the LGB representation bingo card

[kindkit]

I've decided that the world needs a lesbian, gay, and bisexual¹ representation bingo card for all those oh-so-reasonable answers some people like to give when one asks why a particular text contains no characters who are identified as LGB. I'm probably not the first person to think of this, but a quick google didn't reveal an existing card except for a comics-specific one.

So, wanna help me brainstorm squares?

Ideas so far (mine and others'):

It's a children's/YA story.

It's not important to mention the characters' sexualities.

Lesbian/gay/bisexual people only make up X percent of the population, so statistically it makes sense that all the characters are straight.

The creator is at the start of their career and obviously can't risk including queer characters.

Wasn't that one character who had two lines in episode eight gay?

The author said Chracter Y is LGB but it just wasn't specifically mentioned.

It's set in [historical period or historical event] and there's no evidence of any queer people then (and if there was, they were all in the closet).

The creator is gay, why are you singling out their sexuality?

It contains [other minority group], why does it have to have queer people too?

The character is bisexual, they just happen to be attracted to the opposite sex for the whole of this canon.

Why do you have to make everything about sex?

The creator is straight, how can you expect them to write about something they haven't experienced?

It's fantasy! And this universe just doesn't have any queer people in.

There are queer people in my universe.. I just didn't think any of them were worth writing about.

In my universe, nobody cares about sexuality.

They'd just mess it up anyway.

It's about [common setting for situational homosexuality] so that would be stereotyping.

They're as good as dating already!

It just never came up!

The creator is gay, so I'm sure they know what they're doing.

We all know [Character X] and [Character Y] are doing it, anyway

Your contributions are encouraged!



¹I'm aware that the list does not cover the entirety of the queer spectrum. That is because I think the issues of visibility and inclusion around, for example, trans* or asexual characters are sufficiently different from those around LGB characters that one bingo card will not fit all. For that matter, there could probably be separate bingo cards for gay men, bisexual men, bisexual women, and lesbians, if someone wanted to make them.

Comments

[halotolerant]

It's a children's/YA story
Oh god yes this excuse *headdesks* I have seen it trotted out so so often. As if 'queer character' was the same as 'explicit sex' because QUEER IS DIRTY, or, tbh, I think the line is 'If you tell the kiddies there is queerness they might take it into their heads to be queer' which is depressingly fail on so, so many levels and basically exposes a very deep homophobia.

And the one about 'character is bisexual but happens to be attracted to opposite sex for now' is I find so much used for women in particular, because bisexual women are waiting for the right man (of course they are, all women are waiting for the right man! *headdesks moar*)

My contributions:

- If there were queer characters no one would buy it/if this possibly subtextually queer was explicitly outed no one would buy it so we're better off with a wink and nod

- There was that time there was a bodyswap and a same-sex kiss biologically happened although actually the person involved choosing to do the kissing was acting on a het attraction (see: most of Star Trek)

- There's already 'Queer as Folk', how many damn queer TV shows do you need?

- Queer people don't join the navy/army/starfleet/medical services/fire brigade so logically there wouldn't be any in this story

ALSO I think an honourable mention should go to anything where one character is mentioned to be canonically queer and then never dates ever, because ew...

[kindkit]

Ooh, yes, these are good. (Though I would argue that on DS9, Jadzia's kiss with her wife-in-a-former-incarnation was not actually very straight--I think they made Jadzia canonically bisexual but without saying the word. Certainly it would've been better if they had dared to say the word, but I think DS9 at least was trying.)

the one about 'character is bisexual but happens to be attracted to opposite sex for now' is I find so much used for women in particular

*nods* It does come up for men too, though, usually in the context of "he's sexually attracted to men and women, but he found Real Love with a woman."

There's already 'Queer as Folk', how many damn queer TV shows do you need?

Oh, yeah, that one. Once I read about a study of men and women in conversation, which noted that if women spoke in mixed groups more than about 1/3 of the time, they were perceived (by both men and women) as dominating the conversation. I think something similar happens with queer characters. When Russell T. Davies was the showrunner for New Who, there was complaint from some quarters about his "gay agenda" and the large number of gay or bisexual characters he included in the show. Which, on counting, turns out to be something like 8 or 9 characters, only one of them recurring, over the course of four series and some specials.

[halotolerant]

In fairness to DS9, they (to a value of 'they' being the creative team but seemingly not the producers) did try, and handled the Trill same-sex attraction storyline much better than the same theme done in TNG with Crusher.

Re: the bisexual men, thinking about this it's sort of what happens in 'Brideshead Revisited' and quite a lot of Dickens, Wilkie Collins albeit with less specifically defined male-male love as a starting point - young man has intense relationship with 'dear friend', young man meets nice woman (who, in many cases, it is made clear is not an intellectual equal like the man or even really 'friend' material, but probably pretty and vulnerable), young man 'grows up' and marries woman whilst also doing things like learning responsibility in business... [I just finished watching the BBC's version of 'Our Mutual Friend', which has such a friendship and whilst the BBC doesn't make the 'abandoned' half of it in any way explicitly queer, they very much present him as in love with his friend and left alone at the end when Sweeping Heterosexual Happiness has engulfed everyone else in all the plot lines. It's an intriguingly bittersweet choice. I suppose I'll have to read the book to see if it echoes Dickens, although I can't say I enjoyed the story much... full of highly creepy male behaviour that was never called out]

I find it very interesting that the 'gay agenda' complaints camp never seem to have anything to say about Thomas in Downton Abbey. I might speculate that this is becuase he is (a) broadly dislikeable (b) constantly 'punished' (c) never has a partner (d) unhappy and also many of the other, otherwise sympathetic, popular characters express a great deal of homophobia about him... But then if I were to start listing my issues with DA I'd run out of comment space.

I had a good conversation once with a boy who was confused as to why I thought there weren't enough women in 'House'. He pointed out that there were two (!), I pointed out that there were, at that time, five central male characters and asked him if he'd feel men were under-represented if the show had 2 men and 5 women. He told me he'd never thought about it like that before, and I had a point...