Queer 101: Hugh Ryan on “My Bad” & the Queer ’90s

Summer School - classes are now in session, y’all.

Before we get into it — yes, we’re going biweekly for the summer (because Pride season is Pride‑ing), but don’t panic. We’ll be back to weekly episodes before ya know it. In the meantime, I’m booked, busy, and SO honored to be serving as Grand Marshal New York Pride March, and season three of Survival of the Thickest wil be back. Hot queer summer energy only.

Now — onto today’s ‘lesson’.

Let me begin by saying I could not be more proud of co-host and friend the brilliantHugh Ryan. This week we are talking about his new memoir, My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer ’90s and Beyond — out today!! Also available as an audiobook read by Hugh himself (which I love).

We get into why the 1990s were such a pivotal moment in queer history:
- The shift from analog life to the early internet.
- From queer invisibility to mainstream visibility post‑AIDS crisis.
- From mega‑clubs and nightlife freedom to the always‑online world we live in now.

Hugh shares a seventh‑grade classroom moment that shaped how he understood queerness, what it felt like to grow up queer in the ’90s, and how New York City nightlife became a sanctuary. 

We talk about queer isolation, remix culture, disappearing before social media (remember privacy?), and the complicated trade‑offs of mainstream acceptance.

If you’ve ever wondered how the queer ’90s shaped the world we’re living in now — this one is for you.

📚 Click here to order your copy of  My Bad now.

Follow us at:

• @peppermint247
• @hughoryan
• @pridehousemedia

Write to us at:

• questions@queer101podcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey y'all, welcome to Queer 101.

SPEAKER_03 0:06

I'm Pepper Matt and Student Historians. And we're here to bring you all things queer history that you didn't learn in school.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This is a podcast where we dive deep into queer culture, books, and a queer experience, past, present, and future. From the history that shapes us to the culture that keeps us driving. We have got it all covered.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Grab a seat and let's turn a lot on queer history because these stories demand to be heard and must be celebrated.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to Queer 101. Class is now in action. Hey y'all! Welcome back to Queer 101, the weekly podcast where we talk about any and everything under the sun, including queer art, queer culture, and queer literature. I am Peppermint.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

And I'm Hugh Ryan, aka Hugh the historian. And we should let folks know we've got an announcement for the summer. We are actually not going to be your weekly source of all things queer and exciting and fabulous. We're going to be your well, I was gonna say bi-weekly, but I actually don't even know exactly what that term means. So twice a monthly podcast of all things queer art, queer literature, and queer fabulousness.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

That's true. Every other week we will be coming to you right here. Same bat time, same bat channel, whatever that means. Uh and so don't worry, but that's just for the summer. And then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled broadcast uh after the summer. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a lot of Oh, what do we have a lot of?

SPEAKER_03 1:43

Oh, I was gonna say a lot of exciting plans coming up this summer.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

We do have a lot of plans. We let's talk about that because we're here. It's it's basically Memorial Day, it's the end of the month, end of May. I mean, the official start of summer is actually mid-June. But weird. As far as we're concerned, and we're we're not using the weather too as a barometer, liter as a literal barometer uh at all for this. But uh it feels like it's summertime. We were ready for it to be summertime, so it's the kickoff to summer right now, and we have some things planned. Now, we've got some big things here that we're gonna talk about today, but um, what are some things that you're looking forward to for the summer?

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Hugh I am looking forward to pride season. I am looking forward to being out at the march with you as our grand marshal. I am looking forward to the return of survival of the thickest. And I think we're going to get to in a minute. I am looking forward to- Oh, wait, no, no, no!

