What I'd be most curious to hear about, from your perspective, is how cultural-shifts shifted your own experience. There was a kind of taboo element to homosexuality. It seems like that used to be expended in the 'secret' place of gay hookups - is some of that lost now? — csalisbury
Yes, homosexuality was officially a perversion, a sickness, when I was growing up, and it was 'dangerous' to bring up the topic or show too much interest in it. Information--certainly positive information--was hard to find when I was in high school/college (I was born in '46). Naturally, I internalized the taboo and had all sorts of guilt issues. Guilt, however, didn't prevent me from having gay sex.
Gay men built social/sexual lives in the '40s, '50s, and 60s (according to informed sources) through networks, and there were places one could go to find sex -- out of view paths in parks, pubic toilets in stores or college buildings, and cruising in public -- using gaydar to spot other homosexuals, and try to make a contact with them. (I can't explain the details, but it does work often enough to be worth it.). Then there were gay bars, gay bath houses, and adult bookstores where one could have sex.
A lot of these features of gay life were swept away by AIDS, and the civic reaction to AIDS. Well, death kind of cast a pall over things too. But the bars remained--until hook-up apps like GRINDR made trips to the bars to find a partner unnecessary. Gay bars are still around, but at least where I live they have lost a lot of business (this way before Covid).
I've aged out of the active sex demographic--way out--so all this is more an intellectual interest than an urgent sexual one. But some important things have definitely been lost.
One big thing that has been lost was the outsider status a lot of gays felt (and cultivated). Being gay is now no big deal -- apparently. Perhaps "being proudly gay" is not as crucial now as it was? On the other hand, some gay boys (maybe some gay girls too) are getting kicked out of their homes by parents who reject them. They're usually like 15 to 17. Of course, homelessness entails a lot of problems for these young people.
Gay Liberation wasn't quite the revolution it might have been, but "liberating one's self", and joining up with other liberated gay guys felt like a tremendous step forward, back in 1969-70-71. Sure, it was scary to come out and risk rejection (or worse), but it was almost always worth the risk.
The risk of getting caught having sex in unapproved places raised the excitement value. Probably mot much risk dialing into GRINDR to see who's available.
advanced question: how do you think about trans sexuality? you don't have to answer that. — csalisbury
I have known maybe 10 transsexuals since the 1970s. Most of these people had clear identity objectives--from male to female or female to male. Kind of cut and dried. The trans people I have known seemed happier after they transitioned (having had surgery or not) than before. So, the most recent trans person I know I met about 2006. He was a veteran, alcoholic, college educated, M to F. He had to get a lot of problems resolved in the process (like alcoholism) but he made it.
So, these 10 trans people are one thing. The whole current trans-movement thing -- particularly how popular it is with the media -- baffles me. The number of people who are what I would call transsexual isn't much larger than .005% to .0075%--less than 1 percent of the population. It baffles me that this relatively small group of people (with a lot of help from people who are not even remotely trans) have managed to install the term "cisgender" on 99% of the population, and that many people are now listing their acceptable pronouns -- usually they are just what one would expect. I just don't get it.
Gender ambiguity isn't new, of course. Here's a song from 1926,
masculine women, feminine men
Some histories note that the first third of the 20th century was sexually wilder than we would think. There were, particularly, a lot of loosened norms during Prohibition. When Prohibition ended, the forces of propriety clamped down hard, and things didn't loosen up again until the 60s.