Yup. There was a guy in our class that was pretty obvious but he maintained he was straight. He even dated a few girls. While I don’t think we (his closest friends) would’ve ostracized him, we definitely would’ve made every convo about his gayness and teased him for it. “removed” and “homo” were still very common slurs in the late 90s. That’s enough to stay in the closet. If anyone came out as trans I’m sure it would’ve been just as bad.
Using removed as just a general insult took me a long time to break out of. It was rampant in the 80s and 90s. But it was reflective of what people thought: gay=bad choice. Aids made that even worse
So while using it as a slur for your friends wasn’t gay bashing it was basically saying your friend was as lame as a gay person is, which people looked down on
Thankfully in my mid teens I got the chance to work with gay people and I realized any negative way of thinking or treating them was way off base and ignorant. I was never that bad at all but I had the general unease that people back then had. The. You just realize there’s nothing special about them. Just people being attracted to people. That sounds so obvious now but 30-40 years ago it wasn’t normal to think that whatsoever
Yup. There was a guy in our class that was pretty obvious but he maintained he was straight. He even dated a few girls. While I don’t think we (his closest friends) would’ve ostracized him, we definitely would’ve made every convo about his gayness and teased him for it. “removed” and “homo” were still very common slurs in the late 90s. That’s enough to stay in the closet. If anyone came out as trans I’m sure it would’ve been just as bad.
Using removed as just a general insult took me a long time to break out of. It was rampant in the 80s and 90s. But it was reflective of what people thought: gay=bad choice. Aids made that even worse
So while using it as a slur for your friends wasn’t gay bashing it was basically saying your friend was as lame as a gay person is, which people looked down on
Thankfully in my mid teens I got the chance to work with gay people and I realized any negative way of thinking or treating them was way off base and ignorant. I was never that bad at all but I had the general unease that people back then had. The. You just realize there’s nothing special about them. Just people being attracted to people. That sounds so obvious now but 30-40 years ago it wasn’t normal to think that whatsoever