SPEAKER_02 2:40

That all right, I don't know. Hold on.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Wait, wait, wait, wait. What are you waiting for?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

What are you what are you looking forward to? Well, I'm looking forward to a lot. I'm very excited about all those things that you mentioned, of course. Um, and I'm looking forward to uh like just being I mean, I'm gonna try my best to go to an amusement park this summer, um, which is something I like to do if I can, when I can, you know. Um ride a roller coaster somehow, somewhere, yeah. Oh, they're gonna be around. In addition to uh they do? I don't know, too much. I like the water. I mean, listen, it's not it doesn't feel good to be on a roller coaster. It's it's certainly scary and and it could be dangerous. I mean, it's more dangerous than not going on a roller coaster, maybe. Although it's not necessarily it's not more dangerous statistically than walking.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

Remember when Fabio killed that bird with his face on a roller coaster? That's what I picture every time I get on one.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

That's wild. I mean, did it break his nose? I think so. Yeah. I vaguely remember that. Yeah, I definitely don't want that. It would take a l they could. It would take a whole lot less to mess me up on a roller coaster. Honey, if I have if anything that I brought to the roller coaster goes flying, then I'm not then that's enough for me to never ride a roller coaster again. Luckily that has never happened. But so I'm determined to try to do it this summer. Um, in addition to uh being Grand Marshal for Pride, uh and celebrating all things pride, in addition to uh survival of the thickest, which the official countdown is a month now. Uh end of May, end of June. Yeah. A month and a f and a week, basically. Uh so we will be counting down every single every other week here on the show. Uh uh, I'm also looking forward to Laverne Cox's memoir, which comes out next month. I'm very excited. But even more than that, I am very excited because the moment is here. The moment has come. By the time people watch this, by the time the sake al rhythm serves this to you, it might even be the day. Um your your memoir, your book, My Bad, is here today, and I'm so excited, and that's what today's show is all about. So that's what I'm most excited about.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Oh, it is called My Bad. Yes, yes, yes, I'm gonna be able to do it. The personal history of the queer 90s and beyond. I guess we are technically in the beyond now.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

We are we certain we feel we certainly feel like it if we we aren't. So today I want to dedicate the show all to you. You are such a prolific historian, writer, fantastic human being, and getting to read uh se your several of your books. Uh wait, is this is this your fourth book, third third, third technically third book. Okay, yeah. Um getting to read uh your other your first two books uh has is just fantastic. Like getting to know how you explain things and how you're how you tell a story and how you construct things has just been really interesting and a pleasure. Um and and so I'm so excited for uh for for my bad, which is the title of this book. Now, first of all, pause right here. Anybody that does not have this book in their hands right now, uh, and you're that means you're not a member of our I'll store a book club, get on over there. You make sure you get on over there and order that book. Um, and then aside from that, make sure that you um you can also pre-order it. It's also available on audiobook if that's your type.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Um and I read the audiobook. So if you like listening to me on this podcast, welcome to like 12 hours of me talking at you.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

You get to hear Hughes Hugh mention whisper sweet nothings into your ear. Um ASMR. And stop this right now and pause this right now and make sure you order it. You can order it from your device and uh make sure you have your copy because they're gonna sell out, y'all. So make sure you do what you need to do.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

And they did a beautiful job. I gotta say, I I am not all that concerned usually about the design of my books. I feel like that's the other people. Designers know what they do best because this one's me. It's it's different from all my other books. It's it's a history, but it's really about my life and history told through my life. So I had a lot more to say about the cover. And not only did they do a beautiful job with this, you know, mixtape and these two statues wrestling, uh, but it's actually on like a sort of like interestingly textured paper. I don't even know the right words for it. It feels nice, it's nice to touch, and I was not expecting that. So if you don't get the audio version, if you don't want to hear my voice, you'll actually get a like lovely tactile experience, along with the experience of reading way too much about my life. Every single person in my family is about to know so much more about my sex life than I have ever wanted them to know.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

