NOTE: the creator of She-Ra goes by Nate or ND - thank you to those viewers who pointed this out - I unfortunately wasn’t aware when I quoted an interview from before he came out in this video. I've updated the caption and description but wanted to add a pinned comment incase anyone missed that.
Oh god I remember that Sailor Moon censorship....They made lesbians into cousins but changed nothing about their interactions, so they chose to portray a borderline incestuous relationship over a loving queer relationship.
that was intentional, the networks forced the censorship and the people doing the dub didn't want to, so they protested by *technically* complying with the censorship while making the gay relationship as obvious as possible.
The one that still annoys me to this day is how Riverdale removed Jugheads asexuality. Asexuality is practically invisible as it is so it was very disheartening for them to change this.
Actually the Archie comics has multiple universes and there shouldn’t be one canon. In the past Jughead did date, was involved in a love triangle and was married to Midge. Because of that I don’t care if Riverdale didn’t make him aroace. As a aroace myself I’m happy that Riverdale didn’t make Jughead aroace. I would have watched it knowing the show ended up being a huge dumpster fire. Edit: yes I know aroace and asexuality isn’t the same thing. I have known some people that are asexual and in a happy relationship. My comment is based mostly on other people’s reaction which I can’t blame because Jughead was confirmed aroace around 2016. Before that his sexuality was up for interpretation.
Before the show came out I was at a convention that Chip Zdarsky had a panel at. It the panel the show came up and he said 'I hope they don't turn it into Jughead f&
my grandad was an unsuspecting straight who watched Pride because it was about the miner’s strikes, which he was a part of. luckily he enjoyed the movie, learned something from it, and was the one to suggest it to me.
@@123videos456 dude so true! In the end when the miners show up for Pride and that Billy Bragg/brass band version of There Is Power in a Union is playing - instant crying for me, yup.
I internally battle writers who write bisexual women as male fantasies and bisexual men as weirdos. There is still straight washing in how they write bi character’s attraction to the same gender being more sexual than the romantic driven attraction towards the opposite gender.
Just another reason for me to love the videogame Hades. In there, the main character Zagreus can have a very sexual, sadomaso-ish relationship with a female character Megeara, or a very tender, helplessly romantic relationship with a male character Thanatos. :D Edit: Also, Queen Maeve from "The Boys" sleeps around with guys when she was feeling depressed and needed sex, but her ultimate romantic relationship is with a woman.
It might depend on the writer's sexuality, in a CW Out Panel Caity Lotz actually said that she liked how her character (Sarah Lance) wasn't written based on a stereotype and instead was just open to both even if she tells Greg Berlanti that when she was auditioning she didn't see anything about her character being explicitly bisexual. During the run of "Legends of Tomorrow" her character has relationships with both men and women, but doesn't have a committed same-sex relationship until near the end of Season 3 and similarly during a ClexaCon interview Chyler Leigh said that before Season 2 of "Supergirl" she spoke with the writers when they'd told her that they were going to make her character (Alex Danvers) a lesbian and they worked together to ensure the storyline of her coming out was done delicately
I would like to shout out the HBO Max Harley Quinn show for having Harley and Ivy be in a long term lesbian relationship throughout season 2 and validating both of their bisexuality without any ambiguity whatsoever.
Not to mention they had the guts to firmly make both characters bisexual, especially Poison Ivy who often gets depicted as a lesbian. Even in queer coded media, bisexual erasure is a big thing.
It makes SO MUCH sense to make them a couple instead of queer baiting and the showrunners claiming they are pro-LGBTQ. This straightforward representation is a breath of fresh air.
I feel like the film the imitation game can be included. Alan Turing was hella gay. He had dozens of desires and crushes. And only one of them is prominently shown. It angers me so incredibly much. Alan Turing despite being a war hero died because of his queerness
Also tragic seeing people ignoring his questioning of gender present in his later work or misinterpreting it. Dude was forced to be chemically castrated after his invaluable service.
To those complaining, knock it off. The film states he was gay. That should be enough. It was a biopic, not a romcom. And coming from a bisexual man I found the story to be very heart wrenching and moving. The movie was about his contributions to science, the war, and the tragedy of his situation. It was a fine film and doesn't need to be changed because someone thinks it wasn't enough. Think about this, if HE saw it today? What would he think? If you can answer me that question? Then my ears are wide open and I'll happy listen and have a conversation
@@ahmanetbones9496 considering he killed himself over their inhumane treatment, probably angry that Weinstein interfered with the script to leave it on a more unearned happier ending.
Speaking of the straightwashing of posters, my homophobic uncle went to Brokeback Mountain thinking it was a straight, western cowboy movie and left really early on in the movie because he felt duped and angry. Such a strange marketing tactic.
i may be pulling at threads here, but i also thought it was strange & was wondering if it was a tactic to purposely create negative commentary about queer cinema. if homophobes were being duped into seeing these queer pictures, then it wouldn't be too far out to reason that they would leave negative press about the film - either specifically because they were duped, or because they were outraged by the content as a whole. in turn, this negative press could be used by studios to perpetuate not making more queer cinema ("see? other people hated these films, so there isn't a reason to keep making them!" sort of thing).
You're not special because you are sexually confused stop treating straightness as abnormal when it's basic biology and is the reason both me and you are existing now posting pointless things on TH-cam. I know you won't take this to heart anyways.
In interview with the vampire, (the original book) Anne Rice didn’t initially realize her characters were very queercoded (the main characters Louis and Lestat were based on herself and her husband). She later realized this and subsequent books were more explicitly queer. When it was adapted to the 1994 movie, she was concerned that it wouldn’t be palatable to mainstream America and suggested making the main character Louis a woman (she wanted the actress to be Cher, and Cher even wrote a song for it). In the end it was Brad Pitt and the movie is about as gay as you can get without admitting the characters are in a relationship. The new amc tv show however has gone the full nine yards (it’s gayer and blacker) and because they didn’t shy away from this the story has so much more context to it. It is a masterpiece that improves upon the original in many ways.
I always hated the casting of that movie. I had cast it in my mind when I read it with Sting as Lestat and Daniel Day-Lewis as Louis and I could just never unsee that. lol I'm not sure Sting could have pulled it off acting wise but he was fantastic in the role in my inner movie.
I saw the movie when I was a child and I didn't see anything between Louis and Lestat,I always thought that Claudia and Louis were a couple growining up.
@@dhsf5937 I saw it quite young too, and I did see it. It wasn't in your face, but it was definitely there. I personally think Claudia was more of a child Lestat 'got' for Louis, so he won't feel so isolated - kind of pushing Louis into the 'traditional' role of a woman (not ideal either, the role or the idea of that role). To me it seemed Claudia was internally becoming a grown up stuck in her childs body and might have fallen in love with Louis - in my eyes he loved her like a daughter until the end.
You missed a great one. Fried Green Tomatoes has two women living together and raising a child, but have them share a sisterly type love in the movie. In the book they are absolutely in a long romantic relationship with each other. It's not surprising how many other black stories also got cut from the movie.
I was going to comment that. That was one of my favorite movies growing up, but I only read the book it's based on a couple of years ago. I was floored. I always thought the movie was very gay because of the subtext that is still there, but people around me seemed to not see it that way. So when I finally read the book, I felt both vindicated and shocked at how straightwashed it was. By the way, I would have to check, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the two main actresses were against cutting their romance and did their best to portray their romantic love with how they played off each other, even if the script itself removed any direct references. It is probably also one those cases where their queerness were so intrinsic to the story and the characters as a whole, as Rowan mentioned, that it's just impossible to tell that story without at least that subtext...
@@ma_alva I'm so glad someone else loves this story. My sister and I read it years ago and have been trying to spread the word ever since. I feel like I also read that about the main actresses. They did a great job with what they had to work with.
@@odie4bre They really did! They are both so talented and have such great on-screen chemistry, I saw them as a couple even before I could fully understand what being gay meant, let alone in the movie's setting. I was literally a kid. I need to go rewatch that... It's been many, many years, and I haven't even watched it since I read the book...
@@ma_alva Sounds about right. I read somewhere too the flour scene was meant to be subtext or like a nod or something basically to confirm they were meant to be lovers. Like it was written in as a low-key middle finger to acknowledge they were lovers but the explicitness had to be cut, so the flour fight scene was added in
Topics often missing in both straight and gueer media is asexual and aromantic representation. Especially with adaptations of preexisting aro/ace characters the push to have everyone "paired up" makes a part of community invisible.
And even a lot of canon ace rep is either limited to it being revealed outside of the work by the creators or executed in such a way that the "asexual" part can be ignored by audiences. It's frustrating.
the issue is that it is very diffuicult to represent that when it can be hard to actually represent, because its hard to really represent that in a story. You can easily make it clear that characters are in a relationship for any other romantic/sexual orientation, then with trans and nonbinary characters, the pronouns used can make things clear. People need to put a LOT more effort for aromantic and asexual representation, and so a lot of writers don't put in much effort to try to make it clear. A lot of it still does come from erasure and stuff but at the same time, as someone who wants to get into writing myself I can easily see how it is a lot more complicated to represent compared to other queer topics.
@@Savariable I mean you could have a character ask them something along the lines of "And what about you? Do you got a special someone?", since these conversations are both small-talk and often enough occur in reality to not feel forced. Aro/ace character could answer with something like "Nope, not my thing. Never been in love either, and I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon." You could obviously alter that conversation to fit the specific sexuality and clear up misconceptions, but a conversation like that takes less than two minutes and is easy to do in every genre. Aro/ace being a sexuality of absence only means that it's hard to show, but telling should be easy. To add to OP's comment, what also drives me nuts is fandom reactions to a heavily implied aro/ace character. Saiki K for example is an anime about a dude with psychic powers who just wants to be left alone and is heavily aro/ace coded. He shows no interest towards the two girls that desperately try to grab his attention. But for some reason, some parts of the fandom take that as a "he must be gay then" (despite him never showing any interest in guys either), instead of a "maybe he's just aro/ace". It seems that we are completely non-existent to them.
I think a lot about Lake from Infinity Train, who was intended to be nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. Cartoon Network didn't let the show do that, essentially leaving them ciswashed, but the character ended up... so aggressively nonbinary that basically everyone in the fanbase calls them they/them anyway. I always find that interesting - sometimes the coding comes through despite censorship.
"Aggressively Non-binary" I love this. Goes to show what a fanbase can do. It's so annoying that Cartoon Network just didn't make them non-binary in the first place or even now just confirm it because of how well of a reception they've had by viewers. It's so stupid
Surprised you didn't mention Arcane. One of the writers really fought for the second best line in the series ("you're hot, cupcake"), and the execs tried to say it was out of character, but truthfully, it was the most in-character thing she could have said. And still they quibbled.
Even if she was straight it would have been in character (not that she is). Trying to tell argue that the no nonsense street kid who doesnt put on airs.. would suddenly decide to not be direct? Executives are fools who see woman and cant imagine them being anything other than demure in respect to s3x and attractiveness.
@@boserboser6870 Vi literally has a line in league saying they need to hurry it up cause “I have a date, and she hates when I’m late.” As IF it’s out of character or she’s not fruity 😭
I want to see somebody make a movie (even if I have to write or co-write the script myself) from the perspective of characters who slowly realize that they're in a version of their world where some politically unacceptable aspect of their lives has been censored for conservative markets. It would start out as a mystery but progress to existential horror.
Ooh, which way are we talking? Do they literally realize they're fictional characters, or are they in some terrifying Truman Show situation in-universe?
@@perrisavallon5170 Or maybe it's a little bit more "somebody/something has altered reality to eliminate these things" and leave them ultimately unable to find out who/what is doing it all, and keep the censorship parallels in (heavy) subtext.
So, if he grew up watching Blaxploitation films... I'm assuming they somewhat inspired his passion for filmmaking, right? So why on Earth does he claim that Black people don't fit his aesthetic?
For Steven Universe, they kept censoring Ruby and Sapphire by presenting Ruby as a male coded Gem, so Rebecca Sugar fought to have Ruby in a dress and Sapphire in a suit for their wedding so it couldn’t be censored: As far as i know that’s the thing that got the show cancelled, bc they didn’t want to air it in other parts of the world
I hear this all the time but i have yet to find any evidence of Ruby having for example a male voice actor or being reffered to with male pronouns. I know they did't air certain episodes in some regions and toned some voice lines down, but i think the original claim is mostly BS.
Deadpool is one of my favorite characters in comics. Seeing his insatiable thirst for literally anything with a pulse regardless of species or gender (not children obviously) made me very very very sad. Like the whole point of Deadpool is that he not only has a super high libido, but he doesn’t care who he has sex with as long as it’s consensual.
Yessssss it is hilarious, and as a bi girl the erasure of destiny and rogue's story when it comes to mystique has always had me pissed lol they just put her with all four of the male leads in the movies RIP
While your description is correct in a way, the sequel to Deadpool was very obviously trying to adapt Deadpool's relationship with Lady Death. In the comics it's his most standard relationship, and when it comes to Deadpool, about his only real love story. I'm queer. I love Deadpool. And I had 0 problem with this depiction because I still think at the end of the day they got the character right.
Ngl he gets straight-washed a lot in the comics too. Any time he shows attraction towards men it's either something that can be played off as a joke (see; his interactions with Thor, Wolverine or Frank Castle), something that can be written off as just "totally just a very close male friendship ha ha" like with Cable or pure unrelenting queerbait/fujobait like with the Spideypool series. He should've had at least one genuine reciprocal thing with a man (or been with Cable years ago but that's a whole other story 💀) by this point imo.
Please keep in mind that the "cousins" censorship of Sailor Moon was only in the 90s English dub. There has been a more recent English dub that keeps their romantic relationship, as well as the relationship between Zoisite and Kunzite (though their relationship was only romantic in the 90s anime, not in Crystal or the original manga)
One case of severe straight washing that always bugs me is Hercules (or Heracles, whatever). The dude was bi hands down, but he had a huge list of male lovers. And still, in every single piece of media he's represented as a straight guy. Of course a mythological figure as him, who's supposed to represent strength and masculinity at its finest can't be depicted as something other than straight. And not just him, half the male gods, mythological heroes and heII, historical figures canonically bi from Ancient Greece/Rome are always straight washed in the most unapologetical way.
An archilles even :( , i mean ther seems be the marvels loosely based but else, yeah the great thing is gods were relative indicriminate, like a bloody zodiac, is one of zeuses lovers. and yeah even hera is pretty indiscriminate going after zeuses lovers there. and thats near all of the gods, except hades is pretty loyal, apearently, an hestia, and maybe athena ace
That would be the male half lol there was nothing more masculine to the ancient Greek and Romans than to be so magnetically male enough to have a stream of male lovers...
Artemis and Athena were essentially canonically aroace in the mythology. It one of the poems (I can’t remember which), it says that Aphrodite (love and sex) holds no power over them. Unfortunately, this is because of misogynistic ideals in Ancient Greece, so yeah. Most queer rep in Greek mythology is because of misogyny, actually.
@Ella Haha No I wonder if artemis was maybe demi romantic, but there's argument for anything, we'll never really know the original intension or which story was the original interpretation, and on the aroace side of the spectrum either way
Im a 30 year old queer woman Growing up in a small rural area in ireland, i hardly saw myself in popular media so much to the point that i had no idea i was queer. I thought my friendships with other girls were just intense, that i just hadnt met a boy i liked, maybe when im older ill be more girly, etc. It was only when i joined tumblr and began to be exposed to different media, different ideas, different people, that i had a sexual identity crisis. It made me question everything i knew growing up and i finally realised i was queer. Queerness in media is so important. If i had seen myself sooner in movies or tv, it wouldve saved me a lot of heart ache
Completely agree. I didn't know asexuality was an option. Just thought maybe I was a late bloomer and hadn't found the right guy ... Still happy, single, and childfree at 42 😜
@@lkf8799Same. Had a boyfriend because thats what you are supposed to do and was absolutely perplexed to realize that people really are that sex-obsessed and that its not just exagerated propaganda to make people reproduce.
