Hi, Byler fans. I don't usually post here but I just finished the Stranger Things finale and wanted to get something out that I feel needs to be said. My grandmother had an older brother named, coincidentally enough, William.
He was born in 1919 and he was gay.
Everyone in the family knew. It became an unspoken secret. And hereâs the part people don't really say about the past: he wasnât cast out. He wasnât beaten. He wasnât disowned.
They loved him. They were a closeâknit family.
What they did instead was play a game called pretend.
They never said it out loud. When the family gathered for holidays, his siblings brought their spouses. Uncle Bill came alone. His partner wasn't invited, of course. They didn't even want to know he had a partner. When children asked why Uncle Bill wasnât married, the adults smiled and said, âHeâs just a bachelor.â
That answer was given to my mother in the 1950s. To my sister in the 1970s. And to me in the 1980s.
People like the Duffer brothers seem to imagine that the past was only made up of violent, cartoonish homophobes. And sadly, there were a lot of those, just like there still are today. But some families were âfineâ with gay peopleâas long as they were quiet. As long as they didnât ask for the same things. As long as they didnât bring love to the table.
Uncle Bill was accepted on one condition: He sat alone.
So when a modern show frames a gay boyâs arc as âlearning to accept himself without expecting love in return,â thatâs not radical. Thatâs not brave. Thatâs not new.
That story is over a hundred years old.
Itâs the story of being tolerated, not chosen. Of being loved in theory, but denied in practice. Of being welcomeâso long as you donât make anyone uncomfortable.
My Uncle William lived that life a century ago. We donât need to keep calling it progress.
I know a lot of people on here are young. So take the pain you're feeling now and remember it as you get older. Write your own stories that embrace what this show denied. Write the story you wanted Byler to be. Be the generation that stops telling this tired old story.
Do it for my Uncle Bill. Do it for Noah. Do it to give the middle finger to the Duffer brothers. Most of all, do it for yourself.