In that, okay. I I have so many questions for you. And something tells me we're gonna have to have a like this like a part two of this where we get a chance to sort of dive. Okay, I'm I'm in my pajamas. I'm at home, I'm in my pajamas. Mind your business. Um uh we're gonna have to have part two after I get a chance to read the book, but I just got my copy, and so I haven't had a chance to go cover to cover yet. And of course, I'm gonna have a million questions for you afterwards. But um, since this book is a part of our book club, that'll be uh club, that'll be a great opportunity um to uh to have that second conversation. Oh wait. Uh but we will do an official like sort of author's interview with you. But in the meantime, uh, I just wanna to talk to you a little bit about the book. And first of all, the fact that I mean, I guess if you're gonna it's gonna be a memoir, it's obviously gonna talk about your past and your upbringing in some way, shape, or form. It has to, by definition. And so you can't help when you were born, but the fact that it's 90s uh related and coded, it makes me love it even more. But that's probably because I can't help when I was born as well. I know.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

And I think you know what? Look, we can't help when we were born, we can't help where we were born, but I do think there is something about Gen X. It's not just those of us who were there in the 90s. I see all the time now, like kids who are so young, they the 90s is like their parents barely remember the 90s, and they are still excited about the 90s.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah, because the 90s was definitely a special decade. Can you tell us a little bit why why why okay? Well, I'll I'll say one thing that I do know about the book and that I've the vibe that I get from the book, obviously the cover and even beyond, and even reading up some of the the the blurbs about the book is that it is nineties coded. Um and obviously that is because of your experience of the 90s, but I also think the 90s made so like you said, it made it's a particular um for better or for worse, it is a sort of very particular decade, which is it's the last decade where we actually counted the decades. Um and it also uh it was a decade that had so many different things. It was really, really key and notable for so many reasons. But why would why why is that important? Why does the 90s feel like such a character in this in this as well?

SPEAKER_03 10:10

It's a big question, and you know, there's really two big reasons for me. One is that it was kind of the moment in which, you know, the internet and cellular technology sweeps in. Those of us who came of age in the 90s, I was born in 1978, I was 12 in 1990, I was uh I can do math, 22 in 2000. So I saw my entire teenage years in the 90s. We had childhoods that were analog in the way that like every childhood before us was analog, you know, that there was no digital technology, there was no email, it wasn't easy to be in touch with people. You walked out of your house and you were gone. No one was gonna find you. If and when computers did come around, they were in like a special room that you kept to itself and you went to the computer, you went to visit the internet, and then you walked away from it. And that's an experience that everyone before us had, and no one after us will have. Even people without the internet, which they're totally people without the internet in America today, communities that have less access, but the idea of the internet, the idea of constant connectivity, the idea of social media that anything you do might end up online, that at any moment a job might contact you, or you might be getting the phone call that you've not that anyone it's just the phone anymore, actually. But that kind of concept of constant connectivity just did not exist before the 90s. And so, in that sense, I think the world has completely changed. And we are the the bridge generation, the ones who have experienced both sides of it. And that is an essential part of this memoir. It changed everyone's lives in ways that we are only still grappling with. The other part, and the more particular part, I think, is that the 90s were this moment where really, like, you know, there's been a gay rights movement, whatever you want to call it, since at least Stonewall, there have been queer people forever. But in terms of like mainstream acceptance and tolerance and uh, you know, all the stuff about like the same-sex marriage campaigns starting then and queer people showing up on television and in classrooms. Uh, we learned nothing about gay people in my schooling. You know, I'd never, when I come out, when I came out, I had never met an out gay person, right? And I think the 90s, too, was the time that that changed. It's after AIDS, it's because of the internet, it's because of all the people who have come out before us, it's because of all the movements that have happened, but like, so there's this real change. It's like the internet's connecting all of us, and queer people are becoming more and more and more visible. And for me, those two things really happened in the 90s, and that's what sets it apart as a decade.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

