I kimd of am, why are so many relationships in media strsight? We need more lgbt representation
This is dumb and I’m probably getting offended for no reason but here’s a small experience I dealt with recently
So like 30 minutes ago my grandmother wanted me to smile so she told me to think of a pretty girl and while I didn’t react at all my first thought was literally “why not pretty boys” Its silly I know.
I’m not out but I literally couldn’t be leaving anymore hints that I’m bi. Its funny how nobody noticed yet
Removed by mod
Not sure how you meant it, I kind of feel weird about your comment though. How do you get to 95% vs 5%? What about e.g. the Kinsey scale?
What feels totally weird about your comment to me, and actually outright offends me, is how you say that queer people need their 5% space and then we can get on with the normal life. But to me, being queer is about breaking out of oppressive norms and heteronormativity is such an oppressive norm. I don’t want to have to live with it. It not does all us queer people harm, it’s bad for everyone. You cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible. So no, 5% is not enough, I want everyone (!) to be free of norms and free what they want to do. And the view that being straight is a default, just like being male, cis, white, able-bodied, etc also has to go. That is just not reality and it does so much damage.
They didn’t say it’s the default. If more people are straight, you’ll see more straight representation. That’s just generally how things work for everything, not just sexual orientation. There are more white people on TV in the US. There are more Japanese people on TV in Japan. You don’t see as many redheads in American media. There aren’t many shows focused around little people. I could go on and on with examples here.
They’re also saying “we don’t need more”, overlooking the entire value of representation.
Yeah the “need” part doesn’t come off the best, but I get what they mean. I think they’re saying the current representation is adequate, whether or not that’s agreed upon.
that’s exactly how I meant it when I wrote the comment. Purely from a statistical perspective. Your “there are more japanese people on japanese tv” example pretty much sums it up. I’m just not as good as you at choosing my words.
This is a duplicate of two other discussions on statistics already happening in this post. I’m glad there’s a lot of people pushing back to show you how you’re wrong and actively causing harm to people right now, but I wanted to let you know that any further discussion trying to back up your point will be removed and you will be ejected for a failure of empathy and the ability to start any kind of meaningful discussion.
Speaking of offensive. You sound kind of bigoted yourself.
I meant people having gender reveal parties, fragile masculinity, people trying to police gender roles of everyone around, and so on… Once you notice how much everyone tries to keep up with heteronormativity in order to not be socially sanctioned by others, you see it pretty much everywhere in daily life. And well, I get socially sanctioned a lot by people (being stared at, getting transphobic/homophobic slurs thrown at me, being sexually harassed, etc) that cringing about it is pretty much my only way to kind of deal with everyone still trying to live up to a norm that heavily oppresses me and everyone else.
i think this is somewhat presumptive. that 95% figure comes from a world where the representation wasn’t very good. a lot of people didn’t know that being gay was a thing, and a lot of people still don’t know that being gay is a thing they can be
we can’t really know what those numbers would be in a truly accepting world, which is exactly why representation matters. even if it’s “disproportionate”
95% of people definitely aren’t hetero though. Or anyway, they aren’t cisgender and straight and vanilla and mainstream in every other possible way related to sex and gender. We have no idea how many people are queer, but it’s a lot more than 5%, and we won’t know what the actual numbers are like until there have been several generations that are very queer accepting.
“We have no idea, but it’s definitely not that,” is a bit contradictory, don’t you think?
I don’t think so.
The current world paints queer people as exotic and abnormal most of the time, which is due to representation being so low and most importantly hidden away.
For example Disney, where most kids get their movies from, scrapped Nimona because there’s a gay couple in the main cast, and Netflix picked it back up. How many headlines have we had that the first Disney movie with a gay couple is going to happen, only for that gay couple to be 2 people that pass more for very good friends or might just be in the background.
