Your view of being Gay Then and Now

Yup. Love that people are actually discussing this and decoupling gender from sexual preference.

Back in the 80s/90s, there was still a huge amount of pressure to adhere to stereotypes. Men had to be theatre-loving hairdressers, and women had to be stone butch, or else you weren't gay enough in some circles.

Good to see that gone.

 

I'm also glad that we don't have to succumb to the stereotypes to be gay. I love sports and outdoor activities and for a long time felt that I wouldn't be accepted in the gay community if I didn't like dance and decorating. Im so glad that we can like anything and still be allowed to be gay

 

I hate musicals and so many typical/traditional gay culture things. That said, I'm a musician, love music (classic rock and classical), love poetry, reading etc. Amen.

 

This issue is one reason I was in denial of being gay. How could I love fishing, shooting, football and other sports and still be gay?

 

I'm only 25, but can say living in a conservative town during the 90s and early 2000s wasn't much different. The only "gay" kids were those who had only female friends, a swish in their step, and obviously flamboyant mannerisms.

Of course, now I realize there's nothing wrong with being gay, or gender non-conforming, and sometimes it feels like being surrounded by jocks, in the community, except they love men! Coming out should mean not only realizing your sexuality is only one part of who you are, and how you don't need to fit into stereotypes, but also give you the power to question why those things are seen as so bad in the first place.

 

It happens to be the 10th anniversary of the release of Brokeback Mountain. I'm sure that many of us in my age bracket were deeply affected by this movie, I know I was.

I have always felt that Annie Proulx, the author of the short story upon which the movie is based, made a most brilliant move by choosing to portray cowboys as gay. There are few masculine archetypes that are more ingrained in American folklore than the image of the cowboy, and to couple this with a same-sex love story is amazing.

I think this was the beginning of the end of the gay stereotype as the overarching impression of who we are. Yes, of course there are many guys I have met who would nevertheless very easily fit into that category, I myself am completely uninterested in watching or following sports, but even the most stereotypical gay person could easily surprise you with their own particular expression of who they are and of what they are capable.

 

Nicely put great (blue) whale

 

Ten years since Brokeback Mountain. Time flies by fast. If you haven't seen Jake lately, you can see him in a movie that just came out, "Southpaw". The man has put on some weight since Twisting under Ennis, and in all the right places. I don't know how the Hollywood trainer guys seem to be able to pop out washboard abs on almost anybody, and they sure put some on Jake. The movie has a good plot and is worth seeing, to get your mind off any "gay" problems you might be having, and onto some eye candy.

 

Here is an blog post that is very interesting with regard to being gay as an "identity", you can translate the page from the French using your internet tools, well-worth reading.

 

Excellent commentary in the blog, and it echoes a lot of what I've felt over the years.

Growing up in a household (well really, an extended family) where physical contact and affection of any kind were really minimal, I had a very clear division in my mind between the life I expected to lead (house, kids, etc.), and any feelings I might have had, which were always very clearly orientated to other boys, but I behaved the way everyone else did, and assumed that everyone felt it but no one acted on it. I hated sports and loved music and acting, but I never saw it as something "gay", just as who I was and what I liked. Even high school biology didn't really clear anything up, because finally confirming how babies were made just made me think "ugh, so that's what I'm going to have to do?" Then I started meeting people through theater friends who were gay, and everything about them seemed foreign, simply because the way they lived their lives was so different from what I grew up with and expected to be. After high school I finally started to connect my feelings of attraction for guys with "gay" and it scared the hell out of me, not because I thought it was WRONG, but because I saw stereotypical gay men as people who I'd never fit in with, and who sure as hell would never welcome a dull, quiet, churchgoing introvert like myself into the fold.

Finally coming out, for me, was somewhat about worrying about acceptance from straight family and friends, but also about having the confidence to be gay without feeling the need to fit in with the prevailing stereotypes that still exist. My boyfriend and I went to the local Pride festival last year, and it was great to walk around holding hands and be open (and fool around a lot more than we would on the streets of town!), but in the end it was a little foreign to both of us, not because of the internalized homophobia or self-loathing that people love to talk about and bemoan, but simply because it just isn't us--and it doesn't HAVE to be.

We also went to a Mass recently with a friend from a gay Catholic support group, who is in 70's and is a delightfully entertaining guy with story after story of the good old days, pre-AIDS and all this "fitting it with straights" that he seems genuinely sad about. Being gay used to be a lot more fun, he said! We laughed by ourselves later that there was hardly a gay stereotype that he hadn't experienced and embraced, and both breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn't been forced to go to all the clubs and such, because we would have been perceived as terrible bores. But the fact is that for us, being gay is just about who we love and who we're attracted to, and not some kind of a lifestyle that we've adopted or a community that we live in or anything else. We have gay friends and certainly will develop more, and will hang around with them or with people who aren't gay, as long as we can be open about the fact that we are. I don't want to be separate from the rest of society, because I'd rather be accepted as me than as gay me, and I don't have any major gripes with a lot of the world around me. Once we are married at some point in the future, I expect us to be one of those couples who make people think, "Wow, gay couples are just like everyone else." I like to hope that will be some kind of help to other people in the closet who worry that being gay will somehow put a target on their backs. I think being gay is moving in he direction of being just who you are and who you love, and I like that.

 

I really like the sentiment of this. Moving away from stereotypes. The 90's, when I as in college, was rife with stereotyping...and-interesting idea- in fact it may have been some of those stereotypes that might have contributed to my repression and that of others as well during that time period because I'm sure many people said to themselves "Well, I'm not like that, so I can't be gay..." Oh yes you can. All kinds of people can be gay. Good post.

 

Then - a simple matter of survival

Now - a simple matter of survival

For millenia oppressed groups used the "closet" (passing) to escape oppression and survive.

Whether race, religion, sexuality, whatever non conformity it was masked (Rudolf's nose) to avoid oppression.

Sorry, nothing unique about LGBT. The ANSWER...

Who the heck needs anything from oppressors?

 

I think that its wonderful that sexuality seems to just be so much less of an issue that it was 30 years ago. But then a lot of that also resides simply with how each generation of children is raised. If enough parents are open minded and discuss such things with their children, then those attitudes become more the norm. I am very proud of the fact that I have have been raising 3 very strong minded, and very tolerant daughters. They are very firm in their beliefs and not afraid to call someone out on their bigotry or ignorance.

 

Well put. I think this (among other things) messed with my head a lot because I knew and know I didn't really want to be with guys otherwise I would have tried harder to pursue relationships with them rather than just letting them happen, which they rarely have, and I knew I had nebulous feelings that I have done such a good job pushing down I often wonder if they are real regarding sexual feelings toward women, I have never had any questions about my gender identity and have always comfortably and proudly identified as female. Granted in my younger years I was often a female wearing combat boots, too much eye-liner with a partially shaved head (ah, the 80s and early 90s), but I was definitely very much a girl. Because I never was able to identify with what appeared to be lesbian culture at the time, I think it it kept me from realizing certain, uh, things about myself.

 

Wow. I can relate to everything you wrote.