I think that's great. Yeah. Uh, well, there you have it. You know, I it's really interesting that you say that. I think the 90s, it was even more than that. Like, the internet connected us all, but like, you know, my idea of the internet was you log on to talk to people, and by that, the internet connected us all. But I never dreamt that we'd be doing our banking, our music, our watching, our to our news gathering, our socialization, our ordering of our food, like everything about our lives to is connected to the internet, even turning on your lights and turning them off, you know, um uh making reminders, doing your work and whatever work you have, whether it's doing Zooms to have work calls, or whether you're typing on a thing, all of that is connected to the internet. Reading a book these days, ordering a book, not going to ordering a book. I mean, we want to go to the library, and um uh you know, that's the everything I just um said is a is a is reason enough to not do those things and go and have real interactions with human beings. But we do have this as a tool, you know, we would be up to the phone. Even the library is on my phone now. I can I can download exactly. Exactly. You can rent and do things from the library. Um, and so there's that aspect of it, which meant that it changed all the other industries. I mean, that I remember thinking just in alone, like um in the in the during the pandemic, you know, suddenly there were all these apps that you could and we we had we've had apps that you could order food for for ages. But one thing that really popped up that I didn't realize that happened were like this phenomena of phantom kitchens and phantom restaurants that were like restaurants that only existed on the app for the purpose of delivering food. You couldn't go to it, you you'd have we don't know where it is. Which and they all popped up at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

It was like a hundred new restaurants appeared.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

You're like, what is it? Boom. Yeah, and and they like there's like no address. It's like really, really weird. And they have delicious food. It feels like a full thing, but it's just there's no like storefront.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

And when we were younger, we were warned not to give anyone our address on the internet, not to invite strangers off the internet into our. They own it all at this point, I'm sure. Yeah, all of it, all of it happens through the internet now, and none of that happened through the internet when we were kids because there was none.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

One other thing, and we mentioned this before, but I think really happened in the you know, the the 90s was obviously like a huge leap in technology because of the internet and so many other things, but then just coming off and you know, every decade has its like claim to fame in terms of technology. Um but the but the nineties was uh was I I would say was probably one of the one of the larger leaps forward, um especially compared to like recent year uh pri like recent the decades prior. Um was the fusion of like everything, the fusion of art forms and music and you know, um there was like literal fusions that things that were very juxtaposed were paired together for like a creative flair, but then also like not even necessarily like per um as as overt as that, things were just becoming more uh blended and like you know, then the nineties the the 80s began this for sure with MTV, but like the 90s was like I would say the nineties was the prime. MTV was at its in its infancy in 1980. And so it took 10 years, it took like four or five years for it to become a thing. Like Michael Jackson's album was like the first one Michael Jackson was one of the first black album, uh black artists, the first black artists that they played on the channel, and that was in like '83, four, five, eighty-five, I think. So halfway through the decade, they would just put a black artist on. So it wasn't even until the 90s when they started putting rap and hip-hop on. And then rap and hip-hop started fusing with pop and all this stuff. And we started to with country now, yeah. With country and like music started to like blend and all these different things, and genres across the board were like blend. Like, I feel like the biggest genre blending era was the 90s.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

Yeah, and I think that that has only, in some ways, like accelerated. We're not seeing as much genre blending, but we are seeing like I I talk to a lot of younger artists and a lot of folks, whether they're writers or visual artists or performers, and because the internet has made so many things so easy to access, and there's lots of things that aren't on the internet. I want to be clear, lots of movies that are never on the internet, lots of music never made it to the internet. But because you can so easily grab things, there are so many people now who are uh mixing things together, making work that's really referential, that is a look at someone else, or mashes up multiple pieces of music, multiple movies. I mean, I think that all comes about because of how our access to things has changed. And for me, personally, as a as a person growing up through this, it was really hard in some ways as to be a queer person in the 80s and 90s. You just did literally did not know anything. You didn't know other queer people, you didn't see them anywhere, you didn't uh find them in your schools, they weren't on your TV shows, and there were terrible parts of that, right? The loneliness, uh, the suicidality, the how easy it was to get picked on, how often I mean, one of the first stories in the book is all about I was 12 years old in my Spanish class in middle school, seventh grade, and uh a couple of kids who were just kind of jerks. They weren't even particularly like jerky to me. They were just, you know, those kind of class clowns who I feel like are such a a stereotype in 80s movies who make like racist and misogynistic and homophobic jokes, making some shitty jokes. And my Spanish teacher Yeah, they're still out there, right? Because this is not this is recent history. My Spanish teacher overheard them, and for a moment she she didn't understand they were making fun of me. She didn't know if they were making fun of anyone in particular. She tried to figure out what was going on, and then she thought, you know, this is a really teachable moment. Uh they're using the word fag. I can use this moment to teach these kids. And so she taught a whole lesson on how around the world the Spanish we were learning was normative textbook Spanish. And lots of those words meant different things in slang. And so she was going to teach us how to say faggot in every country that spoke Spanish around the world so that we would understand what we were saying, right? That was a a a fun little lesson in twelfth in seventh grade Spanish in 1990. And that's what it was like being queer back then, you know? Like you there was no protection you could depend upon. And I still remember maricón, hato, mariposa. Like, there are so many words for faggots.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

