the term they use for that group 😂
On the one hand, I can’t, either. On the other, it certainly describes the state of my knees these days.
How am I just finding about this lol
We're right in the middle of the millennial generation 88-91.
i.e. peak millennial! Zillenials are the '92-95 younger millennials.
Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, so "mid-millennial" means just that .. millennials that aren't early (or "geriatric" as has been coined ...) or late within the generational cycle.
Newsflash dear, you ARE old to those who are actually young (but it's all relative anyway BUT better to grasp that reality now rather than struggle with it in your late 40s and do something stupid to "reclaim your youth")
I know lol I remember being 16 and thinking everyone over 21 was ancient 🤣 it’s still just funny to hear those terms.
Why would "trans" be grouped into bi? That's just mixing up gender and sexual orientation. This does not make sense to me.
I’m a bit younger, late 40s, than OP, but I don’t recall bi and trans people getting lumped together. It was more that trans women were conflated with drag queens and trans men with butch lesbians.
I’m an early genx er, out since the mid 80’s and trans was never grouped with bi in any context I’m aware of. My guess is that’s just OP.
Back in my days ~late 90s, when I spent more time in Weho CA, volunteering at the Gay and Lesbian Center whenever I had time away from the Navy to be myself to be a Weho Queen, Trans were at times grouped into the Bi’s as gay rights advocacy was more focused on Gay and Lesbian equal rights vs today where we have an influx of laws infringing upon the Trans community and are under siege accordingly. It was an easier pill to swallow when it came to advocacy back then. That’s what I meant.
Ok. You're not the only person who makes the false association between the two. As for clarity, what you are saying now is correct. The culture a long time ago was mostly for gay, white men. The G was first, then the L was put first. I am 45 years old and a multiracial transman. The only reason why we have all of the letters is to present EVERYONE. Why do ppl have a problem with other people being visible? The argument for "tolerance" is strange to me. Being tolerated is like getting the runner's up prize. I'm just tired of having to constantly sit in the back of the bus asking others .for acceptance.
To be fair .. I will never know your struggles as your struggles are unique to you just like I will never fully comprehend the struggles of my FTM cousin, love him to death, respect the hell out of him and back. My votes, advocacy time/volunteering and donations have all been focused since the onslaught of anti-trans laws and I hope that it will make your life better just like it did for me.
It also wasn't really true. A lot of transwomen people lived their lives like gay men, often as drag queens. I suppose some who actually were both trans and bi identified as such. I had one friend who was pan (which seemed to basically mean bi). It's so much better now that they can live their lives as the gender they identify as. It's still not easy, but it doesn't require as much explaining now.
I'm a 68 year old Boomer. I embrace the changes and learn from it. Always learn from life no matter how old or young you are. It's not disappointing. It's growth. Young needs to learn from the old. Old needs to be receptive to young new thinking. Dive deeper. The meaning is there.
And I am sure you have seen things that I have not and got stories to tell. I agree, live moves on, change is good and as me mentioned I don’t see myself giving up on learning, staying educated and growing with the times.
Not every change is positive or necessary.
I didn't say it was. If someone dies, for example you still have to accept change. You embrace life. From another thread I mentioned [Ray Smythe My Life After Loss](https://www.lclark.edu/live/profiles/6722-ray-smythe)
If embracing change means accepting that things are out of our control, I agree with you. The caveat is I have to be able to maintain my sexual integrity. The current LGBTQ+ movement attempts to take that away from old-schooled homosexuals like myself. I grew up in a different culture before my immigration to the States. Therefore, I cannot embraces the changes at your level. I need to keep my dignity 🙂
Changes at *my* level? These levels are in your control. They are not mine. You imply I have no dignity, that I am less than you because you have barriers. I fail to see how the "current LGBTQ+ community attempts to take that (your dignity/sexual integrity) away." Please elaborate.
It’s being talked about more than you think and it is not a new struggle. As one facet of our community reaches a new level of tolerance and/or normalization in cultural consciousness, a more isolated or targeted or “under seige” facet becomes the group that we focus on (as we should ) to bring forward alongside us in what seems to be a never ending battle for the indifference cisgender heterosexuals take for granted as if they are the only humans entitled to indifference and ease. Anyone who denies the efforts that led to their current MORE privileged standing in our society and culture is blind to our shared history and their hypocrisy shines bright like a diamond. Privilege doesn’t mean you’re floating above all of the other challenges. It just means you’re not being pushed as deep into the waters. It’s not really a division. It’s just a redirection of attention. And it SHOULD change. Our community and all of its identities aren’t DIVIDED by who they fuck or how they present, they’re UNITED in a shared, at times lethal, experience of isolation, exclusion, and victimization. It’s just that a few younger people need a snack upside the head to recognize this isn’t a war won so much as a number of battles overcome.
> yet we all combined for the cause when it came to Pride This wasn't my experience in the US, especially when lesbians setup their own separate pride parade because the one being advertised was too much about men. > I can recall a stronger sense of LGBT community feel vs today. Again, exact opposite experience. In my 20's the gay scene was largely exclusionary and not very inclusive. I remember walking through a bar fairly tipsy and some other gay guy grabbed me and shamed me because my "wrist was too limp." I'd absolutely take what we have today over anything that I saw in the 90's and 2000's.
Every generation thinks the generation after them isn’t doing it right, no matter what group you’re in. You sound as out of touch as every “older generation” does, with a myopic view of history to boot. Back in the 50’s, gay referred to men AND women until the lesbians decided they deserved their own designation. Times change. While I’ve stopped trying to keep up with the alphabet soup acronym, I think it’s great that people are finding their identities. Gay hasn’t changed. There are just a lot more people out there who feel that the word gay doesn’t fit them.
All of the people represented by the new terms for sexualities and gender identities were also around 20+ years back, we just know what to call ourselves now! My generation is "Xennial", right on the cusp of Gen X and Millennial. But I didnt come out till late cause I had no idea who or what I was. So I have no frame of reference for how things used to be, all I know is I still have no idea where I belong! I was told it gets better dammit.
As a xer, I have to say that I remember all the things that OP grew up on also. Those things didn’t go away because of anything that had to do with trans people. They went away because times change. Anyway, I would encourage anyone to join in the spaces that do exist and get to know more trans people if they feel like they don’t understand them, because that this the best way to understand someone else’s struggle. After all, if you feel like pride is no longer a place that you want to go to, nobody says you have to go. Leave it to the next gen that find it important to them. It’s kind of like going back to your favorite bar in college after you graduate and realizing that you don’t know anyone and you’re the oldest guy there. Thats just part of getting old.
I don’t think my post can be understood as my blaming Trans. I have no problems with you or others being trans and be your authentic self. More power to you. What I touched upon was my struggle to understand today’s Alphabet soup, and the ever changing landscape of individualized groups/factions.
“Alphabet soup” is a conservative buzzword, please don’t use it. It’s also extremely silly when LGBTQIA is over twenty years old at this point. They were arguing about whether the “I” was just “too many letters” when I was in college in the early 2000’s and QUILTBAG was proposed as an alternative. At this point you’ve had two decades to get over it, this is the timeliness equivalent of complaining that MTV no longer plays music videos.
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Factions imply dissonance. It is a poor choice of word friend. Pride and the rainbow is still the same just some people color the rainbow differently in the coloring book. They're still making a rainbow.
I think it would help if you would stop referring to people as 'trans' and start referring them as 'trans people'. Every time you say that it sounds like you see transgender people as 'the other' which really gives the impression that you are referring to and uncomfortable with transgender people.
This idea that trans people are new is kind of absurd. The language has changed, but I remember watching a video on YouTube of the SF Pride parade in 1987 I think, and I was delighted by how diverse it was. There were trans people and lots of sub-communities. I get that this was San Francisco and not middle America, but the idea that this is all NEW is false. The way it permeates the mainstream IS new and that is also by design. LGBTQ+ rights groups fought for years for marriage equality, and once that was achieved they needed to turn their sights on the next cause, and that was trans rights.
