One of your main bits of evidence that Americans are disrespectful is that we dress like slobs, but that's not what respect means. You can tell a little story about how dressing up conveys respect for the people around you by showing that you put in effort, and respect for yourself by presenting yourself nicely, but you can also tell a story about how dressing down conveys respect for the people around you by releasing them from the obligation to perform a silly social ritual that per everyone's revealed preferences they don't want to perform, and respect for yourself by living authentically. Another one would be that dressing nicely shows off either wealth or a particular kind of cultural competency that encodes class in a way that is inaccessible to some people, therefore putting them down and displaying contempt for anyone who can't manage it. Since you have some background in fashion, this might be an alien perspective to you, but it's definitely not the case that nicer-clothes = more respect. Respect is about how you treat people. How you dress is part of it, and showing up to a wedding in sweats is obviously disrespectful, but it's not at all obvious that going about your daily life in casual clothing is disrespectful.
I'll allow that we may have had a hiatus in class expression between the 40s and 70s (though I'm pretty dubious even of this), but the idea that class was invented in the 80s is absurd. The robber barons, Southern planters, and the Easter financiers around the turn of the 20th century were all way more overt in their class expression than the elite of the 80s. We had a rash of anarchist terrorism motivated on a class basis that resulted in a president getting assassinated. Just walk through the historic part of Detroit and tell me with a straight face that class was invented in America in the 80s.
Finally, the idea that Europeans should be held up as exemplars of respect is crazy to anyone who has worked in a multinational company. Southern Europeans are generally perfectly lovely, but nearly without fail upon having some distant co-worker be rude and unprofessional to me I'll look up where they are based and it's somewhere in Northern Europe (and no they aren't anglophone). I don't actually mind this too much because it means they don't dissemble and you know where you stand with them. I'd much rather work with a Dutchman or German than someone from a high power distance culture who will either not call out a bad idea if they are lower rank or bully people if they are higher rank. Fortunately, there is a culture that manages to both be low power distance and professional: mine. Yes, I understand that this is culturally dependent and everyone has their own perspective. My perspective is that Americans do by far the best job of both remembering that their co-workers are people with egos and getting shit done. (I will say that the French that I've worked with in a professional context seem much closer to the American norms of professionalism than a lot of other Europeans).
For what it’s worth I think one of your two options is the most likely explanation, but this is a false dilemma. There is a third option: non-cis people might be more likely to lie (both to themselves and others) to make themselves seem more interesting.
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One of your main bits of evidence that Americans are disrespectful is that we dress like slobs, but that's not what respect means. You can tell a little story about how dressing up conveys respect for the people around you by showing that you put in effort, and respect for yourself by presenting yourself nicely, but you can also tell a story about how dressing down conveys respect for the people around you by releasing them from the obligation to perform a silly social ritual that per everyone's revealed preferences they don't want to perform, and respect for yourself by living authentically. Another one would be that dressing nicely shows off either wealth or a particular kind of cultural competency that encodes class in a way that is inaccessible to some people, therefore putting them down and displaying contempt for anyone who can't manage it. Since you have some background in fashion, this might be an alien perspective to you, but it's definitely not the case that nicer-clothes = more respect. Respect is about how you treat people. How you dress is part of it, and showing up to a wedding in sweats is obviously disrespectful, but it's not at all obvious that going about your daily life in casual clothing is disrespectful.
I'll allow that we may have had a hiatus in class expression between the 40s and 70s (though I'm pretty dubious even of this), but the idea that class was invented in the 80s is absurd. The robber barons, Southern planters, and the Easter financiers around the turn of the 20th century were all way more overt in their class expression than the elite of the 80s. We had a rash of anarchist terrorism motivated on a class basis that resulted in a president getting assassinated. Just walk through the historic part of Detroit and tell me with a straight face that class was invented in America in the 80s.
Finally, the idea that Europeans should be held up as exemplars of respect is crazy to anyone who has worked in a multinational company. Southern Europeans are generally perfectly lovely, but nearly without fail upon having some distant co-worker be rude and unprofessional to me I'll look up where they are based and it's somewhere in Northern Europe (and no they aren't anglophone). I don't actually mind this too much because it means they don't dissemble and you know where you stand with them. I'd much rather work with a Dutchman or German than someone from a high power distance culture who will either not call out a bad idea if they are lower rank or bully people if they are higher rank. Fortunately, there is a culture that manages to both be low power distance and professional: mine. Yes, I understand that this is culturally dependent and everyone has their own perspective. My perspective is that Americans do by far the best job of both remembering that their co-workers are people with egos and getting shit done. (I will say that the French that I've worked with in a professional context seem much closer to the American norms of professionalism than a lot of other Europeans).
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