And Netflix isn’t that great either, scrapping lesbian shows the moment it becomes obvious. Famous example being Warrior Nun. They admitted to making the first season straight bait so they’d get a second season after which they’ve been cancelled. Don’t get me wrong, Warrior Nun wasn’t a qualitatively great show but we lesbians loved it, because we’re so starved for shows with representation, and it made Netflix good profits.
Most of queer representation has to be specifically seeked out which is exactly what’s wrong and leads to the assumption that everyone is cishet.
So yeah in a world where most kids assume they can’t be queer because there’s normal and there is queer and they are just a normal kid and being different is scary it can be assumed that official statistics are not representative of the actual percentage.
There are “at least” 15% non-cishet people out there. We have no idea how many more, but it’s definitely not that.
That’s a technique right out of my ex’s playbook: “Do you know or don’t you?”
Example: “You said you don’t know how many there are. That means there could just be 1. Oh, but you know the number is more than 1? So you do know? But you just said you don’t know. Are you lying to me?”
Did you know that 98.2% of statistics quoted by people online are simply pulled out of their ass? Did you know that people are less likely to be open about their sexuality when they’ll face communal scorn and exclusion, or often physical harm, for openly expressing it?
The number of people that would identify as queer is certainly higher than 5%, and that doesn’t even include all of the closeted or self-denying people that have been indoctrinated by religious bullshit or simply growing up in a conservative area.
That the number to which you default is 95% is a crystal clear example of the sort of heteronormativity they’re referencing.
Whether or not that stat is true, I don’t think that minority representation should be accurately reflected based on the percentage of the population the minority represents. Just as an example, if we’re talking about television shows, and let’s just throw out a number that there are 100 major characters across all of the major networks/most watched shows. That would mean all LGBTQ+ representation is contained to 5 characters… The chance of any one non-invested viewer seeing those characters becomes minimal – which means that both cishet folks aren’t getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps normalize us), and LGBTQ+ folks aren’t getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps our own confidence and mental health).
Quite a lot of characters on TV or in media where their sexual orientation and/or gender identity is irrelevant, though.
Not saying it’s accurately represented, but if you watch popular stuff - how much else is?
Color? Gender? Mac vs. PC usage?
Small steps at the time, but I think it’s important to note that there’s been progress. Yet female characters are still overly sexualized, but at least we usually get more than that token black guy now.
Oh, I by no means think that other minority groups are more well off when it comes to representation.
I’m just coming at this from my own personal lens, being well aware that any representation of trans folk as normal would have gone a long way for me as a child. So that’s what I advocate for, but by no means do I feel we need to tear others down to get where we need to be.
If I came off as suggesting that you meant such a thing, I apologize.
I merely intended to point out the gaps that everyone will see and recognize.
At least now there are shows where these issues are put front and center, which I think is great, but they may not be considered mainstream, yet, unsure if they ever will.
No worries, and no need to apologize!
I’ll admit coming off of other social media spaces (looking at you, Reddit), I’m consistently (and pleasantly) surprised at the kind of interaction here. I’m so used to having to defend myself that I sometimes read hostility where there’s really no hint of it at all.
And yeah, I’m happy that we’re starting to see some representation out there. As a kid I pretty much just had Jerry Springer or Ace Ventura as far as representation of what trans people are, and let me say that was not at all helpful to a young kid trying to figure out what these feelings were.
Not sure how you meant it, I kind of feel weird about your comment though. How do you get to 95% vs 5%? What about e.g. the Kinsey scale?
What feels totally weird about your comment to me, and actually outright offends me, is that the queer people need their 5% space and then we can get on with the normal life. But to me, being queer is about breaking out of oppressive norms and heteronormativity is such an oppressive norm. I don’t want to have to live with it. It not does all us queer people harm, it’s bad for everyone. You cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible. So no, 5% is not enough, I want everyone (!) to be free of norms and free what they want to do. And the view that being straight is a default, just like being male, cis, white, able-bodied, etc also has to go. That is just not reality and it does so much damage.