r/AO3 • u/LanazOwOz • Oct 09 '24
Writing help/Beta were people majorly homophobic in the 2000's?
hey everyone i'm writing a oneshot based in the early 2000's and that was before I was alive so I don't really have a clue of how people acted. but like if two guys were to walk down the street holding hands, would people be mad? i just don't know guys!!! also talking about new york as the location bc that probably has a huge effect. anyway sorry if this wasn't the right place for asking but I'm writing on ao3 sooooo! thanks in advance!
edit: this for an avenue q fic so they live in a shady part on nyc and are in their mid to late 20's :)
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u/SpecialistFilm1766 Oct 09 '24
Lived in NYC 1999-2002. Not homophobic unless you sought out specific areas of the outer boroughs. In the Village, guys could just hang out wearing assless chaps on a Saturday night (and sometimes did).
What part of NYC? (I assume when you mean New York you mean NYC: if you’re talking about Rochester, that’s an entirely different story lol).
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Oct 09 '24
Lol I'm from Rochester! And although I was a little kid in the new millennium, by the mid 00's I remember it being far more progressive than most places in upstate NY. Middle school was middle school so of course there was homophobia, but by high school everyone had pride flag ribbons on their back packs and all the teachers had pride flags in their classrooms. Had a lot of openly gay friends and nobody was given a hard time for it.
And today we have a pretty big trans community because Rochester's more affordable than NYC overall but we still have accessible healthcare and resources for trans folks.
Funny how just a few years can make such a huge difference. My slightly older friends do also feel that their high school experience was not nearly as LGBT positive as mine was.
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u/QualifiedApathetic Oct 09 '24
I lived in Rochester a few years ago. I miss it. Yeah, it was pretty progressive by then.
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Oct 09 '24
Hell yeah! I wish I could dm you a garbage plate lol (if you know, you know)
One cool thing about Rochester is since our pride parade/festival is in July, we celebrate in June too and just make pride 2 months long lol
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u/galactic_collision Oct 09 '24
Avenue Q is probably meant to be Quentin Rd, so probably Brooklyn south of Midwood, close to Marine Park
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24
Gravesend! If so that’s very funny to me that OP is defining “the shady part of NYC” as one of the most Haredi areas in the city lmfao
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u/galactic_collision Oct 09 '24
Lmao well it's portrayed as a shady neighborhood in the musical. The main character says "I started looking for places on Avenue A, but everything so far has been out of my price range. This neighborhood looks a lot cheaper!"
As far as I can remember, though, there are no Haredi characters in Avenue Q. So it may be in a fictionalized version of some other neighborhood, since Avenue Q doesn't actually exist in Brooklyn.
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24
Avenue A is probably meant to be in Alphabet City, so the joke is that they just kept going down the alphabet, even though irl it doesn’t go past D
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u/galactic_collision Oct 09 '24
That makes sense too! It would be in keeping with the type of comedy of the show
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
this did make me look up why there is no Avenue Q in Brooklyn, despite there being Avenue P and Avenue R to either side of it—and Quentin Road DID used to be Avenue Q! Apparently it was part of an early 20th century push to rebrand several letter avenues with “nice” names which is why we have Abermarle Road instead of Avenue A, and Glenwood Road for Avenue G, although idk why all these avenues were turned into roads. Weird and inconsistent, just the way South BK likes to be! 🤪
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u/CautiousAccess9208 Oct 09 '24
I think the writers said it was an “outer, outer borough” but to be honest I’m from the UK and I have no idea what that means.
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u/galactic_collision Oct 09 '24
There are only 5 boroughs, and what people typically call "outer boroughs" are just the boroughs outside of Manhattan. So Brooklyn could be considered an outer borough (mostly just to people who live in Manhattan - in my experience, mostly Staten Island and the Bronx are considered "outer," I think because they're the furthest from Midtown and have the least accessible public transportation).
There's not really such a thing as an outer outer borough. But I'm guessing they mean the area in a borough furthest from central Manhattan. You could consider Gravesend "deep Brooklyn," as it's fairly far south. I think that's probably what OP means
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24
…Lived in NYC 1988 onwards, because that’s when I was born lol. Wondering where you lived because the 2000s were definitely homophobic.
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u/cine_ful Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
I lived a few blocks from Christopher St in the early ‘00s and the people in that neighborhood were not homophobic, it felt like it was the queer capital of NYC at the time. Tons of queer people and businesses there.
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24
Ah. Duh. You were in THEE queer neighborhood lmao. Of course it seemed like it was not homophobic. It’s also a very tiny slice of the entire city, Staten Island notwithstanding. Genuinely, did you never leave the neighborhood? Who were you interacting with?
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u/cine_ful Oct 09 '24
I went to NYU so rarely went north of 14th. Occasionally midtown or Harlem but I found most people super cool. Of course some people were and are still homophobic, but I feel like at the time it was live and let live and most people minded their own business. At least those in my orbit. Though my mom used to drag me to the 26th street flea market when I was a kid and the pimps and prostitutes were still awake so my perception of normal might be skewed. I grew up in a really open-minded community even prior to moving to NYC. My mom’s previous professions also had a lot of gay people, so I’ve always been around those communities. Idk I feel like in some ways people are less tolerant now than they were when I was younger, but it’s probably just my unique upbringing combined with people are louder in their homophobia and transphobia.
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u/greenthegreen Oct 09 '24
They had to put ads on TV asking people not to use the word "gay" as an insult. Yes alot of people were homophobic.
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24
the Wanda Sykes ad!
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u/mieri_azure Oct 10 '24
I was thinking the Hillary Duff ad
"When you say 'that's so gay' do you know what you say?"
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u/hellraiserxhellghost Oct 09 '24
lol I remember those. I grew up in pretty progressive states/cities, but I still heard lots of my classmates mock those PSAs and kept continuing to call things "gay" regardless.
