Tag Archives: GLADD

LGBTQ Representation Hits High, But Broadcasters ‘Failed Queer Women With Toxic Message’

GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV report cites record-high LGBTQ representation, but the media advocacy group says that television “failed queer women”, killing off a staggering number of lesbian and bisexual female characters.

More than 25 lesbian and bisexual female characters died on scripted broadcast, cable and streaming series this year, the media advocacy group GLAAD found in its report on small-screen diversity.

While TV remains far ahead of film in gay representations, the medium “failed queer women this year” by continuing the “harmful ‘bury your gays’ trope,” the report said.

GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis writes

Television — and broadcast series more specifically — failed queer women… as character after character was killed, it served no other purpose than to further the narrative of a more central (and often straight, cisgender) character. [That] sends a toxic message.”

The violent deaths included characters Poussey Washington (played by Samira Wiley on “Orange is the New Black”) and Bea Smith (Danielle Cormack on “Wentworth”).

It’s part of a decade-long pattern in which gay or transgender characters are killed to further a straight character’s storyline, GLAAD said, sending what it called the “dangerous” message that gay people are disposable.

For its annual report, researchers tallied the LGBTQ characters seen or set to be portrayed in the period from June 2016 to May 2017. Counts were based on series airing or announced and for which casting has been confirmed.

The study, which in 2005 began examining other aspects of diversity on TV, found record percentages of people of color and people with disabilities depicted on broadcast shows.

Among the detailed findings:

  • Broadcast TV includes the highest percentage of regularly appearing gay characters — 4.8 percent — since Gay rights organization GLAAD began its count 21 years ago. Among nearly 900 series regular characters on ABC, CBS, CW, Fox and NBC, 43 characters are LGBTQ, up from 35 last season.
  • Streamed shows included 65 regular and recurring LGBTQ characters, up six from last season. Lesbians, including characters on “One Mississippi” and “Orange is the New Black,” account for the majority of characters, 43 percent, a far higher share than on broadcast or cable.
  • Cable series held steady with 142 regular and recurring LGBTQ characters, with a 5 percent increase in the number of gay men but a 2 percent drop in the number of lesbian characters depicted.
  • The number of transgender characters in regular or recurring appearances on all platforms has more than doubled from last season, from seven to 16.
  • Characters with a disability represented 1.7 percent of all regularly seen broadcast characters, up from 0.9 percent last season. Each platform has at least one LGBTQ character that’s HIV-positive, with only one such character a regular (Oliver on “How to Get Away with Murder”).
  • African-Americans will be 20 percent (180) of regularly seen characters on prime-time broadcast shows this season, the highest share yet found by GLAAD. But black women are underrepresented at 38 percent of the total, or 69 characters.
  • The percentage of regularly appearing Asian-Pacific Islanders on broadcast TV hit 6 percent, the highest tally found by GLAAD and slightly more than the group’s U.S. population percentage. Contributing to the increase are the Asian-American family shows “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Dr. Ken.”
  • Latino characters rose a point to 8 percent, equaling the highest representation found two seasons ago by GLAAD. That differs sharply from the 17 percent Latino representation in the U.S. population as measured by the Census Bureau, the report said.

 

 

 

 

Now That’s What We Call an ‘Acceptance’ Speech. Kerry Washington Rousing Speech on LGBT Rights

Standing in front of a crowd of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and their allies, Scandal star Kerry Washington delivered a rousing speech on human rights, diversity in Hollywood and gender equality, bringing a star-studded crowd to its feet to applaud and cheer.

Washington took the stage to accept GLAAD’s Vanguard Award on Saturday night, an honour given to significant allies of the LGBT community, in a ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Each year, the Vanguard Award goes to someone in the entertainment industry who has helped push LGBT rights forward. It’s been awarded to people like Drew Barrymore, Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lopez, and Jennifer Aniston.

Her speech was a fiery call for the “others” of the world to join together to “fight the good fight” and to work to end a system that leaves some people with fewer basic rights than others.

She discussed how people of colour, women, LGBT individuals, and other marginalised groups have often been pitted against one another.

“Now you would think that those of us who are kept from our full rights of citizenship would band together and fight the good fight. But history tells us that no, often we don’t. Women, poor people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, intersex people — we have been pitted against each other and made to feel like there are limited seats at the table for those of us who fall into the category of ‘other.'”

