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The Legend of GayBlade

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Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#101

Post by martopix »

devenblake wrote: post #66
djaque wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how old you are, but even in 2010 when I was in high school our boy scout troop played smear the queer and the first time I learned the word gay was as an insult. Didn't really help with the whole growing up gay thing.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm a senior enrolled in a Maine high school right now and there's very little homophobia. In fact, a not-insignificant amount of the school is queer. Growing up I only ever heard "gay" used as an insult on-line. Times seem to have changed, and for the better!

The experience seems to be the same for us in northern Italy. When I was in high school, about 12 years ago, there was some homophobia and, even if I knew my friends would have supported me, I hesitated to come out for a long time, simply because I didn't know how to move, and it seemed a big thing. There were maybe one or two openly gay students and they were supported by some, insulted by others. A younger friend of mine, just 10 years later, was completely out and had a good high school experience as an out student.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#102

Post by glaze »

cycomanic wrote: post #84
hnick wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story, growing up in Australia we had Eeny, meeny, miny, moe [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe ] and like some other countries we used the n-word instead of tiger. I'm not sure where that came from since I don't think anyone knew what it meant and it definitely wasn't used as an insult by us kids. I don't think I learned what it meant until well into my teens. Pre-internet days,…

We had a a game in Germany which was called "wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann", which means "who is afraid of the black man". I remember that in my mind it was always a chimney sweep, I only realised at some point as an adult that it's actually an incredibly racist name for a game.

It was called like that also in Finland in the 80s/early 90s.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#103

Post by RalfWausE »

bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #54
hnick wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play games with people in their mid-20s and a few have let out "that's gay" as a synonym for something being bad. I don't think any of them would qualify as homophobic, it's just more a case of hearing something so much that it creeps into your lexicon and comes out by mistake sometimes in a moment of distraction or emotion. It took me a while to unlearn it myself because it was extremely common in the 90s at my sc…

They probably aren't explicitly homophobic, but it's disrespectful and a tiny bit homophobic to not adjust your language a tiny bit, because it's obviously negatively impactful to gay people (not everyone, but I know it is to me).

Perhaps i am just a stupid Neanderthal, but the recent urge to "adjust the language" is something i really don't like... i realize it is based on good intentions, but it feels to much like some orwellian newspeak in the making.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#104

Post by eirini1 »

taurath wrote: post #85
devenblake wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sexuality isn't public but I can say that none of my friends have ever mentioned encounters with implicit homophobia, and that my local school administration (while not being the best) would put an end to that very quickly. However, in Maine it's ground-up: I learned about queer struggles as a kid and I learned about how to protect oneself from any sexually transmissible diseases from a teacher that didn't use gen…

It was explicit for me as late as 2004! I am still rather shocked at the progress. I’ve also noticed a huge distinction between lgbt people of different generations, gen y is practically prudish comparatively. “Sex positive” is far less of a thing it seems.

I find it interesting that you mention this offhand because I've been very seriously noticing this type of prudishness in a lot of gen z and younger gen y people and its begining to manifest as old style homophobia

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#105

Post by WilTimSon »

RalfWausE wrote: post #103
bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably aren't explicitly homophobic, but it's disrespectful and a tiny bit homophobic to not adjust your language a tiny bit, because it's obviously negatively impactful to gay people (not everyone, but I know it is to me).

Perhaps i am just a stupid Neanderthal, but the recent urge to "adjust the language" is something i really don't like... i realize it is based on good intentions, but it feels to much like some orwellian newspeak in the making.

I'd disagree if only because it's not going to be enforced by some authority. Personally, I've stopped using some words because I know that they could be offensive to certain groups of people, not because I was pressured to do it or told it's the only way forward. It's just easier to call someone "weird" or "loopy" instead of "crazy", call something "bad" instead of "gay", call them "cigarettes" and not "fags". If someone was pestering me about it all the time, I reckon my base instincts would kick in and I'd go "Well I was going to do it but not anymore." As is, I came to it on my own and haven't felt any discomfort after adjusting my way of speaking.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#106

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

rayiner wrote: post #68
loeg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California was also considered a lefty-socialist-liberal bastion 12 years ago.

