I am a 51 year old bisexual man. It is difficult to properly put into perspective the progress that has been achieved. Listing major accomplishments like gay marriage doesn’t really capture the difference. Even non-queer people that cared for you saw you as different. I have been married for more than half my life and I can honestly say that back then my wife was with me in spite of my sexuality, but it was always something she worried about. It was like that with all who knew I was bi, and full closet for the rest. Now it feels as controversial or impactful as stating your favorite colour.
So, if hateful people ever make you feel that things are worse today and that you don’t belong, just remember that no so long ago, even your loved ones could make you feel like you didn’t belong, even if they didn’t mean to.
PS: Don’t even get me started on getting hate from gay friends for being bi.
PS: Don’t even get me started on getting hate from gay friends for being bi.
I was friends with a lesbian couple and they told me that both of them made sure the other one was definitely not bi when they started dating because [sic] Bis are the worst you just can’t date them. Your comment reminded me of that. I’m very sorry that you felt so alone for such a long time.
Thank you. I often say that Bisexuals had to be closeted twice. Once for the homophobes and once for the homosexuals. (Anyone remember Chasing Amy?)
I genuinely believe that things started to get better once Anna Paquin came out as bi, especially after the cringe worthy Larry King interview.
As a fellow bi man I feel like the progress in just the past 10 years has been huge, and one of the biggest changes has been how much more accepting other queer people have become.
I feel like it’s been closer to 15 years, but I definitely agree that acceptance was the more drastic change.
Someone needs to colorize the top pic. I’m not convinced they were any less vibrant or peace-loving then. They just happened to understand it would take violence to protect, well, anything that needs protecting.
Usually this format implies highlighting a significant change between “then” and “now”, but I really think it just highlights “the first picture was taken before 1978”, and and “the specific of the struggle have changed, but not the presence”
I’m not entirely sure what they were trying to highlight.
The bottom pic reflects much more of a soft-sell, non-violence-and-family-friendly-only take on the topic. The top pic leaves getting one’s face smashed in, with bricks or dildoes, firmly on the table, where it should be when one considers human rights negotiable.
Totally agree on the hard line stance on human rights.
I guess I’m just not seeing what you’re seeing. They’re both pictures of people mostly holding signs and peacefully marching. A woman holding a sign and smiling doesn’t scream face smashing to me.
If that was the point they were trying to make, then maybe actually using an image from the stonewall riots might have conveyed that a bit better than two sets of images of people peacefully marching.
The biggest changes have been the social acceptance of homosexuality.
Looking at the question of people’s perception on homosexual relationships in the GSS between 1973 and 2022, the percentage of Americana who view homosexual relationships as being “Not wrong at all” went from 10% to 61%. And for the first 20 years of that period, it pretty much stayed around 10%.
The question of homosexual sex itself has only been included 5 times on the GSS. The earliest in 1991 and the most-recent in 2018. In 1991 is was 11% and in 2018 was 55%.
In 1973, 1/3rd of people believed a gay person shouldn’t even be allowed to speak in public.
The somewhat scarier number is reagrdining homosexual books in public libraries, simply because there’s a slight uptick in banning them between 2020 and 2022, and while more-recent GSS numbers aren’t out, we have been seeing lots of book-bans in the news…
Other fun stuff from the GSS:
40% of white reponsants were in favor of a law banning interracial marriage in the 70s, and - more interestingly - up until they stopped asking the question in 2002 more democrats supported laws prohibiting interracial marriage than Republicans.
Support for abortion “for any reason” didn’t cross the 50% threshold until the Trump Presidency, and it’s pretty much entirely a trend on the Democratic side. The Dem and Rep voters weren’t that far apart until very recently.
Good thing they invented colour film!
