According to my mum, it wasn’t looked on the same then, especially between the wars, but before as well. My mother was brought up by her grandma in the 1930s, and said grandma had a younger sister who was a lesbian and transgender, who dressed mainly as a man. She would drink down the pub with her mates (single women were not allowed in pubs, but dressed as a man it was OK) and even get into fights. All her male mates of course knew she was a woman, but it didn’t make any difference to them. She was also known to have several close female friends. Of course there would have been many disapproving voices, but all in all she wasn’t ostracised as you may expect.
Edit: Mum of course wouldn’t have been aware of this sort of thing at the time, as a young girl, but she pieced it together later with the help of her gran.
You are referring just to women!! Which has always been tolerated, perhaps because it features in male fantasies so a male dominated world didn’t see the need to control it.
I remind people that for men homosexuality remained illegal until 1967, and after that was still a matter of harassment and bigotry. And as for attitudes around war time, ask Alan Turing whether he wasn’t ostracised….but whoops, you can’t as he committed suicide to escape the pressure.
Yes, of course I was just talking about women. And I was talking about between the wars rather than during and after. It’s just a story I’ve been told about many times by my mum, who knew her very well. Not sure why this upset you so much.
I do find glossing over past atrocities quite upsetting, so perhaps did react strongly. I read your reply as implicitly suggesting it applied to homosexuality, as you didn’t point out that of course for women their behaviour was legal.
The women your mother referred to may well have painted a different picture of whether they were ostracised in their lives had they spoken to her.
I should probably mute this thread as this mawkish idealisation of the past doesn’t sit comfortably. ……
Radclyffe Hall, who wrote ‘The Well of Loneliness’ was very famous between the wars as a mannish lesbian, it is a long time since I read it but, reading the title, I don’t think she welcomed her lot in life.
Henry David Thoreau . “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he wrote in Walden in 1854.
I think many do not welcome their lot in life. I remember my mother saying to me in the 60s how fortunate I was as a woman to be living through women’s lib. She spent her life being a good mother and housewife and that was a small world for her. In fact for us as her children it was ideal (and no @JaneJones there is nothing mawkish about my memories) because she was always there for us - we were fortunate in having a very stable and loving family background.
One person’s pleasure may be anothers mawk.
Most of us will remember both the happy times and the sad times, but may not choose to share the less good things quite so freely.
One’s own memories of one’s own childhood can be happy, full of fondness and completely rosy. But to extrapolate to saying life in the X’s was implicitly better than today and painting a rosy picture of it is in general mawkish.
What was better in the’50s? Freedom real mates not people you have never met but have friended ( 
) on social meeja. Street games, hours of football, cricket, exploring in the woods, food, family relationships, parents married and staying together, no new " dads" every few years, education etc. etc.
Better now, healthcare ( if you can get it), holidays, sports facilities (for those few who don’t spend all day poking a little plastic jobby). Now i can’t think of much else
I’m assuming pen pals didn’t exist in the 50s?
Mine certainly did, one in Brittany and another in Norway? 
Yes of course we had pen pals but they didn’t replace the dozens of mates you physically met and played games with.I
We didn’t sit on our arses all day writing to each other 
I have 4 children in their teens and twenties Moray - I can assure you, your view of young people today is far from the truth about them or their friends - or the hundreds of other young people I’ve worked with over recent years - mainly setting up enterprises specifically to address social and environmental problems.
To be honest I’m in awe of the coming generations - they are generally better educated, more thoughtful and indeed in many ways more mature - and it seems to me a lot of them are out there actively trying to undo much of the harm caused by older generations.
Thank you @Geof_Cox. I couldn’t think of anything to reply with that wasn’t rather rude so I decided to 
, but I’m glad someone has challenged what was a ridiculous comment.
Pleased to say that the family tradition of making paper-chains is still alive and well in deepest, darkest Norfolk
And what exactly was ridiculous about it? Too truthful?
maybe because its a sweeping generalisation,
Well I made 10 points so hardly a sweeping generalisation. And I was THERE were you?
Certainly was, but my children and grandchildren weren’t and like others have said my experience with young people doesn’t bare out your generalisation.
By the way because you were THERE doesn’t always give you perspective.
It certainly does. I wasn’t in Dreamland. I presume you were unlucky and have the same fabulous childhood as me and my mates.
Also as an aside we didn’t go around carrying knives in our early teens and stabbing other kids to death.