One thing you would remember is that there were no “Pride Parades” in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, until the late 90’s - they were LGB or Stonewall Freedom parades, you can go back and look at posters, flyers and announcements.
We forget that LGBTQ only came about in the later 90’s, as a group, and its major impact was to eliminate the words Gay and Lesbian in all printed material relating to Lesbians and Gays. Queer was a subset of gay, not vice-versa, as in “We’re here we’re queer get used to it.” Which reversed around 1997.
All the drags and female impersonators I’ve known were like you - performers, usually working with named celebrities, and who didn’t really wear drag offstage. Suddenly that changed too but you, like RuPaul and Charles Ludlum and Dame Edna Everidge are not “trans” in any sense whatsoever, but the door to similar-looking people opened up and that’s what’s caused a collapse of camp.
I haven’t seen the word “camp” used in any meaningful playful sense since TQ came into play, and camp - Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” camp - has zero relation TQ. When camp comes back, we will have a new version of gay culture. Until then it’s all deadly fucking serious and boring.
More education for me here, thanks! The sidebars here about NYC dance music remind me of the conversations I’ve had with another online friend who’s a longtime dj and archivist of dance music. (Other music too.)
He helped me get fired up about the creative artistry of dance music, a genre I always saw as separate from my music world. Now I’m investigating Arthur Russell, Tom Moulton, Walter Gibbons, etc. and digging and admiring their work.
It's also fascinating to me that during the time of our greatest oppression the music was geared toward messages of overcoming (i.e., Disco, 80s pop, 90s techno). We always found the time to DANCE together.
Whatever happened to RuPaul's "Everybody say LOVE!"? There's little love on offer in our modern, cynical, (one could say 'critically conscious') LGBT community that's too busy dismantling, decentering, and deconstructing - all destructive - as opposed to generative - acts.
Former gay culture was CONSTRUCTIVE, and in my experience, HAPPIER and more joyous - and MORE FUN.
i'm so lucky to have been a club kid at the peak of 80s club culture, and yes--the music, the drugs, the people--everything was happy, upbeat. And as diverse a crowd as anyone could ever wish--the gay clubs had the best music and the best DJs so every kind of person came to dance. Gay culture was hedonistic, yes, but it was always incredibly creative and fearless--it seems to me young queer people are more interested in denying womanhood and manhood and dressing provocatively and then getting huffy about it when they draw attention to themselves... it all feels a bit tortured to me and self conscious. I hope some will invest in gaining wisdom in insight from our great gay heroes, thinkers and writers and realize our superpowers--humor, daring, compassion and survival.
A key sentence in this post: "...as diverse a crowd as anyone could ever wish-" I resent the DEI crowd assuming that Americans have not delt with racial and sexual differences; they keep painting America as this lurid, unselfconscious racist sexist entity - it is not and I don't like it. I am part of a large and engaged Black community - I see Black American life up close in a majority White region of the country; there is a lot of goodwill on both sides; microaggressions there be but mostly to laugh off; not so the bad stuff with guns and gangs; but life goes on ... Gay culture is big in Seattle, as you probably know ... I hate the divisiveness and hatred being fomented on all sides ...
One of the tactics employed by DEI is to dredge up old tropes and issues from decades ago about LGBT+ people and fill up the heads of young and ignorant people with them as if they were happening now. It's incredibly irresponsible. They have whipped kids up to believe that trans people are committing suicide right and left, and are being murdered by the thousands every day, and that if trans kids don't get hormones and puberty blockers immediately they will off themselves. They then pair this with ideas like misgendering and dead-naming, and raise these to the level of essentially killing or erasing someone. These are gross exaggerations and the reason young activists glue themselves to floors or stand at a mic and scream.
I like the passion in your writing.
