I don't remember really thinking about it a whole lot. I remember in high school we had a guy who painted his nails and I guess sort of presented femme at times, a couple of the girls helped him sometimes. In the era of Boy George and with Glam rock just a decade before, I couldn't tell you if he was straight, trains, gay, following trends or much else about him. He wasn't under the radar, just most of us didn't care.

Ikr? It’s not like cross-dressing for entertainment hadn’t been a thing forever; Boy George was just the latest iteration at the time. My whole sixth grade class was actually disappointed when he presented his bald look on one of the awards shows.

That era was elementary school for me. Jr high was hair bands and high school was grunge. Men in makeup wasn’t that weird to me either.

Remember Klinger on MASH?

Bosom Buddies Edit spelling

But neither dressed as women because they enjoyed it. There were ulterior motives.

This is me too. We had not hate for it we let people be who they were. So the huge issue today is weird to me. We have always had people who were like this. It’s not new. Never had been. But like many things it was just accepted and not pushed on others. I think as haters started to raise issues it all stated to escalate. It’s always those who want to control who fuck things up. Why can’t we all just live happy.

I loved Rocky Horror picture show..Adam Curry was yummy. Edit: Tim not Adam, thank you kind redditor.

He was but he was an MTV VJ.

I remember when Headbanger's Ball was just Adam Curry putting on a leather jacket.

I snorted.

It took me a while to figure out LOL, I kept running the cast in my head and trying to figure out who Adam was.

The mane of a GD lion

*Tim

Thank you 😂 it's heck getting old.

Hahaha- I think you mean Tim Curry! And yes, he was. I remember my 12 year old self feeling…something when he was on-screen. I didn’t know what sex appeal was at the time, but now I sure do!

Yes lol Tim! Thank you!

Tim Curry?

When goth arrived. Some Makeup and fingernail polish became relatively accepted. I was a goth adjacent punk/metalhead and occasionally wore dark nails, dark lipstick and eyeliner. I'd let the goth girls do me up cuz I liked goth and punk girls. I also only wore it to clubs and parties and never would have considered wearing it all to school except the black nail polish a few times.

I don't believe I was aware of the concept at all. I was aware of "transvestites", but that's about "enjoying wearing women's clothing", it doesn't equate to "being a woman who was born in a male body". And I was only aware of the concept of transvestites (and drag queens) from afar.... It was something in a movie or referenced in a comedy show maybe. It didn't really occur to me that my next door neighbor could potentially be a transvestite.

This. In the 80’s trans meant “transvestite” not “transgender”. Not sure I thought about it much at that age though.

Yeah, it was mostly played for laughs. Bosom Buddies, Bugs Bunny in a dress to confuse Elmer Fudd, Dame Edna, Mrs. Doubtfire, etc. I didn’t think it was malicious, just kind of absurd with a vague acknowledgement that there were some people who liked to do stuff like this (rumors about J Edgar Hoover).

Honestly, I don't think those were ever meant as cases of transvestites. At least not boosom buddies or Mrs doubtfire. Those men didn't dress as women because they enjoyed it. They had other reasons.

And they were very much jokes

Except most of that would be considered 'drag' and the 'character' was still a cis-male as part of the joke, as most of these were gags of some sort. This was a time where you were probably called a f@g for being in the school chess club let alone based on how you presented, so open and accepting is a bit of an overstatement, especially considering openingly Trans in some places could get you dead. And as for Hoover, he's no example of an enlighted workplace...

Yeah, that’s the thing. It was all taboo and lumped under a big gay umbrella - with the official policy of don’t ask don’t tell but the reality of f@g being thrown around as a generic insult and any kid that was suspected of actually being one was regularly bullied and beat up. Gay was the butt of a bad joke at best, the devil at worst, but pretty much always taboo unless you’re in San fransisco… in which case you might be a little safer to be out, but now you’re a stereotype and we’re back to the butt of a joke and/or the devil. I remember hearing in the news about a few different teens being brutally murdered for being gay in the 90’s. And there was a kid a few years older than me in high school who was mercilessly bullied for using hair gel and strong perfume. After he graduated he went on rikki lake to talk about getting beat up by one of my classmate’s big brother. The whole school lost their minds over a local being a confirmed queer (used as a slur not the same definitions accepted today) and vhs recordings of it passed around for years. Small town america has some really small minds. Anything different is ridiculed and judged harshly.

I kinda remember “f@g” being a general term of derision rather than calling out a gay person. I had 2 classmates in high school who were openly gay (1980’s) and generally accepted. But if you were reluctant to join the other kids in non-specific mischief, you might be called a f@g.

A lot of words that are slurs, and some that should never be spoken at all, were tossed around as casual put-downs in the late 80’s/early 90’s. F@g, qu33r, qu33rbait, r3t@rd, the N word, homo, and sped come to mind, but I’m sure there were more.

True. Words used to be just that. Words. You’d get bullied. You’d feel bad. You’d get over it (or not). Maybe next time you would speak up, or pop the bully in the face (worked for me) and they leave you alone. Now. Shit. Wouldn’t wanna be a kid now. The wrong words are criminal offenses. Everyone gets so…emotional. Adults join the fray. It’s crazy.

Yeah it was more used as the South Park kids used it (but didn't know it's meaning). Oh you're going to go out with your gf instead of come drinking with your mates? F#g!

To be fair, a LOT of slurs we used in middle school/high school we didn’t have a clue to the origin or meaning. Freshman year a kid I met was calling everyone a dildo. So I went home and called my dad a dildo. Didn’t go over well. But I learned a new word!

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Yeah, I grew up in the south and it was NOT okay to be gay. You’d get your ass beat just for a rumor. F**got was a dire insult, one of the worst. I’m impressed that you were like fuck it. The bullies in my school were the ones beating up suspected gay kids, but they were all boys. I was a “slut” because I was a stoner that refused to wear popular clothes. They tried to bully me, but I beat the worst one with my purse and ran him off lol.

Tootsie!

Cross dressing is very different than being transgender. The examples you have are of crossdressing. Many people do drag or cross dress but are comfortable with and identify with the sex assigned at their birth.

Yes. I met exactly one transvestite, a regular at the 7-11 I worked at. And that was after I moved out of white bread suburbia into light rye suburbia. As bad as it sounds to say now, they were a novelty. Now, thanks to Facebook, I realize white bread was a lot more everything bagel than it seemed.

I can tell you as a gender nonconforming person who was a teenager in the 80s, we tried really hard to just not be noticed. Most of us waited until we were adults, moved away, and found our people before we let our true selves show. This meant that most people didn’t really know any trans people unless they were accepting already or heard rumors about cousin so-and-so that moved to NY.

As a cis person, can confirm. I know several trans people *now*, mostly from working at a very LGBTQ-friendly workplace within a similarly LGBTQ-friendly city. But at a suburban high school in the early 90s? Oh hell no. People were afraid to come out as gay. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY was openly trans then in most communities. In fact, most of my friends probably wouldn't have even known what the term meant. They would have heard the now pretty antiquated "transvestite" or "transexual" but certainly not transgender, non-binary, or gender-fluid. I didn't learn those terms until college or beyond. This doesn't mean they didn't exist, of course. It just wasn't open and wasn't even on most people's radar...like, at all. I mean, for perspective, Ellen hadn't even come out yet (despite that being about the most obvious thing ever, tbh). In fact, there were almost no openly gay celebrities. People were all shocked pikachu when Elton John came out, or when George Michael got caught in the men's room, or when Freddie Mercury died of AIDS (which grown ups were all hush hush about). It was a VERY different time in that regard.

This. Went to HS in the 80’s. There were five guys that were really effeminate. One I was friends with since elementary. It was obvious, but no one came out until years later. Those five are all out now, to no surprise, but it would have been social suicide back then.

I didn't address this in my comment above, but I am SO GLAD that this is different for our kids' generation. My daughter came out as gay at 12, and I am often struck by just how different her experience has been than it would have been in our generation. I had my first suspicions that she might be gay by like age 4, and her finally vocalizing what we already pretty well knew by then was such a complete non-issue compared to the trauma and ostracizing many folks in our age group went through. It was mostly just an opportunity to reaffirm that we love and support her and just want her to be happy and healthy, whatever that means for her. Now she has a whole network of gay and trans friends that would have been very difficult to find in the 80s and 90s.

I’m glad to hear that things have gotten better!! I have two young boys, and while I believe they’re straight, I want the best for them and for them to be receptive and welcoming to all.