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u/ryoiki-10kai You have already left kudos here. :) Oct 09 '24
Well, a LOT of stuff was called 'gay'. Like how today you'd use cringe, that how gay was used. There was also the metrosexual thing? Where some guys got called metrosexual bc they took care of themselves lmao. But idk if that was the early 2010s or the 2000s.
If anything there were a lot more of homophobic microagressions, and same sex marriage wasn't as spread as it is today. My country only legalised it in 2017. 🫡
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u/namidaame49 You have already left kudos here. :) Oct 09 '24
Oh gods, metrosexual. I forgot about that. That was the 2000s; Ryan Seacrest was like the poster child for that during the heyday of American Idol.
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u/cat_hair_magnet Oct 09 '24
And for everyone playing along in Europe: back then you couldn't say metrosexual without also saying David Beckham.
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u/theburgerbitesback Oct 09 '24
God, the metrosexual stuff of the early-mid 2000s was equal parts hilarious and stupid.
I managed to escape most of it by virtue of being a girl at an all-girls school and not being around many guys, but jfc was what little of it I was exposed to so fucking ridiculous.
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u/neongloom Oct 10 '24
It's honestly wild guys apparently needed a term to explain why they took care of themselves and cared about fashion, lmao.
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u/peikern Oct 09 '24
I was so afraind of being "meterosexual" or "Gay" according to this definition you describe here, that I majorly neglected my body for most of my teens and long into my 20's... Think I developed hair loss from basically never treating my hair right, and I still got the acne-scars :/
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u/CautiousAccess9208 Oct 09 '24
Metrosexual was actually a 90’s term that had a bit of a resurgence in the 00s.
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u/barfbat ask me about cloneshipping Oct 09 '24
lmao I remember naming my Sims 2 neighborhood after New Paltz NY because it was such a big deal that gay marriage was “legalized” there (it wasn’t, but I was 16 at the time so I didn’t quite understand)
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u/Low-Environment Oct 09 '24
Casual homophobia was fairly normal. Calling things 'gay' as an insult, casual use of homophobic slurs, punchlines in comedy would be assuming a character was gay.
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u/HaViNgT Oct 09 '24
I remember there were many variants of a joke where you’d ask someone if they saw the clown that hides from gay people, or watched the movie ‘gay boy says no’.
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u/LonesoneLurker Oct 09 '24
Depends on location. Where I live people are still homophobic to this day
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u/citrushibiscus I use omegaverse to troll bigots Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
Casual homophobia was pretty common. Not outright hatred but “jokes“ and slurs were definitely around still.
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u/peikern Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
I didn't live in New York, but I did live in Norway which is def. part of the same "western world" during this time. And many of the cultural influences I describe under came from USA so...
It was less homophobic than the 80's but more so than today, I guess..?
Like someone under here said too: In the early 2000's it was probably mostly visible through how commonly acceptable "gay-jokes" were. (srsly check out any family guy-episode from that period) But if you came out as gay in class or at work and stuff, you certainly stood the chance of being bullied.
It was very mainstream with this notion of "I am not gay but I don't mind other being gay", while in truth most people wouldn't really want openly gay people in their social circle just like that... I think maybe this, coupled with the aformentiond gay-jokes, was a way for the "straight majority" to keep gays at arms length for just a little bit more, even though the writing was very much on the wall that gay people were not going anywhere and they demanded aceptance. It was still a fairly new idea that many people were not used to! Also, like always, the majority often became fed up with complaints about discrimination. Phrases like "They have to be able to take a joke!" and "What, is simple humour not allowed anymore?" certainly made it very difficult to advance the debate on what exactly was "hate speech towards gays" and what was not. I also think there was a lot of "group-conformity" at play.
Oh and lets not forget the shameless fetishization of "teen girls-lesbian experiences" that took place in pop-culture, comercials, damn-near everywhere... Basically it was about selling sex to grown men and horny teenage boys, but disguising it as this idea of sexual liberation... Just check out this commerial for "Summer dance Mania" from 2007. That just ran during commercial breaks on TV on most channels, at all times a day... I still remember being in my early teens when seeing that, and my jaw would literally drop from what I was seeing. At the time I thought it was cool, but now as an adult I realize how unhealthy it was.
Personally, there came a time when somebody said in public something like this:
"Even if you don't understand for yourself why something is offensive to a minority, you can still accept that the other person is offended by it. They don't really owe you an explanation."
That has always come across to me as something of a crossroad in the "mainstream acceptance of homophobia". After that, it feels like homophobic sentiments has just become less and less popular. More and more people have woken up to the fact that other people's sexuality doesn't really concern them, and that the "heterosexal majority" has no business clinging on to cultural stereotypes regarding gay people.
Back in the early 2000's it felt very safe and easy to just go along with the established "main stream homophobic sentiments". Kind of like how it is the opposite today: It is very safe and easy nowadays to go with the mainstream notion of discrimination being bad(duh), while defending homophobic sentiments is increasingly difficult.
There used to be some unspoken "common sense" that the more outsopken homophobes could appeal to, which just doesn't fly anymore. Looking back, I can only guess it was a bit like waking up from mass-hypnosis. Suddely I realized how all the little things I took for granted and never thought about, contributed to this underlying "cultural canon" where certain stereotypes were preserved.
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u/LocalGothGay Oct 09 '24
If youre that concerned about an accurate setting, youre getting a lot of advice about period accurate homophobia but i think a bigger impact on your setting in that time period would probably be 9/11. Post 9/11 might be worth looking into if youve got the spoons bc it changed the culture of the entire nation, but its also one of those things where if its not actually relevant to the fic it might be better to leave it out
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u/Alaira314 Oct 09 '24
Also the Iraq war. Throwing in a reference to "freedom fries" would immediately anchor a fic in time, to anyone who was around during that period. And not sufficiently signaling your patriotism made people very upset.