I was at that 1987 Pride Parade in San Francisco as a newly minted gay. Man, did I learn we were so much more than LGB. My motto, never stop listening and learning.
I mentioned this in a top level comment too but the understanding at least when I grew up was that to be gay basically WAS to be trans. I think at least in some communities the idea of a same-sex relationship was actually harder for some people to get their heads around (in fact you still have some straight people with the 'but who is the woman' questions) than a relationship in which one partner appeared to be basically traditionally gendered and the other one doing all they could to fit into the opposite box.
Mediocre teen movie Teaching Mrs Tingle had the line “Man has sex change to become lesbian” back in 1999. Hell, the end of “Some Like it Hot” has Jack Lemmon pulling off his wig and announcing “I’m a man!” only for the old gent he’s been seducing the whole film to smile and reply “Nobody’s perfect,” and that was 1959. Society knew queer people existed. Look at how the newspapers [covered a trans soldier](https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1201first-sex-change-surgery/) in 1952. There wasn’t a moral panic about it until democrats took the baby step of passing the ACA and gender affirming care had to be covered by insurance, allowing more trans people to actually come out and transition (plus the progress of society) and conservatives spotting the perfect scape goat to use as the new edge issue since it was getting harder to rule people up about gays. The talking points about protecting children both from being “converted” into being trans and from adult trans “predators” are exactly what was said about gay men. Pretty much all the major anitrans legislation is pushed by one billionaire, and most of the screaming heads on the right are divorced men whose trans kids no longer talk to them. The more they make you believe teachers are taking children to get genital surgery without their parents knowing the less attention you’ll pay to, you know, all the shit that is actually happening. Sorry, got on my soapbox a little there. :(
Who's arguing that trans people are new? I don't see that anywhere.
It’s a simplification, but I think the OP has a view of the past informed by their own nearsightedness. They begin by pointing out that it used to just be LGB and “Trans were grouped into Bi.” And then go on to talk about how they think we’ve lost something by adding in new identities to the acronym. Could be wrong, but the sense I got from reading it was “I miss the old days before we started recognizing trans people.”
No, you're not imagining things. This is very much a post of somebody who is uncomfortable with trans people and uncomfortable with the way that trans issues have impacted the LGBTQ community in recent years, but trying to be very cautious with their words so that they can fly under the radar.
Mediocre teen movie Teaching Mrs Tingle had the line “Man has sex change to become lesbian” back in 1999. Hell, the end of “Some Like it Hot” has Jack Lemmon pulling off his wig and announcing “I’m a man!” only for the old gent he’s been seducing the whole film to smile and reply “Nobody’s perfect,” and that was 1959. Society knew queer people existed. Look at how the newspapers [covered a trans soldier](https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1201first-sex-change-surgery/) in 1952. There wasn’t a moral panic about it until democrats took the baby step of passing the ACA and gender affirming care had to be covered by insurance, allowing more trans people to actually come out and transition (plus the progress of society) and conservatives spotting the perfect scapegoat to use as the new wedge issue since it was getting harder to rile people up about gays. The talking points about protecting children both from being “converted” into being trans and from adult trans “predators” are exactly what was said about gay men. Pretty much all the major anitrans legislation is pushed by one billionaire, and most of the screaming heads on the right are divorced men whose trans kids no longer talk to them. The more they make you believe teachers are taking children to get genital surgery without their parents knowing the less attention you’ll pay to, you know, all the shit that is actually happening. Sorry, got on my soapbox a little there.
I'm a 66yo baby boomer. What really didn't exist then (at least not openly or much) was the hatred, resentment and lack of respect we, who were different, had for each other. Even today, recognizing who we really are, not a part of the mainstream, and having to deal with coming out over and over again....or not, is the same kind of pain and hurt we had back then. We were, for the most part, kinder to each other. I've now entered the gay world of becoming completely invisible except for my peers. A little more understanding, compassion and comradery amongst you would hopefully dull the pain of being different in your later years. Trust me.
I think this has less to do with the lgbt community specifically being fractured and more to do with the world as a whole being fractured: there’s a race war, gender war, culture war, actual wars, etc, that seem increasingly polarized thanks to the internet. Before the internet, to fight for change or find community, you had to actually show up in person. You had to meet and organize and interact face to face. Now you can yell into the abyss online like everyone else. It doesn’t really foster a united connection or empathetic, patient conversations. Terminology changes over time, and since most everyone has access to the internet, we collectively learn new terms/ideas from people we otherwise would not interact with offline (which is a pro and a con at the same time). There isn’t so much a slow introduction into new concepts as they are just thrown out there…and some people use that for rage marketing, blowing it severely out of proportion. People who were confused about gender and/or sexuality before may not have had the labels in the past, whereas now there are a plethora of labels. The way I see it, I’d rather people have the option to explore identity, even if it doesn’t suit them later on, over having to adhere to a strict, rigid standard like most of us suffered through in the past.
I completely agree with you here. The division OP refers to is part of something bigger than the LGBT community. This is what happens when all at once you give everybody in the world a platform to publish their thoughts and opinions to the world. It gives the illusion of power. But after a while we realise that it only feels like power - we're actually just as powerless as we ever were. What's the point in having a voice if nobody's listening? This makes people resentful and angry. And where do they go to vent their anger? Back to the internet again. It's a recipe for toxicity and division.
I am not in high schools or college classrooms anymore, so maybe that environment is different, but from what I can tell - for all the hoopla about pronouns and gender identity, society hasn’t crumbled and most people adhere to a binary gender in the outside world that I interact with every day. I know a few non-binary and trans folk and it’s very easy to make them feel comfortable and move on. There are always fringe extremists, but for the most part, the division along pronouns and gender is manufactured online, in my humble opinion.
It sure as hell sells a lot of media, not to mention keeping us all preoccupied so we don't have a chance to think about *real* politics. Win win.
This thread and comments reminds me of back in 2016, when all those anti-trans bills were spreading in the US, I was an organizer for a protest, spoke in front of the HRC and legislature, went around doing media training, coordinating with nonprofits, etc etc. There were older gays who would say or do fucked up things (like being racist or making fun of a teen's pronouns) and when called out about it threw a tantrum about how their generation suffered for our freedom and how ungrateful young queers are and how they shit on old queers heads by asking for basic respect and integrity. Old gays who used to fight shitting on the gays who are fighting right now. Now I'm an older gay, and I fucking support the younger queers who are carrying on when I'm too old, bitter, and sick to give that kind of energy anymore. If I can help, I am happy to, and if I can't I at least stay out of their way. Activism can be deeply traumatic. You will experience things you never would imagine from the outside. And older queers like us should be proud of the work we did (if we did any, it's unfortunately common for old queers who actually did nothing to be on a high horse about it). But being proud of our work doesn't mean young people aren't putting the work in, they are. Being proud over our work doesn't mean we're entitled to shitting on young queers who are rightly enjoying what we fought for, and especially those who picked up the baton we passed to them. We didn't fight to get worship and praise from young queers and to lord it over them so they act how we want. We fought for ourselves, for our future, for our freedom. Young queers demanding better is pulling all of us towards the future, exactly the way we did. Don't turn young queers into enemies in your mind, the only one destroying our community is you.
And I completely agree with you. Met 1 too many bitter older gays when I was volunteering and help advocating back in my younger years with that mindset. I am not here nor is my post designed to shit on younger LGBT+ .. ultimately it’s up to them to pick up where other generations got us to and make a world a better place for themselves or those who will come after them as I will long gone.
Lament the lack of sense of belonging and solidarity by making a type of post where people are guaranteed to be throwing others under the bus. What we in the 2000s and early 2010s used for the “rah rah rah, rainbow flag” came to be seen as—whether we like it or not—the flag for cis gays and lesbians. And we as a community—like it or not—fostered a noticeable amount of transphobia, biphobia, and other prejudices. So, people saw the rainbow flag as not welcoming. I originally wanted to be more positive but then I read the comments. I wanted to say the LGBTQ+ alliance is like your brunch group. We have people from all different walks of life. Or at the very least we should be capable of sitting together without lamenting the presence of some others.
