Celebrating Pride Month: What is Your Favorite LGBT Story/Characters in Speculative Fiction (Canon Examples Only)

[Madner Kami]

I'd like to remind everyone, that even though we share a common place and interests, a lot of us had our formative years in very different places, in a world that was more particular and less well connected. Clearspira is a Brit and, as far as I know, a kid of the 80s and 90s like me. The culture we grew up was influenced by the american media, but we still had a way more independent local media which treated a lot of issues very differently, not to even talk of local culture.
This is not supposed to say that all was sunshine, roses and lollipops for LGBTQs hereabout, far from it, but gays in particular were a lot more present and accepted or at least tolerated (especially in the UK, Germany and France as well, hell, Eastern Germany opened state-owned gay-discos in the 80s...) than it seems to have been the case in the US.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I feel like part of what was being said was just a matter of what clearspira was exposed to in terms of marketing. It's not as if the trailers had remark quotes like "first every lgbt in marvel movie!" - Chicago Sun Times. They do interviews, third parties talk about it, FANS that are LGBT react to it. That's not exactly pervasive to art, and is somewhat normal to expect from a big budget movie in this context.

[ProfessorDetective]

Just learned this one: Robin from Stranger Things. She's even spending ST4 debating asking a girl out (this being the 1980s, the girl can do FAR worse than say "no"). Steve being fully accepting of her is nice, too. They even trade celeb crushes.

[clearspira]

I'd like to remind everyone, that even though we share a common place and interests, a lot of us had our formative years in very different places, in a world that was more particular and less well connected. Clearspira is a Brit and, as far as I know, a kid of the 80s and 90s like me. The culture we grew up was influenced by the american media, but we still had a way more independent local media which treated a lot of issues very differently, not to even talk of local culture.
This is not supposed to say that all was sunshine, roses and lollipops for LGBTQs hereabout, far from it, but gays in particular were a lot more present and accepted or at least tolerated (especially in the UK, Germany and France as well, hell, Eastern Germany opened state-owned gay-discos in the 80s...) than it seems to have been the case in the US.

Nail on the head. The problem here I think is that there are more Zoomers on this forum than there are of any other generation - they don't remember the 90s. They have gotten all of their information third hand from other people who also did not live through the 90s.

Britain did not care about LGBT in our media back then. I'll give you an example. One of the biggest storylines of the 90s on Coronation Street (a show that regularly got up to 20 million viewers in a country that barely had 60 million people in it) was Roy Cropper dating a woman named Hayley who turned out to be trans after they were dating. Were the fans full of rage at ''the entrapment'' or ''the evil trans monster'' or anything like that? No. it was ''will Roy find happiness?'' BTW, Hayley went on to become a main character in Corrie for the next decade.

Whilst this was going on over in Eastenders (again up to 20 million viewers) was the Mark fowler HIV storyline. Did the fans think ''dirty gay guy'' or did they think ''poor Mark I hope he gets better?'' *hint* it was the latter. I was there.

But I guess these huge shows watched by a third of the population weren't indicative of the British views towards LGBT people? I'm sorry that the US was this hotbed of homophobia I really am, but I remember a time when no one cared. And I think the only reason people care *oh so very very much* today is probably Americans projecting onto the rest of the world.

[hammerofglass]

Huh, I guess we're about the same age then. I had you pegged as a child of the 70s honestly.

Section 28 was on the books in the 90s. Of course you didn't hear about the gay and trans issues of the time, telling you was an actual fucking crime.

Actually come to think of it the proponents of bills like Florida's Don't Say Gay and its clones in other states are copying rhetoric from the pro-section 28 crowd verbatim, so if anything the movement is from the UK towards the US.

Edit: leaving it out of honesty but that last paragraph is just stupid, sorry you had to read that.

[Madner Kami]

Huh, I guess we're about the same age then. I had you pegged as a child of the 70s honestly.

Section 28 was on the books in the 90s. Of course you didn't hear about the gay and trans issues of the time, telling you was an actual fucking crime.

Are you a Brit yourself? Because while I'll not try to defend the all-too-familiar-sounding retardation motivating that law back in the day, the fact of the matter is that this didn't really seem to have much repercussions in reality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_2 ... complaints

Although there were no successful prosecutions under the law, there were legal attempts to use it to stop the funding of LGBT and HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives.

[...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_2 ... licability

After Section 28 was passed, there was some debate as to whether it actually applied in schools or whether it applied only to local authorities. Whilst head teachers and Boards of Governors were specifically exempt, schools and teachers became confused as to what was actually permitted and tended to err on the side of caution.

