The Gay '90s - TV Trop

Contents:

• WHY DO THEY LL THE GAY 90’S?
• ALLEGED 'GAY PANIC FENSE' TEXAS MURR TRIAL STUNS ADVOT
• MATTHEW SHEPARD: THE LEGACY OF A GAY LLEGE STUNT 20 YEARS AFTER HIS BTAL MURR
• THE GAY '90S
• GAY 90S
• VTAGE 90S GAY RIGHTS NOW! DONT PANIC SGLE STCH T-SHIRT
• GAY NETI

WHY DO THEY LL THE GAY 90’S?

Wh all that said, I was staggered to fd how many of my favore edi om the relatively recent past are renred almost unwatchable by the sheer amount of jok they have and time they spend on gay-panic and tly horrible trans related humor.

Even Communy, which my opn is one of the bt wrten edi ever, has tons of flat, unspired gay jok, pecially the early seasons om Chevy and Donald Glover's characters. I get that the characters are tentnally wrten to be homophobic and that them teractg wh more "enlightened" group members is part of their character arcs, but often feels like is handled a lazy way, wh ltle g om the jok. Jok disparagg gay and trans people tend to be old, rehashed and unspired, while I n thk of a dozen newer shows, all om wh the last 5-6 years, that handle trans and gay topics much more tertg ways.

ALLEGED 'GAY PANIC FENSE' TEXAS MURR TRIAL STUNS ADVOT

When medil evince was produced, acrdg to Nathan, tend to be the dub form of “technologilly updated versns of the medieval preoccupatn wh sctizg female genalia for signs of s and wchcraft, and of neteenth-century forensic medil mpaigns to tect promiscuy and homosexualy by examg the shap of lips and penis.

The 1890s, which began on 1 January 1890 and end on 31 December 1899, were sometim referred to as the Mve De — bee William Henry Perk’s anile dye allowed the wispread e of that lour fashn — and also as the Gay Neti, unr the then-current age of the word gay which referred ….

MATTHEW SHEPARD: THE LEGACY OF A GAY LLEGE STUNT 20 YEARS AFTER HIS BTAL MURR

Even by today's standards, 's a pretty posive pictn of a gay character -- there's no ht of hostily om Frasier, asi om the awkwardns about havg been on a date wh his boss. There was John Waters' aspiratnal character on The Simpsons, a popular gay gut character on Married wh Children, and South Park's Big Gay Al (who is plited and problematic, I know). In the span of a , we went om gay characters beg treated as a crisis, to beg met wh ambivalence, to beg aspiratnal, and then fally beg so normal 's the name of the show.

Gay rights advot are outraged after an At, Texas, man received a light sentence for stabbg his neighbor to ath what some are llg an example of the so-lled gay panic s, the rare fense has allowed a victim’s sexual orientatn or genr inty to jtify vlent crime some s. No state regniz as a ee-standg fense their crimal perhaps the most notor se, Aaron McKney and Rsell Henrson claimed “gay panic” when they stood acced of beatg 21-year-old Matthew Shepard to ath 1998.

Biermann admted to stabbg Hser more than 60 tim after Hser allegedly threatened to rape 2016, Jam Dixon claimed “gay panic” the murr trial of Islan Nettl, whom he beat to ath New York Cy. Gonzal said the “gay panic fense" is equently ed to fend attacks on transgenr women, particularly transgenr women of lor, who tend to experience disproportnately high rat of vlence. They also hope to make progrs New York, Maryland, Michigan, Mnota and Texas, acrdg to The Associated se 'different and worrisome'Legal expert Anthony Michael Kreis, who helped wre the Illois law banng the “gay panic fense, ” lled the Miller verdict “repugnant.

THE GAY '90S

"Miller’s attorney said a hypothetil ban on the “gay panic fense” Texas would have had no impact on his client’s se, bee he never claimed the first place. Twenty years ago, Matthew Shepard was a "smart, funny" 21-year-old, no different than any other young man that was an "ordary kid who wanted to make the world a better place, " his parents October 1998, that all changed, when the openly gay llege stunt was abducted, beaten and tied to a fence life end a few days later, and wh me a wispread awarens of the dangers that members of the LGBTQ muny face every day. The homophobic btal killg also served as a talyst for progrs Ameri's laws and the two s that have passed, however, remas batable how far the untry has e sce the shock of that crime.

(MORE: 'Gay panic' fense still ed vlence s may be banned by new feral bill)McKney h Shepard about 20 tim the head and face wh the end of the pistol, Marsn said, before the two stole Shepard's sho, got their tck and drove back to town.

GAY 90S

Agast the gay muny until after he grew up to bee very terted ternatnal human rights, particularly women's rights the Middle East and Asia, and he studied polil science, said Marsn. Members of the Wtboro Baptist Church protted the funeral, picketg wh anti-gay Fred Phelps and his parishners traveled om Kansas to Laramie for the funeral and trial, prottg wh brightly lored signs and spewg hatred.

McKney has cled to speak to ABC News while Henrson did not immediately rpond to a requt for WashgtonShepard's murr shed a light on the spe of feral hate crime laws, which at the time did not clu sexual orientatn or genr gay activists monstrate the streets of North Hollywood to prott agast the ath of Wyomg Universy stunt Mathew Shepard, Oct.