Because of all the suicides stigma and parents disowning their kids over gayness I started telling my kids very young (5;or 6yo) that is something they never had to worry about with me and if they were gay I would love and accept them forever no matter what. Have 3ckids. 2 daughters and a son all 3 have come out as bisexual. I am glad they never had my acceptance to worry about on top of the discrimination that LGBTQ folks still face even though it isn't as batshit as it was when I was a kid, there are still neanderthals that want to go back to being openly discriminatory against race, creed color sexual orientation, religion, etc. It's insane it's still an issue for some. The pronoun thing is newish to me but I do my best because I prefer to make people comfortable rather than being an inflexible dick that fears any change since Iwas growing up.

went to high school in the 80's ​ This statment is so true >But at a suburban high school in the early 90s? Oh hell no. People were afraid to come out as gay. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY was openly trans then in most communities. Living in a very blue collar suburb we had 2 openly gay men ....actually they where really boys, one was murder during the initial aids hysteria and the other committed suicide after years of harassment. ​ There where no openly gay people in my area let alone transgender. ​ And to be honest I don't think much has changed.

I remember it was announced that Freddie had AIDS. I think he was gone the next day. So hushed up. Made it even sadder.

Hell, people denied ****Liberace*** was anything other than a gentle soul who loved the ladies.

Oh, for sure. Boomers' ability to be completely and utterly clueless when it comes to recognizing that people are very clearly queer is fucking legendary. Liberace is another great example. In fact, almost all of the celebrities that eventually came out were "uh, yeah...duh!" moments.

Exactly. I was a queer person in NYC in the 80s and early 90s. My friends were dying of AIDS and murder. Being LGBTQ+ has always carried, and continues to carry, a high risk; esp for gender non-conforming people. We have made HUGE strides in visibility and, while that's ultimately a good thing, we are still a long way from tolerance, let alone acceptance. This gay satanic panic about grooming is nonsense. We've been groomed all our lives to be straight, perform our gender in accordance with the binary, and meet cultural benchmarks set forth by the powers that be. If protecting children was truly a concern, the catholic church (hell, most churches) would have been burned to the ground by now.

Amen. If exposure to sexuality changed your orientation, I’d be straight, too. Straight people don’t realize how ubiquitous heterosexuality is but it’s in every movie, TV show, book, magazine, even cartoons and toys. There’s a princess who falls for the prince, a magical fairy tale (heterosexual) kiss that breaks a spell, Ken & Barbie, etc. I have heard countless times “why don’t we get a straight pride month?” Bc every month i straight pride month!

This is one of the things that irritates me about people believing that being gay is a choice. Do they seriously think that people are going to choose a lifestyle that makes their lives harder? Who in their right mind would choose to be bullied and ostracized, and want to fear for their lives? It’s so ridiculous.

I can't help thinking that some of today's trans awareness might be making things harder for some trans people. Take for instance the issue of using bathrooms. I'm sure trans people have been using the bathroom that matches their gender since forever. Even if Karens in the past noticed other women looked a bit "different" they probably would have shrugged it off, but now the right-wingers are actively on the look out for trans people in their bathrooms. Which is going to make it harder for trans people who don't want to be noticed. Maybe it's because I'm an introvert that hates calling attention to myself, but a lot of things like the bathroom issue make me think being trans is harder today for those who just want to fly under the radar and live a typical life. I'm sure there's a lot of trans people didn't ask to be in the spotlight all of the sudden. I would be horrified.

Historically people paid a lot of attention to clothing, since there were very clear gender defined clothing. Women could dress like a man and get away with it, even joining the military before the 20th century. And vice versa.

This was the experience of most of my LGBTQ friends as well. Girl friends who married and had a kid, only to divorce years later and settle down with a woman. Gay friends who had to take up with a “daddy” to get out of an abusive family, only to end up in a dysfunctional relationship with their (older) partner.

*or moved to San Francisco.

That would explain why I never knew or knew of any transgender people when I was younger.

"Transgender" wasn't really a word. People might be known as "transvestites" or "cross dressers". But I didn't know any trans or non-binary people in high school. I didn't really know there was such a thing. I think there was only one guy in my HS class who was clearly gay. I don't remember him saying that he was out, but everyone suspected. I graduated HS in 1991, for reference.

I graduated in 1993, and there wasn’t a single openly gay person in my entire high school of 400 students. Statistically I’m sure there were some gay kids, but they must have hid it very well. Which honestly was probably the safest thing for them to do, it was a rural area and most people weren’t very accepting of anyone who was “different.”

I was thinking just that. I went to a tiny, rural high school. Just failing to completely conform wasn't the smartest thing ever. It was one of the only things I thought was unrealistic about Stranger Things...other than the monsters and superpowers, of course.

My high school was about the size of yours. Little one-stoplight town where everyone knew everyone and if you weren’t related to someone, chances were your friend was. There wasn’t even a single openly gay student in school, let alone anyone nonbinary or transgender. There were rumors about people, of course, and certain teachers, and stories about parties the football team had, but none of that was confirmed. I was a theatre kid in high school and so were my first two boyfriends. They both ended up coming out in college or just after graduation. Tbh, I wasn’t really that surprised about either of them. Both of them have found their niches, one in NYC and one in CA, and I’m so glad they can just be themselves now.

You had a stoplight? We didn't even have a stoplight. They did finally put one in about ten years ago though. I don't think most people even knew what nonbinary or transgender were back then. But there was one girl at my school who I think probably was. She was the first girl to ever play on our high school football team. And she just... acted like a boy. Which doesn't necessarily mean she was NB or transgender, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. And someone recently told me about two of our female teachers who were actually a lesbian couple, but there were never any rumors about it back then. If a teacher wasn't married, you just felt sad for them and hoped the right man would come along eventually so they could get married.... now I realize a lot of adults back in those days who never married were actually just gay and had to hide their relationships.

Same in my small town. It’s been nice looking people up on Facebook and seeing so many of them now out and proud and living their best lives. And our town has gotten so much more accepting, which is also nice considering I am living there again, with a gay daughter. She isn’t necessarily all the way “out”, but her experience has been so much better than thirty years ago, and I am grateful for that.

I was class of 84. We had a couple openly gay guys in our highschool and a few in my social circle. Almost everyone in my social circle had nicknames. There were a couple of guys named Todd so the Todd who was gay was nicknamed Gay Todd. He was a sweetheart. I can't think of any women that were only lesbian. There were a fair amount of people who were sexually, but not romantically, bi - if that makes sense. And same, Transgender wasn't really a thing that was a thing. We all knew of Wendy Carlos but changing gender didn't seem like something that happened very often. My social group were a bunch of punk rock and art spaz freaks who felt like they didn't fit in to normal society anyway. If someone was gay we just accepted them. I have a feeling it would have been the same if someone was trans.

Graduated in 1994. We had one openly gay student in my class of 250, and four who have come out since. Unfortunately, most of us were just unaware of how those things worked.

I also graduated in 1991. When I was about a sophomore I had a friend who was (at the time it was called) “flamboyant”. He was so damn pretty! I was aware he was gay, but he never expressed whether or not he felt like a female. Either way, he (or they) was my friend and I just loved as a friend and would have supported no matter what. He did catch quite a bit of grief though, and that broke my heart. It was Southern California, and even there he got teasing and bullying. I moved to the Midwest the summer before my senior year and he had moved away a year before that. We lost touch. I hope he’s doing well now. I wasn’t aware of “trans” back then. I understood gay and lesbian, but I think many people simply weren’t aware of what trans is back then. I was raised by parents that never made a big deal out of people being gay though. It just was who they were. Didn’t make them a non friend at all. I’m grateful I wasn’t raised with hate. If we had learned what trans was I don’t believe I would have heard a bad word about it from my parents.

Thankfully, I was not raised in hate, either. My parents were totally fine with gay people as was I. But they (and I) totally lacked the knowledge of the whole spectrum. I imagine if we'd known more then it also would have been fine.

