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Queer Cartoon Characters: How lesbians and gay men are represented differently in family media
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- čas přidán 5. 11. 2021
- I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but for all the representation cropping up in family entertainment (especially television) in the last few years it seems to have a fairly distinctly feminine focus. Even if you haven't noticed, I'll provide my findings before diving into the issue.
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Theory: sexual orientation in men is generally associated with being sexual in nature rather than romantic whereas in women it's more likely to be based in romance than sex. Not saying that's true, just saying it's somewhere in people's subconscious. So I think creators feel more comfortable putting youthful characters into these nominally nonsexual lesbian relations rather than gay relations that are assumed to be sexual and lustful in nature.
I have done a lot of thinking on this subject and I never considered this angle! Thank you for your insight.
this was my first thought, too. the hypersexualization (is this a correct term for this phenomena?) of gay men probably is a factor why the gay men are almost always married/in long-time partnership and thus deemed more "safe" for kids. even if the stereotype is something ppl learn from media, and nothing we inherently know...
on the other side of coin is non-sexualization of female gays and "gals being pals"-effect, where without any open declaration two women together are "just friends".
Makes sense, men are generally assumed to be horndogs, with the woman being the tempering influence, so two men are assumed to be twice that. Probably why homophobes get more grossed out about dudes being gay than chicks
Not to offend, but the main reason is sexism.
Women are more exposed and offered for sale in the market than men.
In addition, many heterosexual men consider women only as sexual objects, so that a women desire a woman is "normal" for them, and is "allowed", but two men is a big no for them, because "how is it possible that a man doesn't want to fuck a woman?"
(-_-)
I agree with this take thankfully there are parts of the gay male community that focus on the romantic side like mlm or Achillean but these are realitivly small parts though and I hope with better representation it grows
I've noticed this specifically with cartoons too and it's strange. "Adult" media seems to have a lot more gay men then women from what I've seen but in animation it seems to be the exact opposite.
The former usually made for lazy joke fodder by insecure straight male writers and their intended audiences, the latter historically involved plausible deniability: "girls are naturally more touchy-feely with one another than boys are, they'll grow out of it later," etc.
I wouldn't even call any of the adult animation with gay men representation at all, its still just straight up mockery🤷♂️ i cant think of one gay male character im mainstream adult animation that doesnt fit the mocking feminine stereotype, but then again adult animation has been stuck scraping jokes from the bottom of the barrel for years now, simpsons even had episodes showing Smithers is a part of his local lgbt community, but those episodes only ever focus on cishet characters 🤦♂️and every gay man that appears is overly sexualised, hyper feminine or both🙄 (not saying showing some men as being feminine is bad to be clear😅 its the way they do it without trying to holistically represent the community is bad, all the gay male characters im adult animation have zero character depth)
Lesbians are "safer" and Gay men are more "comedic" is what my takeaway is.
@@Fireberries Pretty much, gay are more comedy because the flamboy gay and because is easier to deal with gay if they are asexualies.
There is one adult animated media in the most recent season of South Park twerk and Craig are a couple and it's treated just like any other relationship
OK KO had a full on wedding between two gay men, both human, so it was massively groundbreaking, but most people still only know it as "That weird show made by Rebecca Sugar's husband" and write it off, but it's a really cute cartoon with so much good in it. Good action, good jokes, good queer rep, good platonic friendships between boys and girls, just overall so good. 💖
This is an entirely different conversation, but OK KO had more varied queer rep than Steven Universe ever did, and was made by a Black man, and has been largely swept under the rug by the mainstream.
Don't forget about boxman and venenomous
It really does feel like a double-edged sword for queer male representation. Like its great to have queer men portrayed as fathers or fatherly figures, but it sucks that its the only representation they're allowed to have. They can't be leads or at least major secondary characters. They're just pushed to the background.
I get ya.
Not so much animation related, but I swear in the 90s, just about every lesbian character was in a monogamous relationship, and the couple would be obsessed solely with parenting, or conceiving.... all. of. them.... almost.
@@dfunkt2291 Oh yeah. So much lesbian rep was either immediately monagmous with a focus on becoming a parent or it was the "lesbian" who stopped being a lesbian once she met the right guy. Just like for gay men it was only being a circuit queen or the sassy gay best friend. Like queer people can't juggle multiple roles...
@@christopherb501 nagito and Kokichi from danganronpa 2 & V3?
@@LanieMae both aren't confirmed though, its implied
@@jules5021 I know Kokichi isn't confirmed but didn't Nagito canonically admit to being in love with a boy?
This reminds me of John Mulaney's "old gay man joke," where he compares his mannerisms to that of a man who is gay, but not sexually active. That, I feel, describes most gay men in fiction.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your explanation - gay men in kids media are seen as threatening unless they’re functionally sexless, either by being married dads (marriage is still seen as a “civilizing” influence on men) or just by pretending that they don’t have sexual or romantic feelings (Shiro’s romantic backstory was essentially ignored for most of Voltron, even after it was revealed).
Additionally, I think there’s also the fact that there’s been an increase over the past decade in women being given opportunities to create these cartoons, and many of them have come from online fandom spaces. So a lot of these women/femmes will write lesbians just because that’s what they’re more familiar with, and because within online fandom spaces f/f ships were usually less explicitly sexualized than m/m ships.
@@christopherb501 I find it really interesting, to see the difference between (American) cartoons for kids/younger audiences and books, especially with what you say in mind. Because in books, queer boys are much more common than queer girls, significantly so. Looking at books for younger teens and Young Adult books (often from large American publishers), queer boys are much more prevalent than queer girls, but it's the other way around in (again specifically focused on American) cartoons. It's kind of interesting, as in theory, those audiences would be quite similar.
@@christopherb501 speaking as a kind of stereotypical 00s yaoi fangirl ("kind of" because i also liked yuri) part of that phenomenon is down to misogyny. female characters actually having complex and intense relationships with each other as a core part of the story??? it didn't tend to happen that often! a good example of this is naruto. sasuke and naruto have this deep, enduring bond with a level of emotional complexity that, say, ino and sakura didn't have with each other. sakura herself was simply not as important as naruto and sasuke were to each other even though she was a love interest for them both.
a lot of female characters in 00s media would exist as an addendum to the male protagonists growth and the *important* stuff was the (intended to be) platonic bromance of the male cast. there is a point where sexism ends up accidentally evolving into homoeroticism... that's kinda the natural course "ew, girls" is gonna take, which is why 00s media does have a lot of (probably unintentional) homoerotic subtext. so of course female/afab fans responded to this by shipping people together who were given the most focus, growth, and room to develop chemistry with each other. therefore... its not entirely their fault. unfortunately a consequence of this also often meant that 'fangirls' would completely despise the female character in question (for 'getting in the way' of their ship) or get too heated about "proving" the reality of their ship when really what needed to happen was just giving female characters more depth/focus and allowing gay relationships to get a similar depth/focus without being a ~forbidden fruit that television daren't touch~
Exactly. Male sexuality is often very sexual and “adult” while female sexuality is sensual and appropriate. Even on adult shows, queer men are usually very sex-based characters and have a large part of their characters around sex itself. “Love Is Love” but only when it’s deemed appropriate by straight people 🙄
@@hinasakukimi As a girl who grew up watching anime in the 90s, you’re absolutely right about this. I never looked at myself this way until you talked about it so thoroughly.
@@j.t.rhoads7658 Which makes it even more interesting that books and cartoons (or TV shows in general) for a teen audience are so wildly different. Where in shows queer girls/women are much more represented in programming for a teen audience, but in books, you primarily get queer boys/men. Even in cases where you'd expect the same target audience of teen girls to be their primary focus. Why queer girls in one form of media but queer boys in the other? Because (as pointed out in the video in case of cartoons and with my own experience in the world of books) there is a huge gap in representation, and the gap seems to be similar in both forms of media, just flipped. Which is interesting.
