I kimd of am, why are so many relationships in media strsight? We need more lgbt representation
This is dumb and I’m probably getting offended for no reason but here’s a small experience I dealt with recently
So like 30 minutes ago my grandmother wanted me to smile so she told me to think of a pretty girl and while I didn’t react at all my first thought was literally “why not pretty boys” Its silly I know.
I’m not out but I literally couldn’t be leaving anymore hints that I’m bi. Its funny how nobody noticed yet
Is there a reason why you’re not out? Being upset or offended over comments made from those without knowledge of your personal feelings is misplaced. Leaving hints is not actual communication. If you want others to respect your feelings then you have to actually share those feelings. I wish you the best.
I’m not sure if they are accepting or not. There are very mixed signals
i’m sure it can be nerve-wracking, i can sympathise with that. i can see why you’d be nervous.
to any lurkers, this is just another component of why representation is so important-- it signals that it is okay, normal and in no way conditional to our love. if we simply operated from a default perspective that is not heteronormative, then we tacitly tell others that we, individually, have moved on from the era of anti-queer hatred.
i’m not queer so i don’t want to impose any uninvited advice, but i really hope that you can find peace with your family and with yourself.
If they always assume that you or everyone they meet are cishet you might not feel safe to come out. It’s a chicken and egg situation that can be solved by not always assuming everyone to be cishet
I’m not sure if they are accepting or not. There are very mixed signals
I’m saying this in earnest and very much not trying to be rude or edgy, but the fact is a lot of people don’t think about me/you/us at all, they’re reciting things they think are normal to people they aren’t close with like talking about the weather. Realizing some of my relatives I care about don’t actually want to get invested in my life to the point of knowing I’m gay was a very freeing moment. Like understanding my grandma is 95 and doesn’t want to try sushi now. And she was fine learning I married a man, but she wouldn’t have brought it up. Decentralizing yourself from other people and realizing you have much more of a free slate than you think can be very helpful.
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Why bring this up here? What is the point of your reply?
It’s also absolutely incorrect and pretty well documented - 9% of adults on average globally, trending much higher for youth according to some of the most recent data from Ipsos.
But you’re absolutely right - bringing up population rates is unnecessary and kind of odd - and how many of us there are doesn’t negate how poorly we’re treated in many parts of the world, and the deficits we still face in western society.
i would assume they brought it up since being heterosexual is the norm because the majority of the population is heterosexual
Specifically in the context of media representation, I’d say it’s relevant. There is an actual objective target that we can talk about there.
Heternormativity in general, and especially in the context of interpersonal interactions, is only tangentially related to that though, and there’s obviously no reason in the modern day to be oblivious to the possibility that people aren’t straight.
9% in 30 countries, that’s far from globally. And I would guess those countries lean liberal. I used population percentage in my original statement to refute underrepresentation. Even if I use your skewed number of 9%, I think that they are appropriately represented in media
This shows a distinct lack of understanding of statistics and common issues in underreporting of marginalized status. The often cited example showing this is the following graph. As marginalization and stigmatization decreased, even for something which isn’t a literal death sentence in many countries, the rate of left handed individuals increased. Researchers in equity, population health, and statistics all hypothesize that a similar phenomenon is happening with queer identification.
That graph… what happened in the 1900s?
We stopped punishing left-handedness. As an example: children used to be taught only how to write with their right hand, and using the left hand would result in punishment – such as the hand being hit with yardsticks or the child being verbally abused – until the child forced themselves to write with their right hand.
But why the dip from the pre-1900s? Was it something like “increased literacy, increased punishment, stopped punishing”?
i would assume they brought it up since being heterosexual is the norm because the majority of the population is heterosexual
The discussion is on underrepresentation. Why would bringing up the percentage of population that’s queer be off-topic? The numbers (and sense that we’re overrepresented) may be wrong, but bringing it up absolutely makes sense. How does one seriously talk about being underrepresented or not without bringing what percentage of the population we might make up? How would one even gauge representation levels without such a framework?
I’m trying to gauge the intent of this person’s reply. It could be bad faith so I’m asking them to clarify. The fact that they only mention the percentage and it’s clearly wrong have me wondering why they left this comment.
I’m not being disingenuous, it’s a statistic I looked up not too long ago when I was digging into something else. I couldn’t care less what someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity is. I am just making an observation based on my knowledge that the marginalized group being referred to is appropriately, and probably overrepresented in public.