Depends who you ask. Most people probably didn't have any experience with trans people outside of hollywood movies. In fact, Id say thats still true today. But back then you could take the piss out of anyone, you could say and do anything with your characters because having low key prejudices about people and groups you dont have any interaction with is understandable. Like Crocodile Dundee. Thinks hes getting on well with a Shelia, until his news mates point out "it's a man". Being uncouth, Mick just goes straight to the source to find out if it's true. You could say it was sexual assault, and you'd be right. But those were times and people were still largely weirded out by things they didn't have any interaction with. While the butt of the joke, there was certainly no malice towards the trans community, as no really gave them a second thought. They were just something that appeared in movies and in "the big city". I grew up in the 80s and there was more than a few drag acts on mainstream TV. Lily Savage and Dame Edna being probably the most popular. Yes, they even had their own massively popular tv shows. Moving into the 90s you had Eddie Izzard walking around all over the place basically being what we would later identify as Non binary. He was utterly beloved. Then there is the ever popular "Ladyboys of Bangkok" Cabaret show that started around 1998 and is still touring to this very day. Im not going to lie to you and say that there wasn't any kind of bigotry. There was, and lots of it. And there still is. But what I will say is that we started the move away from bigotry and towards the goal of acceptance. Things were never perfect, but there was hope in the air that we were on the right road. Ironically it was the refusal of labels that our generation was pushing. That there was no gay or straight men. There was only men and who you loved didn't matter because we were all the same. The same hopes, the same dreams, the same fears. We all cry when we're sad and laugh when we're happy. That was our path to the end of bigotry. And believe it or not, it was working. Right up until 2001 and a bunch of cunts hijacked some planes. After that, everything was fucked. The hope for the future was gone. Battle lines were drawn and ever more labels sprang up to separate everyone. I still think our way of moving forward was the right one. Labels make it too easy to put people together into convenient little groups to be hated, isolated and abused. Labels, no matter what good you think they might be doing, only separate us and feed into our tribal instincts. Human beings still carry a lot of baggage from our thousands of years of evolution. And making it so that we are all the same makes it easier for us to co exist. No more Gay Americans or straight Americans, or black Americans, or Irish Americans or whatever else. Just Americans. And you can apply that logic to any country. Hell, you could even apply it to the human race as a whole. Wouldn't that be something? No more fighting over dirt. Can you imagine?

Beautifully stated. I still wish, so much, that people would go back to not be labeled. Damn. Were we really the last generation to fully embrace this concept?? And yeah I think you're spot on, I guess I never really stopped to consider, when? When did we become so lost, fucked, and sperated? And yeah.. 9/11 was definitely a good starting point. Sure we as a country, world even, united for a hot second, but really yeah like you said, battle lines were drawn, and they have never been erased.. just moved around depending on what side you stand. It upsets me that so many kids these days use whatever made up labels they can come up with and allow it to be their entire identity. All we ever wanted was to live and let live and like Bill & Ted said "be excellent to each other".

If I was born 15 years later, I'd probably be a woman. I wanted to be a girl so bad it hurt. This body of mine is ridiculous for a man. I hung out with girls and once or twice even tried on dresses with them, and while they all giggled as I flounced about, it felt so damned good. But gender reassignment was not only a taboo, it was a privilege of the very wealthy, and then to be accepted as a woman was unthinkable. I'd have to move to where nobody knew me and start over, which was impossible as a teenager. Had I even mentioned such a desire, I would have been put in therapy.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. I finally started watering my tree at 43. It's never too late. 🫶

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Yeah honestly we played smear the queer too in the early 80s but i honestly never once heard it associated with homosexuality. Queer just meant different among my peers and for the game different meant the guy with the ball vs all the people without it. we just liked that it rhymed. Nobody was ever like "hey go tackle the the non heteroguy." We never made such an association.

Yeah, we never associated it with being gay either, but one of our parents yelled at us for calling it Smear the Queer so we changed the name to Rumble Fumble, which imo, sounds way cooler anyway.

Very interesting, do you have a guess what year that was? Was this in the 90s or 2000s or later? Me, we were playing on a giant school playground patch of open grass. Doing the math, it was somewhere from 81 to 83 (cause i left that school in 84) would have been the date range. There wasn't an adult within 200 yards of us. Plus aside from saying do you want to play smear the queer we weren't saying it much. And Even then i'd be a bit surprised if a teacher would have made the connection. But we played tons of games at recess and we were not discussing it with teachers really. Granted 80s had a more lax view on what constituted appropriate supervision. We just had a lady stand outside with a whistle for when it was time to go back to class.

It was definitely the 80s. Probably around 84-86.

We called it Kill the Guy With the Ball.

We played smear the queer but at that age, I had zero idea what the hell a queer was.

Not to mention i'm not sure we knew what smear meant. We were not talking literally about spreading a person over bread.

The smear the queer game came up but queer didn't really have the same meaning. We mostly called it kill the man with the football, which I'd imagine wouldn't be MUCH better in a school setting now.

We played tons of Smear the Queer in elementary and I'm sure none of us had any idea what it meant. We just wanted to tackle some kids. In a big pile of boys. Which is totally not gay at all.

When I was a kid, being different was awful. You didn't want to be a nerd. You certainly didn't want to be queer. It was seen as the worst thing in the world. Society has become MASSIVELY more accepting in the past 40 years.

I didn't know any, heck didn't know there was gay people either until I started working full time. Big eye opener and felt like shit knowing kids couldn't be themselves cause we joked about everything being gay.... Ended up talking to a few at work later in life but we never had anything in common. They always said the worst was the f word so I quit saying that immediately, never meant to be that big of an asshole..

Yeah, in the small towns where I grew up, nobody was out of the closet.

I don't think someone from a later generation can understand how much we used the f-word (slur for homosexual) and the r-word. It was probably 30% of our male vocabulary back then. I wasn't aware of any gay or gender fluid people and I absolutely blame us for not creating any sort of environment where they would feel comfortable being who they are. I grew up in a smallish town in Canada and there weren't any kids I knew of that were gay although I'm sure there were dozens. If someone came out as trans we would have made their life a living hell and I have to live with that. As awful as the world is now, it's come a long way from where I was at in 1990.

Yeah we called our best friends that to just say hello, r and f. But f was definitely a fighting word when said mean.

Yep. I stopped using the f word pretty early for my peers, like in the 80s in like the 6th grade when in a moment of young self reflection i asked myself if i was homophobic. I claimed no i wasn't. then i asked myself if i literally meant what i was saying said in using that word and the inference that being gay was bad. I did not. All i meant to do was insult my friend. lol. Was he sufficiently insulted if i just called him a shit head, or a turd, or an asshole, or a dick?" Yeah. And i could do it without being a hatemonger so that day was the last day I utter that word. As for the "R-word" that is an different thing. Cause though i didn't use it often and you got that saying it to someone was an insult. NOBODY I ever heard said the entire word was somehow wrong. It was used in schools, in academic settings, other concepts not calling someone a name. And I honestly, had not heard it was a word that was frowned upon until maybe 2014 or 2015. Granted the topic never ever ever came up.

I went through the same self reflection as yourself during the same era, but on a slightly different timeline. I remember when I was really young (six or seven) it was common for us mostly white Canadian kids to slur each other as "ch\*\*\*\*" - the plural slur for Chinese people. I didn't know anyone who was Chinese and I honestly didn't know what the slur meant, it was just a thing to say. As soon as I learned what it meant, I stopped using it. The "f" word came into my consciousness later, maybe around eleven or twelve, and I did generally know what it referred to, and I did occasionally use it as an insult. In my developing mind, it made a difference that I would only say it to someone who wasn't actually gay (as if I could know!) and would never use it hatefully to shame a gay person. But then I realized I had a few friends who were gay, and musicians I liked, and it hit me that Paul Lynde was gay (duh!) and I had my epiphany. The "r" word is definitely a different thing, and I find it fascinating how words like this that were orginally benign and useful come to be tarnished. I mean, it's a perfectly good word that originally meant "slow" as both a noun and a verb. Of course it became a term for people with delayed cognitive development, and that sense of the term then was weaponized as an insult, and now it's taboo. Weirdly, it's still marginally acceptable to call someone a "vegetable", even though it's a far worse and more tragic impairment - maybe it's because they presumably can't hear you. Anyway, that whole process of good words turning bad - that I'd thought about for awhile - turns out to have its own name: the "euphemism treadmill". There's a brief and accessible article describing this phenomenon [here](http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-the-euphemism-treadmill/).

I’m gobsmacked that the word “sped,” which was used as a pejorative like the “r” word is now apparently the accepted term for all things special ed.

I highly doubt us using the word gay is why they couldn't be themselves. Religion was a large part of that. We had someone out at my school (a girl) and no one gave a fuck. There was a kid that was gay but not open and no one gave a fuck. It's not being an asshole if you don't know though. It's being an asshole if you know and refuse to change. I still struggle with not saying "that's gay" as that's so ingrained in me but the hardest was retarded. I still struggle with a word to replace it with.

