I kimd of am, why are so many relationships in media strsight? We need more lgbt representation
This is dumb and I’m probably getting offended for no reason but here’s a small experience I dealt with recently
So like 30 minutes ago my grandmother wanted me to smile so she told me to think of a pretty girl and while I didn’t react at all my first thought was literally “why not pretty boys” Its silly I know.
I’m not out but I literally couldn’t be leaving anymore hints that I’m bi. Its funny how nobody noticed yet
Is there a reason why you’re not out? Being upset or offended over comments made from those without knowledge of your personal feelings is misplaced. Leaving hints is not actual communication. If you want others to respect your feelings then you have to actually share those feelings. I wish you the best.
i’m sure it can be nerve-wracking, i can sympathise with that. i can see why you’d be nervous.
to any lurkers, this is just another component of why representation is so important-- it signals that it is okay, normal and in no way conditional to our love. if we simply operated from a default perspective that is not heteronormative, then we tacitly tell others that we, individually, have moved on from the era of anti-queer hatred.
i’m not queer so i don’t want to impose any uninvited advice, but i really hope that you can find peace with your family and with yourself.
I’m saying this in earnest and very much not trying to be rude or edgy, but the fact is a lot of people don’t think about me/you/us at all, they’re reciting things they think are normal to people they aren’t close with like talking about the weather. Realizing some of my relatives I care about don’t actually want to get invested in my life to the point of knowing I’m gay was a very freeing moment. Like understanding my grandma is 95 and doesn’t want to try sushi now. And she was fine learning I married a man, but she wouldn’t have brought it up. Decentralizing yourself from other people and realizing you have much more of a free slate than you think can be very helpful.
It’s also absolutely incorrect and pretty well documented - 9% of adults on average globally, trending much higher for youth according to some of the most recent data from Ipsos.
But you’re absolutely right - bringing up population rates is unnecessary and kind of odd - and how many of us there are doesn’t negate how poorly we’re treated in many parts of the world, and the deficits we still face in western society.
Specifically in the context of media representation, I’d say it’s relevant. There is an actual objective target that we can talk about there.
Heternormativity in general, and especially in the context of interpersonal interactions, is only tangentially related to that though, and there’s obviously no reason in the modern day to be oblivious to the possibility that people aren’t straight.
9% in 30 countries, that’s far from globally. And I would guess those countries lean liberal. I used population percentage in my original statement to refute underrepresentation. Even if I use your skewed number of 9%, I think that they are appropriately represented in media
The discussion is on underrepresentation. Why would bringing up the percentage of population that’s queer be off-topic? The numbers (and sense that we’re overrepresented) may be wrong, but bringing it up absolutely makes sense. How does one seriously talk about being underrepresented or not without bringing what percentage of the population we might make up? How would one even gauge representation levels without such a framework?
I’m trying to gauge the intent of this person’s reply. It could be bad faith so I’m asking them to clarify. The fact that they only mention the percentage and it’s clearly wrong have me wondering why they left this comment.
To be honest I suspect any estimates of queer demographics are going to be dramatically lower than the actuality in part because things like gender and sexuality are fluid and heavily influenced by culture and upbringing. There may be several orders of magnitude more people who might otherwise identify as bi or some kind of genderqueer but not enough to justify investing in the self reflection, identity crisis, and social capital it would cost.
I usually wouldn’t get involved in this topic, but I’m half past drunk right now so here it goes: I’ve got nothing against lgbtqia+, you do you, freedom for everyone. But taking into account that the norm and majority is hetero… I really don’t understand what you expect… It would be like me, a metal head, would ask why aren’t there more extreme metal bands than pop bands?
The issue isn’t that the majority of people are straight (though I’d point to what we saw in the rates of left handedness once we stopped punishing it), it’s how we talk about it and the assumptions we make - and it’s about the disparities LGBTQIA+ people can face because of the specifically heteronormative way society is set up.
Marriage equality is a great easy example - the reason marriage equality was (and is, in so many places) such a big deal wasn’t just so we could marry just like heterosexuals - it’s because there are so many rights afforded to married couples that aren’t afforded to others. Healthcare access is the big one - in so many places, only married spouses are considered ‘family’ and able to make decisions for their partner, or even visit them in hospital.
To use your analogy, it would be like there not being any metal concerts, ever, because everyone just likes pop, right? Why would anyone want to go to a metal gig?
Its different, it’s that feeling when your music, which you know is absolutely fine, gets shat upon by christian conservatives who believe it’s evil. But then throw in the cops and the government which historically and systemically shut down your opportunity to even play or listen to it and give more opportunities and legal benefits to those people who play pop.
And you’re just trying to listen to the music you like, while every step of the way it gets way more difficult than it needs to be because it’s systemically rigged for you not to be able to listen to it. It’s exhausting.
edit: grammar
That doesn’t mean it’s not tiring.
But also, why does the norm need to be hetero vs “people are varied”. Sure, most people are straight, but that doesn’t mean it automatically has to be the default assumption, that’s just a choice made by a… heteronormative society. Most of the time, we aren’t in situations where we actually need to assume someone’s sexual orientation, so we don’t need to play the odds, as it were.
Not sure how you meant it, I kind of feel weird about your comment though. How do you get to 95% vs 5%? What about e.g. the Kinsey scale?
What feels totally weird about your comment to me, and actually outright offends me, is how you say that queer people need their 5% space and then we can get on with normal life. But to me, being queer is about breaking out of oppressive norms and heteronormativity is such an oppressive norm. I don’t want to have to live with it. It not does all us queer people harm, it’s bad for everyone. You cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible. So no, 5% is not enough, I want everyone (!) to be free of norms and free what they want to do. And the view that being straight is a default, just like being male, cis, white, able-bodied, etc also has to go. That is just not reality and it does so much damage.