Straightwashing will continue to exist, but I wanna say representation matters. When I first saw She-Ra, or the owl house I cried, because as a lesbian woman of 24 it would have been amazing to see this type of animation when I was younger. But I also cried for all the queer kids that will watch it and feel like they are not alone, beacuse that's what I needed.
Owl House was really great and wholesome, but tbh the main relationship in She-Ra is extremely toxic and not a great example of how a relationship should be, like I wouldn't want my kids to think that their relationships should be like that at all. Not to mention, the creator of that show and various other members of the creative team are just... assholes.
@@amiccus_ Yeah, The Owl House is great, but I could not finish She-Ra for the life of me. The dynamic between Catra and Adora was painful to watch, and I honestly have to say that as a bi person it helped me accept my own queerness far less, I had always been taught being sapphic was inherently toxic, and the fact that this was shown on screen only reaffirmed what had been already ingrained in my psyche. Obviously this isn't the only cause of my internalized biphobia but it did not make things any better.
@@amiccus_ I don't know the background of the creators. She-Ra is the first sapphic cartoon I watched so it has a special place in my heart. Yes, Catra is not the best character, but I didn't think of the toxic relationship because I have watched it as an adult. All I can say is that besides all of that that's still tons of lgbt+ representation that I never saw. I think that's the silver lining.
@@ameliasellers6396 I mean we are taught that being gay is wrong and that's all we know for so long. Their relationship being flawed, for me at least, it's a sign that even wlw relationship can be flawed, we are all human. But then again seeing this as an adult might have made me biased
The fact that the studio thought a straight, white, cishet man was a good choice to direct a movie about a black lesbian woman is pretty telling to begin with.
That's complicated, I think. No Hollywood studio in 1985 thought making a movie about a black lesbian woman was worth doing at all. It happened the other way around - Spielberg is, without much competition, the most commercially successful director of all time, he made it in his own studio (Amblin), and it's because he wanted to make the movie that it got to the screen at all, and was as widely distributed and watched and reviewed and nominated as it was. Which is not to say that's an ok state of affairs, it's certainly not, but that is the reality of the time. Should Spielberg have made the movie? That's a complicated question too. Color Purple was the first major studio movie centering black women. The only thing that comes close was the Lady Sings the Blues - the 1972 Motown film about Billie Holiday staring Diana Ross. It was definitely the first centering multiple black women and black lesbian women. Spielberg had just come off 8 record busting hits in a row - Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, etc. He could do anything he wanted. His name was gold, it basically guaranteed a hit. And he decided to make this movie, he decided to use his uniquely massive privilege in industry to platform some of the least represented people. He didn't retell the story centering white people, like SOOO many of the Civil Rights movies. I think it's easy to underestimate how revolutionary that was for mainstream Hollywood at the time. 3 black women were nominated for Oscars from the Color Purple, the first time more than one black woman had been nominated in the same film, and never for an explicitly lesbian role. Point being, could an adaptation of the Color Purple done a better job representing black lesbian women? Absolutely. Did Spielberg make choices that water-down the book (including adding a happy ending)? Absolutely. But let's also not lose sight of how much better a job The Color Purple did of representing black lesbian women than the prior 60 years of US cinema.
@@camipco Thanks for this perspective. I didn't know the history of the film adaptation. It's still a shame he watered down the sapphic relationship and the lesbian identity of the main character, but we can appreciate the big stride forward. What's sad is that 4 decades later, studios still operate the same way as if the strides of The Color Purple adaptation were the finish line rather than a good start to a longer journey.
@@stormagedon3852 I mean. It was still made to be quite palatable for general audiences. None of the gay characters are particularly flamboyant or femme. And they don't even mention that Mark Ashton was a communist.
@@Pan-optic never said that's not true just that it's hilarious to remove all hint of queerness in the marketing of the film when it is one that's very explicitly about queers
@@stormagedon3852 No, that's fair, I wasn't disagreeing with you. Just adding that you can still have movies about queers that are kind of acceptable-washed for non-queer audiences.
@@Pan-optic people shout anti communist insults at him and one of the first scenes of the film has his apartment with a big ol' hammer and sickle on the wall?
I think one of the WORSE offenders of straight washing is Da Vinci demons. The show, for the most part, forgot Da Vinci was gay and gave him a female love interest.
I think I watched the first season of that, cause it seemed a little bit promising at the start with good character/actor combos, but then at the end I realized that the ladies had been called multiple variations of 'hole' more than their actual names and just deleted it's entire existence from my brain. Never look back.
Also he is , yeah, like if they kept him ace, that would be fine, disapointing but be fine, but the really distracting romance, whyyyy. The only good thing is vlad and that frienemy he has,
Calling antiquity figures gay is a bit inaccurate. Before individualism became accepted, personal identities like that weren’t really a thing. You would be more accurate saying Greco-Roman culture was bi, but individuals were not really allowed to have sexualities, and at the very least “gay” would have had a very different meaning. Sexuality for an individual (versus enforced by what is good for society) is a modern concept, gender is context dependent, and both are very valid identities today, but really weren’t in the past (before early 1800s or if you really want to stretch it to philosophers, the 1600s at the earliest in European culture), and likely won’t be in the future (I’ve talked to multiple professors who specialize in this, including one from Harvard, and they are in agreement that we are likely moving towards a “universal queer” where everyone agrees that no labels perfectly apply to anyone, and society as a whole rejects labels; this is probably at least a couple of generations away, but could happen in some of our lifetimes). Edit: for an example that showed same sex desire but avoided the anachronism of “sexuality as identity”, see The Favourite; there was undeniably some queer desire happening, but given it was set in a time when most didn’t even get to choose their own “straight” partners, the idea of “not marrying a man” was never even considered by any of the characters (except maybe the queen). This is what I mean when I say sexuality wasn’t really a thing until individualism came in preaching self-determination.
The show runners wanted to do an Assassins Creed movie and didn't think to look up anything about Da Vinci, even though Assassins Creed pointed out he was gay.
It's much better nowadays, but it pains me to remember the kinda shit Sailor Moon did to appease homophobes. "They're cousins" was their "They were roommates."
@@bobmanperson599 Yeah, while I think its a tad bit better now, personally I'd say that the dark magical girl subgenre has done the most damage to this entire genre, as it was mostly made by men for men and you know they went down hill from there.
@@bobmanperson599 I find it funny, that , oh you didnt straghtwash it, you want jut localize with sweet hiome alabama. And how they made the starlets trans to cover up the same sex?! But its a crime they left out in the rose movie the bickring of the girls about how that dude is really havig something with mamoro. And they made one dud of th first main 4, into not a dude , which makes no sense. (also good couple)
Huh? aren't most modern Magical Shows super gay, even when they don't outright say it? Madoka, Nanoha, Precure, Symphogear, etc. even the classics like Sailor Moon and CCS had gay shit even if the main couple was F/M.
Talking about Peter Quill, not only was he definitely not a womanizer who slept around with every woman who crossed his path, but his team also had a lesbian couple that was cut out of the movies, and I suspect won't really appear in the last one. Sigh. I know cutting those two probably had more to do with Disney, but what Gunn did to Quill was all him tbh.
I didn't mind the womanizer aspect of Quill because it fit into his character growth as a broken young man who never felt like he had connections in the galaxy, as the movies progressed he most certainly lost a lot of those womanizing traits (although sadly mostly because he became focused on Gamora, which is nice in its own way, we likely won't ever see a bisexual Star Lord in the MCU)
@@darkmask5933 The thing is: it doesn't fit with Quill, not with the comic version of Quill that inspired Gunn, and I feel that version was much more complex and interesting than what we got. Of course changes need to be made in adaptation, believe me I get that, but I feel like the "dumb womanizer man who grows up to be decent" trope is already quite common and Gunn didn't really bring anything new to the table. I know I'm alone on this boat because very few people read the 2007-2009 version of Quill, and because the GotG movies are good on their own so no one really cares except me lol
@@mekinot Yeah I get you, no I'm not trying to discount your feelings, Gunn completely reshaped the Guardians, Rocket also was completely and irreversibly revamped as well, nowadays you won't find anyone who isn't more familiar with his modern personality.
Honestly comic book Starlord prior to the movie being released was pretty boring and generic. Just a cookie cuter flyboy who also happens to be the lost heir to a galactic empire. He was basically Luke Skywalker but with less personality. I do like he very much in the more recent comics though. I’d love to see Phyla-Vell and Moondragon. Although I can see why they were cut. It’s already a lot of characters to introduce all at once.
I remember people straightwashing Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets to the universe. Everyone always framed the book as two lonely boys form an amazing friendship which is true but it’s also a romance. It took a queer booktuber mentioning that fact for me to finally read the book. It’s one of my favorite books to this day but I almost never read it because no one wanted to just say it was a queer romance.
wait for real? that's so obnoxious lol. i'm guessing the people straightwashing it hoped that people would ignore the giant Stonewall Award sticker on many reprints of the book.
Why, thats why aything i open when you code gay relationship as "just friends" o course people will read that a gay, becaue a lot are. Why would youplay down, a good romance.
hey rowan! just wanted to let you know how much your book and channel mean to me. i’m a 14-y/o queer girl and your book has helped me so much! i got it for christmas and was sooo happy. i originally found you through your video about luca, and your channel has cultivated such a safe and welcoming environment for me. i’m so ecstatic to have the book! thank you for everything you do :))
I remember watching Modern family and seeing Cam and Mitchell never kissing or really being affectionate in general. It always bothered me when I saw all the other straight couples kissing and cuddling but they weren't. Straight-washing, the perfect word for it.
I was surprised to hear that because the show does a full 180 in the later seasons. The clip that comes to mind is them aggressively making out and Mitch full on straddling Cam lol
My mom was very distracted by what she called, your perfect hair. A perfect color, perfect cut, and perfect style combo. She wanted to tell you, thank you.
Deadpool is stated as pansexual but there is never a moment where he is romantically or sexually attracted to a man that is not written to a similar fashion as a looney toon. Where any emotion is treated seriously or not undercut with a joke. Almost every major storyline Deadpool has in the comics has a focus with a serious emotional attachment to a women. It's something mentioned by authors outside of the text like gay Dumbledore. His stories are so straightwashed it just dives into poor queerbaiting to me.
@@dundundun7215 Just because a story is dark doesn't mean it's deep. Also, charliejacobs issue with MLM relationships being played off as a joke is very prevalent in that story.
to be fair, nothing about deadpool is serious; he is an entirely joke character, so ofc none of the queer representation is gonna be very serious. I do wish we had more onscreen queer superheros though.
Not necessarily defending Disney here, but many of the Marvel characters you mentioned weren’t canonized as queer in the comics until after they were introduced in the movies. Loki was confirmed as Genderqueer in 2014 after he had already appeared in three movies. Although the character has been subtextually queer going back to the Nordic legends. Iceman came out as gay in the comics in 2015, almost a decade after the movies in which he appeared were released. Starlord wasn’t revealed to be bi until 2020… so recently that he has yet to appear in a movie since the reveal. The only two who could qualify as straight-washed are Valkyrie, who was confirmed as bi in 2012, 5 years before Thor: Ragnarok; and Mystique, who Chris Claremont wrote as queer way back in the 70’s although he wasn’t allowed to explicitly state her sexuality at the time. I love Marvel comics (clearly) and they really are VERY queer, especially when you compare them to their cinematic counterparts, but this is actually a remarkably recent development.
Iceman was assumed gay for a while. Kitty was also written to be queer by CC. But yeah, essentially queer characters didn't really start popping up in the mainstream of Marvel until the 2010s. Wherein which characters like Karolina Dean and Val were made queer from the jump
I didn’t know what bisexual was until Brittany s. Pierce said “bicorn” in season 3 of glee. I asked my gay friend and he told me the definition and in that moment it clicked into place. I was 14. And I understood myself immediately. How would I feel if I knew sooner?
Kinda disappointed that, when talking about comicbook straightwashing, you didn't mention the instance of explicit aphobia, when Jughead Jones' asexuality and aromanticism was straightwashed (allowashed) for "a more adult storyline" in Riverdale. Particularly because he is one example of a character who's orientation is 'incidental' in the original work (as aceness often is), but the character behaves in ways that are unrecognizable when that orientation is changed.
@@camipco Yeah, but it's still a great example of queer erasure because (a) the creators who did it were so gleeful in doing so in interviews yet get a pass because of the other visibility in their show and (b) even other aces trot out the 'um AKSHULLY there's a multiverse because comics so only Zdarsky's version is allowed to be ace' chestnut (see earlier comments about Jughead under this video). I've never seen an example of a queer character who's erasure in an adaptation is so defended & celebrated as his, and it is entirely rooted in how many people just don't count asexuality.
@@melasnexperience Oh I definitely agree it's queer erasure. I'm just saying Rowan has spoken to this exact topic, even if she doesn't in this particular video. Here's some videos from Rowan about Ace representation: th-cam.com/video/2YJFXqipVOI/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RowanEllis th-cam.com/video/P6v1J7kQv_c/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RowanEllis th-cam.com/video/FV7C4xos5pY/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RowanEllis
one thing worth thinking about for modern family is that the writers have said they were very aware that some of the people watching might be put off by a gay relationship so they tried to get everyone on board with just seeing Cam and Mitch as people who happened to be gay so that people who might not have considered themselves pro gay marriage found themselves rooting for Cam and Mitch's marriage. They had the character arc of unconvinced about gay marriage to being supportive for Jay on the show. It's not great at representation, but I hope that it did manage to make some people who'd been on the fence realise that people just want to marry the people they love regardless of gender
And it worked, in that Modern Family had really high numbers from a Conservative / red-state audience. Like for a lot of Americans, that was the first gay couple they saw on tv. Yeah, it's absolutely integrationist and homonormative, but there's a lot of people who are only ready for homonormative.
It's also my understanding that one of the actors is gay, and the other is not, and it took the hetero actor a bit to get used to the idea of kissing a gay man and did t want to do so at first. Of course, if it was scripted and he couldn't do it, they probably would have cast someone else.
hi id just like to point out that the creator of she-ra has fairly recently (june 2022) come out as transmasc? (not sure what specific label he uses), uses he/him and changed his name to Nate. just for future reference :)
People complain how “Netflix makes everything gay!” when really it’s just allowed a closer to proportionate degree of representation to start existing in media.
The overlooking of Mystique's bisexuality in the X-Men movies is more aggravating when we keep in mind that they intentionally the second movie as attempting to cast mutant identity as a metaphor for queer identity. They even had Iceman 'come out' to his family and suffer rejection from his brother.
the thing is, you act as though there is one single comic with that character, you act as though the timeline where they are gay is THE timeline, iceman was an original xman, one of the first comic books stan lee ever wrote, you are asking movie makers to ignore 800 issues of straight character for one issue of a mediocre lgbtq romance
@@captainstabbin5374 No. I act as though they used mutant identity as an analogy for queer identity, but left characters that are canonically queer in the closet because actually saying what they wanted to say was too scary for them in 2003. And in almost every movie that followed in the franchise.
@@captainstabbin5374 To you, it's a fact. But to all of us, we know it's another shit take. They weren't asking movie markers to ignore "straight characters", I don't know where you got that from. Y'all be putting words into everything that fits your own narrative. Just like how y'all will claim anything is "woke" "political" "pushing an agenda" or "forced" that involves minorities in media nowadays, and when we call you guys out for having an opinion that's so not popular, y'all act like martyrs who are being wrongfully oppressed.
What's funny about Sailor Moon is that the same company did the dub in Spanish. And in Spanish, they were allowed to be lesbian lovers where in English they became Cousins.
I did a paper that started out focusing on compulsory heterosexuality and ended up focusing a lot on erasure of female sexuality, but the media ties into this as well. I myself just came out as a lesbian after 11 1/2 years of being married to a man, 8 of which I identified as bi during. I am so thankful he's supportive of me and my newfound sexuality but because of lack of representation and education, I didn't have a safe space to explore my sexuality and I am not alone in this. Now I try to search out queer media anywhere I can but it is shockingly difficult to find.