As a gay teenage boy, I’ve honestly never once seen a gay man/boy be other then a background dad, comedic relief, or if they do break these trends it’s about there sexuality and honestly I’ve given up hope things will get better for us and I’m kind of immune to it now. Also nb x man representation even if mlm is used to describe it, isn’t the same. I’m sorry I don’t mean be a dick but it’s technically not, So brushing it off as “well they use mlm to describe it” is dancing around the point.
I’m not saying mlm can’t be applied to nb people. What I’m saying is, it’s still not the same.
Not exactly at least.
I think because lesbian characters still appeal to a lot of weird men, they can pass in media easier than gay male characters. There is a fragility involved or threat to masculinity when male protagonists are gay. So comedic or supporting roles tend to be where they show up unfortunately. I think the reason they are usually married is to keep them "non-threatening", again with masculinity being fragile from masc normative perspective.
Which is a shame. I'm a happy lesbian, but damn. Finding for queer masc characters would feel so much more real and enjoyable to me and so many others.
14:50 Lauren Faust (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic) actually noted in a talk once how (STILL in our culture) comparing a man to a woman is supposed to be an insult ("You throw like a girl!"), but comparing a woman to a man is supposed to be a compliment ("You completed that task as well as any man could!").
There’s also the drive for female representation both in front and behind the camera, so as we see more female leads and writers to tell their stories it may skew away a little more from gay men.
I suppose it could also make a certain kind of cynical business sense to put all they're diversity eggs in one basket. A lesbian couple can check both the female representation and homosexual representation boxes at the same time. Make one or both of them a person of color too and now they've got a trifecta.
It's all very "efficient".
A little? More like it’s literally happening anywhere that says “lgbtq representation here!”
Animation storyboard artist here! This is definitely a prominent conversation in queer artist spaces, often hitting on the very points you've brought up! It also feels like audiences aren't quite as receptive to gay male characters too... especially POC ones. Despite its positive reception, Kipo never took off as much as She-Ra or Owl House did. While that's probably mostly due to marketing and release schedule, it's worth mentioning that Kipo is one of the only queer cartoons without a white lesbian character for fans to ship. This whole issue just gets deeper when you start to consider the intersectionality between race and queerness. We already get so little mlm rep, and the few we do get aren't held up as high by fans compared to the wlw couples (where one of them is white). Also want to point out that Summer Camp Island has a non-dad mlm couple with two recurring characters, King and Puddle (who is nonbinary)! We see their relationship grow and they eventually get married in season 2!
@2d fighter fan Puddle uses he/they so it's possible they're man-aligned. And mlm/wlw can include nonbinary people, depending on if the nb person identifies as such (though not everyone agrees on this). Either way, King would still be gay representation in this case :)
Thanks for the reminder that I should really watch Kipo. I watched the first two episodes, figured my partner would also enjoy it. Turned out they didn't as much (stylistically felt a bit too random), and got swamped with other shows. But yes, definitely picking it up again.
this happened with the life is strange series too. the first game focuses on white gay girls but the moment we got a bisexual mexican male lead in the second game suddenly no one gave a shit.
@@hinasakukimi
Welllllll
(Uhh just saying i'm brown and latino)
Honestly i think the problem is that the game was just not as fun or "good" as the first one, there weren't many recurring characters like the first one, Sean is kinda boring compared to Max, you don't have powers (the brother does but eh they're kinda boring), and also, you can only date one guy character and like, it's kinda weird since that character is supposedly an adult and the protag is a teenager so.... well
@@Quinhala11 the second game is miles better than the first and i think racism had a part to play in its critical reception. personality wise, max and sean are pretty evenly matched (but i personally find sean more endearing). but i do understand what you're saying about the powers. it was definitely a risk for dontnod to make the main character have no powers this time around, but i think it was a brilliant risk. sean being powerless in every aspect of his life is kind of the point and i loved the frustration i felt, it really put me in his shoes. still, i understand that this isn't what all players are looking for in a game. and uh, where did you get that finn is an adult?
15:45 No you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Internalized homophobia is why networks and creators are hesitant to make gay protagonists in animated/kids media. Gay men are seen as predators and untrustworthy. Audiences subconsciously believe this, & that's why lesbians are shown less hate/more acceptance then gay men. imho
its kinda sad the only example i can think of off the top of my head for a kids show with gay rep for teen boys is kipo whereas for lesbians and bisexual women theres the owl house, she ra, steven universe ect ect.
i dunno if its some stigma where mlm relationships are seen differently from wlw relationships cause i often see mlm relationships in allot of r rated shows which is unfortunate as i know allot of guys in the community who would've loved wholesome mlm rep growing up as kids.
that's probably why theres been such a response about luca cause kids and teens out there are craving this specific rep, these obviously a demand for it rn
My thoughts on it are that gay men have more of a stereotype of being predatory. Lesbians have this stereotype too, but most of the time we're just considered confused women, especially if you're as young as the target demographic for most of these shows. So it seems like lesbians are just the "safer" option for TV people.
It's strange and makes no sense. I've noticed that lesbians seem to have more rep in childrens media and little to none past the age demographic of say, 10, and gay men have a plethora above that but none in childrens media. I wonder how much that plays into the infantilization of women and the further brushing off of us as "confused" or "going through a phase" whereas gay men are constantly viewed as more adult or perverted.
Not sure if I'm making sense but I'm trying to make sense of some weird ass thinking.
@@thatjedifromgallifrey6663 i mean you're definitely not wrong, lgbt women are not taken seriously and lgbt men are often had a history of being called predators and dangerous for children so the homophobia of that is still aparent,
Luca had the perfect premise and story to be about gay protagonists. I still see it as a LGBT movie because it leaned SO heavily into the subtext that it's impossible the people at Pixar were oblivious to the queer reading.
The history of the 'predatory lesbian' is found in classic films and vintage paper backs (e.g. of film is The Children's Hour; you can also see her in lesbian vampire films like Dracula's Daughter; another example is Whisper Their Love, a novel by Valerie Taylor). Historically, lesbians, just like straight women, were seen as lacking any sexual drive or desire. Women loving women were seen as less threatening - I think Vera was eluding to this (as well as others have stated in comments below). This is my field of research, so I am more familiar with queer representation in mid-20th century media more than contemporary. Sorry, if I am off the topic, I felt compelled to fill in a gap and provide examples of 'the predatory lesbian' in queer media.
Predatory lesbian ?
@@polishalastor142 There is a long history of Queer characters being villains. This is just one example of the villainization of lesbians, specifically.
As an "effeminate gay man"... it does annoy me that the trope and stereotype being so pushed has made people in the community dislike the real people who are actually like that.. (obviously not quite as exaggerated as South Park or Family Guy)
Yes I'm feminine, but I'm not fictional so it's okay for me to perpetuate the stereotype... because the stereotype came from people like me.
I think people forget that some of these "stereotypes" they dislike so much also represent real people.
The show Q Force got a lot of backlash for being Stereotypical and "Bad representation" but it was made by gay people and stared LGBT actors.
We are a part of the community that exists and we should be allowed to tell our own stories after years of being the butt of the joke for cis straight writers.
I think one key part of why there are more WLW on kid's shows is probably because of female, and often queer, creators pushing harder for it. I don't mean to downplay those creators of course, quite the contrary- I admire what people like Rebecca Sugar, Noelle Stevenson and Dana Terrace have done. But there are very few male and ally creators in kid's media (off the top of my head, only Rad Sechrist who made Kipo and Alex Hirsch) who've been doing it, and sometimes they just get told no (Owen Dennis, for example).
as a lesbian I was so glad to see more representation with wlw relationships, but then I realized that in every show I watched that included queer relationships, only kipo and the age of wonderbeasts (fantastic cartoon, recommend) includes a full-fledged gay relationship between two mlm characters. every other show, they're dads, or they're shiro from voltron, and we all know why that rep sucks.
