Growing up in Kansas in the early 2000s, I associated gay liberation with noisy radicals who didn’t have families, and gay pride rallies with distasteful displays of overcharged sexuality. From my own perspective, the premise is almost insulting.
After all, if some members of the LGBTQ community are seen and heard more than others, what progress has been made? If everyone isn’t included, no one is.Ĭorrection: A previous version of this article misstated the amount of racial diversity among primetime broadcast networks and the percentage of characters who were white in programs on cable and streaming services.Has the American gay movement failed? It’s a striking and likely counterintuitive question for 2018, when marriage equality is the law of the land and gay people occupy prominent positions in nearly every field of endeavor.
We need more transgender characters, more queer characters on the LGBTQ spectrum (nonbinary, asexual, intersex, pansexual), and more queer disabled characters, portrayed fairly and free of stereotypes. And while streaming services boast wins like having the most transgender characters on-screen, they, too, fall victim to pitiful levels of racial diversity.Īll around, television must do better in representation-specifically in racial and gender diversity. But through it all-and still today-racial diversity has been lacking and storylines have often fumbled.Įven more recent shows, like Modern Family and Transparent, feature primarily white characters with the killing of Poussey in 2015, even Orange is the New Black-a show that has always been exemplary for queer POC female representation-chose to bury one if its gays. The 2000s brought us groundbreaking queer-centric shows like Queer as Folk and The L-Word. Queer female storylines improved with shows like Roseanne, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ellen Degeneres’ early sitcom Ellen, and LA Law. And they were often used for shock value, like the kiss between Rachel and her college friend on Friends. While sympathetic portrayals of gay men have been around since the early 70s, it wasn’t until the 90s that queer female characters were finally introduced to TV.
Too many TV shows continue to bury their gays GLAAD found that since the start of 2016, over 25 queer women have been killed off on scripted and streaming TV series. Freeform (formerly ABC Family) continues to make huge strides for inclusion, with 27 recurring LGBTQ characters across the network’s lineup, the most on cable TV.Įven with the rise in representation we’ve seen in the last decade, many queer characters on TV often fall victim to stereotypes and tropes for instance, GLAAD’s report highlights that many storylines featuring transgender characters on TV center on coming out. Disney Channel just announced their first character to come out as gay, a huge step for children’s programming. There are actors like Tituss Burgess to applaud, who has been celebrated for, among other things, using his role on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to undermine the “ gay best friend” trope. Shows like Transparent, which features seven recurring LGBTQ characters, and One Mississippi, a semi-autobiographical show from out lesbian comedian Tig Notaro, continue to push forward both the scope and prominence of queer roles on TV. GLAAD noted it was able to count asexual and nonbinary characters for the first time in the report’s history. Those findings can make it hard to celebrate the wins, but there were definite wins. And about half of all LGBTQ characters on TV are gay men-a preponderance that’s endured, generally speaking, since queer characters first broke into TV in the 1970s.
In addition, the number of queer women on broadcast and cable programs actually dropped this year, due in part to “a very deadly year for queer female characters,” the report noted. GLAAD said racial diversity amongst primetime broadcast networks dropped two percent since last year, and on cable and streaming services, 64 percent and 77 percent of LGBTQ characters counted, respectively, were white.