I don't want "good" representation, I want "broad" representation. I want the boring, the good, the messy, the bad, and the scandalous. I just want the creators to know which one they're writing.
YES I love Titus from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidtt, even if he's a walking stereotype, because he's so gosh darn happy with who he is--and I love the flashback of his highschool days of being a closeted jock and how much of a nightmare it was being normal and popular. And on the other end, I also love Oscar from The Office being the ironic comedic "straight man" dealing with everyone's bafoonery, and knowing when and how to stand up for himself and call people out. I think it would be super unfair to consider either of them as some sort of standard or singular ambassador for gay men. We need to see variety!
or when they're writing which of these sides in one character. People have more than one side/layer and often go through several of these stages during the early explorations of their sexuality. Not always, but it would create very interesting plots, conflicts, and dynamics (both between characters and inside the characters head).
A general rule I have when it comes to diversity is "A characters diversity shouldn't be their most interesting characteristic". I'd say that overly perfect or boring characters aren't good representation, personally, because good representation would be treating them the same as other characters: letting them be flawed, interesting and nuanced.
And my first thought is Trevor from Shameless when he was first introduced. He was so obviously just a vehicle to bring up trans and LGBTQA+ topics the show hadn't touched before. It was painful.
“We don’t need perfect representation. We just need more of it.” YES! If writers are concerned about their trans/gay/bi/POC/female/disabled character coming off as a stereotype or offensive, the easy solution is just… have another character similarly marginalized but has their own way of navigating it. Some people IRL just happen to fall into stereotypes. Stereotypes are only bad when they’re the only representation seen.
this isn't even difficult to write in, most members of marginalised groups will find each other quickly. when you're all excluded for the same reasons, you start to hang out with each other. if you've got an autistic male character, give him a female autistic friend. if one character leans into a stereotype, don't have non-stereotypical characters of the same group make fun of them unless they're also gonna canonically have their own issues around respectability politics. and for the love of god hire a sensitivity editor if ur discussing those topics.
@@toothfairy10133 “when you’re all excluded for the same reasons, you start to hang out with each other.” This is so true even if someone doesn’t even KNOW they belong to that group. I like that you used autistics as an example, since I’ve had a few friends on the spectrum long before I knew I was. Plus, “token straight in a group of LGBTQ+ friends realizes they’re not actually straight and/or cis” is a common phenomena that I’ve also experienced first-hand.
@@LJA116 it's very natural to gravitate towards people with similar mindsets and experiences as you because you'll understand each other the best That's why it's so easy for queer people to "fund each other"
It's not that some people fall into stereotypes. Most do. That's why they're stereotyped to begin with because it's a fairly sized amount which is most likely above average. People just don't like stereotypes because "not everyone" is like this. If I were to say black people are tall ots a stereotype but generally they are on tbe taller side. It's a stereotype but there's nothing wrong with what I said in my observation unless you choose to take offense to it. The only other way it's offensive is if the stereotype is simply not true for most and just a made up stigma used by anti people.
I'm not paraphrasing this well, but in an essay, Ursula Le Guin talks about how if a writer prioritizes the message over the story, it will usually kill both. Storytelling has to come first. It can be self-aware, but it's how people connect and empathize with characters, and good characters that reflect us... aren't perfect. This is a great video, it really hit home for me as a queer/trans writer of stories. Thank you!
I'm glad you mentioned IUrsula Le Guin I live near porland and had ocasion to meet her a few times. During one of her interviews she told how she decided to write about a topic when the critics mentioned how she couldn't do it.
It's particularly interesting coming from ever as she wrote in order two of my favourites books ever and one that for how much I tried I only found a chore to go through, which It happens to be the one most explicit about its own topics after the first Earthsea novel. If only more people knew of her, I wouldn't have to suffer when people ask who she is
I'm trans writer too) But right now I am writing a story about lesbians, but planning a poem about trans man in the atmosphere of Russian folklore ('cause I'm Russian) :)
I’m gonna say it: “If it only took one bad character to make someone hate an entire group of people then they were just looking for an excuse, any excuse.”
I think youre missing the point. I think when people write normal gays, trans, blacks, they arent doing it for that sake, and i think one of the problem with the communities is that you guys are taking it the wrong way in that sense of “not wanting _______ to look bad.” It has more to do with not stereotyping. Not every minority has this “set” persona or stereotype they are supposed to be, us minorities are more than capable of being normal people. Like for instance; I’m black. My blackness will not go away if i’m quiet, reserved and smart. A gay man will not be any less gay if he isnt talking funny or isnt wearing a pink sweater and being b*tchi.
“I’m honestly tired of people praising “wholesome” queer shows and putting down queer shows that aren’t. Is that the only way you can enjoy gay characters? Gay people have sex, gay people are assholes, gay people can be anything. Showing all sides is proper representation. I just want messed up characters that are so unapologetically gay.” - random person on twitter
I think the weakness of that is that it give homophobes a reason to make broad assumptions. Many people still don't know people who are part of the lgbt nor understand any basic concepts around it other then the identity and label
@@darianbarber3763 I think no matter what we do, homophobes will always making assumptions toward LGBT,so I think good representations are important but the foundation of that is more and broad representations for sure
Yeah tbh it feels condescending that people are scared to make gay people and women villains or antagonists these days. In trying so hard to correct some stereotypes, now it seems like the only people who are allowed to be cunning villains are straight white men, which just aligns with different stereotypes of us being lesser, less intelligent, emotional etc. A woman, little lone a gay woman, couldn’t possibly just be evil or a horrible person, or commit deeds just because she wants to, she NEEDS to have tragic backstory and redemption arc and cry about her past. Like come on, why are only dudes allowed to be evil now
Although I’m cis, this is how I feel about Black representation as s Black woman. People are worried about being racist or stereotypical that they think writing a flawed Black character is racist and that Black characters have to be perfect and kind to everyone all the time, which ends up making them boring and unrelatable. Most of my Black characters are morally grey assholes and I like writing women that are kind of cold and grumpy at first the way male characters are often written (and loved/romanticized by fans for being). But when I write an angsty selfish morally gray Black female lead in my comic, I just know she will be accused of being a stereotype even when she isn’t and seen as her race and gender before as a character. Or people will subscribe a stereotype that didn’t previously exist onto my characters just because they are Black and not always likable. There’s just no way to win.
I feel that, I'm not black, but I have a lot of black characters that I'm afraid to write or tell people, even if I've talked about them with my black friends and they don't see anything wrong, I'm still insecure. I didn't make them for representations per see, I just thought their design was better this way, with these colors, felt more "them" if you understand? Like any other character I've made. But they arent perfect snowflackes, which gaves me even more fear...representation x internet is scary
Something like that i think is something i worry about a bunch.. Although i dont write and only occasionally draw im often worried about hurting people even tho i know they wanna be treated as just.. people.. at least in most cases Like.. if i draw someone whos white and i mess up its just eh and i just suck but whenever i draw someone who looks average and white i always just feel bad and like i should try harder.. even tho theyre not drawn any worse than the others ..i think at least..
Honestly same and I'm a black woman, I feel weird writing black woman has anything other than soft, silly and girly cause I don't want to add to the strong aggressive black woman stereotype. But like black woman exist in a spectrum so I should show all of it.
It's kind of what happens to all minorities. Because people want to break away from stereotypes but people have personalities of all types that can align with said stereotypes. But in my mind the issue is with the people stereotyping to make their world view easier. It's a double edged sword I think all minorities face. To try and not be a stereotype but that still boxes you in just like the stereotype.
Same! While I'm a gay black man, it's the same feeling: I want to watch controversial stories too, not just the sad and/or overcoming kind of movies/series. Go crazy, you know?
Okay I’m massively overtired but the sheer whiplash of “here is this extremely boring comedy that doesn’t have a single joke in it” to “‘I am a transgender woman’ ‘thank you for sharing your truth. with me’” legitimately put tears on my face
"I am a transgender woman." "Thank you.................................................................... for sharing your truth." that line delivery pains me so much
I think most (not transphobic) people would just react with "Oh, okay" or parents "we love you nonetheless". No need for thank you, for telling me your truth.
I personally love relationships in fiction that are messy, complicated, maybe even a little toxic but there is some good there or the potential for good and they work through it to a happier healthier relationship
Tbf isn’t that just regular way every basic straight white male character is written? “He’s an asshole, but he can learn ya’ll🎊” they even get a complimentary trophy gf upon reaching what the male writers think selfactualisation is.
I totally agree, messy relationships are the best (in fiction). If they're too perfect it's just not interesting. The Stamets/Culber and Adira/Gray couples from Star Trek are great examples of this. "Oh so you're saying there is no drama in this *drama* programme? Yeah I'll go out and buy the Blu-Rays of that, absolutely for sure"
I agree. Mickey and Ian from Shameless have a sort of toxic relationship, messy at times but it is super entertaining. Furthermore Mickey is an amazing character because while he is very aware what he likes sexually, for a long time he denies it and hides the emotional side of it. There are some scenes that are hard to watch but it's never boring.
I only recently watched through Hannibal AFTER learning that not only is the relationship cannon, but messy and destructive and INTERESTING. And I’m obsessed.
I’m waiting for this conversation with queer characters to hit the same point that the convo around “strong female characters” has. Where we understand thy just having these “strong female characters” giving us “good representation” is boring and actually sexist in itself. Hopefully this video will give it a good kick up the arse and get it rolling, because I’m definitely over the boring “strong trans character”.
Exactly. Characters that aren't seen as minorities are allowed to just be good and interesting characters, whereas women (less so than in the past, thankfully), queer people, and POC have to be "strong role models" and "good representation". The problem really is just one of scale. Like, Catradora has some aspects that are less than perfectly healthy, but no one called that bad lesbian representation because we also had Spinnerella and Netossa and Scorpia and Perfuma being uncontroversially perfect.
yeah, it feels like a stepping stone the same way "magical negroes" were a stepping stone to more honest, three dimensional and complex representation of people of color, resulting from a well meaning (or at the very least, trying toi cash in on diversity) but still insular and white dominated industry. First you erase or demonize, then you go for squeaky clean but empty and dishonest representation, and then you manage to get three dimensional representation when the represented group gets more power in the industry, and when enough people who are part of these groups get enough experience around these people to write them as something else than cardboard cutouts.
@@maximeteppe7627 This is it. The squeaky clean image naturally comes first after years of erasure and demonization. While yes, it's still dishonest and empty, think about what the backlash would be like if that step was skipped, before the represented group had gotten the power to write themselves.
But isn't the whole point of that discussion that the "strong female character" trope isn't good representation? It's inaccurate and idealised and comes across as being a mary sue every single time because the idea is to create the perfect woman that defies all stereotypes and is "just as good as a man" to show men that girls can too, instead of being written as a relatable and interesting 3 dimensional character with depth and complexity meant so that real women can feel seen and understood. Representation can only be good if it's intended audience is the group it's representing, I've only just started the video so I'm not sure if she addresses this or not but it isn't even really representation if it's a carefully constructed propaganda piece (often created by a person who is not of the minority group) that is intended to give a certain impression of the minority group, that's just propaganda, nothing wrong with that I guess since public opinion has to be affected somehow but representation has to exist authentically without any agenda or its not actually representative of anything.
I think the problem started with the very term "representation" as if the characters were embassadors of their culture to the rest of the World and must be paragorns of what is to be expected
“Isn’t every bisexual a disaster bisexual at heart?” Just wanted to say that I have never felt SO seen as I was listening to this line. And now I’ll go back to my distinguished bisexual life wishing I could be more disaster…
@@telepathicmagicshop I totally get this. Being bi and in the ace community we exist too. We can be a lot of different things. Also, some of us have our it together. There is nothing wrong with sexual bi people, and like this video asserts they can be flawed, but I wish I had seen more non-closeted bi people who had it together.
@@fbaxter8551 for me disaster bi is me over thinking and I can't talk in general. especially to a pretty lady then I try another option to look away cuz eye contact is hard in general.but then on the tv is a shirtless man and u urself haven't had any type of sexual gratification in over 2 months so now u can feel ur face visablly getting brighter and ur face is just making all the emotions. Ur just trying to order food to go :/
It reminds me of when Knives Out came out, the director revealed a bit of trivia that Apple don't allow bad guys to use their products on screen, so if a character is seen using an iPhone then they won't be the killer. This kind of policy has been adopted for LGBT and ethnic minority characters. I just watched a recent Netflix horror movie, a Scream-esque teen slasher murder mystery, where the core cast was incredibly diverse. The problem is we know that the killer is likely one of them but we know that it won't be the Brown main girl or her Black bff or the Latino boy or the trans kid or the gay guy, which only left the token rich White straight guy. What's a murder mystery without the mystery? If Knives Out 2 has a diverse cast then do we simply rule out LGBTQ people and non-White people and people with iPhones to pick the killer in the first 5 minutes? Equal representation needs to be both quantitative and qualitative. Diverse representation needs to be allowed to be both present and unpleasant.
This is very off topic, and absolutely NOT a jab at you OP at all, but the "Android bad, iPhone good" movie theory is so insane to me. I get that it usually has to do with branding and all that, and not wanting a bad, awful character to be associated with your product, but at the same time...It lowkey just screams classism lol.
@@toomessy I mean it's giving me when HP Lovecraft made it so anyone with an accent was evil. Just because the authors intended it doesn't mean it's morally right. Therefore you're right, it is classist.
@@dontburstmybubble686 i mean, Jim Moriarty in Sherlock was that basically. He was never officially confirmed gay but they queercoded the shit out of him.
This video reminded me of one time when I started talking to a trans girl who liked the same series I did, and we also shared a favorite character. She then confessed me that she headcanoned this character as trans for number of (extremely) valid points that actually made me wonder if the creators had done it on purpose, but then she also said that she didn't want to publish her headncanon on social media for fear of backlash, since this character was (sort of) the villain of the show, and therefore "bad representation". And honestly? I don't get it. This character was extremely queer coded regardless, with even a pressumed ex-girlfriend in the show, and she was also very intelligent, cleaver, hot, and fun to watch. I liked her as a character! I didn't care if she was trans, that wouldn't make me think any less of trans people; on the contrary, it made me more open-minded than I had been before our talk. All of this is to say, I don't think we need all lgbtq+ characters to be good people. We need lgbtq+ characters to be good characters.
my favourite gay character is Dean from Russell T Davies' first episode of Banana. He lies and manipulates people into feeling sorry for him, tells them a story about coming out and being kicked out the house by his intolerant family. then he goes to see them in the episode and they're... completely fine with him. absolute icon. No one writes awful loveable lgbt characters like RTD.
also RTD does not give a *shit* about any internet reaction to his characters. "storytelling is not a democracy." so many people forget that. Twitter activists should not be doing activism for fiction, full stop.
I feel like there's a difference between good representation vs politically correct representation. Good rep should be realistic, warts and all. At the same time, I understand the concerns surrounding bad rep. Media kinda influences how we see the world and for people who don't know lgbt people in real life, tv shows and movies end up being the filter through which they see us. That can be bad if those are full of bad representation.
The other difficulty with transfolk and other minorities getting good representation is that their inclusion into ensemble stories can sometimes turn into a smurfette problem. If everyone else has a defining characteristic and is cis, then the trans character's defining characteristic is by default being trans (until otherwise supplanted by something more developed by the story). Bad writers will not move beyond the differences and ignore characters' commonalities that can lead to interesting relationships and conflicts.
I feel like its not even about politically correct at times. Its just the shallowness. Its like he old adage in story telling "show don't tell". They want "good rep" so they they check to make sure they hit those talking points and reflect back some things they've been told instead of actually working positive representation into the story and make it an part of everything instead of something added in for show.
@@thezpn Aaaagh, smurfette made me SO mad as a kid! Like, either I can have a personality & be something cool, or I can be a girl?? And I know I was younger than 9, & I was a hugely sheltered kid- I doubt I'd even heard the word "feminism", but I could see the problem. Of course fiction has some influence, but I just don't buy the idea that people blindly copy it or believe it without ever questioning it or thinking about it.
Maybe Netflix & HBO and other networks are trying to appeal to younger audiences who are more politically correct by being more politically conscious? And by proxy they write unproblematic characters who while are inoffensive appear less real because most people are... pretty problematic
"I think we can be distrustful as LGBT people, because we're used to getting hurt." Look at Our Flag Means Death; nobody believed that we weren't being queerbaited until they "proved it" in the second-last episode of the (first) season, because we were just so used to never actually getting what was seemingly being promised. It's a wild time for LGBT media.
I've often found it boring to have every story involving an LGBTQ+ character be about them overcoming discrimination, but I do realize that there is the opposite issue too- having a queer character face no conflict whatsoever except for the smallest of things. I think the real issue is just people having trouble writing these characters as real people and not just ways to teach lessons.
Personally I think we need a mix of stories like that, some which focus on LGBTQIA+ characters discovering their identity/overcoming discrimination, and some which just have LGBTQIA+ characters and their gender/sexuality is never an issue or conflict. It can be reassuring in a way to see struggles you’ve faced shown in fiction because it reminds you you’re not alone, but it’s also nice to see characters who are just LGBTQIA+ and completely accepted for that, because it shows that’s a normal way to be and doesn’t always have to be some massive debate. It’s also relaxing escapism after discrimination in real life. But I absolutely agree with you when you say they’re often written to teach lessons rather than as real people.
I think its a sad reality that the vast majority of LGBTQ+ face discrimination in some way in their day to day lives, but there are already so many ways that media misrepresents the average human experience, that I think you can occasionally sacrifice full accuracy for the sake of a feel-good story. I feel like this process should just be more natural. There shouldnt be any like strict rules or anything for writing an LGBTQ+ character, it just gets annoying when we constantly see the same thing. What I'm saying is, we need a healthy mix of everything, rather than trying to dictate which stories can and cannot be told. Feel-good stories where everything works out for the main character have their place in media, but that can't be all we have. Stories about discrimination have their place, but that cant be everything either. There's always a certain balance that just works.
I think the problem is cis/het writers don't realize how intersectional being LGBT+ is in actual LGBT+ people. They think, "A queer character's story has to be all about their queerness, otherwise people will question why they were written queer in the first place." That position then turns into a pulpit and the character becomes a martyr, not an actual person. When in reality, it is entirely possible to write a character whose life is undeniably affected by being queer, without their queerness being their main character arc. Right now, they can't seem to tell the difference between QUEER character and queer CHARACTER.
This reminds me of a presentation I saw once by a blind woman for writers about writing disability. The thesis of her presentation was more or less that her and her family, as people very comfortable with her disability, could joke about it. They treated her in ways that onlookers might call mean, but she had no problem with. The problem she readily admitted was that if you wrote her family accurately, people would probably burn you at the stake for writing it.
lol exactly, I have a genetic disorder, blah blah, long story short, I'm very wobbly and often sway a bit, careen into bookshelves, etc, and if you didn't know better you might think I was a bit drunk, so my dad calls me Captain Jack (ala Pirates of the Caribbean "Where's the Rum gone?") Cuz he's a dick lol (I say with love and affection). My family's full of deeply loving, witty, sarcastic assholes, It's practically our love language. He's got his own Frankenstein health issues going on as well so he knows the score. If you say you have a headache he'll offer to punch you in the leg to take your mind off it lol. If someone wrote the way we talked to each other without doing a big qualifying speech beforehand they'd be fired soooo fast.
Exactly. My arm disabilities have given me nothing but hell. My whole body hurts from chronic pain and my knee eventually went bad. Between my arms and knee, I walk and act like a little-armed T-Rex. It actually helps to joke about my struggles and pain and the hell I've gone through over time. My parents, family, husband, friends, and even co-workers all joke with me and gift me T-Rex stuff and tag me online in stuff about T-Rexes. People get offended on my part and the part of other disabled people, saying it's rude and disrespectful. Yet they don't understand it. A.) I am allowed to make fun of my own pain and struggles because they are mine. B.) I literally acknowledged the jokes with my friends and family members and accept it as fine, so I don't need people to defend me because I'm not offended and it isn't poking fun at anyone but me.
Here in the latam side of the internet, making those kinds of jokes is kind of the norm, but that's partly beacuse all of us have experienced discrimination before and we learned to laugh at it. We learned to laugh at stereotypes and dark humor beacuse if the context and tone is right then we know the person telling the joke is not serious (something i feel many others on the internet cant tell). We never exclude anybody when making fun of stuff, including ourselves, heck i learned to laugh and make fun of my own aspergers, but that's beacuse it helps me deal with the struggles that come with it and helps me connect with other autists who also know how to laugh at themselves. We latinos live in a miserable place full of corruption and violence, but why be gloomy when you can just grab a beer and make fun of everything with your friends, beacuse we know life is shit so may as well have some laughs and enjoy it.
My friend is a double amputee the amount of times I've have a hand or an arm prosthetic for saying hey can I have a hand. Even with my own issues I joke about it people would think my friends are bullying but it's just playful bantering
@@NoOneReallySpecial yea like my family often ties me to characters like the corpse bride or monster high characters because of my eds (my joints are always slipping in and out). Other people would find being compared to monsters because of your disability degrading but I don’t.
This sort of pattern also happens with autistic representation. It's like people want to remove some of the more ugly symptoms in favor of "socially-awkward angel with restricted interests."
Sara Eriksson from Young Royals will always be one of, if not, my favourite autistic characters in media. She’s autistic adhd, played by Frida Argento - an autistic adhd actress (fair warning though, they use the term Asperger’s, my guess as to why would be that they just don’t know that it’s a problematic term). She’s not morally perfect, but none of the characters are. Also, she’s genuinely one of the most authentic feeling autistic characters I’ve seen.
For me I want bittersweet representation, I want to see a balance of queer coded villains and heroic or morally gray lgbt characters that are complex and relatable, but are also well written and not just some boring walking stereotype with no interests, goals, hobbies, fears, desires, misbeliefs, backstory
It reminds me of a Tumblr discussion where someone complained that people would love mass murderer character but hate characters that had done nothing wrong except being boring. And the answers basically boilled down to : "the mass murder is fictional, my annoyance is real". The worst thing a character can be is boring. If your show is boring, nobody is gonna watch it, and then what's the point of representation if nobody sees it?
The pre-trans photo episode could have been - he freaks out because he still finds her attractive in the photo when she was looking male, and has a sexuality crisis. He thinks he’s gay and starts going to bars, pursuing men, leading to awkward funny and insightful encounters. Has a conflict with his trans lady over it, then finally realises he’s just attracted to Judy after all - no matter what gender she is. Awww…
I've seen some people say this outcome "erases representation" when they've gone to find media marketed as mlm because accepting someone as whatever their identity happens to be makes the relationship not queer/truthful to the marketing, and I'm just confused. This is the most natural outcome I could imagine if you truly love someone and surely accepting people no matter their gender would make a better society? But I'd really love genuine representation like this that starts out with the audience being left in the dark and then as the relationship progresses, the audience is allowed to learn of the complexity of the relationship. Truly just the peak of pansexual media :)
just a thought: i really dislike the criticism from some people that inevitably comes up whenever a villain or just a mildly imperfect character is lgbtq... like queer people aren't all angels??? the character doesn't have to be a perfectly moral saint to be good representation. i love queer coded disney villains, for example, even though they're NOT good representation. but they're fun! i think this policing of what type of characters are allowed to be lgbtq comes from a real place of disillusionment, because we've historically been relegated to villainy, and to be fair there are many examples where the queer=bad characterization is definitelyyyyy intentional. but also... idk, entirely perfect characters, queer or not, are boring! good rep comes from respect, authenticity, understanding, and ACTUAL LGBTQ PEOPLE!
