I saw a conversation here where someone thought homophobia wasn’t that bad in the 90s.
I had someone else say they didn’t remember any anti-Japanese racism in Australia in the 90s. I being on the receiving end of it would remember it pretty strongly, but to forget it entirely?
Just really poor memory
(History? I guess this is history subbear. Given how much people seem to misinterpret events happening now, what does that say about writing of events at the tim?)
Any chance the people failing to remember aren’t part of the minority in question? Many people are blind to oppressions because they haven’t personally faced them or thought of them as jokes or otherwise minor, as they did not experience any negative outcomes due to them.
But yeah homophobia was rampant in the 90s. Gay was a slur equivalent to being bad or stupid, mainstream media was rife with it, and of course gay people were almost entirely closeted, including people with power or other things we’d recognize as privilege. I had closeted friends that were afraid of their parents. Literally 100% of them are doing great now, which is something that gives me a lot of joy and hope for us as a society.
Also want to validate the anti-Japanese racism of the 90s, generally conglomerated around anti-Asian stereotypes. Who thinks this wasn’t rampant!?
Pretty much a given. I mean, sure, there are a few older people from marginalized groups who’ll downplay the discrimination they’ve faced as part of a coping mechanism, i see that a lot with transmeds for example. But i’m also fairly sure that the debatebro dingus from dbzer0 who barged into the thread about queer liberation to claim that calling everything “gay” in the 90s had nothing to do with homophobia and that nobody had anything against actual gay people didn’t actually know any gay people because they all stayed in the closet in his shitty homophobic highschool.
When it comes to homophobia in particular, western chauvinists are frighteningly good at minimizing the fact that showing acceptance towards gay people only became something that wasn’t ridiculed in mainstream society a mere decade ago (this goes especially for gay men, being halfway ok about lesbians is a bit older than that. Let’s not get into how far bi acceptance is, because boy oh boy is that still a shitshow). Before the mid 2010s, all the straights were if not outright hostile, then at least incredibly weird about the subject, they always had to make up for being inclusive with saying something shitty and homophobic as well or to deflect in another way to not come off as gay themselves. That’s just how it was “back then”, and that “back then” is in living memory for everybody on this site. And ofc the people who have memory holed this are all cishets. Even the most reactionary homonationalists i know are painfully aware how recent tolerance towards gay people is.
I think a lot was Japan because Japan’s economy was doing pretty well during the 90s, not that the sort of person engaging in slurs can tell the difference between different east Asians. I remember it cooled off by the time I graduated high school, but it was pretty constant until about 2003.
Finding an old Australian joke book from the era that has a decent amount of Japanese businessman, Japanese tourist, Japanese small dick jokes (also a weirdly high proportion of divorce, cheating, and unhappy marriage jokes, also gay jokes). But the jokes kinda are the tip of the iceberg. If the jokes were the worst thing happening, it would be shit but not as bad as being assaulted, denied access to communities, being more heavily policed and observed, not having wrongs taken against you as seriously… you know, marginalised.
But also yes, it’s usually straight white dudes who don’t remember
I’d kind of forgotten all the “asian men have small penises” joke thing. “All politics is sexual pathology” moment.
I thought Japan’s economy was doing terribly in the 90s, wasn’t the big bubble in the 80s?
My memory was a collapse of sorts in the mid to late 90s. But I could be wrong, I just remember what it was like here in oz
Sorry you had to experience that. I don’t quite have the words to communicate enough solidarity but I can validate that that is terrible, it happened, and it shouldn’t be something that happens.
I personally am not from Australia but a lot translates due to Anglo cultural influence. Plenty of “(anti-Japanese)” racism among the people that should’ve taught me ethics rather than racism or bitterness. And an astounding amount of pro-Italian thinking despite both anything vaguely Italian and anything vaguely Japanese being of the same “axis” in terms of the war propaganda influence on racist rhetoric.
Also ran into a fair share of people obsessed with Japanese pop culture. Both racists who had the worst opinions and behavior you can think of and then also people really into some Japanese band or art.
Anyways sorry again that you had to go through that. And sorry there are people who want to pretend it didn’t happen.
Yeah, anime was a major cultural import at the same time. Dragonball Z, pokemon, Digimon, sailor moon on TV in the morning
Wasn’t the prospect of Japan taking over the world a recurring plot thread in speculative '90s political fiction? Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor (1994), that kind of thing. Also seems like a line of thought in op-eds from the period.
Constantly. Cyberpunk leaned heavily in to the idea that cheap consumer electronics would vault Japan to global domination.
lol they were just east a little bit too far
This has to be it. I don’t strongly qualify for any of the letters in LGBTQ+, unless you really want to add woman or “not a 10/10 supermodel” and the only difference in anti-LGBT rhetoric I’ve seen in my life is that I’m not required to interact with assholes after highschool and college. Even at jobs reactionaries usually tone it down, at least tone down the doing-it-openly and the targeting-somebody parts. The worst I usually see is by randos on the internet or like if I’m at a bar or if I’m dating a guy who has that extra sus friend or 50% of anyone’s older relatives. I see misogyny all the time though, and also I see people who-aren’t-women claim misogyny doesn’t happen anymore. It’s obvious to me that I don’t see anti-LGBT so much because I’m not a target.