In a follow up to mainstream culture borrowing queer culture, could it really be the opposite problem of queer culture just blending right into the melting pot of a global metro world? Andrew Sullivan expounds eloquently on the conflicting desire for acceptance and independence, triumph and sorrow of the new millennium. Here are some particularly compelling moments:
But here’s the strange thing: These changes [gay marriage in Massachusetts] did not feel like a revolution. They felt merely like small, if critical, steps in an inexorable evolution toward the end of a distinctive gay culture. For what has happened to Provincetown this past decade, as with gay America as a whole, has been less like a political revolution from above than a social transformation from below. There is no single gay identity anymore, let alone a single look or style or culture. Memorial Day sees the younger generation of lesbians, looking like lost members of a boy band, with their baseball caps, preppy shirts, short hair, and earrings.
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For many in the gay world, this is both a triumph and a threat. It is a triumph because it is what we always dreamed of: a world in which being gay is a non-issue among our families, friends, and neighbors. But it is a threat in the way that all loss is a threat. For many of us who grew up fighting a world of now-inconceivable silence and shame, distinctive gayness became an integral part of who we are. It helped define us not only to the world but also to ourselves. Letting that go is as hard as it is liberating, as saddening as it is invigorating.
His points are fleshed out in a later post wherein a young college student discusses how “normal” he is. The lad is gay and wants nothing to do with social struggle or any kind of subcultural living. He also admits freely that he knows none of his gay history. This I find rather saddening, especially in light of his comments around the difficulty of living gay in the 70s while not realizing at all the vibrant culture that did exist then, and has existed in various places in various points in history. Are there more legal protections and general social acceptance now than there was in the 70s? Sure. (Well, probably, I mean, sort of. Ill get to that). But the 70s were not necessarily a horrible time to be queer. On the contrary, those of my parents’ generation lament the loss of sexual the freedoms of the 70s frequently. And while I realize this nostalgia may be overly simplistic and revisionistic, I do wish I could have been there…
And on this very day that Sullivan gives us the ramblings of a 20 year old, so too, does Film Threat review Gay Sex in the 70s, a documentary about the sheer debauchery that was gay culture in this long-ago decade. The article goes on to say:
Filmmaker Joseph Lovett describes this era as “the most Libertine period the Western world has seen since Rome.”
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Gay Sex in the 70s is definitely an eye-opening experience (and even mouth-watering for some) for we babies who were too young to really remember the 70s, a care free time we’ve never really experienced. The film will also serve as a trip down raunchy memory lane for others who were able to fully enjoy themselves in the 70s.
So people, whats it gonna be? Conservative or wild? Melting pot, mosaic or separationism? Can we find our queer zen balance?