There's also Mr. Ratburn, from the PBS Kids show "Arthur," who got a special episode all about his wedding (he is/was a favorite teacher to the main characters, so another father figure). And in addition to implicit bias reason that you talk about here, where gay men (& boys) are considered "inappropriate" for children (which I agree with), I also wonder how much of it is gender bias in children's programming in general -- where the audience is deliberately split between "for girls" and "for boys" (especially when the show is meant to be an extended commercial for toys). And shows "For Girls" are more likely to be centered around relationships and friendship, and shows "For Boys" are more likely to be centered around fighting bad guys and adventure.
But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I grew up with kids cartoons in the '80s and '90s, and some of that may be outdated. It's a thought that popped up, anyway.
They really could have made some of the child characters actually gay. Like Brain, would Brain being gay really damage the character?
@Rebecca Woolf To be perfectly honest, I picked Brain because at some point he was voiced by failed comedian Steven Crowder, and I just know that if they made Brain gay it'd make him quite upset.
Francine is depicted like a stereotypical lesbian at times, and it would make a lot of sense for her to get with Muffy, who looks like the same species as her.
@@ThanhTriet600 Francine definitely feels gay coded
Oh I really liked that episode. Little odd that the class attended his wedding. Like isn’t that a bit unprofessional? Ahh I’m overthinking it. It was cute and very nice to see.
I also remember the backlash from the “usual suspects.” How it’s indoctrinating kids or some such nonsense
So I asked my nephew about his thoughts of the episode.
His major takeaway?
“Whoa teachers have lives?”
Ahh youth
I had definitely noticed this trend. But not just in kids media, also in adult content. For instance, I've been watching Lucifer, where there are several bisexual characters, and while women are allowed to kiss and show affection, we only know of Lucifer's bisexuality by mention, never by action. The only kiss he shares with a man is played for laughs. The same goes for tertiary characters.
This is just the one example fresh in my minds, but it happens in a big number of adult "woke" shows.
OMG I NOTICED THAT TOO
It's even weirder since there's so many times the show does so many mental gymnastics to make up a situation to make the female leads kiss each other, and there are so many scenes that they make jokes about Lucifer "liking" seeing them kiss
Edit: Oh and it annoyed me when Ella kissing Maze was treated super casually by the show, but when Lucifer commented he had sex with that one dead guy in that one episode they made a deal about it, they just had to make Chloe be "Huh??" and Lucifer say "Oh is there any problem with it?"
Like 😭 come on
Anyone else bugged by how Netflix hyped up Adam ( Shiro's Fiancé) as a major Character in the Seventh Season of Voltron: Legendary Defender when he was only in Two Scenes in the Entire Show?
And he wasn’t romantic coded at all. He literally could’ve been a platonic roommate or family. We barely got any development and then he died
I've personally done everything in my power to block Voltron from my memory as a result of what was done with Adam.
I think it does have to do with how women aren't seen as predatory as men are. When I was a kid, my mom had to specifically remind me that stranger danger applied to women too, and I think it was cause that since we were an all-female household, she was afraid I would be too trusting of women in general. I've seen many examples where female characters exist solely to support the main male character, or just be supportive to other characters in general, the parental or sisterly figure that's loving, guiding or needs protecting, and then also female villains who have traits that say 'see, they aren't THAT bad'. I'm all for having well-rounded female characters who don't have to sacrifice traditionally feminine traits to be strong, but sometimes I just wan an irredeemably and despicable baddie, like the classic Disney villains. I think it's important for creators to acknowledge that, even when they are doing something good and their heart's in the right place, they can still have their biases in the back of their minds influencing their work. The simple question that can help with this is just to ask yourself, why is this character like this? Why are these characters girls? Why are those characters boys? If there's no specific reason for a couple to be two girls, why can't they be two boys? Or vice versa, and so on.
Sorry I totally went on a tangent in a completely different direction, lol. What I was trying to say was that I agree with what was said in the video.
No it’s not just you. And while I don’t think it’s a conspiracy I do think it’s a deliberate, calculated choice on the part of executives etc. They worry they’ll upset audiences more if it’s male queer characters. Even though sapphics are often fetishized in adult media, they’re not seen as being inherently sexual on their own so they’re more palatable to be in kid’s shows. It goes back to the old stereotype of women being desired and men being desirers. I think it’s also affected by the thinking that girls will watch shows “for boys” but boys won’t watch shows “for girls” so they make more “boy shows” aimed at a majority cishet guys to reach the largest possible audience, and they won’t risk turning off their core audiences cishet boys/men by the existence of a not straight man in a story. Also as others have mentioned many of the shows with a lot of representation for lesbian/bi women are run by queer women who are writing from their own experiences and creating what they would’ve wanted. But it’s worth asking why they got green lit when others didn’t.
I'm doing a self-care weekend starting today (I'm reading Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology later), and this is how I'm starting it off. Always a joy to watch your videos!
Ooh, Norse Mythology is really good. Then again, it's Neil Gaiman so of course it is. If this is you first read I hope you really enjoy it. 🙂
Sounds good! Glad that you are taking care of yourself!
Idk if someone mentioned this already but I think another angle is that even platonically, girls are generally allowed to be more affectionate and emotionally open with each other by society. So it's easier to hide a budding f/f romance under the radar until the show gets far enough to gain some popularity and not be so easy to cancel/censor, whereas with an m/m romance, viewers might become suspicious much sooner if two boys are being affectionate with each other. So shows with f/f couples just have a better chance at getting greenlit/staying on air until they're complete.
(And I don't want people telling me that this is the reason why straight men are scared to show affection to their male friends, because they don't want people to assume they're gay, as if gay/bi/pan men have it easier. They don't want people to assume they're gay because being gay is still stigmatized and punished - and it affects men of all sexualities.)
People get furious if two men who have a close relationship are even speculated to be gay. Look at the Falcon and Winter Soldier thing or how people reacted when gay people liked Luca's queer allegory or when DC had some bi characters, or especially when things have a heavy layer of queerbaiting. The straights with underlying homophobic beliefs go mental and say, "why can't two guys ever be friends anymore" despite there being countless examples of two straight guy friends.
Compare that to how no one flies into a rage when 40% of modern fictional women are portrayed as bi or lesbian. I can't help but think people just hate queer men. People don't even get fixated on transmen like they do transwomen. It's a strong bias and cultural aversion.
There is a light-hearted joke I'd tell from time-to-time: acceptance isn't just "Love is Love," but "Lust is Lust." In all sincerity, coming from someone who is a cis, straight(ish) white male, there is this normalization of heterosexual people being interested in either traditionally committed relationships, or non-monogamous/casual relationships, and not giving it a second thought. However, relating to Vera's take on the gay dads representation in children's media, it seems to be more rare to see someone depicted as gay and not be in a committed relationship, which is somewhat odd to me.
Love is Love is very real and an overall great message to send. In addition, however, I believe to get to the same level of acceptance/representation of LGBTQ people in media, there needs to be this understanding that "hey, they're gay, there not in/looking for a committed relationship, and that's OK," giving the same level of acceptance that we would give to someone portrayed as heterosexual. It becomes less of a normalization of romantic love, and more of a normalization of sexuality.
I don't know if my words are making any sense or if they are a bit of a word salad, but hey here they are! Just something that Council of Geeks got me thinking about, appreciate the video and open dialogue!
Well said! It is not only about loving. It is just as much (or sometimes even more...) about wanting to have steamy intimate relations with someone. And that should be just as okay.
This is a sort of respectability politics problem. It’s still to scary for some creators to show casual homosexual relationships they don’t want to show that and give their detractors fodder of lgbtq people being promiscuous ect. They want to only put out the most unobjectionable clean representation.
