I am interested to know what life was like from the words of people who were still children then or they were from 16-30 years old.
I am interested to know what life was like from the words of people who were still children then or they were from 16-30 years old.
I would argue that misogyny and racisim are ascendant in our time.
Sure, open racism was much worse, but they also were in the aftermath of 2nd wave feminism and the Civil Rights movement; things were getting better.
It’s those very strides that have aggravated the backlash we see now; things are getting worse.
So I’m not saying 1970 was better than today, but I’d argue that the early 2000s were.
Go back to 80’s movies and look at the casual sexism.
Don’t tell Mom the babysitters dead. The oldest sister is 17, gets an office job. She has a late thirties-mid forties man creeping on her for half the movie. It’s played for laughs. This was a kids movie.
Early 2000s it was less overt, but still widespread. I watched girls get harassed on the school bus, nobody spoke up. I watched women get harassed and groped during my first fast food job. I didn’t have the courage to speak up.
I dodged it by virtue of not having transitioned or even knowing I was trans yet.
I tried watching Dukes of Hazzard out of nostalgia…
Sheesh it’s a LOT worse than I recalled
There at least existed a sense of … decorum. Yes racism was ubiquitous, but people were forced to go about it obliquely. Because of that, there were a bunch of white people who identified with minorities when minorities were under attack. Welfare moms meant black single mothers, but plenty of white people looked at the verbiage and said, “wait a second, I need welfare.”
It perpetuated a near-universal understanding that racism is shameful. Now it’s a joke and the racists have more power.