If you’re comfortable, would you comment on how you figured out you were lesbian instead of bi? I’ve identified as bi for the last 10 years but definitely lean more toward women, and I’d like to hear your perspective
@@highonquack6622 Hi , absolutely! My partner and I are polyam but I never had the confidence to date a woman. When I finally did, everything clicked. All the feelings I had that didn't make sense fit and all the things I related to me being weird or having a low sex drive just vanished. My partner is wonderful and supportive so it wasn't just a wrong man scenario. For the first time I believed I was sexy and I craved everyrhing about her. It still took me a few more months to realize it but looking back, I never thought about boys, but it seemed like I had to be with one. Plus I grew up in a small town where no one came out until after they moved away.
@@ashlin8326 thank you for sharing, and I'm glad you understand yourself better now! Hearing about other people's experiences really helps put my own into perspective. Wishing you a beautiful, Sapphic life
Straightwashing is a thing in literature too! The original French version of the Count of Monte Cristo had a pretty explicitly lesbian character, whereas in the ubiquitous British translation Eugenie's queerness was downplayed and made super vague
Honestly, I just read it for the first time recently, and I'm not sure if I had a more recent translation, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that they were gay. At least, as obvious as it could possibly be without using terminology that I don't think existed yet at the time. Pretty much any time Eugenie is on page or being discussed by other characters it's pointed out how she clearly doesn't like men and spends all her time with her girlfriend, plus Dumas goes out of his way to describe them sleeping in the same bed in a hotel room that has two beds after they run away together. They never kiss or say anything blatantly romantic to each other, but their relationship is about as unmistakably sapphic as it could possibly be in the 19th century. A better example of straightwashing in literature would be the Picture of Dorian Gray, which had a censored version released that cut out Wilde's more blatant homoerotic subtext. Even still, it was considered gay enough that it was used as evidence against him in his trial.
In the Black Panther Wakanda Forever script, Aneka had a couple of scenes which were cut, including a scene with just her and Ayo, Aneka’s whole storyline of leaving the Dora and rejoining at the end got cut, and in the forehead kiss scene, in the script Aneka and Ayo kiss on the lips after.
Speaking of straightwashing, I always find it wild that the first I ever heard of Bayard Rustin was in a biography aimed at kids… that never mentioned he was gay. I remember reading it and thinking “why haven’t I heard of this person before?” Didn’t learn he was gay until years later, despite having read a whole biography about him
There was a PBS documentary about Stonewall that straight up ignored Marsha P. Johnson, which just goes way farther than biopics do. Biopics massage the truth, but documentaries are supposed to BE the truth. The audacity.
I know rowan does a lot of research and that some stuff just gets missed, but I literally had to pause when I heard that error because it caught me off guard here in a cultivated safe space.
Professionally, he goes by ND (pronounced Indy) because he still wants all his work connected under one title, so ND would have actually been more appropriate when referring to him
Your speech towards the end about how representation helps us realize our feelings are okay and normal is so true. Took me a long time to accept I was asexual. A big reason for that was because I didn’t know it was a thing for so long. I often wondered why I was so different, why I never had sexual dreams or crushes in the same way as others did. I tried to fit in by choosing my crushes and dating whoever wanted to date me. I remember getting shocked looks when I said I felt nothing when I kissed my partner and had no desire to keep doing it. Most of all though I remember crying to myself, thinking I was broken and that I would never find love. Even after I learned about asexuality, I didn’t want to identify with it because I thought that it would be proof I would never find love. And then when I finally admitted it, started researching it, and accepting it - I felt such a huge relief and now I’m happy and proud to say I’m asexual. I also have a lovely boyfriend who accepts who I am too!
I know it's a small thing, but I appreciate you putting the quotes in full for me to screenshot and save for reference later, than like splitting it up into 6 slides. Great essay as always Rowan!
I was stunned to learn how many authirs of children's books, books I grew up with and are now reading to my kids, where LGBT+. My family works in the queer community and runs a pride-based business but these lives had been lived so quietly and without recognition, we're only discovering their contributions today.
Jughead wasn’t necessarily straight washed. A recent writer made him aroace, I was happy when I first heard about it. But Archie is a series and it has multiple universes. Jughead was in relationships in past comics being in a love triangle himself and being married to Midge. The fact Riverdale is a dumpster fire makes me relieved my rare representation isn’t shown there
I wish original authors would start putting this stuff in their contracts. Like, yes, you may adapt my queer book/play into a movie (for a boatload of cash) as long as it's a queer movie. I'm not sure how you'd qualify a 'queer movie' but I'm sure the lawyers could come up with something. Of course the blame lies with the people actually doing the straightwashing, but it wouldn't hurt to force their hand a bit.
I think they did that in The Old Guard. The author insisted that the scene between Joe and Nicky talking about their love be included in the film and he put it in his contract.
Original authors should write plays instead of novels. Playwrights have control over adaptations which authors don't. If you're in the Dramatists Guild, they can't straight wash your work.
Whenever straightwashed biopics are mentioned the first example I think about is 1965's "The Agony and the Ecstasy". The worst part is that Charlton Heston refused the rights for the film to be used in the 1995 documentary "The Celluloid Closet" because he swore that Michelangelo was straight when, by historical accounts, he was at least bisexual. Talking about Mr. Heston, I wonder if he ever found out that he played a queer character in Ben-Hur and didn't even know it.
@Embreis No, he didn't. It's a well known story that Gore Vidal, the writer, and the actor playing Marsala came up with the idea of playing Marsala as if he'd been Ben Hur's lover when they were young, but knew Heston would have a fit and so they didn't tell him. The result was a level of uncomfortableness in Heston's performance that fit, in story, as if Ben Hur didn't want to admit it happened, and Marsala is getting ticked off about the rejection.
* gets out my spiked bat for the “X character was straightwashed because they’re a bi/pan that is in an opposite gender relationship” comments * …I’ve been hurt too many times
31:04 just a heads up. ND Stevenson, the creator of She-ra, goes by Nate now and uses he/him pronouns otherwise, great video. very interesting discussion of this aspect of cisheteronormativity in media
also a really prominent example is sailor uranus and sailor neptune from sailor moon who were called “cousins” in the dub despite being very very obviously dating and girlfriends. they didn’t even go the “best friends” route which would’ve been bad but at least not incest.
Also funny because the same company did the Spanish dub, where they were lesbians. So it was essentially stating that Latin America would be chill but Americans think literal incest is better
@@caterpillarking I just think that DiC didn't realize the implication of the censorship, nor did they know about all of the physical affection the two showed for each other in the original show. "Oh they aren't kissing or having sex on screen? We can work around that lol" Remember, the dubbing process back in the 90s isn't at all how it is today.
When I was a preteen, my mom told me that when she was a teenager, she had once made out with her female friend and that it was totally normal for girls to think about kissing their female friends. So when I used to fantasize about making out with my one friend I convinced myself that it was normal. Now that I have become more open and seen more queer representation in the media I realized I am bisexual and had a crush on her. Queer representation really changed my perception of myself.
Love actually also cut a storyline with between 2 African characters. It didn't keep all the straight storylines it kept all the straight white storylines
It amused me that dad was mad at "The Imitation Game" about Turing, because they made him gay. ... this amused me greatly. As a "history buff" himself, i am very suprised dad did not ever find out anything about turing, and genuinely believes that this is hollywood trying to change history. Historywas changed a long time ago, and now we are in the often frustrating process of trying to un-change it.
i wanna add how Rebecca Sugar added a diamond scene to Garnets wedding so the wedding scene cannot be cut out and that's how the next episode started. when they crashed Garnet's wedding. Because if the scene was cut out, it wouldn't make sense. I also saw how people pointed out that Ruby was wearing a dress and Sapphire a suit, even tho Ruby was often more 'male presenting' and Sapphire more 'fem presenting' which of course they could wear it anyways, but for example in the Russian dub Ruby is voiced by a man apparently.. so people talked how it would be awkward in that specific dub, ofc we don't know if that was Rebecca's intention. But the wedding scene was a smart move.
I'm not sure about the voice actor in the Russian dub, could be a man could be a woman, that's not important. But they did change Ruby's pronouns to he/him and it was really annoying. And when they could not pretend that Ruby is a man anymore (the wedding scene) they just stopped broadcasting the show. I had to rewatch the whole thing in English.
On the biopic, this is why I love Ammonite (2020) so so much. They take a person from real life, the paleontologist Mary Anning, and despite not knowing her sexuality they made her queer in the movie. I love that so much, because straight is not the default, we don’t know what we don’t know, and her queerness made the narrative 100% more interesting. Also Kate Winslet’s interviews about the movie are great, I love how enthusiastic she was to portray this role, and I love how the director Francis Lee defended his choice to depict her as queer when homophobic audiences complained. More biopic directors should take some notes smh. Edit: also it’s pretty laughable to me that people don’t include queer characters in war movies when like… most of the men on the front be f*ckin lmao. The inherent homoeroticism of fighting for your life beside your lover… Also also on the topic of more historical erasure, I HATE any depictions of Greek or Roman times without any semblance of MLM romance. Like you’re just doing it wrong, it’s not accurate at all, if you don’t want to depict generals with male lovers don’t make Roman movies or shows unless it’s after a certain era where homosexuality was banned.
I think another form of straightwashing could be characters who are queer for comedic reasons but straight whenever they get some development. I think this comes from writers who want to make jokes at the expense of queer without any self-reflection, but also from trying to fit queercoded vibes into normativity without actually challenging LGTBphobia.
John Barrowman's character Captain Jack Harkness from Dr. Who is a wildly popular character in the show and in Torchwood, and is one of my favorite queer characters in a series personally. I don't remember if we ever saw him kiss another man, but the Doctor makes sure to set him up with Toby from Space Titanic before transitioning to 11. It truly was lovely to see.
harkness is one of those characters you just can't really straightwash, honestly doctor who has been surprisingly one of the more progressive franchises over the years
Jack kisses 9 in Series 1 ep 13: The Parting of the Ways and has a relationship with his co-worker throughout the first 3 series of Torchwood + another time agent in Series 2 and a guy from the past in Series 4.
Very late to the party but I wanted to add my answer to whenever people ask 'what's the big deal?' in regards to the importance of representation in media: Representation equals normalization and normalization will cut down on the violence committed against queer folk outside their community. Not eliminate, because there are always going to be haters, but at least allow queer folk to move in every community without a perpetual underlying fear of being targeted because of their sexuality. This, for me, is the most important purpose in having representation of queer folk in all forms of media.
Extremely interested on people's thoughts on the straightwashing of Homelander since he is canonically bisexual in the comics and contentious for people as a character, and because the way Kripke's re-adapted The Boys' source material and the allegories within it might make him _not_ being part of a marginalized group more powerful for the show's messaging. But then on the other hand, you have the argument that Amazon and a straight showrunner shouldn't be making the decision that a character's queerness is okay to omit if it's too uncomfortable or potentially challenging for them to face as writers. 🤷
would people get mad anyway? "yay we have a bisexual character. we don't care how he behaves!" like when people can't decide if they enjoy gay villains or "stop making the bad guy gay, it says gays are bad guys"
Speaking of networks straight-washing fully queer moments, I used to work for a tv network in the Middle East (specifically known for showing unedited movies in a region where the government would HEAVILY edit movies showing in the cinema). There was a internal memo that leaked to the wider company that they weren’t going to air the Modern Family episode where Cam and Mitchell got married! There was a HUGE push back internally from both the queer and non queer workers (mostly the westerners, and I had some big arguments with some my “more religious” colleagues about why it should air…). Thankfully the company “apologised” and aired it but with a warning about the content before it, which was fucking stupid as anyone who watches the show knows there is a gay couple with kids ffs!
Here's my question: who is participating in these "test screening"? Like, where do they pull that audience from? Is this LA? Is it Ohio (the testing ground for the united states)? Do these people sign up and are doing this as a part time job? What is the socio-economical make up of that audience because it feels like a constant sticking point (or scapegoat) for executives when they end up with egg on their faces. "Oh, we WANTED to put the gay stuff in, but, darn it, those "test audience" didn't like it so we could we do?" Oh idk, maybe fill your test audience with folks that are actually part of your intended audience?!?! *heavy sigh of gayness*
Honestly though... they're very obviously reinforcing their biases but because it's culture it's somehow invisible and acceptable. Imagine if their testing audience for "feminine hygiene products" (I honestly find the term a little silly but I don't know a more inclusive replacement for non-cis, non-binary ppl) was purely men 💀
I will say, it seems like in comics its a lot easier to lean more heavily in lesbian nods than gay male nods. It's unfortunately part of that coding where girl on girl is more palatable to heterosexual audiences cause "hurr hurr girl on girl is hot", while boy on boy is considered "icky". Even in something that is see as very LGBT-positive like HBO's Harley Quinn, it leans heavily in lesbian/bisexual female appeals, even making Catwoman a confirmed bisexual, but there is really no homosexual representation. Not demanding "fair is fair", but you see it in things like She-Ra, The Owl House, and Steven Universe as well (even Avatar/Korra), its a little easier nowadays to show it if it involves women. The only (and single best) piece of comic book homosexual fair I can think of off the top of my head was when it was confirmed Constantine used to date a very muscular bruiser King Shark. Honestly I feel a big part of it seems to stem from people having no idea how to wright a gay male heroic character. Lesbian heroes seem to work easier since they can just be written as badass and its enough of a queer codifier that they could be gay/bi. Meanwhile if you try to wright a male queer hero, there seems to be an inherent need to make them 'act' gay, somehow make them more feminine. Comic books at least get this right because Deadpool and Constantine are just two badasses who happen to not care what people have between their legs, but in movies or TV Shows, a gay male hero has to be like more obviously gay.
I'd hazard a guess that it's mostly just because comic book readers are mostly (heterosexual) men. I don't know how many women read comic books, but I cannot imagine the number being anywhere near 50% for there to be equal leaning for both lesbian and gay characters. It is a little sad that to be a heroic character, you have to erase any expression of femininity though. A very 'obvious' gay should also have the same opportunities to be heroic and powerful as any 'butch' ones; at the same time very masculine gay characters should also be afforded to be gay in all ways possible, be that very queer relationships or other characteristics. As a gay man I do feel very alone in terms of superhero characters. Especially living in a non-US or non-UK country where American superhero comics aren't as popular. Thank god for fanfics filling that void for me.
Honestly, the only gay male hero I can think of is Midnighter (although I think he's more of an anti-hero). He is treated as a badass dude, but thinking it through, his partner Apollo doesn't get much of the same treatment? Sure he looks big and masculine, but somehow always ends up becoming a damsel in distress and even a victim of SA, to be saved by his cool badass boyfriend, which never sat right with me.
@@An1llusion in the west maybe. over in [east] Asia their form of comic (manga, manhwa or manhua) attracts quite another audience. also have a look at _yaoi_ or _danmei_
@@embreis2257 Isn't that media is often made by straight women for straight women and fetishises gay relationships? Kinda the mirror of lesbian issue in the west?
dumbledore and grindelwald are such a good example of how studios and writers at the same time do the minimum to include queerness and at the same time don't dare to actually present the topic properly for fear of losing a homophobic audience
I mean in the case of dumbledore, it was less about "losing homophobic audience" and more about trying to distract the *very* present queer audience from finding out about her transphobic, racist, and antisemetic views. It was an effort to say "Look! I cant be bigoted now!! I just right now decided that a character is gay!" when people were slowly realising how antisemitism and racism ridden both her books and the movies were, and she brought it up again when people initially found out about her strong transphobia. She knew the biggest part of her active fandom were "progressive" or queer, so she used (and continues to use new "diverse characters") it as a cover-up to convince her "progressive" audience to stay, not to cater to homophobic audiences.. She was already catering to those audiences. Her "diverse characters" are as one-dimensional, not to mention harmfully depicted, as she can get away with (her trans woman character is literally named 'sir ona' and is voiced by a man...). If anything, she has only queer baited, because it was very clear that she did not intent for any diversity in the first place. Also, PSA for anyone wondering, do not give your money to anything HP related, that money is actively used to fund anti-lgbt movements that are having seriously negative effects in the UK right now. That includes not streaming the movies, the fantastic franchise, not downloading or buying the games (yes even the free mobile game), and do not buy any merch related to it.
the one that frustrates me the most (so much so i have a list) is characters that could've been bi, or were planned to, and that was simply cut from their character for no real reason. so many examples
This reminds me of all those angry parents who were mad that Disney put a gay kiss scene in the latest Buzz Lightyear movie. To those parents I say: Get over it. It’s not that big of a deal.
