I remember when I was a teenager, I was told that hetero guys get a single earring in their left ear. and gay guys have single earring in their right ear. guess who had a single earring pierced into her right ear! :D

It's fun to discover those "early girlfag things" that I did way before becoming aware of being one, but also I don't want to fall into the trap of manipulating my story to fit into a consistent narrative. I'm not a 100% girlfag, never was, always was a person in between labels, and that's what I will always be.

re: girlfag terminology: I'm aware "fag" is not my term to reclaim, but tbh but all the people who for decades never protested against the term "fag hag" and now are complaining about ppl using "girlfag" can fuck right off.

what bothers them is not really the terminology, but that gendequeer people who aren't really men claim a gay male identity. things are complicated, and that's not going to go away.

@distelfliege in Britain this term is rarely used as in our slang -fag" more commonly means a cigarette (eine Kippe).

in coastal towns you may have a "fag house" which might be raided by the Police, but not because lewd stuff is occuring there.. 20 cigarettes in UK can cost over €11 because of taxes, folk travel to BE/DE and other EU nations, buy in bulk and resell for profit (which is illegal)

we did have the same stereotype about earrings but other way round (L/R reversed!)

@vfrmedia thanks for the funny anecdotes and the help getting what lewd means!

the reversed earrings thing is especially funny when I think about traffic participants in UK and DE doing linksverkehr and rechtsverkehr ;D

@distelfliege I was more surprised the earring "indication" was also used in DE as I'd thought society over there was more advanced than 1980s UK; although looking at history this was by very narrow margin and both countries had split ages of consent, so younger folk dared not come out for fear of being arrested for sex offences.

Although youth in mid-late 80s UK (at least my friends) were often *more* tolerant than today, no one judged if anyone else was straight or gay!

@vfrmedia I grew up in the very christian south of DE - I'm not sure if germany could be called "more advanced" at all though!

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90ies, and the aids crisis hit germany as well. that was when southern german politicians even talked about putting hiv-positive people into camps, causing many to flee the south. bavaria closed its borders to hiv positive "ausländer" back then. it was awful.