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I been watching some movies and TV shows from the early 2000s as a nostalgia trip with my wife and man there were some terrible lessons. We talked about the homophobia and transphobia but the misogyny, body image and sexualization of teens. The skin women being called fat with the fashion that only looked good on thin thin thin women. The insistence that there was nothing worse than being a virgin. (While the schools were doing an abstinence only education BTW). The countdown clocks to when every female celebrity turned 18 everywhere. It’s surreal to think that message was everywhere.
Shallow Hal comes to mind and one of the reasons I have a difficult time enjoying Jack Black.
It’s basically everything from that time. What a weird era
The culture shift is stark sometimes when you watch old stuff.
On the other hand, don’t let them turn that into an excuse. You know what dealt with trans rights in a pretty honest, raw, and understanding way, in the mid 1980s? Fucking Hill Street Blues. One of the cops gets together with a woman, he’s happy to be with her, and then the other cops start giving him hell for it because she used to be a man. He gets disgusted and angry, goes over to her place, and she lectures him about it and sets him straight, tells him to figure out if he wants to be with her, but don’t try to turn who I am into some kind of thing I did to you, or make me feel bad about it. He sort of accepts it, because she clearly has a point, and that’s the end of the episode.
Hill Street Blues, man.
One of Al Pacino’s best movies, Dog Day Afternoon, is still a very relevant movie to this day and was released in 1975.
Yeah, I had a pretty sheltered childhood because I remember lots of good shows with a lot less of those issues. I watched a lot of sci-fi though, which IME tends to be a bit more forward-thinking. Not super surprising if you think about it
Doctor who had every type of queer back in the mid-late 2000s. From a trans “last human” to lesbian aliens
Doctor who had every type of queer back in the mid-late 2000s. From a trans “last human” to lesbian aliens
Wait, that “bitchy trampoline” was trans? How is that even possible with so few body parts left?
In her introduction episode she makes reference to “when I was a little boy”
She’s also a conwoman, which is kinda unfortunate and ties into upsetting stereotypes and tropes.
There’s enough examples of positive trans or otherwise characters in Doctor Who that it should be fine. You should be able to use queer characters as villains so long as them being queer isn’t part of their motivation.
I just dislike/am suspicious of a trans character whose main traits are that she is duplicitous and obsessed with unnecessary cosmetic surgeries. I’m not anti queer villains, but I bristle at stereotypes about queer individuals being used as their villainous traits.
I definitely see your point, and this might be a bit of hope posting but they did turn her around a bit. It was 2005 when she was just an evil trampoline (oh my god I think I just made a connection. Say that out loud a time or two), but then in the next season she realizes how much prettier she was before all of the surgery and how much nicer it felt to be kind. Of course, she only has this realization moments before death but I want to believe that there’s an actual positive statement in there
Watched Ace Ventura a few years ago for the first time since I was a kid. I remembered the whole trans reveal thing. Never put together as a kid they were implying that it was part of that character being mentally ill and completely forgot about Ace and the cops freaking out after finding out. Shan’t be watching again.
Yeah. It’s absolutely nuts.
In the 60s, if you were a man in a movie, you could hit women if they were getting crazy, to set them straight.
In the 80s, the heroes of movies could commit rape (Revenge of the Nerds) or child molestation (Indiana Jones) and still be the heroes of the movies.
In the 90s, the simple fact of a character being gay, or God forbid trans, was its own comedic element, without anything additional needing to be added.
Things have changed. Like changed a lot.
In Pinto’s defense he did, after some soul searching, decide not to fuck the passed-out girl. Congrats, Pinto.
I like retrospective threads like this. Puts things in perspective. Growing up under conditions like that, it would have been weird if I hadn’t repressed my gender identity. Pity things couldn’t have changed earlier, and let me realize sooner.
David Milch the creator of the Deadwood series wrote and produced several episodes of Hill Street Blues.
Night Court did the same thing. The assistant D.A., Dan, has an old buddy who visits after many years and turns out they transitioned and have a boyfriend. Dan is stunned because they used to party and womanize together, but his friend said he was never actually into it. At one point Dan argues with the new boyfriend and says, “He used to be a guy!” Boyfriend says it doesn’t matter. He loves her. That episode really stuck with me, watching it as a kid.