I'm not sure what letter of the lgbtq he is but Mr X from Amphibia has to be one of my favourite villains now. Idk, maybe it's the bald head with the lip stick plus the voice 😂
i've seen people criticise she-ra cause double trouble (nonbinary shapeshifter, awesome morally grey character) shapeshifted into a young fairy girl to get into the rebellion and spy for the bad side and some people think that's pushing a harmful stereotype but i actually think it was a really smart plotline and DT is such a likable character, and she-ra's creator is non-binary themselves so i really don't get why there's an issue
@TP well, i actually have seen both those shows, but anyway my point wasn't that the evil, villainous lgbtq trope doesn't exist or isn't a problem -- in fact, i think it's the opposite. rather, that we shouldn't automatically condemn every representation of ourselves that isn't completely spotless and appeasing. gay/trans people should be allowed to be protagonists, heroes, love interests, and yes, antagonists/villains (so long as their villainy isn't BECAUSE they're lgbtq). my problem comes from the boring, one dimensional, included-just-so-the-gays-will-give-us-money type characters that writers only put in to get representation brownie points, but ALSO the antiquated demonization/condemnation of querness in media. both are bad representation, just in different ways. i want characters i can see myself in, ones that i relate to and understand, not characters that exist only to be waved around by writers and directors for profit and praise. anyway, sorry for the ultra long paragraph, i have a lot of thoughts on this apparently 😅
I think youre missing the point. I think when people write normal gays, trans, blacks, they arent doing it for that sake, and i think one of the problem with the communities is that you guys are taking it the wrong way in that sense of “not wanting _______ to look bad.” It has more to do with not stereotyping. Not every minority has this “set” persona or stereotype they are supposed to be, us minorities are more than capable of being normal people. Like for instance; I’m black. My blackness will not go away if i’m quiet, reserved and smart. A gay man will not be any less gay if he isnt talking funny or isnt wearing a pink sweater and being b*tchi.
@@leaf111 my criticisms for double trouble are because theyre a sex fluid enby character. im just tired of enby characters being either shapeshifters or somehow very different than human or human adjacent characters. it makes enby people seem like theyre fundamentally different than binary people, and i dislike that. double trouble is a good character, but meh enby rep
I would just like to see LGBTQ characters who are as common, complex, and compelling as straight characters and for popular art to stop being by and large created, controlled and distributed by like 3 massive corporations. But maybe that's too much to ask!
@@bannedmann4469 wtf? LGBT exists on the same spectrum as straightness, not to mention sexuality is a spectrum. They are as common, they're not some shut away minority.
When I went to Disneyland a few months ago, everything had the same texture. Everything was smooth. No matter where in the park I was everything felt smooth and plastic and safe. When I looked at the sky I started feeling that it wasn't really, that it was a painted dome celling. I felt like if I touched the sky, it would be plastic. The examples of "good" representation that were given in the video felt like Disneyland. Smooth and bland and safe, not like how I am, not like what home feels like. We dont want "good" representation, we want real representation; cause I can't stand that Disneyland texture. (sorry for the essay)
Supergirl fans and lgbt supergirl fans from what I’ve seen in the fandom love and adore nia so I wouldn’t call her boring she’s a messy and complex and well developed character
@@madnessarcade7447 I was more talking about some types of representation in general, not her. She seems like amazing representation. I've also never watched the Supergirl TV show.
I think the problem of a lot of progressive media, rhetoric, etc is that it’s too moral. At the end of the day, what we often find funny, attractive, exhilarating, tasty, etc probably doesn’t survive thorough moral examination. Maybe it’s not pernicious, but still not “good for us”. Media that tries to be “good for us” often ends up insufferably cheesy or like eating cold broccoli
Yes! I'm SO OVER the modern tendency to demand that fiction be morally perfect- like, the fact that it's fiction makes no difference, it's as if you've done that awful thing irl, or you're condoning it. As if fiction has to be a fable or parable, to teach you moral lessons & how to live a good life, cos apparently people will blindly copy it. Even if you look beyond entertainment, the psychological functions of stories are far more numerous & complex than that.
The best bisexual representation I've ever seen in a show is in Crazy Ex Girlfriend tbh. There are three different characters who date both men and women and the characters aren't boring either.
@@jacobd1984 Maya (who often gets forgotten because she's a supporting rather than main character like the others - she comes out too right after Darryl's song). Also the MC Rebecca is bi-coded and defines herself as a "Kinsey 1.8" (in her words).
Nonbinary person here shouting at my laptop about how right you are, with one exception: I felt genuinely seen when Cal broke up with Jackson. It was the realest that character ever got for me. I was so proud of them for setting that boundary! Identity and behavior are separate things and all that good stuff, but also, it makes me dysphoric as hell when someone who identifies as straight wants to date me but still continue to identify as straight. It's only in the last few years that I've felt able to insist that people who date me need to be fully on board with the reality of my gender, including that it makes our relationship queer, instead of going along with a situation that lessens me just to avoid being alone. Watching Cal say with confidence that Jackson's "I'm still straight" thing was a dealbreaker gave me so much hope. Other nonbinary people can and will of course disagree, I just wanted to share that there's at least one person out here who really liked that part of the story. I would've loved a storyline for Cal that wasn't ~about~ being trans though too, like they're a whole person or something, that would've been really cool.
I'm hoping they delve into their story further is season 4, Cal needs to be fleshed out for sure! I think the actor can pull it off if given a good script with more character backstory meat to work with
YES! I've had this dysphoria too. Like...my issue is when people who are monosexual and would insist that they are monosexual even though I'm not the same gender as themselves. It hurts, and though their identity matters. So does mine. And I just need to learn to set boundaries and I've always had an issue doing so
This...! I came out as nonbinary a year ago, and my partner and I have been together for many years. He says he's straight and that was fine until ist wasn't. It's hard getting intimate with him because I know how he sees me... I've told him I'm not his girlfriend anymore, but his partner, yet he still introduces me as former... Says he thinks it's weird. Thanks for your comment, it's the first thing I've read that shows that I'm not the only one with those problems :(
Fellow enby here, I also really related to Cal. The way I read it was that they didn't want to be in a romantic relationship who still saw them as a girl, and I thought that was one fucking amazing boundary. I would be interested to see if their relationship gets revisited in later seasons - I'd love to see Jackson grow and learn more about nb folks and complicate his sexual identity because of his feelings towards Cal, but I'd be just as happy if that's where that arc ends.
You wanna know what twists the knife even more? A couple days ago, one of the people who spearheaded the harassment campaign against her startedd a kickstarter for a fiction anthology about trans people who pilot militarised mechs. Ruin Fall's life, and then steal her iddea.
@@WarMomPT I hope that stolen anthology crashes and burns harder than the Arkh Project and the Real Robot and Super Robot metafandoms eat that harrasser alive.
I'd personally say it can be way more educational for kids to see lgbt characters just naturally incorporated into their shows instead of having long expositional stuff that kids won't be bothered to listen to anyway ... "show don't tell" kinda stuff. I personally am sick of kids TV not taking children serious as human beings and dumbing down their shows more and more ... kids are smart. Give them age appropriate interesting characters who happen to be lgbt ... I mean you can put the purely educational suff into actual education focused kids series, that much is true, as those are usually watched by kids interesting in educational content, but for the entertainment-focused kids shows ... just give them proper characters, some of which happen to be lgbt ... and let the children see that those lgbt characters are just as much part of the world as all the others.
It often is though. Like, Love Simon is a movie for young teens. Of course adults might find it boring. I personally find it a bit tedious that people who are clearly not the target audience keep complaining online about how it was not edgy or dark or sexual enough. Way to miss the point.
@@grundgutigertv6170 Read at risk of spoilers: It's crazy that She-Ra, what is ostensibly a "Kids' Show", has far messier characters than most of queer representation currently. Catra is a complete mess and does awful things including co-leading and perpetuating a war, is emotionally manipulative, and overall unable to deal with her emotions and romantic feelings for most of the show's length. It's honestly why I like it so much compared to most queer rep at the moment, because while the show's queer rep in general is soft and wholesome, Catra as a person is a fucking disaster with serious emotional trauma who is repeatedly self-destructive, in large part because of trouble processing and understanding her feelings around Adora.
@@treeaboo Dont worry, Ive watched the series 5 times over by now, so no spoilers for me :p Catra is my fav character because she is so relatable. Its really hard to become a decent person when your parent mistreats you over and over again. By giving her an emotional support animal in melog, they did the best thing to help her grow. Melog reflects catras feelings without judgment, can talk to her in private about her problems (no one else can understand it) and can protect her by making her literally go invisible and hide. Something that can help you process greatly. Melog is also very affectionate and can give her the love she needs to feel better without overdoing it. Whoever wrote this arc was very wise.
the reason Cal and Jackson's relationship in Sex Education didn't work out was because Jackson being wholly straight saw Cal as basically a different flavor of woman. As an afab nonbinary person I see a lot of straight guys do this and really appreciated seeing Cal be assertive in how they wanted to be seen sexually.
i don't know if i'm a bad enby for this, but if i, with all of my contradicting presentations and gender roles and gendered attitudes of all kinds, if i managed to get a straight guy/girl who genuinelly are that label and don't feel like changing it, i would literally feel so powerful lmao it's not like i'm gonna change. they already know who and what i am, and they got an attraction for me anyway and they have to deal with me being me all the time. they might think they see me as a man or a woman, but i definitely won't fit perfectly well anyway and it's not ignorable jdbsjsba i would feel like i'm fucking with their little boxes in the best possible way. i do acknowledge that i am saying this as a non binary who likes to be truly androgynous and that, for a lot of people, how other people see them is, if not the whole point, a massive point about gender, but for me, nothing about how people are attracted to me or how they see me would deny what i am. i also realize that i get a kick out of being people's "exceptions", like back when i identified with my assigned at birth gender, but hooked up with a guy who wasn't attracted to it. and that people mostly... might not like that jsbsjsbsjsb
i appreciated it too as a nonbinary person! a lot of the queer representation in sex education felt really well written and how the writers didn't just focus on only the negative or the positive - an even mix of both
"He feels younger, probably because he lives with his parents" *cries in 26-years-old still living with her parents* depressive episode apart, this was really good. The point you're making is something I have thought about but never managed to get into words.
shows discussed: 0:50 Boy Meets Girl 10:50 Love Simon 13:22 Supergirl 16:26 Sex Education 19:02 Star Trek Discovery 21:06 Deep Space Nine's Jadzia Dax 22:59 I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter 27:48 Orange Is The New Black 29:00 bunch of 90s films and misc shows mentioned- In and Out, The Birdcage, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Queer As Folk, But I'm A Cheerleader, The L Word, Loki in MCU, Captain Jack in Doctor Who, Feel Good 33:23 Will & Grace 40:51 Euphoria 43:00 Transaction
to be fair to love, simon, the book also had very strong vibes of “gay for straight people.” I think that’s a step forward in itself, but I do wish there was more “gay for gay people” too, especially for teen audiences. and I agree with your assessment- bad, bland, and boring/“fine”
THANK YOU God watched this film with my straight cis friends they loved it and thought it was revolutionary. I was so bored by seeing the same "I'm just like everyone else guys I'm normal but gay" storyline without any nuances of queer life just plastering rainbows everywhere and have one short male male kiss
Here's my thing with the book. First of all Simon has personality in it, and truly feels like a person. But more than that I really liked that we spent time with him and Blue once they finally meet in real life. I can't remember exactly just how many pages there are of them, interacting as a couple, but I just remembered being so happy that these gay teens were behaving like any other teen couple. They were just as horny and over flowing with cheesey-but-in-a-good-way romantic encounters as their straight counterparts. Also unless I'm remembering it wrong, his friends never ditch him once he's outed! That made me so goddam mad in the film. Are any of you watching Love Victor ? I watched the first season but then dropped it. Don't care that much for any of the characters in it, gay or straight.
I think a lot of the “Jules is the real villain” stuff happened because s1 is told from rues pov and she’s meant to be an unreliable narrator who kinda sees Jules as her manic pixie dream girl. I don’t think the creator expecting people to judge the characters on face value but the typical teen drama audience aren’t used to characterizations that aren’t black and white and that actually require you to think but I think if you watch s1 even through rues pov you can see Jules is her own person with her own struggles
That and Jules' special episode that was co-written by Hunter Schaefer, who's trans irl and plays jules used her own experience as a young trans women to shape her character into this fleshed out, complicated and messy person who's also beautiful and good. That episode is by far one of the best episodes of the show. It not only shows that jules isn't a villain but also that rue is unreliable and can be hard to be around sometimes.
as a straight teenage guy who is growing up with lgbtq + movies and shows coming out more and more and not knowing what it's like this was an interesting video to watch. a great way to broaden my horizes
Being Trans is fuckin hilarious like I'm a woman who used to be a boy. It's hilarious. The problem is that only trans people understand the funny stuff and most "comedy" about trans people is malicious. Malicious comedy that is punching down is never funny
im afab nonbinary. when im dressed masc people will read me as a guy and then do a double take when i speak cause i have a femme, childish voice. i switch between 50s housewife and teenage pub guy on a daily basis. that's *funny*, cisfolk are missing out
@@toothfairy10133 haha im masc non binary too and the amount of people that will call me son in work until i speak is amazing. Makes me laugh every time. They then fall over themselves apologising for calling me son. Its the funniest thing.
I really hate it when I’m genuinely happy about some form of representation and when I look for people who feel the same it turns out the Internet Hive Mind decided it was homophobic/transphobic/any other kind of phobic. It’s hard to do representation perfectly, and often it’s the flaws that actually make it interesting.
This is hardly the best example of this but it’s fresh enough in my mind that I still want to talk about it-despite all the negative sides to how it happened, I was really happy when Castiel finally got to say he was in love with Dean. Yeah I know that people were upset that it was his last appearance, and certainly it sucks that it couldn’t have happened sooner, but the show portrayed the love Cas expressed as being a really positive, beautiful thing, and I felt it was genuinely nice representation. Your point about people dying constantly on Star Trek also really applies here-I don’t think it should be considered “bury your gays” if EVERYONE dies constantly on the show, and yeah it looks bad that Cas died directly after coming out, but if we’re being honest he NEVER would have felt comfortable telling Dean how he felt if he wasn’t about to say goodbye forever. Straight people are allowed to confess their feelings right before they die and it’s considered pretty natural, so lgbt characters should be allowed to as well. Anyway, one of the biggest reasons “bury your gays” is such a bad thing is that it implies that gay people are receiving some kind of punishment for their “terrible gayness”, and that wasn’t what happened. Castiel didn’t STAY dead, sure he didn’t come back on screen but the show explicitly stated that he was brought back to life and is actively helping GOD HIMSELF make decisions for the way the world should work. Cas didn’t get to be perfectly happy at first, but he was treated as a good and admirable person in every step of him coming out. He was portrayed as selfless and heroic when he sacrificed himself for the man he loved, and he was later rewarded for that when he was brought back to life. Yeah it stinks that we didn’t get to see him again after he came out, but I think it’s important to remember that having Cas come out as lgbt means that Cas has ALWAYS been lgbt. We can look back on over a decade of tv and see a really interesting lgbt character, and we can see a lot of things in his interactions with Dean as canon, when before they would have been considered simply speculation. There are frustrating things about the WAY this reveal happened, but in my opinion the ultimate results are pretty cool. I know it sucks to wait until the last second to have a character be lgbt, but we don’t know what was going on behind the scenes and given the amount of controversy around that episode, it’s genuinely possible that having Cas come out last minute was the only way the writers could have him come out. Anyway in the end, after all the dust has settled and the show can be looked at as one big, complete story, we now have a really nuanced lgbt character, who’s allowed to have complexities and make mistakes but ultimately is still shown in a positive light as an admirable and heroic person. His love for another man was portrayed as beautiful and selfless, and ultimately he received a sincere happily ever after in a show that’s typically overflowing with misery. It’s too bad that we never got to SEE him be happy, but we know that he is and really I still suspect they’ll film some kind of epilogue after COVID ends. But anyway like I said this isn’t the biggest example of what I was talking about, it’s just something I’ve wanted to rant about for a while. No one has to view it as good representation, but I really did like it and I wish that I was allowed to see the good in it without looking like a traitor or something. It was far from perfect but I still stand by the fact that there were some really good things about it, and if we react THIS negatively to any lgbt representation that isn’t perfect, we’ll probably never get to see anything better.
I know right? Like I get that some people have a different taste in media which is valid, but for people to say it’s homophobic because if a villain or a flawed character so happens to be lgbtq are the ones being homophobic themselves because 1. No one is perfect including lgbtq people and yes their are some queer people who did wrong but not every queer person is a criminal and 2. Everyone has a different personalities, tastes in fashion, interests, etc and it creates erasure because well no one is the same because you can still be a gay man and be a fem/soft boy just like a gay man that’s masc and the answer is simple theirs no right or wrong way to be gay Some people need to wake up
When you mentioned the "I Sexually Identify As an Attack Helicopter" short story I immediately went to read it. It's so deeply weird in a good way, and so deeply interesting. They (you said they detransitioned so not sure on pronouns) clearly researched the heck out of how attack helicopters work to write this story, which means they are a wonderful nerdy weirdo, I want to meet them! I'm devastated to hear about what happened after they posted the story. On the grounds of moral purity, on the grounds of ~Right Way To Be A Social Activist Rules~, they got harassed to the point of being suicidal? Really? You're supposed to be progressive, is that what we want to as a society? Is that progress? Doing weird experimental thought thought provoking things on the subjects of marginalized communities you're part of is a Grave Offence? Ugh
Ok, one thing to note, just because I use she/her pronouns, that does NOT mean that I'm still in the closet. Some NB ppl aren't bothered by pronouns and never feel the need to "change" them. They are just as non-binary and just as valid
Same. I'm non binary in the way that I don't care about gender. If someone sees/refers to me as a man that's equally as wrong or right or neutral as seeing me as a woman.
YES! I am transmasc but use He/They! But i remember somewhere a person saying that a friend of them was "pretending" to be non-binary for attention because they were using They/Them! And i honestly hate when people think "Gender = Pronouns" When its def not true!
@@oggyboggy8692 me too, it took a while to realize that pronouns are conversational shorthand and not prescriptive titles. I can just be myself and let others assume whatever they're going to assume as long as you don't call me a "man" eww I hate that word 😠
im not enby but from the bi area code where i come from, we get this similar shit when we're in hetero relationships (or even gay relationships) where people force an idea of what someone should be like, and not just let people exist as they do i see this often with enby people often when they dont use neo pronouns or They/Them. Especially so when I see Enby people getting accused (and damn near interrogated) of being "fake Non Binary" because they use She/Her or He/Him, ESPECIALLY when theyre presenting as their heteronormative pronouns. Like, just let people live how they want to live. If someone looks like a man and uses he/him but he says he's Non Binary, then he's Non Binary. Idk why people have such a difficult time.
One point about Love, Simon is that while, yes he has nothing to lose by coming out, there is definately a subgroup of young LGBT people who feel like that. That was me for the longest time, and still is to an extent. The way to make that story work is to give the character confidence issues or have them struggle with social anxiety because then that way the hesitation to come out makes sense.
Yes omg! I can speak from my own experience as someone who waited for years to come out, even though I was ultimately accepted by everyone I told and knew I probably would be before coming out in the first place. That “probably” holds so many what-if scenarios, and for someone that struggles with anxiety and self-confidence, I had myself convinced that every worst case scenario could result even if it was unrealistic! A lot of my favorite stories have conflicts centering around internal rather than external conflicts, and I think that’s because themes of anxiety or personal hold-ups are much more relatable than the fear of a big-bad villain! It makes the characters feel so much more human, and it’s good way to prompt character growth from a writing perspective. I wish more television writers/producers would remember this more when writing these kinds of characters. (Sorry, that was a longer response than I expected, but it makes me mad when writers think the /only/ thing queer people need to overcome by coming out is homophobia. More inner conflict!! ☺️)
@@ali.ali4700 Unfortunately, those kinds of stories are really hard to come by, and even rarer if they include queer rep on top of all that. That’s why I wish writers would do it more often, they’re always so good! The best example I’ve seen comes from an anime called Yuri on Ice. The show doesn’t really have a villain, so a lot of the central conflict comes from the main character’s own anxieties and self confidence. (It’s also incredibly gay and very adorable if you want to check it out ☺️) Two other good ones I’ve seen are The Haunting of Bly Manor and She-Ra. Both have villains acting as the central conflict, but the queer relationships in these are built around a lot of trust issues and anxieties that help to build the characters a lot! Both have amazing stories, too, so I’d definitely recommend checking them out!
Honestly I’ve had the same issues with gay representation in media lately. I feel so bad about it but sometimes I wanna see the characters struggle out of spite. I want cishet folks to watch the shows and really get it. Understand the struggles lgbt people go through. I wish I could take my experiences being outed and fetishized and put them onscreen so others have to understand it and learn to be better. It just sucks that we have to actually live it and they don’t even wanna look at a gay person or trans person onscreen if it’s not overly sugarcoated and family friendly. I’ve had too many people tell me how “gay women aren’t oppressed” and it hurts having to explain my experiences to straight people over and over in order for them to understand. I wish someone would just put it into a show so I didn’t have to keep doing the work to defend myself.
you should look up Hazbin Hotel. the character Angel Dust is a gay sex worker who had drug problems when he was alive (the whole show takes place in hell and all the characters are demons). the main character is a lesbian too. there's only one episode so far, it got picked up by A24 and will have a former premiere later this year, but me and my friends are optimistic
there is pretty good representation in other media, like webcomics and fanfiction. i feel like I've watched plots where one person was outed but I'm struggling to remember where. I hate when there's a queer romance plot where one person is mad at the other for not coming out and they get pushy... that is not your place. if you respect your partner, then let them decide it for themselves. if it's too much for you, end the relationship. but then the show usually makes the outed character go "oh it's okay you did it, i guess it had to happen at some point" NO IT DIDN'T! I'd never speak to that person again... it's not safe or comfortable for everyone to come out, especially if you're a minor with limited control over your life... but I'm ranting...
Bit about Sex Education reminded me how artificial-feeling their representation of asexuals also were. We got Todd who's ace drama was absurdly crazy and fun to watch in show about depressed horse that really didn't had to do any of it while show all about sex literally called *Sex Education* just gave us try hard one scene with "oh you're so valid who is a valid good boy yes you are" and just never spoke about us ever again removing only ace character from existence. Like... it's very nice you think we're valid but that's boring, if i ever wanted to listen to someone throwing fake validation at me i would just call my parents so they can call me "smart but lazy". Be fun or don't waste my time, why even bother if all you do is a pinterest quote?
I feel like Sex Education wasted the asexual character for a very special episode. We learned 2 things about her (she's asexual and a theatre kid) then she was never heard of again. She could have been a recurring side character in the Jackson school play subplot or one of the main characters could have been asexual but Florence was only there for a teachable moment. Cal suffered a similar fate and was pretty boring compared to the less well adjusted characters but at least Cal appeared in multiple eps this season as a constant presence.
I think Sex Education has roped themselves into representing and educating around everything. They started off with a good premise that made room for that, but now I wish they’d focus on telling good stories with their many diverse characters- mostly they hit the mark, but sometimes you’re right it’s so bland.
Yeah, I suppose it would have been much more interesting to show the messy parts, like a romantic asexual trying to find a compatible partner, and making mistakes. At least half the show is about how sex and relationships are messy, so it's jarring wen good representation tm shows up without the drama to support it.
Rowan Ellis pointed it in a video that Otis could have been a great ace representation, is not the perfect definition of being asexual he would be more in the demisexual side of the spectrum but it would have been really interesting, also he has a character beside it, he has a lot of flaws and i love it
i genuinely think this is a result of a few things: 1. the alienation of online younger queer community from queer lit and complex history means ppl growing up made their community from scratch, thereby entirely losing much of the radial nuance 2. everyone on the internet is a high schooler
it's really weird talking about art by queer people online and then you get the occasional reminder that about half the people you're talking to use literal children's cartoons as their yardstick. Which is fine, until you get to things like, well, the fact these people eagerly joined in on the hate brigade against Isabel Fall.
This. And to add, a significant section of said younger queer community seems to overlap with fandom. So, a lot of these young queers may have grown up getting their rep pretty much entirely from fanfiction, which, for the most part, is self-indulgent wish-fulfillment by design.