Public opinion on same-sex marriage changed very quickly from 2008 to 2016. Obama opposed same sex marriage in 2008 and didn’t really support it until after the 2012 election. And I'm not sure it's totally accurate to say that what happened was people coming around to "lefty liberalism." The nature of the debate changed quite significantly after 2005. First, it became clear to the public that sexual orientation was a…

It's interesting indeed. In Spain there was a similar fast-paced change: when I was a kid at school in the first half of the 90s, I remember the equivalent of "faggot" being practically the go-to insult for anyone people wanted to bully (and of course any kid deemed to be even mildly effeminate was bullied), and gay people almost always kept it in secret.

In the early 2000s, some famous people (TV anchors, etc.) came out of the closet. In 2005, gay marriage was approved, with some controversy but according to polls 65% of the population supported it at the time. 3 or 4 years later, only a minority of extremists remained opposing it, so even the main (and in that time, practically the only) national right-wing party stops actively opposing it.

It's curious because I don't think the change was driven by any obvious big movement or campaign with media attention (analogous to, say, BLM, or in the Spanish context, the 15-M movement). Maybe I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the issue, but it seems like most people just kind of spontaneously decided that hating on gay people was stupid.

I guess secularization probably helped (2000 was also the year where a fast downward trend started in statistics like religious marriages vs. civil marriages) but it's at most a partial explanation. Most religious people now don't object to gay people getting civil marriages either.

PS: This is not to discredit the Spanish gay movements and the people who tirelessly fought for their rights, it's just that my impression is that they weren't on the news that much so most people weren't convinced directly by any specific movement. Plus, gay rights movements in Spain existed at least since the end of the Franco dictatorship but it seems that it wasn't until the early 2000s that there was the sudden change I'm mentioning, it wasn't a slow and constant change.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#107

Post by thaumasiotes »

rayiner wrote: post #68
loeg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California was also considered a lefty-socialist-liberal bastion 12 years ago.

Public opinion on same-sex marriage changed very quickly from 2008 to 2016. Obama opposed same sex marriage in 2008 and didn’t really support it until after the 2012 election. And I'm not sure it's totally accurate to say that what happened was people coming around to "lefty liberalism." The nature of the debate changed quite significantly after 2005. First, it became clear to the public that sexual orientation was a…

I believe the outcome in 2008 was driven more by differential voter turnout than by California residents changing their opinions between 2008 and 2016.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#108

Post by foldr »

bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #79
geofft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "probably" mean here? Does it mean "Here is the evidence-based argument why this is more plausible than that," or does it mean "I would be happier believing this than that"?

It's part of HN's tradition of gaslighting victims of demographically-targeted violence by ignoring any kind of context and pedantically claiming "it couldn't possibly have been $bad_thing". Of course, because being contrarian is more important than learning about the history of LGBT abuse.

Very much this. Do you have an ubsubstantiated conspiracy theory about the evil machinations of bigcorp? Congratulations - upvotes for your wisdom. An actual report of your lived experience of homophobia/racism/sexism/whatever? Hmm, are you sure it's not just in your imagination?

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#109

Post by cblconfederate »

matthewheath wrote: post #52

This was such an interesting read. As a gay man, I'm pleased some of our culture is being unearthed from the past like this.

I think a lot of the gay culture is not well known , even though it's such an important and disproportionally influential little part of western culture. Part of it is because parts of it are considered too racy for todays generally conservative world.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#110

Post by [deleted] »

eirini1 wrote: post #104
taurath wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was explicit for me as late as 2004! I am still rather shocked at the progress. I’ve also noticed a huge distinction between lgbt people of different generations, gen y is practically prudish comparatively. “Sex positive” is far less of a thing it seems.

I find it interesting that you mention this offhand because I've been very seriously noticing this type of prudishness in a lot of gen z and younger gen y people and its begining to manifest as old style homophobia

[deleted]
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