I was going to mention this. I started watching the old night court when the new one started airing and was blown away at how well they handled that episode given the time period.
There’s still weird shit on tv. For obvious reasons, I haven’t seen much Big Bang Theory, but that show has some weird, casual sexism.
y’all remember what they called white people who enjoyed hiphop
I’m not sure which one you mean. Wiggas? That’s the one they used in Sweden.
Yeah but mostly hard r around my area.
… yeah…
We had one for Asians who liked hipho too… Kids come up with the craziest shit 😬
Oh, right… I forgot about that one because it’s also the word for a pest in my area, double whammy slur
Apparently it’s also now a slur for fake rednecks? So that’s nice.
And so the world turns. What was old is new again 😭😭😭
That was especially hilarious when I learned about the “whig” party in early US history.
“Holy shit! They were saying that back then??”
Do you mean wigga?
Listen, I just really like wigs
Oof I watched a clip from clerks 2 the other day where they drop the hard R multiple times and wow I did not remember them going that hard.
As someone who grew up in the late 90’s and early 00’s as a christian midwest kid, it is a constant struggle to deprogram that stuff because it was EVERYWHERE.
I’m quite literally LGBTQ+ and it’s still a struggle.
I have a degree in musical theatre and am a member of a music oriented fraternity. The fraternity was called “the gay” fraternity by the typical frat bro organizations within the last decade. Its not just relegated to the early part of the 2000s.
I bet you guys had far better parties
The gay theatre kid has been a stereotype forever, but they literally had to invent a word to describe guys who showered and wore something that wasn’t a T-shirt because that was enough for even women to think you were gay. The homophobia was so bad back then that you could possibly lose your job if people thought you were gay because you used hair gel and dressed well.
The 90s and 2000s were something else.
I remember how angrily people would defend themselves not being gay.
Asian dude who went to high school in the 90s.
We were constantly called metro or straight up gay because we dressed like BTS before BTS was born.
But they called us that in a hateful way.
Ya 90s high school sucked for minorities.
Before we had been introduced, my wife’s BFF told her I might be gay because I like opera.
When I was growing up “f!!!ot” wasn’t even seen as a cuss word, it was just a burn you called your friends all the time. We didn’t really think about it until I was 16 and one of our friends came out as gay. My whole friend group kind of had it click at the same time that 1. We didn’t care that he was gay and 2. It was probably pretty fucking rude to call everything we didn’t like “g!y” and call eachother “f!g” as an insult. I think that realization happened for a lot of people who had gay friends in my generation, and it’s part of what helped lead to the level of acceptance and support the LGBT community has now.
I was the gay friend who changed my friend group’s language, and I didn’t even do it intentionally. After I came out, I had a few of my friends ask if them saying “fag” or “gay” or similar was bothering me as long as they weren’t intending it to be a slur against gay people. I just told them the honest truth:
“It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t think any less of you for using it; but I do hear it every time it’s used. It jumps out just as clear as someone saying your name in a crowded room. Every. Time.”
And that’s really all it took. Just the awareness that those kinds of words aren’t entirely meaningless. That maybe if you’re only using them to describe something negative in a general sense, then there are other words you can use that work just as well, but aren’t connected to an entire group of marginalized people.
It was kind of a funny year or so after that when they were trying to break the habit. One of them would accidentally say something and all that would happen is we would lock eyes for a second and I’d just give a small smile and a nod as if to say “You’re fine, I don’t think you’re a bigot. But yea, I heard that.”
Yeah for us we were all surprisingly progressive about it for a small town Alberta school. Like everyone in the school bar a few goofy assholes were totally fine with it and the entire school just started policing their language. It wasn’t even a big deal. But I’m sure it wad important to him and the few other kids who didn’t come out until after school.
I’m sure it didn’t go that well everywhere for everyone.
that’s two words for the same thing…depending on which european country it is.
I didn’t even look at the post
I was thinking about that word just recently and whatever happened to it
That came about partly because homosexuality in the US was legalized on June 26, 2003. Without the fear of raids, people started talking more openly about sexuality and the tide was turning slowly more positive that movies and TV shows that joined the conversation weren’t immediately shut down.