As a high-schooler, I 100% but I also think it's just that in our modern day, there's a lot of alienation to what makes a good story. Young people have to live sorting through live action remakes and Riverdales to actually find a good story, if they even know how to find one. Maybe it's not that big of deal as it seems to be, but thinking about how the most loved movies among people I know are one that were made at least 10 years ago...seems to say a lot
I really like that first point. As to the second, I think it's less that everyone on the internet is a teenager, and more that teenagers tend to be very vocal in online queer spaces, so adults don't feel comfortable hanging around those spaces. At least, in my experience of being a teen on the internet and then growing up a bit, I've found that I and the people I used to interact with left those spaces once we matured past the "just finding our identity and trying to define ourselves against the normative world" phase of queerness. Which is tricky because that is a healthy stage of coming to terms with your identity, the same way that anger and denial are healthy stages of grief. It's ok for teens (and adults in the early stages of coming out, for that matter) to go through that stage, and it's important to have spaces where people can express that. You just can't get stuck there forever -- and the problem with the internet is that it becomes a space where people in that stage of accepting themselves dominate the conversation. Partly because they're more prone to be outspoken, since they're asserting their identity for the first time, and partly because it's good fodder for The Algorithm. Plus it often presents simplistic explanations for well meaning allies to understand and get behind. But it leaves people who are at other stages in their journey feeling alienated, it leaves the discourse in a perpetually adolescent state, and I worry that it keeps some people stuck in that stage of acceptance, rather than giving them space to move on.
@@one_smol_duck nice explanation! I can totally see this... Thanks for reminding me that this acceptance phase is normal and healthy. I mostly just blinded to hate these loud people that just really have to make LGBTQ identity as their sole personality. But remembering it, I was like that too back then in accepting my queerness. I'm just not loud on the net, I express it in personal diary, but I was like them too.
I think the solution to this problem lies in LGBTQ+ creators. Straight and cisgendered people have to resort to this type of representation because there's a very high likelihood they'll fuck something up. Some stories can only be told with accuracy by the groups they're about. Boondocks could not have been written by a white person for example, and that show was great. It tackled a lot of issues in the black community that a lot of white people simply wouldn't understand, or at the very least, they wouldn't have the same takeaway. We need a show like that for the LGBTQ+ community, and it needs to be made by LGBTQ+ creators. In the right hands, a show like that could do wonders for everyone.
On one hand I agree. On the other, there is a very vocal group of Puritan Types in the LGBTQ+ Community that still shit on other LGBTQ+ creators when the rep is't squeaky clean. I would LOVE if it were the be all end all solution. But its not. Not without those people changing their minds about how their fellows would depict those experiences.
@@nsullivan9096 Well yeah, every group has those types of Puritans. But the exceptional creations still shine through and are remembered as as being exceptional. We can't let those people hold us back forever.
While it's true that people living an experience can tap into things about it that people outside of it can't, marginalized creators also get representation "wrong" or tell poor stories around it. They just get a free pass because they belong to the group the story is about. Their identity prompts people to read their characters and world as more authentic by default. Boondocks was great but it was a very particular perspective and voice exploring things in a way that not all black people relate to or even enjoy, despite its sincerity and accuracy. And much of it would be called problematic if a white person had created it. This isn't the point of my reply but designating things as "stuff only members of your group can understand" can alienate members who actually don't understand either. It reminds of this twitter thread where a trans person was explaining why deadnaming is harmful. What stood out to me was all of the trans people who expressed not having the same negative relationship with their former name being attacked and ostracized for it. They were "othered" and shushed by their own community, by other trans people who despise being deadnamed, simply for not feeling the same way and embracing their past in a way the rest don't. Who gets to decide which of those experiences is more real and authentic to that community? Using the example in this video where Jules talks about wanting to stop taking hormones and trying to conquer femininity, I'm not trans, yet nothing about what she said was new or eye opening. They're thoughts someone transitioning could obviously have. And they parallel the same inner complexity we cis people have regarding outward expectations, the associations we make with our bodies and selfhood, and our labels, and the boxes we fight to get out of or into and how all of that can fluctuate. So I disagree that someone who isn't trans couldn't write that. Someone who doesn't think about or know how to express experiences outside of their own couldn't write that, and that can just as easily be another trans person. I just stumbled across this so I don't know the channel owner's name, I'll just use VB. Even they acknowledged that there are trans people who don't want to see the same kind of representation they do. That alone should be a reminder that someone belonging to the same group doesn't guarantee they're going to put out content you connect with or like. But I do agree that increased representation behind the scenes will help. It gives media access to a broader, more diverse range of experiences to draw from, but it also addresses a problem I touched on at the start. People outside of marginalized groups know they're being held to stricter standards and are under more scrutiny. They have to tiptoe around how they depict others because the culture already decided they don't have the right to tell those stories, that they can't understand them, and that anything they get "wrong" is because of their privilege or bigotry. They're seen as bad people rather than bad storytellers. And they can't EXCLUDE other groups from their stories for fear of getting it wrong because that would make them the villain too. So they balance it. They include others for the sake of diversity while taking the safest, blandest, least complex, most surface level approach to those characters/stories that they can to avoid moral outrage. Having more people who belong to those groups telling the stories instead doesn't mean they'll get it right more often, but it does mean we'll see more risks being taken and less choices being made out of fear of social backlash. Because the progressive minds who decry poor representation of marginalized groups aren't as likely to criticize creators who belong to those groups. That sense of agency alone will inject some life into the corpse that is today's more sanitized entertainment. Beyond that, I think the solution to boring representation (and media period) is learning how to tell entertaining, quality stories that feel authentic when they need to, with engaging characters people feel invested in, no matter who or what you are or they are. Many creators from underrepresented groups approach stories as a form of wish fulfillment. They don't focus on the core principles of writing. They just toss together all the things they personally want to see. There's a reason most fan fiction is awful from a technical/creative standpoint yet still insanely popular. People are getting their specific fix from it, and that fix isn't a good story. It's seeing this person with that person, or this type of person in this kind of relationship etc. That's fine for fanfic. It shouldn't be what drives storytelling as an industry. Trying to depict people a certain way simply because they belong to X group drops the ball more often than not. No group is all good or bad. Monoliths don't exist and every depiction is valid because every type of person you can think of is real. Just pick who you want to focus on and do it well. - Sincerely, TLDR
I love this video because I am a queer who has never really had any kind of crush - like at all. I'm quite young so I don't want to label myself as like "aromantic" but at the moment it feels very hard for me to relate to respectable lesbian representation that tries to emphasise how wholesome and loving and monogamous these characters are. Its annoying
Oh if you're young don't worry too much about it. (i worried way too much when i was younger - i fell in love for the first time at the age of 18. I wish someone would've told me that (romantic) love isn't everything, the love that matters the most is self-love)
@@carina-nonbinary thanks, this is really nice! I think people can live fulfilled lives without romantic love but I really like the idea of getting married and that, so this is nice to hear
@@myyoutubeaccount1493 same when i was a kid all my friends had crushes and stuff but i didnt some people just.. realize attractions later than others.(a lot of my friends also said they had crushes but they didnt) anyways dont worry youll get older and figure it out
On the "Love, Simon" point about "fake tension" - I actually related to it. The idea that you would miss out on "being teased by your dad" is definitely something I was worried about. It's super benign and I do feel stupid in retrospect, but it was still relatable. Maybe it didn't make for good movie tension, but I never really felt it as tension tbh. That said, I found the film boring and that the twist broke the rules of a mystery. Great video! I actually enjoyed Boy Meets Girl but I watched it during a phase where I was just binging feel-good media, and the fact it was 'boring' didn't matter when I was only looking to smile.
I personally was ok with the representation in love simon. Obviously character felt bland and the stakes were low but I did relate to the no sex drive. As a teen I didn’t get the whole sex thing, and even now, I don’t really get the need for it. Idk I just wanted to point that out since maybe some people on the ace spectrum felt the same way
I wish they discussed avoiding dysphoria triggers during sex in sex education, and how to communicate those triggers with a sexual/romantic partner. I really thought they were going to discuss that with Cals character, as I thought I picked up on Cal becoming uncomfortable after their chest being touched, maybe they couldve gone to one of the sex therapists and learnt how to communicate to Jackson their dysphoria triggers. I think Jammidodger talked about this in one of his vids.
I’ve always found those sorts of “good representations” quite bad, not just cause their boring, but because they aren’t actually representing us. Especially those of us without intersections. I largely never knew there could be a lesbian trans woman cause it was never shown in media. And all these sorts of people I could never connect with because they didn’t go through any other struggles than a cartoonishly written cis construction of our lives. “Positive” trans depictions were as far from my experience as was Buffalo Bill.
So I'm not part of the LGBT community, but l kind of agree with you,and I may add that good and complex characters who are lgbt can captivate audiences even outside your community. On the "trans women can be lesbians" I found that out from a mobile game called "one night,hot springs" whose protagonist is a trans woman who is revealed to be in love with her best friend; it's really cool I recommend it.
Well said! I do hate how "Good Representation" has become a gold standard rather than like... good stories, that just happen to cover diverse characters.
I think the worst representation is lazy representation--the same tropes repeated over and over again. I want a wide range of representation--boring, interesting, enjoyably terrible, all of it! Enough that no one character has to bear the burden of Doing It Right.
This perfectly explains why sometimes I’ll read/watch something thats older with characters that are queer coded only to be surprised by how they are objectively better rep than some ‘out’ new character just because they are fuller and more interesting people.
The fact that proper representation is boring because CIS writers/audiences think that coming out or discrimination is the only drama in LGBTQ+ lives…. Like have you ever met a single queer??? There is SOOOOO much drama
@@Terik17 Iunno, you ever see that movie Darkstar? It's entirely about a bunch of guys in an incredible, far out situation and them just being utterly, intensely bored by it, and it manages to be really, really funny, there's a lot of comedy to be found in mundane day to day things, small personal dramas can be compelling, and i don't think i really buy the idea of a truly "boring" character, people have a rich inner life, i think the mark of good character writing expresses a fictional inner life to the audience in a way that's engaging.
@@tanyanikolaevagizdova6571are they? if it's a mystery, it is still drama. if it is a guy going to work like everyday and nothing out of the ordinary happens, there's no much story, you know? it doesn't pique people's interest
This is a tragedy, because every trans person is a comedy genius. I'm narcissistic, but I'm RIGHT. I'm a trans guy; my girlfriend's a trans girl. Our straight relationship leads to lots of wacky situations, which are totally untapped by mainstream comedy. My androgynous sibling often uses the gender confusion for comedy, in a way that would make Mel Brooks proud. Every time I get together with trans friends, we unlock jokes which may confuse or trouble conservatives, making the comedy inaccessible for every demographic. Also, it seems like cis people don't know trans people often interact as friends, perhaps even date! I think media about trans people misses all of this, because the creators see trans people in an allegorical sense. They don't get individual personalities, and thus lack personal agency. And, if you don't know a person, you'll never get to hear their jokes, or their flaws.
@@donnieraczynski572 the humor is fairly dry and British, and the topics are often largely serious. It's humor that's rarer and not as likely to land with as many, especially in the US, but I personally still love it when it's there
trans ppl will literally say shit like "brb gonna go mod my tits" and the rest of the trans ppl in the area lose their goddamn minds while the cis ppl are like "....o.0 is that allowed?....." or trans ppl will go "if you don't start behaving i'ma make your pronouns was/were bitch" to other trans ppl and thats just like a Tuesday night for us lol. There is so much comedy available for trans ppl/about trans ppl that is neutral or positive instead of transphobic/transmisogynistic etc, it kills me that the current mainstream situation is "transphobia or EXTREMELY confused cis ppl" :P
@@doctorwholover1012 exactlyyyyyy my trans friends are like the funniest people i know (and i consider myself to be moderately funny on occasion as well) like we have so many puns and inside jokes that only other trans people understand and find funny its so sick
My favorite lgbt rep was The Magnus Archives because it didn’t feel forced because they built up the relationships it didn’t feel like they just threw it in to be progressive, it was just cool and fun. Edit: Also on another note I feel like lgbt+ people are more likely to write fun lgbt people.
@@cmmosher8035 first season is the weakest imo (still good, but the plot and characters get way more developed from season 2 on) really recommend you continue :)
@@eiliscantsleep i switched phones earlier this year and for some reason not all of my podcast subs switched over and broke up my binging. Its a promising thing to know that the show has an ending after getting frustrated with shows like the Black Tape
@@cmmosher8035 oof that's fustrating. If it helps, tma always had a 5 season arc planned from the get go, and imo pulled it off really well. I binged it in a couple of months in the run up to halloween, and I can honestly say it had a super satisfying ending Also I get what u mean about podcasts that just don't end (or lose it after a couple of seasons) I might skip that then. If you have any reps for a good horror podcast I'm all ears btw
Agree!! And the fact that because most of the cast was LGBT, we also got a lot of flavors of morality. There’s no “good” and “bad”? Just varying shades of gray.
Honestly it is so very clear many shows are meant to be palatable to a straight audience, when it comes to lesbian representation so many of it is presented in a way that is meant to be arousing to a straight male audience. This fetishization is so intense and I think it's particularly concerning when we realize "lesbian" was the very first searched term on Pornhub this year. Lesbian love stories are very often depicted superficially because they often suffer from the same issues all women's story suffer from : the inability to be seen as full complex characters, except it's multiplied by two
I absolutely hate boring representation, which almost everything is. I watched Ryan Murphy's The Prom a while ago and the main lesbian couple were awfully nice, had zero chemistry and honestly made me kind of angry. I have been in gay relationships as a teenager but couldn't relate one bit to those two.
Depends on your perception of those relationship, or whether it was based on addiction and/or consummerism, in societal grooming of c(r)apitalism and if your not used to healthy relationships, outside of hypers*xuality and/or overf*tishization, if not also ""dubious" "consent"", as a result let alone with intoxicants, in tow?
@@TheSapphireLeo why would you ever assume from my comment that my relationships were unhealthy or even hypersexualized? and that they contained dubious consent? really weird. that says more about you than me.
This "everyone is accepting" is dangerous as its unrealistic and a young person coming out who doesn't receive acceptance from everyone maybe even more trauma inducing. And some allies and even other LGBT can be passive aggressive and hostile to a member for amy reason.
I think it's so weird how zoomers that grew up terminally online and learned all their activism keywords from social media have this obsession with "good and moral" representation, and how they hunt down queer authors that are interested in telling darker and/or messier stories because it's not for them. Somehow the message became that "good representation means morally good character" and that's really bad for writing in general. I am very curious about what sort of stories they are going to create.
Lol not all zoomers, 'good' representation doesn't have to be stale with no morality but when its messy it doesn't have to continuously plays into stereotypes...
It happens in cycles. A fun microcosm of it is the discussion around fanfic and what is permissable. Every time a new group of youngsters comes of age and joins in, the debate picks up steam again and you get a bunch of purity culture concerns over what people can write and calls for hosting sites to be boycotted for content they didn't even create as if policing fanfiction archives has ever resulted in good things. The same thing happens on a broader scale with mainstream media, it just has a longer cycle from what I can tell
I feel like artists need to stop feeling beholden to the whims of 13 year olds on twitch and Jezebel writers. Like, throughout history good art took a certain amount of courage. There used to be Tipper Gore's evangelical crowd, McCarthyism, the Hayes Code, blasphemy laws, and before that literal monarchy which followed feudalism. Today, we have maladjusted CHILDREN who misappropriate the language of social justice. As an artist, youre never going to please EVERYONE. And if you do, youre probably not expressing anything.
This obsession with good moral rep isn't just a symptom of Gen Z, but I think it stems from the fact that lgbtq rep has been so atrocious in the past that many writers now fear writing them in complex ways. Writers do the same thing with female characters, by wanting them to be strong and not giving them any other personality traits. It's not really that hard to understand, I'm not saying this obsession is right, but I can understand wanting good rep when historically it's been extremely offensive and stereotypical.
Thank you for this video. I’m cis so I can’t speak to trans stuff, but as a queer, neurodivergent, fat woman, I have a lot of similar feelings about what makes “good” representation. My partners don’t like to deal with bigotry in fantasy worlds, which is totally fair. However, it sometimes makes me feel like I can’t talk about the things I want to talk about in stories like D&D campaigns, because they want to escape into a world free from those painful ideas. To me, that pain is important, and being able to process it while also being a magical chaos tiefling makes the stories more meaningful. I don’t want to escape into a world with no pain; I want a space to have control over it. Sometimes, I feel guilty for that, so it was nice to see someone acknowledge that I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Have to admit I just read a fantasy novel about an ork woman retiring from looting and starting a cafe with a succubus and fall in love. Their backgrounds are a bigger issue than their genders and it was very soothing to read. Loved it (more queerness in fantasy!).
Both approaches are perfectly valid and it matters what you anybody else is comfortable with, that's why it's so important to communicate with the group what everybody wants out the adventure, what's comfortable and what are no goes. Andbif there are topics with different approaches then doen't play as this group (because in the longrun it almost always becomes and grows into an even bigger problem) or there have to be compromises. Finding a pen and paper group ,even if it's all good friends, can be hard. 🙁
I have so many conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand, I know how important representation can be in dispelling the stereotypes that people have about us, so I get this visceral sense of discomfort at the idea of a trans or LGB character that plays into stereotypes rather than against them (eg. a deceptive trans character). On the other hand, I've got a real soft spot for villains and a**hole characters because, when written well, I find they sometimes have more depth and can be more interesting than the good guys, I think because they kind of have more room to explore the darker sides of themselves, which exist in all of us, and much more so than good characters. If I had to list some of my favourite characters, a good chunk of them would be, if not straight up villains, then certainly antagonists. And if I'm honest, I would be SO HERE for it if those characters were canonically trans or gay. That would be way better than some boring, flawless character that I can't connect with, that only exists to make us more palatable to cishet audiences. I think ultimately "good" representation is and always will be a tricky subject, at least until there is just more LGBT characters in general. A large part of the problem, I think, is that queer people are so starved for representation, so the little scraps of it we do get, we hold to extremely high standards. It's understandable because we all want to be represented, but not always in the best interests of creating characters that people genuinely love.
@maldon3659 Too bad Catra’s redemption arc was terribly written so her becoming a “hero” felt unearned. I’d say a better example is Sasha Waybright from Amphibia, who is a bisexual villain who becomes a hero in season after having an actually well written redemption arc.
Had never heard of the attack helicopter story until now but i am absolutely devastated to hear how things turned out. the culture on the internet is so heinous. people would rather attack someone for something they assume is problematic than take a few extra minutes to actually take a look into it and get the chance to uplift the voices of those who have experience with what theyre talking about. the quote you showed from the story was incredibly thought provoking and smart. i cant see how anyone would not consider it an insightful lgbt look at the world
I feel like one of the easiest ways to make it easier to write interesting trans and other queer characters is to not just throw in one of them as a way to tick a checkbox. Having The Good Trans/Gay/Etc. in your stories can be helpful as a way to show that queer people aren't a monolith, but it's a bad idea to only go for one Good(tm) token. Besides, so many queer people have found families and congregate together that it's not that strange to have a group of them instead of just a single person. The only reason I can think of that this just doesn't happen is that the largely cis straight writers of large media productions such as TV series and movies don't tend to feature groups of queer people (and especially groups of trans people) is because they don't have many of them in their own social circles, which leads to them not understanding the dynamics of such a friend group. And that's quite sad.
Yes! I think this is why Glee, The Fosters, recently Everything's Gonna Be Okay, even Faking It are all so much more enjoyable and authentic seeming shows when it comes to just... Having a bunch of LGBTQ+ characters in each show, having a variety of rep, Everything's Gonna Be Okay explicitly showing a gay character Alex's entire friend group is queer in various ways. There's something so much more authentic in some of the really flawed rep... But also I did genuinely adore Love, Simon and even more i love the spin-off Love, Victor, especially season 2 of it... I'm a gray-panromantic asexual and aros still have zero rep on tv and asexuals still are rare and when they're there they're minor side characters and never main characters too. I want so much more from rep... I know so many people do.
@@VioletEmerald FWIW, making your own representation is also valuable. If you identify an empty niche, filling it or helping to fill it will benefit everyone. It sure as hell won't be the cishet allosexuals who will make any good characters that make your heart sing, so *if* you are able to contribute and want to, it is awesome. I do want to emphasize that you don't have to be an active content creator/contributor if you don't have the energy or time or will, just that if you would want to be and manage to then that is kickass (as someone with a lifelong depression and ADHD, I am acutely aware of how easily life gets in the way of even stuff one really wants to do... Sometimes one doesn't even have the spoons for anything beyond immediate survival, and that is ok).
honestly this is why glee will forever be my favorite because it handled every issue just in the worst way possible which is what helped make it so entertaining
this is also why I love the L Word so much, it’s a fucking mess and it’s aged like milk but I love it for that. The last season is one of the most unintentionally hilarious pieces of content I’ve ever seen.
"I'm trans" isn't a script. It's barely a plot point. If you (general you) want your show about representation to be liked (or god forbid, popular) the plot needs an actual plot.
I didn't like how all the nonbinary characters in Sex Education were AFAB, especially since they're there for cis people to learn gender 101. A lot of cis people think that nonbinary people are just women with short hair and the show did nothing to disabuse them of that notion
Idk, I really connected with Love, Simon. I'm not from an upper middleclass nuclear family, but what family and people around me I do have are really open minded and accepting. When I first got "The Talk" it was from my lesbian cousin since my mom had passed away. She had experienced homophobia and her mom had briefly kicked her out if the house when she came out, which led to my dad letting her stay with us. I didnt know all that at the time, but my cousin made up for it by aggressively pushing the sentiment that gay people were normal people and it's perfectly normal to love people of the same sex. It actually made me anxious and I felt like I had done something wrong even though I had never thought otherwise. When I figured myself out it was oretty much scene for scene what Simon went through about how I really didnt think most people would care and that it would feel weirder making a huge deal out of it. You get told by so many people that coming out is dangerous and scary, but when you grow up in an openly accepting family... idk... it's like you feel like a fraud. Like you cheated and never earned your gay card because you didnt experience homophobia. Not to mention you, or at least I, kept waiting for the shoe to drop. Every time I slip in that I'm gay, part of me thinks the worst of the people I'm telling because at some point someone is going to disown me, right? I didnt want to make a big deal out of it because straight people dont come out as straight and as my cousin said, being gay is normal. I dont hide it, but I dont flaunt it. I dont have a closet to hide in, it's more a dresser in the middle of the room for everyone to see, i can open the drawers to show you what's inside but it isnt like my laundry is all over the floor and visible. I talk about it when it comes up or when it's natural to say, like telling an experience I had with an ex gurlfriend while we're all talking about relationships. I've only ever experienced backlash once when someone said I just never had "the right dick" and the person apologized the next day after I went off on them about corrective rape. Not saying my way of handling it is "correct" but that I'm glad a character like Simon was created because it speaks to my experience, even if it isnt the stereotypical coming out experience. I connect with Simon more than I connect with gay characters who do get raked over the coals. I connect with his internalized struggle, not with accepting that he's gay, but trying to figure out what to do with that information. As for desexualizing him, maybe it's because I'm on the ace spectrum, so that never seemed like an issue for me to notice. Edit: I do totally agree with loving characters to have hardships to overcome. Yes. But making horrible homophobia-driven coming out stories are like making the next spiderman origin movie. I see it all the time and it was nice that for once there was a character who experienced what I experienced. I got my movie, I'm haply to go back to the drama and craziness of shitting on protagonists to see them rise above.
I haven't seen the movie but I just wanted to say that I relate a lot to your experience. My family has always been very diverse and open minded so growing up I never thought there would be an issue if i ever came out or that I would even need to come out. It's just accepted and treated like not a big deal. I eventually "came out" as bisexual and nothing changed...at all. I am obviously very grateful for having such a supportive and good environment and honestly can't imagine anything else. However like you said it almost feels as if I have done something wrong because nothing has gone wrong. I have told people about my sexuality in situations where it was relevant (I don't typically share it but don't hide it either) and have yet to experience any reaction past "oh cool", "really?" or "oh I'm LGBTQ too". It feels so anti climatic and like you said it almost feels like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anyways I just wanted to say you're not alone in having a good experience/environment and feeling guilty for not having had a hard time when so many do. It's weird but it's nice to hear I'm not the only one!
As a gay fantasy writer, ive been struggling with writing the characters I want and had no idea why until i watched this video. Its like i was thinking in abstract pictures and you just turned it all into digestible words.