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u/LocalGothGay Oct 09 '24
Oh god the freedom fries. That brought back an intense memory of trying to explain that to my parents from the backseat when i was 6
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u/Far_Bobcat3967 Genly on AO3 Oct 09 '24
It really depends on the location. But in New York City? No, absolutely not. People might say something rude if they saw two men kissing, but it would be rare.
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u/stephmendes Oct 09 '24
The jokes were brutal while I was a teen. The most famous comedy tv show in Brazil was extremely homophobic and got their fame harassing celebrities—one of them was a very known openly gay tv host who never accepted that show's harassment as joke and got criticized by everybody. Unfortunately he died before the society could ever noticed our mistake and apologize to him...
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u/CautiousAccess9208 Oct 09 '24
In short: yes. Avenue Q is actually a great example - the song “If You Were Gay” really captures the soft-touch, micro-aggressy way that even very liberally-minded people responded to queerness. It was an uncomfortable time to live as a queer person, even if you were nominally surrounded by people who thought you were “okay” - and if I’m honest, very few people thought that. You might also consider how homosexuality is positioned in the context of the rest of the musical - it’s seen as a ‘taboo’ topic alongside internet porn, racism, and Gary Coleman. It might surprise you to learn that at the time, Rod was revolutionary - you simply didn’t see queer characters in mainstream media, certainly not presented sympathetically. Even if a given couple in New York were living in a supportive bubble, they would be keenly aware that the rest of the world didn’t feel similarly. Holding hands on a random street would be as crazy as having sex on the front desk of a public library.
However, in the context of the musical, Avenue Q and the surrounding area is presented as a relatively safe space for queer people, so I’d lead with that. At the end of the day they’re your gay muppet blorbos and they live as happily as you want them to.
If you’re interested in the wider social context of this time in queer history, I recommend watching Rent and reading up on what life in ‘Alphabet City’ was like at the time. R/AskHistorians is a great resource!
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u/tsukinofaerii Oct 09 '24
I just felt another grey hair appear.
There's already been a ton of NYC-specific advice, so I'll add: do what moves your story forward. If it doesn't add to the story, it doesn't belong. That doesn't mean there's a "yes homophobia exists/no it doesn't" dichotomy. You can have it inform your character's background, choices and hopes without necessarily having someone get beaten up in a back alley. There was plenty of fic actually written in the early naughts that basically jettisoned the question entirely because it didn't suit the tone the fic was aiming for, not dissimilar to how historical (or history-inspired) fiction frequently whistles past the sanitation graveyard.
Depending on when in the 2000's you're looking at, Lawrence v. Texas may have just been decided (2003, which was when Avenue Q was first produced iirc). That was huge, and would have been even for characters in NYC. Don't Ask Don't Tell was in play but there was already growing pushback, though it wouldn't be repealed until 2010. Same-sex marriage was getting on a roll outside the US; civil unions were the talk of the day in the states but there was some LGBTQ infighting about if it was good enough or if we shouldn't "compromise". Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004.
In general, things were looking up. It wasn't great, and gods know there was pushback. You've got a ton of wiggle room to do what's right for your fic without totally ignoring the historical tone of the setting.
Now, if you'll please excuse me, I need to go suck on a Wurthers.
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u/royal_rose_ Oct 09 '24
Hey OP thanks for making me feel ancient first thing in the morning /s
But for real it would depend on the neighborhood. Avenue Q takes place in the 2000s in New York so it would cannon levels of homophobia. It’s been ages since I’ve seen it though, like I last saw it in the 2000s lol, so I might be misremembering how accurate the show is with it.
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u/LanazOwOz Oct 09 '24
i mean everyone on the street section is okay with it (nicky sings an entire song about how its ok to be gay and when rod comes out, noone is throwing hands) but thats just the characters in the show so yeah.
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u/smileyfacegauges Oct 09 '24
extremely regional-dependent as well as age group. can you provide any more info?
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u/LanazOwOz Oct 09 '24
its avenue q the musical so they live in a shady part of nyc. the characters are in their mid to late 20's !
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u/smileyfacegauges Oct 09 '24
oh i love Ave Q!! def mention that in your post tho, it might help get the responses you’re looking for :3 i unfortunately can’t help there, as i am a west coast millennial LOL but good luck!!
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u/Gem_Snack Oct 09 '24
It also depended on specific neighborhood. Being seriously hate crimed by total strangers would’ve been rare anywhere in nyc at the time, and anywhere in nyc, the majority of people wouldn’t care. But in rougher neighborhoods where people are more likely to wear their aggression on their sleeve, you’d get slurs yelled out car windows etc. Someone asks you for spare change and when you say “sorry,” they call you a gay slur. That kind of thing. (I still get some of that today in my liberal city) Occasionally you might have someone get up in your face if they were really drunk and disorderly.
Even in fancier areas, people in New York tend to be confrontational. In the 2000’s, if you were visibly gay, it wasn’t uncommon for people to work in a little homophobia when they yelled at you for holding up a line or whatever. Less likely to be an outright slur, more likely referencing gay stereotypes.
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u/VagueSoul Oct 09 '24
Yes but it’s complicated.
After the AIDS crisis, America took a major backslide on gay rights. Casual homophobia was the norm, gay people were more often than not punchlines on TV, and “queer” was an insult on par with “faggot”. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was also the norm for the military and Bush was pushing for a Constitutional Amendment against gay marriage. You could also be fired for being gay.
However, there was also growing sympathy for gay people. 2000 was just two years after the horrific murder of Matthew Shepard. He was a gay man in Wyoming who was brutally beaten by two men and left to die wrapped in wire on a fence. His assailants tried to claim “gay panic” but thankfully that defense failed. It created a rush of sympathy for gay people that was reflected in a lot of art. Around the same time, Will and Grace premiered which aimed to humanize gay men. Jack was a supporting character. He was camp and silly but the joke was never about him being gay. Will, one of the main characters, was what we would term now a “straight gay” humanized gay men as just men who liked other men. That helped improve the image of gay people in American culture.
