You’ll find the same thing in poorer regions of the US.
This is correct, but I also believe you see this in more middle class areas as well. This sort of thing is almost impossible to prove, but I think a lot of middle class suburbanites do sort of carry a lot of homophobic attitudes but they just keep it to themselves. Because over the last decade it's become socially unacceptable in a lot of the social sphere to be outwardly homophobic. Personally I think a lot of Americans are just bottling up their homophobia and god help us if fascism takes hold, because all that bottled up homophobia will definitely break out.
It wasn't that long ago (like mid-2000s) that polls showed a majority of Americans felt homosexuality was immoral. In the 15-20 years since, I highly doubt that hardly anyone say age 35+ at the time who was already homophobic has changed much, they've just been keeping their mouths shut.
On your last point, I'm slightly more optimistic on the theory that personally knowing an LGBT person can reduce bigotry in at least some folks, and the gains made since maybe ~2000 mean there are more out people than ever.
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and i had a ton of homophobic and transphobic brainworms i had to work through in spite of being bi and trans myself. Are there people who just don't say anything out loud anymore because they don't want to be shamed for it? Yeah, absolutely. Lots of cishet people aren't fully honest with me and just play nice because they don't want to cause a scene. But there's also lots and lots of people who have genuinely become better, more accepting people and that's honestly not all that surprising. All queerphobias are learned responses. There's nothing genuine about them. People have been trained to reflexively feel the hate and disgust because that was the socially expected thing to do. If they fully realize that, it's easy to discard these fears once they lose their purpose of being a mandatory part of somebody's gender performance. Without that, there is simply no reason to be queerphobic anymore.
I feel that too. Lived in both the inner city and suburbs when I was in the US. People in the inner city used the f-slur a lot more openly while the suburbanites would say that shit behind your back and you'd get it especially bad if you acted flamboyant at all. But this was also the mid 2000's when homophobia was still largely accepted even in liberal circles. To me it looks a lot like racial acceptance. The inner city was a lot more vocal about its racism with little race wars taking place as young as first grade. The suburbs would tolerate you as long as you behaved like them. Anything deviating from that would get you labelled as "ghetto."
It's like that with lgbt. They like you as long as you don't act outwardly flamboyant or cut your hair a certain way. I hear it whenever I visit my American family in the suburbs. They'll have a few gay friends and trans family members, but shit on gay guys that talk a certain way and trans women that don't pass.
This is correct, but I also believe you see this in more middle class areas as well. This sort of thing is almost impossible to prove, but I think a lot of middle class suburbanites do sort of carry a lot of homophobic attitudes but they just keep it to themselves. Because over the last decade it's become socially unacceptable in a lot of the social sphere to be outwardly homophobic. Personally I think a lot of Americans are just bottling up their homophobia and god help us if fascism takes hold, because all that bottled up homophobia will definitely break out.
It wasn't that long ago (like mid-2000s) that polls showed a majority of Americans felt homosexuality was immoral. In the 15-20 years since, I highly doubt that hardly anyone say age 35+ at the time who was already homophobic has changed much, they've just been keeping their mouths shut.
On your last point, I'm slightly more optimistic on the theory that personally knowing an LGBT person can reduce bigotry in at least some folks, and the gains made since maybe ~2000 mean there are more out people than ever.
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and i had a ton of homophobic and transphobic brainworms i had to work through in spite of being bi and trans myself. Are there people who just don't say anything out loud anymore because they don't want to be shamed for it? Yeah, absolutely. Lots of cishet people aren't fully honest with me and just play nice because they don't want to cause a scene. But there's also lots and lots of people who have genuinely become better, more accepting people and that's honestly not all that surprising. All queerphobias are learned responses. There's nothing genuine about them. People have been trained to reflexively feel the hate and disgust because that was the socially expected thing to do. If they fully realize that, it's easy to discard these fears once they lose their purpose of being a mandatory part of somebody's gender performance. Without that, there is simply no reason to be queerphobic anymore.
Good point.
I feel that too. Lived in both the inner city and suburbs when I was in the US. People in the inner city used the f-slur a lot more openly while the suburbanites would say that shit behind your back and you'd get it especially bad if you acted flamboyant at all. But this was also the mid 2000's when homophobia was still largely accepted even in liberal circles. To me it looks a lot like racial acceptance. The inner city was a lot more vocal about its racism with little race wars taking place as young as first grade. The suburbs would tolerate you as long as you behaved like them. Anything deviating from that would get you labelled as "ghetto."
It's like that with lgbt. They like you as long as you don't act outwardly flamboyant or cut your hair a certain way. I hear it whenever I visit my American family in the suburbs. They'll have a few gay friends and trans family members, but shit on gay guys that talk a certain way and trans women that don't pass.