As a non-binary person, Cal and Jackson's uncomfortable interaction actually hit home really hard for me. The issue wasn't Jackson "trying really hard to be respectful," it was -- as is said explicitly the next time they get together to talk -- that it's pretty apparent through Jackson's discomfort that he doesn't really see Cal as the gender that they are, but as a girl. He's too Heterosexual and it puts a wrench in things. He can't help in any romantic or potentially sexual interaction they have but to project his own desires for who cal should be onto them, and it slips out when he calls them things like "beautiful" and *has* to work really hard to try to make it *seem* like that's not how he's thinking about them in order to salvage the relationship... when really, he just can't cross that mental bridge or find comfort with the idea of being in a queer relationship. This is a wall I often hit in many of my romantic/sexual relationships with cis people, where many of them just have such a strictly binary view of gender, it's like they can't see me as me or even act normally and relax around me. It's like understanding and being around me is difficult for them, and that usually comes to a head. Just thought I'd share that little piece because I think that might've gotten lost in translation in the analysis
100% this! I think some of verily's critiques on the storytelling with Cal are reasonable, like the lesson on binding. But at the same time I saw a TON myself in Cal's storyline. As an enby I've been in relationships with 2 cis straight men. I had a really strong sense that the first guy I dated only saw me as a girl, and the second guy after asking him explicitly told me he saw me as a girl. It's not like I haven't experienced these issues with queer people, but the gap in understanding and the need for me to be the educator for cis straight people was just too great. So one of the biggest takeaways I got from my relationships was to never again date people who consider themselves cis and straight
Well, you can't be sexually attracted to gender identity, not really. If you want to have sex with a person, your desire is mostly based on certain characteristics of that person related to their sex and sex is 99,99% binary, so what Jackson felt was pretty normal for his sexuality, and Cal couldn't accept that. Jackson was pretty open with the idea of having relationship with Cal, but if you can't even comfortably call someone beautiful because it's a "gendered word" how the hell it's supposed to work?
Their whole highlight for having a trans character is always to have a big shacking plot twist reveal scene where out of the blue the guy is bombed with "I have/had a penis". They don't take into account at all that a trangirl would herself be self conscious about getting a strong reaction and also wouldn't want to intentionally focus on that aspect specifically.
Like a few other people are saying, I think what we really need is LOTS of representation. We need so many trans characters that we could make a "top 100 trans heroes" or "top 100 trans villains" or "top 100 trans characters we love to hate", etc. - I want to be spoiled for choice as to who my favourite trans character is. I'm using trans as an example here, of course I would like overwhelming numbers of all kinds of characters across the LGBTQ spectrum, race, ethnicity, class, neurodivergence, etc.
the sad part about Love, Simon being a boring movie is that the book is actually pretty interesting, and the stakes for coming out are definitely higher. instead of just two guys bullying simon and then getting swiftly told off, there's lots of jokes made at simons expense by more of the students. also leah never actually professed her love to simon because it was just a small crush and she was actually interesting in the book instead of just being there as a generic character
I get where you're coming from with Cal and Jackson's storyline, but I took it more as Jackson not seeing Cal as nonbinary - he understands on a intellectual level but it hasn't fully computed, and his crush was based off seeing Cal as a girl, as he had when they first met and he didn't know their gender. And because Cal is nonbinary rather than a binary trans person his feelings on their gender were less obvious to himself - what it feels like to see someone as a girl or a boy is much easier to understand than what it is to see someone as nonbinary. To me it felt really cool to see that on screen because I've had the same issue with dating. I agree that the binder scene at the end was a little preachy, and if they'd framed it differently it could have been lovely to see one nonbinary person give another advice.
Yep! Also‚ some people just AREN’T attracted to nonbinary people. Just because we’re technically included in every sexuality doesn’t mean every individual person who’s gay/straight will also want to date nonbinary people-and guess what‚ that’s fine! I as a nonbinary person am definitely closed off to some categories of nonbinary people in my dating life.
@@lynxaway I still don't know if I'm nonbinary or not, but I present myself in a very """feminine""" way (clothes, makeup, heels etc) and I had more than one straight guy saying things like "I would fuck you, but I'm not attracted to a male body" and honestly, I completely understand!
Honestly this is why I get annoyed at most shows that people tout as "so good!!! All the gay rep!!!" They're (usually) boring and one-dimensional, or follow typical models of character progression. I do find that a lot of people just want to swoon over "uwu unproblematic beans!!!" who do soft and fluffy wholesome things. Sometimes I think it's like...I don't know...wish fulfillment, or something. People projecting on characters they particularly like/relate to so they can't be "bad"/problematic in any way lest it inspire uncomfortable feelings. And yes. Corporations just consistently put out safe/easy media to amass as wide an audience as possible for that ad revenue (or subscription revenue). Art suffers for the almighty dollar and all that. Anyway. Another great video!!!! Very cool, very smart, and I think you just have an attractive way kf speaking. Makes me wanna listen.
I know most people really don't feel that way, but Love Simon is possibly the movie that came the closest to capturing how I felt about my sexuality as a teenager. Not being in a particularly homophobic surrounding, but feeling none the less uncomfortable about how being gay could impact my relationships. Its conflics were ultimately not that important, but they were the kind of unimportant things I worried about when I was younger. I felt like I was watching a movie about a gay person who is like me, rather than a person who, like me, happens to be gay. Once again, I know my experience is absolutely not universal, but it feels a bit weird that a film that connected with me in such a way is seen as the go-to "gay movie for straight people"
Hey, so I know I'm replying to an old comment, but I'm curious if you've ever read the book that Love Simon was based on (Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda) I'm not gay or a man, but I found that book incredibly relatable for a different reason -- it's one of the only stories that I've ever seen to accurately depict what it was like to be a nerdy teenager in the 2010s So many movies and novels portray high school as this warzone of different factions wear the jock bullies the nerd, where there's one group of popular kids that everyone in the school knows about, and where everyone has their well-defined social roles But SvtHSA showed things more like how they actually were in 2015. Everyone has their own interests and friend groups, but it isn't some kind of Jungle Book-style social hierarchy that the media makes it out to be (Edit - And also, it's VERY easy nowadays for nerdy young people to find nerdy friends. Someone needs to tell Hollywood that it's not the 80s anymore and nerds aren't an oppressed class) I'm currently 24, and I don't know how old you are, but if you're around my age, you might find the book relatable on multiple levels, since the book also portrays the thing you were talking about -- being a gay teenager in a mostly accepting setting but still uneasy about relationships. It even arguably portrays this aspect better than the movie did
@@justanotheryoutubecommente2 High school has rarely to never been the social hierarchy seen in American teen movies. People tend to hang with specific friend groups because they have stuff in common. Maybe there was some point high school was the way American TV & Film would have you believe it was. But I graduated High School in 1997. And I didn’t care about cheerleaders or jocks because I didn’t care about sports in general. Yet American TV would have you believe there was a standard to High School social hierarchy that was universal. If it ever existed, it applied to a small group of people and somehow became text book for writing high school characters.
@@justanotheryoutubecommente2 Although I’m not a guy, I am gay, and I also found the book really relatable (back when I last read it in high school, at least). Beyond its more accurate depiction of school social dynamics, Book Simon’s general aversion to spectacle (the whole thing with his parents and milestones) and his fear of changing to the people he knows and loves resonated with me. I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t speak to it, but it annoys me that the two are lumped together as being “for straight people” somehow, when it felt like it really hit with the baby gay feelings of trying to figure out some sense of your real personality (like every teenager is, except with the added confusion and angst that comes with being gay in an environment that sees gay people as an other,) under all that repression you’ve only just realized you have.
The idea that everyone is 100% accepting upon coming out is not the experience for the majority of people so ones where it is a real issue in the story feel more realistic; Especially nonbinary people, cis people do not just immediately accept that with no questions asked so its weird when TV shows just drop an enby character in there and there is never any conflict or development of the character.
@@charliekahn4205 or the "hmmm that's kinda fruity" to everyone who is attracted to nonbinary people because I have done that due to get mostly cis straight men off my ass as an enby myself.
I tried watching euphoria, and for some reason the first thing I watched was the Jules special episode, and I so surprised by how sincere and well written it was that I kept going thinking that she would have been the protagonist and this would have been the vibe of the show, but I was so let down
The worst part is that her actress, Hunter Schafer, was in charge of writing most of that episode. That’s why the authenticity of the trans experience comes through. Meanwhile in the first and second season, she had no voice. Understandable considering she’s merely an actress for the show, but Levinson was the only person fully in charge of the script. And yeah… it suffered. At the very least, she should’ve been consulted more. She’s so fuckin talented.
i do like Jules as a character but I feel like she got a different treatment from the other "main" characters. i feel like we're viewing Jules as the manic pixie dream girl romance from Rue's perspective... and that's why it didn't make sense to watch her leave on that train and disappear for a while, because we never truly got her perspective on things.
Loved the video! Have you seen the short-lived Generation (genera+ion) on HBO Max? To me, it has some of the best teen LGBTQ+ representation I've seen in a while. The characters are allowed to be unapologetic, flawed, messy, awkward, cringey and chaotic in a way that's so refreshing and adolescent? That show was created by a teenage girl who's part of the LGBTQ+ community and her gay dads and you can tell the difference in approach compared to a lot of LGBT stories (especially the teen ones). I feel like a lot of mainstream LGBTQ+ movies and shows (and frankly, a large part of their LGBTQ+ audience) want LGBTQ+ characters to be palatable to the (cis-straight-white) masses. That means they can only be inoffensive or titillating. It really doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance and authenticity. And yeah, it really bores me.
I did a quick Google and as far as I can see no UK broadcaster picked this up and we don't have HBO max in the UK. Most HBO shows get picked up by Sky and so are available to stream on Now TV (as this is owned by Sky) but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
The issues you brought up with 'Love, Simon' are so much better in the book. Simon has much more of a personality, he has flaws, he has a more active sexuality (he has a crush on a guy from theater that he convinces himself is Blue, he's attracted to Bram before the Blue reveal, there is a scene where he and Blue talk about sex and Simon masturbates (it's a cutaway kind of scene, but it's obvious what he's doing), there's more than one kiss, there's a makeout scene near the end, etc). They show way more of Simon and Bram's relationship both through the emails and after the reveal so it's much more of a romance. In the book Simon does know that coming out will probably be okay for him, the reason he doesn't want to come out is that he doesn't want to make a big spectacle out of it or for anything to change with his family or friends. Another huge thing is the relationship with Blue. He's scared that Blue will freak out if they're outted (which he kind of does) and he'll lose him. The bullying is also worse in the book and they also talk about not feeling safe holding hands in public. I still liked the movie, but it's sad that almost all of that was dulled down for the movie to create this plain coming out story.
This! Becky Albertalli creates such wonderful characters and the book is fantastic. The movie is good but all the characters feel so surface level in comparison
I can't even describe how happy I was when Our Flag Means Death introduced Jim, a non-binary character that I actually LIKED and could even relate to. Every nonbinary character I have seen so far has either been boring with no distinct personality or were just side characters they added just for the sake of representation. It was just so refreshing to see a nonbinary character BE a character and it made me feel so seen compared to the "trans/non-binary 101" lessons I would get on shows trying to give "good representation" but really just made me feel like I was just watching a live action version of stuff I read on trans tumblr back in 2014.
My friend and I who are both nonbinary watched Our Flag Means Death and as the show went on and it became clear that Jim was non binary we both literally screamed with excitement.
it kills me to see trans people who are creating genuinely interesting radical fiction and art constantly and consistently getting sidelined (at best) for bland palatable tv. and it rly feels like the push for Good Positive Uplifting Rep All The Time No Exceptions is like lgbt creators being made to apologize for cishet creators' past malice, all while continuing to center cishet audiences. it's so frustrating.
Exactly. Like yeah cis people can write trans characters, but cmon. Maybe just even for a second can we let trans folk write ourselves? Instead of have cis folk, who are probably terrified of overstepping, write the blandest and safest plots possible?
Love this - for me it’s idealism vs realism. Straight creatives think being an ally means portraying the world as they think it should be vs how it actually is. Give me the mess.
Someone on twitter pointed out the distinction between being moral and moralising and it clicked as this exact issue. I liked your point about us not knowing how to handle this responsibility for our ability to directly communicate with and critique media to its creators.
I did like Cal as a character, but I agree that them and Jackson deciding not to date was contrived and the storyline about them having to teach the other nonbinary kid how to bind was unnecessary
imagine if the arc had ended with jackson calling Cal out on their bullshit. Like I'm attracted to you, and if you're attracted to me, you shouldn't push me away, we should figure it out and be messed up together. If only because messed up relationships is all Sex ed, and good drama is about (as long as it doesn't cross the line into romanticizing abuse).
Honestly I was disappointed because when I heard about Cal being introduced, I thought that they were going to be a love interest for Ola and there would be a "You're the only one who's into me" because Ola is pansexual, so I was excited when I thought Cal and Jackson would be some romantic endgame
@@曾華偉-k7t obviously. But for a show all about navigation the quirks in relationships, stopping the relationship here is slightly jarring. Specially since the character is presented as sure of themselves and generally having their shit together, the Idea that they have to figure themselves out before gestion into a relationship comes a bit out of nowhere. Granded, we have to see what they do next season.
i agree with you on everything you said!! i hope in the future as lgbt representation becomes less of like… a spectacle? that more “bad” representation will be celebrated. being afraid to show the more unrefined or unappealing sides of an lgbt character on tv or movies just eventually makes people afraid of the unrefined or unappealing sides of real people or even themselves, i think. it reminds me of people online criticizing the leather/bdsm community for being at pride parades just because they’re personally uncomfortable with people being prideful of their kinks and sexuality. i guess it’s a weird layer of conservatism being applied to a community that at it’s core was very liberal, taking a minority experience and trying to make it seem as “normal” as possible so as to not offend any potential watcher while ignoring the reason why it offends people in the first place (because it would probably make them uncomfortable to be faced with their own flaws and then make them stop watching?) which ends up making the majority of the current lgbt representation in shows and movies so “good” and palatable to the point that it doesn’t even feel like representation to most of us anymore. it’s less showing the life of an actual lgbt person and more showing a watered down and sanitized version of one that just feels kind of disingenuous.
for ppl who like reading & esp post-apocalyptic stories, the last girl scout by natalie ironside is really good. it has a romance between two lesbian trans women, written by a trans woman. one of them is an ex-fascist with a lot of guilt and the other is a communist soldier. and they are in love and traumatized and guilty and angry and. interesting! and also it has nazi vampires!
Wait though, "I Identify as an Attack Helicopter" sounds like an awesome story after that tiny summery and I didn't even know it existed. Onto the list of fiction I need to read it goes.
A really good example of good ‘bad’ representation is “Helluva Boss.” Its deuteragonist Stolas has a really weird transactional relationship with the protagonist. But episode two is all about Stolas and his relationship with his daughter and by the end of it he is a deeply empathetic character who still has that transactional relationship with the protagonist. They captured my attention without removing any of their rough edges.
I thought about that phrase a lot during this video, because it started as a rallying cry for better representation, and swung to derogatively describe a template emblematic of bad attempts to answer that cry. What we always wanted were women who are just as messy and human as the men that surround them.
I agree with you on the Cal from Sex Education front, in that yes, they were disappointingly boring, but it was my impression that a big issue for them when it comes to having a relationship with Jackson was the dysphoria that getting physical with him prompted them to feel. You may not experience this, but many trans people feel dysphoric when people feel attracted to them as an exception - Jackson is as respectful as can be, but because he is straight, Cal will always have the nagging thought that he is thinking of them as a woman. He also tries to feel their chest at one point iirc, which he has consent to do, but I imagine that that could also easily make them feel dysphoric. I, as an AFAB trans person, could empathise with and relate to this part of their character, having had similar experiences with navigating advances from people who are normally only attracted to women, which often make me feel really uncomfortable and kind of invalidated. Cal isn't a binary transmasc like me, but it seems to me that they have similar experiences
That’s the impression I got as well. While it’s true that cishet men can be attracted to non binary people, it’s important to remember that non binary identities are not a monolith. Some non binary people might not feel their identity is “challenged” by a relationship with a straight person, but other non binary people might get dysphoric because they’re aware that their partners perception of them might come into conflict with their self perception.
"Good representation" that never shows any negative experiences (-phobia, bigotry, erasure, bullying, harassment, etc) just feels like gaslighting to me. Not saying it needs to be the focus, but it's a part of queer experience. I love your take on how relationships with trans people can challenge cis gender and sexuality conceits, and how that can be very funny. Last, Jadzia Dax 💜💜💜
Another well-thought out video with some humor thrown in that I thoroughly enjoyed. Please don't ever feel bad about taking a bit longer to deliver this kind of quality. I hope you use the Patreon money for a fancy chair for future videos to resolve your issues with standing for so long! Or at least one of those really mean, spiky foam rollers. Also, I never notice that stuff and know nothing about it, but for what it's worth: The editing in this was really nice!
I think this really needed to be said, and you did a great job with it. Especially since the mid 2010s, suddenly people are more concerned about how morally good media is and it does kinda lead to some worrying trends. Not quite sure how it all took off, but being in the Steven Universe fandom I pretty much saw in real time how people went from adoring the show to suddenly calling it a crime against humanity just because the show dared to have flawed characters and push people out of their comfort zone. I also really hate when people feel when they have to defend shows like SU or say the ones you like in the video, they always have to start with "it's not perfect" or "it has its flaws", like duh, water is wet, we don't need you to say what's obvious, not to mention it kinda feels like you're forcing yourself to say something that's not really relevant to the discussion. People are so concerned about being seen as normal and accepted it ironically ends up making rep easier to be co-opted by corporations. So yeah, let characters from marginalised backgrounds be as rich and varied as anyone else.
You talking about possibilities of comedy including trans people reminded me a lot of my relationship with my girlfriend (I am gender fluid and she's a trans woman), making me feel real warm and fuzzy on the inside, thinking about how much I love her. Very important and eye-opening video, thanks!
Personally, my biggest pet peeve when it comes to 'good' LGBT representation is that the characters are not only boring but just... far too mainstream. I mean 'mainstream' in terms of what the general (cishet) public tend to dress like/be interested in/create-- I've never seen queer goths or punks be explicitly represented because their lifestyles are not 'the norm'. Or even just queer characters with weird hobbies, or specific tastes. These movies all seem like they're trying to go for the "we are just like you" message and it irritates me because, well, we really aren't. It wasn't just that we were queer that society pushed us away, it was also that as queer people we specifically didn't conform to gender roles and societal norms. And that lack of conformity hasn't changed at all, in fact, it might be even stronger. Many queer people today-- especially young queer people--- are part of subcultures and have certain styles and types of humour. It's near impossible to find a representation of the kind of queer people who are around me, which sucks because they are authentic parts of the community who are completely ignored in favour of more 'socially acceptable' ones. sorry that this comment is so long, I kind of ranted without thinking about organising my thoughts. basically, tl;dr LGBT characters are all too mainstream and specific subcultures in the LGBT community never get rep, which they should far more than all these practically straight-passing queer characters
I completely agree. I can find it really hard to find a character I truly relate too. And sure maybe thats partly due to the fact I’m also neurodivergent (I dunno if thats spelled right, sorry) but theres always those boxes. You have to be this and this if you want rep where you feel truly represented. Queer people tend to not fit in those boxes, yet cishet people writing them always seem to put them into said boxes. While yes, some queer people do enjoy stuff like that, thats not everyone. Which is also probably part of the reason why they always seem so perfect. It’s kind of like they’re saying: heres this perfect character, because this is what society has deemed good, BUT look at that! They’re queer! So now they aren’t that perfect person! Thats what it feels like to me anyway. Just my thoughts, sorry that this is kinda long
![The [Queer] Politics of Eurovision](/img/n.gif)
I don't want "good" representation, I want "broad" representation. I want the boring, the good, the messy, the bad, and the scandalous. I just want the creators to know which one they're writing.
This exactly.
YES I love Titus from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidtt, even if he's a walking stereotype, because he's so gosh darn happy with who he is--and I love the flashback of his highschool days of being a closeted jock and how much of a nightmare it was being normal and popular.
And on the other end, I also love Oscar from The Office being the ironic comedic "straight man" dealing with everyone's bafoonery, and knowing when and how to stand up for himself and call people out.
I think it would be super unfair to consider either of them as some sort of standard or singular ambassador for gay men. We need to see variety!
or when they're writing which of these sides in one character. People have more than one side/layer and often go through several of these stages during the early explorations of their sexuality. Not always, but it would create very interesting plots, conflicts, and dynamics (both between characters and inside the characters head).
+
This is perfect as long as the creator is respectful and knows their own character it should work.
A general rule I have when it comes to diversity is "A characters diversity shouldn't be their most interesting characteristic". I'd say that overly perfect or boring characters aren't good representation, personally, because good representation would be treating them the same as other characters: letting them be flawed, interesting and nuanced.
Yup. Respectable representation is not the same thing as empathetic representation.
It's as the saying goes "don't make a good [minority] character. Make a good character that happens to be [minority]"
exactly
Sadly bring LGBT is as deep as its goes
And my first thought is Trevor from Shameless when he was first introduced. He was so obviously just a vehicle to bring up trans and LGBTQA+ topics the show hadn't touched before. It was painful.
“We don’t need perfect representation. We just need more of it.” YES! If writers are concerned about their trans/gay/bi/POC/female/disabled character coming off as a stereotype or offensive, the easy solution is just… have another character similarly marginalized but has their own way of navigating it. Some people IRL just happen to fall into stereotypes. Stereotypes are only bad when they’re the only representation seen.
this isn't even difficult to write in, most members of marginalised groups will find each other quickly. when you're all excluded for the same reasons, you start to hang out with each other. if you've got an autistic male character, give him a female autistic friend. if one character leans into a stereotype, don't have non-stereotypical characters of the same group make fun of them unless they're also gonna canonically have their own issues around respectability politics. and for the love of god hire a sensitivity editor if ur discussing those topics.
@@toothfairy10133 “when you’re all excluded for the same reasons, you start to hang out with each other.” This is so true even if someone doesn’t even KNOW they belong to that group. I like that you used autistics as an example, since I’ve had a few friends on the spectrum long before I knew I was.
Plus, “token straight in a group of LGBTQ+ friends realizes they’re not actually straight and/or cis” is a common phenomena that I’ve also experienced first-hand.
Yesss
@@LJA116 it's very natural to gravitate towards people with similar mindsets and experiences as you because you'll understand each other the best
That's why it's so easy for queer people to "fund each other"
It's not that some people fall into stereotypes. Most do. That's why they're stereotyped to begin with because it's a fairly sized amount which is most likely above average. People just don't like stereotypes because "not everyone" is like this. If I were to say black people are tall ots a stereotype but generally they are on tbe taller side. It's a stereotype but there's nothing wrong with what I said in my observation unless you choose to take offense to it. The only other way it's offensive is if the stereotype is simply not true for most and just a made up stigma used by anti people.
I'm not paraphrasing this well, but in an essay, Ursula Le Guin talks about how if a writer prioritizes the message over the story, it will usually kill both. Storytelling has to come first. It can be self-aware, but it's how people connect and empathize with characters, and good characters that reflect us... aren't perfect. This is a great video, it really hit home for me as a queer/trans writer of stories. Thank you!
Had anyone else said this I’d just assume it was another boring bro talking about go woke go broke, but since it’s this queen… I can trust her.
I'm glad you mentioned IUrsula Le Guin I live near porland and had ocasion to meet her a few times. During one of her interviews she told how she decided to write about a topic when the critics mentioned how she couldn't do it.
@@miticaBEP07 truth is truth. People who hate the lgbtq community arent going to be giving constructive criticsm to improve their characters in media.
It's particularly interesting coming from ever as she wrote in order two of my favourites books ever and one that for how much I tried I only found a chore to go through, which It happens to be the one most explicit about its own topics after the first Earthsea novel.
If only more people knew of her, I wouldn't have to suffer when people ask who she is
I'm trans writer too) But right now I am writing a story about lesbians, but planning a poem about trans man in the atmosphere of Russian folklore ('cause I'm Russian) :)
I’m gonna say it:
“If it only took one bad character to make someone hate an entire group of people then they were just looking for an excuse, any excuse.”