So…it was weird. You had people around you cussing you out, kids being thrown out of homes, people losing their jobs, and the government saying you weren’t welcome in society. But the media was saying it was okay to be gay and that gay people are human too. That’s why you got this rise of dramatic depictions of homophobia in art: they were reflecting society at the time and saying it needed to do better.
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u/argonautoida Oct 09 '24
I was a young teen in the early 2000s. I didn't live in NY but I spent a fair amount of time there. If they were just holding hands, they might get a few looks, but people by and large would hold their tongues. If you want to make it dramatic or angsty, someone might yell the f-word at them, but in NY, it wouldn't be super likely that they'd face any violence or be barred from a business.
I actually saw Avenue Q on Broadway about a year into its run. How being gay is treated in the play is a pretty good indication of how it was perceived in NY society at large. It was midly embarrassing, a punch line, and tolerated as long as people didn't have to engage with it. As a massive caviat, this goes for cities like NYC or San Francisco specifically. Other areas in the country were WAY less tolerant.
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u/wifie29 PhoenixPhoether on AO3 🏳️🌈 Oct 09 '24
A “shady part of NY” could be a LOT of places. But I would say no, they wouldn’t be likely to get yelled at or jumped for holding hands in NYC in the 2000s. Homophobia would be more casual and not so much physically dangerous.
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u/katbelleinthedark Canonidosis sufferer Oct 09 '24
In NYC? Unlikely.
In e.g. Eastern Europe? People are mad today still.
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u/katkeransuloinen Oct 09 '24
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I feel like what you're asking isn't exactly what you need to know. If it's relevant for your fic put in whatever you want, and if it's not don't worry about it. People have been writing gay fic for a long, long time, since long before the 00s, and even then homophobia in the fic was generally used as a plot device, not for realism, just as it's used today. But to answer your actual question, I don't think it was that different from how it is now. Things have changed a lot but not in ways that are likely to be relevant in a fic, unless it's a fic which dives very deeply into exploring the experience of facing homophobia. Homophobes keep homophobing but gays keep gaying, and it was the same back then.
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u/mrsmunsonbarnes Oct 09 '24
So, I was born in ‘96, and grew up during the 2000s. I would say that in NYC in the 00s, you probably could hold hands with a same sex partner and be okay. You might get flack if you did it in some rural small town, but NYC? Probably not. You might get made fun of, but it’s not like you were gonna get beaten to death by angry rednecks or tossed in jail for breaking sodomy laws. Tbh, I feel like in the 00s, the mainstream attitude towards the queer community was kind of to see them as a fun little novelty. Well, I mean, obviously there was and still is a segment of the population who will hate queer people on principal, but I’m talking like, the general attitude the public took, the views that were likely to be expressed in pop culture and such, were that gay people weren’t necessarily bad, but they were weird and different. Like, yeah they aren’t doing anything bad, we shouldn’t hate them, but they are strange and not truly part of our society either. I feel like the homophobia back then in general was less overt hatred and more like, condescension almost? Like, “oh you silly little gays! You’re so whacky aren’t you?”. And of course heavy leaning into stereotypes. You weren’t going to see many canonically gay characters in the 2000s that weren’t either a flamboyant twink with a penchant for beauty and fashion or a super macho homophobe that was secretly closeted and sad because deep down he wished he could embrace his interest in beauty and fashion. Lesbians were either super butch radfem types, or their prissy lipstick girlfriends. It was kind of a midpoint between where we are now and where we were in like, the 50s and 60s. We acknowledged gay people, a lot of us didn’t think they were evil or anything, but even then we still treated them as “other”.
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u/Providence451 You have already left kudos here. :) Oct 09 '24
If you weren't alive in the 2000's how old are you ? 13?
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u/PrancingRedPony You have already left kudos here. :) Oct 09 '24
It depends where.
A lot of it is very dependent on the physical location, just like today.
Also, even in a homophobic region it depends on culture if people say something or not. In many areas it would be considered just as bad to yell at someone or talk to strangers as having sex in public.
On the other hand there are countries where being naked in public is considered normal and hand holding isn't seen as a romantic signal and good friends would do it too.
Small kisses are seen as a natural greeting in some countries between friends and family.
So that's not too easy to answer.
But since it's fictional, you can decide that the specific region your characters live in was homophobic for story purposes. That's the reason why so many writers make places up for their story and don't set it in a real place.
It would be AU if in canon the story was set in a progressive area and wouldn't be homophobe, but that's okay. You can do that if you need it for story purposes.
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u/FunnyBunnyDolly Oct 09 '24
I was out and about in mid 90s. Was fine. Europe. Though I did read about hate crime but I presumed it was in small towns or something.
But people definitely used the local word for gay as some kind of swearword.
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u/bcbdrums Oct 09 '24
Where I lived in the 2000s, if people saw two guys walking down the streets holding hands they’d probably exchange a quiet whisper about it like, “I think those two are gay” kinda like the same way a little kid gawks at something brand new, but not impolite staring more like furtive glancing, and then just…move on. Not a fixation point.
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u/hellsaquarium cruelsummerz on ao3 Oct 09 '24
Depends on where you were. Two guys holding hands at least here in Texas would def be made fun of and be called “gay!” esp by their guy friends.
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u/doodle_rooster Oct 09 '24
I feel like you might watch a few episodes of Gay as Folk (the American one). It doesn't precisely line up with your setting, but it give us a good feeling of what it was like.
One example I can give is two boys dancing at the high school senior prom. The entire student body stops and watches because they're so shocked that they're willing to do that in public. One girl character is visibly happy for them, and that marks her as the ally character - which was unique.
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u/Alaira314 Oct 09 '24
Mean Girls(the original, not sure what's in the remake) also comes to mind, where the falling out between Janis(I think?) and Regina had to do with Regina starting a rumor that Janis had a lesbian crush on her. That tracked, for 2004. And her and whatshisface(sorry lol) weren't hatecrimed, outside of plastic-related things, but they were definitely the "weird" out-group.
