`”the straights” now refers exclusively to het people specifically ` wait, did anyone use “the straights” for anyone NOT straight? i thought it was about straight people who lean into heteronormativity-
Up until some time in the 80s “straights” referred on anyone who did not participate in some form of reviled counterculture.
“straight edge” or “straight laced”
WASPS in suits and ties who went to church every Sunday and only had good missionary sex with the opposite sex for the means of procreation.
People who didn’t do drugs, or have gay sex, or listen to rock and roll.
Peoplew who weren’t hippies.
People who weren’t beatniks.
You know, man, the straights. (Imagine I am a beatnik in a beret snapping my fingers while I say this.)
I’ll pull up some examples of this usage later!
But yeah once upon a time if you referred dismissively to “the straights” people assumed you took drugs at weird parties and had sex with strangers. Not that you were explicitly homosexual.
You can see how it arrived at meaning ‘not gay people’ though. Especially in the 80s when all the straights started doing cocaine at business meetings, and the AIDS crisis etc.
–🌺😈
It always throws me off when my cishet parents refer to people as straight, because they grew up in the time when straight meant normal and not part of any kind of subculture or anything. My parents were definitely not straight by that meaning, and i get momentarily confused when they say theyre not straight till i remember what they mean.
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