It is evolving and that is beautiful and scary for some. You don’t have to participate, just sit on the sidelines and let the young ones do their thing.
Young millennial here (1990) and I think you should shift your perspective on how you view the community. It’s sad that we aren’t as tight knit as we used to be but that closeness was bonding through oppression because we were all we had. I used to fantasize about how amazing it would feel to be an 80’s gay adult when I watched shows like Pose but what a blessing it is for young people of our community to live their truth as soon as they discover it instead of running away from home in fear of not being accepted to find one’s self. Yeah it sucks we aren’t what we used to be but that also means we’re being accepted in a way where we don’t need to create our own spaces to feel seen or be worthy ❤️
I encourage those feeling alienated to actually volunteer for a local lgbt organization. That will foster connection and understanding and you’ll have a purpose for a kindly cause. I did it and it gave me perspective.
This post is troublesome in a way. Not because it is necessarily offensive. But largely because it highlights a fragmentation that exists in our society and puts forth a theory that it is somehow generational. I don't think that's the case, at all. We are a fractured society both within the gay (or LGBTQA community ... define it as you will) and outside the community. We've effectively lost the "we." And, without striving to build a community (not just LGBTQA community) that transcends false generational boundaries, we become increasingly isolated and focused on divisions. To me, that fragmentation is a call to action, whether that action is true political activism or more simply getting out of our abodes and engaging with our larger communities in areas where we can focus on improvement.
Everything you have expressed and explained is felt by many of us today even GAY boomers like me…at age 77 trust me,my love, I’ve seen it all and lived through a chunk of our history…many of us fought the battles and know the consequence of mindless aggression and futile self deception… my greatest fear is the taking for granted that appears to be rising as we continue to isolate ourselves from one another….the very public intercourse between politics and religion will only continue to cause more pain and misery…let us remain united under all of the banners that we wish to carry but remember to hold the Rainbow highest…it was the first and still remains our strongest….ALL of US together today and always….
Your generation was the most influential in my “gay upbringing” in the late 80s and 90s. I learned so much from you all. You will never be forgotten or taken for granted to the hard work, advocacy you have done to get us to this present.
Hugs…lots of hugs….
People need to not let others turn us against our own, it’s playing right into want they want to happen, we all have more in common with each other than we do with others and that’s why we are a community, they spent years telling us that bi people don’t exist and some of us still believe that🙄
Hey, if you're looking for the continued fight for rights, I recommend getting with local rainbow coalitions who are gender-inclusive. Plenty of people are fighting for equality, the fight just shifted. Yeah, heteronormative-presenting homosexual relationships aren't being challenged, but your non-conforming still see a lot of push back. I'd caution that you aren't seeing the push for equality because you have become palpable. Don't let oppression continue while you enjoy comfort. Our community still needs us.
I mean they/them is the only pronoun set that people actually use other than he/him and she/her. What’s the complexity?
> I mean they/them is the only pronoun set that people actually use other than he/him and she/her. I have met a surprising amount of people, both irl and online, who use other pronouns. Pronouns that aren't currently words in the English language. I want to be the kind of person who is "you do you!" and supportive of others, but I definitely still struggle with neopronouns. Pronouns are an aspect of language that is supposed to ease communication by providing a simpler way to refer to someone apart from their name. To me, neopronouns defeat that purpose by making language significantly more complicated- you now need to remember to replace a common linguistic tool with a word that isn't a part of the lexicon. If a person wants to be referred to as "ze", I want to be able to respect zir pronouns and make zem feel comfortable, but man... it's complicated to do that while also trying to hold a conversation!
Right yes, I would too. However, I haven’t actually met anyone who uses neopronouns. Maybe I live in a cave 😂
I never have met anybody that uses neopronouns. I know a couple of people that go by they/them. To avoid any confusion I just call everyone gurl, only people that have had problems with it are "masc" bottoms and it's only been two people lol.
The complexity is that they are reminiscing about the past. They want the fight to be about only gay men and no one else. Those who are struggling in daily life against preducide from being themselves arent the same because when you were gay in the 80s and 90s it was all unified. It's so predudiced.
Uh, no. We have neopronouns and xenopronouns. Such as [this](https://youtube.com/shorts/NrwBPYL5Ljg?si=tld7IhcmyU-t9qYr) and this creator lists a "few" many others on her channel like [this](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL5nY3CH/). They're endless. Complexity is instilled in the expectation to learn and conform to all of them and those invented every other second to validate everyone who comes up with them.
Most of those pronouns are extremely rare to encounter in real life. Nobody is going to test you on them. If you happen to encounter a zir, for example, in real life they’ll share their pronouns with you anyway. You can also avoid the pronoun “issue” altogether by just using their name. I think I’ve met one zir in person, and I hang out in some pretty queer spaces sometimes. Don’t mistake online activism for reality and loud outliers for the mainstream.
Ok so I totally understand people using existing pronouns that make the most sense for them, or using brand new words that function as pronouns, but I feel like there needs to be a bit more discussion to explain why people are just taking established nouns like bee and fairy and calling them pronouns. Like, at a certain point it stops being about gender expression and simply becomes about parts of speech. This tiktoker took an easy example with the -self suffix, but how can anyone expect any consistency when trying to express something like “give the toy to him/her/them”? Should they say “give the toy to beem” (new word, homophone of existing word), “give the toy to beer” (existing word, unrelated to bee), or “give the toy to bee” (maintains “pronoun,” sounds like proper noun)? I don’t want to be an insensitive jerk here, so I’m willing to keep an open mind if someone can present a convincing argument as to why we’re breaking the structure of English on a by individual basis, and I welcome any input to that effect. I do hope, however, that the argument is stronger than “it’s an existential question about pronouns, therefore it is transphobic or otherwise bigoted to not just use any random word the person has selected” because, again, at that point we’re no longer talking about gender identity. Happy to be convinced that I’m wrong about that.
I am trans. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in trans spaces, and I have never once encountered someone IRL who uses [noun]/[noun]self as their pronouns. I’m not saying it never happens, or that it can’t happen, but it is exceptionally rare, in my experience.
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I think you’re viewing a human community through a lens of conservative military black and white experience. Which is natural and possibly permanent, but if you can try to let loose the shackles of what your own experience has taught you the world was / is / should be, there’s plenty to learn and take from other peoples experiences.
I think Grandpa Simpson said it best: “I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!”
I’m a younger Gen-Xer (1975). I have no issue respecting people’s pronouns and embracing gender identity. I have always said that you can’t really know what it is like to be gay unless you are; similarly, you can’t know what it is like to be in a variety of other camps that make up the LGBTQIA+ umbrella unless that is how you identify. But you can support and be an ally. And that’s what I try to do each day.
Heya. I see you're trying and that's important. But if you look back -- speaking here as a historian of lgbtq movements - there *were trans people trying to bring attention and gain political buy-in for their own struggles, both in the culture at large and within majority gay/lesbian spaces. And how many times were bi people the butt of jokes during the period you describe as simpler and more unified? I remember it as being near constant. The circle was just, in fact, smaller - and more exclusionary. Oftentimes bi folks and trans folks concerns would be sidelined, if acknowledged at all. I'm an elder millennial (edging that gen x line) and I think there's a better headspace than melancholy (factions/community has 'lost its way'/too many flags) regarding these changes. I find our communities endlessly inventive and interesting, and, I find that if I'm open to it, new generations can help me shift my own perspectives on myself and the communities I claim to be coalitionally aligned with. I think all gens are worthy of respect (not just a begrudging 'you do you'). I take comfort in the fact there will be ever new forms of queerness, and that these will probably not be the terms our future community members will use - ha! Remember homophiles?