Maybe I’m in a bubble living in one of the most liberal places in the country, but I see representation on TV, while shopping, in print media, on lemmy (formerly reddit), etc.
The OP is making a claim that there needs to be more representation based on the opinion of a old timer that is clearly conservative. No amount of representation is going to change that person’s mind.
And this is a queer space, it’s not exactly nice to barge in and offer your opinion, especially when it runs counter to what experts have to say about it. You also didn’t provide any analysis of whether overrepresentation is a bad thing. Furthermore, your comment was reported by multiple people - which is why I stopped by to ask you a question about your intent. I would suggest quietly participating if you’re unsure how to act in minority spaces.
So is the instance just meant to be an echo chamber? I didn’t say anything derogatory or insensitive. I just offered a dissenting opinion on something that came up in my feed on All. I didn’t seek this thread out and barge in, I just made a comment on something I saw. Here’s the most recent poll I found stating 7%, which isn’t really that far off from 5%.
It’s not that this instance is meant to be an echo chamber, it’s that it’s meant to be welcoming, inclusive, and queer friendly. Saying that we’re over-represented, ackshually, isn’t really contributing to the discussion other than to tell us that our lived experiences of being under-represented are wrong. It implies that a statistical/percentage-based over-representation of a minority group is a somehow a bad thing. Less charitably, it sounds awfully similar to being told to sit down, shut up, and be happy with what we’ve got.
So is the instance just meant to be an echo chamber?
literally nobody has ever asked this question in good faith on this instance, so to say the least it really does not endear me to your continued participation here. this is almost always a dogwhistle from people who think censorship is when they’re not allowed to dominate conversations with bad or unnecessary takes—and in this context, you’re not really breaking from that pattern.
Nope, but there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way. I’m offering you suggestions on how to interact the right way in the future. You didn’t see an issue with your comment and I’m trying to help you understand why others did. If you’re not willing to put in the time and effort to show that you’re knowledgeable on the subject (in this case population statistics, which you proved you were not), then you need to at least put in the effort to use your emotional intelligence to understand how you’re not being particularly helpful and in fact pushing away minorities by offering a “dissenting opinion”, one which most marginalized individuals around here have likely heard ad nauseam in their lives from all sorts of folks, bigoted and not.
This is still sus, however, since that same source points out 10.5% of Millennials and 20.8% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ. So, if anything, the 5% number thrown around is vastly underestimating the proportion of people in the US who are, strictly speaking, not cishet. So, if we’re creating media for the dominant consumer demographic in the US, we should see at least 1 in 10 characters in media with queer identities, if not 1 in 5.
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Fair enough. Can’t be too careful on the internet.
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To be honest I suspect any estimates of queer demographics are going to be dramatically lower than the actuality in part because things like gender and sexuality are fluid and heavily influenced by culture and upbringing. There may be several orders of magnitude more people who might otherwise identify as bi or some kind of genderqueer but not enough to justify investing in the self reflection, identity crisis, and social capital it would cost.
I usually wouldn’t get involved in this topic, but I’m half past drunk right now so here it goes: I’ve got nothing against lgbtqia+, you do you, freedom for everyone. But taking into account that the norm and majority is hetero… I really don’t understand what you expect… It would be like me, a metal head, would ask why aren’t there more extreme metal bands than pop bands?
The issue isn’t that the majority of people are straight (though I’d point to what we saw in the rates of left handedness once we stopped punishing it), it’s how we talk about it and the assumptions we make - and it’s about the disparities LGBTQIA+ people can face because of the specifically heteronormative way society is set up.
Marriage equality is a great easy example - the reason marriage equality was (and is, in so many places) such a big deal wasn’t just so we could marry just like heterosexuals - it’s because there are so many rights afforded to married couples that aren’t afforded to others. Healthcare access is the big one - in so many places, only married spouses are considered ‘family’ and able to make decisions for their partner, or even visit them in hospital.
To use your analogy, it would be like there not being any metal concerts, ever, because everyone just likes pop, right? Why would anyone want to go to a metal gig?
Its different, it’s that feeling when your music, which you know is absolutely fine, gets shat upon by christian conservatives who believe it’s evil. But then throw in the cops and the government which historically and systemically shut down your opportunity to even play or listen to it and give more opportunities and legal benefits to those people who play pop.
And you’re just trying to listen to the music you like, while every step of the way it gets way more difficult than it needs to be because it’s systemically rigged for you not to be able to listen to it. It’s exhausting.
edit: grammar
That doesn’t mean it’s not tiring.