It’s the censorship and tax payer money wastage for plastic surgery and propaganda that gives trans people an entitled and selfish reputation
I think youre missing the point. I think when people write normal gays, trans, blacks, they arent doing it for that sake, and i think one of the problem with the communities is that you guys are taking it the wrong way in that sense of “not wanting _______ to look bad.” It has more to do with not stereotyping. Not every minority has this “set” persona or stereotype they are supposed to be, us minorities are more than capable of being normal people. Like for instance; I’m black. My blackness will not go away if i’m quiet, reserved and smart. A gay man will not be any less gay if he isnt talking funny or isnt wearing a pink sweater and being b*tchi.
@@thorstenmarquardt7274 trans people are not a waste & dont play like you wouldnt be paying taxes otherwise
@@chickychickist both your statements make no sense in this context and only prove why virtue signalling bullshit must be stopped at all costs
@@thorstenmarquardt7274 grow up
“I’m honestly tired of people praising “wholesome” queer shows and putting down queer shows that aren’t. Is that the only way you can enjoy gay characters? Gay people have sex, gay people are assholes, gay people can be anything. Showing all sides is proper representation.
I just want messed up characters that are so unapologetically gay.”
- random person on twitter
I think the weakness of that is that it give homophobes a reason to make broad assumptions. Many people still don't know people who are part of the lgbt nor understand any basic concepts around it other then the identity and label
@@darianbarber3763 I think no matter what we do, homophobes will always making assumptions toward LGBT,so I think good representations are important but the foundation of that is more and broad representations for sure
@@edwardlegend1564 Exactly. We shouldn’t have to make ourselves more palatable to be accepted.
Yeah tbh it feels condescending that people are scared to make gay people and women villains or antagonists these days. In trying so hard to correct some stereotypes, now it seems like the only people who are allowed to be cunning villains are straight white men, which just aligns with different stereotypes of us being lesser, less intelligent, emotional etc. A woman, little lone a gay woman, couldn’t possibly just be evil or a horrible person, or commit deeds just because she wants to, she NEEDS to have tragic backstory and redemption arc and cry about her past. Like come on, why are only dudes allowed to be evil now
It’s just so boring. Give me female villains that are unapologetically evil and male protagonists that have emotions
Although I’m cis, this is how I feel about Black representation as s Black woman. People are worried about being racist or stereotypical that they think writing a flawed Black character is racist and that Black characters have to be perfect and kind to everyone all the time, which ends up making them boring and unrelatable.
Most of my Black characters are morally grey assholes and I like writing women that are kind of cold and grumpy at first the way male characters are often written (and loved/romanticized by fans for being). But when I write an angsty selfish morally gray Black female lead in my comic, I just know she will be accused of being a stereotype even when she isn’t and seen as her race and gender before as a character. Or people will subscribe a stereotype that didn’t previously exist onto my characters just because they are Black and not always likable. There’s just no way to win.
I feel that, I'm not black, but I have a lot of black characters that I'm afraid to write or tell people, even if I've talked about them with my black friends and they don't see anything wrong, I'm still insecure. I didn't make them for representations per see, I just thought their design was better this way, with these colors, felt more "them" if you understand? Like any other character I've made. But they arent perfect snowflackes, which gaves me even more fear...representation x internet is scary
Something like that i think is something i worry about a bunch..
Although i dont write and only occasionally draw im often worried about hurting people even tho i know they wanna be treated as just.. people.. at least in most cases
Like.. if i draw someone whos white and i mess up its just eh and i just suck but whenever i draw someone who looks average and white i always just feel bad and like i should try harder.. even tho theyre not drawn any worse than the others ..i think at least..
Honestly same and I'm a black woman, I feel weird writing black woman has anything other than soft, silly and girly cause I don't want to add to the strong aggressive black woman stereotype. But like black woman exist in a spectrum so I should show all of it.
It's kind of what happens to all minorities. Because people want to break away from stereotypes but people have personalities of all types that can align with said stereotypes. But in my mind the issue is with the people stereotyping to make their world view easier. It's a double edged sword I think all minorities face. To try and not be a stereotype but that still boxes you in just like the stereotype.
Same!
While I'm a gay black man, it's the same feeling: I want to watch controversial stories too, not just the sad and/or overcoming kind of movies/series. Go crazy, you know?
Okay I’m massively overtired but the sheer whiplash of “here is this extremely boring comedy that doesn’t have a single joke in it” to “‘I am a transgender woman’ ‘thank you for sharing your truth. with me’” legitimately put tears on my face
“Thank you for sharing your truth with me” absolutely destroyed me!
an utter hyena laugh at that.
A woman I used to work for actually said this to me. She misgendered me literally every time she spoke about me.
@@ciarancooper394 When someone says "your truth" they often mean it's not the truth to them.
“Thanks for trusting me” for douches.
"I am a transgender woman."
"Thank you.................................................................... for sharing your truth." that line delivery pains me so much
That was the most awkward shit ever lmaoo
I scream-laughed at that dramatic “Thank you…” 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I'd rather be called a slur honestly it'd be less awkward.
Could have just said ‘thank you for telling me’. Sounds like a more normal response.
I think most (not transphobic) people would just react with "Oh, okay" or parents "we love you nonetheless". No need for thank you, for telling me your truth.
I personally love relationships in fiction that are messy, complicated, maybe even a little toxic but there is some good there or the potential for good and they work through it to a happier healthier relationship
Your pfp gives that away!
Tbf isn’t that just regular way every basic straight white male character is written? “He’s an asshole, but he can learn ya’ll🎊” they even get a complimentary trophy gf upon reaching what the male writers think selfactualisation is.
I totally agree, messy relationships are the best (in fiction). If they're too perfect it's just not interesting. The Stamets/Culber and Adira/Gray couples from Star Trek are great examples of this. "Oh so you're saying there is no drama in this *drama* programme? Yeah I'll go out and buy the Blu-Rays of that, absolutely for sure"
I agree. Mickey and Ian from Shameless have a sort of toxic relationship, messy at times but it is super entertaining. Furthermore Mickey is an amazing character because while he is very aware what he likes sexually, for a long time he denies it and hides the emotional side of it. There are some scenes that are hard to watch but it's never boring.
I only recently watched through Hannibal AFTER learning that not only is the relationship cannon, but messy and destructive and INTERESTING.
And I’m obsessed.
I’m waiting for this conversation with queer characters to hit the same point that the convo around “strong female characters” has. Where we understand thy just having these “strong female characters” giving us “good representation” is boring and actually sexist in itself.
Hopefully this video will give it a good kick up the arse and get it rolling, because I’m definitely over the boring “strong trans character”.
We also need to stop deleting hot female characters from cartoons like Miss Bellum or Hello Nurse
Exactly. Characters that aren't seen as minorities are allowed to just be good and interesting characters, whereas women (less so than in the past, thankfully), queer people, and POC have to be "strong role models" and "good representation".
The problem really is just one of scale. Like, Catradora has some aspects that are less than perfectly healthy, but no one called that bad lesbian representation because we also had Spinnerella and Netossa and Scorpia and Perfuma being uncontroversially perfect.
yeah, it feels like a stepping stone the same way "magical negroes" were a stepping stone to more honest, three dimensional and complex representation of people of color, resulting from a well meaning (or at the very least, trying toi cash in on diversity) but still insular and white dominated industry.
First you erase or demonize, then you go for squeaky clean but empty and dishonest representation, and then you manage to get three dimensional representation when the represented group gets more power in the industry, and when enough people who are part of these groups get enough experience around these people to write them as something else than cardboard cutouts.
@@maximeteppe7627 This is it. The squeaky clean image naturally comes first after years of erasure and demonization. While yes, it's still dishonest and empty, think about what the backlash would be like if that step was skipped, before the represented group had gotten the power to write themselves.
But isn't the whole point of that discussion that the "strong female character" trope isn't good representation? It's inaccurate and idealised and comes across as being a mary sue every single time because the idea is to create the perfect woman that defies all stereotypes and is "just as good as a man" to show men that girls can too, instead of being written as a relatable and interesting 3 dimensional character with depth and complexity meant so that real women can feel seen and understood. Representation can only be good if it's intended audience is the group it's representing, I've only just started the video so I'm not sure if she addresses this or not but it isn't even really representation if it's a carefully constructed propaganda piece (often created by a person who is not of the minority group) that is intended to give a certain impression of the minority group, that's just propaganda, nothing wrong with that I guess since public opinion has to be affected somehow but representation has to exist authentically without any agenda or its not actually representative of anything.
I think the problem started with the very term "representation" as if the characters were embassadors of their culture to the rest of the World and must be paragorns of what is to be expected
This makes so much sense!
That's such a great observation. Thanks for pointing that out, I learned something.
Nope, the problem is the term "diversity"!
‘Representation’ is a good synonym for that.
“Isn’t every bisexual a disaster bisexual at heart?”
Just wanted to say that I have never felt SO seen as I was listening to this line. And now I’ll go back to my distinguished bisexual life wishing I could be more disaster…
@@telepathicmagicshop I totally get this. Being bi and in the ace community we exist too. We can be a lot of different things. Also, some of us have our it together. There is nothing wrong with sexual bi people, and like this video asserts they can be flawed, but I wish I had seen more non-closeted bi people who had it together.
@@telepathicmagicshop Being a disaster bisexual has nothing to do with being hypsersexualized. Settle down there bud.
@@telepathicmagicshop You’re allowed to feel things, but you’re being both overly dramatic and wrong 😌
@@fbaxter8551 for me disaster bi is me over thinking and I can't talk in general. especially to a pretty lady then I try another option to look away cuz eye contact is hard in general.but then on the tv is a shirtless man and u urself haven't had any type of sexual gratification in over 2 months so now u can feel ur face visablly getting brighter and ur face is just making all the emotions. Ur just trying to order food to go :/
I’m just always over thinking and I’m a competent disaster bi 😭
It reminds me of when Knives Out came out, the director revealed a bit of trivia that Apple don't allow bad guys to use their products on screen, so if a character is seen using an iPhone then they won't be the killer.
This kind of policy has been adopted for LGBT and ethnic minority characters.
I just watched a recent Netflix horror movie, a Scream-esque teen slasher murder mystery, where the core cast was incredibly diverse. The problem is we know that the killer is likely one of them but we know that it won't be the Brown main girl or her Black bff or the Latino boy or the trans kid or the gay guy, which only left the token rich White straight guy. What's a murder mystery without the mystery?
If Knives Out 2 has a diverse cast then do we simply rule out LGBTQ people and non-White people and people with iPhones to pick the killer in the first 5 minutes?
Equal representation needs to be both quantitative and qualitative. Diverse representation needs to be allowed to be both present and unpleasant.
This comment is gold! Didn't know about the no iPhones for villains bit, that's a mindfuck
Bruh I don't think I've ever seen a "genius gay" and it's a sin.
This is very off topic, and absolutely NOT a jab at you OP at all, but the "Android bad, iPhone good" movie theory is so insane to me. I get that it usually has to do with branding and all that, and not wanting a bad, awful character to be associated with your product, but at the same time...It lowkey just screams classism lol.
@@toomessy I mean it's giving me when HP Lovecraft made it so anyone with an accent was evil. Just because the authors intended it doesn't mean it's morally right. Therefore you're right, it is classist.
@@dontburstmybubble686 i mean, Jim Moriarty in Sherlock was that basically. He was never officially confirmed gay but they queercoded the shit out of him.
This video reminded me of one time when I started talking to a trans girl who liked the same series I did, and we also shared a favorite character. She then confessed me that she headcanoned this character as trans for number of (extremely) valid points that actually made me wonder if the creators had done it on purpose, but then she also said that she didn't want to publish her headncanon on social media for fear of backlash, since this character was (sort of) the villain of the show, and therefore "bad representation". And honestly? I don't get it. This character was extremely queer coded regardless, with even a pressumed ex-girlfriend in the show, and she was also very intelligent, cleaver, hot, and fun to watch. I liked her as a character! I didn't care if she was trans, that wouldn't make me think any less of trans people; on the contrary, it made me more open-minded than I had been before our talk.
All of this is to say, I don't think we need all lgbtq+ characters to be good people. We need lgbtq+ characters to be good characters.
might i ask who that character was?
@@vivaciousarcanist3389 Croix Meridies from Little Witch Academia. She's actually my profile picture lol
@@taniahylian3799 thanks, i'll be sure to check it out
See, things like this are fine, but then you get those other people who think that EVERYONE has to be trans... 🤦♀️
@@teutonicsniper2502 why not tho
my favourite gay character is Dean from Russell T Davies' first episode of Banana. He lies and manipulates people into feeling sorry for him, tells them a story about coming out and being kicked out the house by his intolerant family. then he goes to see them in the episode and they're... completely fine with him. absolute icon.
No one writes awful loveable lgbt characters like RTD.
also RTD does not give a *shit* about any internet reaction to his characters. "storytelling is not a democracy." so many people forget that. Twitter activists should not be doing activism for fiction, full stop.
There should be more gay villains in general
@@maldon3659 absolutely. fuck problematising disney villains. embrace the camp
RTD just writes people as people, and makes sure there’s people of all sorts in his stories
God, Freddie was awful. Gorgeous but so awful lol
I feel like there's a difference between good representation vs politically correct representation. Good rep should be realistic, warts and all. At the same time, I understand the concerns surrounding bad rep. Media kinda influences how we see the world and for people who don't know lgbt people in real life, tv shows and movies end up being the filter through which they see us. That can be bad if those are full of bad representation.
The other difficulty with transfolk and other minorities getting good representation is that their inclusion into ensemble stories can sometimes turn into a smurfette problem. If everyone else has a defining characteristic and is cis, then the trans character's defining characteristic is by default being trans (until otherwise supplanted by something more developed by the story). Bad writers will not move beyond the differences and ignore characters' commonalities that can lead to interesting relationships and conflicts.
I feel like its not even about politically correct at times. Its just the shallowness. Its like he old adage in story telling "show don't tell". They want "good rep" so they they check to make sure they hit those talking points and reflect back some things they've been told instead of actually working positive representation into the story and make it an part of everything instead of something added in for show.
Well said!
@@thezpn Aaaagh, smurfette made me SO mad as a kid! Like, either I can have a personality & be something cool, or I can be a girl?? And I know I was younger than 9, & I was a hugely sheltered kid- I doubt I'd even heard the word "feminism", but I could see the problem. Of course fiction has some influence, but I just don't buy the idea that people blindly copy it or believe it without ever questioning it or thinking about it.
Maybe Netflix & HBO and other networks are trying to appeal to younger audiences who are more politically correct by being more politically conscious? And by proxy they write unproblematic characters who while are inoffensive appear less real because most people are... pretty problematic
"I think we can be distrustful as LGBT people, because we're used to getting hurt." Look at Our Flag Means Death; nobody believed that we weren't being queerbaited until they "proved it" in the second-last episode of the (first) season, because we were just so used to never actually getting what was seemingly being promised. It's a wild time for LGBT media.
I've often found it boring to have every story involving an LGBTQ+ character be about them overcoming discrimination, but I do realize that there is the opposite issue too- having a queer character face no conflict whatsoever except for the smallest of things. I think the real issue is just people having trouble writing these characters as real people and not just ways to teach lessons.
Probably because they are cis/het people writing for cis/het people.
Personally I think we need a mix of stories like that, some which focus on LGBTQIA+ characters discovering their identity/overcoming discrimination, and some which just have LGBTQIA+ characters and their gender/sexuality is never an issue or conflict. It can be reassuring in a way to see struggles you’ve faced shown in fiction because it reminds you you’re not alone, but it’s also nice to see characters who are just LGBTQIA+ and completely accepted for that, because it shows that’s a normal way to be and doesn’t always have to be some massive debate. It’s also relaxing escapism after discrimination in real life. But I absolutely agree with you when you say they’re often written to teach lessons rather than as real people.
I think its a sad reality that the vast majority of LGBTQ+ face discrimination in some way in their day to day lives, but there are already so many ways that media misrepresents the average human experience, that I think you can occasionally sacrifice full accuracy for the sake of a feel-good story. I feel like this process should just be more natural. There shouldnt be any like strict rules or anything for writing an LGBTQ+ character, it just gets annoying when we constantly see the same thing. What I'm saying is, we need a healthy mix of everything, rather than trying to dictate which stories can and cannot be told. Feel-good stories where everything works out for the main character have their place in media, but that can't be all we have. Stories about discrimination have their place, but that cant be everything either. There's always a certain balance that just works.
i dont blame them, theyre probably terrified of getting cancelled on twitter for not making all lgbt people look like angels all the time
I think the problem is cis/het writers don't realize how intersectional being LGBT+ is in actual LGBT+ people. They think, "A queer character's story has to be all about their queerness, otherwise people will question why they were written queer in the first place." That position then turns into a pulpit and the character becomes a martyr, not an actual person. When in reality, it is entirely possible to write a character whose life is undeniably affected by being queer, without their queerness being their main character arc. Right now, they can't seem to tell the difference between QUEER character and queer CHARACTER.
This reminds me of a presentation I saw once by a blind woman for writers about writing disability. The thesis of her presentation was more or less that her and her family, as people very comfortable with her disability, could joke about it. They treated her in ways that onlookers might call mean, but she had no problem with.
The problem she readily admitted was that if you wrote her family accurately, people would probably burn you at the stake for writing it.
lol exactly, I have a genetic disorder, blah blah, long story short, I'm very wobbly and often sway a bit, careen into bookshelves, etc, and if you didn't know better you might think I was a bit drunk, so my dad calls me Captain Jack (ala Pirates of the Caribbean "Where's the Rum gone?") Cuz he's a dick lol (I say with love and affection). My family's full of deeply loving, witty, sarcastic assholes, It's practically our love language. He's got his own Frankenstein health issues going on as well so he knows the score. If you say you have a headache he'll offer to punch you in the leg to take your mind off it lol. If someone wrote the way we talked to each other without doing a big qualifying speech beforehand they'd be fired soooo fast.
Exactly. My arm disabilities have given me nothing but hell. My whole body hurts from chronic pain and my knee eventually went bad. Between my arms and knee, I walk and act like a little-armed T-Rex. It actually helps to joke about my struggles and pain and the hell I've gone through over time. My parents, family, husband, friends, and even co-workers all joke with me and gift me T-Rex stuff and tag me online in stuff about T-Rexes. People get offended on my part and the part of other disabled people, saying it's rude and disrespectful. Yet they don't understand it. A.) I am allowed to make fun of my own pain and struggles because they are mine. B.) I literally acknowledged the jokes with my friends and family members and accept it as fine, so I don't need people to defend me because I'm not offended and it isn't poking fun at anyone but me.
Here in the latam side of the internet, making those kinds of jokes is kind of the norm, but that's partly beacuse all of us have experienced discrimination before and we learned to laugh at it. We learned to laugh at stereotypes and dark humor beacuse if the context and tone is right then we know the person telling the joke is not serious (something i feel many others on the internet cant tell). We never exclude anybody when making fun of stuff, including ourselves, heck i learned to laugh and make fun of my own aspergers, but that's beacuse it helps me deal with the struggles that come with it and helps me connect with other autists who also know how to laugh at themselves. We latinos live in a miserable place full of corruption and violence, but why be gloomy when you can just grab a beer and make fun of everything with your friends, beacuse we know life is shit so may as well have some laughs and enjoy it.
My friend is a double amputee the amount of times I've have a hand or an arm prosthetic for saying hey can I have a hand. Even with my own issues I joke about it people would think my friends are bullying but it's just playful bantering
@@NoOneReallySpecial yea like my family often ties me to characters like the corpse bride or monster high characters because of my eds (my joints are always slipping in and out). Other people would find being compared to monsters because of your disability degrading but I don’t.
This sort of pattern also happens with autistic representation. It's like people want to remove some of the more ugly symptoms in favor of "socially-awkward angel with restricted interests."
Of course, autistic people are all different, and some don't have those symptoms, but I hate the fact that's all "good" representation is.
As an autistic person,you’re so real for this and I agree
Sara Eriksson from Young Royals will always be one of, if not, my favourite autistic characters in media. She’s autistic adhd, played by Frida Argento - an autistic adhd actress (fair warning though, they use the term Asperger’s, my guess as to why would be that they just don’t know that it’s a problematic term).
She’s not morally perfect, but none of the characters are. Also, she’s genuinely one of the most authentic feeling autistic characters I’ve seen.
I wonder if it was in-response to how Sheldon Cooper is as a character from The Big Bang Theory
@@RedBanana_some people prefer describing their diagnose as asperger it’s not a big deal please be less American next time
For me I want bittersweet representation, I want to see a balance of queer coded villains and heroic or morally gray lgbt characters that are complex and relatable, but are also well written and not just some boring walking stereotype with no interests, goals, hobbies, fears, desires, misbeliefs, backstory
Same
THIS.
@@liebling8560 thanks
watch she-ra !! :>
Just make a good villain, and oh they’re bi? Ok yeah carry on
It reminds me of a Tumblr discussion where someone complained that people would love mass murderer character but hate characters that had done nothing wrong except being boring.
And the answers basically boilled down to : "the mass murder is fictional, my annoyance is real".
The worst thing a character can be is boring. If your show is boring, nobody is gonna watch it, and then what's the point of representation if nobody sees it?
The pre-trans photo episode could have been - he freaks out because he still finds her attractive in the photo when she was looking male, and has a sexuality crisis. He thinks he’s gay and starts going to bars, pursuing men, leading to awkward funny and insightful encounters. Has a conflict with his trans lady over it, then finally realises he’s just attracted to Judy after all - no matter what gender she is. Awww…
I think this is way better than "small penis funny" :P
that's really good and cheesy in a good way
I've seen some people say this outcome "erases representation" when they've gone to find media marketed as mlm because accepting someone as whatever their identity happens to be makes the relationship not queer/truthful to the marketing, and I'm just confused. This is the most natural outcome I could imagine if you truly love someone and surely accepting people no matter their gender would make a better society? But I'd really love genuine representation like this that starts out with the audience being left in the dark and then as the relationship progresses, the audience is allowed to learn of the complexity of the relationship. Truly just the peak of pansexual media :)
For some reason this all feels so gross
That's a storyline I would watch, it's not a snooze fest
just a thought: i really dislike the criticism from some people that inevitably comes up whenever a villain or just a mildly imperfect character is lgbtq... like queer people aren't all angels??? the character doesn't have to be a perfectly moral saint to be good representation. i love queer coded disney villains, for example, even though they're NOT good representation. but they're fun! i think this policing of what type of characters are allowed to be lgbtq comes from a real place of disillusionment, because we've historically been relegated to villainy, and to be fair there are many examples where the queer=bad characterization is definitelyyyyy intentional. but also... idk, entirely perfect characters, queer or not, are boring! good rep comes from respect, authenticity, understanding, and ACTUAL LGBTQ PEOPLE!
I'm not sure what letter of the lgbtq he is but Mr X from Amphibia has to be one of my favourite villains now. Idk, maybe it's the bald head with the lip stick plus the voice 😂
i've seen people criticise she-ra cause double trouble (nonbinary shapeshifter, awesome morally grey character) shapeshifted into a young fairy girl to get into the rebellion and spy for the bad side and some people think that's pushing a harmful stereotype but i actually think it was a really smart plotline and DT is such a likable character, and she-ra's creator is non-binary themselves so i really don't get why there's an issue
@TP well, i actually have seen both those shows, but anyway my point wasn't that the evil, villainous lgbtq trope doesn't exist or isn't a problem -- in fact, i think it's the opposite. rather, that we shouldn't automatically condemn every representation of ourselves that isn't completely spotless and appeasing. gay/trans people should be allowed to be protagonists, heroes, love interests, and yes, antagonists/villains (so long as their villainy isn't BECAUSE they're lgbtq). my problem comes from the boring, one dimensional, included-just-so-the-gays-will-give-us-money type characters that writers only put in to get representation brownie points, but ALSO the antiquated demonization/condemnation of querness in media. both are bad representation, just in different ways. i want characters i can see myself in, ones that i relate to and understand, not characters that exist only to be waved around by writers and directors for profit and praise. anyway, sorry for the ultra long paragraph, i have a lot of thoughts on this apparently 😅
I think youre missing the point. I think when people write normal gays, trans, blacks, they arent doing it for that sake, and i think one of the problem with the communities is that you guys are taking it the wrong way in that sense of “not wanting _______ to look bad.” It has more to do with not stereotyping. Not every minority has this “set” persona or stereotype they are supposed to be, us minorities are more than capable of being normal people. Like for instance; I’m black. My blackness will not go away if i’m quiet, reserved and smart. A gay man will not be any less gay if he isnt talking funny or isnt wearing a pink sweater and being b*tchi.
