• Mantikora [none/use any]@hexbear.net
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          2 days ago

          I see more hate today than then. Actually, at least here where I live, only haters were skinheads. Liberals wanted to be cool, so everything that wasn’t fitting the norm was cool. Also, we ate a lot of ecstasies. Punkers were always antifascists, they only hated pop fans and ravers were lame to them. I was young back then and the whole rave movement and era will always be nostalgic for me. I even miss back then bigotry. It wasn’t so spreaded and massive like today. Bigots were idiots and nothing else.

          • I grew up around punks and anti-racist skinheads, and while the community was very accepting, there was still a lot of unquestioned toxic masculinity and patriarchy that was pervasive. Bigots were rare and understood to be weirdos/idiots, but so many the background radiation of hate was way stronger, too.

            There is more hate, but there’s a larger community and visibility. I could never imagine being queer when I was growing up in the early 2000s. I simply lacked any vocabulary or experiences to draw from, and all the casual hate and stigma that was around anything not cishet kept me from even questioning. Not only that, but I had a lot of internalized hate that really affected my mental health, and a lot of those issues were unresolved until I realized my own truth. Seeing so many kids happy to be themselves, or exploring because queerness is more visible, is a net positive in my eyes. Same for my situation with neurodivergence and race.