My first “online” service was GEnie, logging in for the first time in November 1991. Yeah, I can verify that the same issues were there, but they were often also easier to avoid. (More isolated communities? Not as easy to navigate so trollies actually had to work for it? I don’t know.) It was also an amazing thing for a lonely young person, just really starting to come to grips with their sexuality as a reality, to immediately find a group of actual people who were also queer. I know for a fact that the first time I logged into that GEnie’s chat system was the first time I’d ever identified myself as something other than my AGAB.
(And hey, that was the same November I got notification that I was being investigated for “possible homosexual/bisexual activity” and that my TS:SCI clearance was being suspended. That was all kinds of fun.)
Finding my people was transcendent.
In that time, we weren’t exactly widely accepted. While I am well aware of how we still have a long way to go, knowing the differences between then and now actually gives me hope. At that time there was just starting to be some talk of accepting “gays in the military,” not very widely supported, complete with lots of bigotry in the newspaper, both the civilian ones and the Stars and Stripes. (I still have some of those articles.) Being able to go home and talk with other queer people … honestly I hope none of the young people in my life ever have that specific feeling because I hope none of them ever have that kind of isolation and repression again!
Okay, I don’t want to turn this into a long saga, but it wasn’t as clean and bright as so many want it to be back then, nostalgia being a hell of a drug and all that, but there was also some amazing things and overall: positive.