She has a powerful, uplifting suggestion: The “others” of the world need to work together in their common goal and use the power of storytelling to create change.

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“There is so much power in storytelling, and there is enormous power in inclusive storytelling, in inclusive representation. … We must be allies, and we must be allied in this business because to be represented is to be humanized. And as long as anyone anywhere is being made to feel less human, our very definition of humanity is at stake, and we are all vulnerable.

We must see each other, all of us; and we must see ourselves, all of us. We must continue to break new ground until that is just how it is. Until we are no longer firsts and exceptions and rare and unique. In the real world, being an ‘other’ is the norm. In the real world, the only norm is uniqueness, and our media must reflect that.”

Washington’s message is powerful and personal. But above all, it’s an honest reflection on a world that treats entire groups of people — women, people of color, LGBT people — as second-class citizens, as others.

 

Fall TV Makes Progress With Lesbian Characters – But There’s Still a Long Way to Go

On the path of gay rights and acceptance, the way that the media portrays the lives of gay is massively important. No, not just in the way they talk of Bill and David’s whirlwind marriage following the repeal of DOMA or Kathy and Sue’s adoption of a child following a court ruling but in the fictional stories too.

For those who don’t know any gay people, televisions shows and movies can help normalise the non-heterosexual relationships that really exist. It eliminates the idea of the rainbow wearing bogeyman (or woman) hiding (both literally and figuratively) in a closet.

But getting to a point where the media is fair with its portrayal isn’t always easy. We’re moving forward but playing the turtle’s game against a heteronormative hare doesn’t help conjure favourable opinion towards gay people in the short term.

As noted by GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis,

“Television networks are playing a key role in promoting cultural understanding of LGBT lives around the world, and are now producing some of the best LGBT-inclusive programming we’ve yet seen.”

Thankfully, the latest GLAAD ‘Where We Are On TV’ report for the 2014 to 2015 season (including shows scheduled to air in the Summer of 2015) show a swathe of new lesbian faces for queer women to identify with.

These include Renee Montoya on Gotham, Renee’s love interest Barbara Kean and the lesbian doctor responsible for the main mix-up at the centre of Jane the Virgin’s story. When we add all of the newcomers to those that already existed we have 74 queer women (bisexual and lesbian) of all races depicted across cable and broadcast networks.

However, although the numbers are strong (if you can call less than 10% of all characters being LGBT ‘strong’, anyway) we are faced with many challenges about representation.

Also according to GLAAD’s statistics, on both cable and broadcast, the figures of queer woman hovered just above 40%, with most queer characters being men. In total this leads to a difference of over two dozen queer men in comparison to the total of queer women. Whilst many could argue that queer representation for all genders is a plus point, a lack of real equality can lead to inherent problems.

Glee in particular comes to mind as although it has a reasonable amount of white, gay males (the show’s creator is also a white, gay male it’s worth nothing) it has gone as far as to ridicule, mock and make fun of female queerness and antagonise the fans of said characters.

Meanwhile, despite Modern Family being very proud of its two gay leads (married male couple Cam and Mitch) when it featured a lesbian couple, they were incredibly stereotypical in their portrayal which is perhaps not offensive but is definitely enough to roll your eyes.

Not only this but the portrayal of queer women on our TV suffer from the same plague of ‘mostly white characters’ that the roster of heterosexual characters do. While it’s difficult to get a break down of queer women only, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that with 117 white LGBT characters out of 170 LGBT characters, there aren’t going to be a whole lot of queer women included.

Hollywood is racist from the ground up – the practice of whitewashing and the stereotypes they promote can tell us that much – but the TV side of the industry needs to embrace and overcome its problematic past.

One the one hand showing queer faces of colour can have a massive impact as it shows people that yes, people of all races can be gay not just the effeminate white man down the street, leading them to be more accepting. While on the other, with people of colour watching more TV than white people it just makes better business sense for Hollywood – y’know, if they aren’t particularly interested in the legacy and the messages that their media leaves behind.

But with this all said, it should be praised that we’re seeing new types of stories, even if we need the demographics to change a little. We have queer parents, we have bisexual women who aren’t just a sweeps week ploy and there are queer people of all sorts of professions and backgrounds too.

Ultimately there’s a long way to go until we can be truly satisfied but we’re slowly and surely getting there, at least.