Thus is the defining characteristic of gay millennials: we straddle the pre-Glee and post-Glee worlds. We went to high school when faggot wasn’t even considered an F-word, when being a lesbian meant boys just didn’t want you, when being nonbinary wasn’t even a remote option. We grew up without queer characters in our cartoons or Nickelodeon or Disney or TGIF sitcoms. We were raised in homophobia, came of age as the world changed around us, and are raising children in an age where it’s never been easier to be same-sex parents. We’re both lucky and jealous. As the state of gay evolved culturally and politically, we were old enough to see it and process it and not take it for granted–old enough to know what the world was like without it. Despite the success of Drag Race, the existence of lesbian Christmas rom-coms, and openly transgender Oscar nominees, we haven’t moved on from the trauma of growing up in a culture that hates us. We don’t move on from trauma, really. We can’t really leave it in the past. It becomes a part of us, and we move forward with it.
For LGBTQ+ milennials, our pride is couched in painful memories of a culture repulsed and frightened by queerness. That makes us skittish. It makes us loud. It makes us fear that all this progress, all this tolerance […] can vanish as quickly as it all appeared.
The 2000s Made Me Gay, Grace Perry
Coming from a reference group where everyone’s first queer movie was either Rocky Horror or Brokeback Mountain, it’s fascinating to talk (in person!) to gay teenagers who grew up with Korra and Stephen Universe and She-Ra.
The sheer culture clash of trying to explain that Brokeback Mountain was received as and treated as a punchline. Two men fall in love and one gets murdered for it. Considering the time this movie was made, that isn’t a spoiler: that’s an inevitability.
And all the popular culture at the time would only reference it to laugh at it.