@@leaf111 my criticisms for double trouble are because theyre a sex fluid enby character. im just tired of enby characters being either shapeshifters or somehow very different than human or human adjacent characters. it makes enby people seem like theyre fundamentally different than binary people, and i dislike that. double trouble is a good character, but meh enby rep
I would just like to see LGBTQ characters who are as common, complex, and compelling as straight characters and for popular art to stop being by and large created, controlled and distributed by like 3 massive corporations. But maybe that's too much to ask!
The second bit would require a complete rework of FCC policy.
Yeah!!!!!!!!!!
Helluva boss
@ElizaDrawsStuff that sounds like a good idea I'm making a comic as well.
@@bannedmann4469 wtf? LGBT exists on the same spectrum as straightness, not to mention sexuality is a spectrum. They are as common, they're not some shut away minority.
When I went to Disneyland a few months ago, everything had the same texture. Everything was smooth. No matter where in the park I was everything felt smooth and plastic and safe. When I looked at the sky I started feeling that it wasn't really, that it was a painted dome celling. I felt like if I touched the sky, it would be plastic. The examples of "good" representation that were given in the video felt like Disneyland. Smooth and bland and safe, not like how I am, not like what home feels like. We dont want "good" representation, we want real representation; cause I can't stand that Disneyland texture. (sorry for the essay)
I love this analogy, thank you for the essay
Supergirl fans and lgbt supergirl fans from what I’ve seen in the fandom love and adore nia so I wouldn’t call her boring she’s a messy and complex and well developed character
@@madnessarcade7447 I was more talking about some types of representation in general, not her. She seems like amazing representation. I've also never watched the Supergirl TV show.
Facts, man...
It’s ok. It’s true.
I think the problem of a lot of progressive media, rhetoric, etc is that it’s too moral. At the end of the day, what we often find funny, attractive, exhilarating, tasty, etc probably doesn’t survive thorough moral examination. Maybe it’s not pernicious, but still not “good for us”. Media that tries to be “good for us” often ends up insufferably cheesy or like eating cold broccoli
agreed
i will not accept this broccoli slander!
@@phosphenevision broccoli is disgusting lol
Hey! Cold broccoli is delicious!
Yes! I'm SO OVER the modern tendency to demand that fiction be morally perfect- like, the fact that it's fiction makes no difference, it's as if you've done that awful thing irl, or you're condoning it. As if fiction has to be a fable or parable, to teach you moral lessons & how to live a good life, cos apparently people will blindly copy it. Even if you look beyond entertainment, the psychological functions of stories are far more numerous & complex than that.
The best bisexual representation I've ever seen in a show is in Crazy Ex Girlfriend tbh. There are three different characters who date both men and women and the characters aren't boring either.
One of whom comes out with a kickass song.
@@SirThinks2Much I'm g g g g getting bi :D
Valencia, Darryl, and.....?
@@Niniminns that would be the new Bi Anthem if Bicycle by Queen didn't exist
@@jacobd1984 Maya (who often gets forgotten because she's a supporting rather than main character like the others - she comes out too right after Darryl's song). Also the MC Rebecca is bi-coded and defines herself as a "Kinsey 1.8" (in her words).
As a trans person who can make art and write, I've always wanted to make my own media by trans people for trans people.
You should do it then
Go for it you amazing b@stard
As if we have not had enough of that shit
@@Anika9691 vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom vine boom
Do it then monarch!
Nonbinary person here shouting at my laptop about how right you are, with one exception: I felt genuinely seen when Cal broke up with Jackson. It was the realest that character ever got for me. I was so proud of them for setting that boundary! Identity and behavior are separate things and all that good stuff, but also, it makes me dysphoric as hell when someone who identifies as straight wants to date me but still continue to identify as straight. It's only in the last few years that I've felt able to insist that people who date me need to be fully on board with the reality of my gender, including that it makes our relationship queer, instead of going along with a situation that lessens me just to avoid being alone. Watching Cal say with confidence that Jackson's "I'm still straight" thing was a dealbreaker gave me so much hope. Other nonbinary people can and will of course disagree, I just wanted to share that there's at least one person out here who really liked that part of the story. I would've loved a storyline for Cal that wasn't ~about~ being trans though too, like they're a whole person or something, that would've been really cool.
I'm hoping they delve into their story further is season 4, Cal needs to be fleshed out for sure! I think the actor can pull it off if given a good script with more character backstory meat to work with
YES! I've had this dysphoria too. Like...my issue is when people who are monosexual and would insist that they are monosexual even though I'm not the same gender as themselves. It hurts, and though their identity matters. So does mine. And I just need to learn to set boundaries and I've always had an issue doing so
This...! I came out as nonbinary a year ago, and my partner and I have been together for many years. He says he's straight and that was fine until ist wasn't. It's hard getting intimate with him because I know how he sees me... I've told him I'm not his girlfriend anymore, but his partner, yet he still introduces me as former... Says he thinks it's weird.
Thanks for your comment, it's the first thing I've read that shows that I'm not the only one with those problems :(
This!!
Fellow enby here, I also really related to Cal. The way I read it was that they didn't want to be in a romantic relationship who still saw them as a girl, and I thought that was one fucking amazing boundary.
I would be interested to see if their relationship gets revisited in later seasons - I'd love to see Jackson grow and learn more about nb folks and complicate his sexual identity because of his feelings towards Cal, but I'd be just as happy if that's where that arc ends.
The thing about the trans author made me want to cry.
You wanna know what twists the knife even more? A couple days ago, one of the people who spearheaded the harassment campaign against her startedd a kickstarter for a fiction anthology about trans people who pilot militarised mechs. Ruin Fall's life, and then steal her iddea.
@@WarMomPT that’s horrible!
@@WarMomPT WTF. That's disgusting. I honestly want to know how to connect with Isabelle to support her. Like to donate or just send hugs or something.
@@WarMomPT I hope that stolen anthology crashes and burns harder than the Arkh Project and the Real Robot and Super Robot metafandoms eat that harrasser alive.
i feel like the educational and "boring" lgbt representation is still needed but it should be in kids tv shows and movies instead
Watch the She-Ra reboot and thank me later. It has exactly what you asked for :3
I'd personally say it can be way more educational for kids to see lgbt characters just naturally incorporated into their shows instead of having long expositional stuff that kids won't be bothered to listen to anyway ... "show don't tell" kinda stuff.
I personally am sick of kids TV not taking children serious as human beings and dumbing down their shows more and more ... kids are smart. Give them age appropriate interesting characters who happen to be lgbt ... I mean you can put the purely educational suff into actual education focused kids series, that much is true, as those are usually watched by kids interesting in educational content, but for the entertainment-focused kids shows ... just give them proper characters, some of which happen to be lgbt ... and let the children see that those lgbt characters are just as much part of the world as all the others.
It often is though. Like, Love Simon is a movie for young teens. Of course adults might find it boring. I personally find it a bit tedious that people who are clearly not the target audience keep complaining online about how it was not edgy or dark or sexual enough. Way to miss the point.
@@grundgutigertv6170
Read at risk of spoilers:
It's crazy that She-Ra, what is ostensibly a "Kids' Show", has far messier characters than most of queer representation currently. Catra is a complete mess and does awful things including co-leading and perpetuating a war, is emotionally manipulative, and overall unable to deal with her emotions and romantic feelings for most of the show's length.
It's honestly why I like it so much compared to most queer rep at the moment, because while the show's queer rep in general is soft and wholesome, Catra as a person is a fucking disaster with serious emotional trauma who is repeatedly self-destructive, in large part because of trouble processing and understanding her feelings around Adora.
@@treeaboo Dont worry, Ive watched the series 5 times over by now, so no spoilers for me :p
Catra is my fav character because she is so relatable. Its really hard to become a decent person when your parent mistreats you over and over again. By giving her an emotional support animal in melog, they did the best thing to help her grow.
Melog reflects catras feelings without judgment, can talk to her in private about her problems (no one else can understand it) and can protect her by making her literally go invisible and hide. Something that can help you process greatly. Melog is also very affectionate and can give her the love she needs to feel better without overdoing it.
Whoever wrote this arc was very wise.
the reason Cal and Jackson's relationship in Sex Education didn't work out was because Jackson being wholly straight saw Cal as basically a different flavor of woman. As an afab nonbinary person I see a lot of straight guys do this and really appreciated seeing Cal be assertive in how they wanted to be seen sexually.
i don't know if i'm a bad enby for this, but if i, with all of my contradicting presentations and gender roles and gendered attitudes of all kinds, if i managed to get a straight guy/girl who genuinelly are that label and don't feel like changing it, i would literally feel so powerful lmao it's not like i'm gonna change. they already know who and what i am, and they got an attraction for me anyway and they have to deal with me being me all the time. they might think they see me as a man or a woman, but i definitely won't fit perfectly well anyway and it's not ignorable jdbsjsba i would feel like i'm fucking with their little boxes in the best possible way.
i do acknowledge that i am saying this as a non binary who likes to be truly androgynous and that, for a lot of people, how other people see them is, if not the whole point, a massive point about gender, but for me, nothing about how people are attracted to me or how they see me would deny what i am. i also realize that i get a kick out of being people's "exceptions", like back when i identified with my assigned at birth gender, but hooked up with a guy who wasn't attracted to it. and that people mostly... might not like that jsbsjsbsjsb
@@l.josino i think they made a video about this called "everyone is attracted to nonbinary people"
@@quiqui6424 oh god JBSJSBSHA i watched it (and some other videos of this channel regarding genderqueer/nonbinary) and i feel SO SEEN
i appreciated it too as a nonbinary person! a lot of the queer representation in sex education felt really well written and how the writers didn't just focus on only the negative or the positive - an even mix of both
Cal❤❤
"He feels younger, probably because he lives with his parents"
*cries in 26-years-old still living with her parents*
depressive episode apart, this was really good. The point you're making is something I have thought about but never managed to get into words.
LMAO this is me rn. She did make several good points in this video and the relationship between those 2 definitely felt odd.
shows discussed:
0:50 Boy Meets Girl
10:50 Love Simon
13:22 Supergirl
16:26 Sex Education
19:02 Star Trek Discovery
21:06 Deep Space Nine's Jadzia Dax
22:59 I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter
27:48 Orange Is The New Black
29:00 bunch of 90s films and misc shows mentioned- In and Out, The Birdcage, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Queer As Folk, But I'm A Cheerleader, The L Word, Loki in MCU, Captain Jack in Doctor Who, Feel Good
33:23 Will & Grace
40:51 Euphoria
43:00 Transaction
to be fair to love, simon, the book also had very strong vibes of “gay for straight people.” I think that’s a step forward in itself, but I do wish there was more “gay for gay people” too, especially for teen audiences. and I agree with your assessment- bad, bland, and boring/“fine”
same
also i think straight people would learn best from media about queer people actually for queer people
I feel like the movie was so much worse though
@@whatcanidooo oh it definitely was .. becky albertalli has better books tho w more diverse queer characters , not just the 1 cis gay man
THANK YOU God watched this film with my straight cis friends they loved it and thought it was revolutionary. I was so bored by seeing the same "I'm just like everyone else guys I'm normal but gay" storyline without any nuances of queer life just plastering rainbows everywhere and have one short male male kiss
Here's my thing with the book. First of all Simon has personality in it, and truly feels like a person. But more than that I really liked that we spent time with him and Blue once they finally meet in real life. I can't remember exactly just how many pages there are of them, interacting as a couple, but I just remembered being so happy that these gay teens were behaving like any other teen couple. They were just as horny and over flowing with cheesey-but-in-a-good-way romantic encounters as their straight counterparts.
Also unless I'm remembering it wrong, his friends never ditch him once he's outed! That made me so goddam mad in the film.
Are any of you watching Love Victor ? I watched the first season but then dropped it. Don't care that much for any of the characters in it, gay or straight.
I think a lot of the “Jules is the real villain” stuff happened because s1 is told from rues pov and she’s meant to be an unreliable narrator who kinda sees Jules as her manic pixie dream girl. I don’t think the creator expecting people to judge the characters on face value but the typical teen drama audience aren’t used to characterizations that aren’t black and white and that actually require you to think but I think if you watch s1 even through rues pov you can see Jules is her own person with her own struggles
That and Jules' special episode that was co-written by Hunter Schaefer, who's trans irl and plays jules used her own experience as a young trans women to shape her character into this fleshed out, complicated and messy person who's also beautiful and good. That episode is by far one of the best episodes of the show. It not only shows that jules isn't a villain but also that rue is unreliable and can be hard to be around sometimes.
as a straight teenage guy who is growing up with lgbtq + movies and shows coming out more and more and not knowing what it's like this was an interesting video to watch. a great way to broaden my horizes
Being Trans is fuckin hilarious like I'm a woman who used to be a boy. It's hilarious. The problem is that only trans people understand the funny stuff and most "comedy" about trans people is malicious. Malicious comedy that is punching down is never funny
Nice Bayonetta pfp!!! :)
im afab nonbinary. when im dressed masc people will read me as a guy and then do a double take when i speak cause i have a femme, childish voice. i switch between 50s housewife and teenage pub guy on a daily basis. that's *funny*, cisfolk are missing out
@@toothfairy10133 haha im masc non binary too and the amount of people that will call me son in work until i speak is amazing. Makes me laugh every time. They then fall over themselves apologising for calling me son. Its the funniest thing.
I really hate it when I’m genuinely happy about some form of representation and when I look for people who feel the same it turns out the Internet Hive Mind decided it was homophobic/transphobic/any other kind of phobic. It’s hard to do representation perfectly, and often it’s the flaws that actually make it interesting.
This is hardly the best example of this but it’s fresh enough in my mind that I still want to talk about it-despite all the negative sides to how it happened, I was really happy when Castiel finally got to say he was in love with Dean. Yeah I know that people were upset that it was his last appearance, and certainly it sucks that it couldn’t have happened sooner, but the show portrayed the love Cas expressed as being a really positive, beautiful thing, and I felt it was genuinely nice representation. Your point about people dying constantly on Star Trek also really applies here-I don’t think it should be considered “bury your gays” if EVERYONE dies constantly on the show, and yeah it looks bad that Cas died directly after coming out, but if we’re being honest he NEVER would have felt comfortable telling Dean how he felt if he wasn’t about to say goodbye forever. Straight people are allowed to confess their feelings right before they die and it’s considered pretty natural, so lgbt characters should be allowed to as well. Anyway, one of the biggest reasons “bury your gays” is such a bad thing is that it implies that gay people are receiving some kind of punishment for their “terrible gayness”, and that wasn’t what happened. Castiel didn’t STAY dead, sure he didn’t come back on screen but the show explicitly stated that he was brought back to life and is actively helping GOD HIMSELF make decisions for the way the world should work. Cas didn’t get to be perfectly happy at first, but he was treated as a good and admirable person in every step of him coming out. He was portrayed as selfless and heroic when he sacrificed himself for the man he loved, and he was later rewarded for that when he was brought back to life. Yeah it stinks that we didn’t get to see him again after he came out, but I think it’s important to remember that having Cas come out as lgbt means that Cas has ALWAYS been lgbt. We can look back on over a decade of tv and see a really interesting lgbt character, and we can see a lot of things in his interactions with Dean as canon, when before they would have been considered simply speculation. There are frustrating things about the WAY this reveal happened, but in my opinion the ultimate results are pretty cool. I know it sucks to wait until the last second to have a character be lgbt, but we don’t know what was going on behind the scenes and given the amount of controversy around that episode, it’s genuinely possible that having Cas come out last minute was the only way the writers could have him come out. Anyway in the end, after all the dust has settled and the show can be looked at as one big, complete story, we now have a really nuanced lgbt character, who’s allowed to have complexities and make mistakes but ultimately is still shown in a positive light as an admirable and heroic person. His love for another man was portrayed as beautiful and selfless, and ultimately he received a sincere happily ever after in a show that’s typically overflowing with misery. It’s too bad that we never got to SEE him be happy, but we know that he is and really I still suspect they’ll film some kind of epilogue after COVID ends.
But anyway like I said this isn’t the biggest example of what I was talking about, it’s just something I’ve wanted to rant about for a while. No one has to view it as good representation, but I really did like it and I wish that I was allowed to see the good in it without looking like a traitor or something. It was far from perfect but I still stand by the fact that there were some really good things about it, and if we react THIS negatively to any lgbt representation that isn’t perfect, we’ll probably never get to see anything better.
I know right? Like I get that some people have a different taste in media which is valid, but for people to say it’s homophobic because if a villain or a flawed character so happens to be lgbtq are the ones being homophobic themselves because
1. No one is perfect including lgbtq people and yes their are some queer people who did wrong but not every queer person is a criminal and
2. Everyone has a different personalities, tastes in fashion, interests, etc and it creates erasure because well no one is the same because you can still be a gay man and be a fem/soft boy just like a gay man that’s masc and the answer is simple theirs no right or wrong way to be gay
Some people need to wake up
When you mentioned the "I Sexually Identify As an Attack Helicopter" short story I immediately went to read it. It's so deeply weird in a good way, and so deeply interesting. They (you said they detransitioned so not sure on pronouns) clearly researched the heck out of how attack helicopters work to write this story, which means they are a wonderful nerdy weirdo, I want to meet them! I'm devastated to hear about what happened after they posted the story. On the grounds of moral purity, on the grounds of ~Right Way To Be A Social Activist Rules~, they got harassed to the point of being suicidal? Really? You're supposed to be progressive, is that what we want to as a society? Is that progress? Doing weird experimental thought thought provoking things on the subjects of marginalized communities you're part of is a Grave Offence? Ugh
Considering she detransitioned it's hard to feel sorry for her lol
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 what
@@nessie7306 Exactly what I said. Says a lot they detrans after some people were mean to them
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 you're absolutely horrible.
@@A.MNeverP.M Not as horrible as them lol
Ok, one thing to note, just because I use she/her pronouns, that does NOT mean that I'm still in the closet. Some NB ppl aren't bothered by pronouns and never feel the need to "change" them. They are just as non-binary and just as valid
Same. I'm non binary in the way that I don't care about gender. If someone sees/refers to me as a man that's equally as wrong or right or neutral as seeing me as a woman.
YES! I am transmasc but use He/They! But i remember somewhere a person saying that a friend of them was "pretending" to be non-binary for attention because they were using They/Them! And i honestly hate when people think "Gender = Pronouns"
When its def not true!
@@oggyboggy8692 me too, it took a while to realize that pronouns are conversational shorthand and not prescriptive titles. I can just be myself and let others assume whatever they're going to assume as long as you don't call me a "man" eww I hate that word 😠
yes exactly. many people think that identifying at non-binary and using them/them pronouns go hand-in-hand
im not enby but from the bi area code where i come from, we get this similar shit when we're in hetero relationships (or even gay relationships) where people force an idea of what someone should be like, and not just let people exist as they do
i see this often with enby people often when they dont use neo pronouns or They/Them. Especially so when I see Enby people getting accused (and damn near interrogated) of being "fake Non Binary" because they use She/Her or He/Him, ESPECIALLY when theyre presenting as their heteronormative pronouns.
Like, just let people live how they want to live. If someone looks like a man and uses he/him but he says he's Non Binary, then he's Non Binary. Idk why people have such a difficult time.
One point about Love, Simon is that while, yes he has nothing to lose by coming out, there is definately a subgroup of young LGBT people who feel like that. That was me for the longest time, and still is to an extent. The way to make that story work is to give the character confidence issues or have them struggle with social anxiety because then that way the hesitation to come out makes sense.
Exactly. As outsiders, we know he has nothing to loose, but when WE are in the closet we may not see it that way
@@erikperhs_ Cognitive distortions really do be like that haha
Yes omg! I can speak from my own experience as someone who waited for years to come out, even though I was ultimately accepted by everyone I told and knew I probably would be before coming out in the first place. That “probably” holds so many what-if scenarios, and for someone that struggles with anxiety and self-confidence, I had myself convinced that every worst case scenario could result even if it was unrealistic!
A lot of my favorite stories have conflicts centering around internal rather than external conflicts, and I think that’s because themes of anxiety or personal hold-ups are much more relatable than the fear of a big-bad villain! It makes the characters feel so much more human, and it’s good way to prompt character growth from a writing perspective. I wish more television writers/producers would remember this more when writing these kinds of characters.
(Sorry, that was a longer response than I expected, but it makes me mad when writers think the /only/ thing queer people need to overcome by coming out is homophobia. More inner conflict!! ☺️)
@@emilygappel Hi, could you give me recomendations, please? I love that kind of stories.
@@ali.ali4700 Unfortunately, those kinds of stories are really hard to come by, and even rarer if they include queer rep on top of all that. That’s why I wish writers would do it more often, they’re always so good!
The best example I’ve seen comes from an anime called Yuri on Ice. The show doesn’t really have a villain, so a lot of the central conflict comes from the main character’s own anxieties and self confidence. (It’s also incredibly gay and very adorable if you want to check it out ☺️) Two other good ones I’ve seen are The Haunting of Bly Manor and She-Ra. Both have villains acting as the central conflict, but the queer relationships in these are built around a lot of trust issues and anxieties that help to build the characters a lot! Both have amazing stories, too, so I’d definitely recommend checking them out!
Honestly I’ve had the same issues with gay representation in media lately. I feel so bad about it but sometimes I wanna see the characters struggle out of spite. I want cishet folks to watch the shows and really get it. Understand the struggles lgbt people go through. I wish I could take my experiences being outed and fetishized and put them onscreen so others have to understand it and learn to be better. It just sucks that we have to actually live it and they don’t even wanna look at a gay person or trans person onscreen if it’s not overly sugarcoated and family friendly. I’ve had too many people tell me how “gay women aren’t oppressed” and it hurts having to explain my experiences to straight people over and over in order for them to understand. I wish someone would just put it into a show so I didn’t have to keep doing the work to defend myself.
you should look up Hazbin Hotel. the character Angel Dust is a gay sex worker who had drug problems when he was alive (the whole show takes place in hell and all the characters are demons). the main character is a lesbian too. there's only one episode so far, it got picked up by A24 and will have a former premiere later this year, but me and my friends are optimistic
Have you been oppressed? Could you explain?
@@avivastudios2311 hush now little sealion.
there is pretty good representation in other media, like webcomics and fanfiction. i feel like I've watched plots where one person was outed but I'm struggling to remember where.
I hate when there's a queer romance plot where one person is mad at the other for not coming out and they get pushy... that is not your place. if you respect your partner, then let them decide it for themselves. if it's too much for you, end the relationship. but then the show usually makes the outed character go "oh it's okay you did it, i guess it had to happen at some point" NO IT DIDN'T! I'd never speak to that person again... it's not safe or comfortable for everyone to come out, especially if you're a minor with limited control over your life...
but I'm ranting...
Bit about Sex Education reminded me how artificial-feeling their representation of asexuals also were.
We got Todd who's ace drama was absurdly crazy and fun to watch in show about depressed horse that really didn't had to do any of it while show all about sex literally called *Sex Education* just gave us try hard one scene with "oh you're so valid who is a valid good boy yes you are" and just never spoke about us ever again removing only ace character from existence.
Like... it's very nice you think we're valid but that's boring, if i ever wanted to listen to someone throwing fake validation at me i would just call my parents so they can call me "smart but lazy".
Be fun or don't waste my time, why even bother if all you do is a pinterest quote?
I feel like Sex Education wasted the asexual character for a very special episode. We learned 2 things about her (she's asexual and a theatre kid) then she was never heard of again. She could have been a recurring side character in the Jackson school play subplot or one of the main characters could have been asexual but Florence was only there for a teachable moment. Cal suffered a similar fate and was pretty boring compared to the less well adjusted characters but at least Cal appeared in multiple eps this season as a constant presence.
I think Sex Education has roped themselves into representing and educating around everything. They started off with a good premise that made room for that, but now I wish they’d focus on telling good stories with their many diverse characters- mostly they hit the mark, but sometimes you’re right it’s so bland.
I wish they at least had some objectum representation on the show.
Yeah, I suppose it would have been much more interesting to show the messy parts, like a romantic asexual trying to find a compatible partner, and making mistakes. At least half the show is about how sex and relationships are messy, so it's jarring wen good representation tm shows up without the drama to support it.
