Alright, get this: Dennis the Menace is a kid. Do you remember what life was like when you were a kid? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the original creator of Dennis the Menace wasn't trying to convey a message that beating up girly, sissy boys is a good thing, but was actually just trying to capture a slice-of-life, winsome childhood story? It actually kind of sickens me that people are trying to find a political message in a 50s comic series aimed at children.
Karilyn wrote:
The understanding that not all feminine guys are gay, and not all gay guys are feminine, is fairly new.
You can say they aren't gay. But this is the 50s. If you put a feminine guy in a story at that time, they WERE gay. Heck, that was true pretty much through the 90s. Even now, the odds of a feminine male not being heavily implied as being gay in a current television or comic is slim to none. About the only time it doesn't occur, is if the writer wants to make the specific point that "Oh yeah, haha everyone thinks this guy is gay, but he's really straight as a ruler. Haha, look at the drama and comedy from the awkard social situations!"
You can try to pretend that "Oh yeah, the creator wasn't anti-gay, and these were just feminine boys who weren't gay," but that would be pretty darn hard to believe.
Where do you get the idea that feminine male characters in the fifties are automatically gay? You act like this trend was strongest in the fifties, and has diminished since, but actually the opposite is more likely to be true. Homosexuals were less outspoken and well-known in the fifties than during the last twenty years. The stereotype of femininity=homosexuality probably wasn't a stereotype at all, at the time. But I can understand why you might think it was at the time. Cartoons in the fifties were definitely offensive by today's standards, but not for gay jokes.
And I don't really understand what you mean about feminine males being implied as gay. Do you think this trend being propagated by writers? I highly doubt the creators of Dennis the Menace ever tried to imply that Walter was gay. Sure, writers might sometimes make gay jokes, but only for cheap laughs in more mature, modern stories.
If anything, I think this trend of softies=gays is largely due to a fanbase reading too far into characters, and picking up on implications that aren't really there. Kind of like what you and Bacon are doing right now.