Being LGBTQ is one of the few identities or choices that will result in being disowned by a significant portion of American families. That attitude is edging out of the mainstream but it’s practically dogma among evangelicals and other socially conservative groups. So yes, those people do live in a different reality, where Biden admin policy and “Will and Grace” don’t matter at all.
You're making an emotional argument (LGBTQ people get disowned by families) against a logical argument (LGBTQ is supported at so many levels of culture that it no longer counts as "counterculture").
No I’m not. The culture of many, many Americans is so anti-LGBTQ that they’ll disown their family. Thats their culture! There is not one American culture, social conservatism is a very common culture in America, and being LGBTQ is counter to that culture. Ergo LGBTQ culture is counterculture.
That's not what counterculture is. Counterculture is counter the mainstream culture. Which is more mainstream in the US, (ie, in media, art, products, government, businesses, etc): suppressing LGBTQ people or giving LGBTQ people a platform? It's pretty obvious if you're being honest. You appear to be suggesting that it counts for nothing because some LGBTQ people get disowned by some conservative or religious people.
> That's not what counterculture is. Counterculture is counter the mainstream culture. Which is more mainstream in the US, (ie, in media, art, products, government, businesses, etc): suppressing LGBTQ people or giving LGBTQ people a platform? It's pretty obvious if you're being honest. You appear to be suggesting that it counts for nothing because some LGBTQ people get disowned by some conservative or religious people.
It could also be their outdated picture of "mainstream" culture is a fossil embedded in the self-justifications of the current mainstream culture.
Some people will forever pretend current-year is the 1950s, because, not because they want to live in the 50s, but because they see themselves as the people who are abolishing it.
This thread keeps conflating a subset of culture which exists within families or small subsets of already small towns within America which is a subset of western culture... in order to dismiss the dominant mainstream culture from which counter cultures are sprung from on the wider internet.
Despite the fact these current cultural trends and related ideologies are very much dominant on every major western social media platform and even more so among dominant traditional media platforms (and their executives and journalists). Yet they still pretend it's not the default culture in the west.
The existence of pushback from significant/influential parts of the population != you're not the dominant mainstream culture.
I think it’s less an issue with the thread and more an issue with people in general. The amount of people who view themselves or want to be viewed as a member of a dominant mainstream culture that is trying to force others to assimilate to the mainstream culture is incredibly small. Almost everyone prefers to view themselves as the plucky rebels fighting for survival and what’s right. There’s more than a few former hippie boomers who still view themselves as part of a counterculture sticking it to the man as they use the money they get from their cushy VP of marketing position at a major bank to sue any developers that try to build affordable housing near their gorgeous McMansion.
My aunt went from burning American flags and marching in support of interracial marriage and civil rights to clutching her pearls about Marilyn Manson ripping up bibles and gay marriage becoming legal, but even as she supports censorship and state mandated injustice, she will always view herself as the protestor that fought against censorship and state mandated injustice.
Even I find myself occasionally saying things about zoomers that sounds just like stuff my dad used to say about me and it’s a lot easier to rationalize it as “no, TikTok is actually hurting kid’s attention spans, it’s different this time” than admit that I might be acting just as silly as he was when he said exactly the same thing about my Game Boy.
I think you yourself are a little mixed up - these attitudes and opinions arent limited to small failing towns, its entire states when you get off the coasts.
There isnt really a default culture across america the way you are insisting. The place is fucking huge.
Yes, I agree that corporate businesses and the entertainment industry have broadly adopted acceptance of LGBTQ people. My point is that what counts as mainstream culture is still different in Florida and California. America is not a perfect homogenate.
That is by design and I consider it a feature rather than a bug. We have options to live at a local or state level closer to our own values rather than being forced to conform at a national level.
Our national institutions are very accepting of LGBTQ as well as the federal government. Looking at LGBTQ equality by state, https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps the majority of the country, 29 states are fair or pro LGBTQ vs 21 that have negative policy or low equality.
Is it still counterculture when it is accepted and embraced by the overwhelming majority of citizens, education and cultural institutions, and protected by laws in the majority of the country?
