this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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The millennials spearheaded the LGBT rights, but we're also the ones who had been trans- and homophobes growing up in 90s and 00s, with or without realising it.
Character development, I guess?
Spearheaded the LGBT rights?
Some of us literally battled it out in the streets in the 80s and 90s. People fucking died. We were expelled from our families.
It's hard not to take offense to your comment. Millennials did not spearhead shit. You were GIVEN the opportunity to be yourselves.
edit: Don't think that I don't appreciate that we still have boundaries to push. The war against sexuality isn't over, and the old warriors are still here. We just don't make as much noise these days.
Sorry, saying spearhead is a wrong choice of word. I didn't mean to downplay the previous generations of lgbt rights activists, like Harvey Milk. I suppose what I mean is that millenials are the ones who have finally made lgbt acceptance come to fruition.
Here's what many people don't understand. Millennials and the younger generations are not more diverse. They didn't make it popular. Sexual diversity has always existed.
The difference is that by the time you came around generations previous had been fighting for the right to exist. Those that didn't have the ability or desire to fight for themselves simply remained 'in the closet' (a phrase I'm not fond of). But we made a TON of progress in the 80s and 90s so by the time you came along people were finally able to TRY and understand. Before that it wasn't really even a question of if you would be accepted. You knew you weren't. Again, millennials were GIVEN the opportunity to be accepted by those that came before them, quite possibly even close family members who they never realized fought for those rights even when they would never get them.
If you need a specific example to get it... My brother has a child that is non-binary. They get to have a relationship with their grandparents (my parents) ONLY because my parents understand now that refusing to accept would mean the loss of the relationship completely. If I had not made the sacrifices I did back then, that child would not have had the benefit of loving grandparents. In fact I'm often jealous because by the time my parents realized that they were wrong, it was too late for me. The damage had already been done. I will never know what it's like to have a family, to talk to adult siblings about growing up. I'm still on the outside because my siblings were too young to really know what happened. To dig all of that up now would only damage their relationships and why would I do that? I know what it's like to not have any support networks.
You should be happy with the freedom you were born into. I'm happy for your generation. I would go back and do it again.
And one of my biggest fears is that I might have to.
As a Millennial hard agree there. The old guard had to deal with mobs running the bars, institutions letting them die and in select places forming militia to prevent people from going out and beating queer people for fun. Millennials aren't the spearhead, we're like mid shaft of the spear at best.
That being said we're all gunna have to go back to the hardcore roots if we want to uphold the civil rights wins of the past. This all is gunna get messy.
Yeah, GenX really took the reins on this one. By the time millennials were old enough to actually affect change, most of the blood had been spilled and the dust had already settled.
Yea, as a millennial, it's kinda depressing to hear some of us take credit for being the spearhead when previous generations were the ones who went through things like the Stonewall Riots and started Pride.
We absolutely were not the spearhead. We were supposed to be the bulwark to prevent it from backsliding and we failed.
We Millenials consumed Gen X made media and Gen Xer's pop cultural was very "Its fun to be cruel to weaklings and weirdos, be against consumerist modern life dweebs, and swear in front of old ladies. We're so punk."
Gen X 90's culture being all about being a renegade nihilistic slacker as a reaction to the 80's culture which was a lot more colorful, consumerist, and earnest at an almost saccharine level, even when it was trying to "rebel".
EDIT: To clarify, Millenials consumed edgelord stuff from Gen X, and homophobia was edgey.
My talent as a homophobic millennial knew no bounds in the 2000s
I'd unironically call some straight girl a raging lesbo for wearing old burkes, then jump on the GSA forum and tell some teenager "it's okay to be gay, it gets better, when I first came out you'd get bashed so things are improving" like I wasn't part of the ongoing problem....
What was wrong with us back then!?
(I was definitely transphobic AF back then too! I have no excuses for it, especially because it turns out I tick that box as well)
The "not that there's anything wrong with that" episode of Seinfeld kind of summarizes the attitudes at the time. I don't think the majority of millennials ever were against gay people (I'm sure there were exceptions regionally) but there was heavy stereotyping, which of course was a form of othering. And yeah the 90s were very no filter in general. At this time people viewed poking fun as a form of acceptance. But it took some time for the stereotypes to die down.