@@AJJ129 I get that that can be a valid consideration. On the other hand: who decided that promisquity is a bad thing?
(When I was discovering my identity in the 90s , the hiv-pandemic was still a big thing, and sex was considered bad behaviour. But nowadays?)
@@niek024 oh it’s fucked like nothing is wrong with promiscuity but conservative ppl who now just barely might accept lGbt+ people will condemn it unless it meets some standard of purity or morality they have
I am really glad you talked about this, as it is something I have noticed a lot in animation aimed at younger audiences. I really hope this is something which will change over time, as having gay/bi/pan etc male teens is something we need more of! Giving younger guys someone that they can identify with on a gender level holds a lot of power, and I really believe shows should try to focus more on it going forward!
I've noticed this, too. I think it's basically fear of male sexuality. It's the same reason people are more afraid of trans women than trans men. There's a belief that men are sexual predators by nature and women are some kind of "wet blanket" that, in heterosexual relationships, tames them. So two women together are sexless and safe, but two men together are inherently sexual and dangerous. Parents are seen as sexless, so it's ok for gay men to be dads. People in the US think children should never be exposed to sex, so you get two sexless women or two sexless parents in cartoons, but two men are only for "mature" audiences.
I've definitely noticed this trend. Pretty common in Video Games too, though I suspect it's for different reasons there.
I can actually only think of two examples of male Gay or Bisexual characters that aren't "Player-Sexual".
Edit: I just remembered Borderlands exists, so that really boosted the number to like, 5 or 6.
What are your examples, I can only think of Dorian from DA:I
@@DianaBell_MG Cortez from Mass Effect 3.
@@TTRPGSarvis hmmm not sure I should trust what a Drow tells me
@@DianaBell_MG Wade and Herren from DA:O are apparenly surpose to be like a married couple
Do the Dragon Age characters count? As I recall, Dragon Age: Inquisition had an all the way gay man, an all the way lesbian woman, two bi characters (one of each binary gender) and a trans man. Some of these were backgroundish characters, yes, but they did still get a decent amount of lines/screen time (There might've been others I'm not remembering now, too.)
I mean, I’d argue Voltron’s mishandling of their gay rep went way beyond just the bury your gays thing. Not only was that an issue, but while the canon straight relationships had actual buildup, the canon gay couple got jack squat. That dude kissing Shiro there didn’t even get named in canon, only in *closed captioning.* On top of that, there was another character to whom Shiro was close to who confessed love to him, Keith. And nothing was ever addressed of that again, effectively qu33rbaiting the fanbase (no, klance fans, you were not the ones baited, get over your damn selves, thanks /salt). And that’s just the gay rep they screwed with on vld, that doesn’t begin to touch Allura’s treatment, much less Lotor’s and various other characters.
.....i don't think shiro x keith was implied at all, they even had a brother like relstionship. (You can say "i love you" to your brother folks)
@@pamelavergara3771 that is literally the oldest “no homo” in fiction ever, my dude. Idk what to tell you. We got a love confession that in translations went the romantic route where possible to differentiate, too. And it STILL wasn’t fucking addessed. Sheith got baited, hard. Bc the showrunners were goddamn cowards.
@@Caterfree10 Keith was underage at the start though wasn't it? I mean I feel the gays read too much into it. Even I knew they just had a bro relationship.
@@ihatetheheat4524 He was 18 which is AN ADULT, despite what r/relationships likes to tell you. FOH with the homophobic bullshit
"Lesbians are leading the charge" from what I recall of the 80s, they often did.
I’m going to be optimistic and say that we will eventually get gay male protagonists in children’s media. I have no clue which animation company will be “brave” enough to commit to it, but it’s going to happen sooner than we expect.
I also wonder if the reason gay men are only see as adults in these kids shows is to combat the stereotype that gay men are predators. Now I don't watch much cartoons, and barely any aimed at children, so I didn't really understand the context of the couples you were showing as examples (and please correct me if I am wrong), but they appear to be positive older male figures, vs villains. I mean it is still bad to have a lack of representation, and I am sure that the female/male stereotypes our culture has is playing into which ones are leads... but I do wonder if what was originally done, was done so to combat a negative stereotype and now studios are just taking the easy way out. It is "all look I have diversity!", but not realizing (or refusing to realize) how narrow that diversity is when viewed through character archetypes. It kinda similar to how studios keep saying that they have female leads in films, but failing to give them the same depth and complex character narratives as male characters. Basically they are telling us to be fine with whatever scraps they give us, vs integrating why those scraps would in theory be seen as the least threatening to audiences.
Having seen a good majority of the shows she mentioned.
Ducktales 2017, Indy & Ty rarely show up, usually in the background.
Wasn't mentioned but, The Owl House, Willow's dad's rarely show up but they've been around in the background.
Voltron I haven't seen, but one of the MCs was gay. But they killed off his ex & didn't give him a partner until the end.
Gravity Falls, the police men weren't even acknowledged until the end.
The Dragon Prince has Ethari & Runaan, & like she mentioned, they're father figures to the main character also Runaan is MIA for most of the series so we only get to see them together in flash backs.
Even in OK KO, while there's a good mix bc Venomous and Boxman are p prominent, but they still are parents. & There's a background gay couple. (Vs Enid & Red who are young adults.) Also Venomous & Boxman are villains. But like. The show makes it a point that EVERYONE is a hero or villain. And the real villains are monstrous. Like, Boxman and Venomous aren't bad, they're even caring to their kids, but Shadowy Figure is an absolute asshole.
The rest of the shows I can't talk on. But. Yeah. It does seem to be trying to paint older gay men in a good light. But that causes an issue of alienating young gay men.
I do think this trend in cartoons is interesting considering considering how prominent Achillean ships are compared to Sapphic ships in fandoms.
Of the shows mentioned, I'm actually hoping that for The Owl House, we get Gus & Matty as a couple. Like. They were setting them up to be friends, but I could see romance. (Also Hunter could be mlm but at the same time. We only have 10 more eps to set that up so probs not likely.)
Ya know, I always noticed there was a lot of female queer rep but somehow didn't connect the dots that I wasn't seeing as much male queer rep. 🤔 I'd definitely love to see more in the future!
I think it’s possibly due to the fact that the romance in children’s media tends to be skewed for the female audience, the action adventure side being for the boys, so its the female characters who get more involved in those kinds of plots. I’m not saying boys don’t like romance or girls don’t like action adventure, but as the Nostalgia Critic said: “It’s not girls who made Transformers a hit, and it’s not boys who made Twilight a hit.” I also think gay men are also more stereotyped as flamboyant and promiscuous than gay women are. So that’s kind of where the predatory-misconception comes in, whereas gay women are never really thought of as predators, and the stereotype masculine Lesbian woman is praised more nowadays, than the stereotype feminine Gay man.
The early '00s cartoon Braceface is almost always overlooked when it comes to discussions about LGBTQ+ representation in cartoons, but it featured a recurring gay male character named Dion.
A point that wasn't mentioned : lesbians/bi women/non-binary people make up the majority of the centrefront characters, because there's still stigma around boys watching cartoons like Shera and the Owlhouse. If the majority of the audience is not male, the main character is also likely not going to be. Therefore if the lead is a girl, the only way to make her queer is to have them for a female/n-b chracter. (Also, the fact that I don't know of any animated tv show with the main character being non-binary is really saying sth)
Yeah, even non-binary side characters are only now starting to show up. At least in video games we are a little bit further with that, take Undertale/Deltarune for example.