She's like, we're gonna make sure that you know how to equally offend in every every country. Faggot, faggot thing. Are you serious?

SPEAKER_03 20:00

The amazing thing is that when I walked when I walked out of that classroom, very sad, very depressed, depressed for months, but in the back of my mind, I can still remember this. That was the first moment where I was like, w wait a second. If there are words for faggots everywhere, then there are faggots everywhere. And that was like a light bulb going off in my head, right? That like up until that point, I had sort of learned a couple of different things about gay people, like officially. First, they were a biblical abomination. I was Catholic, uh, there was a lot of Leviticus, you know, so I I knew that. Uh second, that they were also kind of a a modern invention. They were this new fangled thing that was disrupting the world, these gay people, you know, and they wanted to destroy the family and school and uh and three, that uh they were actually all dead already because of AIDS. So that was kind of like what I understood about gay people in this moment. It was like biblical abomination, new fangled monstrosity, but also all dead. AIDS. AIDS. And so when my teacher did this, yeah, it sucked. It was awful, but it sort of sent me on like the quest I've been on for the rest of my life. It was like a clue. And as a historian, we we talk about this all the time when you're doing queer history. It's a practice called reading against the archive. It's like the official story you're being told by the news you're being given is one thing, but the useful thing that you have to pluck out of that information is something else entirely. So she was going to teach us how to say faggot around the world, and instead I learned, oh my god, there are gay people everywhere, right? And that is for me kind of the quintessential experience of what it was like in the 90s. I was constantly like bumping up against like the shittiest, most awful things you can imagine just as normative, just like that is what life was. And then through that, coming out the other side of it and being like, wait, there are queer people out there, and I'm gonna find them, and it's gonna be amazing. I loved the queer world that I discovered in New York City in the 90s. It had tons of problems, right? It was misogynistic, it was racist, it was separated into all of these different fractured spaces, people were poor, you could still have violence against you. But when you went to those clubs, it was like a world all its own. When you went to curfew and limelight and Esquilita and Meow Mix, and it was amazing. And it felt like a secret nobody else was in on. And where I got to experience the fun of nightlife and of dressing however you wanted and being in a honestly like a secret society. I don't know about you, but that's what it felt like to me. It was like our own little world and it had its own problems, but like we got to do things that were different. And if I showed up anywhere in America in the late 90s, I looked really different. You know, I had long hair, I wore a lot of makeup, I wore a lot of like traditional female clothing. I was really trying to figure out what it meant to be gay or trans or bi or queer. But I could show up at any country, any world, any place in the world. And yeah, people would be shitty to me, but also queer people would find me. And like by the end of the night, someone would be like, here's the party you should go to, here's the club, here's the bar, here's the restaurant. Why don't you come over to my place? Like it felt like a secret society, and that is what I love and hated about the 90s.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

And hated. And hated secrets.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