Rowan Ellis pointed it in a video that Otis could have been a great ace representation, is not the perfect definition of being asexual he would be more in the demisexual side of the spectrum but it would have been really interesting, also he has a character beside it, he has a lot of flaws and i love it
i genuinely think this is a result of a few things:
1. the alienation of online younger queer community from queer lit and complex history means ppl growing up made their community from scratch, thereby entirely losing much of the radial nuance
2. everyone on the internet is a high schooler
it's really weird talking about art by queer people online and then you get the occasional reminder that about half the people you're talking to use literal children's cartoons as their yardstick. Which is fine, until you get to things like, well, the fact these people eagerly joined in on the hate brigade against Isabel Fall.
This. And to add, a significant section of said younger queer community seems to overlap with fandom. So, a lot of these young queers may have grown up getting their rep pretty much entirely from fanfiction, which, for the most part, is self-indulgent wish-fulfillment by design.
As a high-schooler, I 100% but I also think it's just that in our modern day, there's a lot of alienation to what makes a good story. Young people have to live sorting through live action remakes and Riverdales to actually find a good story, if they even know how to find one. Maybe it's not that big of deal as it seems to be, but thinking about how the most loved movies among people I know are one that were made at least 10 years ago...seems to say a lot
I really like that first point. As to the second, I think it's less that everyone on the internet is a teenager, and more that teenagers tend to be very vocal in online queer spaces, so adults don't feel comfortable hanging around those spaces. At least, in my experience of being a teen on the internet and then growing up a bit, I've found that I and the people I used to interact with left those spaces once we matured past the "just finding our identity and trying to define ourselves against the normative world" phase of queerness.
Which is tricky because that is a healthy stage of coming to terms with your identity, the same way that anger and denial are healthy stages of grief. It's ok for teens (and adults in the early stages of coming out, for that matter) to go through that stage, and it's important to have spaces where people can express that. You just can't get stuck there forever -- and the problem with the internet is that it becomes a space where people in that stage of accepting themselves dominate the conversation. Partly because they're more prone to be outspoken, since they're asserting their identity for the first time, and partly because it's good fodder for The Algorithm. Plus it often presents simplistic explanations for well meaning allies to understand and get behind. But it leaves people who are at other stages in their journey feeling alienated, it leaves the discourse in a perpetually adolescent state, and I worry that it keeps some people stuck in that stage of acceptance, rather than giving them space to move on.
@@one_smol_duck nice explanation! I can totally see this... Thanks for reminding me that this acceptance phase is normal and healthy. I mostly just blinded to hate these loud people that just really have to make LGBTQ identity as their sole personality. But remembering it, I was like that too back then in accepting my queerness. I'm just not loud on the net, I express it in personal diary, but I was like them too.
I think the solution to this problem lies in LGBTQ+ creators.
Straight and cisgendered people have to resort to this type of representation because there's a very high likelihood they'll fuck something up. Some stories can only be told with accuracy by the groups they're about.
Boondocks could not have been written by a white person for example, and that show was great. It tackled a lot of issues in the black community that a lot of white people simply wouldn't understand, or at the very least, they wouldn't have the same takeaway.
We need a show like that for the LGBTQ+ community, and it needs to be made by LGBTQ+ creators. In the right hands, a show like that could do wonders for everyone.
On one hand I agree.
On the other, there is a very vocal group of Puritan Types in the LGBTQ+ Community that still shit on other LGBTQ+ creators when the rep is't squeaky clean.
I would LOVE if it were the be all end all solution. But its not. Not without those people changing their minds about how their fellows would depict those experiences.
@@nsullivan9096 Well yeah, every group has those types of Puritans. But the exceptional creations still shine through and are remembered as as being exceptional.
We can't let those people hold us back forever.
While it's true that people living an experience can tap into things about it that people outside of it can't, marginalized creators also get representation "wrong" or tell poor stories around it. They just get a free pass because they belong to the group the story is about. Their identity prompts people to read their characters and world as more authentic by default.
Boondocks was great but it was a very particular perspective and voice exploring things in a way that not all black people relate to or even enjoy, despite its sincerity and accuracy. And much of it would be called problematic if a white person had created it.
This isn't the point of my reply but designating things as "stuff only members of your group can understand" can alienate members who actually don't understand either. It reminds of this twitter thread where a trans person was explaining why deadnaming is harmful.
What stood out to me was all of the trans people who expressed not having the same negative relationship with their former name being attacked and ostracized for it. They were "othered" and shushed by their own community, by other trans people who despise being deadnamed, simply for not feeling the same way and embracing their past in a way the rest don't.
Who gets to decide which of those experiences is more real and authentic to that community?
Using the example in this video where Jules talks about wanting to stop taking hormones and trying to conquer femininity, I'm not trans, yet nothing about what she said was new or eye opening. They're thoughts someone transitioning could obviously have.
And they parallel the same inner complexity we cis people have regarding outward expectations, the associations we make with our bodies and selfhood, and our labels, and the boxes we fight to get out of or into and how all of that can fluctuate.
So I disagree that someone who isn't trans couldn't write that. Someone who doesn't think about or know how to express experiences outside of their own couldn't write that, and that can just as easily be another trans person.
I just stumbled across this so I don't know the channel owner's name, I'll just use VB. Even they acknowledged that there are trans people who don't want to see the same kind of representation they do. That alone should be a reminder that someone belonging to the same group doesn't guarantee they're going to put out content you connect with or like.
But I do agree that increased representation behind the scenes will help. It gives media access to a broader, more diverse range of experiences to draw from, but it also addresses a problem I touched on at the start.
People outside of marginalized groups know they're being held to stricter standards and are under more scrutiny. They have to tiptoe around how they depict others because the culture already decided they don't have the right to tell those stories, that they can't understand them, and that anything they get "wrong" is because of their privilege or bigotry.
They're seen as bad people rather than bad storytellers. And they can't EXCLUDE other groups from their stories for fear of getting it wrong because that would make them the villain too. So they balance it. They include others for the sake of diversity while taking the safest, blandest, least complex, most surface level approach to those characters/stories that they can to avoid moral outrage.
Having more people who belong to those groups telling the stories instead doesn't mean they'll get it right more often, but it does mean we'll see more risks being taken and less choices being made out of fear of social backlash.
Because the progressive minds who decry poor representation of marginalized groups aren't as likely to criticize creators who belong to those groups. That sense of agency alone will inject some life into the corpse that is today's more sanitized entertainment.
Beyond that, I think the solution to boring representation (and media period) is learning how to tell entertaining, quality stories that feel authentic when they need to, with engaging characters people feel invested in, no matter who or what you are or they are.
Many creators from underrepresented groups approach stories as a form of wish fulfillment. They don't focus on the core principles of writing. They just toss together all the things they personally want to see.
There's a reason most fan fiction is awful from a technical/creative standpoint yet still insanely popular. People are getting their specific fix from it, and that fix isn't a good story. It's seeing this person with that person, or this type of person in this kind of relationship etc. That's fine for fanfic. It shouldn't be what drives storytelling as an industry.
Trying to depict people a certain way simply because they belong to X group drops the ball more often than not. No group is all good or bad. Monoliths don't exist and every depiction is valid because every type of person you can think of is real. Just pick who you want to focus on and do it well. - Sincerely, TLDR
@@tenchfroast That seems like an exaggeration.
@@tenchfroast are you french toast?
I love this video because I am a queer who has never really had any kind of crush - like at all. I'm quite young so I don't want to label myself as like "aromantic" but at the moment it feels very hard for me to relate to respectable lesbian representation that tries to emphasise how wholesome and loving and monogamous these characters are. Its annoying
As a young, closeted aromantic/trans person, I agree
Oh if you're young don't worry too much about it. (i worried way too much when i was younger - i fell in love for the first time at the age of 18. I wish someone would've told me that (romantic) love isn't everything, the love that matters the most is self-love)
@@carina-nonbinary thanks, this is really nice! I think people can live fulfilled lives without romantic love but I really like the idea of getting married and that, so this is nice to hear
@@myyoutubeaccount1493 same when i was a kid all my friends had crushes and stuff but i didnt some people just.. realize attractions later than others.(a lot of my friends also said they had crushes but they didnt) anyways dont worry youll get older and figure it out
@@deliri0um thanks!
On the "Love, Simon" point about "fake tension" - I actually related to it. The idea that you would miss out on "being teased by your dad" is definitely something I was worried about. It's super benign and I do feel stupid in retrospect, but it was still relatable. Maybe it didn't make for good movie tension, but I never really felt it as tension tbh. That said, I found the film boring and that the twist broke the rules of a mystery.
Great video! I actually enjoyed Boy Meets Girl but I watched it during a phase where I was just binging feel-good media, and the fact it was 'boring' didn't matter when I was only looking to smile.
^^^^^
I personally was ok with the representation in love simon. Obviously character felt bland and the stakes were low but I did relate to the no sex drive. As a teen I didn’t get the whole sex thing, and even now, I don’t really get the need for it. Idk I just wanted to point that out since maybe some people on the ace spectrum felt the same way
I wish they discussed avoiding dysphoria triggers during sex in sex education, and how to communicate those triggers with a sexual/romantic partner. I really thought they were going to discuss that with Cals character, as I thought I picked up on Cal becoming uncomfortable after their chest being touched, maybe they couldve gone to one of the sex therapists and learnt how to communicate to Jackson their dysphoria triggers. I think Jammidodger talked about this in one of his vids.
I’ve always found those sorts of “good representations” quite bad, not just cause their boring, but because they aren’t actually representing us. Especially those of us without intersections. I largely never knew there could be a lesbian trans woman cause it was never shown in media. And all these sorts of people I could never connect with because they didn’t go through any other struggles than a cartoonishly written cis construction of our lives. “Positive” trans depictions were as far from my experience as was Buffalo Bill.
So I'm not part of the LGBT community, but l kind of agree with you,and I may add that good and complex characters who are lgbt can captivate audiences even outside your community.
On the "trans women can be lesbians"
I found that out from a mobile game
called "one night,hot springs"
whose protagonist is a trans woman who is revealed to be in love with her best friend; it's really cool I recommend it.
@@dDoodle788 That is a good game! I noticed that it and its sequels are getting a port onto the Switch as well, which is really cool to see.
Have you watched Sense8? I saw a lot of people discovering "lesbian trans women" through that show
Well said! I do hate how "Good Representation" has become a gold standard rather than like... good stories, that just happen to cover diverse characters.
I think the worst representation is lazy representation--the same tropes repeated over and over again. I want a wide range of representation--boring, interesting, enjoyably terrible, all of it! Enough that no one character has to bear the burden of Doing It Right.
This perfectly explains why sometimes I’ll read/watch something thats older with characters that are queer coded only to be surprised by how they are objectively better rep than some ‘out’ new character just because they are fuller and more interesting people.
The fact that proper representation is boring because CIS writers/audiences think that coming out or discrimination is the only drama in LGBTQ+ lives…. Like have you ever met a single queer??? There is SOOOOO much drama
boring queer people exist as well but why would a writer write a story about boring people? doesn't make sense to me, who also writes stories.
@@Terik17 Iunno, you ever see that movie Darkstar? It's entirely about a bunch of guys in an incredible, far out situation and them just being utterly, intensely bored by it, and it manages to be really, really funny, there's a lot of comedy to be found in mundane day to day things, small personal dramas can be compelling, and i don't think i really buy the idea of a truly "boring" character, people have a rich inner life, i think the mark of good character writing expresses a fictional inner life to the audience in a way that's engaging.
@@Terik17Because some people's lives are still interesting even without any sort of drama.
@@tanyanikolaevagizdova6571are they? if it's a mystery, it is still drama. if it is a guy going to work like everyday and nothing out of the ordinary happens, there's no much story, you know? it doesn't pique people's interest
This is a tragedy, because every trans person is a comedy genius. I'm narcissistic, but I'm RIGHT.
I'm a trans guy; my girlfriend's a trans girl. Our straight relationship leads to lots of wacky situations, which are totally untapped by mainstream comedy.
My androgynous sibling often uses the gender confusion for comedy, in a way that would make Mel Brooks proud.
Every time I get together with trans friends, we unlock jokes which may confuse or trouble conservatives, making the comedy inaccessible for every demographic.
Also, it seems like cis people don't know trans people often interact as friends, perhaps even date!
I think media about trans people misses all of this, because the creators see trans people in an allegorical sense. They don't get individual personalities, and thus lack personal agency. And, if you don't know a person, you'll never get to hear their jokes, or their flaws.
eh not really
philosophy tube is boring for example
@@donnieraczynski572 the humor is fairly dry and British, and the topics are often largely serious. It's humor that's rarer and not as likely to land with as many, especially in the US, but I personally still love it when it's there
@@donnieraczynski572 I don't think the humor is really the point there
trans ppl will literally say shit like "brb gonna go mod my tits" and the rest of the trans ppl in the area lose their goddamn minds while the cis ppl are like "....o.0 is that allowed?....." or trans ppl will go "if you don't start behaving i'ma make your pronouns was/were bitch" to other trans ppl and thats just like a Tuesday night for us lol.
There is so much comedy available for trans ppl/about trans ppl that is neutral or positive instead of transphobic/transmisogynistic etc, it kills me that the current mainstream situation is "transphobia or EXTREMELY confused cis ppl" :P
@@doctorwholover1012 exactlyyyyyy my trans friends are like the funniest people i know (and i consider myself to be moderately funny on occasion as well) like we have so many puns and inside jokes that only other trans people understand and find funny its so sick
My favorite lgbt rep was The Magnus Archives because it didn’t feel forced because they built up the relationships it didn’t feel like they just threw it in to be progressive, it was just cool and fun.
Edit: Also on another note I feel like lgbt+ people are more likely to write fun lgbt people.
I really do need to finish that series. The first series was great.
@@cmmosher8035 first season is the weakest imo (still good, but the plot and characters get way more developed from season 2 on) really recommend you continue :)
@@eiliscantsleep i switched phones earlier this year and for some reason not all of my podcast subs switched over and broke up my binging. Its a promising thing to know that the show has an ending after getting frustrated with shows like the Black Tape
@@cmmosher8035 oof that's fustrating. If it helps, tma always had a 5 season arc planned from the get go, and imo pulled it off really well. I binged it in a couple of months in the run up to halloween, and I can honestly say it had a super satisfying ending
Also I get what u mean about podcasts that just don't end (or lose it after a couple of seasons) I might skip that then. If you have any reps for a good horror podcast I'm all ears btw
Agree!! And the fact that because most of the cast was LGBT, we also got a lot of flavors of morality. There’s no “good” and “bad”? Just varying shades of gray.
Honestly it is so very clear many shows are meant to be palatable to a straight audience, when it comes to lesbian representation so many of it is presented in a way that is meant to be arousing to a straight male audience. This fetishization is so intense and I think it's particularly concerning when we realize "lesbian" was the very first searched term on Pornhub this year. Lesbian love stories are very often depicted superficially because they often suffer from the same issues all women's story suffer from : the inability to be seen as full complex characters, except it's multiplied by two
I absolutely hate boring representation, which almost everything is. I watched Ryan Murphy's The Prom a while ago and the main lesbian couple were awfully nice, had zero chemistry and honestly made me kind of angry. I have been in gay relationships as a teenager but couldn't relate one bit to those two.
Depends on your perception of those relationship, or whether it was based on addiction and/or consummerism, in societal grooming of c(r)apitalism and if your not used to healthy relationships, outside of hypers*xuality and/or overf*tishization, if not also ""dubious" "consent"", as a result let alone with intoxicants, in tow?
*s
@@TheSapphireLeo why would you ever assume from my comment that my relationships were unhealthy or even hypersexualized? and that they contained dubious consent? really weird. that says more about you than me.
This "everyone is accepting" is dangerous as its unrealistic and a young person coming out who doesn't receive acceptance from everyone maybe even more trauma inducing.
And some allies and even other LGBT can be passive aggressive and hostile to a member for amy reason.
The Prom isn’t an original Murphy movie, it’s based off a play. Maybe the play had this issue? Can anyone who’s seen it confirm?
I think it's so weird how zoomers that grew up terminally online and learned all their activism keywords from social media have this obsession with "good and moral" representation, and how they hunt down queer authors that are interested in telling darker and/or messier stories because it's not for them. Somehow the message became that "good representation means morally good character" and that's really bad for writing in general. I am very curious about what sort of stories they are going to create.
Lol not all zoomers, 'good' representation doesn't have to be stale with no morality but when its messy it doesn't have to continuously plays into stereotypes...
It happens in cycles. A fun microcosm of it is the discussion around fanfic and what is permissable. Every time a new group of youngsters comes of age and joins in, the debate picks up steam again and you get a bunch of purity culture concerns over what people can write and calls for hosting sites to be boycotted for content they didn't even create as if policing fanfiction archives has ever resulted in good things.
The same thing happens on a broader scale with mainstream media, it just has a longer cycle from what I can tell
I feel like artists need to stop feeling beholden to the whims of 13 year olds on twitch and Jezebel writers.
Like, throughout history good art took a certain amount of courage. There used to be Tipper Gore's evangelical crowd, McCarthyism, the Hayes Code, blasphemy laws, and before that literal monarchy which followed feudalism. Today, we have maladjusted CHILDREN who misappropriate the language of social justice.
As an artist, youre never going to please EVERYONE. And if you do, youre probably not expressing anything.
This obsession with good moral rep isn't just a symptom of Gen Z, but I think it stems from the fact that lgbtq rep has been so atrocious in the past that many writers now fear writing them in complex ways. Writers do the same thing with female characters, by wanting them to be strong and not giving them any other personality traits. It's not really that hard to understand, I'm not saying this obsession is right, but I can understand wanting good rep when historically it's been extremely offensive and stereotypical.
@@dylankennedy4539 I def agree, but those children will really make your life hell if they want to tho
Thank you for this video. I’m cis so I can’t speak to trans stuff, but as a queer, neurodivergent, fat woman, I have a lot of similar feelings about what makes “good” representation. My partners don’t like to deal with bigotry in fantasy worlds, which is totally fair. However, it sometimes makes me feel like I can’t talk about the things I want to talk about in stories like D&D campaigns, because they want to escape into a world free from those painful ideas. To me, that pain is important, and being able to process it while also being a magical chaos tiefling makes the stories more meaningful. I don’t want to escape into a world with no pain; I want a space to have control over it. Sometimes, I feel guilty for that, so it was nice to see someone acknowledge that I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Have to admit I just read a fantasy novel about an ork woman retiring from looting and starting a cafe with a succubus and fall in love. Their backgrounds are a bigger issue than their genders and it was very soothing to read. Loved it (more queerness in fantasy!).
Both approaches are perfectly valid and it matters what you anybody else is comfortable with, that's why it's so important to communicate with the group what everybody wants out the adventure, what's comfortable and what are no goes. Andbif there are topics with different approaches then doen't play as this group (because in the longrun it almost always becomes and grows into an even bigger problem) or there have to be compromises.
Finding a pen and paper group ,even if it's all good friends, can be hard. 🙁
I have so many conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand, I know how important representation can be in dispelling the stereotypes that people have about us, so I get this visceral sense of discomfort at the idea of a trans or LGB character that plays into stereotypes rather than against them (eg. a deceptive trans character). On the other hand, I've got a real soft spot for villains and a**hole characters because, when written well, I find they sometimes have more depth and can be more interesting than the good guys, I think because they kind of have more room to explore the darker sides of themselves, which exist in all of us, and much more so than good characters. If I had to list some of my favourite characters, a good chunk of them would be, if not straight up villains, then certainly antagonists. And if I'm honest, I would be SO HERE for it if those characters were canonically trans or gay. That would be way better than some boring, flawless character that I can't connect with, that only exists to make us more palatable to cishet audiences.
I think ultimately "good" representation is and always will be a tricky subject, at least until there is just more LGBT characters in general. A large part of the problem, I think, is that queer people are so starved for representation, so the little scraps of it we do get, we hold to extremely high standards. It's understandable because we all want to be represented, but not always in the best interests of creating characters that people genuinely love.
I feel like the only way to have it both ways is to have more than one trans character in the show to cover both bases
Wonderfully put. I feel exactly the same.
Catra from She-Ra Princeseses Of Power is a good example of a gay villain until they turn her into a hero in season 5
@maldon3659 Too bad Catra’s redemption arc was terribly written so her becoming a “hero” felt unearned. I’d say a better example is Sasha Waybright from Amphibia, who is a bisexual villain who becomes a hero in season after having an actually well written redemption arc.
"Actually, Judy really loves tiny penises" SENT ME. That comedy plot sounded so funny, if only we could've had your version!
THIS is funny!
Had never heard of the attack helicopter story until now but i am absolutely devastated to hear how things turned out. the culture on the internet is so heinous. people would rather attack someone for something they assume is problematic than take a few extra minutes to actually take a look into it and get the chance to uplift the voices of those who have experience with what theyre talking about. the quote you showed from the story was incredibly thought provoking and smart. i cant see how anyone would not consider it an insightful lgbt look at the world
I feel like one of the easiest ways to make it easier to write interesting trans and other queer characters is to not just throw in one of them as a way to tick a checkbox. Having The Good Trans/Gay/Etc. in your stories can be helpful as a way to show that queer people aren't a monolith, but it's a bad idea to only go for one Good(tm) token. Besides, so many queer people have found families and congregate together that it's not that strange to have a group of them instead of just a single person. The only reason I can think of that this just doesn't happen is that the largely cis straight writers of large media productions such as TV series and movies don't tend to feature groups of queer people (and especially groups of trans people) is because they don't have many of them in their own social circles, which leads to them not understanding the dynamics of such a friend group. And that's quite sad.
Yes! I think this is why Glee, The Fosters, recently Everything's Gonna Be Okay, even Faking It are all so much more enjoyable and authentic seeming shows when it comes to just... Having a bunch of LGBTQ+ characters in each show, having a variety of rep, Everything's Gonna Be Okay explicitly showing a gay character Alex's entire friend group is queer in various ways. There's something so much more authentic in some of the really flawed rep...
But also I did genuinely adore Love, Simon and even more i love the spin-off Love, Victor, especially season 2 of it...
I'm a gray-panromantic asexual and aros still have zero rep on tv and asexuals still are rare and when they're there they're minor side characters and never main characters too.
I want so much more from rep...
I know so many people do.
@@VioletEmerald FWIW, making your own representation is also valuable. If you identify an empty niche, filling it or helping to fill it will benefit everyone. It sure as hell won't be the cishet allosexuals who will make any good characters that make your heart sing, so *if* you are able to contribute and want to, it is awesome. I do want to emphasize that you don't have to be an active content creator/contributor if you don't have the energy or time or will, just that if you would want to be and manage to then that is kickass (as someone with a lifelong depression and ADHD, I am acutely aware of how easily life gets in the way of even stuff one really wants to do... Sometimes one doesn't even have the spoons for anything beyond immediate survival, and that is ok).
honestly this is why glee will forever be my favorite because it handled every issue just in the worst way possible which is what helped make it so entertaining
this is also why I love the L Word so much, it’s a fucking mess and it’s aged like milk but I love it for that. The last season is one of the most unintentionally hilarious pieces of content I’ve ever seen.
"I'm trans" isn't a script. It's barely a plot point. If you (general you) want your show about representation to be liked (or god forbid, popular) the plot needs an actual plot.
I didn't like how all the nonbinary characters in Sex Education were AFAB, especially since they're there for cis people to learn gender 101. A lot of cis people think that nonbinary people are just women with short hair and the show did nothing to disabuse them of that notion
Idk, I really connected with Love, Simon. I'm not from an upper middleclass nuclear family, but what family and people around me I do have are really open minded and accepting. When I first got "The Talk" it was from my lesbian cousin since my mom had passed away. She had experienced homophobia and her mom had briefly kicked her out if the house when she came out, which led to my dad letting her stay with us. I didnt know all that at the time, but my cousin made up for it by aggressively pushing the sentiment that gay people were normal people and it's perfectly normal to love people of the same sex. It actually made me anxious and I felt like I had done something wrong even though I had never thought otherwise.