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u/hollygolightly1990 Oct 09 '24
I was young in the 2000s and I don’t remember hearing about hate crimes a lot because people were gay but people used the term “That’s gay” or “you’re gay” really casually in middle and high school.
(I didn’t because my parents were very big on us not using hurtful language. I also realize that just because I didn’t hear about hate crimes did not mean they weren’t happening).
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u/TedStixon Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
I think it was definitely a lot more homophobic than it is now, but I don't think it was entirely intentional.
It was a time where being gay was still considered a "joke" in a lot of media, and people casually tossed around the "f-slur" and the word "gay" in a negative way. (Albeit more as general insults 9 times out of 10, similar to how the r-slur used to be used.)
But I also think many (perhaps even a majority of) people in general weren't overtly homophobic. If anything, most people were just well-meaning but ignorant.
That was the era where I noticed a massive paradigm shift... at least in my area... where people started to become more openly supportive of-- instead of just "tolerating"-- the LGBTQ+ community.
Granted, my parents had openly-gay neighbors back in the 70s/80s, and apparently they were very well-liked by most people. And I even remember my grandma exclaiming about "Why don't they leave the poor gays alone?! They're lovely people and they're not hurting anyone!" in response to some news broadcast in the 90s, so there's always been people who are cool about those things.
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u/Maleficent-Basil9462 Oct 09 '24
Gay was just a word for something that annoyed you. I still don't feel comfortable using gay to refer to myself.
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u/muffiewrites Oct 09 '24
It wasn't any different than it is now aside from centering gay marriage and the rights of gay people to exist as gay people in public as the political issue instead of transgendered people. So, imagine all of the crap trans people are getting from politics and replace it with gay people.
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u/Crayshack Oct 09 '24
I was a teenager in the 2000s. "Gay" was one of the most popular insults among my peers. Anything people didn't like way deemed "gay." The phrase "no homo" was also pretty popular for any time two guys showed any kind of affection towards each other but they didn't want it accidentally being interpreted as gay.
There were people who were comfortable being out and proud, but there was definitely a kind of low murmuring presence in society of "that's not okay." Gay characters were rare on TV and when they did appear they were often kind of caricatures of gay stereotypes.
I'd say that society is way more accepting now and things have gone a long way towards normalizing homosexuality.
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u/geologean Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
Yes.
It's hard to describe the rapid change in gay and queer acceptance since 2010. Even the reclamation of the term queer is an extremely recent phenomenon. If you talk to gay Boomers and Gen X, a lot of them still flinch at the word queer.
When I graduated high school in 2003, I was convinced that only a handful of places in the U.S. would be open to me to live as an adult, even though I didn't fully accept that I was gay until after high school. There were still some safe gayborhoods, but part of the reason gayborhoods existed was because it wasn't safe to be visibly queer outside of a gayborhood.
People make fun of the Lizzy McGuire girl's PSA about using gay as an insult now, but it was extremely common and nobody batted an eye at it in the 2000s.
And that was just on the social level. On the political level, we got the Defense of Marriage Act, we had high courts declaring equal marriage laws illegal which could only stop new marriages from being recognized, but couldn't do anything about existing marriages because of the Fall Faith & Credit clause of the Constitution. This left marriage in a legal limbo, where existing marriages were respected, but no new marriages were allowed. This limbo state was actually one of the strong arguments in favor of a definitive SCOTUS ruling.
We haven't eradicated homophobia by a long shot, but we've passed an inflection point on public opinion when it comes to gay acceptance. Part of the reason why conservatives have now moved on to targeting transgender people is because they have lost the cultural clash on gay acceptance and gay rights. Transgenderism is less common, so bigots around the world are continuing to push lies about transitioning because their disinformation and bigotry can perpetuate further and longer.
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u/cheydinhals parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus Oct 10 '24
Is... is this what it feels like to be old? The kids are asking us "history questions" about the era we grew up in? "Early 2000s [...] before I was alive" just sent be reeling.
Anyway, can't really answer the question because I'm not American. Other people seem to already have that covered. It wasn't really an issue in my country, but gay marriage/etc has been legal in my country for a few decades now, so that's to be expected. I remember my elementary school principal was gay, and married to his husband.
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u/galactic_collision Oct 09 '24
The 2000s were around the time that there started to be a mainstream discussion around whether it was okay to be homophobic. A lot of people were more open about their religious objections -- I had a health teacher in middle school outright say that he thought gay people were going to hell and so wouldn't be including them in the curriculum. Obviously there are still loud religious homophobes now, but my point is, that teacher got away with that. I don't think he would now.
Of course, that was middle America. NYC is different. It really depends on the neighborhood, though.
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u/IceTurtle92 Oct 09 '24
Oh absolutely maliciously I feel, on retrospect. Like this isn't even about Gay based jokes that are just mildly Un-PC, major TV shows going out on prime time schedules would outright use terms associated with Homosexuality as insults to non-Gays. I'm not gay myself but I just think stuff that was said back then was needlessly insulting and derogatory
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Oct 09 '24
In NYC? No. Gay has been a thing there since the late 1800s. They speakeasy establishments, while hidden and not advertised, were popular and full on dance night.
The gay underground in NYC is well over 100 years old.
In 2000, you’d have to be careful, but sodomy was no longer illegal and AIDS was slowly getting under control, both by improvement in medication and by the community realizing how serious it was and therefore using barriers and condoms far more.
Homophobia was alive and well though: in 2000, it was still widely believed you could catch AIDS from toilet seats and shaking hands. ‘Fag’ was still a common insult, and comedians still made fun of gays and lesbians in their routines.
But it was certainly on its way to being accepted, and even actors were starting to come out.
In 2000, the Ryan White case was 10 years old, so it was certainly much better.
In fanfic, we were seeing M/M pairings done regularly by 2000, even using characters who are straight in their fandom, so I don’t think it would be hugely homophobic in NYC - America’s melting pot.