A National Union of Teachers (NUT) statement remarked that "While Section 28 applies to local authorities and not to schools, many teachers believe, albeit wrongly, that it imposes constraints in respect of the advice and counselling they give to pupils. Professional judgement is therefore influenced by the perceived prospect of prosecution", and that it "limits the ability of local authorities to support schools in respect of learning and educating for equality. The effect of Section 28, therefore, is to inhibit anti discrimination initiatives and make it difficult for schools to prevent or address the serious problems that arise from homophobic bullying".[35]

Similarly, the Department for Education and Science said that "Section 28 does not affect the activities of school governors, nor of teachers ... It will not prevent the objective discussion of homosexuality in the classroom, nor the counselling of pupils concerned about their sexuality",[36] to which Knight responded by saying that "This has got to be a mistake. The major point of it was to protect children in schools from having homosexuality thrust upon them".[36] In response to these criticisms, supporters of the bill claimed that the NUT and Department of Education were mistaken, and the section did affect schools.[citation needed]

Some local authorities continued to deliver training to their staff in their education system on how to deliver their services without discrimination against gay people; Manchester City Council continued to sustain four officer posts directly involved in policy making and implementation, contributing to the 1992 report Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988: a Guide for Workers in the Education Service, produced by Manchester City Council, May 1992.[14]

Before its repeal, Section 28 was already largely redundant: sex education in England and Wales has been regulated solely by the Secretary of State for Education since the Learning and Skills Act 2000 and the Education Act 1996. Nevertheless, many campaigners still saw abolishing Section 28 as "a symbolic measure against intolerance", and campaigned for its repeal.[37]

It feels much like the legislation used to be in Germany, where homosexuality was technically illegal by the law, but nobody really cared about and it stopped being enforced at all in the 50s (with Western Germany at least in the early 50s proudly carrying on the Nazi-heritage in this regard - fuck religious-"inspired" parties btw), only to be removed from legal codes in the late 60s to early 70s.

Now, as said, not all was sunshine, roses and lollipops. The public at large largely ignored unresolved issues, like equalizing same sex partnerships to heterosexual partnerships and the like and of course, there was still a lot of trouble and prejudice in the private realm, as songs like "Small Town Boy" from Bronski Beat aren't created in a vacuum, but at the same time a debut song from an all-gay group that nobody heard about before like this reaches the Top 3 in the UK existing is telling of the social climate in not just one direction. Cultural icons like Benny Hill, Rosa von Praunheim (a gay german film director), Elton John, Cher, Hella von Sinnen (a lesbian entertainer who was in a 25 years long known relationship with the daughter of the west german Bundespräsident Walter Scheel no less) and Freddie Mercurcy are a thing and they wouldn't exist in such a prominent position, if the society at large would've been completely or even "just" overwhelmingly hostile to them.

Actually come to think of it the proponents of bills like Florida's Don't Say Gay and its clones in other states are copying rhetoric from the pro-section 28 crowd verbatim, so if anything the movement is from the UK towards the US.

I don't agree with that assessment. Section 28 was a brain-child of Thatcher and her conservative cronies and it came up in the wave of the wide conservative backlash of the mid to late 80s. Just think of the AIDS-epidemic in the US, heated up, if not outright caused by Reagan's idiocy. This counter-movement came up after two decades of sexual liberation (60s and 70s) and was replaced by the reformation-decades beginning in the late 90s and lasting till midish-2010. What you see there is just the repeat of the conservative-backlash, just another wave of the eternal societal swing between liberation and conservation. That doesn't make it better at the moment, but it's not any worse than before and if you look back in history, these counter-swings just do not eliminate what was gained generally. It's two steps forward, one step back, with the occasional outlier like Nazi Germany and the crash of the Soviet Union.

[hammerofglass]

Are you a Brit yourself?

Nope. Violently American. I've got exactly the same standing to judge and comment an y'all's politics and culture as y'all do to comment on ours.

That "going the other way" bit was a half formed thought that frankly I know better than, I apologize for that one.

[Madner Kami]

Are you a Brit yourself?

Nope. Violently American. I've got exactly the same standing to judge and comment an y'all's politics and culture as y'all do to comment on ours.

That "going the other way" bit was a half formed thought that frankly I know better than, I apologize for that one.

My question wasn't aimed at whether you have a right to comment on other countries or nations. The question was asked in order to understand whether you have first-hand knowledge "from the streets", as opposed to Clearspira, as I felt you tried to make a counter-arguement to his words based off first hand-knowledge.

And just to make sure: I have no intent to argue against evaluating and commenting on other's countries, communities, nations or whatever. You don't have to be a US-american to see the problems in the society and you don't have to be a German to see that the behaviour of the SPD in regards to Ukraine is sketchy at best. Quite the contrary. An outsider percieves issues often much more pronounced than someone who grew up and learned to live with them.

[hammerofglass]

Are you a Brit yourself?

Nope. Violently American. I've got exactly the same standing to judge and comment an y'all's politics and culture as y'all do to comment on ours.

That "going the other way" bit was a half formed thought that frankly I know better than, I apologize for that one.

My question wasn't aimed at whether you have a right to comment on other countries or nations. The question was asked in order to understand whether you have first-hand knowledge "from the streets", as opposed to Clearspira, as I felt you tried to make a counter-arguement to his words based off first hand-knowledge.

And just to make sure: I have no intent to argue against evaluating and commenting on other's countries, communities, nations or whatever. You don't have to be a US-american to see the problems in the society and you don't have to be a German to see that the behaviour of the SPD in regards to Ukraine is sketchy at best. Quite the contrary. An outsider percieves issues often much more pronounced than someone who grew up and learned to live with them.

I communicated badly again I see. My apologies. I was not accusing you of anything although reading ot back I understand why you read it that way, just trying to make my position as an outsider clear. My understanding of section 28 is all second hand horror stories, not personal experience. I fully agree with what you say here.

[hammerofglass]

Original thread topic: Really enjoying Hunter: the Parenting on YouTube. Very much on the "incidentally half the characters are gay or pan but nobody really cares" end of things.