I remember a reviewer basically going on a rant on how parents don't know to tell their kids that lesbians exist. And after that she got called out for her shit but she hides her "apology and explanation" behind a paywall. So you have to pay for her saying a bunch of shit
The only thing that made me upset about the kiss was the fact that it was easy to cut out when shown in other countries, but that's the closest thing we're going to get from Disney when it comes to Queer rep without it seeming forced so it's not too bad I guess just wish they could do better.
The instance of queer stories not marketed as queer continues, with a recent example being the first season of Our Flag Means Death. None of the marketing for the first season even implied it could be gay and then turned out to be a love letter to the queer community with such an array of queer characters. It really is wild to think that this still happens, though then again the show was cancelled after season 2 despite glowing reviews so it just goes to show how much of a hold homophobia has on the production and marketing of media
I grew up being obsessed, really really obsessed with Hans Christen Anderson stories. I even watched the musical with Danny Kaye in it (which is a mahusive bit of straightwashing) and I didn't learn how one of the most beautifully tragic stories of love was really the expression of a man's love for another until I was 20. I feel robbed in a way, not knowing that since I fell in love with his stories since I was 4 but I'm so glad the knowledge came to me eventually. I can now see the queerness in so many of his fairy tales and it makes me love them all the more.
The Simpsons kind of have a lot of queer characters all around and they just kind of roll with it. Smithers and Lenny/Carl have been gay since the time of Matthew Shephard
Re superhero movies, specifically the MCU: the relationship between Captain America and the Winter Soldier, officially platonic hetero buddies, reads as considerably more loving, devoted, and directly queer than any of the intended official depictions of queerness or queer characters onscreen. Screenwriters have gone on record calling theirs a love story and describing them as soulmates. And yet, just roommates, bros, pals, OMG golly we just can't understand why people see a romantic relationship. Can't men just be friends anymore!!!?!?!? Meanwhile characters who are officially queer? Barely a whisper. Make it make sense
Also its just , not only terrible they didnt let them have an ambivalent relationship, steve has to bang peggies niece?! And Not be shown with bucky , the reason why th conflict o the movie happens? Thy didnt even left it at that but , had steve bang peggies niece. Yikes. It makes the movuis worse, by not even letting them be together ambivalent.
I loved what you said about older people saying things when someone comes out now indicating they could have been open to exploring queerness if they'd been born now. I was disowned by my family for being queer and I swear my mom is queer, but won't admit it to herself. Every time a she sees an attractive woman she's always commenting on their bodies, faces, hair.... EVERYTHING about how beautiful they are. My mom has really low self-esteem, so I grew up thinking it was an envy thing. Now, I'm sure she's attracted to other women. I'm sure there's still envy mixed in, but there's no doubt in my mind. Would her attraction to women ever be acted on? I severely doubt it. But still, it's soooooooo clear to me (and other people who know her). It's so sad that my mom is in such denial she can't admit it to herself. Granted, I was the same way once. I'd had sex with 2 women and told myself, "You've had sex with men too, you only had sex with those girls to rebel against your parents. It doesn't matter that you fantasize about women a lot. That you get crushes on them. You're just... You had sex with a man! That means you're straight." I truly felt that way due to my hyper-religious upbringing. I guess extreme denial runs in the family. I'm very glad I got over mine.
This might sound like a dumb question but how do you know when you have a crush on a woman? In high school I felt like I had crushes on girls but I'd always ignore them. I feel more comfortable with women than men so it felt different. And the envy thing you brought up. It was confusing whether I thought about their beauty because of a crush or because I envied them.
@@mismiserables Well I mean if you get crushes on boys it's the same in essence, of course culture can make denial go a long away but also, if you don't really have crushes on boys but do on girls... it's also kinda obvious there's a different thing happening, which sadly we're often coaxed into misunderstanding
12:00 what really annoys me about the superhero movies is that I see them with my aunt and cousin and when stuff like kisses and implied gay relationships happen I can see my aunt scowl at it. And the ride home she always says something about it, it makes me so mad. So one time after Enternals she said something and I said “but look at all the man and woman relationships, every one man and man relationship for every 500 woman and man relationships” She hasn’t mentioned anything since so that’s good. It still makes me mad though
Speaking of Tim Burton, I feel like Wednesday is another case where her being queer could have elevated the story. Her being Pan or even AroAce would ave been more true to the og character instead of thrusting her into the most basic netflix love triangle ever that really doesn’t feel like something she would do
i think Wednesday would only date as a way to get a test subject. She'd probably think it was funny how easy it is to manipulate boys, get bored, meet lesbian/bi girls that are just as thirsty (they exist- i went to middle school once), get bored, realize she wasn't really challenging herself, start "dating" more difficult prey, all the while racking up a victim count without putting too much suspicion on herself or the Adams family. And her character would be smart enough to do that.
HOLY SHIT! you just solved a 30 year mystery for me.[my trauma induced eidetic memory retains the weirdest shit] I remember when I was 10ish, we were asked what movie we wanted to watch in class for some reason that escapes me. I said a league of their own because I REALLY liked it and there wasn't any content in it that was inappropriate for our age group, or at least that's what I thought at the time, but the teacher was so angry she told me to never talk about that movie again in class. fuuuucccckkkk...
I don't understand though, the movie itself is squeaky clean family entertainment? Why would a teacher object to that, even if he knew that many of the real baseball players were lesbians? It's a Tom Hanks movie basically.
It took me until I was in my late twenties to realize that I was bisexual and even now in my mid-thirties, I still find that when I have genuinely romantic feelings for a woman (more than just "oh, she's really pretty and I like her"), I often don't realize it for quite some time because my mind had been so accustomed to ignoring those feelings or recasting them as something else. It's frustrating. I'm married to a man and I love being with him, but that doesn't switch my sexuality off. My husband points out how oblivious I can be to my own feelings even though I have put a lot of effort into being emotionally aware--the last woman I had really strong romantic feelings for ended our friendship very abruptly with no explanation and that was when I realized I'd been falling for her, which made processing my grief a lot harder. More representation and more acceptance might have helped when I was a teen, because I didn't know how to parse some of the emotions I had and it was really confusing.
Boogie Nights was another movie whose queerness was erased in post. The main POV character was supposed to be bisexual but that was completely erased from the film. A major part of the reason why the film ultimately falls short for me is precisely because so much meaning was lost without the explicit bisexuality.
It is interesting that you discussed librarians at the end. Until recently I worked in a library and constantly worked really hard to get LGBTQ+ books in. From my experience there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done in that area. In my job we catered specifically to resources for schools so I thought it was particularly important that they have LGBTQ+ books to read. I worked there for 2 years and it took them a year of me encouraging them, taking down notes on every school librarian who requested LGBTQ+ books and identifying a list of LGBTQ+ books in my own time outside of work to get them to finally buy them. It was extremely frustrating as my manager acted like my effort meant nothing and that 'they were always going to get them in eventually'. At the same time I was also trying to set up a LGBTQ+ reading group, which I was hoping could be a support group. I had requested to start one when I first began my job, again it took a year to get permission to get it off the ground. My work kept piling more and more hoops for me to jump through to get every action for the group approved and it was very frustrating. Just a simple poster for the group needed to be approve by three people of different hierarchies. Then they announced that the group was only going to be a trial after it had been going for three months. They gave me one more month and then I would have to stop it. Afterwards, I was meant to write a report about everything and the stress of it all led me to taking a mental health leave for month after repeatedly falling physically ill. Eventually I did write the report (after a good six months had passed because I found it so traumatic to try remember that time period), but my manager basically told me that they didn't really care about it. The whole thing was an absolute nightmare. I tried to bring up the issue to HR at one point and they just deferred me to the apprentice team (I was an apprentice), who didn't seem to understand how isolated and discriminated against I felt by the whole issue. Now I will add that there were some library assistants in the public libraries that were really encouraging and supportive of the reading group, so not everyone in the libraries I worked in were bad. Whenever I made a poster for the next month they were the first to put it up and I really appreciated that. They even setup LGBTQ+ book displays to really highlight and advertise the reading group. I just find it a real shame that a lot of the higher ups where I worked seemed to be not so inclusive. It was pretty clear to me that the reason I was not offered a job after my apprenticeship was partly because of my outspoken views on LGBTQ+ rights, while quieter apprentices were kept on as they would not challenge the status quo.
I think the film was in production before the sequel book that fully confirmed Leah's and Abby's bisexuality but it's still baffling that a thin actress was cast as Leah and her plot was changed so she had an out of nowhere crush on Simon. I'm also devastated there's never going to be an adaptation of Leah On The Offbeat.
thank you for mentioning the Color Purple! the straightwashing in that movie really pains me as a black queer person, especially because it is SUCH an important film within the black community. many black people, especially Gen X and older, know and love the movie but have never read the book so they don't know how deep the romance between Shug and Celie is. to have that represented in such a culturally important movie could've gone a LONG way to improving acceptance of queer people in the black community. (i wish i could tell you how many times i've heard someone say being queer is "some white people shit.") a film adaptation of the musical (which keeps the gay content in) is coming out at the end of this year, and i'm very excited for it but i've already seen people who only know of the Spielberg film questioning why they "made them gay." because they were supposed to be!!
17:57 also wanted to note that in the Bayard Rustin biopic, Rustin will be played by gay actor Colman Domingo (who is also going to be in The Color Purple adaptation!)
Omg I didn't know this was a term. I hate how in Lucifer , his Bisexuality is pretty much erased and his encounters with men are pretty much shoved to the corner and he mentions it like three times throughout the show. There's many, Many scenes of him kissing women and waking up in bed with women but not a single one with men? Be fr. 😭
Your arguments in this video were so well put and so validating. I appear to just now be unlocking the queer side of youtube, and it is so empowering to hear you say what I feel all the time; “our queer identity is an important part of what makes up the totality of us.” It’s something I don’t get to see or feel a lot as a gay boy living in the south. You wouldn’t think you just sitting there and talking could be some impactful but it is. And i am so grateful you did.
Thank you for the video, incredibly informative yet concise as always 💜 I immediately started thinking of The Imitation Game while on the topic of biopics - which I guess falls into the category 'oh but the movie was about the war and maths, so there just wasn't time or place for THAT', except they gave him a straight love interest and completely 'forgot' what happened to that man after.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
NOTE: the creator of She-Ra goes by Nate or ND - thank you to those viewers who pointed this out - I unfortunately wasn’t aware when I quoted an interview from before he came out in this video. I've updated the caption and description but wanted to add a pinned comment incase anyone missed that.
Please pin this, i have to scroll really down to see this, /nm
thank you for the correction! please pin this comment, i had to scroll quite a while to find it 💀
@@everfluctuating that's strange, it's pinned for me - I've tried unpinning and re-pinning again - is it showing up for you properly now?
@@nuclearpancake3683 that's strange, it's pinned for me - I've tried unpinning and re-pinning again - is it showing up for you properly now?
@@HeyRowanEllis for me it isn't pinned either
Oh god I remember that Sailor Moon censorship....They made lesbians into cousins but changed nothing about their interactions, so they chose to portray a borderline incestuous relationship over a loving queer relationship.
don't forget turning Zoisite into a woman so that he and Kunzite wouldnt be gay
that was intentional, the networks forced the censorship and the people doing the dub didn't want to, so they protested by *technically* complying with the censorship while making the gay relationship as obvious as possible.
The one that still annoys me to this day is how Riverdale removed Jugheads asexuality. Asexuality is practically invisible as it is so it was very disheartening for them to change this.
Actually the Archie comics has multiple universes and there shouldn’t be one canon. In the past Jughead did date, was involved in a love triangle and was married to Midge. Because of that I don’t care if Riverdale didn’t make him aroace.
As a aroace myself I’m happy that Riverdale didn’t make Jughead aroace. I would have watched it knowing the show ended up being a huge dumpster fire.
Edit: yes I know aroace and asexuality isn’t the same thing. I have known some people that are asexual and in a happy relationship. My comment is based mostly on other people’s reaction which I can’t blame because Jughead was confirmed aroace around 2016. Before that his sexuality was up for interpretation.
Writers like to have characters hook up.
I'm glad that someone was thinking this besides me - a fellow aroace
XD
Before the show came out I was at a convention that Chip Zdarsky had a panel at. It the panel the show came up and he said 'I hope they don't turn it into Jughead f&
my grandad was an unsuspecting straight who watched Pride because it was about the miner’s strikes, which he was a part of. luckily he enjoyed the movie, learned something from it, and was the one to suggest it to me.
that's really sweet:)
W grandad
“Pride” was such a wonderful movie. It brought me to tears. Seeing one marginalized group stand up for another was beautiful.
W old dude
@@123videos456 dude so true! In the end when the miners show up for Pride and that Billy Bragg/brass band version of There Is Power in a Union is playing - instant crying for me, yup.
I internally battle writers who write bisexual women as male fantasies and bisexual men as weirdos. There is still straight washing in how they write bi character’s attraction to the same gender being more sexual than the romantic driven attraction towards the opposite gender.
Just another reason for me to love the videogame Hades. In there, the main character Zagreus can have a very sexual, sadomaso-ish relationship with a female character Megeara, or a very tender, helplessly romantic relationship with a male character Thanatos. :D
Edit: Also, Queen Maeve from "The Boys" sleeps around with guys when she was feeling depressed and needed sex, but her ultimate romantic relationship is with a woman.
It might depend on the writer's sexuality, in a CW Out Panel Caity Lotz actually said that she liked how her character (Sarah Lance) wasn't written based on a stereotype and instead was just open to both even if she tells Greg Berlanti that when she was auditioning she didn't see anything about her character being explicitly bisexual. During the run of "Legends of Tomorrow" her character has relationships with both men and women, but doesn't have a committed same-sex relationship until near the end of Season 3 and similarly during a ClexaCon interview Chyler Leigh said that before Season 2 of "Supergirl" she spoke with the writers when they'd told her that they were going to make her character (Alex Danvers) a lesbian and they worked together to ensure the storyline of her coming out was done delicately
Most bi men are weirdos
In a good way of course
My grandfather took my grandma to see brokeback mountain as a cowboy movie and stormed out horrified. But my grandma wanted to stay and watch 😂
Did she stay and watch?
It is a chick flick after all.
I would like to shout out the HBO Max Harley Quinn show for having Harley and Ivy be in a long term lesbian relationship throughout season 2 and validating both of their bisexuality without any ambiguity whatsoever.
Not to mention they had the guts to firmly make both characters bisexual, especially Poison Ivy who often gets depicted as a lesbian. Even in queer coded media, bisexual erasure is a big thing.
If they are both bisexual why do you call their relationship a lesbian one? We have the term sapphic for these cases.
It makes SO MUCH sense to make them a couple instead of queer baiting and the showrunners claiming they are pro-LGBTQ. This straightforward representation is a breath of fresh air.
since they're both bi, it would probably be more accurate to use the words sapphic or queer!
Catwoman too! Having on screen confirmation of Selina's bisexuality was so great to see. This show is the gift that keeps on giving.
I feel like the film the imitation game can be included. Alan Turing was hella gay. He had dozens of desires and crushes. And only one of them is prominently shown. It angers me so incredibly much. Alan Turing despite being a war hero died because of his queerness
yes, I thought of that, too. It is definitley not talked about sincerly that he is gay, it is stated like a cold fact
Also tragic seeing people ignoring his questioning of gender present in his later work or misinterpreting it.