When I figured myself out it was oretty much scene for scene what Simon went through about how I really didnt think most people would care and that it would feel weirder making a huge deal out of it. You get told by so many people that coming out is dangerous and scary, but when you grow up in an openly accepting family... idk... it's like you feel like a fraud. Like you cheated and never earned your gay card because you didnt experience homophobia. Not to mention you, or at least I, kept waiting for the shoe to drop. Every time I slip in that I'm gay, part of me thinks the worst of the people I'm telling because at some point someone is going to disown me, right? I didnt want to make a big deal out of it because straight people dont come out as straight and as my cousin said, being gay is normal. I dont hide it, but I dont flaunt it. I dont have a closet to hide in, it's more a dresser in the middle of the room for everyone to see, i can open the drawers to show you what's inside but it isnt like my laundry is all over the floor and visible. I talk about it when it comes up or when it's natural to say, like telling an experience I had with an ex gurlfriend while we're all talking about relationships. I've only ever experienced backlash once when someone said I just never had "the right dick" and the person apologized the next day after I went off on them about corrective rape.
Not saying my way of handling it is "correct" but that I'm glad a character like Simon was created because it speaks to my experience, even if it isnt the stereotypical coming out experience. I connect with Simon more than I connect with gay characters who do get raked over the coals. I connect with his internalized struggle, not with accepting that he's gay, but trying to figure out what to do with that information.
As for desexualizing him, maybe it's because I'm on the ace spectrum, so that never seemed like an issue for me to notice.
Edit: I do totally agree with loving characters to have hardships to overcome. Yes. But making horrible homophobia-driven coming out stories are like making the next spiderman origin movie. I see it all the time and it was nice that for once there was a character who experienced what I experienced. I got my movie, I'm haply to go back to the drama and craziness of shitting on protagonists to see them rise above.
I haven't seen the movie but I just wanted to say that I relate a lot to your experience. My family has always been very diverse and open minded so growing up I never thought there would be an issue if i ever came out or that I would even need to come out. It's just accepted and treated like not a big deal. I eventually "came out" as bisexual and nothing changed...at all. I am obviously very grateful for having such a supportive and good environment and honestly can't imagine anything else. However like you said it almost feels as if I have done something wrong because nothing has gone wrong. I have told people about my sexuality in situations where it was relevant (I don't typically share it but don't hide it either) and have yet to experience any reaction past "oh cool", "really?" or "oh I'm LGBTQ too". It feels so anti climatic and like you said it almost feels like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anyways I just wanted to say you're not alone in having a good experience/environment and feeling guilty for not having had a hard time when so many do. It's weird but it's nice to hear I'm not the only one!
Yes!!! Everything about this!!!
As a gay fantasy writer, ive been struggling with writing the characters I want and had no idea why until i watched this video. Its like i was thinking in abstract pictures and you just turned it all into digestible words.
I write gay fantasy also, but usually in the setting of an established property.
As a non-binary person, Cal and Jackson's uncomfortable interaction actually hit home really hard for me. The issue wasn't Jackson "trying really hard to be respectful," it was -- as is said explicitly the next time they get together to talk -- that it's pretty apparent through Jackson's discomfort that he doesn't really see Cal as the gender that they are, but as a girl. He's too Heterosexual and it puts a wrench in things. He can't help in any romantic or potentially sexual interaction they have but to project his own desires for who cal should be onto them, and it slips out when he calls them things like "beautiful" and *has* to work really hard to try to make it *seem* like that's not how he's thinking about them in order to salvage the relationship... when really, he just can't cross that mental bridge or find comfort with the idea of being in a queer relationship. This is a wall I often hit in many of my romantic/sexual relationships with cis people, where many of them just have such a strictly binary view of gender, it's like they can't see me as me or even act normally and relax around me. It's like understanding and being around me is difficult for them, and that usually comes to a head. Just thought I'd share that little piece because I think that might've gotten lost in translation in the analysis
Exactly what I thought about! That scene made me feel really validated
100% this! I think some of verily's critiques on the storytelling with Cal are reasonable, like the lesson on binding. But at the same time I saw a TON myself in Cal's storyline. As an enby I've been in relationships with 2 cis straight men. I had a really strong sense that the first guy I dated only saw me as a girl, and the second guy after asking him explicitly told me he saw me as a girl. It's not like I haven't experienced these issues with queer people, but the gap in understanding and the need for me to be the educator for cis straight people was just too great. So one of the biggest takeaways I got from my relationships was to never again date people who consider themselves cis and straight
Well, you can't be sexually attracted to gender identity, not really. If you want to have sex with a person, your desire is mostly based on certain characteristics of that person related to their sex and sex is 99,99% binary, so what Jackson felt was pretty normal for his sexuality, and Cal couldn't accept that. Jackson was pretty open with the idea of having relationship with Cal, but if you can't even comfortably call someone beautiful because it's a "gendered word" how the hell it's supposed to work?
@@GiltleyRage no no no
@@smallnotesbydina7091 Pls elaborate.
Their whole highlight for having a trans character is always to have a big shacking plot twist reveal scene where out of the blue the guy is bombed with "I have/had a penis". They don't take into account at all that a trangirl would herself be self conscious about getting a strong reaction and also wouldn't want to intentionally focus on that aspect specifically.
Like a few other people are saying, I think what we really need is LOTS of representation. We need so many trans characters that we could make a "top 100 trans heroes" or "top 100 trans villains" or "top 100 trans characters we love to hate", etc. - I want to be spoiled for choice as to who my favourite trans character is.
I'm using trans as an example here, of course I would like overwhelming numbers of all kinds of characters across the LGBTQ spectrum, race, ethnicity, class, neurodivergence, etc.
AND we want to be able to wonder who will be on the list, not what place they’ll be
the sad part about Love, Simon being a boring movie is that the book is actually pretty interesting, and the stakes for coming out are definitely higher. instead of just two guys bullying simon and then getting swiftly told off, there's lots of jokes made at simons expense by more of the students. also leah never actually professed her love to simon because it was just a small crush and she was actually interesting in the book instead of just being there as a generic character
I get where you're coming from with Cal and Jackson's storyline, but I took it more as Jackson not seeing Cal as nonbinary - he understands on a intellectual level but it hasn't fully computed, and his crush was based off seeing Cal as a girl, as he had when they first met and he didn't know their gender. And because Cal is nonbinary rather than a binary trans person his feelings on their gender were less obvious to himself - what it feels like to see someone as a girl or a boy is much easier to understand than what it is to see someone as nonbinary. To me it felt really cool to see that on screen because I've had the same issue with dating. I agree that the binder scene at the end was a little preachy, and if they'd framed it differently it could have been lovely to see one nonbinary person give another advice.
Yep! Also‚ some people just AREN’T attracted to nonbinary people. Just because we’re technically included in every sexuality doesn’t mean every individual person who’s gay/straight will also want to date nonbinary people-and guess what‚ that’s fine! I as a nonbinary person am definitely closed off to some categories of nonbinary people in my dating life.
@@lynxaway I still don't know if I'm nonbinary or not, but I present myself in a very """feminine""" way (clothes, makeup, heels etc) and I had more than one straight guy saying things like "I would fuck you, but I'm not attracted to a male body" and honestly, I completely understand!
Honestly this is why I get annoyed at most shows that people tout as "so good!!! All the gay rep!!!" They're (usually) boring and one-dimensional, or follow typical models of character progression.
I do find that a lot of people just want to swoon over "uwu unproblematic beans!!!" who do soft and fluffy wholesome things. Sometimes I think it's like...I don't know...wish fulfillment, or something. People projecting on characters they particularly like/relate to so they can't be "bad"/problematic in any way lest it inspire uncomfortable feelings.
And yes. Corporations just consistently put out safe/easy media to amass as wide an audience as possible for that ad revenue (or subscription revenue). Art suffers for the almighty dollar and all that.
Anyway. Another great video!!!! Very cool, very smart, and I think you just have an attractive way kf speaking. Makes me wanna listen.
I know most people really don't feel that way, but Love Simon is possibly the movie that came the closest to capturing how I felt about my sexuality as a teenager. Not being in a particularly homophobic surrounding, but feeling none the less uncomfortable about how being gay could impact my relationships. Its conflics were ultimately not that important, but they were the kind of unimportant things I worried about when I was younger. I felt like I was watching a movie about a gay person who is like me, rather than a person who, like me, happens to be gay.
Once again, I know my experience is absolutely not universal, but it feels a bit weird that a film that connected with me in such a way is seen as the go-to "gay movie for straight people"
This isnt to say I disagree with the point, just wanted to share my experience
Hey, so I know I'm replying to an old comment, but I'm curious if you've ever read the book that Love Simon was based on (Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda)
I'm not gay or a man, but I found that book incredibly relatable for a different reason -- it's one of the only stories that I've ever seen to accurately depict what it was like to be a nerdy teenager in the 2010s
So many movies and novels portray high school as this warzone of different factions wear the jock bullies the nerd, where there's one group of popular kids that everyone in the school knows about, and where everyone has their well-defined social roles
But SvtHSA showed things more like how they actually were in 2015. Everyone has their own interests and friend groups, but it isn't some kind of Jungle Book-style social hierarchy that the media makes it out to be
(Edit - And also, it's VERY easy nowadays for nerdy young people to find nerdy friends. Someone needs to tell Hollywood that it's not the 80s anymore and nerds aren't an oppressed class)
I'm currently 24, and I don't know how old you are, but if you're around my age, you might find the book relatable on multiple levels, since the book also portrays the thing you were talking about -- being a gay teenager in a mostly accepting setting but still uneasy about relationships. It even arguably portrays this aspect better than the movie did
@@justanotheryoutubecommente2 High school has rarely to never been the social hierarchy seen in American teen movies. People tend to hang with specific friend groups because they have stuff in common.
Maybe there was some point high school was the way American TV & Film would have you believe it was. But I graduated High School in 1997. And I didn’t care about cheerleaders or jocks because I didn’t care about sports in general. Yet American TV would have you believe there was a standard to High School social hierarchy that was universal. If it ever existed, it applied to a small group of people and somehow became text book for writing high school characters.
@@justanotheryoutubecommente2 Although I’m not a guy, I am gay, and I also found the book really relatable (back when I last read it in high school, at least). Beyond its more accurate depiction of school social dynamics, Book Simon’s general aversion to spectacle (the whole thing with his parents and milestones) and his fear of changing to the people he knows and loves resonated with me. I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t speak to it, but it annoys me that the two are lumped together as being “for straight people” somehow, when it felt like it really hit with the baby gay feelings of trying to figure out some sense of your real personality (like every teenager is, except with the added confusion and angst that comes with being gay in an environment that sees gay people as an other,) under all that repression you’ve only just realized you have.
The idea that everyone is 100% accepting upon coming out is not the experience for the majority of people so ones where it is a real issue in the story feel more realistic; Especially nonbinary people, cis people do not just immediately accept that with no questions asked so its weird when TV shows just drop an enby character in there and there is never any conflict or development of the character.
They could even play it up like the everyone-gets-my-name-wrong joke. Instant running gag!
@@charliekahn4205 or the "hmmm that's kinda fruity" to everyone who is attracted to nonbinary people because I have done that due to get mostly cis straight men off my ass as an enby myself.
I tried watching euphoria, and for some reason the first thing I watched was the Jules special episode, and I so surprised by how sincere and well written it was that I kept going thinking that she would have been the protagonist and this would have been the vibe of the show, but I was so let down
The worst part is that her actress, Hunter Schafer, was in charge of writing most of that episode. That’s why the authenticity of the trans experience comes through. Meanwhile in the first and second season, she had no voice. Understandable considering she’s merely an actress for the show, but Levinson was the only person fully in charge of the script. And yeah… it suffered. At the very least, she should’ve been consulted more. She’s so fuckin talented.
i do like Jules as a character but I feel like she got a different treatment from the other "main" characters. i feel like we're viewing Jules as the manic pixie dream girl romance from Rue's perspective... and that's why it didn't make sense to watch her leave on that train and disappear for a while, because we never truly got her perspective on things.
Loved the video!
Have you seen the short-lived Generation (genera+ion) on HBO Max? To me, it has some of the best teen LGBTQ+ representation I've seen in a while. The characters are allowed to be unapologetic, flawed, messy, awkward, cringey and chaotic in a way that's so refreshing and adolescent? That show was created by a teenage girl who's part of the LGBTQ+ community and her gay dads and you can tell the difference in approach compared to a lot of LGBT stories (especially the teen ones).
I feel like a lot of mainstream LGBTQ+ movies and shows (and frankly, a large part of their LGBTQ+ audience) want LGBTQ+ characters to be palatable to the (cis-straight-white) masses. That means they can only be inoffensive or titillating. It really doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance and authenticity. And yeah, it really bores me.
That show was cancelled too soon. Still mad about it.
I feel like that show was such a good stepping stone for better representation ! The characters were so interesting. I’m so sad it got cancelled
I did a quick Google and as far as I can see no UK broadcaster picked this up and we don't have HBO max in the UK. Most HBO shows get picked up by Sky and so are available to stream on Now TV (as this is owned by Sky) but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
The issues you brought up with 'Love, Simon' are so much better in the book. Simon has much more of a personality, he has flaws, he has a more active sexuality (he has a crush on a guy from theater that he convinces himself is Blue, he's attracted to Bram before the Blue reveal, there is a scene where he and Blue talk about sex and Simon masturbates (it's a cutaway kind of scene, but it's obvious what he's doing), there's more than one kiss, there's a makeout scene near the end, etc).
They show way more of Simon and Bram's relationship both through the emails and after the reveal so it's much more of a romance. In the book Simon does know that coming out will probably be okay for him, the reason he doesn't want to come out is that he doesn't want to make a big spectacle out of it or for anything to change with his family or friends. Another huge thing is the relationship with Blue. He's scared that Blue will freak out if they're outted (which he kind of does) and he'll lose him. The bullying is also worse in the book and they also talk about not feeling safe holding hands in public.
I still liked the movie, but it's sad that almost all of that was dulled down for the movie to create this plain coming out story.
This! Becky Albertalli creates such wonderful characters and the book is fantastic. The movie is good but all the characters feel so surface level in comparison
I can't even describe how happy I was when Our Flag Means Death introduced Jim, a non-binary character that I actually LIKED and could even relate to. Every nonbinary character I have seen so far has either been boring with no distinct personality or were just side characters they added just for the sake of representation. It was just so refreshing to see a nonbinary character BE a character and it made me feel so seen compared to the "trans/non-binary 101" lessons I would get on shows trying to give "good representation" but really just made me feel like I was just watching a live action version of stuff I read on trans tumblr back in 2014.
My friend and I who are both nonbinary watched Our Flag Means Death and as the show went on and it became clear that Jim was non binary we both literally screamed with excitement.
Yeah, the representation in ofmd makes me so, so, happy
it kills me to see trans people who are creating genuinely interesting radical fiction and art constantly and consistently getting sidelined (at best) for bland palatable tv. and it rly feels like the push for Good Positive Uplifting Rep All The Time No Exceptions is like lgbt creators being made to apologize for cishet creators' past malice, all while continuing to center cishet audiences. it's so frustrating.
Exactly. Like yeah cis people can write trans characters, but cmon. Maybe just even for a second can we let trans folk write ourselves? Instead of have cis folk, who are probably terrified of overstepping, write the blandest and safest plots possible?
no one, absolutely no one:
bisexuals when a vampire appears on screen: YAS! SLAY QUEEN!
Look I don't know who you are, but I don't appreciate being called out so bluntly and this late at night
@@TheCountOrlok Ha, same!
I was just trying to enjoy my evening when BAM
This hits me like a truck
Wow you're really just gonna call us out like that with facts and receipts, huh? Rude.
yeah AND?!
Love this - for me it’s idealism vs realism. Straight creatives think being an ally means portraying the world as they think it should be vs how it actually is. Give me the mess.
What you perceive as "realistic" is not actually realistic. It's merely what your biases tell you is possible.
Someone on twitter pointed out the distinction between being moral and moralising and it clicked as this exact issue. I liked your point about us not knowing how to handle this responsibility for our ability to directly communicate with and critique media to its creators.
I did like Cal as a character, but I agree that them and Jackson deciding not to date was contrived and the storyline about them having to teach the other nonbinary kid how to bind was unnecessary
imagine if the arc had ended with jackson calling Cal out on their bullshit. Like I'm attracted to you, and if you're attracted to me, you shouldn't push me away, we should figure it out and be messed up together. If only because messed up relationships is all Sex ed, and good drama is about (as long as it doesn't cross the line into romanticizing abuse).
Honestly I was disappointed because when I heard about Cal being introduced, I thought that they were going to be a love interest for Ola and there would be a "You're the only one who's into me" because Ola is pansexual, so I was excited when I thought Cal and Jackson would be some romantic endgame
@@maximeteppe7627 I thought it was pretty complex on Cal's side, you can like someone but not getting together ya know
@@曾華偉-k7t obviously. But for a show all about navigation the quirks in relationships, stopping the relationship here is slightly jarring. Specially since the character is presented as sure of themselves and generally having their shit together, the Idea that they have to figure themselves out before gestion into a relationship comes a bit out of nowhere.
Granded, we have to see what they do next season.
@@jasminewadsworth1983 because no other sexuality involves enbies
i agree with you on everything you said!! i hope in the future as lgbt representation becomes less of like… a spectacle? that more “bad” representation will be celebrated. being afraid to show the more unrefined or unappealing sides of an lgbt character on tv or movies just eventually makes people afraid of the unrefined or unappealing sides of real people or even themselves, i think. it reminds me of people online criticizing the leather/bdsm community for being at pride parades just because they’re personally uncomfortable with people being prideful of their kinks and sexuality. i guess it’s a weird layer of conservatism being applied to a community that at it’s core was very liberal, taking a minority experience and trying to make it seem as “normal” as possible so as to not offend any potential watcher while ignoring the reason why it offends people in the first place (because it would probably make them uncomfortable to be faced with their own flaws and then make them stop watching?) which ends up making the majority of the current lgbt representation in shows and movies so “good” and palatable to the point that it doesn’t even feel like representation to most of us anymore. it’s less showing the life of an actual lgbt person and more showing a watered down and sanitized version of one that just feels kind of disingenuous.
for ppl who like reading & esp post-apocalyptic stories, the last girl scout by natalie ironside is really good. it has a romance between two lesbian trans women, written by a trans woman. one of them is an ex-fascist with a lot of guilt and the other is a communist soldier. and they are in love and traumatized and guilty and angry and. interesting! and also it has nazi vampires!
Oh, I'm gonna have to plop that on my reading list. Have you heard of Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin?
Holy shit /posi
sounds so cool!! hope it'll end my 'reading block' too :")
Wait though, "I Identify as an Attack Helicopter" sounds like an awesome story after that tiny summery and I didn't even know it existed. Onto the list of fiction I need to read it goes.
It IS. Made me reconsider a lot of things about my being trans. Like the corporeal fact, and the reasons I've started transitioning
A really good example of good ‘bad’ representation is “Helluva Boss.” Its deuteragonist Stolas has a really weird transactional relationship with the protagonist. But episode two is all about Stolas and his relationship with his daughter and by the end of it he is a deeply empathetic character who still has that transactional relationship with the protagonist. They captured my attention without removing any of their rough edges.
I'm so excited for Hazbin Hotel to drop this year, Angel has lived in my head rent free
@@Lo0serx3 samee
@@Lo0serx3 that’s happening this year? Do you know when?
@@SorowFame Sometime this summer
@@snare_the_silly neat, thanks
Ditto all of this for men writing “strong female characters”
I thought about that phrase a lot during this video, because it started as a rallying cry for better representation, and swung to derogatively describe a template emblematic of bad attempts to answer that cry. What we always wanted were women who are just as messy and human as the men that surround them.
I agree with you on the Cal from Sex Education front, in that yes, they were disappointingly boring, but it was my impression that a big issue for them when it comes to having a relationship with Jackson was the dysphoria that getting physical with him prompted them to feel. You may not experience this, but many trans people feel dysphoric when people feel attracted to them as an exception - Jackson is as respectful as can be, but because he is straight, Cal will always have the nagging thought that he is thinking of them as a woman. He also tries to feel their chest at one point iirc, which he has consent to do, but I imagine that that could also easily make them feel dysphoric. I, as an AFAB trans person, could empathise with and relate to this part of their character, having had similar experiences with navigating advances from people who are normally only attracted to women, which often make me feel really uncomfortable and kind of invalidated. Cal isn't a binary transmasc like me, but it seems to me that they have similar experiences
That’s the impression I got as well. While it’s true that cishet men can be attracted to non binary people, it’s important to remember that non binary identities are not a monolith. Some non binary people might not feel their identity is “challenged” by a relationship with a straight person, but other non binary people might get dysphoric because they’re aware that their partners perception of them might come into conflict with their self perception.
"Good representation" that never shows any negative experiences (-phobia, bigotry, erasure, bullying, harassment, etc) just feels like gaslighting to me. Not saying it needs to be the focus, but it's a part of queer experience.
I love your take on how relationships with trans people can challenge cis gender and sexuality conceits, and how that can be very funny.
Last, Jadzia Dax 💜💜💜
Another well-thought out video with some humor thrown in that I thoroughly enjoyed. Please don't ever feel bad about taking a bit longer to deliver this kind of quality. I hope you use the Patreon money for a fancy chair for future videos to resolve your issues with standing for so long! Or at least one of those really mean, spiky foam rollers.
Also, I never notice that stuff and know nothing about it, but for what it's worth: The editing in this was really nice!
Those foam rollers are amazing and mean.
I think this really needed to be said, and you did a great job with it. Especially since the mid 2010s, suddenly people are more concerned about how morally good media is and it does kinda lead to some worrying trends. Not quite sure how it all took off, but being in the Steven Universe fandom I pretty much saw in real time how people went from adoring the show to suddenly calling it a crime against humanity just because the show dared to have flawed characters and push people out of their comfort zone. I also really hate when people feel when they have to defend shows like SU or say the ones you like in the video, they always have to start with "it's not perfect" or "it has its flaws", like duh, water is wet, we don't need you to say what's obvious, not to mention it kinda feels like you're forcing yourself to say something that's not really relevant to the discussion. People are so concerned about being seen as normal and accepted it ironically ends up making rep easier to be co-opted by corporations. So yeah, let characters from marginalised backgrounds be as rich and varied as anyone else.
You talking about possibilities of comedy including trans people reminded me a lot of my relationship with my girlfriend (I am gender fluid and she's a trans woman), making me feel real warm and fuzzy on the inside, thinking about how much I love her. Very important and eye-opening video, thanks!
Personally, my biggest pet peeve when it comes to 'good' LGBT representation is that the characters are not only boring but just... far too mainstream. I mean 'mainstream' in terms of what the general (cishet) public tend to dress like/be interested in/create-- I've never seen queer goths or punks be explicitly represented because their lifestyles are not 'the norm'. Or even just queer characters with weird hobbies, or specific tastes. These movies all seem like they're trying to go for the "we are just like you" message and it irritates me because, well, we really aren't. It wasn't just that we were queer that society pushed us away, it was also that as queer people we specifically didn't conform to gender roles and societal norms. And that lack of conformity hasn't changed at all, in fact, it might be even stronger. Many queer people today-- especially young queer people--- are part of subcultures and have certain styles and types of humour. It's near impossible to find a representation of the kind of queer people who are around me, which sucks because they are authentic parts of the community who are completely ignored in favour of more 'socially acceptable' ones.
sorry that this comment is so long, I kind of ranted without thinking about organising my thoughts. basically, tl;dr LGBT characters are all too mainstream and specific subcultures in the LGBT community never get rep, which they should far more than all these practically straight-passing queer characters
I completely agree. I can find it really hard to find a character I truly relate too. And sure maybe thats partly due to the fact I’m also neurodivergent (I dunno if thats spelled right, sorry) but theres always those boxes. You have to be this and this if you want rep where you feel truly represented. Queer people tend to not fit in those boxes, yet cishet people writing them always seem to put them into said boxes. While yes, some queer people do enjoy stuff like that, thats not everyone. Which is also probably part of the reason why they always seem so perfect. It’s kind of like they’re saying: heres this perfect character, because this is what society has deemed good, BUT look at that! They’re queer! So now they aren’t that perfect person!
Thats what it feels like to me anyway. Just my thoughts, sorry that this is kinda long
exactly!!!!