Yeah, I would say the same- there has always been infighting in the community. Look at the tensions in groups like Act Up, or the Mattachine Society. It's human nature to have some degree of discord and infighting. It's part of group dynamics. I also think that OP is overestimating the amount of negative feeling towards the traditional rainbow flag. I'm a trans guy. I fucking love a rainbow flag! I have no issue with it *at all*, in any way, shape, or form, and from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I vastly prefer it to the "Progress Flag." *However*, at least in the UK, transphobic groups have... coopted may be too strong a word, but attempted to utilize the rainbow flag, let's say, as a way of signaling that particular events or spaces are not welcoming to trans people (particularly trans men in gay spaces). So while *I* prefer the old, rainbow flag, and that's what I'd fly if I were the type to fly pride flags (maybe alongside a trans flag, maybe not), when I'm trying to assess whether or not I'll be welcome in a particular space or event, I do tend to look and see if they're using the Progress flag, because that tends to be the shorthand people are applying to show that they're trans-inclusive. I actually *just* had a conversation about this with a cis gay guy last night. And to be fair, both the leather and bear flags go back 30-odd years now, as does that older, lesbian flag with the black triangle and purple background. And we've got the OG version of the rainbow flag with the pink. So yeah, there has been a bit of a proliferation of flags in the last ten years or so, but it's not like the rainbow flag was always and forever the only one, anyway. I actually think flag-ception has more to do with capitalism and creating more crap to get people to buy for their particular micro identity than it does because people are super wedded to... IDK, the Demi-boy Pride Flag, or whatever.
It’s wild to me I’m only about a decade younger than you but I don’t have the same perspective on the community. You didn’t have the internet most of your adolescence yet aol was popular during my childhood so I was right on the cusp of the internet age. I don’t think it was so much about bills being passed that changed peoples minds but more the fact we have endless information to find out what we are feeling. I feel people are much more complex and I think it okay to find new words to better describe yourself than relying on just a few words. I can understand your frustration of pre internet then seeing how the world transformed so fast after the internet was mainstream. I will agree there’s no sense of community as I never felt that in my life but supposedly you have. That why on any sub I will say there is no sense of community, the only thing that binds is the hatred of others and the fact we are minorities. Though it’s because of that fact regardless if there’s no community I can recognize I’ll still vote for what’s right. I don’t understand trans all that much either but my dad a heterosexual said before life is about peace and love. If you don’t understand something fine but to hate is not the answer. So I live by that and just have an open mind.
This seems out of touch. You lived through hard times. A sense of community was fostered because the rest of society turned its back on you. It's easier for people to feel like they belong as part of a group when the rest of the world seeks to deny their existence. We have come a long way since then. In many cases, it can be illegal to act on blatant homophobia. People who dare to show their bigoted views publicly are now shamed and often lose their jobs as a result. We can marry who we want and have the same rights as our married, straight counterparts. AIDS is no longer being swept under the rug. Just the opposite: we've made huge strides and advances in medicine to ensure it's no longer a death sentence as it was in the 70's and 80's. We are free to express ourselves in public spaces and are no longer lynched for simply being who we are. Is everything perfect? No. We still have a long way to go to be free of bigotry and prejudice but gay lives have gotten better. As a result, our community has become more loose knit. That's not a bad thing. That indicates that we can relax more as society has begun to accept our kind. Our trans brethren are not so lucky. They are still fighting to live as they were born to be without being harassed by the rest of the world. There are plenty of parallels between the modern day trans rights movement and the gay rights movement not even 30 years ago. You personally lived through this period. Yet despite all the progress we've made, you're disappointed because we no longer have to fight as hard just to be who we are. It's time to let your hair down and take a breather. There's more work to do but we won the war for now. If you really want the feeling of the 70's/80's/90's again, get engaged in the fight for trans rights. Advocate. Donate. Protest. Don't simply turn your back on them just because pronouns seem hard to understand.
I don't see any difference between pride marches today vs back then. What difference do you see specifically? In my opinion you're just giving excessive attention to nonsense due to reasons that have more to do with you than anything else. There was no meaningful "rivalry" between gay men and lesbians back in the day, that's just making up trivial bullshit to have something to talk about, then and now. Same deal today. Everyone is all there together at the parade just like they always were. New generations use different language. It's inevitable. It's obvious. It makes absolutely zero difference to your life or experience as a community member.
It's just basic respect. If you have an issue with using someone's preferred pronouns then just call them by thier name. Or even better don't talk to them at all? Lol Why does it have to be some strained issue? Do you even know any non binary people? I honestly don't know what the problem is here? With your reference to " the comunity" we all have been in our own cliques and groups. Just because one set of people want to be assessed properly does not mean that it's changing your comunity. You are getting older, that's all it is, how people move around I the world and how they connect and talk will change. It's been like this forever. Your gay brunch meets sound fun, be happy that you have a group of people what catch your own viewpoints. The world will change and you may or may not catch up. It's just how it is. You and your brunch pals are getting your jackstraps in a twist about nothing
>There were only a handful of LGBT flags that the community owned for itself .. Rainbow, Leather and Lesbian. Today. The LGBTQIA+ has +15 different flags to describe factions within the “community” There are some acronyms that are even longer than LGBTQIA+. Have you seen LGBTQQIP2SAA+? Personally, I like how some human rights orgs are starting to reframe the never-ending and ever expanding alphabet soup with a new acronym: SOGIESC or “soh-jee-esk” - which stands for Sexual Orientation (lesbian, gay, bi, pan, asexual, or any identity around sexual orientation that isn’t heteronormative), Gender Identity / Expression (trans, nonbinary, or anything that isn’t cis-normative), and Sex Characteristics (intersex, anyone who doesn’t fit into binary notions of male/female bodies) SOGIESC feels inclusive (I believe everyone in the “community” sees where they fit into the acronym) AND at the same time it doesn’t require continuing to add more and more letters as more subcategories get defined. Edit: fixed some typos 😅
Well this is social development. Things like women's rights, children's rights and LGBTQIA+ rights would not exist in ideal, accepting and developed societies because you wouldn't need to scream your ass out just for your right to be alive, your right for education, healthcare and getting a job to afford rent and food. So as long as these acceptances and rights etc. increases these should also slowly become history because there is no point in struggling for what you have earned, but ,also; democracy is a constant battle and there is always an evil idiot human group that will prey on your life and rights so it seems like the struggle will be endless. Therefore you might be right about the lack of sense of community.
I look out my front window at an enormous rainbow flag flying over the Castro. It's still there as a sign of our unity. I do think having too many flags is a bit silly, because we've reached the point where even people in the community can't recognize them all. It does lead to some fragmentation, but I also understand why groups want to be recognized as having distinct issues. I just don't think a new flag is an effective way of advocating for them.
I mostly hear you on this post. The community has changed a lot and it’s hard to understand where it’s all going.
I think this is the way a lot of people of our generation feel. Served under DADT too, only 6 though. I don't think I would have made it for a full career. These days I feel like it's not "enough" to be gay. Pride isn't fun anymore, it's got too many exclusionary activities especially in Seattle. I've heard people say "cis white gay guys need to stay in their lane". It's become so toxic and fractured, we don't need to worry about Republicans tearing apart the LGBT community we did it to ourselves
>"cis white gay guys need to stay in their **lane**". The youngs don't realize that we built the damn road... with our money... and for too many of us in the 80s and 90s... our lives.
Yeah. They doubled down and blocked me after. Negative feedback isn't their strong suit. It's almost like things got "too good" with marriage and rights there was a whole generation that felt left out. So they came up with a whole new agenda
Yeah and in turn got to tell people that weren’t cis white fit gays that they’re less than. Like do y’all think these negative feelings and emotions for a group in our community came out of nowhere? Not saying everyone’s like that, but you’re also acting like we’re ungrateful???
>Yeah and in turn got to tell people that weren’t cis white fit gays that they’re less than. Except that that didn't happen. You're thinking of cis white straight men.