But also, why does the norm need to be hetero vs “people are varied”. Sure, most people are straight, but that doesn’t mean it automatically has to be the default assumption, that’s just a choice made by a… heteronormative society. Most of the time, we aren’t in situations where we actually need to assume someone’s sexual orientation, so we don’t need to play the odds, as it were.
Nah. It’d be like if everyone just assumes that you like pop, because most people do. It might be understandable, but people constantly assuming you like pop and only pop is… tiring and annoying.
Also, on a personal note, it definitely stopped me from figuring it out wayyy earlier than I could have. “Normal/average people are straight, I am normal, therefore I am straight” was effectively my reasoning.
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Not sure how you meant it, I kind of feel weird about your comment though. How do you get to 95% vs 5%? What about e.g. the Kinsey scale?
What feels totally weird about your comment to me, and actually outright offends me, is how you say that queer people need their 5% space and then we can get on with normal life. But to me, being queer is about breaking out of oppressive norms and heteronormativity is such an oppressive norm. I don’t want to have to live with it. It not does all us queer people harm, it’s bad for everyone. You cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible. So no, 5% is not enough, I want everyone (!) to be free of norms and free what they want to do. And the view that being straight is a default, just like being male, cis, white, able-bodied, etc also has to go. That is just not reality and it does so much damage.
They didn’t say it’s the default. If more people are straight, you’ll see more straight representation. That’s just generally how things work for everything, not just sexual orientation. There are more white people on TV in the US. There are more Japanese people on TV in Japan. You don’t see as many redheads in American media. There aren’t many shows focused around little people. I could go on and on with examples here.
They’re also saying “we don’t need more”, overlooking the entire value of representation.
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.
ou cannot image how I cringe seeing how straight cis people act, it’s just terrible.
Speaking of offensive. You sound kind of bigoted yourself.
I meant people having gender reveal parties, fragile masculinity, people trying to police gender roles of everyone around, and so on… Once you notice how much everyone tries to keep up with heteronormativity in order to not be socially sanctioned by others, you see it pretty much everywhere in daily life. And well, I get socially sanctioned a lot by people (being stared at, getting transphobic/homophobic slurs thrown at me, being sexually harassed, etc) that cringing about it is pretty much my only way to kind of deal with everyone still trying to live up to a norm that heavily oppresses me and everyone else.
i think this is somewhat presumptive. that 95% figure comes from a world where the representation wasn’t very good. a lot of people didn’t know that being gay was a thing, and a lot of people still don’t know that being gay is a thing they can be
we can’t really know what those numbers would be in a truly accepting world, which is exactly why representation matters. even if it’s “disproportionate”
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.
“We have no idea, but it’s definitely not that,” is a bit contradictory, don’t you think?
That’s a technique right out of my ex’s playbook: “Do you know or don’t you?”
Example: “You said you don’t know how many there are. That means there could just be 1. Oh, but you know the number is more than 1? So you do know? But you just said you don’t know. Are you lying to me?”
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.
It’s tiring to see so many non marginalized individuals entering a marginalized space to claim that things are fine. Learn to read the room. All further discussion about whether this is “okay given statistics” shows a failure of empathy, a place of privilege, and an ignorance of the harm you are causing. I’ve decided to leave some of these comments up because some people benefit from seeing the discussion about how they are wrong, but to anyone who is entering this thread and is not queer and the only take you have to offer is “maybe you ARE over-represented” I will start banning you now.
common gaywallet W
i dont know how you have so much emotional energy to share here as much as you do, especially in the face of so much intolerance. much love.
You give me energy with comments like this. I love you 🥰💜
to add some nuance to this, if anyone would like to listen. a cry from a cishet to the cishets.
beehaw platforms safe spaces. within that, this is a community for queer people. coming into this discussion as someone that isn’t queer, a person needs to be aware of the nature of safe spaces. this isn’t the same as seeing a post from r/cars on the front page of reddit and adding to the discussion that trains are more convenient for you. to queer people, many of these discussions are existential in nature. this will not carry the same weight to you, because it does not impact you in the same way- if at all.
take a moment to reflect on how irritating it is to see average people turn into experts on twitter whenever a new topic is trending. understand that in queer discussion, you are that person, but your words aren’t simply annoying, they’re harmful.
a common response to this is “well you can’t have discussion with only people that agree with you, that’s an echo chamber!”. sure, you can put 100 men into a discussion about feminism and hear a hundred different opinions, but none of them will be a womans. there’s enough cishets discussing this, respect that this space is designed to amplify the voices of the minority.
stay quiet, recognise that you have privilege blindspots, and say “thanks for sharing”.