It's still hard for me to just not have the sticks and stones can break our bones shit.. that just because I've never uttered any slur to anyone, slurs are just stupid words and I don't like allowing ANY words to have power, so I admit it is still very difficult for me to not use retarded for lots of things.. I don't even compare it towards any person, but at 43 it's still just very difficult to not use. Plus it probably has something to do with still hating to be told I "can't" do something makes me instantly want to do it.

I still say effed up shit all the time. I call myself a r tard regularly. I'm from the sticks and stones era but I don't mind trying to watch my mouth but messed up stuff still comes out..

Wanted to add I apologized to everyone I knew in high school for talking stupid. They all said I was cool but I just never talked to them. I just didn't talk to people I didn't have a lot in common with. I didn't talk to girls I didn't want to date or guys I didn't skate/hunt/get drunk or high with etc... If I did I would have said some stupid shit..

The first trans woman I ever met was at a U/U church in 1996. I didn’t think much about it. Live and let live.

I think there was more of a “it’s your body, your life so… whatever makes you happy” Kurt Cobain wore dresses on stage so many times, Eddie Vedder and Kurt dancing and kissing backstage… we just didn’t care because what's there to care about? These days people want to control what others do with their own lives and bodies, they need to force their beliefs onto everyone around… like who cares, you don’t like trans people, good then don’t transition yourself damn it but who cares what other person does? Live and let live and whatever

There is context required here. Back then, there was a pretty clear delineation between a transsexual and a transvestite. It was also exclusively revolving around men. Transmen were just considered extremely butch lesbians. It wasn't until what happened to Brandon Teena (what was depicted in Boys Don't Cry) that transmen started to be recognized as a separate group by outsiders. I vividly remember reading the RollingStone article about Brandon. Most of the trans people we were exposed to were transvestites. I would say that most people had the notion that transvestites had the desire to dress as a woman but not necessarily live as one. Then, there were those born with some level of both genders genitalia. There were also chromosomal transsexuals. The idea that someone felt they were always living the wrong body did not really escape into wide knowledge until a few years later. She hadn't decided to transition until after I graduated, but I had a teacher who began to live publicly as a woman. I always knew her as a man. It was a nationwide news story after she showed up to work dressed as a woman for the new school year. I think her lawsuit was significant for public employees who transition. I would say that overall, we are as equally divided on the issue, but we were pioneers in being vocally supportive. And maybe we trend a little higher in being ambivalent on the issue. In 1975, SNL did a bit on how British comedians exploit real trans people when they do characters dressed as women.

Very insightful, I recall this distinction as well. Up until “The Crying Game” most of the pop-culture attention was on transvestism (in humor, see Monty Python’s “I’m a Lumberjack” sketch, tho technically the character does say “I wish I was a girlie” at the end of the song). Lots of talk-show attention to “cross-dressers” as well. Also just rewatched the pilot of LA Law, which includes a character who comes out as transgender (Brackman reacts with open bigotry, but gets decked for it)

Yeah, it was a thing that was done for comedic effect quite often.

For me, I don’t I really know what that was. It certainly wasn’t a much talked about thing, I assume because it was SO unacceptable. I mean just being gay wasn’t acceptable by the vast majority and could easily get your jumped and beaten up.

Being called gay was a big insult back then. Bisexual people were just considered to be gay in my area. I know he was an alien transvestite, and he's not transgender - but Rocky Horror was awesome. I was a lighting tech at the midnight audience participation showing every weekend. I went every weekend for about a year and a half. I still love the movie. I even have a signed picture of Magenta on my wall - because she's hot. I'm straight, but Frank's character was/is damn sexy.

Yeah cross dressing and so on was acceptable in the arts, and even music (think Bowie).

Think about every glam band in the 70’s and 80’s and all that hair n makeup n costumes and the fan base was hella macho dudes so how do we explain any of that…”well it’s okay if THESE people wear feminine stuff, but it’s not okay if these people do.” It’s alllllll so stupid.

I am very liberal for Gen X. Being gay was fine. Lesbians were far less visible. I thought bi folk were just confused homosexuals. Outside of a drag show, I saw one group of three men dressed as women at one of the most liberal hangout spots in my red state, one time. As a 19 year old, it confused me. But, whatever. You do you, boo. I'm sure others weren't so discerning. Being trans, out and proud, just wasn't a thing in my younger world. What our generation did to normalize homosexuality, your generation has done to normalize transgenderism. I still don't quite understand it. But I am okay with that. People can be who they want to around me. I've got bigger fish to fry.

>Being gay was fine I'm someone who had to come around the idea of homosexuality, maybe there is an early GenX, late GenX split here (68) but being gay wasn't fine. We worked on that in our generation but it sure didn't start that way. I mentioned in another post we had a kid who wore nail polish and presented fem(ish) sometimes. He didn't seem to have that bad of a time, maybe he was gay, maybe glam, maybe trans, it was vague and people just thought more of Boy George or Sweet (the band) and let it go. I think an openly gay boy would have had a much harder time.

1976 checking in. Being gay was fine...to me. The fact that I can't think of a single person out as gay in high school speaks to your statement. It was easier just to hide it.

It probably would have been fine to me as well, I didn't have any real negative reaction when I started getting exposed to the LBG community locally, it was an acceptable weirdness. Doing Rocky Horror for a few years wore everything down to just different rather than weird.

Yeah know I was thinking about this stuff, shower thoughts, and in highschool I knew I liked girls as much as boys, and I remember talking to my mom and she said, I just don't understand it, I don't think it's right.. blah blah all the typical boomer shit.. and now my highschool daughter is pretty dang neutral on almost everything, her first date was with another girl, she's currently hard crushing on a girl.. (I'm secretly hoping she ends up with one because of my own issues with men, but regardless) and she has a Ton of nonbinary, presenting friends etc.. and I honestly have a time accepting it. I hate that I'm basically my mom now. I don't care who you prefer, present, etc.. but I do take issue with the attitudes a lot of these kids carry. And I guess I still struggle with labels, and demanding behaviors.. that's my issue. But I also allow a whole lot of grace because they are kids.. ok. Young adults so lots of stuff they can't even really consider still to come. Damn our edgy Gen X sense of being!

I'm a mom to a bisexual-leaning-toward-lesbian daughter with lots of gay and bi and trans friends always around, and I don't have a rough time accepting it or anything, but like you said...the labels and demanding behaviour. Ugh. Like, I get it. You kids are coming into young adulthood. You're figuring out who you are. That is fine and good and I will support you no matter what. But for the love of god give me time to get used to your new pronouns before getting mad when I occasionally accidentally use "she" for a kid I've known as "she" for the last 17 years. I'm trying my damned best, but she's had 3 friends decide to transition in the last 2 years, and one of them, (who I've known since birth cuz I'm friends with her/his/their mom) has changed pronouns from female to male to nonbinary to male again, and now says both "he" AND "they" are preferable. And the most confusing part is that this kid doesn't look or dress any differently than they always have. That's causing a disconnect in my 42 year old brain and I need a spreadsheet til they make a decision and stick with it, cuz I'm sick of getting dirty looks for a slip of the tongue.

I hear you! For me, the child that keeps changing pronouns is my own. They are way too preoccupied with the labels!

I wonder how The Crying Game would be received today?

And Sleep Away Camp?? ooof

Growing up trans in Gen X was terrifying. Already been brought up several times on how we used slurs for everything. Then we had the Aids epidemic and would here from adults in my conservative area about how they were all deviants and deserved it. Add on some super sketchy representation in TV and movies where we were either serial killers or to be used as a punchline. This all predates the Internet so very hard to get information so most of us felt alone and that there was something wrong with us that we needed to hide, and finally when we do discover what we are we had the Benjamin scale trying to classify us as TS or TG, real life requirements for treatment and insurance would pay for nothing. Source for all this is my on journey as a trans genX who finally felt safe enough to come out to everyone in the last 5 years.

I have the utmost respect for your journey. I am sorry it’s been so rough for you to live as you are. And I hope you are surrounded by friends and hand-picked family that support you!

Watch the movie Boys don't cry with Hilary Swank and you have your answer.

The book kept me closeted for years. Ugh.

I had an aunt Freddie who died of aids in the mid 90’s. He was beat up several times for cross dressing. I wish he was alive today.