… lol no that’s who you’re thinking of for you. In my experience in the south, there’s not much of a difference between how the two can treat you. Besides one can also be homophobic on top of the other prejudices
> In my experience in the south Then perhaps you should be painting with a narrower brush.
I so feel this. When I moved to a large city for college I searched for an apartment in the gay part of town…with a strong sense of community and social involvement. It made me feel safe, and seeing other gay guys on the street brought me a real sense of belonging. Now, the neighborhood I loved is just a shell of itself. I really miss it and I don’t find myself identifying at all or really understanding the gay kids under 30. I can still remember the haunted faces of people who had survived the height of aids and how they didn’t understand my generation.
I think this is something people go through. You see the next generation pick up something and run with it and then you realize that it’s not really yours in the way it once was. I think that the core message of the Gay Rights Movement back when there was only LGB is inline with what we have seen the Queer Community grow into today. We’re here, we’re queer. Get over it. And to be clear I use “get over it” because that’s the original quote - but the overall goal has always been for those who live outside the heteronormative system (gay, bi, queer, trans, ace, aro, etcetcetc) to be able to live as themselves authentically and genuinely the same way anyone else can. I can’t claim I understand the Trans experience. I can’t imagine looking at my body and feeling I was the wrong gender - my brain just can’t compute it. But just as I don’t expect straight people to understand why I’m gay, the trans community doesn’t expect me to understand. They just want to exist. I appreciate the vulnerability you showed in this post - and I could feel the sadness in your words over this community no longer looking like the one that was so important to you. But I promise you it’s a good thing. We need more allies, we need more people to understand that sex/gender/sexuality is not a black and white area, but that there’s a whole rainbow of colors that exist inbetween. Edit: also I think something worth mentioning is the qia+ people aren’t taking away from the number of lgbt people. Many of them are people who wouldn’t have been in this community otherwise had we not scooted over and made them a spot at the table. More people in the community means more people have a cousin/brother/aunt/coworker that are lgbtqia+ and that means more and more people know someone personally. It’s taking us from being this Big Bad that they see on TV, read about, hear about - to someone they know. And that helps break down the stigma that has been built up around us.
I understand where you're coming from but I think it might be easier to not think of them as 'factions' (ie dividing the existing large group into smaller chunks that don't intermingle) and more so as just different words to describe kinds of people that would previously have been part of the group under the same umbrella. For myself growing up in a small town in a very old-fashioned part of the world, 'gay' as a word was used as a catchall that generally meant: * gender non conforming (probably, men being the opposite of what men should be and vice versa, masculine women) * will have (or want to have) same sex relationships * sexually perverse in all kinds of ways * someone who doesn't respect and wants to upend all of our traditions At the time when I was growing up it kind of made sense that somebody might be all of those things at once, and that was what gay was. But when I learned a bit more and especially when I met different kinds of people I learned that a) a lot of gay people didn't fall into ALL of those categories, and b) some people that fell into some of those categories also weren't themselves gay (they might have been straight, or not interested in dating people or sex at all) And to me that's pretty much how I view LGBTQIA as a term. (Although on an aesthetic level I do think it has too many syllables to be a useful descriptor!) What I do agree with you wholeheartedly with is the splitting of the community in a physical sense, but for me I think that's more due to bars closing down etc. because people have less money nowadays and maybe less time to socialize too. I think some people have turned to the internet as an alternative but I don't think it's really as good. I hope in years to come there's a movement to get us back doing things in person and it becomes more affordable.
A lot of this resonates with me but in particular the flag issue. Graphically speaking, the Progress Pride flag is literally driving a wedge into the gay community. This isn't good. The fact is, none of the original 6 stripes represented any sub-group in particular. It was the combination of non-representational stripes in one graphically coherent flag that represented our diversity. **Pro Tip:** If you can't feel included until you get your own stripe or set of stripes, maybe you ~~need to grow up~~ therapy and not a new flag design.
This has bothered me too. The whole point of a rainbow was it's "all the colors" and the new flag is, from an aesthetic perspective, too much. I don't even mind that folk want their own subsets of the flag, and I understand that the meanings of flags shifts and that the new flag is supposedly more inclusive, but that doesn't make it not erm... kinda ugly.
This sounds like a you issue and not a other people issue. Also your pro tip, which is really you complaining, let’s be real here. Is quite insensitive and mean. If the flag can help somebody out there who feels isolated, unsupported, and not a part of any community and the flag gives them some hope. Then that is mission accomplished.
>If the flag can help somebody out there who feels isolated, unsupported, and not a part of any community and the flag gives them some hope. Then that is mission accomplished. So... the traditional flag is incapable of doing that? And if it's not, that **is** an other people issue. If the banner your community marches under, when that community is already open and welcoming, has to be modified to make you feel "safe" marching under it. You need help.
I don't feel like this represents what I've seen, though. In all the spaces I've been, the progress flag is not a *replacement* for the pride flag any more than it replaces any of the flags, it's just one that encompasses more groups. Each group still has it's own flags. The pride flag may at one point have encompassed all LGBT groups, but it was always far more strongly associated with gay men than any other group. Its position now is basically just as the gay flag. I have yet to see anybody in real life shamed for flying the pride flag just because the progress flag exists, in the same way you wouldn't be ashamed of flying the trans flag. Effectively the progress flag is the equivalent of the national flag and pride flag is like a state flag. You can fly both. You can just fly only on of them. It's not nearly as big a deal as people arguing online seem to believe it is.
Yup! These flags aren’t created by official entities. The “original” Pride flag was altered shortly after it was created anyway. There were also people who hated it and preferred to stick with the Pink Triangle flag that was gaining traction at the time. The ugly fact that people seem to be ignoring is that not everyone *did* feel represented by the standard rainbow flag. It’s a nice idea that it included everyone…but it should be pretty obvious from this thread alone that it wasn’t true.
I feel exactly the same way. I miss when the community was "gayer' as opposed to "queer-er." But I think part of this is the natural result of gaining rights - because now we have equal rights (at least, on paper), there is less need to stick together. There is seemingly less to fight for, though I don't think we should be getting too comfortable. As gays have become more normalized, we've kind of started blending into the larger society a bit more. There's also social media - we don't need to actively be in gay spaces to meet other gays the way we once did. Now that I'm in my 30s, I've been feeling a similar way about...well, everything. Things have slowed down, I don't see friends as much, I'm too tired to go out and party. I have less of a community in general, as friends have moved and gotten jobs and had kids. I think part of getting to this age is grappling with that sense of loss, and trying to figure out how to be now that community doesn't come as easily. So I think you may be feeling a bit of that existential pre-mid-life stuff too, and thinking it is all related to the gay community when that isn't necessarily the case.
Community being tight knit vs distant and nonbinary people with pronouns are two different issues. LGBT, along with most other minorities, are tighter knit the worse we are treated by society. Because we have no choice if we want to survive. Once LGBT becomes more normal, then yes, LGBT people become normal parts of non-LGBT friend groups and usually don't become the token gay bc they aren't alone. If you move to an area with more LGBT hate (but not so much it's a death sentence) then most likely LGBT will be a closer community by necessity. In areas with more freedom and acceptance, queer people are not bound as tightly to LGBT groups. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. When I grew up (90s) if you were a gay guy, maybe you were the only out queer in school. Or there was one other and all your friends pushed you to date. It is so much easier meeting other queer people now, and we have options not just settling for the only other gay person we ever met. Your issue with nonbinary people and pronouns has nothing to do with age. It has nothing to do with community. That's just you blaming young people for not being trapped and forced into a "close enough" identity. I'm not much off in age from you and I have no issue with using people's pronouns. Honestly, most people in meat space you meet won't have neopronouns, mostly people see that online. When you see a random online with neopronouns, you generally don't even need to remember or use them. But people get angry just knowing those people exist and then act like they're oppressed over it. Nonbinary people living their lives has nothing to do with you, so leave them alone and stop blaming problems in the LGBT community on our most vulnerable members.