Wow, I’m not American so I didn’t realise Texas was holding out that long, wasn’t Massachusetts offering state sanctioned marriages in like 04/05? That timeline is mind blowing! To have one state doing so much for equal rights while the other fights in court to actively do less.
I thought here in Australia, Tasmania was bad waiting until 1997 when their overseas neighbour to the north (Vic) was 1980… Then we didn’t get any form of same sex marriage until 2017.
But 2003!
You have actually broken my brain with this fact…
If you really want your mind blown, TX police are still trained on the sodomy law (even though they can’t enforce it) and there are still sodomy laws on the books in I believe 12 other states, according to a New York Times article I saw. If Lawrence v TX is overturned, as Thomas has insinuated it could be, the sodomy laws could immediately be enforced again.
When Lawrence v TX was decided, it overturned the sodomy laws in the states of Idaho, Utah, TX, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, and also Puerto Rico.
Since that ruling, the only states that have repealed the ban on sodomy are Alabama, Missouri, and Puerto Rico. People in the other states will be in danger should Lawrence be overturned.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States
Was a mid 2000s hipster wearing skinny jeans and bright colors. Non hipster girls thought I was gay. Honestly frat bros were generally more pleasant and if they thought I was gay never said anything and just handed me a beer.
and, how is your husband ?
/jk
somehow not being gay while not being gay was important while the real gays got accepted more. maybe it was a side effect of higher acceptance. kids of that time had to visibly distance themselves from stereotypical gay behaviour to appear more conformist?
Wait, shorts were gay? Does that include cargo shorts? Cuz there were a lot of cargo shorts at the time.
Source: used to wear cargo shorts back then. I still do, but I used to too.
Basically any clothing that actually fit your build instead of being a lumpy bag was gay
Can’t even wear my chartreuse short-shorts with JUICY printed on the butt without people thinking I’m gay
That’s cause you need a hot pink button up with “Badman” emblazoned on the back to truly state your masculine dominance to the world.
A friend’s boyfriend has a hot pink and glittery t-shirt that says “Alpha Male” on it, which I find hilarious
the shorts part makes no sense. everyone wears shorts
Well the term originated in Britain where they weren’t that popular at the time, and like the post says it was only if you wore short too much.
No they mean a certain type of shorts that end above the knees. Not the shorts that are basically three quarters pants. The shorter they were the gayer you’d be.
Gay:
Not gay:
Thank god I grew up in Europe. I would’ve been gay as fuck in America.
Ohh, I distinctly remember that showing your knees was gay. But not as gay as bending over to pick up a pencil without bending your knees for it. It meant you wanted it up the ass then and there, there was no other conceivable reason.
Haha I learned the habit of properly lifting and not breaking your back this way. Looks like school taught me something practical after all.
Best part is that the “not gay” shorts look like a skirt. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The not gay ones are hella comfortable looking. Not sure about the gay ones, I’ve never really been into that type, I prefer my shorts really loose and the pockets big enough to hold 2 liter bottles
Oh, for sure. Skirts are also really comfy. Just thought it was funny given the context.
I appreciate your period-appropriate example with TJ Ford.
unless you’re wearing running shorts in which case the length of the shorts is inversely related to how good/fast of a runner you are.
That’s not “gay”. Not in any circle of people I’ve ever been in. That’s rich boy yacht clothing. Especially if they are salmon colored shorts.
They are comfy and easy to wear!
I don’t. The only time I’d ever wear shorts is when swimming.
It was only if they fell above the knees that made you gay. If they fell below the knee or were basketball shorts, you were fine.
I can remember getting shouted at from a moving car for wearing shorts circa 2006, it was a thing.
Just people shouting invectives at you as they drove past, is that still a thing? I remembered it happening quite a bit back then, and it would ruin my day each time.
I think it depended on if your shorts were above or below the knee. Cargo shorts, I want to say, are okay. I want to say that because I used to wear cargo shorts.
Metrosexual 2033, Metrosexual Last Light, and Metrosexual Exodus
And the aptly named VR title, Metrosexual Awakening
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I’ve always perceived metrosexual as a modern urban male look, sort of a Euro-inspired upgrade from yuppie.