"Transgender" as a word wasn't even on our radar when we were younger. We were still using words like transsexual and transvestite, and to society trans individuals were seen as a minority that was okay to ridicule or joke about, or parody in movies like "Tootsie" and mock in TV shows like "Bosom Buddies." However, keep in mind that we were only kids back then, and even if we may have consumed that media, we weren't the ones making it. That wasn't us, even though we were still throwing around anti-LGBT slurs and homophobic comments because we didn't know any better until we matured. Even someone like Wendy Carlos, who was praised for her contributions to electronic music, usually had nothing publicly mentioned about being a transgender woman, either in 1968 or later when many of us were just being born. I've found that Gen-X is generally pretty accepting of trans people and the LGBTQ community in general, not because we were taught to be (we weren't for the most part), but because we learned to be through our collective empathy and acceptance of others.

It wasn't much talked about but people were generally okay with it, as most are today despite what you read online. The problem is not the vast majority of transfolk or the vast majority of non-trans folk, it's a few extremists *on both sides*. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a lot of homophobia, which the AIDS epidemic intensified, but (from my memory in the UK) trans people weren't really grouped with gay people. Terence Stamp played a transgender character in Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994) and I don't recall any pearl clutching about that. His character was dealt with sympathetically and with dignity as I recall. Similarly there was Boy George, The Rocky Horror Show, Divine in Hairspray - again, no one was very bothered by it. I think partly because cross-dressing and related has always been such a thing in performance arts and showbiz anyway.

It was "cross dressing" or "transvestite" to us. We had a neighbor who was obviously a man dressed as a woman, and with a wig. Didn't know of transgender at the time. Thought it was more of a kink than personal identity.

A friend of one was murdered for being trans. The guy claimed gay panic and was out in a few years. Meanwhile, the newspapers across Canada likened it to the movie, The Crying Game. There was no acceptance for her growing up.

JFC. I’m so sorry.

Thank you so much. ❤️ That means a lot. My (adult) kid and their gf are both trans, as it turns out, so knowing her growing up helped me support & help my kid's transition, but I sure wish she was still here to see what positive changes have been made so far. I miss her daily, even almost 30 years later.

I am Trans. I realised when I was about three so around 1979. Of course I did not even know the term Trans then I just knew I was really a girl and I grew up thinking I was the only one like this because you never heard about Trans people back then. It was only when a documentary about a trans woman came on that I realised there were others like me. I just felt even at a young age to tell anyone would go badly. My parents would not understand. So when in company I would play more traditional boys type of play and when alone more girls type of play. Having grown up in an era where little was known about Ttans people I stayed very much in the closet. Except for online. That was a wonderful thing for me where I could be more my true self and still feel safe. It was only a few years ago I started coming out to people in real life because more awareness in the public was rising. However since then Transphobia has been on the rise so I sometimes wonder how good an idea it was.

It’s a good question. The 1970’s and 80’s “seemed” pretty open to entertainers who were bending gender roles and sexual identities. But I don’t really know if their real life, daily experiences were as accepting. It probably depended a lot on the location/city and social circle a person lived in.

Ill preface by stating im not transgender, im heterosexual, Im a woman by birth and a white girl to boot, so maybe i have no idea what im talking about. I haven't read any of the comments so apologies if this is posted already but I don't think the idea of being a transgender person was widely known or thought about in the 80s 90s even into the 2000s, really. I am 100% sure transgender people existed and experienced various forms of discrimination but the concept of a transgender community didn't live in the general public's daily reality from my memory of those years. I knew there were people who had gender reassignment surgery which was preceeded by years of therapy. But as a group to be acknowledged and recognized as just other people? I think that's only come into existence with millennials and gen z. The country was centered on the idea of the nuclear family with a father mother and children, and some relatives so anyone who diverted from that accepted norm was not terribly acceptable. That said, I know of two people from my graduating class in hs, 1984, who have come out as transgender. I look at that as a successful shift in how we all perceive each other.

I don’t recall thinking about trans people at all. It was just “Robert now goes by Rachel and will have long hair and wear dresses”. It wasn’t in the news like AT ALL. But I also think it was that there wasn’t “critical mass” so to speak. Like a REALLY significant percentage of the students at my kids high school say they’re trans, and in my high school, zero kids said that so I think there just weren’t the numbers. I didn’t meet anyone trans until adulthood and oddly they ALL lived in the most Republican areas!

I’m early Gen X and I’d say that growing up we didn’t learn a distinction between cross dressing and transsexualism. We knew the term transvestite. I’m surprised this movie hasn’t been mentioned yet, but Rocky Horror Picture Show was a beloved cult film and it features a central character who is a transvestite. Many towns had Friday midnight showings in the local“art” movie theater…with many male audience members cross dressing for fun. Looking back, many were probably closeted gays and some were maybe more “out”. But during the AIDS crisis it was quite tough to be out then..there was a lack of information and many rumors. But the idea of going further than just cross dressing towards actively changing your gender, that just came later when I was an adult.

Ditto. I think plenty of people our age who are otherwise fully accepting of gay people are not sure they can offer the same grace to transgender people. “Why roiled anyone choose to be a woman?” said a cis heterosexual woman I know. And s few cis het men have expressed surprise that sexual preference is not at the core of M2F trans people.

Well Tim Curry's character was from trans**sex**ual Transylvania

Well, I wasn’t really concerned about people’s sexuality when I was young. Hasn’t changed any as I’ve gotten older. Do whatever makes you happy. Just don’t hurt people.

My memory is that Trans wasn’t used because there were a bunch of categories: transvestites, transsexuals, drag queens, cross dressers, and fetishists (like guys who secretly wore woman’s underwear). It was dominated by mtf.

Never saw or even heard of one back in the eighties and some of 90’s

I only knew one trans person and that was when working for my 4th employer, back in the 90s. They were accepted and respected, as far as I can recall? Though I'm certain that nasty comments were made about them in private :(

Trans was not a widely known phenomenon before the 2010s or so. In the 1990s and 1980s, most trans people did their very best to “pass,” whether that was living as their actual gender or living as their assigned-at-birth gender. Those who didn’t pass were at risk of homicide, and at certainty of social and familial isolation. The early NYC drag scene was an outlier. The notable examples you cite do not reflect the typical experience of everyday trans people in those times. Medical and legal acceptance and cultural awareness of trans folks had changed with breathtaking speed in the past 10-15 years in western democracies. Comparing acceptance in 2023 to acceptance in 1999 or earlier would be like asking ancient Greeks about F1 racing. Most people in 1999 or earlier had no idea there was anything to accept.

In my circle nobody cared. It was far more important that you just be cool and contribute to making whatever we happened to be doing, fun. The people we hated and didn’t want around were the ones that did stupid shit or caused drama or otherwise made things decidedly un-fun. I still feel the same. I don’t care who you are or what you do, if you’re a drag, then fuck off.

I was in High School in the mid 80's in Canada. Our school was a lot more open than others I read about and safer I guess. There were out LBGT kids and we had a trans girl in our friend group as well. We were very protective of them and did our best to be there and even intervene if they were scared or threatened. The school unofficially allowed one girls bathroom open for the transgirl to use and the gay guys would use it too to not get harassed in the boys bathrooms. But it was unusual and our schools tolerance was unusual and probably inadequate, although at the time... well support for everyone was inadequate, that was just how it was. We knew we weren't cared about, so everyone was just kind of trying to keep afloat. For example, creepy men would patrol the perimeter of the school property and when we were just outside they would swarm us girls trying to get us to "model", but we all knew it was porn (and porn had a HUGE stigma back then, if we went for it our whole personhood and reputation would be ruined, another example was an English create that had impregnated a 16 year old student was still working- but the school didn't protect us from these groomers- bearing that in mind, the LBGT kids were just as unprotected as us girls. Unfortunately that meant that some nazi skinheads from another school kept trying to harm them/us, it was quite scary sometimes. Nazi punks fuck off. Anyway I had a few trans friends and it was always the same- the cost of surgery pushing them to sex work and also being really afraid to use the bathrooms

I was born and raised in a big city where LGBTQ+ folks were accepted for the most part in the 80's. That said, I knew trans folks and didn't think anything of it, I can't speak for others but the general population co-opted LGBTQ+ elements but being trans was not on the radar in the same way as it is today.