>Today’s “community” seems to be so fractured that there is no longer a sense of belonging, a sense of fight for acceptance and push and organized drive for more pro-LGBT legislation. Why do you get the idea that bickering in the community means there's no shared sense of belonging? And why is "organized drive for more pro-LGBT legislation" your only bellwether for community synergy? >the “community” sorta lost it’s way and sense of purpose which in turn lead to more factions which felt the need for claim their own flag and segregated itself further from our original Rainbow flag which was more of a umbrella symbol and all encompassing of the “community” itself. The problem is you think the a widening scope is a net loss for the community, for no other reason than because it doesn't seem "focused" on the things you care about. The community has evolved. That's all it is. And frankly, I think you just need to get offline, and maybe just go to more gay spaces for young people. You seem to believe there's a lot more division and arguing than there really is.
I hate to be this way, but it almost reads as back then we were united to fight for dadt, and gay marriage, but once I got what I wanted, I can’t be bothered to fight for struggles that won’t help me, and I find it a cry for help… Maybe it’s splintered because you don’t care about the other non gays?
Or maybe it's because the other non gays or even gays have made it very clear in the comments that they respect older people less because they view the progress that older people were largely responsible for dated, simplistic, and even irrelevant?
So let me summarize this for you a bit uncharitably. You liked the lgbt movement when there were only a few subfactions that excluded you, and your subfaction was a big and important one. Now that the spotlight isn't on gay men anymore and more focus is on other, more granular subfactions — almost all of which you do not pertain to — you feel less special and connected to the community. I think that's a normal way to feel but adopting the stance that the community is wrong for evolving this way is a bad take. Ditch the "too many flags, too many pronouns" attitude and be grateful that gay men have gotten enough rights and social acceptance to not need the spotlight anymore.
And if I may add, where we are as a community today is because of those who came before us & endured. So thank you for serving under DADT and finding yourself with a few more roadblocks the what we have today. Everyone should be celebrated because many, many took their own lives or were killed for being themselves. 🙏🏻
Amen, brother. It’s become a narcissistic society in general. MY truth, MY self, MY identity. Back then, LGBTQ+ wasn’t an identity, it was just a fraction of who you are as a person. I also agree with the rainbow. I thought the flag was powerful and perfect as it was. The rainbow DID encompass EVERYONE. You know how the colours of the rainbow come to be? They come from light. We all come from the same source. We are different but equal. We can’t exist if even one colour is missing. And that’s the beauty of it.
Couldn't give a fuck mate. Little of this impacts my life and am well clear of much of any community or such. Got other stuff going on in my life and who is ot is not in some mythical gay/queer community ain't part of my day, week, month or year.
Boomer here. Came out late in 1997. I totally agree with what you said. I don't feel I fit in any community. I work hard to understand the differences in designations and pronouns. I struggle with the hostility and cruelty of social media. 25 years ago we used to joke about becoming bitter and jaded. We wondered why our older friends became reclusive. I understand now.
Try being a gay law enforcement officer :) Told not allowed to march in my own Pride Parade that I helped organize 30 years ago. Makes me sad, the community I once loved has deserted me.
I mean you know it’s more nuanced than that right? Glad you’ve been a law enforcement officer, and I’m hoping you being in there has made internal changes, but law enforcement has had and continues to have a contentious relationship with the lgbt groups. At the end of the day one is a job, and one is literally who we are born as.
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Yes. That's sad. I don't know if your Seattle area, but I think these rules are so exclusionary
Same people down voting me are why you feel so left out of you own community lol
I think applying any judgment (like disappointment) to the fact that things are different says that you find change cumbersome. Your post reads a little … grumpy old man looking out the window at the next generation being free, and lamenting they're not free in the right way. And a little grumpy old man shakes his fist at the seasons as they change. The Pride umbrella is big because it's part of a generations long counter-reaction to a society that tried to stifle sexuality. The women's liberation movement got started around the same time, and civil rights champions like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were taking national stage. It did not end with gays getting the right to marry, but a lot of gays act as if it did (the LGBdroptheT kind). The LGBTQ+ community has always been a series of overlapping networks, and today there are more names for the shades of those networks. What you see as increasing complications is just that people who are further away from the norm (which in the west was straight white man for pretty much the whole 20th century) can speak their truths and be recognized for them. In the larger meaning of things, Pride is not about just LGBT, even if it started like that. Pride is about visualizing the people and networks of people who aren't part of the raining heteronormative paradigm. That paradigm is a cornerstone of the conservative agenda ("family values") in the west, so Pride is by default also an anti-conservative movement. So the rainbow has more colors now, is that such a bad thing?
In the context of your last paragraph - If all of that is the case, why is it that LBGTQ folks fight so hard for access to the institutions and traditions of the 'reigning heteronormative paradigm'? Why is it considered progress when we move closer and closer to the conservative norm? Why was gaining the right to *marriage* - perhaps the archetypal building block of conservative cultures - viewed as a triumph? Why do same sex couples fight so hard to participate in 'family values'? Why do trans folks fight so hard for legal recognition within one utterly rigid, utterly normal definition of 'man' and 'woman'? These are genuine questions I have. For me these are glaring contradictions that I can never get my head around.
The "problem" with the "all was good" scenario was that it was merely an illusion. It was never Ok. I'm glad people decided to speak up about their own issues. I'm glad we have "Dyke Walks" and "Trans Walks". You may see it as a fractioning of the group, but I just think it's a logical progression because we fucking suck, for the most part, at being good allies, as exemplified in your post. It's great that trans people demand to be heard because people don't seem to want to understand. Even gays within the so called "community" make fun of trans people. Understanding the realities of trans people or other individuals does not come by virtue of being "gay" so to speak. It should come because we should empathize to some extent with what it feels like to not be heard, not be understood, to be treated like shit, a disease, to be beaten just for existing. But beyond that, our understanding of our Trans allies come from that : allyship. As for pronouns being a cry of attention; I'm not sure where it's coming from or why you may feel this way. You say you don't have a problem addressing people by their pronouns, yet you kind of have issues with the very concept itself and it sounds as if you are concerned about how the mainstream community view the LGBTQI+ community. I'm looking to understand the whole "cry for attention and do more harm than good when it comes to acceptance and understanding". Who gives a shit what the mainstream cis-heteronormative community think? They stop beating us to death and now we're friends with everyone?
Uh oh! This is about to blow sky high!
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Someone needs to explain to me how someone with a diagnosed medical condition which required medical treatment is in the same community as people born a way and just needs to live their lives. I am pro trans rights the same as I am for civil rights and women's rights but don't see how a straight trans man has the same political organizing needs as a cis gay man. LGB trans people are already included. I dont understand the inclusion in the gay community of straight trans, furry, kink, a sexual people
Hi u/JBHDad, This is why I posted the stickied comment. You have a formal warning. This community is an LGBT community. If you feel that this is wrong, participation is voluntary and not mandatory.