I think it comes back to basic misogyny. The framework of masculinity is so small that its inherently more of a risk to depict a man as anything but straight and cis, especially in children's media. Lesbians are less threatening in most cases because relationships without a man involved can be more easily dismissed as unimportant. While I do think there is something to be said about how gay men are stereotypically considered more threatening, that's the backlash of stepping outside of the box of masculinity rather than the cause. If being seen as effeminate (read: woman-like) wasn't an issue for men, there wouldn't be a need to demonize gay men in the first place. Acceptance of gay men in mainstream culture, media or otherwise, poses much more of a threat to the systems of male power than depicting gay women.
I always saw an additional point that lesbian relationships were typically viewed more “acceptable” by heteronormative society (in particular heterosexual men) for yes the reasons your bring up. But also there was this bizarre fetishization of “girl on girl action”. Maybe this is overthinking it but I always found that, if a large outcry of homophobia comes from the typical cis-straight guy, the same archetype that would fetishize these kinds of lesbian relationships, I always thought the larger proportion of female-female relationships in mainstream family media is to some extent stemming from those being more “palatable” to the typical vocal dissenters.
Always great to see OK KO in these conversations, it really did make an effort to cover everyone across the board.
Funnily enough, Unikitty (the spin-off cartoon from the LEGO Movie franchise) had its only LGBT+ rep be male/male, but it was another very last minute thing. At least they weren't dads I guess lol.
Thank you so much for bringing up this issue. I notice it ALL THE TIME. I like that more shows tackle wlw stories but as a gay guy I feel like we get the crumbs really. Having side characters' parents being two fathers is fine and all, but usually the inclusion of that amounts to two characters who appear sporadically and don't do much or have non-speaking roles. I feel like it would be a really big comfort for young gay/bi guys to see representation since the representation we get is minimal. I feel like the male queerbaiting can be more like gaslighting the queer audience than anything.
My thoughts on the reason for this is that in the minds of a significant portion of the audience they see gay men as stereotypes. They used to see butch women as stereotypical lesbians but that stereotype isn't as fixed as the ones the gay community has dealt with like being predatory, mincing, comic relief, petty, or make people uncomfortable. That and the notion that gay men are more sexual than lesbian women is something people really don't get past.
South Park is weird because it also has Tweek and Craig, who -- regardless of how it started -- are presented as a genuine and supportive couple. So, basically the opposite of the trends being discussed here.
They are kids couple
One of my favourite cartoons as a kid (in the ‘80’s) was Battle of the Planets, and I don’t know how you can possibly read the villain Zoltar as anything but trans. I think, though I’m not sure, that they were an intersex character in the original Japanese version. But that was my first exposure to a trans character that wasn’t a pantomime dame (closer to drag, that). I think you hit the nail on the head with your theory about gay male representation. Queer men are (wrongly) depicted as inherently threatening in popular culture: associated with child abuse, or with HIV. Culture change is slow, but it is changing.
Oh! I know this! (-:
"Battle of the Planets" was taken from the anime "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman" (you can just call it Gatchaman). Zoltar's original name was Berge Katse... And... ok, strap in: Berge was (yes *was*) twins. But the Big Bad, Sosai X, experimented on them, turning them into one being. So Berge is a character who can change gender because... they? are both male and female.
Well done!. I think the unconscious biases you explored have everything to do with it. Side note: as a middle-aged trans lesbian who spent the '80s watching the original She-Ra, I'm glad they made the remake, and that it made your cut for criteria.
It's honestly frustrating for me as a shipper and a gay (trans) man where like... despite how undeniably popular mlm ships are in fandom circles they're just NEVER allowed to be canon to the point where I've just...kind of given up hope a ship I like will ever be allowed to just...be a real couple.
So it's so great that like actual popular wlw ships get to become canon and I'm so happy for them (love Catradora) but it's like...so sad and frustrating when most of the mlm rep we get is side characters / one-offs / people who have no arcs or screentime so it's just...cool... they're there but I have little to no emotional attachment to them. It's definitely better than nothing but I'm so tired.
I mean trans men also feel invisible (trans rep in general obv lacking) so it's just...kinda sad I just feel like both my identities are constantly erased / relegated to the background. I know we've come so far but we still have a looooong ways to go.
Just for example, when Shiro x Keith was a really popular Voltron ship (I know there's controversy around it and for the sake of argument I don't care), instead of just going with that for Shiro's coming out they introduced their shitty burry the gay shenanigans instead and had Shiro hitch up with a rando npc offscreen. (Voltron had a lot of problems screwing over all its characters but still).
Even the new drama with DC where like...Tim Drake is finally bi, but instead of letting him be with a character he's been shipped with FOR YEARS it's another rando (I didn't read it so idk how good the storyline is but still). Same with the new Superman drama. And don't get me started on all the queerbaiting in the MCU.
I mean they'll take our money and are perfectly fine with the huge presence of mlm ships in fandom but just will never give it to us for real......
With Tim Drake, they did pair him with a male friend from Tim's solo book series from the early years of the character, so it's not all bad. I do wish they had him and Connor Kent cause it was so painfully obvious that Tim was deeply in love with Connor. He was fixated on bringing him back to life and didn't get nearly that affected when his on/off girlfriend died.
Y E S
At this point i kinda gave up on shipping mlm couples lol
one exception I can think is the jock from para-norman
I dislike how most gay stereotypes code men with female traits, and most lesbian stereotypes code women with male traits. It's like it's saying gay men "Aren't real men" and lesbians "Aren't real women.
Though I'd argue that if you're a guy and you're intimate with guys, that's probably the most masculine thing you could possibly do. The same goes for women and women, and being the most feminine thing imaginable.
I would argue that the queer rep in My Little Pony is... debatable? It's kinda hand-wavey from my reading of it.
Scootaloo's aunts are shown together on-screen, and Scootaloo refers to them as Aunt Holiday and Auntie Lofty, so I guess one could imply that they are a couple? It's never explicitly stated by any of the characters that the two aunts are partnered.
Lyra and Bonbon are both background characters, who only really got speaking lines in a few episodes. In the times where they speak, they only ever refer to themselves as "such good friends!" It is only at the very end of the series that the two are confirmed as lesbian, where they are shown in a wedding photo in a newspaper for a split-second on-screen.
I bring this up because a lot of folks in the MLP fandom were upset with Hasbro for not having explicit enough queer representation. It always felt like Hasbro was trying to maintain plausible deniability. I think based on the technical definitions, they both count on your list, but like... barely.
Willow in Owl House also has gay dads. 😅 Gay dads is such a trope lol
I wonder if writers consider creating young lesbian couples to be easier than creating young gay couples because female friendships in media tend to already be depicted as fairly intimate (both physically and emotionally) as compared to male friendships, so the gap between friends and lovers might seem shorter. Basically, you could take two girls who already hug and have them kiss and have them add the word "love" to heart-to-heart conversation they're already having - especially if it's a family show where everybody understands nothing beyond that can really be shown.
I also think to some extent that lgbt+ women are the ones who are making a lot of the content that includes LGBT+ characters in family-oriented entertainment, and so are creating to fill a void they felt growing up without any female representation (hell, LGBT+ or otherwise in a lot of content). I know I didn't think about writing gay men into my writing because I just think of them as the prominent face of LGBT+ movements in general, but I also never stopped to think about what face they are allowed to have. And you're right, in fiction, they are often only allowed to be sexualized adults in content for adults.
also in literature, there's also the rampant problem of straight women writing stories about gay men that are intended for straight female audiences, then they go around touting themselves as LGBT+ allies, but become screeching venomous assholes towards authors that are writing LGBT+ stories that aren't 'gay men for straight women' stories, but in them doing this it can sometimes feel like there's better 'gay male' representation than there actually is while also feel more like every other group is being sidelined
Cis middle-aged bloke here. Firstly, I would like to say that I am a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community (apologies if I missed your letter, but please take it that even if your letter isn't on the list, I still support it!). However, I do find it uncomfortable to watch men kissing, be it on television or in real life.