Dude was forced to be chemically castrated after his invaluable service.
He had the poetically gayest life. It sounds fictional but he lived it all.
To those complaining, knock it off. The film states he was gay. That should be enough. It was a biopic, not a romcom. And coming from a bisexual man I found the story to be very heart wrenching and moving. The movie was about his contributions to science, the war, and the tragedy of his situation. It was a fine film and doesn't need to be changed because someone thinks it wasn't enough. Think about this, if HE saw it today? What would he think? If you can answer me that question? Then my ears are wide open and I'll happy listen and have a conversation
@@ahmanetbones9496 considering he killed himself over their inhumane treatment, probably angry that Weinstein interfered with the script to leave it on a more unearned happier ending.
Speaking of the straightwashing of posters, my homophobic uncle went to Brokeback Mountain thinking it was a straight, western cowboy movie and left really early on in the movie because he felt duped and angry. Such a strange marketing tactic.
A strange marketing tactic indeed, but I've got to admit that stories like this are pretty hilarious
@@joanapitanguinha150 Sooo funny
At that point, he had already given them his money. Not a bad strategy at the time
i may be pulling at threads here, but i also thought it was strange & was wondering if it was a tactic to purposely create negative commentary about queer cinema. if homophobes were being duped into seeing these queer pictures, then it wouldn't be too far out to reason that they would leave negative press about the film - either specifically because they were duped, or because they were outraged by the content as a whole. in turn, this negative press could be used by studios to perpetuate not making more queer cinema ("see? other people hated these films, so there isn't a reason to keep making them!" sort of thing).
@nightwingdefeatingbadguys enlightened Nightwing fans in this thread
Not only is it frustrating, it's... frustraighting.
Best comment lol
you deserve an award for this comment x)
You're not special because you are sexually confused stop treating straightness as abnormal when it's basic biology and is the reason both me and you are existing now posting pointless things on TH-cam. I know you won't take this to heart anyways.
Nice comment 😂
Aha good one 😁
Honestly, straight bating homophobes into watching Brokeback Mountain or Call Me By Your Name is pretty funny.
It's the best thing on earth
I want to know reactions in theaters. It HAD to be hilarious right?
EXACTLY HAHAHA
@@gogreen2496 someone talked about it in these very comments lol
i mean i don't like call me by your name since it's like. just gross in regards to the age difference but otherwise i agree
In interview with the vampire, (the original book) Anne Rice didn’t initially realize her characters were very queercoded (the main characters Louis and Lestat were based on herself and her husband). She later realized this and subsequent books were more explicitly queer. When it was adapted to the 1994 movie, she was concerned that it wouldn’t be palatable to mainstream America and suggested making the main character Louis a woman (she wanted the actress to be Cher, and Cher even wrote a song for it). In the end it was Brad Pitt and the movie is about as gay as you can get without admitting the characters are in a relationship. The new amc tv show however has gone the full nine yards (it’s gayer and blacker) and because they didn’t shy away from this the story has so much more context to it. It is a masterpiece that improves upon the original in many ways.
I loved the show so much I was like "Finally!"
I always hated the casting of that movie. I had cast it in my mind when I read it with Sting as Lestat and Daniel Day-Lewis as Louis and I could just never unsee that. lol I'm not sure Sting could have pulled it off acting wise but he was fantastic in the role in my inner movie.
Thanks for the informative and interesting post
I saw the movie when I was a child and I didn't see anything between Louis and Lestat,I always thought that Claudia and Louis were a couple growining up.
@@dhsf5937 I saw it quite young too, and I did see it. It wasn't in your face, but it was definitely there.
I personally think Claudia was more of a child Lestat 'got' for Louis, so he won't feel so isolated - kind of pushing Louis into the 'traditional' role of a woman (not ideal either, the role or the idea of that role). To me it seemed Claudia was internally becoming a grown up stuck in her childs body and might have fallen in love with Louis - in my eyes he loved her like a daughter until the end.
You missed a great one. Fried Green Tomatoes has two women living together and raising a child, but have them share a sisterly type love in the movie. In the book they are absolutely in a long romantic relationship with each other. It's not surprising how many other black stories also got cut from the movie.
I was going to comment that. That was one of my favorite movies growing up, but I only read the book it's based on a couple of years ago. I was floored. I always thought the movie was very gay because of the subtext that is still there, but people around me seemed to not see it that way. So when I finally read the book, I felt both vindicated and shocked at how straightwashed it was.
By the way, I would have to check, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the two main actresses were against cutting their romance and did their best to portray their romantic love with how they played off each other, even if the script itself removed any direct references.
It is probably also one those cases where their queerness were so intrinsic to the story and the characters as a whole, as Rowan mentioned, that it's just impossible to tell that story without at least that subtext...
@@ma_alva I'm so glad someone else loves this story. My sister and I read it years ago and have been trying to spread the word ever since.
I feel like I also read that about the main actresses. They did a great job with what they had to work with.
@@odie4bre They really did! They are both so talented and have such great on-screen chemistry, I saw them as a couple even before I could fully understand what being gay meant, let alone in the movie's setting. I was literally a kid.
I need to go rewatch that... It's been many, many years, and I haven't even watched it since I read the book...
@@ma_alva Sounds about right. I read somewhere too the flour scene was meant to be subtext or like a nod or something basically to confirm they were meant to be lovers. Like it was written in as a low-key middle finger to acknowledge they were lovers but the explicitness had to be cut, so the flour fight scene was added in
They cut the sex scene and made it a food fight.
Topics often missing in both straight and gueer media is asexual and aromantic representation. Especially with adaptations of preexisting aro/ace characters the push to have everyone "paired up" makes a part of community invisible.
And even a lot of canon ace rep is either limited to it being revealed outside of the work by the creators or executed in such a way that the "asexual" part can be ignored by audiences. It's frustrating.
the issue is that it is very diffuicult to represent that when it can be hard to actually represent, because its hard to really represent that in a story. You can easily make it clear that characters are in a relationship for any other romantic/sexual orientation, then with trans and nonbinary characters, the pronouns used can make things clear. People need to put a LOT more effort for aromantic and asexual representation, and so a lot of writers don't put in much effort to try to make it clear. A lot of it still does come from erasure and stuff but at the same time, as someone who wants to get into writing myself I can easily see how it is a lot more complicated to represent compared to other queer topics.
@@Savariable maybe someone will make an asexual peacock cartoon. like Happy Feet, but not.
In a sense Barbie has ace and aro representation. Barbie is basically aroace
@@Savariable I mean you could have a character ask them something along the lines of "And what about you? Do you got a special someone?", since these conversations are both small-talk and often enough occur in reality to not feel forced. Aro/ace character could answer with something like "Nope, not my thing. Never been in love either, and I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon." You could obviously alter that conversation to fit the specific sexuality and clear up misconceptions, but a conversation like that takes less than two minutes and is easy to do in every genre.
Aro/ace being a sexuality of absence only means that it's hard to show, but telling should be easy.
To add to OP's comment, what also drives me nuts is fandom reactions to a heavily implied aro/ace character. Saiki K for example is an anime about a dude with psychic powers who just wants to be left alone and is heavily aro/ace coded. He shows no interest towards the two girls that desperately try to grab his attention. But for some reason, some parts of the fandom take that as a "he must be gay then" (despite him never showing any interest in guys either), instead of a "maybe he's just aro/ace". It seems that we are completely non-existent to them.
I think a lot about Lake from Infinity Train, who was intended to be nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. Cartoon Network didn't let the show do that, essentially leaving them ciswashed, but the character ended up... so aggressively nonbinary that basically everyone in the fanbase calls them they/them anyway. I always find that interesting - sometimes the coding comes through despite censorship.
"Aggressively Non-binary" I love this. Goes to show what a fanbase can do. It's so annoying that Cartoon Network just didn't make them non-binary in the first place or even now just confirm it because of how well of a reception they've had by viewers. It's so stupid
It's insulting to women to suggest that Lake does not count as one.
@@VPWedding No it isn't. And if you think it is, you have some issues you need to work through.
@@VPWedding Why?
@@VPWedding I do.
Surprised you didn't mention Arcane. One of the writers really fought for the second best line in the series ("you're hot, cupcake"), and the execs tried to say it was out of character, but truthfully, it was the most in-character thing she could have said. And still they quibbled.
Imagine thinking Vi finding Cait hot is out of character 💀
Even if she was straight it would have been in character (not that she is).
Trying to tell argue that the no nonsense street kid who doesnt put on airs.. would suddenly decide to not be direct?
Executives are fools who see woman and cant imagine them being anything other than demure in respect to s3x and attractiveness.
@@boserboser6870 Vi literally has a line in league saying they need to hurry it up cause “I have a date, and she hates when I’m late.”
As IF it’s out of character or she’s not fruity 😭
I think that was a producer, not Riot. Riot basically plaster up Vi and Cait for any pride material that they can
One of my great joys in life is that in League, one of Caitlyn's death lines is, "Tell Vi I..."
I want to see somebody make a movie (even if I have to write or co-write the script myself) from the perspective of characters who slowly realize that they're in a version of their world where some politically unacceptable aspect of their lives has been censored for conservative markets. It would start out as a mystery but progress to existential horror.
That would be so cool! I’d watch it. I think I’ve seen a fanfic with a slightly similar concept
I now want to see this hypothetical movie even though I have no idea how that would actually work
Ooh, which way are we talking? Do they literally realize they're fictional characters, or are they in some terrifying Truman Show situation in-universe?
@@perrisavallon5170 Or maybe it's a little bit more "somebody/something has altered reality to eliminate these things" and leave them ultimately unable to find out who/what is doing it all, and keep the censorship parallels in (heavy) subtext.
Would definitely watch/read that.
Tim Burton"s comment that he "grew up watching blaxploitation movies" feels like the cinematic version of "I have a black friend"
lmao you're not wrong... but also makes it sound like he doesn't have (m)any black friends either
...and his black friend's name is SUPAFLY.
Well, since we don't fit his "aesthetic," I would say this is probably accurate.
He doesn't really seem to like people who are not wh*te tbh.
So, if he grew up watching Blaxploitation films... I'm assuming they somewhat inspired his passion for filmmaking, right? So why on Earth does he claim that Black people don't fit his aesthetic?
For Steven Universe, they kept censoring Ruby and Sapphire by presenting Ruby as a male coded Gem, so Rebecca Sugar fought to have Ruby in a dress and Sapphire in a suit for their wedding so it couldn’t be censored: As far as i know that’s the thing that got the show cancelled, bc they didn’t want to air it in other parts of the world
I hear this all the time but i have yet to find any evidence of Ruby having for example a male voice actor or being reffered to with male pronouns. I know they did't air certain episodes in some regions and toned some voice lines down, but i think the original claim is mostly BS.
Tbf, Rebecca Sugar isn't really an individual whose content I want to consume to begin with. She's kinda problematic
@@amiccus_ Ok i fail to see why.
@@amiccus_ why is Sugar problematic?
@@amiccus_ How exactly is Sugar problematic?
Deadpool is one of my favorite characters in comics. Seeing his insatiable thirst for literally anything with a pulse regardless of species or gender (not children obviously) made me very very very sad. Like the whole point of Deadpool is that he not only has a super high libido, but he doesn’t care who he has sex with as long as it’s consensual.
Yessssss it is hilarious, and as a bi girl the erasure of destiny and rogue's story when it comes to mystique has always had me pissed lol they just put her with all four of the male leads in the movies RIP
Must be in newer stories. I read quite a lot Deadpool comics, and I can't remember the character being a horn dog.
While your description is correct in a way, the sequel to Deadpool was very obviously trying to adapt Deadpool's relationship with Lady Death. In the comics it's his most standard relationship, and when it comes to Deadpool, about his only real love story. I'm queer. I love Deadpool. And I had 0 problem with this depiction because I still think at the end of the day they got the character right.
Ngl he gets straight-washed a lot in the comics too. Any time he shows attraction towards men it's either something that can be played off as a joke (see; his interactions with Thor, Wolverine or Frank Castle), something that can be written off as just "totally just a very close male friendship ha ha" like with Cable or pure unrelenting queerbait/fujobait like with the Spideypool series.
He should've had at least one genuine reciprocal thing with a man (or been with Cable years ago but that's a whole other story 💀) by this point imo.
Wait you guys think deadpool is straight washed,no he flirts with colossus like a lot
Please keep in mind that the "cousins" censorship of Sailor Moon was only in the 90s English dub. There has been a more recent English dub that keeps their romantic relationship, as well as the relationship between Zoisite and Kunzite (though their relationship was only romantic in the 90s anime, not in Crystal or the original manga)
But it's also a great contrast because the same company did the dub in Spanish which allowed them to be queer
that is interesting.
One case of severe straight washing that always bugs me is Hercules (or Heracles, whatever). The dude was bi hands down, but he had a huge list of male lovers. And still, in every single piece of media he's represented as a straight guy. Of course a mythological figure as him, who's supposed to represent strength and masculinity at its finest can't be depicted as something other than straight. And not just him, half the male gods, mythological heroes and heII, historical figures canonically bi from Ancient Greece/Rome are always straight washed in the most unapologetical way.
An archilles even :( , i mean ther seems be the marvels loosely based but else, yeah the great thing is gods were relative indicriminate, like a bloody zodiac, is one of zeuses lovers. and yeah even hera is pretty indiscriminate going after zeuses lovers there. and thats near all of the gods, except hades is pretty loyal, apearently, an hestia, and maybe athena ace
The video game Hades thankfully averts this! Quite a few gay/bi greek mythological characters in that.
That would be the male half lol there was nothing more masculine to the ancient Greek and Romans than to be so magnetically male enough to have a stream of male lovers...
Artemis and Athena were essentially canonically aroace in the mythology. It one of the poems (I can’t remember which), it says that Aphrodite (love and sex) holds no power over them. Unfortunately, this is because of misogynistic ideals in Ancient Greece, so yeah. Most queer rep in Greek mythology is because of misogyny, actually.
@Ella Haha No I wonder if artemis was maybe demi romantic, but there's argument for anything, we'll never really know the original intension or which story was the original interpretation, and on the aroace side of the spectrum either way
Im a 30 year old queer woman
Growing up in a small rural area in ireland, i hardly saw myself in popular media so much to the point that i had no idea i was queer. I thought my friendships with other girls were just intense, that i just hadnt met a boy i liked, maybe when im older ill be more girly, etc.
It was only when i joined tumblr and began to be exposed to different media, different ideas, different people, that i had a sexual identity crisis. It made me question everything i knew growing up and i finally realised i was queer.
Queerness in media is so important. If i had seen myself sooner in movies or tv, it wouldve saved me a lot of heart ache
Hope you watched Derry Girls!
Completely agree. I didn't know asexuality was an option. Just thought maybe I was a late bloomer and hadn't found the right guy ... Still happy, single, and childfree at 42 😜
@@lkf8799Same. Had a boyfriend because thats what you are supposed to do and was absolutely perplexed to realize that people really are that sex-obsessed and that its not just exagerated propaganda to make people reproduce.
Straightwashing will continue to exist, but I wanna say representation matters. When I first saw She-Ra, or the owl house I cried, because as a lesbian woman of 24 it would have been amazing to see this type of animation when I was younger. But I also cried for all the queer kids that will watch it and feel like they are not alone, beacuse that's what I needed.
cis het but love both of those shows so sad owl house was cut short.
Owl House was really great and wholesome, but tbh the main relationship in She-Ra is extremely toxic and not a great example of how a relationship should be, like I wouldn't want my kids to think that their relationships should be like that at all. Not to mention, the creator of that show and various other members of the creative team are just... assholes.
@@amiccus_ Yeah, The Owl House is great, but I could not finish She-Ra for the life of me. The dynamic between Catra and Adora was painful to watch, and I honestly have to say that as a bi person it helped me accept my own queerness far less, I had always been taught being sapphic was inherently toxic, and the fact that this was shown on screen only reaffirmed what had been already ingrained in my psyche. Obviously this isn't the only cause of my internalized biphobia but it did not make things any better.