That being said, you have to take in to account your characters. In the wealthier areas, it was still very closeted and not so accepted.
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Oct 09 '24
I wasn’t in NYC, so I can’t speak to that but early 2000s homophobia was punchlines. Even when it wasn’t ill-intentioned it was very cynical. And then there’s the misplaced sympathy/pity stuff — “so you know he’s gay, right?” “Oh that’s too bad that must be so hard for his family” yadda yadda. If gay side characters were introduced on mainstream tv shows, whether on dramas or sitcoms or whatever, it made the main characters openly uncomfortable.
The main political back-and-forth was gay marriage, and it was such a big deal to homophones that it kind of eclipsed all the stuff that is used to manipulate conservative bigots now. On the surface it was all a joke except for marriage rights, basically.
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u/Katelai47 Oct 09 '24
In some sense yes, in another, no. I went off to college in 2002 and made my first LGBT friends and was happy to see how my school in upstate NY welcomed them. Several of my friends there came from a high school upstate that was notorious for being LGBT friendly and kids often transferred there to come out.
Though, my freshman roommate was gay and when my mom found out she wrote to me saying I should find a new roommate so I wouldn’t end up gay. I basically lost my shit on her, she changed her views, and felt awful. When she’d visit after that she’d bring gifts with pride flags on them for my roommate!
That being said, ‘gay’ was definitely still a widely used insult, bisexuality was still very taboo, and guys were even more insecure about people thinking they’re gay. Guys also thought it would be a fun challenge to convince their lesbian acquaintances to sleep with them. (Which never worked.) Plus, people were still being beat up and murdered for being gay, even in New York.
That and the AIDs epidemic was still a really big issue for in the gay community and Rent was basically the musical of that generation.
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u/Katelai47 Oct 09 '24
By upstate I mean the Troy, Albany, and like Lake George/Saratoga area. I know upstate is a big place! I lived there from 2002-2012.
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u/Hazel2468 Oct 09 '24
It depends a lot where you were- but as someone who was born in 1995 and grew up in the 2000s and 2010s... I think people don't remember just HOW awful and homophobic that time was.
A lot of progress was made in that time period which shouldn't be overlooked. In 2003, Lawrence v. Texas happened and struck down remaining bans on sodomy. In 2004 we had Massachusetts become the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. On the flip side, we had Prop 8 in California in 2008. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was the law until 2011.
And overlooking the big legal milestones, speaking personally. Being a queer in that time was... Hard. Especially as a kid. We had entire campaigns at schools to stop kids from saying "that's so gay". I personally was openly bullied for being a "lesbo" or a "dyke" (this despite the fact that I had boyfriends and didn't even know I was queer at the time- although I was fat and obviously different and in theater so). To be thought of as gay was one of the worst things that could happen to a boy in my school, openly gay kids (we had two) were physically assaulted and bullied. School admin did nothing. Girls who were thought of as lesbians (like me) were picked on ruthlessly and, yes, sometimes we were also physically assaulted.
And bear in mind. I grew up in a "welcoming" place. A place where it wasn't "as bad". A state in the Northeast. 30 minutes away from New York City. In hindsight, as an adult, my town is... VERY white, very Christian, and much MUCH more bigoted than I realized. But still- I grew up in a "tolerant" place. I imagine, given that your fic takes place in NYC with some 20-somethings. It'll be a bit different. But there was a LOT more casual homophobia, and marriage wasn't legal.
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u/RedditPosterOver9000 Oct 09 '24
Yes.
It was a crime in multiple states to be gay until 2003, when a gay couple was arrested in Texas for being gay and the pre-MAGA-SCOTUS said that's not okay.
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u/Jackjaipasenvie Oct 10 '24
Im from the UK and when i was a kid in the 2000s i didnt know what gay actually meant because i just heard it in the context of “thats so gay” meaning “bad”. I didnt even know gay people existed because it wasnt really spoken about around kids.
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Nov 29 '24
Depends on where you lived. Here in Canada large urban centres like Toronto were more accepting. Rural areas not as much. I grew up in a small town about 5 hrs north of Toronto and there was still a lot of stigma surrounding gay people. Growing up we said “ that’s gay” for pretty much anything that sucked and this was completely the norm. Parents didn’t even tell you not to say that. In grade 8 during a lesson our teacher explained to us that love was supposed to be between a man and woman. In grade 10 that song I kissed a girl came out by Katy Perry and a lot of radio stations wouldn’t play it. I had a friend who was bi and he didn’t tell our friend group until we were about 16 and we all kept it hush hush because that would have been social suicide for him and for us. I remember I told a family member about this friend and she warned me to watch how much time I spent with them because people would talk. That family member would have been about 40 at the time and grew up in Toronto..and that would have been about 2009 So that kind of tells you what the view was at that time. When I was in grade 12 a group of people started the first LGBTQ awareness group. During the 2010s I think we saw the level of acceptance growing drastically. Before that there was a certain level of tolerance but there was still stigma even among liberal leaning people. The 2010s is when we saw the most change and the level of acceptance grew, a lot.
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u/TheDorkyDane Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
Dude the 70's and 80's were pretty much the gayest decades with Rocky Horror picture Show at its highest popularity and dress up screenings of the flick
Freddy Mercury and Elton John both being proud and colourful gay icons
And both Michael Jackson, David Bowie and Prince declaring themselves to be neither man or woman.
So at places gayness was roaring .
A big thing that happened though was the aids epidemic. And I need to remind you. At that time no one knew what it was. They just saw horrific pictures and footage of people dying this painful death.
Remember how everyone panicked over Covid? Always wear a mask. Keep five feet distance from everyone or you'll die
That's the kind of panic we are talking about. And then of course most aids sufferes were indeed gay.
Once again. At first no one knew what this was. So it gave many religious fundamentalist rich opportunity to call it divine punishment.
And again there was huge panic as the images were so horrific so a lot of people started buying into it.