One thing you would remember is that there were no “Pride Parades” in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, until the late 90’s - they were LGB or Stonewall Freedom parades, you can go back and look at posters, flyers and announcements.
https://www.bolerium.com/pages/books/195600/al-ruiz/the-challenge-june-1981-the-front-line-of-freedom-gay-freedom-day-parade
We forget that LGBTQ only came about in the later 90’s, as a group, and its major impact was to eliminate the words Gay and Lesbian in all printed material relating to Lesbians and Gays. Queer was a subset of gay, not vice-versa, as in “We’re here we’re queer get used to it.” Which reversed around 1997.
All the drags and female impersonators I’ve known were like you - performers, usually working with named celebrities, and who didn’t really wear drag offstage. Suddenly that changed too but you, like RuPaul and Charles Ludlum and Dame Edna Everidge are not “trans” in any sense whatsoever, but the door to similar-looking people opened up and that’s what’s caused a collapse of camp.
I haven’t seen the word “camp” used in any meaningful playful sense since TQ came into play, and camp - Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” camp - has zero relation TQ. When camp comes back, we will have a new version of gay culture. Until then it’s all deadly fucking serious and boring.
great points.
More education for me here, thanks! The sidebars here about NYC dance music remind me of the conversations I’ve had with another online friend who’s a longtime dj and archivist of dance music. (Other music too.)
He helped me get fired up about the creative artistry of dance music, a genre I always saw as separate from my music world. Now I’m investigating Arthur Russell, Tom Moulton, Walter Gibbons, etc. and digging and admiring their work.
Thanks much for this J; I look around at the scene today and think, 'I'm so old I remember when drag was fun ...'
Ah, those were the days... now it's some kabuki makeup, a tear away skirt and a few jump splits.
It's also fascinating to me that during the time of our greatest oppression the music was geared toward messages of overcoming (i.e., Disco, 80s pop, 90s techno). We always found the time to DANCE together.
Whatever happened to RuPaul's "Everybody say LOVE!"? There's little love on offer in our modern, cynical, (one could say 'critically conscious') LGBT community that's too busy dismantling, decentering, and deconstructing - all destructive - as opposed to generative - acts.
Former gay culture was CONSTRUCTIVE, and in my experience, HAPPIER and more joyous - and MORE FUN.
i'm so lucky to have been a club kid at the peak of 80s club culture, and yes--the music, the drugs, the people--everything was happy, upbeat. And as diverse a crowd as anyone could ever wish--the gay clubs had the best music and the best DJs so every kind of person came to dance. Gay culture was hedonistic, yes, but it was always incredibly creative and fearless--it seems to me young queer people are more interested in denying womanhood and manhood and dressing provocatively and then getting huffy about it when they draw attention to themselves... it all feels a bit tortured to me and self conscious. I hope some will invest in gaining wisdom in insight from our great gay heroes, thinkers and writers and realize our superpowers--humor, daring, compassion and survival.
A key sentence in this post: "...as diverse a crowd as anyone could ever wish-" I resent the DEI crowd assuming that Americans have not delt with racial and sexual differences; they keep painting America as this lurid, unselfconscious racist sexist entity - it is not and I don't like it. I am part of a large and engaged Black community - I see Black American life up close in a majority White region of the country; there is a lot of goodwill on both sides; microaggressions there be but mostly to laugh off; not so the bad stuff with guns and gangs; but life goes on ... Gay culture is big in Seattle, as you probably know ... I hate the divisiveness and hatred being fomented on all sides ...
One of the tactics employed by DEI is to dredge up old tropes and issues from decades ago about LGBT+ people and fill up the heads of young and ignorant people with them as if they were happening now. It's incredibly irresponsible. They have whipped kids up to believe that trans people are committing suicide right and left, and are being murdered by the thousands every day, and that if trans kids don't get hormones and puberty blockers immediately they will off themselves. They then pair this with ideas like misgendering and dead-naming, and raise these to the level of essentially killing or erasing someone. These are gross exaggerations and the reason young activists glue themselves to floors or stand at a mic and scream.