@@amiccus_ I don't know the background of the creators. She-Ra is the first sapphic cartoon I watched so it has a special place in my heart. Yes, Catra is not the best character, but I didn't think of the toxic relationship because I have watched it as an adult. All I can say is that besides all of that that's still tons of lgbt+ representation that I never saw. I think that's the silver lining.
@@ameliasellers6396 I mean we are taught that being gay is wrong and that's all we know for so long. Their relationship being flawed, for me at least, it's a sign that even wlw relationship can be flawed, we are all human. But then again seeing this as an adult might have made me biased
The fact that the studio thought a straight, white, cishet man was a good choice to direct a movie about a black lesbian woman is pretty telling to begin with.
yes!
My guess is that if Spielberg didn't push for it, the movie never would have been made
That's complicated, I think. No Hollywood studio in 1985 thought making a movie about a black lesbian woman was worth doing at all. It happened the other way around - Spielberg is, without much competition, the most commercially successful director of all time, he made it in his own studio (Amblin), and it's because he wanted to make the movie that it got to the screen at all, and was as widely distributed and watched and reviewed and nominated as it was. Which is not to say that's an ok state of affairs, it's certainly not, but that is the reality of the time.
Should Spielberg have made the movie? That's a complicated question too. Color Purple was the first major studio movie centering black women. The only thing that comes close was the Lady Sings the Blues - the 1972 Motown film about Billie Holiday staring Diana Ross. It was definitely the first centering multiple black women and black lesbian women. Spielberg had just come off 8 record busting hits in a row - Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, etc. He could do anything he wanted. His name was gold, it basically guaranteed a hit. And he decided to make this movie, he decided to use his uniquely massive privilege in industry to platform some of the least represented people. He didn't retell the story centering white people, like SOOO many of the Civil Rights movies. I think it's easy to underestimate how revolutionary that was for mainstream Hollywood at the time. 3 black women were nominated for Oscars from the Color Purple, the first time more than one black woman had been nominated in the same film, and never for an explicitly lesbian role.
Point being, could an adaptation of the Color Purple done a better job representing black lesbian women? Absolutely. Did Spielberg make choices that water-down the book (including adding a happy ending)? Absolutely. But let's also not lose sight of how much better a job The Color Purple did of representing black lesbian women than the prior 60 years of US cinema.
@@camipco Thanks for this perspective. I didn't know the history of the film adaptation. It's still a shame he watered down the sapphic relationship and the lesbian identity of the main character, but we can appreciate the big stride forward. What's sad is that 4 decades later, studios still operate the same way as if the strides of The Color Purple adaptation were the finish line rather than a good start to a longer journey.
@@pmtoner9852 It probably wouldn't have.
They tried to straight wash a movie called PRIDE???
the movie is literally about the interaction between gay activists and miners like its literally the main plot lmao
@@stormagedon3852 I mean. It was still made to be quite palatable for general audiences. None of the gay characters are particularly flamboyant or femme. And they don't even mention that Mark Ashton was a communist.
@@Pan-optic never said that's not true just that it's hilarious to remove all hint of queerness in the marketing of the film when it is one that's very explicitly about queers
@@stormagedon3852 No, that's fair, I wasn't disagreeing with you. Just adding that you can still have movies about queers that are kind of acceptable-washed for non-queer audiences.
@@Pan-optic people shout anti communist insults at him and one of the first scenes of the film has his apartment with a big ol' hammer and sickle on the wall?
I think one of the WORSE offenders of straight washing is Da Vinci demons. The show, for the most part, forgot Da Vinci was gay and gave him a female love interest.
I think I watched the first season of that, cause it seemed a little bit promising at the start with good character/actor combos, but then at the end I realized that the ladies had been called multiple variations of 'hole' more than their actual names and just deleted it's entire existence from my brain. Never look back.
Also he is , yeah, like if they kept him ace, that would be fine, disapointing but be fine, but the really distracting romance, whyyyy.
The only good thing is vlad and that frienemy he has,
Leonardo (2021) is gay af. Check it out, it's not bad.
Calling antiquity figures gay is a bit inaccurate. Before individualism became accepted, personal identities like that weren’t really a thing. You would be more accurate saying Greco-Roman culture was bi, but individuals were not really allowed to have sexualities, and at the very least “gay” would have had a very different meaning. Sexuality for an individual (versus enforced by what is good for society) is a modern concept, gender is context dependent, and both are very valid identities today, but really weren’t in the past (before early 1800s or if you really want to stretch it to philosophers, the 1600s at the earliest in European culture), and likely won’t be in the future (I’ve talked to multiple professors who specialize in this, including one from Harvard, and they are in agreement that we are likely moving towards a “universal queer” where everyone agrees that no labels perfectly apply to anyone, and society as a whole rejects labels; this is probably at least a couple of generations away, but could happen in some of our lifetimes).
Edit: for an example that showed same sex desire but avoided the anachronism of “sexuality as identity”, see The Favourite; there was undeniably some queer desire happening, but given it was set in a time when most didn’t even get to choose their own “straight” partners, the idea of “not marrying a man” was never even considered by any of the characters (except maybe the queen). This is what I mean when I say sexuality wasn’t really a thing until individualism came in preaching self-determination.
The show runners wanted to do an Assassins Creed movie and didn't think to look up anything about Da Vinci, even though Assassins Creed pointed out he was gay.
Most magical girl shows are straightwashed, I ain't gonna lie
It’s such an odd pattern
It's much better nowadays, but it pains me to remember the kinda shit Sailor Moon did to appease homophobes. "They're cousins" was their "They were roommates."
@@bobmanperson599 Yeah, while I think its a tad bit better now, personally I'd say that the dark magical girl subgenre has done the most damage to this entire genre, as it was mostly made by men for men and you know they went down hill from there.
@@bobmanperson599 I find it funny, that , oh you didnt straghtwash it, you want jut localize with sweet hiome alabama. And how they made the starlets trans to cover up the same sex?!
But its a crime they left out in the rose movie the bickring of the girls about how that dude is really havig something with mamoro. And they made one dud of th first main 4, into not a dude , which makes no sense. (also good couple)
Huh? aren't most modern Magical Shows super gay, even when they don't outright say it? Madoka, Nanoha, Precure, Symphogear, etc. even the classics like Sailor Moon and CCS had gay shit even if the main couple was F/M.
Talking about Peter Quill, not only was he definitely not a womanizer who slept around with every woman who crossed his path, but his team also had a lesbian couple that was cut out of the movies, and I suspect won't really appear in the last one. Sigh.
I know cutting those two probably had more to do with Disney, but what Gunn did to Quill was all him tbh.
I didn't mind the womanizer aspect of Quill because it fit into his character growth as a broken young man who never felt like he had connections in the galaxy, as the movies progressed he most certainly lost a lot of those womanizing traits (although sadly mostly because he became focused on Gamora, which is nice in its own way, we likely won't ever see a bisexual Star Lord in the MCU)
@@darkmask5933 The thing is: it doesn't fit with Quill, not with the comic version of Quill that inspired Gunn, and I feel that version was much more complex and interesting than what we got. Of course changes need to be made in adaptation, believe me I get that, but I feel like the "dumb womanizer man who grows up to be decent" trope is already quite common and Gunn didn't really bring anything new to the table. I know I'm alone on this boat because very few people read the 2007-2009 version of Quill, and because the GotG movies are good on their own so no one really cares except me lol
@@mekinot Yeah I get you, no I'm not trying to discount your feelings, Gunn completely reshaped the Guardians, Rocket also was completely and irreversibly revamped as well, nowadays you won't find anyone who isn't more familiar with his modern personality.
Wasn't Peter quill being bi a recent change? Or is that not what you're talking about at all?
Honestly comic book Starlord prior to the movie being released was pretty boring and generic. Just a cookie cuter flyboy who also happens to be the lost heir to a galactic empire. He was basically Luke Skywalker but with less personality. I do like he very much in the more recent comics though.
I’d love to see Phyla-Vell and Moondragon. Although I can see why they were cut. It’s already a lot of characters to introduce all at once.
I remember people straightwashing Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets to the universe. Everyone always framed the book as two lonely boys form an amazing friendship which is true but it’s also a romance. It took a queer booktuber mentioning that fact for me to finally read the book. It’s one of my favorite books to this day but I almost never read it because no one wanted to just say it was a queer romance.
That makes me so mad! I can't believe people would leave out such a pivotal part of the books
@@jaywilliams4216 right? It’s literally a romance book. That’s the whole point of the story
wait for real? that's so obnoxious lol. i'm guessing the people straightwashing it hoped that people would ignore the giant Stonewall Award sticker on many reprints of the book.
Why, thats why aything i open when you code gay relationship as "just friends" o course people will read that a gay, becaue a lot are.
Why would youplay down, a good romance.
gonna check it out
hey rowan! just wanted to let you know how much your book and channel mean to me. i’m a 14-y/o queer girl and your book has helped me so much! i got it for christmas and was sooo happy. i originally found you through your video about luca, and your channel has cultivated such a safe and welcoming environment for me. i’m so ecstatic to have the book! thank you for everything you do :))
Samee!! 💖
OMG SAME!!
The book is at my library now and I can't wait until I can check it out!!
Rowan rules!!
I remember watching Modern family and seeing Cam and Mitchell never kissing or really being affectionate in general. It always bothered me when I saw all the other straight couples kissing and cuddling but they weren't. Straight-washing, the perfect word for it.
This is so true!!! (I’m currently rewatching the show for the 2nd time)
I was surprised to hear that because the show does a full 180 in the later seasons. The clip that comes to mind is them aggressively making out and Mitch full on straddling Cam lol
It's not "straight washing" though. They aren't called straight, they're not shown crushing on women. It's just having to work around censorship.
@@magnus6609eh. It's just that as the show went on gayness became more and more accepted so they knew they could show more affection.
My mom was very distracted by what she called, your perfect hair. A perfect color, perfect cut, and perfect style combo. She wanted to tell you, thank you.
Deadpool is stated as pansexual but there is never a moment where he is romantically or sexually attracted to a man that is not written to a similar fashion as a looney toon. Where any emotion is treated seriously or not undercut with a joke. Almost every major storyline Deadpool has in the comics has a focus with a serious emotional attachment to a women. It's something mentioned by authors outside of the text like gay Dumbledore. His stories are so straightwashed it just dives into poor queerbaiting to me.
Isn't there a spiderpool story that's pretty dark?
@@dundundun7215 Just because a story is dark doesn't mean it's deep. Also, charliejacobs issue with MLM relationships being played off as a joke is very prevalent in that story.
Yeah, Deadpool is pan, but only in a jokey “I’ll fuck anyone or anything” way, he isn’t actually played as a genuine bi/pan guy.
@@stevethebarbarian9876 Which sucks, as a genuinely played straight bi/pan deadpool would work really well.
to be fair, nothing about deadpool is serious; he is an entirely joke character, so ofc none of the queer representation is gonna be very serious. I do wish we had more onscreen queer superheros though.
Not necessarily defending Disney here, but many of the Marvel characters you mentioned weren’t canonized as queer in the comics until after they were introduced in the movies.
Loki was confirmed as Genderqueer in 2014 after he had already appeared in three movies. Although the character has been subtextually queer going back to the Nordic legends.
Iceman came out as gay in the comics in 2015, almost a decade after the movies in which he appeared were released.
Starlord wasn’t revealed to be bi until 2020… so recently that he has yet to appear in a movie since the reveal.
The only two who could qualify as straight-washed are Valkyrie, who was confirmed as bi in 2012, 5 years before Thor: Ragnarok; and Mystique, who Chris Claremont wrote as queer way back in the 70’s although he wasn’t allowed to explicitly state her sexuality at the time.
I love Marvel comics (clearly) and they really are VERY queer, especially when you compare them to their cinematic counterparts, but this is actually a remarkably recent development.
Iceman was assumed gay for a while. Kitty was also written to be queer by CC. But yeah, essentially queer characters didn't really start popping up in the mainstream of Marvel until the 2010s. Wherein which characters like Karolina Dean and Val were made queer from the jump
I didn’t know what bisexual was until Brittany s. Pierce said “bicorn” in season 3 of glee. I asked my gay friend and he told me the definition and in that moment it clicked into place. I was 14. And I understood myself immediately. How would I feel if I knew sooner?
Kinda disappointed that, when talking about comicbook straightwashing, you didn't mention the instance of explicit aphobia, when Jughead Jones' asexuality and aromanticism was straightwashed (allowashed) for "a more adult storyline" in Riverdale. Particularly because he is one example of a character who's orientation is 'incidental' in the original work (as aceness often is), but the character behaves in ways that are unrecognizable when that orientation is changed.
fwiw, Rowan has definitely talked about Jughead before, iirc there's a whole video on the channel about ace erasure.
@@camipco Yeah, but it's still a great example of queer erasure because (a) the creators who did it were so gleeful in doing so in interviews yet get a pass because of the other visibility in their show and (b) even other aces trot out the 'um AKSHULLY there's a multiverse because comics so only Zdarsky's version is allowed to be ace' chestnut (see earlier comments about Jughead under this video). I've never seen an example of a queer character who's erasure in an adaptation is so defended & celebrated as his, and it is entirely rooted in how many people just don't count asexuality.
@@melasnexperience Oh I definitely agree it's queer erasure. I'm just saying Rowan has spoken to this exact topic, even if she doesn't in this particular video. Here's some videos from Rowan about Ace representation:
th-cam.com/video/2YJFXqipVOI/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RowanEllis
th-cam.com/video/P6v1J7kQv_c/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RowanEllis
th-cam.com/video/FV7C4xos5pY/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RowanEllis
one thing worth thinking about for modern family is that the writers have said they were very aware that some of the people watching might be put off by a gay relationship so they tried to get everyone on board with just seeing Cam and Mitch as people who happened to be gay so that people who might not have considered themselves pro gay marriage found themselves rooting for Cam and Mitch's marriage. They had the character arc of unconvinced about gay marriage to being supportive for Jay on the show. It's not great at representation, but I hope that it did manage to make some people who'd been on the fence realise that people just want to marry the people they love regardless of gender
And it worked, in that Modern Family had really high numbers from a Conservative / red-state audience. Like for a lot of Americans, that was the first gay couple they saw on tv. Yeah, it's absolutely integrationist and homonormative, but there's a lot of people who are only ready for homonormative.
@@camipco I'm really glad to hear that :) I'm in the UK so I had no clue the sort of demographic it was reaching in the USA
It's also my understanding that one of the actors is gay, and the other is not, and it took the hetero actor a bit to get used to the idea of kissing a gay man and did t want to do so at first. Of course, if it was scripted and he couldn't do it, they probably would have cast someone else.
That show actually kinda swayed my gfs dad on gay marriage lol. He's a bigot
@@thelemon5069
hi id just like to point out that the creator of she-ra has fairly recently (june 2022) come out as transmasc? (not sure what specific label he uses), uses he/him and changed his name to Nate. just for future reference :)
Ooh thx
@Grape :D (Garples)! I remember reading in one of his tweets he is gendefluid. He also goes by indy :)
People complain how “Netflix makes everything gay!” when really it’s just allowed a closer to proportionate degree of representation to start existing in media.
they just want everything to be staright
The overlooking of Mystique's bisexuality in the X-Men movies is more aggravating when we keep in mind that they intentionally the second movie as attempting to cast mutant identity as a metaphor for queer identity. They even had Iceman 'come out' to his family and suffer rejection from his brother.
the thing is, you act as though there is one single comic with that character, you act as though the timeline where they are gay is THE timeline, iceman was an original xman, one of the first comic books stan lee ever wrote, you are asking movie makers to ignore 800 issues of straight character for one issue of a mediocre lgbtq romance
@@captainstabbin5374 Do you think people will agree with your take?
@@captainstabbin5374 No. I act as though they used mutant identity as an analogy for queer identity, but left characters that are canonically queer in the closet because actually saying what they wanted to say was too scary for them in 2003.
