#myopicnostalgia — Public Fediverse posts

It might be that I have come across once too much across a certain meme format that shows several artists from the 70s, 80s, 90s and claiming that these eras were so much more friendly about #gnc expression.

It certainly was not so. Those were artists. How they presented themselves, all #androgynous, warping the line between male and female, was not accepted as their identity, they were accepted as their brand. And that brand followed suit with queercoding villains. They were seen as rebellious, or wanted to project rebelliousness of their art in their visual appearance.

On the street, as private people, they were expected to adhere to conform to strictly gendered expressions like everybody else. Of course, the blue-pink trap wasn't as pronounced as today, but what you were allowed to wear, to be, was very much determined by what's in your pants. We only ever recently got a discussion, and precious few bans, on surgeries conforming babies to a supposed genital configuration if they were found ambiguous in that regard. This is the "friendly" reality of those times. If your non conform expression of gender wasn't recognized as a brand, you suffered for it. You were relegated to counter cultures, like with the battleskirts of old. What happened to them, anyway? Do I have to get out the sewing machine to get one again? #queer #expression #NonConformity #MyopicNostalgia