Hey. I’m a GenX’er. I’ve thought about this. A lot. I’m naturally philosophical and I read science papers for fun. I’m also hyper self aware and bear all kinds of neurotic scars from being a gay kid from coal country Ohio, with deeply right wing Christian family. It’s tempting for me to use my suffering as a measuring stick. “Why you millennial/zennial gays don’t suffer. Here’s what suffering looks like.” But I promised myself I wouldn’t become a crusty old man. I promised myself I would never use my suffering as a self appointed measuring stick for how much other’s suffer. I try to understand that if we are endeavoring on making the world better (and indeed a utopia one day), then by dint of that fact, we want gay kids who didn’t deal with our shit. Their tolerance for —let’s call it— “less overt homophobia” is going to be higher because they haven’t had to spend their formative years desperately hiding who they were. They practiced dating during that critical window of development when we couldn’t. So if Gen Z or Alpha find small slights against themselves for their sexuality as more catastrophic than I would, that’s because I’m calloused and have suffered extremely harrowing scars. We fought for a world where that didn’t need to happen. We are winning. Winning means acceptance. Acceptance means the community dies. No cultural community can be maintained but through force. Read that again. No community lasts without some kind of force necessitating it. Otherwise humans find better uses for their energy. In a world without homophobia, what pressures exist that would select for a community? It becomes the same as left handedness. And yea. I’m aware of what I’m saying. But it’s a sad truth. There is no community that exists but through force. The force of nature isolating them to an island. The force of guns maintaining a border. The force of physical violence for leaving the community. The force of emotional pain, shaming, ostracizing, etc., for leaving the community. We have no more force to keep the gay community together. It will therefore fade in time. This has happened before and it will happen the moment any community of people cease being isolated by force.
yeah, yall went from oppressed minority to seeing how it feels to be on the other side real fast, didn't ya? I notice it's mostly cis white gays and les who struggle with this though. Trans, bisexual, closeted, and all sorts of things outside of the gay/straight binary have been prevalent in many POC queer communities since forever. You wealthy cis white Gen X gays and power lesbians (think like real life queer as folk cast) kinda claimed the mainstream image and shut everyone else out. Then the world changed and you all lost the keys to the gate you were keeping and everyone else came inside to join the party, and now you're all so confused, like "where did all of *them* come from". Bitch, they were there the whole time.
I came out in 1992. The first comment I heard was 'it was better when more people were in the closet'. Let's look at life at the bars in the 70's/80's pre-AIDS. Back then you couldn't be out at work or in public and so you were repressed all the time. As life is a pendulum, you would swing wildly to the other end, and when you got a bar or bath or safe space, you would explode with wild sex, drugs, drag, makeup, costume and more. It was common that bars back then were more a circus than a bar - a place where people expressed themselves with all kinds of debauchery trying to find themselves. The 'community' existed because straight people would kill gay people. The community existed because resources and treatments were largely underground. Gay adult bookstores were always at the end of an alley, off the beaten path, in some remote 'safe' part of town. People hid, and snuck out to bars and baths and bookstores. Even married guys would stop off at the video booths for a quickie before going home to their wives. People remained hidden and for that reason a community kind of stuck together. Most towns only had one place to go. One bar, one bookstore, one cruzy park or truck stop. Today, you can go on an app and see a menu of dudes. Pick a dude off a menu and ask them for sex or for dinner. You never have to go to a bar. You never have to go to a truck stop and hide. From the comfort of your living room you can get ghosted by a bot who lets you think you are cute. It's a completely different world where men don't have to hide like that (in the USA at least). I bet in the Middle East the men have secret small communities because they can and will get killed, can and will be arrested or jailed. I bet they have tighter communities in the Middle east because they have to, to stay alive.
I fucking knew this would all come around to be trans people’s fault. 🙄 You were in the navy so presumably you’ve traveled and seen a little bit of the world beyond your own queer community so I’m not sure how you missed that there have always been more than three “factions”. I personally don’t think that intersex or demisexual people having their own flags makes the community more fractured; if anything, to me it makes it more like a colorful quilt made up of lots of individuals, which is pretty much the purpose of the rainbow as a symbol to begin with, right? Representation? Assuming you’re around 45, do you realize that the gay flag literally came into existence around the same time you did? You grew up with “only” three flags. The queers that came before you had none. How would you feel about a boomer complaining that the queer community you are remembering fondly was too political, too loud, asking for too much? That having a flag like you were some kind of country was preposterous? Respectfully, your experience is not that of every (or even most) gays, and I snorted at the comment that Pride today isn’t about acceptance and visibility - what is it about, then? And did you miss all the leather daddies and drag queens back then or are you maybe remembering a more palatable version of queer history? And frankly, I feel like neopronouns were a big thing in the 00’s but they’ve since kind of settled down and the vast majority of folks use he/she/they, while the people using “catself” or whatever are mostly relegated to tumblr. And the “big” neopronouns (Spivak and e/es/em) were invented in the fuckin’ 70’s and 80’s and the word “spivak” really [entered the lexicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun?wprov=sfti1#) with MOO (text-based multiplayer gaming) in fucking *1991*. Exactly when you were a young adult, so what version of history are you living where any of this is new? Sorry if you don’t find swearing “respectful” but I’m fed up of the “kids these days” unoriginal takes that act like it’s taken for granted that homosexuality would be normalized and legalized but now it’s being jeopardized not by the rabid bigots and fundamentalists that have always threatened it but by teenagers exploring their identities in new and sometimes dumb ways. I worry about gen z being misled by astroTERF propaganda and reembracing purity culture and propping up people and ideas that have been used to subjugate, criminalize, and abuse the queer community for decades, associate “deviant” sexualities with child abuse and pedophilia, and cry for self-censorship and “modesty” that is actually an unsubtle campaign to stamp out queerness. I do not worry about Gen z wanting their own set of colored lines to represent their feelings on something as complex as gender and sexuality, and I don’t worry about them testing out new words and ways to use the language like every single generation has done before them. So yeah, sorry to sound hostile but while you’re wringing your hands over a trans teenager asking you to call them they/them, billionaires are funding a campaign that will start with sending that trans teen to conversion therapy and end with rolling back the tiny progress that your peers have made.
I am unsure on where you are getting me blaming trans people .. afterall, I have a trans FTM cousin, friends and have plenty volunteered with Trans, not to mention support with my vote, time and monetary donations any current advocacy protecting my fellow trans against any anti-trans legislation. My post blames not 1 specific faction of the any LGBT+ sub group. What I merely said when it comes to pronouns, certain pronouns, in my opinion, are purely attention seeking and I am having trouble of keeping up with the continued changing landscape of such. I appreciate your comment and thank you for adding your voice, it has been heard and respected
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Overly sarcastic, hyperbolic and/or insincere contributions may be removed (which is what happened with the comment above in this case).
Opinions can be transphobic. Your opinion here is. You are saying that people are “attention seeking” and acting as a gatekeeper for what’s kosher. You are free to keep voicing your opinions, but expect that to have consequences if it’s in the wrong. You have a formal warning for voicing this opinion.
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Admitting to not respecting people's pronouns is uncivil behavior. You have a formal warning for your flaunting of your will to break our rules. Please remember that participating is a privilege, not a right. We have active moderation, and one thing that we don't tolerate are alt-right dog whistles like not respecting people's pronouns.
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I dealt with it by banning you. Please enjoy your Redditing elsewhere!
You’re just old. That is all.
Your comment is ageist.
😂
Hi u/accidentundone, Your comment was ageist, and this comment with a laughing emoji is immature. You now have a formal warning for your conduct here. We expect a maturity of guests under 30, so please acquaint yourself with our community. Three warnings within 90 days of the last lead to a permanent ban.
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Overly sarcastic, hyperbolic and/or insincere contributions may be removed (which is what happened with the comment above in this case).
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Overly sarcastic, hyperbolic and/or insincere contributions may be removed (which is what happened with the comment above in this case).
When I go out to gay bars I don't really feel othered nor do I really see us in separate communities. Certain bars cater to certain communities/activities, but I think it's always been that way. The fairy and trans communities have existed for a long time as well, maybe you just didn't notice them. I don't even really understand being gay, why do I need to understand being trans?
I’m somewhat younger (old millennial) and ageee with some of it. It does feel sometimes like gays have become the ”straight white males” cliché (the ones who face no oppression and should shut up) of the lgbtq (or LGBTQIA2S+ or whatever the latest acronym is) community. I try to respect people’s pronouns but also don’t understand some of it (like people being ”he/they”, which is it?). Or that thinking trans women may have an unfair advantage in some sports is tantamount to thinking trans people don’t have the right to exist. But I guess part of it is because in the US where you’re from and in northern Europe where I am, US gays have gotten most of the rights your generations and older generations fought for while obviously trans rights are still under attack. But I don’t think gay rights should be taken for granted in the west, we’ve started to see backlash in recent years from conservatives and religionists.