And in almost every movie that followed in the franchise.
@@nicatina not a take, its fact
@@captainstabbin5374 To you, it's a fact. But to all of us, we know it's another shit take. They weren't asking movie markers to ignore "straight characters", I don't know where you got that from. Y'all be putting words into everything that fits your own narrative. Just like how y'all will claim anything is "woke" "political" "pushing an agenda" or "forced" that involves minorities in media nowadays, and when we call you guys out for having an opinion that's so not popular, y'all act like martyrs who are being wrongfully oppressed.
What's funny about Sailor Moon is that the same company did the dub in Spanish. And in Spanish, they were allowed to be lesbian lovers where in English they became Cousins.
That Tim Burton quote has the vibe of a drunk uncle rambling at Christmas dinner.
I did a paper that started out focusing on compulsory heterosexuality and ended up focusing a lot on erasure of female sexuality, but the media ties into this as well. I myself just came out as a lesbian after 11 1/2 years of being married to a man, 8 of which I identified as bi during. I am so thankful he's supportive of me and my newfound sexuality but because of lack of representation and education, I didn't have a safe space to explore my sexuality and I am not alone in this. Now I try to search out queer media anywhere I can but it is shockingly difficult to find.
If you’re comfortable, would you comment on how you figured out you were lesbian instead of bi? I’ve identified as bi for the last 10 years but definitely lean more toward women, and I’d like to hear your perspective
@@highonquack6622 Hi , absolutely! My partner and I are polyam but I never had the confidence to date a woman. When I finally did, everything clicked. All the feelings I had that didn't make sense fit and all the things I related to me being weird or having a low sex drive just vanished. My partner is wonderful and supportive so it wasn't just a wrong man scenario. For the first time I believed I was sexy and I craved everyrhing about her. It still took me a few more months to realize it but looking back, I never thought about boys, but it seemed like I had to be with one. Plus I grew up in a small town where no one came out until after they moved away.
@@ashlin8326 thank you for sharing, and I'm glad you understand yourself better now! Hearing about other people's experiences really helps put my own into perspective. Wishing you a beautiful, Sapphic life
well, sexuality is fluid
@@kaiyodei Have to disagree if your a lesbian your a lesbian that's not gonna change
Straightwashing is a thing in literature too! The original French version of the Count of Monte Cristo had a pretty explicitly lesbian character, whereas in the ubiquitous British translation Eugenie's queerness was downplayed and made super vague
Oh shit was Eugenie a lesbian?
@@beeaggro2593 definitely, there's a couple of scenes where she clearly prefers a womans company to men, and she's described as a sapphic beauty
Not that vague lol
Honestly, I just read it for the first time recently, and I'm not sure if I had a more recent translation, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that they were gay. At least, as obvious as it could possibly be without using terminology that I don't think existed yet at the time. Pretty much any time Eugenie is on page or being discussed by other characters it's pointed out how she clearly doesn't like men and spends all her time with her girlfriend, plus Dumas goes out of his way to describe them sleeping in the same bed in a hotel room that has two beds after they run away together. They never kiss or say anything blatantly romantic to each other, but their relationship is about as unmistakably sapphic as it could possibly be in the 19th century.
A better example of straightwashing in literature would be the Picture of Dorian Gray, which had a censored version released that cut out Wilde's more blatant homoerotic subtext. Even still, it was considered gay enough that it was used as evidence against him in his trial.
In the Black Panther Wakanda Forever script, Aneka had a couple of scenes which were cut, including a scene with just her and Ayo, Aneka’s whole storyline of leaving the Dora and rejoining at the end got cut, and in the forehead kiss scene, in the script Aneka and Ayo kiss on the lips after.
They kept the beloved part but it does make me want to see the rest of it
Speaking of straightwashing, I always find it wild that the first I ever heard of Bayard Rustin was in a biography aimed at kids… that never mentioned he was gay. I remember reading it and thinking “why haven’t I heard of this person before?” Didn’t learn he was gay until years later, despite having read a whole biography about him
There was a PBS documentary about Stonewall that straight up ignored Marsha P. Johnson, which just goes way farther than biopics do. Biopics massage the truth, but documentaries are supposed to BE the truth. The audacity.
One slight correction. The showrunner of She-Ra goes by Nate now and uses he/him pronouns.
Oh really? FUCK yeah
I know rowan does a lot of research and that some stuff just gets missed, but I literally had to pause when I heard that error because it caught me off guard here in a cultivated safe space.
Professionally, he goes by ND (pronounced Indy) because he still wants all his work connected under one title, so ND would have actually been more appropriate when referring to him
Showrunner means primary voice actor?
@@legion999 Showrunner is the head writer and executive producer. They quite literally “run the show”.
Your speech towards the end about how representation helps us realize our feelings are okay and normal is so true. Took me a long time to accept I was asexual. A big reason for that was because I didn’t know it was a thing for so long. I often wondered why I was so different, why I never had sexual dreams or crushes in the same way as others did. I tried to fit in by choosing my crushes and dating whoever wanted to date me. I remember getting shocked looks when I said I felt nothing when I kissed my partner and had no desire to keep doing it. Most of all though I remember crying to myself, thinking I was broken and that I would never find love. Even after I learned about asexuality, I didn’t want to identify with it because I thought that it would be proof I would never find love. And then when I finally admitted it, started researching it, and accepting it - I felt such a huge relief and now I’m happy and proud to say I’m asexual. I also have a lovely boyfriend who accepts who I am too!
I know it's a small thing, but I appreciate you putting the quotes in full for me to screenshot and save for reference later, than like splitting it up into 6 slides. Great essay as always Rowan!
I was stunned to learn how many authirs of children's books, books I grew up with and are now reading to my kids, where LGBT+. My family works in the queer community and runs a pride-based business but these lives had been lived so quietly and without recognition, we're only discovering their contributions today.
The straightwashed character that bothers me the most is Jughead in Riverdale. Especially since there are hardly any ace characters on TV.
Jughead wasn’t necessarily straight washed. A recent writer made him aroace, I was happy when I first heard about it. But Archie is a series and it has multiple universes. Jughead was in relationships in past comics being in a love triangle himself and being married to Midge. The fact Riverdale is a dumpster fire makes me relieved my rare representation isn’t shown there
That one's more a fight between two creators since RAS was also a long-time Archie writer
I wish original authors would start putting this stuff in their contracts. Like, yes, you may adapt my queer book/play into a movie (for a boatload of cash) as long as it's a queer movie. I'm not sure how you'd qualify a 'queer movie' but I'm sure the lawyers could come up with something. Of course the blame lies with the people actually doing the straightwashing, but it wouldn't hurt to force their hand a bit.
I think they did that in The Old Guard. The author insisted that the scene between Joe and Nicky talking about their love be included in the film and he put it in his contract.
Original authors should write plays instead of novels. Playwrights have control over adaptations which authors don't. If you're in the Dramatists Guild, they can't straight wash your work.
Sadly, that's a good way not to get your story picked up at all.
Whenever straightwashed biopics are mentioned the first example I think about is 1965's "The Agony and the Ecstasy". The worst part is that Charlton Heston refused the rights for the film to be used in the 1995 documentary "The Celluloid Closet" because he swore that Michelangelo was straight when, by historical accounts, he was at least bisexual. Talking about Mr. Heston, I wonder if he ever found out that he played a queer character in Ben-Hur and didn't even know it.
oh, Heston knew. they even filmed some quite explicit parts which were later cut and never shown
@Embreis No, he didn't. It's a well known story that Gore Vidal, the writer, and the actor playing Marsala came up with the idea of playing Marsala as if he'd been Ben Hur's lover when they were young, but knew Heston would have a fit and so they didn't tell him. The result was a level of uncomfortableness in Heston's performance that fit, in story, as if Ben Hur didn't want to admit it happened, and Marsala is getting ticked off about the rejection.
* gets out my spiked bat for the “X character was straightwashed because they’re a bi/pan that is in an opposite gender relationship” comments *
…I’ve been hurt too many times
31:04 just a heads up. ND Stevenson, the creator of She-ra, goes by Nate now and uses he/him pronouns
otherwise, great video. very interesting discussion of this aspect of cisheteronormativity in media
also a really prominent example is sailor uranus and sailor neptune from sailor moon who were called “cousins” in the dub despite being very very obviously dating and girlfriends. they didn’t even go the “best friends” route which would’ve been bad but at least not incest.
Yeah it certainly was a choice.
@@Stargazer_Ley ngl the fact they made them cousins to cover up their love implies they think/thought, homosexuality is worse than literal incest
Also funny because the same company did the Spanish dub, where they were lesbians. So it was essentially stating that Latin America would be chill but Americans think literal incest is better
@@caterpillarking I just think that DiC didn't realize the implication of the censorship, nor did they know about all of the physical affection the two showed for each other in the original show.
"Oh they aren't kissing or having sex on screen? We can work around that lol"
Remember, the dubbing process back in the 90s isn't at all how it is today.
When I was a preteen, my mom told me that when she was a teenager, she had once made out with her female friend and that it was totally normal for girls to think about kissing their female friends. So when I used to fantasize about making out with my one friend I convinced myself that it was normal. Now that I have become more open and seen more queer representation in the media I realized I am bisexual and had a crush on her. Queer representation really changed my perception of myself.
So glad your posting this now! Your videos help me stay entertained through out my dreadful commute
Love actually also cut a storyline with between 2 African characters. It didn't keep all the straight storylines it kept all the straight white storylines
I once had somebody include my OC (who was a lesbian) in his fanfiction but he turned her into a straight without my knowledge or consent.
It amused me that dad was mad at "The Imitation Game" about Turing, because they made him gay. ... this amused me greatly. As a "history buff" himself, i am very suprised dad did not ever find out anything about turing, and genuinely believes that this is hollywood trying to change history. Historywas changed a long time ago, and now we are in the often frustrating process of trying to un-change it.
i wanna add how Rebecca Sugar added a diamond scene to Garnets wedding so the wedding scene cannot be cut out and that's how the next episode started. when they crashed Garnet's wedding. Because if the scene was cut out, it wouldn't make sense. I also saw how people pointed out that Ruby was wearing a dress and Sapphire a suit, even tho Ruby was often more 'male presenting' and Sapphire more 'fem presenting' which of course they could wear it anyways, but for example in the Russian dub Ruby is voiced by a man apparently.. so people talked how it would be awkward in that specific dub, ofc we don't know if that was Rebecca's intention. But the wedding scene was a smart move.
I'm not sure about the voice actor in the Russian dub, could be a man could be a woman, that's not important. But they did change Ruby's pronouns to he/him and it was really annoying. And when they could not pretend that Ruby is a man anymore (the wedding scene) they just stopped broadcasting the show. I had to rewatch the whole thing in English.
On the biopic, this is why I love Ammonite (2020) so so much. They take a person from real life, the paleontologist Mary Anning, and despite not knowing her sexuality they made her queer in the movie. I love that so much, because straight is not the default, we don’t know what we don’t know, and her queerness made the narrative 100% more interesting. Also Kate Winslet’s interviews about the movie are great, I love how enthusiastic she was to portray this role, and I love how the director Francis Lee defended his choice to depict her as queer when homophobic audiences complained. More biopic directors should take some notes smh.
Edit: also it’s pretty laughable to me that people don’t include queer characters in war movies when like… most of the men on the front be f*ckin lmao. The inherent homoeroticism of fighting for your life beside your lover…
Also also on the topic of more historical erasure, I HATE any depictions of Greek or Roman times without any semblance of MLM romance. Like you’re just doing it wrong, it’s not accurate at all, if you don’t want to depict generals with male lovers don’t make Roman movies or shows unless it’s after a certain era where homosexuality was banned.
I think another form of straightwashing could be characters who are queer for comedic reasons but straight whenever they get some development. I think this comes from writers who want to make jokes at the expense of queer without any self-reflection, but also from trying to fit queercoded vibes into normativity without actually challenging LGTBphobia.
John Barrowman's character Captain Jack Harkness from Dr. Who is a wildly popular character in the show and in Torchwood, and is one of my favorite queer characters in a series personally. I don't remember if we ever saw him kiss another man, but the Doctor makes sure to set him up with Toby from Space Titanic before transitioning to 11. It truly was lovely to see.
harkness is one of those characters you just can't really straightwash, honestly doctor who has been surprisingly one of the more progressive franchises over the years
Jack kisses 9 in Series 1 ep 13: The Parting of the Ways and has a relationship with his co-worker throughout the first 3 series of Torchwood + another time agent in Series 2 and a guy from the past in Series 4.
An he does shamelessly flirt with a dude with the season 3 end saga. If i remember he did alo flirt with rose and the doctor.
@@marocat4749 He also flirted with a British soldier in the very first episode he appeared in.
There's also Bill Potts, one of 12's companions, who's a lesbian, working class and generally awesome 🥰
Very late to the party but I wanted to add my answer to whenever people ask 'what's the big deal?' in regards to the importance of representation in media:
Representation equals normalization and normalization will cut down on the violence committed against queer folk outside their community. Not eliminate, because there are always going to be haters, but at least allow queer folk to move in every community without a perpetual underlying fear of being targeted because of their sexuality.
This, for me, is the most important purpose in having representation of queer folk in all forms of media.
Extremely interested on people's thoughts on the straightwashing of Homelander since he is canonically bisexual in the comics and contentious for people as a character, and because the way Kripke's re-adapted The Boys' source material and the allegories within it might make him _not_ being part of a marginalized group more powerful for the show's messaging.
But then on the other hand, you have the argument that Amazon and a straight showrunner shouldn't be making the decision that a character's queerness is okay to omit if it's too uncomfortable or potentially challenging for them to face as writers. 🤷
I see the show as completely divorced from that edgy mess that the comics are. Stuff like the milk scene would just leave really bad vibes..
I think the boys TV series tries to maintain the queer characters like Maeve in a more heroic light
would people get mad anyway? "yay we have a bisexual character. we don't care how he behaves!" like when people can't decide if they enjoy gay villains or "stop making the bad guy gay, it says gays are bad guys"
Speaking of networks straight-washing fully queer moments, I used to work for a tv network in the Middle East (specifically known for showing unedited movies in a region where the government would HEAVILY edit movies showing in the cinema). There was a internal memo that leaked to the wider company that they weren’t going to air the Modern Family episode where Cam and Mitchell got married! There was a HUGE push back internally from both the queer and non queer workers (mostly the westerners, and I had some big arguments with some my “more religious” colleagues about why it should air…). Thankfully the company “apologised” and aired it but with a warning about the content before it, which was fucking stupid as anyone who watches the show knows there is a gay couple with kids ffs!
Here's my question: who is participating in these "test screening"? Like, where do they pull that audience from? Is this LA? Is it Ohio (the testing ground for the united states)? Do these people sign up and are doing this as a part time job? What is the socio-economical make up of that audience because it feels like a constant sticking point (or scapegoat) for executives when they end up with egg on their faces. "Oh, we WANTED to put the gay stuff in, but, darn it, those "test audience" didn't like it so we could we do?" Oh idk, maybe fill your test audience with folks that are actually part of your intended audience?!?! *heavy sigh of gayness*
we need a jury of our *queers* in these test screenings >:I
Isnt LA pretty liberal so, unless youreally are excluding, you get queer people. :(
Honestly though... they're very obviously reinforcing their biases but because it's culture it's somehow invisible and acceptable. Imagine if their testing audience for "feminine hygiene products" (I honestly find the term a little silly but I don't know a more inclusive replacement for non-cis, non-binary ppl) was purely men 💀
But if you do that and only show your movie to a test audience made up of queer people, then you just run into the opposite problem.