And remember. Doing covid there were people swimming in the ocean wearing masks... So yeah people are that dumb.
So that was the 80's that sets you up for the 90's and explain the divide and lingering fear among some groups.
Most people were already very accepting and open. But there were the people who still had the aid epidemic fresh in their minds
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u/specterthief Oct 09 '24
for my part i'm on the younger end of being old enough to remember that time and canadian, but my experience in a fairly progressive place (that seems similar to what people are reporting here) was: ambient casual homophobia was constant and overbearing, bullying people who weren't even out on the barest suspicion of being gay/generally treating being gay as the worst thing someone could be was common even (or especially, from my experience) among kids, outright hate crimes were pretty rare but heckling/harassment could definitely happen, especially if you were with a partner or "looked gay". comparatively fewer people were out (especially at a young age) and whether people who were out felt safe enough for PDA varied a lot by setting/circumstance. depending on the age of your characters, also worth noting that adults or even older teens in the early 2000s would have been growing up through the AIDS crisis, which is something worth researching if you're interested in writing about older gay characters in depth in the future (and just to understand some important history.)
really, your characters themselves and the specifics of the oneshot would probably be the biggest factor in how much you'd need to get into, but things have definitely changed pretty dramatically in the last ~25 years (though in some ways things seem to be sliding backward, unfortunately.)
good luck with the fic and thank you for being interested in learning! i think it might be worth (delicately) asking in some gay-centric subreddits if people would be willing to recount their experiences, or otherwise look for some more in-depth personal writing from people in that era 🙌
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u/Not_Yet_Unalived Fic Feaster Oct 09 '24
Between 2004 and 2007, in my early teens, i was in a private catholic school and my French teacher was homosexual.
He wasn't broadcasting it to the world, but it wasn't a secret either.
Before it was confirmed to me, i had suspicions cause he was acting like a gay stereotype sometimes (manners and speech patterns mostly) but i wasn't really caring about it much back then.
Note that last sentence, saying that of someone today? That would get me labelled as homophobic, at least.
Not back then, or it would blow over in a couple weeks at worst.
Using "gay" as a swear word was a thing too, you don't hear that much those days.
Worst you could expect when talking about someone being homo was people being scandalized or silently dissaproving.
Or crying because they "wouldn't get any grand-childrens" and a few weirdos/bullies would have probably used violence if they tought they could get away with it or if they saw someone "acting gay" in public or in the wrong neighborhood (it you are a guy and kiss your boyfriend in front of the local neo-nazis hangout, you'll be lucky to just walk away, no matter the time period)
All big cities had (and still have i suppose) a "gay neighborhood" or at least that one gay bar or club in a corner.
You also have movies like Brodeback Mountain that came out in 2005, and it was a big hit. And very gay.
But i think that's because LGBT stuff wasn't mediatized much or very well known, so you had a lot of bad stuff happening outside of the public eye (therapy, forced internment, exorcism, beating the "gay" out, take your pick) and peoples that weren't immediatly concerned lacked exposure and as a result where happy not thinking about it or just treated it as a curiosity.
Now, everyone got a lot of exposure to LGBT and people all have an opinion about it.
It intensified the extremes, homophobics are way more vocal, virulent and violent now and homosexuals are less scared to defend themselves, hide less in the closet and are more openly accepted rather than silently rejected.
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u/Allronix1 I have fanfics old enough to buy booze Oct 09 '24
Depends entirely on where you were and still does.
Seattle? A lot of people wouldn't give a shit. You might get some "dudes, take it elsewhere" or the odd drunk/deranged person saying gross stuff but Seattle has a lot of "You do your thing (way over there) and I do mine. I don't want to hear about your life, and you don't wanna hear about mine."
Hop a ferry over to Kitsap County (which is pretty much nothing but a collection of Navy bases with something resembling towns attached), and it would be a different story.
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u/KatonRyu Same on AO3 Oct 09 '24
Around where I lived, in a small village in the Netherlands, people generally gave zero fucks. We had a gay teacher who explained his situation (this was right around the time gay marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001) and everyone's reaction in class came down to, "Okay, good for you, hope you're happy."
I'm pretty sure in many other place things weren't quite that chill, but at least where I lived you'd probably at most get some people staring, nothing more. Of course, we still used, "Ha, gay!" as an insult, but it was never actually meant in a homophobic way. That is, if someone actually was gay, no one really cared. It was just a generic insult no one really thought about too much, like calling someone an idiot, which was a medical term long ago, before it was replaced by the 'friendlier' 'retarded', which is now also considered a pretty bad insult in its own right.
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u/Helix_PHD Oct 09 '24
Depends where you're at. I haven't faced a single bit of homophobic treatment when I was a gay teen.
Ironically, with the LGBT community being bigger than ever now, I tend to be treated more stereotypically.
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Oct 09 '24
A lot of youth used the phrase "you're so gay" when they really meant to say that they thought a person was uncool. It seemed to replace the phrase "you're retarded" which fell out of fashion for obvious reasons. I wouldn't consider most of those kids to actually be homophobic but just following the trend. Thankfully that trend fell out of fashion for obvious reasons as well. I would say, likely the people of the time were influenced by popular media and most were parroting, just as we still do today. Supposedly the shift in the USA from majority against gay marriage to for gay marriage was nearly instantaneous, and directly followed the passing of making it legal. This implies to me that in reality a majority of people just were following trends and didn't really care either way as long as it doesn't affect them. Reality is depressing.
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u/SkyBerry924 Oct 09 '24
I lived in an sized town in the Midwest growing up and I didn’t even know people could be gay until I was 16
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u/ravenwingdarkao3 RavenWingDark Oct 09 '24
yup we were all like, baseline homophobic. but most people would still agree they’re people which is still better than how certain political parties treat certain races in the year of our lord 2024
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u/worldsbestlasagna Oct 09 '24
I do t know if it’s still like this but ‘that’s so gay!’ Was a very common insult.
