what you might not know about 1987
Jun. 29th, 2009 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmFrank 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 11:09 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 12:37 am (UTC)http://community.livejournal.com/newyorkers/5142222.html
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 08:51 am (UTC)