Oh man, Rocky Horror. That\u2019s a big part of why I roll my eyes at the admonitions that I must totally reorder my worldview in accordance with our new post-gender utopia or else Be Judged By History: I am aware of the 1970s, which did not in fact turn out to be the thin end of the wedge.
And I\u2019m not just talking about Ren\u00e9e Richards and Wendy Carlos, like the two big 70s rock songs drawing on the exciting novelty of trans women, Lou Reed\u2019s Walk On the Wild Side and The Kinks\u2019 Lola, peaked on the US Billboard charts at #16 in 1973 and #9 in 1970, respectively.
Rocky Horror Picture Show was a 1975 cult classic (from a 1973 stage musical) with an intense decades-long fandom, where a \u201csweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania\u201d introduces a normie couple to the wonders of polymorphous perversity.
Not just that, Tim Curry\u2019s Frank-N-Furter was clearly drawing on Liza Minnelli\u2019s Sally Bowles AND Alan Cumming\u2019s Emcee from gender-nonconformity-fest Cabaret, hit 1972 movie from a 1966 stage musical, set in the early 1930s.
Whenever I see something about hip young guys who declare themselves pansexual but then caveat it so they clearly mean \u201cpeople who would be considered women in 2008\u2033, I think of Velvet Goldmine, the 1998 film about the 1970s post-hetero glam rock scene.
And what\u2019s that one line, in the context of all the boys calling themselves bisexual and snogging each other for female attention (I only now notice the gender-swap parallel to \u201890s-2000s lesbian chic Girls Gone Wild culture), something like \u201cthe problem with declaring yourself bisexual, is eventually someone is going to expect you to have sex with a man\u201d