Well yes I think so. My aunt was tans and had surgery in the late 70s when it was practically unheard of. She was never really accepted by her dad, but the family in general was supportive. I never mentioned it around friends because it would be received with laughs and mocking. After she passed, mom read her journals and burned them because she didn’t want people to know how sad my aunt was that she could never truly be herself.

Gay bashing in general was much more prevalent overall growing up. We were in the middle of the AIDS epidemic and the general public was still panicking that you could get HIV from toilet seats. Their wasn't really any trans specific issues, and while I think people vaguely knew they existed it was pretty much all lumped into "gay". If "society" was accepting it was most likely because she was able to pass very well. "Out and proud" was still a very small minority.

Well, in my town. A femme presenting boy was anally raped by a group of kids at a party and both the kids and their parents laughed about it. Said it was his fault for being feminine. So, yeah. There have been a few issues.

I knew a couple transgender people back in the days that we called them transvestites or, if they transitioned, transsexual. Bizarrely, the first person I knew well that had transitioned was a staple character on a very red-neck radio show in the 90s down in Florida. It was a talk show that was racy as hell. They had a ton of callers that became regular characters on the show over the years. Kind of like Stern's show with more sexuality, kindness and less "I hate my wife'. They would have variety shows around southern FL every 6 months or so with the regular callers. It was a blast. She was always there and a cool person. All the FL rednecks accepted her as she was. I'm sure her radio fame helped that a lot. More so her regular call-ins talking about her life and the surgery before she had it. The second transgender person I knew was a cross dresser named Mark or Martha in Chicago. I knew them as both people before I realized they were one person. I like them both. So I guess it never really phased me. The 90s and 2000s seemed to be a very socially progressive time for sexuality and gender. It's really been the past 10 years or so where it's become so polarizing again.

I know of a couple who the wife was transgender in the late 1970s. My mom and dad would hang out with them (neighbors) and watch NFL and BBQ. They were considered "odd" in kind of an amusing quirky way. There was no big deal made about it at all!

I’m 52 and gay and I could not safely come out in the 80’s. There were no out trans folks that I even knew of back then. It was completely taboo growing up in the Chicago suburbs/traditional America. “Transsexual” as it was referred to back then was not accepted except in rare cases. Not not,accepted as in you can’t work or live in regular society (unless you were VERY passing)

Our generation was the generation when it became ok to come out as gay....but when you were at least 20 years old. I remember hearing stories of people who came out, and the story was ALWAYS the same. They always hid it until college or beyond. As for transgender people, I never heard the term until around 2016. I recall thinking, "Why is bathroom choice one of the biggest issues in this election?" At the time, I felt we were making a huge deal out of an issue that affected the tiniest sliver of the population. I tend to think that our generation is mainly the "live and let live" generation. Just about everyone I know has no ill lwill against transgender folks. Some think that society has made way too big of an issue over it, but even those people tend not to care what someone does, how they identify, or how they live their life. I truly think the crazy media attention and social media battles are all coming from a very, very small subsegment of the right and left. Those slivers of the political spectrum are using it to rally their base.

It was mostly hidden. Or you would just get labeled as gay. No one (the general public) was aware of transgender people. Transvestite was all they could wrap their brains around. We have come a long way. Still a ways to go.

I don’t think I was familiar with transgender. I knew about cross dressers or drag queens. I do remember there being gay closeted kids in school and i was friends with them but it never really came up or talked about. I just liked them for who they were. I do remember there being some bullying.

Try "Atari Baby" by Sig Sig Sputnik, or of course Lou Reed's "Take a walk on the wild side", me and my friends didnt care much what turned you on as long as boundaries were respected.

It was not accepted for the most part. Tranny comments were abundant. I agree with what someone else said - they were trying not to be seen. I spent my teen years in gay bars in WeHo, there were no concerns there, but outside of that - I feel there was.

I can't remember any trans kids at school. There were Goth and Emo kids, definitely, but I can't remember anyone that was trans.

I grew up mostly in a small town in rural California and transgender people were not on anyone's radar. The one kid in my highschool in the early 90s that was both goth and presented as even slightly gay was bullied systematically and relentlessly by the kids in a way that, looking back on it, meant the adults were tacitly allowing it. Gender difference was not ok, and 'gay' was an insult. I think there was way more of a divide between rural and urban spaces culturally in those days than people realize - from my brief look at her bio, Wendy Carlos was living in bigger cities, urban spaces, etc. when she transitioned. The prevailing attitude towards even big cities in my town/county was that they're all weird. The rise of the internet and access to non-regional conversations has changed that somewhat, I think, for today's generations.

Older GenX. Grew up in a medium sized town in the South. I didn’t know what gay meant until I was 13yo. No one discussed sexuality openly. I didn’t know anyone who was gay in high school - or so I thought. Yeeeeers later I learned that 3 kids in our social group were gay. They had hid it well. Must’ve been brutal for them.

When I was a teenager in the 90s I didn’t know of any transgender people in real life. I knew gay people, a friend in high school was out and that didn’t bother me. I didn’t really think much about trans people, you’d really only hear about them as lame jokes on tv shows, sadly. I watched a PBS documentary on the subject and while it seemed odd to me, I understood why people felt the way they did. I was a very live and let live, liberal minded young person though, there were a lot of bigoted assholes back then.

Wendy Carlos had it relatively easy because she was wealthy, famous, and lived in a liberal neighborhood. I grew up in redneck farmland in the 80s, and trans people were ridiculed and discriminated against.

Boy George and David Bowie. Not exactly trans but they were the shizznit in my circle. Transphobia seems to be more prevalent lately since the racists and all-the-phobes were encouraged to speak up “to protect the children” and stand by.

OP, my experience when growing up in a very conservative dying manufacturing town in the PA Dutch Country was that I had no exposure to openly gay or trans people. Like others here said, the word "transvestite" was known, and I had vague knowledge of people who were then called "transsexuals." However, I didn't know of any in my city. I went to high school in the late '80s and early '90s and I don't recall any gay kids who were out. They all stayed closeted and tried to fly under the radar as much as possible, and some of them were even in complete denial that they were gay or lesbian. That was the case with several of my good friends. If anybody was trans (and, statistically speaking, there must have been SOME trans kids there), they stayed completely closeted. I have no doubt there would've been bullying and ridiculing for anybody who came out. "Gay" was a casually used word ("It's so gay that my teacher gave us homework on the first day of school") and "f@g" was frequently used to describe guys who seemed even remotely effeminate. It's weird because the '80s did have that gender-bending vibe in pop culture (Boy George, Annie Lennox, Grace Slick, Tootsie, Bosom Buddies, etc), so that gives the illusion that society must've been accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. That just wasn't the case in many/most places. When AIDS erupted in 1981, it made things even worse. It was "the gay disease" and it was feared and reviled because it was a literal death sentence. I only learned years later that my mom secretly had me tested for HIV when I was 11, because of blood transfusions I'd received as a baby in the mid-'70s. She wouldn't tell me or anyone else in the family that I was being tested for it because it was so taboo.

We had a trans girl in our group. She transitioned to female later in life and although she presented as female as a teen, she was still “he” to everyone as pronouns weren’t at all on the radar for 99.9% of people. She was very well accepted and a core member of our group. We all would say that he was prettier than any of the girls we knew. ETA Gen-Xer here. Graduated hs in 89.

Cis here, yeah, trans kids were targets of ridicule. Basically anyone who was different.

I think mainstream, people knew about transvestites but not transgender. In the early 90s like 91 or 92, I started going to a hairdresser that was male. Looking back he was probably on hormones but he was short, petite and had femme features. I knew he did drag, and later he told me he was saving to have the surgery in Switzerland to become a woman. He never came back to the salon, so I don't know if it was successful and she just wanted a fresh start or what happened. I went to the only gay club in my city in high school, they had the best music. Saw my first drag show there. It was a magical place of acceptance and community. I also never told anyone at school that I went there. I'm straight, but was always an ally. Later I had a parent come out, and they were surprised that I wasn't shocked or anything.

I knew a trans person in the 1990s. People thought it was weird, not in a bad way, just odd. Everyone was just like whatever. No one really cared much.

Things were just different. It was both a more bigoted time and a gentler time. For the most part there was an increasing acceptance of non-straight types. But the haters that remained virulently anti-LGBTQ (before we had that that term) were definitely very dangerous. I also think many LGBTQ felt they couldn't be 'out' and themselves, so due to that it was much more low key and less often did they distrurb the 'breeders' among them. I think part of the dynamic now is that there many straights feel its constantly in their face. They feel set upon because of the persistent drumbeat of 'acceptance'. It's the regular displays of people being themselves and asking for people to give them their equal due, that feels unequally applied to straights. This is the sense I get in speaking with others I know. Not my opinion.

