what you might not know about 1987

[rm]

Frank Rich on Stonewall:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28rich.html

But the reason I am linking, other than it's a good piece, is that it contains a piece of trivia I suspect most of you don't know:

The New York Times did not allow the use of the word "gay" in its pages until 1987.

It's preposterously recent, and was a subject of much angst in the period of time leading up to it as the paper struggled both with obituaries and protest coverage in the midst of the AIDS crisis.

I turned 15-years-old in 1987. That's the world I grew up in. It wasn't a bunch of slashers giggling about period British novels and the love that dare not speak its name and every marketing class in the world talking about the "gay vague" strategy -- it was the fucking New York Times considering what is now the generally accepted word for my tribe as too obscene to print (And this, btw, is why I sometimes lose patience with some of the utter blitheness in fandom).

I was 15-years-old and wore second-hand men's sports coats I bought at Canal Jean Co. and lamented how they never fit me right while trying to convince my mother this was just how girls impressed boys in these strange days.

I wanted to be a journalist, in a world where the newspapers didn't allow themselves to even say I existed in terms human as opposed to clinical and diseased. And newspapers really meant different things then, the language they used mattered, because from them our own language flowed (now the path is largely the reverse thanks to the Internet).

There were a lot of things about my childhood that were hard, and I don't tend to count being queer as one of them -- I was so weird that we didn't often get to that particular insult. It's not like I would have fit in and had friends and been easy in the world but for that.

But holy crap! Looking back and remembering all of this (God, we were so angry with the Times, with the Church, with Regan), I think, sure, of course I hated myself for other things -- because those things at least existed. How very strange.

Comments

[godofstrife.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to this.

This and your commentary has reminded me that I, and my generation in general, often forget we can only grow up, snogging in the streets on any given day, without the fear of having our heads bashed in because the generations before us fought for against homophobia and often paid dearly for standing up.
Thank you.

[rm.livejournal.com]

And meanwhile, this happened on SATURDAY, ten blocks from where I grew up, and less than a mile from where I live now.

http://community.livejournal.com/newyorkers/5142222.html

[godofstrife.livejournal.com]

Obviously I'm less aware than I thought. Point in case.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Until I was eight, I was 'mentally' ill solely because I'm homoseuxal. Luckily, at eight, it made no difference to me.

Insult du jour?

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

I was so weird that we didn't often get to that particular insult
You've just told the story of my childhood.....
I guess the convent school I reluctantly attended wasn't that different from Miss Hew's ;)

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

I turned 11 in 1987... What I find interesting is that by the time I got to high school, it was acceptable to be gay - so long as you weren't of the Jack McFarland persuasion and didn't hit on anyone straight... but being a lesbian was equivalent to being the scum of the earth...

There were a lot of things about my childhood that were hard, and I don't tend to count being queer as one of them -- I was so weird that we didn't often get to that particular insult. It's not like I would have fit in and had friends and been easy in the world but for that.

And yeah... This... Totally...

[laufeyette.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting is that by the time I got to high school, it was acceptable to be gay - so long as you weren't of the Jack McFarland persuasion and didn't hit on anyone straight... but being a lesbian was equivalent to being the scum of the earth...

My experience in high school was very much the opposite of that. I wonder if it's geography, or just random.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

I think my school was just a bit odd - the popularity game was all about who were the alpha males, and the females fighting over who got the attention of those alpha males... so - having other males who were attracted to the alpha males was okay... but a girl who wasn't focused on the alpha males was unacceptable...

[tdanaher.livejournal.com]

The New York Times was way behind the curve that way. Looking at my archives, I see newspapers in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Iowa, Utah, Pennsylvania, all over the country, were using the phrase "gay rights" as far back as 1972. The lesson I've learned over the past few years is that, when you get down to brass tacks, the New York Times was and is often not worthy of the sense of authority people bestowed on it.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I didn't know the NYT didn't use "gay" until 1987. That's news in itself.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Man, I was a baby. Awk.

I can't ever remember thinking gayness was a bad thing. No one in my family ever tried to tell me that, although when I told my parents I wanted to grow up and become a gay rights advocate when I was 13, they were like, "You can't do that! You'll get killed!" This was also their argument about why I shouldn't go to UC Berkeley (PROTESTS ARE DANGEROUS) and, currently, why mission work abroad is bad.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Well... 1987 was also the year Section 28 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28) was introduced in the UK.

I was also two so I didn't have much of an opinion on anything.

"Homo" and "Lesbian" were very much insults I heard growing up (still do, of course). From about the time I was eight I was perceived as something challenging to some status quo.

Gay Rights have always seemed to be on the back burner of Human Rights in general... because it's dirty dontcha' know. The Sodomy law was repealed in Israel only in 1988 (which I understand is better than some laws still on the books in the States).
But really, the only place in Israel in which Queers are more than just tolerated in Tel-Aviv and sexual migration is difficult in such a tiny country in any event.

Many of my friends (straight or gay) perceive the 80's as this time of odd fashion, odder music and alienation in film. I'll admit that until I actually made friends with older queer people, I thought the same thing. Now... not so much.

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

In fairness to the NYT, the reason they didn't use "gay" was not that they thought it "too obscene to print"; it was their very conservative approach to English style. Words acquire different meanings in real life much faster than they do at the Times.

I worked at the Int'l Herald Tribune in Paris from 1980 through 1988, and the Times (now its full owner) then held only a minority stake in the Trib, so to our great relief as copy editors we didn't have to follow its antiquated style (we used the AP stylebook, I believe - memory of those days grows hazier by the minute).

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

By contrast to the NYT, here's how the Daily News covered Stonewall (http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/06/40-years-ago.html), courtesy of Joe.My.God.

It's not like I would have fit in and had friends and been easy in the world but for that.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I turned thirty then, and I completely hear you, Sister.