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The comments in here aren’t… what I was expecting from this community. Feels like I’m back on old internet. Ironically, the comments themselves seem to be perpetuating the heteronormativity brought up by the post.
I notice it’s mostly people coming in from other communities saying things like “The population is small, so we should only have to see it as much as we see it now (basically never),” which reads as “You barely exist, so continue that way.” This ignores the real world current statistics that people are increasingly feeling safe identifying as LGBT+, so we don’t actually have a number of where that percentage will plateau. It could be significantly higher than the outdated 5% I’m seeing bandied about in here. It’s already moved towards 8% of total USA population, with nearly 20% of Gen Z identifying LGBT. If that holds, then that’s quite a lot more than the 5% everyone keeps saying.
Regardless of how little we supposedly matter based on a number, it’s insulting to see people outside the community telling us how we should feel about our own experiences. That’s not something they get to decide for us.
Unfortunately this is one of the issues with federation. In the future we would like to have all the identity based communities either beehaw users only or locked down from comments/posting. We have no control over other instances, but to remove their content or remind them how to act here. I’ve personally been avoiding a scorched earth policy for non-beehaw accounts, but I’m slowly finding myself leaning towards it because of behavior like this. I’ve cleaned up some of the worst of it, and I’m keeping a close eye on a few folks in this post.
Well said on all points. I expected better of this community.
Not really. In fact, I enjoy how often queer relationships are featured in media. What I am tired of is straight writers trying, and failing, to write queer characters.
Ye i get you it’s tiring. Just reading the replies to this post has been tiring because it already has a bunch of cishet people wanting us to stay in our little corner. When i read the description of beehaw i assumed this place was safe from that. I get that people JAQing off and quoting questionable statistics to say our actually felt problem is negligible aren’t easy to deter but seeing them be the most liked replies was really disheartening.
Yeah, these replies are not at all what I expected to see coming into this thread. When did we decide that this is enough representation, and why did no one ask me?
We didn’t decide it, fragile cishet broflakes decided it for us.
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Everyone here are probably tired of that shit. Being asked about when will you get married is not fun. Assuming your partner must be of different gender is not fun. Gatekeeped out of some locations built for couple (but for some reason doesn’t really think about same sex couple) is not fun.
I’m kind of in the closet because of a lot of this, but it’s weird saying I’m in the closet when I’m ace. Like, on the one hand, what am I gonna do, go around telling everyone I don’t have sex? That’s weird. But at the same time, it’s incredible how much normal small talk interactions with friends and even just-slightly-more-than-strangers revolves around sex and having sex.
“Sorry about that, I was up late last night and I’m still kinda worn out” “Oh, I’ll bet you were, YOU DOG wink nudge”
or
“Yeah, my girlfriend and I are going camping this weekend” “Sounds like FUN, amirite? [insert multiple innuendos]”
or
“I’m going to be a little late to the get-together; I really need to clean the kitchen before I leave” “Going for that [HOT SEX ACT REWARD] huh? I get it! Go get [THE SEX POINTS]!”
Like, it’s all over the place. It’s every day. I just kind of nod along agreeably, but I feel like I’m a big dirty liar.
Sorry for your experience. I can sort of relate. Too many conversations about relationship became conversation about sex for no good reasons. As if people have relationships only to have sex…
I watched Nimona the other night, and I really enjoyed it.
When posting on Mastodon about it, I specifically didn’t mention that the central relationship is a gay one, because would I have done so if it was straight? No, of course not.
It’s a little thing, I know…
Not really relevant to the overall thread, but I just learned Nimona exists earlier today while I was checking to see if K.Flay had any new songs out since I last checked! (She does, and it’s one she did for Nimona.) That plus this comment has officially got it on my to-watch list!
yeah, its funny that heterosexuality is considered the default when it has to be constantly (often violently!) enforced.
The young mixed race gay couple that moved in across the street is always having people over and doing fun things. Then there is me trying to strap my screaming toddler into the car after trying to get her out the door for the past 45 minutes. Maybe they could not rub it in my face that they have all the free time in the world?
Then there’s the goddamn leaf blower. Every time they mow, they then use a backpack gas leaf blower, leaves on the ground? Leaf blower. Just got done washing the car? Better blow dry it with the leaf blower.
Goddamn gay people making me miss being young and free.