It was secret, and also you ran into the same seven people, you know, like the world felt like it was like big. And eventually we had to break out of that. And the internet helped us break out of it. It spread the world to the world what it meant to be queer, and it allowed us to find each other and come up with new words for who we are, new identities. All of this stuff that happened in and through the 90s and into the early 2000s. It was hard, but it was also great. And so I I really am trying to present my book as like I'm not angry at anyone. I'm this is not an accusation, this is not a thank you letter, this is not, oh my god, we had it so much better than the kids today, but it's not also we had it so much worse. It was different. And there was good shit and there was bad shit. Like I love that we live in the era of prep, right? And that we do not have to be, if you can afford the medications, you do not have to be afraid of AIDS in the way that was an absolute.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I mean, and it wasn't possible in the in the 90s. We we were afraid of it. Yeah. Constantly the current era for everybody listening.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

Yes. Yeah, but back then it was so different. I had a recurring nightmare that I was dying of AIDS from the time I was like 10 years old, right? I remember getting tested every like two months for years, constantly. I wouldn't even be having sex and I would go get tested. Like that's how how like uh unreal the fears were, you know? They were just overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

I yeah, I that's my I get tested regardless.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

And and kids today can't understand that at all, right? Like that's just not a world they've grown up in where the only thing you knew about gay people was they're gonna die of AIDS. And that's one of the chart changes that has happened in the course of our lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

What are some top three things that the 90s had that we no longer have that you miss?

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Okay, that is a great question. I would say this. I really do miss, and this is very regional, very local, but like the the mega clubs of the late 90s, mid to late 90s on the west side of Manhattan, the places that were like a little seedy, but like humongous, multi-floors, DJs going all the time.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah, big barge that fell into the ocean.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

Not the barge, no. No, I'm thinking more like uh Twilo or tunnels, the clubs, not bars, yeah, yeah. Those I I know that there are still parties out there and they are amazing. I've been to things at like the knockdown center and other locations that have like you know monthly parties, but like I never used to have to buy a ticket weeks in advance to make sure I could go to the club night. No, you just showed up and you waited online for like an hour and that was frustrating, but the line was full of like really sexy people, so there was also some good cruising. So that's one thing. I I miss the nightlife that I knew, even though nightlife today is its own incredible and amazing thing. I miss the version of it that I had. I also miss never worrying about where a photo was gonna end up, that someone was gonna take a picture of me, and that that was gonna be suddenly online, that it would, you know, uh show me doing something I didn't want people to know, or the wrong person would see it, or that surveillance. I I often felt like I could just disappear in the 90s. And I did. I would go away for weekends at a time, just leave where I was uh in school upstate, you could catch a bus down to the city, you could get into Grand Central, it was before 9-11, so you could rent a locker in Grand Central, leave all your stuff there, go over to the Big Cup, which was the gay coffee shop on 8th Avenue, where they would hand out free issues of HX and Next magazine, so you could look through the listings for like what parties were happening that week and plan your weekend, and then go home.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Which was inevitably to come and see Peppermint, who was often on the cover of both of those magazines.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

I saw you frequently in the 90s, I was very excited about that. I remember you from those days. And then I could go back to my other life, and and that was it. That no one knew where I was. I didn't have to make a phone call, I didn't have to respond to email, and no pictures were gonna show up on Facebook or you know, we didn't even have friends stirred with nothing like that back then. So I missed the clubs. I missed feeling like I could totally and completely disappear. And I think the the third thing that I missed, and it's a tough one, but as hard as it was, there was something about being a sort of like outlaw, a community that was so demonized, that was so um feared and hated, uh, and and maybe I wouldn't miss that if I hadn't experienced it, but there was something I don't know, I liked when people were a little scared of gay people. I liked when I felt a little like, yeah, I'm different in a way that is fundamental. And and I think that still exists today. I don't I want to be clear, but there was something about that feeling that to me cracked me open and made me ask a lot of questions of like, okay, well, if I'm told that these other people are evil and bad, and I'm told that about myself, then maybe I need to like like ask that question. It it it's something about being so in some ways targeted made me see things that I would not have otherwise seen.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