They didn’t say it’s the default. If more people are straight, you’ll see more straight representation. That’s just generally how things work for everything, not just sexual orientation. There are more white people on TV in the US. There are more Japanese people on TV in Japan. You don’t see as many redheads in American media. There aren’t many shows focused around little people. I could go on and on with examples here.
They’re also saying “we don’t need more”, overlooking the entire value of representation.
ou cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible.
Speaking of offensive. You sound kind of bigoted yourself.
I meant people having gender reveal parties, fragile masculinity, people trying to police gender roles of everyone around, and so on… Once you notice how much everyone tries to keep up with heteronormativity in order to not be socially sanctioned by others, you see it pretty much everywhere in daily life. And well, I get socially sanctioned a lot by people (being stared at, getting transphobic/homophobic slurs thrown at me, being sexually harassed, etc) that cringing about it is pretty much my only way to kind of deal with everyone still trying to live up to a norm that heavily oppresses me and everyone else.
i think this is somewhat presumptive. that 95% figure comes from a world where the representation wasn’t very good. a lot of people didn’t know that being gay was a thing, and a lot of people still don’t know that being gay is a thing they can be
we can’t really know what those numbers would be in a truly accepting world, which is exactly why representation matters. even if it’s “disproportionate”
Whether or not that stat is true, I don’t think that minority representation should be accurately reflected based on the percentage of the population the minority represents. Just as an example, if we’re talking about television shows, and let’s just throw out a number that there are 100 major characters across all of the major networks/most watched shows. That would mean all LGBTQ+ representation is contained to 5 characters… The chance of any one non-invested viewer seeing those characters becomes minimal – which means that both cishet folks aren’t getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps normalize us), and LGBTQ+ folks aren’t getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps our own confidence and mental health).
Quite a lot of characters on TV or in media where their sexual orientation and/or gender identity is irrelevant, though.
Not saying it’s accurately represented, but if you watch popular stuff - how much else is?
Color? Gender? Mac vs. PC usage?
Small steps at the time, but I think it’s important to note that there’s been progress. Yet female characters are still overly sexualized, but at least we usually get more than that token black guy now.
Oh, I by no means think that other minority groups are more well off when it comes to representation.
I’m just coming at this from my own personal lens, being well aware that any representation of trans folk as normal would have gone a long way for me as a child. So that’s what I advocate for, but by no means do I feel we need to tear others down to get where we need to be.
Did you know that 98.2% of statistics quoted by people online are simply pulled out of their ass? Did you know that people are less likely to be open about their sexuality when they’ll face communal scorn and exclusion, or often physical harm, for openly expressing it?
The number of people that would identify as queer is certainly higher than 5%, and that doesn’t even include all of the closeted or self-denying people that have been indoctrinated by religious bullshit or simply growing up in a conservative area.
That the number to which you default is 95% is a crystal clear example of the sort of heteronormativity they’re referencing.
95% of people definitely aren’t hetero though. Or anyway, they aren’t cisgender and straight and vanilla and mainstream in every other possible way related to sex and gender. We have no idea how many people are queer, but it’s a lot more than 5%, and we won’t know what the actual numbers are like until there have been several generations that are very queer accepting.
“We have no idea, but it’s definitely not that,” is a bit contradictory, don’t you think?
I don’t think so.
The current world paints queer people as exotic and abnormal most of the time, which is due to representation being so low and most importantly hidden away.
For example Disney, where most kids get their movies from, scrapped Nimona because there’s a gay couple in the main cast, and Netflix picked it back up. How many headlines have we had that the first Disney movie with a gay couple is going to happen, only for that gay couple to be 2 people that pass more for very good friends or might just be in the background.
And Netflix isn’t that great either, scrapping lesbian shows the moment it becomes obvious. Famous example being Warrior Nun. They admitted to making the first season straight bait so they’d get a second season after which they’ve been cancelled. Don’t get me wrong, Warrior Nun wasn’t a qualitatively great show but we lesbians loved it, because we’re so starved for shows with representation, and it made Netflix good profits.
Most of queer representation has to be specifically seeked out which is exactly what’s wrong and leads to the assumption that everyone is cishet.
So yeah in a world where most kids assume they can’t be queer because there’s normal and there is queer and they are just a normal kid and being different is scary it can be assumed that official statistics are not representative of the actual percentage.
“We have no idea, but it’s definitely not that,” is a bit contradictory, don’t you think?
That’s a technique right out of my ex’s playbook: “Do you know or don’t you?”
Example: “You said you don’t know how many there are. That means there could just be 1. Oh, but you know the number is more than 1? So you do know? But you just said you don’t know. Are you lying to me?”
Not sure how you meant it, I kind of feel weird about your comment though. How do you get to 95% vs 5%? What about e.g. the Kinsey scale?
What feels totally weird about your comment to me, and actually outright offends me, is that the queer people need their 5% space and then we can get on with the normal life. But to me, being queer is about breaking out of oppressive norms and heteronormativity is such an oppressive norm. I don’t want to have to live with it. It not does all us queer people harm, it’s bad for everyone. You cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible. So no, 5% is not enough, I want everyone (!) to be free of norms and free what they want to do. And the view that being straight is a default, just like being male, cis, white, able-bodied, etc also has to go. That is just not reality and it does so much damage.