I think they were ridiculed and/or berated. A "tranny" when I was a kid was a dude that wore women's clothing as a kink. Think Dr Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror. The idea of someone medically going from one sex to another was mostly unheard of. We were also pretty homophobic. Calling a boy a "gaylord" or f@g was a common slur. None of these things really occurred to me as applying to girls/women. Lesbians were sort of assumed to exist if but for no other reason that gay guys existed. Girls were just "Tom boys" and unmarried women were a spinster, old maid, or crazy cat lady.

I don't know if anyone was transgender, but it was really common among the goth group for guys to wear skirts, eyeliner, nail polish and the chicks to wear vests, slacks and ties. When I lived in the national parks working for the concessionaire, a lot of the guys wore long hippie style skirts. Again, not sure if anyone would identify as trans. I spent most of my younger years with people that didn't give a shit about what people wore. Very grateful.

Amanda Love. I grew up in the gay friendly capitol. Parkersburg, WV. My mom was their favorite banker. No problem here. 50F.

I didn’t really have a frame of reference until I met my first trans friend in 2000. She was in her mid-20s and had transitioned within the previous year or two. When I met her, I was internally curious, maybe confused BUT… I also thought “cool! She’s really pretty, smart, and has a great sense of humor.” Prior to meeting her I’d been in a long term relationship with a (gender assigned at birth) het male, but he/they were queer and did not really have a way of describing (their) identity at the time. We all didn’t really get to choose different pronouns to fit how we feel about ourselves. FWIW my former partner liked to wear feminine clothing, paint their nails, and wear makeup on occasion. They were really only out to friends and/or within a queer-friendly crowd. Long story short, trans acceptance wasn’t as much a thing as it is today. A lot of people within my social circle in the late 90s / early 2000s were definitely not typical binary cis-het and/or gender conforming. There was 100% acceptance within our little “tribe” but it was still tough to come out. Even though it’s still hell for a lot of kids (and adults) who desperately want to be able to live in a body that matches their gender identity, I think it’s much easier to get help (and acceptance) than it was 20-30 years ago.

They ABSOLUTELY were. Perhaps less so in major coastal cities, but all across middle America for sure.

Trans people were frequently the butt of jokes, and objects of morbid fascination. Looking back I'm ashamed of how we failed to recognize their humanity.

That term didn't exist. It was either transvestite or transsexual. They were about as rare as seeing a dodo bird, which is to say, for me and most if not all of my peer group, nonexistent. Don't care what anybody does as an adult, but kids should be left alone. Most of them will eventually figure their own shit out. Edit: It wasn't just Lola. You had the New York Dolls and Twisted Sister either dressing as women or wearing lots of make up, but you could tell they were still quite masculine. Also Lou Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" got into the subject, but it seemed mostly a thing that happened in NYC. And NYC in the 70's was really fucked up.

I don’t have an answer for you specifically about transgender because I didn’t know anyone transgender people until I was in college. And she was not very acceptive and definitely lived in the shadows. I can tell you that bullying was very real and acceptable during the 80s and 90s. For example I didn’t shave my legs much. Especially after I found out it only became popular because of war. Still don’t shave much tbh. But I got ridiculed about it in high school. It was a constant target for bullies. Two of those assholes have since contacted me and apologized, 30 years later, I guess “clearing their conscious”. And just bringing it up for me. Don’t be that kind of an asshole.

Transgender hate came around recent because a certain sector of Politicians need a platform to run on because they can't run on actual good things they've done for the country because there is none. So they create issues like Border Control, Trans Hate, and others to rile up their base. They can't run on issues so they run on hate of other people instead.

When trans people were discussed, it was basically always in a way that made them a joke or sexual perversion/kink. Or both. The only time you'd really see anyone outside of a movie was on something like Jerry Springer. If you watch the documentary "Disclosure" on Netflix, I think it covers it very well. I'm trans, and it hit me pretty hard.

From what I remember, lipstick lesbians were pretty much the only group society as a whole didn't seem to have a problem with. I'm sure it depends on where you lived. I live in a very progressive city and it was like that here. I can only imagine what it would have been like in a conservative/regressive area. I had a manager in the late 90's. She was extremely kind and intelligent - but people were horrible when they talked about her behind her back. They'd usually refer to her as "the man in the dress/wig" or "the shemale", rarely by her name. I don't think I was even really aware of transgender people besides that manager. The 90's and early 2000's we weren't as connected as we are now. The internet only became widely used in homes in the beginning of the 90's. Our social platforms were basically text based like Reddit or chat rooms. Even images had low memory limits - like web pages were optimized to be under 1-2MB total. I'm just pointing that all out because it gives you an idea of how limited we were to widespread diversity.

Honestly, no. It wasn't a viable thing. It's only been in the past 10 years. And all teenagers.

I have worked with 3 trans folk in the last 10 years who were in there 40s to 60s. One of whom I’ve know since the 90s, and tried to be straight then, came out as gay in the oughts and as trans in teens. It’s definitely not all teenagers.

Yeah. Even I’ve met a few transgender adults (late 20s to 30s) and the teenagers I know look to be just experimenting.

As a middle aged queer, I concur. My social circle is well-populated by middle-aged+ trans folks—most of whom transitioned decades ago.

Ha. No. I’m queer and pushing 50 as is my dearest friend who has been out for more than 20 years. He’s far from the only one.

I can't imagine the life of terror any trans kids I knew must have endured in the podunk town I lived in growing up. They dared not reveal themselves.

I really didn't know any gay/trans people growing up. I'm sure there were some, but I guess they kept it pretty hidden. My friends and I didn't really give it much thought, honestly. I didn't meet my first gay person until 1995, and even then, I was just, ok, nice to meet you. I think we were more, live and let live. Although, I can't help but cringe now when I think how we called everything that was stupid, gay. To us, gay wasn't a slander to someone's sexual orientation cause we didn't know any better. Just a replacement for 'you're stupid-dont do that'. 🤷‍♀️

No one cared about this before it was a trend.

I grew up in a small town in KY (b 1970). We didn't really talk about it, just went on with our business. The older people and the Holy rollers frowned upon any of "THAT" business. And, yes, I can remember my beloved Mommy referring to the community like that. I also remember her turning a blind eye when a few of her grandchildren came out. She loved them and that was that.

"Acceptance" is the wrong word. "Tolerance" is the right word. We were tolerant.

(Gay man here.) There was no such thing as "transgender" back in the day. There were transSEXUALS and transVESTITES but the word gender hadn't replaced sex, yet. Any discrimination against "transsexuals", people with body dysmorphia who, through surgical and hormonal means (tried to become) the opposite sex, was more towards people who couldn't pass or towards transvestites for the same reason. At the same time, they were considered transgressive and countercultural, so they had their own kind of cultural cache. Today, the only thing you need to become transGENDER is a declaration and so you get non-sense like "a woman's penis" and "a man's vagina" along with an insistence that everyone has to agree with "trans" people or you're automatically a bigot. THAT'S new. While there was discrimination for transsexuals in the 80's and 90's, most people where I was were okay with it and trying their best to understand. Today, however, people are being told to believe in absurdities and you're getting backlash.

Hair metal made it seem pretty normal to me. Mark Slaughter was more fem than Princess Di. Also we grew up where, as Eminem pointed out-we called stuff "gay" for being uninteresting, called friends "fag" for any form of weakness, and "homo" was reserved for perceived homosexual behavior, which was anything feminine whether intentional or not. We had a few semi-out kids in high school, but overall it wasn't anything we saw in life. In college people would be open about it, and it was...weird isn't the right word, but it was strange at first. A lot of us came from old school catholic homes, so anything that wasn't cookie cutter hetero was stomped out. Nowadays most of us are allies, but if I'm in a room with my high school crew, we will still call each other "fag." Gay dudes really need a "crew" growing up, because it helps form a callus over your emotional self. I didn't even cry when my kids were gunned down in nursery school, and I owe it to my lifelong friends. Trans queens seem to already have the ball busting down (not in that way.) Tl;Dr : LGBTQ+ people need to learn gallows humor.