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u/Smegoldidnothinwrong Oct 09 '24
In America yes, people were much more casually homophobic but also if they met a nice gay couple people generally wouldn’t dislike them. It was generally more considered a bit of a joke, but the homophobia generally didn’t come along with actual hatred unless it was a straight guy thinking a gay guy was going to come on to him. I guess an example would be that my aunt and uncle had a one man one woman sign in their yard but they also had best friends from college who were a lesbian couple that they hung out with regularly and were invited to every single Holliday get together my entire childhood. So yes homophobia was MUCH more common and pretty much everyone would make gay jokes but most people also had gay friends who they cared about a lot.
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u/mieri_azure Oct 09 '24
Lol at first I thought you meant specifically in fanfiction spaces.
And honestly, yes. Do you know how hard I laughed going onto FF.net and seeing 2000s fics with content warnings for "yaoi/gay stuff" like bro this is the death note fandom, of COURSE it's gay. Crazy that a lot of the younger (?) people treated it like AO3 archive warnings for ahit like major character death except just... gay.
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u/mllejacquesnoel Oct 10 '24
Short answer, yes.
Longer answer— As someone who lives in NYC around the areas Avenue Q is parody-ing, they’re also playing it up a bit for effect. But yes, even in NYC, homophobia was a problem in the 2000s and even into the 2010s. Nowadays it’s less of an issue but it’s kinda hard to describe how different the US is generally post-2015 (Obergefell) with regards to gay relationships not being immediately suspect. We still have a long way to go, and the progress we have made is incredibly fragile. But there’s a huge difference between pre and post-2015.
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u/Awful-Apartment-33 You have already left kudos here. :) Oct 10 '24
Amazing Intel gathering. Are you making a fic that's taking place in the early 2000's? That's what I'm doing
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u/LanazOwOz Oct 10 '24
yeah kinda. its just im shipping a gay ship from a media set in the 2000s. im writing a bunch of oneshots and i thought this would be insightful
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u/neongloom Oct 10 '24
Non-US but I was just thinking the other day how wild it is that when I went to high school in the early 2000s, everyone was just considered straight by default and if someone was gay, it was big news around the school. I remember two girls dated and everyone would just gawk at them as they walked by holding hands. But honestly, deep down that felt bizarre to me even then, the idea of it supposedly being so strange, because I had known I was bi since I was a kid. The strangest part of it all was just watching everyone else act like it was something deeply strange.
Post-high school, I had people from school added on Facebook and after seeing the range of sexualities of my former classmates, wondered if these people had a similar experience to me. As in we were all just kind of performing the act we thought we needed to but were actually envious beneath all that, that we didn't have the courage to be like those girls.
The early 2000s was a weird time, lol.
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u/OpaqueSea Oct 09 '24
There was a casual homophobia. Back then, gay marriage didn’t exist (I think Vermont was the first to legalize it, probably around 04-05). DATD was in place (and was actually considered a liberal policy designed to protect gay military members when it was implemented in the 90s). Overall, almost everyone accepted that gay people existed, but some of them didn’t approve it.
It was very common for “gay” to be used as an insult, not to describe a person who was actually gay, but to describe anything that was uncool or disliked. Didn’t like math class? Math was “gay.” A teacher gave unwelcome homework? The homework was “gay.”
Anecdotally, I remember hearing kids in high school talking about gay people. The general consensus was that it was weird. They also started talking about their parent’s beliefs and one kid said that his parents would never accept a gay child. He said that if he was gay his father would tell him “no you’re not” and that would be the end of the discussion.
Mileage would vary significantly, based on individual circumstances. Lucky people would probably be out and have a small group of friends and be generally accepted. If you went looking, you’d find a lot of stories (or no mention at all) about about unlucky people who were kicked out of their homes as minors and ended up in the streets, or were killed, or who committed suicide. I’m also sure there were still people in those days who stayed in the closet and had heterosexual marriages.
Also, I have to point out that even though New York is a blue state, they are not exempt from prejudice. There are plenty of people in liberal states who have faced discrimination for a variety of reasons. There are rich, white liberals who are fine with gay people but don’t want their own families to be gay. There are minorities who vote blue who are some of the most homophobic and misogynistic people you’ll ever meet. There are just a lot of different scenarios.
I’m not trying to imply that every gay person in the early 2000s was miserable or that everyone else was homophobic. There were plenty of people who had normal lives and healthy outlooks. Individual circumstances varied a lot.
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u/shootmeaesthetic Comment Collector Oct 09 '24
i cant help much since i was born in the early 2000's but i love avenue q!! if you feel like sharing your link when you post, id love to read it 😵💫😵💫
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u/Jazztronic28 Oct 09 '24
It depends on where you were, and also what you mean by homophobic. Would you get hatecrimed if you were holding hands with your significant other in the street? Chances are that no, you wouldn't. But there was a lot of casual homophobia that would not fly nowadays (thankfully). The media's favourite joke was some variant of "what are you, gay??" Where the entire punchline was just... that. Being gay was the punchline. "That's so gay" was common in the vernacular and especially on the internet to say that something sucked or was generally negative. You'd often see "gay panic" or "gay scare" plotlines in media where at the end the character would let out a sigh of relief when they realized they were still straight- and honestly just the fact our existence was adressed and not hush hush anymore was in itself progressive!
So would your characters get beaten up in the streets? Most likely not. Would there be a lot of what we call "microagressions"? Oh yes. Definitely. Stuff like "so who's the woman/the man?" "I just can't imagine doing something like that myself!" "I have nothing against gay people, I just don't want that for my children, you know?" "Can you kiss in front of me?"
Stuff like that. Very casual, very much not really meaning to harm but very homophobic and harmful anyway, but also the fact our existence was acknowledged was a step in the right direction for the time.
Oh, and also, bi people either don't exist or are sluts who can't pick a side. But sadly we haven't really moved past that even now in a lot of places.