BUT... I would never say anything to those who do make PDAs when I'm about, because I see this as MY problem, not theirs. It feels uncomfortable to me, because it isn't commonplace for me (yet). I'm not going to ask anyone to stop doing it in public, because there has been far too much of that. As uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I WANT there to be more of it in mainstream TV and film. I'm not worried it would make me gay, because that's just ridiculous and insulting.
Basically, I want all non-cis kissing to become normalised for me. Not for thrills, but because at that point it will hopefully mean it's becoming normal for everyone else, and that would mean there is less LGTBQ+ persecution going on, and far more acceptance.
I do have hope for me. This morning, I watched The Eternals. At one point, it looked like two gay men (yes, they were both dads) were going to kiss. I was willing them to kiss on screen, as I knew that would be a huge thing. And they did kiss! And I didn't look away! And I didn't feel as uncomfortable as I have in the past!
Please keep on posting these videos: I watch them all, and I love and respect your thoughts. Whilst I might not always agree with you on matters of whether or not a film is any good, your videos on sexuality and gender issues (be they representation in the media or experiences you have had in real life) are must viewing for me, as I want to understand.
Thank you!
I don't mean to be critical, but I don't think cis means what you think it does. Cis is just the opposite of trans which has to do with gender not sexuality. Cis het is often used to describe people are neither trans nor gay but the het seems to be your focus here. Just as an example I'm bisexual but still cis or people can be trans but still straight.
@@glitterberserker1029 ah, right. As you've probably already guessed, I'm still a relative noobie in understanding this topic, which is why the videos on this channel (and indeed the commentators) are so important to my trying to get things right. It seems obvious now, but I did have to look up "het"... at first I thought that was a typo, but you used it twice. I realise it is short for "heterosexual". I thought I had a grip on the difference between sexuality and gender identity; it seems more study is needed lol!
I'm just relieved that when I said I find men kissing uncomfortable that no one shouted me down. I didn't think they would as I firmly believe this to be a safe space. But I was still a bit nervous when I announced my feelings.
@@Stephen_The_Waxing_Lyricist I honestly feel like for me at least, the fact that you are trying is enough, and it absolutely should be normalised in public. It’s nice to see people not part of the lgbtq+ community (I’m making a bit of an assumption here, sorry if I’m wrong) trying to educate themselves on it
@@Stephen_The_Waxing_Lyricist totally understandable mistake. There's a lot of nuance to it all. Also sorry sometimes I forget the difference between terminology that's commonplace to queer people online vs what the general public actually knows. If you're looking for other creators to follow may I recommend Jessie Gender, they're friends with Vera and thier content is in the same vein, verilybitchy, they do content that is mostly centered around bisexuality but also trans and nonbinary topics, Kat Black, she does content about trans topics as well as race and how they intersect and compound one another, and finally Jamidodger, he makes shorter videos so they can a bit easier to fit in sometimes and they tend to have a fairly humorous slant on mostly trans topics but other queer identities as well as gender roles. Jamidodger specifically does a pretty good job of explaining terms as he uses them.
The perspectives of non-queer people who are open and honest about learning to be better allies is extremely valuable. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
I think you are right. In Queer as Folk the married couple with a kid was used to gain sympathy vs the “less savory” Lgbtq community members after a hate crime. And that was a while ago.
I think that for British Children's media it's generally a lot better at having gay men in it, for example, I remember seeing a children's TV show (of course written by the legendary Russell T Davies) called Wizards Vs Aliens when one of the main characters or at least high ranking side characters comes out as gay, although I'm not sure if it had anything to do with couples but it was about 7 years ago.
One thing I don't like about that though is that Benny is then written out in 2 stories and never returns
I've seen also in The Hallow, a Netflix show target to around 11 years old. It isn't very popular. One of the main boys is gay and used to date a guy from the opposite team.
The Hollow is criminally underrated.
@@TheTakerFoxx And Cancelled too soon.
The Canadian Voice actors in that Show don't get enough work.
The very day you posted this, Amphibia introduced Mr. X, who seems to be poised to become a prominent character for the rest of the show's run, and very much gives off vibes of being in a relationship with his male assistant who he affectionately calls Jenny, which could well eventually get confirmed given how open the show has been otherwise about representation (the very same episode also features an offhand scene of two male background characters getting engaged). Oh, and he's played by RuPaul, so that's a big sign itself.
@@christopherb501 The first season is a pretty low-key animated sitcom, but then the finale suddenly turns it into something on the same level as Owl House.
Doesn't Mr. X and Jenny kind of also remind you of how Dr. Eggman and his assistant were from the Sonic live action movie? I was getting serious flashbacks, that was even before the episoded had that movie statue of the pre-fixed Sonic.
I agree with you but also part of it could just be that the producers who are funding shows with queer characters are looking to hit multiple "representation" checkboxes at once so those shows have a lot of female characters.
Or maybe the people deciding what shows get funded are men who remember not wanting to be called gay when they were kids. Their guess on what straight girls will watch could be more accurate than what straight boys will watch because it isn't clouded by out of date personal experience.
With the owl house u missed Willow Parks’ dads (total legends. Not really a spoiler but when their kid got expelled for a period of time, they quit their jobs and committed to homeschool her)
Yeah I realized that during the edit but didn't have the time to add it in.
Right
Willow have two Dads
By the way, Willow's parents in Owl House are also gay dads.
To be fair to kyle and rogelio, kyle's cruch on rogelio is actually refrenced once or twice throughout
Yeah I know about Owl House and annoyed I forgot to mention it.
@@CouncilofGeeks I'm still waiting for you to do another owl house reaction ^-^ really enjoyed the last one
I think part of it is also that a ton of the wlw and nb creators responsible for these shows grew up watching more than just children's media. If you were a western kid in the 00s who hung out in fannish spaces and wanted lgbtq+ representation, you likely had access to things like limewire, so you could watch very much adult-targeted shows like QaF and The L Word without your parents finding out, and also had an entire world of anime and manga (granted, of varying emotional quality) filled with lgbtq+-presenting characters just /there/ if you had the patience for it to download. Of the big fandoms there was Sailor Moon and Utena, but most of the really popular ones you could share with your friends were mlm. Combine that with a few years in fandom discussing how alienating the laser focus on mlm ships over anything else was, and of course you'd end up concentrating on wlw characters when you have the chance to make your own stories.
Interesting subject, for sure. I haven't done any research into it, really, so I'm just going off my own limited perspective here, but I feel like North American culture in general has always been more comfortable with the idea of women being emotionally close and physically close than it has been with men being so. Probably rooted in this very heteronormative idea of what the act of sex is, and therefore two women or two female-presenting people being intimate is less transgressive than two men or two male presenting people. There seems to be a lot of confusion about how women even have sex with each other, and that also really centers around the entire concept of v*rginity and what it means to have or not have it. Two male-presenting bodies together is inherently seen as more sexual and therefore more threatening, than two female-presenting bodies. (All of this is nonsense social construction, of course, but still is kind of assumed.) So then to get more on-screen gay male representation in children's media, you need to make sure it's as non-threatening as possible, so you have comfy dads who are basically de-sexed in favor of their "dad-ness" and making sure they're extra wholesome and holding up the nuclear family ideals and stuff. At least that's my take on the shape of this particular trend, but again, can't back it up with research or stats or anything. am very interested in hearing from people who do have that stuff.
In "The Hollow" on Netflix, the character Adam is gay, and the character Mira has two fathers.
"I'll focus on American shows, won't go through the Japanese stuff"
Other 95% of the world: Am I a joke to you?
But in all seriousness, is there anything mentionable from Canada, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy or Korea for example? Would be interesting.
6Teen is actually Canadian but it's easy to mistake it for being American, I also heard a lot of episodes of it weren't aired in the US too over LGBT stuff but it was the 2000's after all.
