He was a dick about it, but it does get tiring to see mostly femmes and drag queens representing gay men in mainstream media. There are so many of us that aren’t femme or catty or flamboyant. Those things are fine but it starts to feel like a stereotype instead of true representation.
Oh man, I agree that it’s super refreshing when writers add “minority” characters whose character doesn’t revolve around that one part of their personality.
A lawyer who happens to be gay. And a father. And raised by a single mom, etc. He’s not “the gay guy”, just a character who happens to be gay as much as another character is straight.
An engineer who happens to be black. And is really into origami, etc. His character isn’t constantly pointing out “white guys” and “black guys”. He’s just a dude from St. Louis.
It feels much more progressive and realistic and respectful to me.
In the 90s+ it was good to start seeing a lot more diverse characters, but too many have been one-dimensional, sometimes to the point of being props.
Those things are fine but it starts to feel like a stereotype instead of true representation.
Popular media doesn’t care about ‘true representation’. It cares about getting clicks, readers and subscribers. Of course the media tends to sell stereotypes and fads.
Drag queens represent a general idea of ‘gay’ because they’re flamboyant, and that sells, and the media doesn’t have to care that this skews the idea of who gay people are. Furthermore, bigots won’t learn that gay men can represent majority gender norms easily if they don’t want to, because bigotry is not based on reality. I can imagine bigots generally reacting to pictures of gay dudes who look much like they do with “but they’re not gay, they don’t have nail polish”.
He was a dick about it, but it does get tiring to see mostly femmes and drag queens representing gay men in mainstream media. There are so many of us that aren’t femme or catty or flamboyant. Those things are fine but it starts to feel like a stereotype instead of true representation.
I’m cishet but it is so refreshing to see the occasional gay male characters on TV that are not stereotypical in any way.
I didn’t love Star Trek: Discovery, but I did love that the gay couple were just a couple of guys who loved each other and were married.
Oh man, I agree that it’s super refreshing when writers add “minority” characters whose character doesn’t revolve around that one part of their personality.
A lawyer who happens to be gay. And a father. And raised by a single mom, etc. He’s not “the gay guy”, just a character who happens to be gay as much as another character is straight.
An engineer who happens to be black. And is really into origami, etc. His character isn’t constantly pointing out “white guys” and “black guys”. He’s just a dude from St. Louis.
It feels much more progressive and realistic and respectful to me.
In the 90s+ it was good to start seeing a lot more diverse characters, but too many have been one-dimensional, sometimes to the point of being props.
Popular media doesn’t care about ‘true representation’. It cares about getting clicks, readers and subscribers. Of course the media tends to sell stereotypes and fads.
Drag queens represent a general idea of ‘gay’ because they’re flamboyant, and that sells, and the media doesn’t have to care that this skews the idea of who gay people are. Furthermore, bigots won’t learn that gay men can represent majority gender norms easily if they don’t want to, because bigotry is not based on reality. I can imagine bigots generally reacting to pictures of gay dudes who look much like they do with “but they’re not gay, they don’t have nail polish”.
I was hardly a dick. But it does get tiresome to never see people I can identify with in my own community. It just seems pretty exclusive.