On Queer: On queer media

“The thing you need to know is, it's all about sex... They say men think about sex every 28 seconds. Of course, that's straight men. With gay men, it's every nine.” So begins "Queer as Folk," the early-2000s TV show thought to be the apex of queer TV. The show opens in an overflowing gay club as three men — the “normal” narrator, the excessively flamboyant “queen” and the I-can’t-believe-he’s-not-straight businessman — search the crowd for sexual partners. And that’s enough. Those 30 seconds illuminate several issues of queer representation in the media.

All members of the queer community have their own representational issues. For gay men, characters are either tied to coming out, sex or AIDS (or perhaps some combination of the three). Of the five top-rated movies on Netflix featuring gay lead characters, four include characters struggling with coming out, two have heavily sexual plots and one documents the AIDS epidemic in Australia. This is not to say that these topics are unimportant. But it is damaging to reduce our community to only three topics, especially ones that are so stigmatized in society.

Lesbian women are also mistreated, as characters typically take one of two forms: the hyper-sexualized, conventionally attractive woman that only serves to titillate the straight male audience and the woman happily in a queer relationship, only to be killed off within a few episodes. "The 100" garnered a lot of critique after killing off Lexa, a female character who had recently become sexually active with another leading female character, Clarke, articulating that queer love is only a precursor to death.

Trans people face even more unique challenges, as their characters only serve as a tool for further stigmatization. "Orange is the New Black’s" Sophia Burset, "Glee’s" Unique Adam and "I Am Cait" all unintentionally perpetuate an image of “men playing dress-up,” as if being transgender is nothing more than heels and a wig. Of course, this only describes trans females. Trans males have almost no representation in media, along with bisexual, ace, pan, genderfluid and gender nonconforming individuals.

Altogether, to be queer in the media is to be reduced to an “other,” something simple and one-dimensional and the product of a society that makes little effort to understand you. And while there are exceptions (a handful of characters on "Orange is the New Black" and Annalise Keating of "How to Get Away with Murder"), it hurts to watch TV and recognize that this is how society views us. As a gay man, I can tell you that coming out was not the climax of my life story, as TV would lead you to believe. Our lives are not solely about sex or drama or fitting some ridiculous archetype. We are real people and we have real lives. Imagine watching a show and seeing a woman come home, set down her briefcase and kiss her wife. Or a man finish a marathon and run into his arms of a husband. Being gay isn't a plot point. It’s simply who we are.

This column was written by an anonymous resident of the Rainbow House.