I feel like the idea that F/F relationships are seen as "safer" is reinforced by the fact that all the most prominent M/M relationships are in adult cartoons. Like, just off the top of my head there's Blitz and Stolas, and Fizzarolli and Asmodeus in Helluva Boss, Terry and Korvo in Solar Opposites, and technically Marshall Lee and Prince Gumball were only officially made a couple in the Fionna and Cake show, which is on the more adult oriented end of the Adventure Time franchise.
I think there’s another reason that’s not as deep, that being that a lot of these shows were made by queer women or non-binary people who at some point identified as queer women. so they’re gonna be more likely to write what they know and what they would’ve wanted to see as a kid.
I think you're really onto something here. I also think that the perception of men as more authoritative and predatory also may be inherently linked with the way that women tend to be infantilized. This is just something that occurred to me while listening to you, so I haven't been able to give it a lot of adequate thought as of yet.
I hate suggesting this additional possible factor, but in the U.S. mainstream, a lot of straight cis men fetishize lesbians. Obviously the world of anime and fanfiction skews those numbers, but I don't think we can really count that as the mainstream in the U.S. I don't want that to be a contributing factor, but I feel it likely is.
I don't think I agree with you about effeminate men facing more stigma than masculine women. The amount of hate and cruelty I see hurled toward my transwomen friends, though makes me feel that one can't weigh out who has it worse.
I think there might more discomfort with how people commonly think about how gay men are intimate compared to how lesbians are.
I do think a big part that plays into it is that a fair few of the writers/creators of these shows are queer women or non-binary, so they tend to write theirown exsperences
Dragon Prince: Also gay moms! (-:
I’m not sure about other shows but I’ve got a different theory when it came to she-ra. When I tend to write stories, the characters tend to be dominantly female and non-binary, very much lacking male representation due to the fact that I was born afab and leaned towards female (and non-binary) characters. While I was watching shera I noticed they were also writing less male characters similar to me and when I looked up who wrote it, what do you know, they were written by someone like me, queer and afab. In this case, I think it’s less of what you were saying and more that the show was targeted towards girls and queers.
I think a major factor with She-ra is its nature as a reboot. Almost all the recurring characters are from the original show, Bow's dads being among the few new additions. There's just not many male characters to begin with.
@@wendyheatherwood
I mean Bow was right there 😭 but they aimed too high at the family tree
There's also the pirate guy too
There was Legend of Korra with Korra and Asami that was HEAVILY implied at the end of the show and then expanded on in the comics. IN CANON kiss as well. But this, again, only reinforces your points on w|w relationships over m|m relationships.
Willow, on The Owl House, also has gay dads. (I tHiNk you missed them, but I may be mistaken…)
But aren’t the creators of Steven Universe, The Owl House, and the She-Ra reboot all women? (“Write what you know…” and all that.) 🤷🏼♂️
6Teen is actually Canadian but it's easy to mistake it for being American, I also heard a lot of episodes of it weren't aired in the US too over LGBT stuff but it was the 2000's after all.
Really interesting video- Also I'd go a bit further. If you notice, the examples mentioned for the most part are either designed to appeal to a female or broad demographic. It seems unlikely we'd get gay characters in (just throwing out an example) Justice League Action. It does also seem to tie in with the idea of men not being comfortable with the emotional aspect.
I think there's a divide in how males (boys and men) and females (girls and women) are seen in our overall culture, and that goes very deep down in people's thinking and feelings about anything about the body (nudity) or sexuality or gender. Somehow, it's more accepted for girls/women to have close relationship s and express their feelings, but guys/boys/men don't get to do that, it's repressed more, or coded into strict modes, and woe be it for the boys who step outside that, and the girls too. Notice that doesn't even get into anybody who is physically or emotionally in between ins some way. That's how restrictive our culture is toward that. But we see this in all kinds of ways. Dolls and action figures, cartoons and most art, drawings, definitely photos, avoid showing "boy parts" other than a basic bulge. Women get to have breasts, but that's about it. Somehow, thee's this assumption that those boy parts are too blatant, too exciting for anyone to see, even when you're a boy (male). Yet about half the population is male. This attitude carries over into how men and women (and boys and girls) are treated, what's expected of them, what is allowed for them to be. And if you don't happen to fit in that, oh, sorry, too bad for you. We still don't see a lot of non-straight / queer representation, and it's very iffy in media for kids and teens, as well as for adults. It's better than it used to be, maybe, but it's often still only certain kinds of portrayals, stereotypes, while other things, the real range of what it is to be not-so-straight is rarely covered. There's the assumption too that being other than straight means you're going to talk about or show sex, that that's all it is. Only for those of us who aren't so straight, we know there's much more to it than that, just like there's more to being straight than just sex. Look at the controversy over whether a certain two characters are close best friends or a budding gay couple, and the fuss over, how old do people think they are? Wherever people side on that, why is it such a problem? Why can't it be OK for them to be best friends being lose, affectionate? Why can't it be equally OK if they are discovering they are gay and becoming boyfriends? Because if they were a boy and girl, no one would be upset at the scenes depicted, for them to be friends or discovering first love as a straight boy and girl. But oh, the idea that two boys might be discovering they are gay and boyfriends, at whatever age that is? People use their minds. (From the movie creators interviewed, the bunch of kids are pre-teens or early teens, closer to early middle school than late elementary.) But people still get all upset. And that's just one recent example. (I know my own reading on it is they are close friends, but I'd be happy if they could be gay boyfriends. Real life, many gay boys don't get accepted by their straight friends when those first feelings start emerging. But best friends being close, that's good and healthy. I'd just like the chance for gay boys to be happy and healthy when first having feelings too. So it's a whole mess of things, and it seldom gets any discussion without people losing their cool, losing their minds over it. Why is homophobia and transphobia so deep? Why is even basic acceptance of anything, straight too, or just the facts of the human body, so off-limits or threatening for so many people? I ask as someone who grew up with that, but pretty much everyone my age also grew up that way. Anyone more positive about it must have been somewhere else, or I missed out. heh.
I think you're pretty spot on with this. Plus the vast majority of people who finance and greenlight these shows are men, who I'm guessing, even if it's subconsciously, feel a lot more threatened by gay men than lesbian women
90s Disney Lloyd in Space had an episode about a non binary alien that was meant to choose to settle as male or female but refused
Hmm my first thought about potential "whys" was like you said, men being more predatory. Then I thought that cis, straight men are potentially more likely to enjoy watching female queer characters, mainly lesbians. So perhaps some unintended pandering to that demographic.
As a gay man this has been something I've noticed and something that, while I'm happy that there is representation for same sex female relationship, has hurt me growing up. More shows where this is prominent are, Arcane, ark survival, Scooby doo and the Velma series, Harley Quinn and DC in general
i will say as well that no matter who in the community is being represented, they are constantly railroaded and/or canceled. So despite the unfairness in levels of representation amongst the community in family/kid's media, I'm just glad we have any positive rep at all nowadays 😭
I agree with you. It would also be interesting to check if maybe more women work on these type of media and thus bring more lesbian rep? because as you said, adult media (and not just cartoon) tend to represent more gay men than women (how they represent them is of course another story but in general I feel like we get more gay men in mainstream than gay women)
I know you included The Simpsons as a more adult orientated show, but when I was growing up it was very much considered family entertainment. It's probably less family friendly now due to having to compete with the likes of Family Guy...I have no idea as I've not watched a new episode of The Simpsons in about a decade, probably even longer. With all that said though, they always had Waylon Smithers. While in the earlier seasons his sexuality was only ever hinted at, it was confirmed later on. For the most part, Smithers hasn't (at least in the days I actively watched the show) been depicted as a gay stereotype. He's Mr. Burns' faithful assistant and respected employee, he doesn't mince or lisp, he dresses conservatively, he's not a drama queen, he's just a guy who happens to be gay. Aside from his collecting of Malibu Stacy dolls, none of his characteristics are particularly queer coded. Then I seem to remember around the time I stopped watching that either Patty or Selma came out as a lesbian, I forget which one. So those are some very high profile characters in the longest running and most successful animated show. It's not exactly a kids show like some of the others you list here, but it was always a family show when I was growing up.