I will say, it seems like in comics its a lot easier to lean more heavily in lesbian nods than gay male nods. It's unfortunately part of that coding where girl on girl is more palatable to heterosexual audiences cause "hurr hurr girl on girl is hot", while boy on boy is considered "icky". Even in something that is see as very LGBT-positive like HBO's Harley Quinn, it leans heavily in lesbian/bisexual female appeals, even making Catwoman a confirmed bisexual, but there is really no homosexual representation. Not demanding "fair is fair", but you see it in things like She-Ra, The Owl House, and Steven Universe as well (even Avatar/Korra), its a little easier nowadays to show it if it involves women. The only (and single best) piece of comic book homosexual fair I can think of off the top of my head was when it was confirmed Constantine used to date a very muscular bruiser King Shark.
Honestly I feel a big part of it seems to stem from people having no idea how to wright a gay male heroic character. Lesbian heroes seem to work easier since they can just be written as badass and its enough of a queer codifier that they could be gay/bi. Meanwhile if you try to wright a male queer hero, there seems to be an inherent need to make them 'act' gay, somehow make them more feminine. Comic books at least get this right because Deadpool and Constantine are just two badasses who happen to not care what people have between their legs, but in movies or TV Shows, a gay male hero has to be like more obviously gay.
I'd hazard a guess that it's mostly just because comic book readers are mostly (heterosexual) men. I don't know how many women read comic books, but I cannot imagine the number being anywhere near 50% for there to be equal leaning for both lesbian and gay characters.
It is a little sad that to be a heroic character, you have to erase any expression of femininity though. A very 'obvious' gay should also have the same opportunities to be heroic and powerful as any 'butch' ones; at the same time very masculine gay characters should also be afforded to be gay in all ways possible, be that very queer relationships or other characteristics.
As a gay man I do feel very alone in terms of superhero characters. Especially living in a non-US or non-UK country where American superhero comics aren't as popular. Thank god for fanfics filling that void for me.
Honestly, the only gay male hero I can think of is Midnighter (although I think he's more of an anti-hero). He is treated as a badass dude, but thinking it through, his partner Apollo doesn't get much of the same treatment? Sure he looks big and masculine, but somehow always ends up becoming a damsel in distress and even a victim of SA, to be saved by his cool badass boyfriend, which never sat right with me.
@@lazyval27 maybe Marvel can muster the courage to make Wiccan and Hulkling into a fully fledged tv show
@@An1llusion in the west maybe. over in [east] Asia their form of comic (manga, manhwa or manhua) attracts quite another audience. also have a look at _yaoi_ or _danmei_
@@embreis2257 Isn't that media is often made by straight women for straight women and fetishises gay relationships? Kinda the mirror of lesbian issue in the west?
That's similar to how I feel whenever I find out so many celebrities and past historical figures were / are actually bisexual+, not gay.
How many were there??
wtf is bi+ is that, like, premium bisexuality?
dumbledore and grindelwald are such a good example of how studios and writers at the same time do the minimum to include queerness and at the same time don't dare to actually present the topic properly for fear of losing a homophobic audience
Oh, THIS!
True, although I'm not sure I'd call that straightwashing since they're exactly as gay as JK has ever written them...
oh my god, that is so true 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I mean it's not like Dumbledore was written as explicitly queer in the first place.
I mean in the case of dumbledore, it was less about "losing homophobic audience" and more about trying to distract the *very* present queer audience from finding out about her transphobic, racist, and antisemetic views. It was an effort to say "Look! I cant be bigoted now!! I just right now decided that a character is gay!" when people were slowly realising how antisemitism and racism ridden both her books and the movies were, and she brought it up again when people initially found out about her strong transphobia. She knew the biggest part of her active fandom were "progressive" or queer, so she used (and continues to use new "diverse characters") it as a cover-up to convince her "progressive" audience to stay, not to cater to homophobic audiences.. She was already catering to those audiences.
Her "diverse characters" are as one-dimensional, not to mention harmfully depicted, as she can get away with (her trans woman character is literally named 'sir ona' and is voiced by a man...). If anything, she has only queer baited, because it was very clear that she did not intent for any diversity in the first place.
Also, PSA for anyone wondering, do not give your money to anything HP related, that money is actively used to fund anti-lgbt movements that are having seriously negative effects in the UK right now. That includes not streaming the movies, the fantastic franchise, not downloading or buying the games (yes even the free mobile game), and do not buy any merch related to it.
A big issue with the many forms of Washing is that if a sequel or remake is made that makes attempts to be more accurate are seen as wokewashing.
the one that frustrates me the most (so much so i have a list) is characters that could've been bi, or were planned to, and that was simply cut from their character for no real reason. so many examples
Buffy's a fun one since Tara was supposed to be her college girlfriend
@@beeaggro2593 but faith was RIGHT THERE like im shocked it never happened. imglad we got willow and tara, but buffy was the bi icon we deserved
This reminds me of all those angry parents who were mad that Disney put a gay kiss scene in the latest Buzz Lightyear movie. To those parents I say: Get over it. It’s not that big of a deal.
I remember a reviewer basically going on a rant on how parents don't know to tell their kids that lesbians exist.
And after that she got called out for her shit but she hides her "apology and explanation" behind a paywall.
So you have to pay for her saying a bunch of shit
The only thing that made me upset about the kiss was the fact that it was easy to cut out when shown in other countries, but that's the closest thing we're going to get from Disney when it comes to Queer rep without it seeming forced so it's not too bad I guess just wish they could do better.
The instance of queer stories not marketed as queer continues, with a recent example being the first season of Our Flag Means Death. None of the marketing for the first season even implied it could be gay and then turned out to be a love letter to the queer community with such an array of queer characters. It really is wild to think that this still happens, though then again the show was cancelled after season 2 despite glowing reviews so it just goes to show how much of a hold homophobia has on the production and marketing of media
I grew up being obsessed, really really obsessed with Hans Christen Anderson stories. I even watched the musical with Danny Kaye in it (which is a mahusive bit of straightwashing) and I didn't learn how one of the most beautifully tragic stories of love was really the expression of a man's love for another until I was 20. I feel robbed in a way, not knowing that since I fell in love with his stories since I was 4 but I'm so glad the knowledge came to me eventually. I can now see the queerness in so many of his fairy tales and it makes me love them all the more.
Comic book guy came out as bisexual a few seasons ago and then they never mentioned it again
No shit lol
The Simpsons kind of have a lot of queer characters all around and they just kind of roll with it. Smithers and Lenny/Carl have been gay since the time of Matthew Shephard
Re superhero movies, specifically the MCU: the relationship between Captain America and the Winter Soldier, officially platonic hetero buddies, reads as considerably more loving, devoted, and directly queer than any of the intended official depictions of queerness or queer characters onscreen. Screenwriters have gone on record calling theirs a love story and describing them as soulmates. And yet, just roommates, bros, pals, OMG golly we just can't understand why people see a romantic relationship. Can't men just be friends anymore!!!?!?!?
Meanwhile characters who are officially queer? Barely a whisper. Make it make sense
Also its just , not only terrible they didnt let them have an ambivalent relationship, steve has to bang peggies niece?! And Not be shown with bucky , the reason why th conflict o the movie happens?
Thy didnt even left it at that but , had steve bang peggies niece. Yikes. It makes the movuis worse, by not even letting them be together ambivalent.
Dating Johnny Bravo is what made Velma realize she was a lesbian, lol! 😆
I'm a bit disappointed you didn't talk about Jughead in the adaptation section.
Your video essays are great, thank you for spending the (I am sure huge amounts of) time to put these together.
I loved what you said about older people saying things when someone comes out now indicating they could have been open to exploring queerness if they'd been born now. I was disowned by my family for being queer and I swear my mom is queer, but won't admit it to herself. Every time a she sees an attractive woman she's always commenting on their bodies, faces, hair.... EVERYTHING about how beautiful they are. My mom has really low self-esteem, so I grew up thinking it was an envy thing. Now, I'm sure she's attracted to other women. I'm sure there's still envy mixed in, but there's no doubt in my mind. Would her attraction to women ever be acted on? I severely doubt it. But still, it's soooooooo clear to me (and other people who know her). It's so sad that my mom is in such denial she can't admit it to herself. Granted, I was the same way once. I'd had sex with 2 women and told myself, "You've had sex with men too, you only had sex with those girls to rebel against your parents. It doesn't matter that you fantasize about women a lot. That you get crushes on them. You're just... You had sex with a man! That means you're straight." I truly felt that way due to my hyper-religious upbringing. I guess extreme denial runs in the family. I'm very glad I got over mine.
thx for sharing your story!
This might sound like a dumb question but how do you know when you have a crush on a woman? In high school I felt like I had crushes on girls but I'd always ignore them. I feel more comfortable with women than men so it felt different. And the envy thing you brought up. It was confusing whether I thought about their beauty because of a crush or because I envied them.
@@mismiserables Well I mean if you get crushes on boys it's the same in essence, of course culture can make denial go a long away but also, if you don't really have crushes on boys but do on girls... it's also kinda obvious there's a different thing happening, which sadly we're often coaxed into misunderstanding
12:00 what really annoys me about the superhero movies is that I see them with my aunt and cousin and when stuff like kisses and implied gay relationships happen I can see my aunt scowl at it. And the ride home she always says something about it, it makes me so mad. So one time after Enternals she said something and I said “but look at all the man and woman relationships, every one man and man relationship for every 500 woman and man relationships”
She hasn’t mentioned anything since so that’s good. It still makes me mad though
Speaking of Tim Burton, I feel like Wednesday is another case where her being queer could have elevated the story. Her being Pan or even AroAce would ave been more true to the og character instead of thrusting her into the most basic netflix love triangle ever that really doesn’t feel like something she would do
i think Wednesday would only date as a way to get a test subject. She'd probably think it was funny how easy it is to manipulate boys, get bored, meet lesbian/bi girls that are just as thirsty (they exist- i went to middle school once), get bored, realize she wasn't really challenging herself, start "dating" more difficult prey, all the while racking up a victim count without putting too much suspicion on herself or the Adams family. And her character would be smart enough to do that.
The original character is a child, how could it represent any sexuality...
Yeah, it was jarring making her about the boring typical romance. There was Enid. Wednesday needs her Enid ❤
The worst example of straightwashing is Achilles, it’s hard to believe people think he’s straight.
That part about "gay in the original, straight in the remake" is fun to hear after the announcement about the new Picture of Dorian Gray show...
HOLY SHIT! you just solved a 30 year mystery for me.[my trauma induced eidetic memory retains the weirdest shit] I remember when I was 10ish, we were asked what movie we wanted to watch in class for some reason that escapes me. I said a league of their own because I REALLY liked it and there wasn't any content in it that was inappropriate for our age group, or at least that's what I thought at the time, but the teacher was so angry she told me to never talk about that movie again in class.
fuuuucccckkkk...
I don't understand though, the movie itself is squeaky clean family entertainment? Why would a teacher object to that, even if he knew that many of the real baseball players were lesbians? It's a Tom Hanks movie basically.
It took me until I was in my late twenties to realize that I was bisexual and even now in my mid-thirties, I still find that when I have genuinely romantic feelings for a woman (more than just "oh, she's really pretty and I like her"), I often don't realize it for quite some time because my mind had been so accustomed to ignoring those feelings or recasting them as something else. It's frustrating. I'm married to a man and I love being with him, but that doesn't switch my sexuality off. My husband points out how oblivious I can be to my own feelings even though I have put a lot of effort into being emotionally aware--the last woman I had really strong romantic feelings for ended our friendship very abruptly with no explanation and that was when I realized I'd been falling for her, which made processing my grief a lot harder. More representation and more acceptance might have helped when I was a teen, because I didn't know how to parse some of the emotions I had and it was really confusing.
Are you me? Lol
I think there is a term for people who have a hard time separating aestatic and romantic attraction
Sounds like me but not w a husband.
Boogie Nights was another movie whose queerness was erased in post. The main POV character was supposed to be bisexual but that was completely erased from the film. A major part of the reason why the film ultimately falls short for me is precisely because so much meaning was lost without the explicit bisexuality.
It seems to me that they fixed The Color Purple, but they straightwashed Dune: Part 2...one step forward, ond step back. *sigh*
It is interesting that you discussed librarians at the end. Until recently I worked in a library and constantly worked really hard to get LGBTQ+ books in. From my experience there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done in that area. In my job we catered specifically to resources for schools so I thought it was particularly important that they have LGBTQ+ books to read. I worked there for 2 years and it took them a year of me encouraging them, taking down notes on every school librarian who requested LGBTQ+ books and identifying a list of LGBTQ+ books in my own time outside of work to get them to finally buy them. It was extremely frustrating as my manager acted like my effort meant nothing and that 'they were always going to get them in eventually'.
At the same time I was also trying to set up a LGBTQ+ reading group, which I was hoping could be a support group. I had requested to start one when I first began my job, again it took a year to get permission to get it off the ground. My work kept piling more and more hoops for me to jump through to get every action for the group approved and it was very frustrating. Just a simple poster for the group needed to be approve by three people of different hierarchies. Then they announced that the group was only going to be a trial after it had been going for three months. They gave me one more month and then I would have to stop it. Afterwards, I was meant to write a report about everything and the stress of it all led me to taking a mental health leave for month after repeatedly falling physically ill. Eventually I did write the report (after a good six months had passed because I found it so traumatic to try remember that time period), but my manager basically told me that they didn't really care about it. The whole thing was an absolute nightmare. I tried to bring up the issue to HR at one point and they just deferred me to the apprentice team (I was an apprentice), who didn't seem to understand how isolated and discriminated against I felt by the whole issue.
Now I will add that there were some library assistants in the public libraries that were really encouraging and supportive of the reading group, so not everyone in the libraries I worked in were bad. Whenever I made a poster for the next month they were the first to put it up and I really appreciated that. They even setup LGBTQ+ book displays to really highlight and advertise the reading group.
I just find it a real shame that a lot of the higher ups where I worked seemed to be not so inclusive. It was pretty clear to me that the reason I was not offered a job after my apprenticeship was partly because of my outspoken views on LGBTQ+ rights, while quieter apprentices were kept on as they would not challenge the status quo.
this title is misleading because it made me think that straightwashing was erased and i almost cheered
The fact that they straight-washed a bi woman in a gay movie adaptation (Love, Simon) is baffling to me.
I think the film was in production before the sequel book that fully confirmed Leah's and Abby's bisexuality but it's still baffling that a thin actress was cast as Leah and her plot was changed so she had an out of nowhere crush on Simon. I'm also devastated there's never going to be an adaptation of Leah On The Offbeat.
thank you for mentioning the Color Purple! the straightwashing in that movie really pains me as a black queer person, especially because it is SUCH an important film within the black community. many black people, especially Gen X and older, know and love the movie but have never read the book so they don't know how deep the romance between Shug and Celie is. to have that represented in such a culturally important movie could've gone a LONG way to improving acceptance of queer people in the black community. (i wish i could tell you how many times i've heard someone say being queer is "some white people shit.")
a film adaptation of the musical (which keeps the gay content in) is coming out at the end of this year, and i'm very excited for it but i've already seen people who only know of the Spielberg film questioning why they "made them gay." because they were supposed to be!!
17:57 also wanted to note that in the Bayard Rustin biopic, Rustin will be played by gay actor Colman Domingo (who is also going to be in The Color Purple adaptation!)
Omg I didn't know this was a term. I hate how in Lucifer , his Bisexuality is pretty much erased and his encounters with men are pretty much shoved to the corner and he mentions it like three times throughout the show. There's many, Many scenes of him kissing women and waking up in bed with women but not a single one with men? Be fr. 😭
Your arguments in this video were so well put and so validating. I appear to just now be unlocking the queer side of youtube, and it is so empowering to hear you say what I feel all the time; “our queer identity is an important part of what makes up the totality of us.” It’s something I don’t get to see or feel a lot as a gay boy living in the south. You wouldn’t think you just sitting there and talking could be some impactful but it is. And i am so grateful you did.
Thank you for the video, incredibly informative yet concise as always 💜 I immediately started thinking of The Imitation Game while on the topic of biopics - which I guess falls into the category 'oh but the movie was about the war and maths, so there just wasn't time or place for THAT', except they gave him a straight love interest and completely 'forgot' what happened to that man after.