"Beyond the feral hate crime law, the years sce Matthew Shepard's ath, among the most substantive legislative ws for the LGBTQ muny were the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell 2010, so gay ary members n serve openly whout fear of beg dismissed, and the legalizatn of same-sex marriage across the untry 2015. The first-season episo The Slutty Pumpk was on, and I saw somethg jarrg: a scene where Marshall (Jason Segel) objects to his stume beg lled a “gay pirate” when he and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) w MacLaren’s Halloween stume ntt. ” When the bartenr says, “You’re wearg eyeler, ” Marshall sffs, “I jt want everyone to know that I’m not a gay pirate, I have sex wh my parrot (Lily) all the time!

VTAGE 90S GAY RIGHTS NOW! DONT PANIC SGLE STCH T-SHIRT

”It was a ty scene, but stood out to me, bee ma me realise two thgs: 1) We don’t see “gay panic” jok like that on ss anymore, and 2) It seemed perfectly natural to have jok like that on shows as recently as 2005, when that episo are both of the thgs possible? I asked a few wrers and shownners about the topic, and Kev Biegel (Cougar Town, Enlisted), had the bt rponse: “It’s one of those bad, hacky stori where someone nf a character for beg gay — and the character to spiral out worry and/or go to great lengths to show that they are not gay. ” There are variatns on the theme: the creepg spectre of the gay lleague htg on the hetero ma character, a gay character beg lled a “uke” by someone who is obvly secure his masculy.

It’s pretty much anythg where the character who’s beg mistaken as gay feels who’s read Brett Whe’s fe Decir lumn “That Gay Episo” knows that the history of gay panic ss don’t track learly; the episo of Friends where Chandler is horrified people thk he’s gay bee he has a “certa qualy” was 20 years after a Mary Tyler Moore episo sensively handled a character’s g out. “When you watch an olr TV show or movie and hear a “gay panic” joke and mak you almost jump your seat e you’re so ught by surprise, ” says DeAnn Hele, -shownner of The Middle. ”Even one of my favoure s episos, Sefeld’s The Outg, where an NYU journalism stunt (Pla Marshall) outs Jerry (Jerry Sefeld) and Gee (Jason Alexanr) as a gay uple a New York Post article, feels crge-worthy 25 years later.

Ken Leve, who was a shownner on M*A*S*H, and wrote and produced episos of classic ss like Cheers, Frasier and many more, feels that gay panic started fadg the late ’70s, wh the troductn of Billy Crystal’s character Jodie on Soap, who was gay whout beg flamboyant or any of the other stereotypil portrayals of gay men at the time. “I jt thk you have to be as creative as you n your storytellg and make as te as you n to your characters — if the pot of your storyle/show is a character who don’t want to be seen as gay, there better be a damn good, real character-based reason behd to make a story, ” says Biegel. If we take to acunt the highly homophobic social ntext which news of the ndn first started circulatg, then s cultural dimensns bee all the more important.

GAY NETI

Even if we ignore the fact that ernments only publicly acknowledged AIDS years after the first known patients (homosexual men) started dyg, the and other films of the time are evince of the impact a homophobic mastream culture had on the ways AIDS was alt wh public. Dpe the fact that homosexual men had been one of the mographics most affected by the ndn, the mpaigns still refed to addrs homosexuals directly and munite clearly to them ways which homosexual sex uld be ma safer. Marked by a fear, on the part of the Thatcher and Reagan ernments, that speakg directly to homosexuals uld be seen as endorsg “viant” homosexual behavur, the often moralistic – and publicly-fund – health mpaigns released durg the peak of the Wtern AIDS crisis ignored the specific reali of those most affected by the epimic.

Not only that, but health mpaigns and news stori often played wh metaphors that were not only eply sexist and homophobic, but also spired by the language of warfare. Further, if AIDS beme such a fg spectre hntg gay men durg the 1980s and the early 1990s, we need to thk about the ways which gay masculi and sexual practic are today beg shaped and reprented the age of antiretroviral therapi.

That is, part, the aim of my new rearch project, fund by a fellowship of the Arts and Humani Rearch Council, which will look at ntemporary reprentatns of masculy “post-AIDS” gay pornography.

The hope is that will help to unrstand the ways which the AIDS crisis and s aftermath have impacted the liv, inti, and sexual practic of gay men, rather than jt see terms of tombston and grim reapers.

It was where what we now regnize as " nostalgia" was born, and The Gay Neti beme a popular settg for films of the 1930s, the 1940s and, to a lser gree, the 1950s and 1960s, by which time was seen as that nocent age before World Wars and atomic bombs. In fact, the "everybody's rich" stereotype stems om a nflatn of this perd wh "The Gild Age" (1876-1896), as the Gay Neti were also marked by enomic prsn and much labor agatn (see Panic of 1893 on The Other Wiki), not to mentn the Spanish-Amerin War.

Even then, the term "Gild Age" (as , "ated gold") was specifilly meant to dite that the good tim were only a surface veneer, wh ser problems lurkg jt beneath (as the Gay Neti themselv later monstrated). " Also, a French aristocrat by the name of Pierre Coubert would revive the Olympic Gam for the Gay Neti, which would be hosted Greece (the se of the origal Olympics).

This wasn't ually done whout at least a b of irony (ually only satiril or Cloudcuckoolanr works), but wrers and artists returned to the Gay Neti well so often that s nventns beme even more stereotypil. However, kooky Gay Neti stuff still pops up ocsnally, most often works directed at preteen children, or surreal edy seri such as The Simpsons or Fay Guy. Ironilly, real life, the Gay Neti were the perd where the world began to move beyond tradnal steampunk/gaslamp fantasy athetics bee of new technologi and movements such as Art Nouve.