Former 00s emo (Millennial) kid here.
Uhh no we didn’t. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia were Extremely rife in the scene. Precisely because the boys looked like the girls - the boys who were not closeted transfems like myself frequently were extremerly sexist. If you look at the lyrics of most of those scene bands - hell even the titles like “ikilledthepromqueen” and “kill Whitney dead” it was mostly misogyny. Men in their 20s frequently groomed my then-16 year old friends, and I had to convince them to not date the 23 year old while at high school. Many of these men would later be charged for child r*pe.
Evenly openly gay people like Jeffery Starr are transphobic and reactionary.
While I felt better dressing like a girl in the 00s, it was no substitute for HRT and actually being a girl, as opposed to a feminine boy. I was still dysphoric in women’s clothes as long as didn’t have the body of a woman, and treated socially like “woman-lite”.
The worst part is - a lot of straight boys did it for the attention of mostly straight women, rather than gender affirmation like myself.
Being emo or scene is no substitute for trans liberation and feminism. It was absolutely the opposite of gender abolitionist. Because often the sexism and queer phobia of scene kids came precisely because many emo boys felt too emasculated and needed to prove their masculinity, even in women’s jeans. Hence the lyrics and grooming.
A boy can still dress effeminate and act like a patriarch. There is a reason so many scene bands have vocalists with SA/CSA allegations or charges against them, Lostprophets being an extreme example.
Please stop making it the utopia it never was, especially if you were not there. I don’t miss it. I am a woman, not an emo femboy. I don’t want us to go back to 90s-00s values. Zoomers idolise my childhood too much.
I also don’t want my femininity abolished - I was still dysphoric when I was androgynous. It’s why I get upset when I am *still* they/themmed by strangers.
As a broader note: I am sick of “gender abolition” being used as a subtle mechanism for transmisogyny and pressuring trans women to detransition (OP does not imply this to be fair). I don’t want to abolish MY gender identity, just patriarchal gender roles and power dynamics. My femininity is not something to be abolished, but empowered and celebrated. The same applies to those who are NB. Men get to be men, just not to be at a top of a sex hierarchy. Emo men still were men, most of the time.
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