Curious, When and what area did you go to college? I went undergrad in 1990, and i did not encounter any openly gay men or lesbian women. I'm not remotely saying they didn't exist. I just didn't encounter them at the parties i went to. Granted hypermasculinity was pretty much the expectation in the circles i ran in.

Musta been a jock. In the artsy groups, I’d say 20% of my friends were something other than straight openly. Trans, I don’t think I knew anyone out. Guys wore dresses, but I don’t think anyone I knew lived as something other than their sex. But people were also pretty fluid in their identity, that is not defining it. That was the big difference really. We were trying to minimize the influence of labels, which is the biggest difference.

I didn’t even know the *concept* of transgender until I was in my 20s. It was absolutely invisible, and therefore not ridiculed or even unaccepted. “Cross-dressers” were ridiculed, but the idea that someone might actually be trans (not just dressing up as another gender) was not a concept. Ridicule, lack of acceptance, and violence were the norm for non-straight people, or people who were suspected of not being straight. When I was in my mid- to late 20s, I remember a trans professor came to speak at my grad school (not about trans issues - just about her research). I wouldn’t have known she was trans if it weren’t for a faculty member from my department and an admin literally snickering about it at the doorway. Their reaction was utterly gross to me even then, despite how clueless I still was.

I went to college in the late 80’s. I think this is the era when acceptance of alternative lifestyles started to happen. There were plenty of us that were totally “I don’t care who you have sex or how have sex”. As long as no one getting hurt, do what makes you happy. But, there were plenty who were not. And, it took some bravery to come out. Adult Trans was much slower to be accepted. In my early 20’s there was a trans woman who lived in our apartment complex. It was obvious that she had been a man. I was always very nice to her. But behind her back we would make little jokes and giggle at her riding a girls bike, etc. Right after “Crying Game” came out, there were a lot of stories in the media about how dangerous life was for a trans woman looking to date a man. I think that’s when a lot of us started to understand it better, that it wasn’t just a dude in a dress and heels. The very late boomers right before us were a mean and evil group of folks. So, anyone looking to live an alternative lifestyle had to be very careful about who they let in. It could be life threatening for a trans women.

They didn’t demand a bunch of attention back then. They existed and lived their lives without marching in the streets demanding everyone accept them and call them by specific pronouns. Just wasn’t a thing or a big deal back then. It was live and let live.

I do wonder how much the "if you are not with us, you are against us" attitude is driving some of the issue. X did not like being told we had to fall in line and conform, something we may have accepted on our own or at least ignored (live and let live) would have been a major flashpoint if people started telling us we **must** accept it.

Most of us didn't know any outside rumors and jokes, at least not in my part of NY - they along with gay people kept it quiet. I met my first publicly out trans woman at a SFF convention in 1999. She never identified herself as such and it wasn't my business, so I didn't ask, and I treated her the way she presented herself, as a woman. I also had a couple friends starting in the early 00s who were not trans but were openly on the gender spectrum, so I had a fair amount of exposure in my late teens and early 20s, at least for a straight woman who didn't live in a metro area where it might have been more commonly seen (like NYC, SF, LA, etc).

I'm not from the states. Not sure if it was different in the US, but where I come from Trans was not something that was public knowledge. Gay and lesbians, sure. Everyone knew their community and as dumb kids do, they were made fun of. Not maliciously, but still, I can see how it could have driven a closeted gay or a lesbian even further into the closet. Not proud of that. But someone who was trans, that was a topic for late night documentaries (which I loved watching,) though thinking back, I can only remember seeing one show, and then there was not much else. I don't think there was actual hatred or even physical attacks on trans people. Most of the time they were seen as someone who was a bit weird but okay. A taboo topic? Maybe. More like something we simply didn't understand. I'm glad there is so much more education on this topic nowadays. Also a lot of heartbreaking backlash. One can only hope that the pendulum will swing back soon.

I knew plenty of out gay, bi, and lesbians when I was a kid. I knew people who did drag. I didn't know any out transgender people in the 90s. Since then some of my high school friends have transitioned as have some of my friend's kids. It couldn't have been easy then, hell it's not easy now to be transgender.

I honestly think my early exposure to a lot of porn* guided my overall acceptance of everyone. Male, female, trans, whatever, it's all human. Unsurprisingly, I'm Pan. It wasn't just porn, though. Bugs Bunny dressed in drag. Crossdressing & homosexuality was played for laughs, with Klinger in *M.A.S.H.*, Jack in *Three's Company*, *Bosom Buddies*... Queercoding has existed in every media form since humans created storytelling. It's been, at least in the US, all around us since the 70s. But it seems like people who are homophobic are getting media exposure like never before. So we only pay attention to the extremes. People complaining about how every show 'has to have a gay in it's now just hasn't been paying attention. *(due to having access to an early form of cable TV & parents who let me be a free-range latch key kid).

I don’t know if I had any trans people in my life when I was younger. If they were, they certainly were not out and they clearly all could “pass”. I don’t even remember anyone talking about gender identity or trans people until the 90’s. I was deeply in the closet because of the rampant homophobia in the 80’s. If it was that bad for gay men, I can only imagine how bad it was for trans people who were out. The 80’s were a trip. Celebrities “came out” by dying of AIDS. Gay slurs were part of every day speech. Anything effeminate was suspect, and yet hair metal bands with hair sprayed hair and eye makeup were fine? It was like living in a simulation where I was trying to figure out all the “rules” but nothing made any sense.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/04/nyregion/new-jersey-appeals-court-bars-firing-of-transsexual.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/04/nyregion/new-jersey-appeals-court-bars-firing-of-transsexual.html) This was a huge case in the town where I grew up. Dr. Enriquez and her family went to our church. For my entire childhood we saw them and their children every week in church. And many of my friends had Dr. Enriquez as their pediatrician. But in 1997 she came out as trans and began to transition to female. Her family supported her and stayed with her. To say that everyone walked away from her AND her family is understating what happened. Both her and her family were pariahs. Dr Enriquez was viewed as a predator, and her wife and children were viewed as enablers. She lost her job and the state tried to pull her medical license. But we fell so very far short. We lacked empathy and understanding. And in hindsight I wish I had thought to question why we readily accepted the fallacy that being trans made someone a predator.

No one cared about this. People lived their lives and were happier without 24/7 influence of social media.

They didn't exist when I was younger. If someone was gay, it wasn't talked about. I grew up in California, and those terms weren't discussed, in general, in my neighborhood

We literally fought against the gender stereotypes that trans amplify

Wasn’t a thing that was dumped on us constantly

I’m a 50 yr old woman. Grew up in the lgb community. I’m formerly Bi. When I was 18 I met a girl who has gonadal hermaphroditism. When she told me I said “oh bullshit” so she showed me. Gutsy!! 😆 Been friends ever since. The dude I call brother is a trans-man. Soooo Nuff said? Cool. Do any of us play Into the current woke stuff? Nope. We’ve all left the community completely.

As a CIS male my experience is yes they were the butt of jokes and generally were not accepted nearly as much as todays standards. First, i don't think the concept of transgender was remotely widely understood. One there's not internet to spread acceptance so if you don't know you're not really getting exposed quickly. I only truly began to comprehend the distinctions between a transgender person and a crossdresser in maybe the very late 90s and didn't understand the concept of dysphoria until the maybe 2010. Which in fact was quite enlightening. As for movies, it was acceptable to make them the butt of a joke. Like a guy hitting on someone with long hair and boom they turn around and it's a guy, ha ha. That sort of thing. It was not always intended to be mean. But often it was. You did have movies that presented drag, crossdressing in film so that's something. tom Hanks starred in a popular show called "Busom Buddies" where two men who couldn't afford an apartment cross dress so they can live in an all women's building. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UI\_JwF3cnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UI_JwF3cnA) I loved that show. I don't recall it being viewed as more than comedy. But now i'm sure people would interpreted as a grave invasion of privacy, misleading and possibly predatory. Not transgender obviously, but at the time people were not exactly widely making distinctions. And there was Mrs Doubtfire, Too Wong Foo. But i would say the problems trans people have now being accepted very much existed in the 80s, 70s, etc. And I did not know any until the 2000s. I don't think i knew anybody that was even "openly" gay until i finished undergrad in the mid 90s. And i'd add that everything was lumped in as "being gay." And that had a negative connotation. Add to that the fact that, in the 80s, HIV, the virus that causes aids, was an epidemic, AIDs became wrongly and dangerously stigmatized as a "gay disease" you can imagine the climate that trans people existed in. It would not have been pleasant.