I wonder what the result would be if you looked for bi men in the same way. I bet the representation would be close to zero.
Yea…I was excited when Robert Webb’s character in Peep Show was represented as bi but he falls into the stereotype of bi people are overly sexual and desperate to sleep with everyone and anyone :/
I think you definitely hit the nail on the head. As much as we have progressed as a society, there's still too many lingering thoughts and people's heads because of a lot of the media most people consumed. And unfortunately, television is where a lot of people get their first interpretations of people that they never actually met in real life before. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these writers immediately looked to like stand up comedy acts and comedians making jokes about gay men as a way to write the personality of their characters. Not saying that's what they did, I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened. Like I am very much enjoying how much queer up there is nowadays, especially in kids animation, but writers very often just jump to making the sapphic couple, again mostly because of society and the images people have when it comes to queer people, in this case queer women.
I often said queer men are demonized & queer women are fetishized, cuz look at the way society, especially men talk about lesbians versus gay men. They have no problem with lesbians because they like looking at it, but when it comes to gay men, they want to either act offended, disgusted, or like some moral center and scream "Think of the children" even though once again, they were just fetishizing lesbians. And these are the same people that will try and teach younger boys that is wrong to be anything other than straight. Example: Lil Nas X talking about Kevin Hart's stupid gay jokes and being afraid to come out or be himself for along ass time.
Honestly, this is why I will always say Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts has the best queer rep in animation. Not only is Benson a lead character, but they had him actually say it out loud, which I know some people are going to try and respond with actions speak louder than words or show don't tell or you have to be subtle and to that I say "Screw That Shit". If there's one thing that I have learned over the past few years in watching audiences responses online to many shows, it's that subtlety goes over people's heads too damn much. Sometimes you have to say it out loud and people being afraid to say it out loud is the reason we have so many "implied" queer characters in the first place.
I mean it’s kind of obvious. Women are more marketable and since they’re not only more “attractive” and people are willing to help them and see them as “victims” of something.
This lends itself to shows because not only can the characters look attractive whether that’s sexual or cute, their characters overall are more accepted because they’re seen as something people want to protect and help.
Men don’t get that. Look at any social problem we have and women usually get the most help, even when it comes to marketing women are generally the models and have more self expression.
I'd like to think that we've mostly moved past the negative connotations that fandoms have with mlm and the (hugely wrong and toxic) stereotype of gay men being sexual predators but to be quite honest? I don't think we have. We still get major mainstream franchises portraying said stereotype like Persona 5. If you ship mlm then you're often labelled as degenerate or gross for "sexualizing underage kids." Half the youtube videos with a confirmed mlm pairing in a children's cartoon will be littered with massive dislikes and a bunch of angry comments making fun of the video for being "woke." If you walk 2 feet into any shounen anime fandom space, you're pretty much hit with mlm homophobia and transphobia on sight. Heck, the majority of the One Piece fandom still refuse to acknowledge that two confirmed trans characters who aren't portrayed as stereotypical drag queens or predators are actually trans and still purposely use the wrong pronouns for them. wlw ships and shoujo fandom spaces just don't have these problems as much.
Anyways, thank you so much for making this video! This is something that has been bothering me for a while now as I've been following a ton of great children's cartoons and was mostly disappointed at the lack of mlm representation.
Mr. Ratburn from Arthur. A peripheral but beloved authority figure.
In general, the reason is because we dont like to sexualize men in general, dads have a child and more important, the consume their relationship long time ago, ergo they are "safe", is the trend that in order to queer people to appear, they have to become patable to stright audience and at some level, we still consider gay men to be gross.(I do at some level unfortunally, you know the old habit die hard, a thing to overcome I guess).
I feel like lesbiansare mainly accepted in animated series bit if it is live action from my experience and what I seen the shows with lesbian characters either is used for the male gaze, canceled, or has a really depressing story going on whereas from what I see live action mlm shows/movies get to have more happier stuff
I barely remember there was a TV show called Northern Exposure that had a non-stereotyped gay couple late in the series. They were never regular characters but they were prominent in one or two episodes.
There's something of a very unfortunate elephant in the room at play, I feel, and that's that lesbians have a history of being fetishized in western culture far more than gay men couples are. Not saying that gay men are also not fetishized, not by a long shot, and also am very much not saying that creators are specifically including lesbian couples for titillation purposes, but that this probably is a factor in why there is less pushback from studio execs, as a lesbian couple would be much easier to promote than a gay couple would be, and less likely to see the same level backlash from several demographics than gay men would.
I know you weren’t doing anime, but in Sailor Moon there were two same-sex couples. In Sailor Moon (season 1) you hadn’t villains Zoisite and Kunzite who were gay men, and in Sailor Moon S (season 3) we’re introduced to Haruka and Michiru a lesbian couple who fight together as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune.
I'm so glad you made a video about this. I've noticed this too and I give it the side-eye. Poor WLW romances. It's like, either they are portrayed as like, sexless and "pure" in a way other relationships aren't, or they're ultra-fetishized and nothing but sexual! It's like, even when they're winning, they have to face this double-edged sword!
Although I can think of more diversity when I remember kids' shows with MLM characters that lie in the realm of "heavily implied" instead of fully confirmed intrinsically, they still very often were like, an old married couple-style relationship....
Animation has two genders
American an Japanese
(The joke is there are more options in both cases)
Admittedly Clyde’s dads came to mind when seeing the title of the video they are good example of alternative families that aren’t the traditional mom and dad family and it disproves the idea that being raised by gay dads or lesbian moms that the children will be gay or lesbian cause Clyde has a crush on Lori Lincoln’s oldest sister and Luna Lincoln’s older sister implying she is lesbian and in a lesbian relationship I haven’t watched Nickelodeon in a while and Their badly scheduled lineup where u can tell the company’s focus is on paramount+ makes it harder to know when new loud house episode especially since I have reduced my viewership down to only watching the power rangers since most of the network’s time is taken up by spongebob not that it’s a bad show it’s just overplayed at this point
You missed Willow’s dads in the owl house
maybe it's bc of the recently dropped episode of helluva boss, but i found myself thinking about web originals. many of them are not aimed at kids, but a lot of them do have lgbt representation that you'd not find in most mainstream american media.
I’ve noticed that us female members of the LGBTQ+ community get more rep in media. As much as I love canon sapphic ships like Lumity and Catradora, and Korrasami (and I do love the canon sapphic stuff, keep it coming media) the men and boys in the community need and deserve to be able to see themselves in media more too.
Oh I also think that maybe there are more women who both write kids animation and are interested in fighting for subversive rep. So the fact that the characters they write are women might not be that weird. Like we have limited sample size but I think it might be possible that the vent diagram of people who want to write queer characters might lean feminine. My evidence might be limited but Dana terrace is a woman wrote owl house. Daron nefcy a woman show runner of star vs. I don’t know who was writing in the finale of at where bubbline became canon. (Iirc it was an animator that made them kiss as it wasn’t in the story board? So maybe that animator?)
Yeah, they are seen as more dangerous, like the idea of a man being attracted to masculinity means they are likely to be a threat. And so often ones overcompensate as effeminate gay man joke, or as unthreatening as possible as the dads.
As a consumer of anime, the stuff for adults very often if there is a gay character they are a joke, threatening in ways that seem abusive, and often both.
okay i know this is an old video,but one thing i also noticed that most of the queer couples in animation(family, "adult" or indie) is most of them are white/white coded or white wth poc but rarely both poc or interracial couple 🤔