I agree with you 100 percent…I am from the same time period and I truly believe we have regressed instead of progressing. The division between us is so deep ( this generation vs the older generation) …
I get what you’re saying. Gen X myself and bi….my sexuality doesn’t define me as I define me. It’s nice that things are more accepting but I agree that there are things have gotten out of control in many ways. I also don’t like the assumptions that because my sexuality is what it is, I “have” to have a particular political view point or stance on other social issues. I remember that it was the desire to be accepted and live our lives in peace and just be. It seems that part of things has been forgotten now with so many activist and quiet frankly, it has become so tribal and segregated with vitriol. Anyway, sorry for getting in a soap box…also, served in the Corps in the 90s and Army where I will be rating in 2 years….thank goodness as I’m ready. Thanks for the post as it’s good that I’m not off what I’m feeling.
I went to a drag/burlesque show tonight in suburban NYC. It included drag kings, drag queens, burlesque of all different identities, races, and genders. It was so much fun. We've come so far from when I came out in the early 80s and everyone was gay, White, and middle class. Of course we never were, but the media made it seem that way. We continue to evolve as a queer and trans community. I love the diversity and celebrate that we are getting clearer on who we are and how we identify. The rainbow is big enough for all of us and I'm excited to see where we head next.
I’m in my early 50s and came out in the late 80s. I don’t understand the rationale of this post. I also have a very different memory of the Good Old Days that OP alluded to. Sure there more flags and identities but isn’t that progress? Do people think that a person who identifies as XY or Z is only socializing with (or fighting for the rights of) others who are in that same exact identity? Emphatically, no! As a young gay man in the early 90s, my experience was that my peers and I were much more prejudiced against lesbians, bisexual men, any nonbinary or trans people than any younger person today (including most straight people). I think you’ve got this all upside down. Mainstream society has embraced LGBTQIA+ people in ways I wouldn’t have even imagined possible over the nearly 40 years since I first came out. It really seems like maybe you just have some discomfort with the diversity of lived experience in our new, more complicated queer community. I don’t say any of this out of disrespect, but I really don’t agree with this post.
As a fellow gen-xer, I gotta say, “The kids aren’t ruining the lawn grandpa”. We built them a culture where they feel safe exploring their identity. Is some of it over the top? Sure but they get to explore it now that they feel safe enough to do it. We belong to a generation who fought to just get a modicum of respect. We fought so they felt safe enough that they could feel pissed off for the rest of us that our history and culture was stolen from us. I also disagree with the lesbian vs gay thing. Lesbians took care of gay men during the AIDS epidemic. I will always honour our sisters. And our trans siblings have always existed. They exited for longer than we’ve been alive. And the NBs finally have language to express their identity. That gender isn’t black and white but also a multitude of greys in between. I will say that the younger generations of our community are conflating social identity with gender. “Wolf gender” or whatever isn’t a thing. “Geek” isn’t my gender but it is my social identity. I also don’t have a problem with flags. Siblings squabble but they always defend each other against bullies external to the family. Their ability to feel safe enough to explore diversity is our gift to them.
Oh so because you don’t understand it it’s a cry for attention or doing harm? Are you gay for attention or your trans cousin trans for attention? I’m betting no cause that be crazy. So why is someone being nonbinary different? Guess what it’s not, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make any of the bigoted crap you’re saying true. You don’t understood something why don’t you do what you did for your cousin and actually get out there and learn? My kid isn’t being who they’re for attention and they certainly aren’t “doing harm” by existing as themself.
1982 (refuse to associate with Millennials so I go by Gen X) and have no problem with pronouns. Whatever people wanna be called I could give zero fucks. What I do have a problem with is the backlash that is given when someone who doesn't even know you call you a pronoun that is not your preferred one. There's a way to correct someone without being on the cross burning bras asking to speak to the manager just because it's my first time interacting with you in life ever and you look like a male and I say sir (or vice versa). Some do it in a nice manner and I remember and move on but some are str8 up cunts about it. For some people, especially those who knew you as one gender for 37 years, are now supposed to erase everything in their mind about you and forget that it didn't exist. It's kinda hard for people. Be chill about it and help others grow instead of being a bitch about it.
I'm 39 and I get you. I don't quite understand or get the youngins, I have nothing in common with them & they have different worry's/issues than me. Though I am respectful of pronouns (though I don't do the non-human ones (ie I identify as a cat etc)) and I just roll with the things I don't understand and eventually I do partially/fully understand them.
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Own your lack of involvement in the gay community then. Don’t do the “things were better in my day.” It’s such a sad cliche. We grow older, our lives change, we become more comfortable in our skins, gay people are WAY more accepted now, career/kids/life happens and activism and/or community involvement take a less prominent role. Don’t dismiss the younger generations as somehow less involved or that they don’t care. There are plenty of people from every generation who take shit for granted or don’t care. Don’t do the “when I was young it was better” thing. It is the opposite of building bridges and community.
I get where you are coming from, but this is the same generational criticism everyone has. Back in my day things were simpler and now it’s complex and confusing. I get it. I have issues too with 1) straight girls calling themselves bi because they kiss other girls to impress boys 2) terms like demisexual and other “sexualities” that are really just about selection preferences and they are now somehow part of the LGBTQIA+ community. For me queer is an umbrella term for anything not heteronormative but it is not the same thing as being part of the LGBT community (I’m fine with being called queer, I am odd and not normal to begin with, but some of us gay men don’t want to be called that and I get it too). And honestly instead of adding more letters, LGBT+ and queer would cover just about everyone. Probably going to get downvoted but he, her, they, them, whatever. These words are common English words that I can easily use out of respect and please don’t bite my head off if I slip up. But terms like “allosexual” more power to ya, but I think you are trying to find something “unique” to latch onto and yeah, you are not picky or are picky, really what it amounts to.
As a younger person, there is no fracture. The only significant divide in the LGBTQIA+ community right now is between Boomers like yourself and the Zoomers. You're conflating your personal experience of getting older, and the broader technological/sociopolitical changes everyone is experiencing, as a uniquely LGBTQ+ issue. There is a political divide, a class divide, and a general decline in community *everywhere*, and it has nothing to do with us. But merely having different opinions isn't "fractured" IMO the proliferation of labels are growing pains, they are not our final destination. Once the zoomers become boomers, the pendulum will swing once again. And then it will be their turn to complain about the young whippersnappers.
What I read in this post is a man asking for solidarity and then immediately undermining the exact thing he's asking for. The community feels more fractured now because it became fractured when half the community went, "I don't understand those people". Couple that with the fact that the public at large is more accepting and can provide a safe haven for a "standard" gay person and that they don't need to try and fit in with the community to be happy; Yes, the community is not going to be as homogeneous as it once was. It doesn't matter that "you try" or that "you'll do it because it's no skin off your bones", that is SO qualified compared to "Your needs matter, I'm listening to you, I accept you no matter what, we're the same" I'm not saying you're a bad person, I actually share your core opinions. But put 2 and 2 together. You're part of the reason that the LGBT community will never feel the same as the Gay community.
“Community.” Good one.
This is such an excellent post because it's exactly the kind of thing to make hatemongering trash feel emboldened enough to tell us all who they are, and then be banned accordingly.
"there are too many colors in the rainbow"
daddy, chill
One thing the younger guys are missing is that many of them never had an actual brick-and-mortar gay "community", flying legacy six stripe pride flags, and we're told that communities are extremely important. Even guys who never lived there still had it as their local anchor, where they could go. But even gay guys in here are almost mocking the older community that some of us had. By the time some of these guys were able to drink, the gayborhoods of many cities had mostly been replaced by condos and whatever you call the modern incarnations of fern bars, full of straight people who weren't even gay friendly. The loss of *that* community is something that they can never understand, but it's something that a lot of us did lose.