I'm gonna say that I hope I don't get I I'm I'm developing a theory here, so it's not that fleshed out. So please nobody drag me on this. But I'm counting that time. And of course there was extreme homophobia in our modern era, and there still is, right? And there probably unfortunately will be for a long time, especially with this reset that we're having. But I think I feel like I was alive for the bulk of the mainstream the homophobia that was mainstreamed in in the United States from the 80s into the 90s. And certainly in the 90s, there was lots of homophobia. Those are probably some of the largest like displays of homophobia that we would see like on the news or whatever. Um, but we were also seeing these personalities emerge and and certainly like the sort of commodification of the homoph the gay sort of identity was the the they were starting to figure out how to they were starting to figure out that that notion that young white gay men had this d this income stream that they wanted to bring them into capital. Yeah. And that the um the uh the they were discovering that and that like the the I guess the contributions to art and fashion were inseparable from the queer community. And so I think that they were I I honestly think that if it were if they could have framed if is if n if if if white men did not want to come out of the closet as fervently as they ended up doing in the nine eighties, seventies, eighty nineties or in in in the history, then then the LGBT community would have had a much harder go at it. And I think one of the things that um our that society, humanity, but certainly the United States and our country wan likes to do is to find these out groups that they can discriminate against and sort of find these people that they can place in a lower caste. Certainly gays have been in that group. But I think the lower castes, the castes that um I mean I'm just gonna say it, like their proximity to or their connection to whiteness and white people being in a part of that group means that the cast won't go all the way to the bottom. And so, you know, the gay like demonizing and harming gay people has always has been a thing and can will still be a thing and certainly is a thing now. But they're j like making a spectacle out of harming young white men is not something that this white-run country can get in the habit of doing.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

And so like I mean that's what transformed AIDS, right? Like that's what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's what transformed AIDS. When it when it was when it felt like it was like this black thing that was in the poor neighborhoods, and in in Oakland, there was no resources. And you're the historian more than me, you obviously know. There was very little resources. And the connection between the crack epidemic and the war on drugs and you know the the uh AIDS explosion that was happening in Oakland at the time, as opposed to how it was being portrayed and treated in in San Francisco, right across the bridge, uh, was like night and day. And we could just see it right there, right? And then, of course, the horrible, brutal murder of Matthew Shepherd could have been a could have gone a different way. People have could have said, look at what happens when you're and um some people certainly did use that as a terrible example, but like the country rallied and felt horrible and sense of remorse, rightly so, and um and empathy and all these things. And suddenly, you know, a young like literally the next year, we had Ryan Philippi playing a young gay AIDS patient every single year on World AIDS Day of all things, on uh uh uh one turns. One life to live. I believe it was one life to live. Yeah, yeah. Um, and so like you know, so so that that that that that I think saved some of the um doom and gloom that the that the queer that the gay community would could have would have had to go to. I know that sounds kind of backwards, but no, no, it's definitely true.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

Yeah, and and there's there are like historical parallels to this, right? Like Sarah Shulman talks about in her work on AIDS, she talks about how because like men who grew up in privilege, who were they not gay and HIV positive, would have been, you know, had so much privilege because they were in the same boat as everybody else with AIDS, that the movement was able to do things that it was never able to do, would not have been able to do otherwise. You look back like a hundred years at prohibition. The reason like the 1920s is this decade full of incredible art and parties and bars and nightlife is because prohibition meant that the recreational choices of straight white rich men were just as criminal as the recreational choices of everybody else. And when you do that, suddenly the parties take off because those men are able to like give protection, spread money. They don't want to persecute these things in the same way, right? It's like, like you said, the closeness to whiteness brings a sort of umbrella and power with it. And I am not saying that like I want to go back in any way to bad times, to worse times, to uh more homophobia everywhere. But there was something about the fact that like white gay guys felt endangered that sort of brought them into the community, brought us into the community.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

I mean, just as much, just as much of a risk as there was for people being outed and assumed to have AIDS just by being just for being gay, there was also a I even think amongst people who were um not connected to the queer community and perpetu uh perpetuators, perpetuants, perpetuators uh of uh anti of homophobia, um they would also protect the notion of someone wanting to stay in the closet. Obviously, that like helps perpetuate the sort of like all the harmful, toxic, patriarchal systems that we have going on. But I do think that there was like like there were not a lot, I think I feel like the salacious news people were the ones, and probably the shady gays were the ones who were in the newsrooms outing people. But like the straits, if they said, oh, he could be gay, let's not even talk about like they were the ones who were like, nope, as long as you agree, shut it down. Marry that woman and be productive to this corporation, we will protect you. And I know they did that for politicians and for new for people in entertainment and for people in in Fortune 500 companies. They definitely did that. And so that was some of that protection where you could go out and have a a bender and be getting fucked all the way every 12 words and Sunday by every other big black dick that you were hunting for at the clubs at night and be passed out in the morning, and the cops would take you and clean you up and make sure that nobody found out if you were right.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

Some of the time. Lindsay Graham, that's his entire career, you know, that's it. But if you do that and you uh speak up or you in any way, you know, like disturbing.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

You had to pretend you had to agree to participate in the system. That was the trade-off, right?

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Yeah. And I think there is something that I miss about a time period where like the gay bar I went to as a kid upstate as a kid, you know, when I was like eight common ground. Uh it had been bombed by neo-Nazis, and so it moved out of its original location to one much further out of town, so that it was, you know, safe. And it was uh it was imperfect. I I'm not gonna say it was a perfect place, but it was a melting pot of like men and women and trans and cis and as much as there were in this rural, you know, part of New York, uh, people of color, in a way that most of the bars I went to in New York after I moved down here uh were not, you know, and there was something about that closeness that was forced on us for a lot of reasons that I I do miss. I don't want to say that it was better. Again, I'm not here to argue that that time was better or worse. But you asked what I miss, and that that is something that I do miss from that time. I think I don't know, you know, look, there is so much more that we could talk about uh that I would love to talk about once you've read the book. But actually, speaking of things that I am going to miss, I have my launch party tonight, so I do need to head out to the launch party for my bed. If you are listening to this, probably it's too late. But if it's not, you know, check the Strands website. Maybe you can get a ticket, maybe you can still join us. It's gonna be me and the incredible author Sabrina Imbler, who wrote the memoir How Far the Light Reaches. I highly recommend if you have not read How Far the Light Reaches, it's an absolutely incredible book. I'm so excited to have this conversation with Sabrina and to continue this conversation with you, Pep, once you've got the book. And then we can like I won't be running off in a crazy 10,000 different directions because my head is at the launch already.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

It's an amazing day. I'm so happy and so uh proud of you and so grateful for your mind and that you're able to put pen to paper and articulate in such a wonderful and expressive way. And I'm just super proud of you. And I wanna I wanna ask everybody to join me in saying congratulations to you. Today is a huge day. Um, for everybody that's listening to this, please go out and make sure that you have your copy, get your copy ordered. We will definitely be doing that interview over on allstore.com. We'll keep you posted on that. Remember that we're only every other week for this summer. But if you did make it this far into the conversation and you have ordered your copy of My Bad, make sure you place a yellow heart into the comments. And um, and then uh make sure that you tune in for our next episode. Congratulations. Thank you so much for you are the best. Uh see you in a couple weeks. Love you. See you all too. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by us, Peppermint and Cube, produced and edited by Josh Rosenspig with original music composed by Nell Balavan.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

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SPEAKER_03 39:29

You can stay connected and join the conversation by following us at Peppermint 247 or write to us at questions at queer101podcast.com.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Thank you for listening, and remember, our history is your history. Stay proud, stay curious, and we'll see you next time on Queer One One.