The Missing Letters in LGBTQIA+ Media

With the dawn of increasing queer representation in today’s modern and popular media, there has been a cause for celebration for the newfound visibility of the queer community. Unfortunately, this visibility does not expand equally across the queer community in media. The most commonly represented letter of the queer alphabet is G, which stands for for gay, and traditionally refers to cisgender gay men. After that, the second most commonly represented letter of the queer alphabet is L, which traditionally stood for cisgender women who identify as lesbians. Altogether, the majority of representation of the queer community is focused on cisgender gay and lesbian relationships.

When I discovered that I had been selected to attend the immersion trip to San Francisco to attend the Frameline Queer Film Festival, I was ecstatic. I was especially ecstatic because our cohort would be viewing films to bring back home to the University of Eau Claire, for our very own queer film festival. I was incredibly excited to bring home films that I thought would encompass a variety of queer identities since I had been introduced to so many in the past two semesters as the Rainbow Floor RA. In fact, many of my residents were super interested in applying for the immersion trip to the historically queer city of San Francisco, until they learned that they could not because of their freshman status. After I was admitted into the program, I made it my goal to bring back films that my residents would see themselves represented in. Unfortunately, this was just not the case.

As I attended film showings at the Roxie and Castro theaters, I began to notice a lack of representation. Although I only attended a limited amount of the showings, I read each of the film’s descriptions and listened to summaries and reviews of films I had not watched by others in my cohort who had viewed them. As I continued on into the festival, I began to notice the lack of diversity in the film’s queer representation.

I began to notice that the majority of films I was viewing focused on able-bodied, generally attractive cisgender gay men. Of course, each character had their own story and challenges, but for the most part, they lacked diversity in their queer identity. Going into this festival, I thought that I would see a wide variety of representation in gender identities, sexualities, and so much more. I had seen so many stories of cisgender men that I began to feel disinterested because I saw a lack of myself and my friends represented. By the end of the festival, I was craving representation of transgender identities and even cisgender lesbian narratives because of the sheer lack of queer identity representation.

When I reevaluate my expectations, I placed too much hope into seeing diversity in queer identities. I had been living on the Rainbow Floor for a year and a half, amongst mostly transgender, gender non-conforming, asexual, nonbinary, and aromantic individuals. I was so used to this environment that I thought the rest of the queer community was like this. But in San Francisco, it was a different story.

I spent around two weeks in San Francisco. It felt like a fresh breath of air to be in a queer community. But I couldn’t help but notice that most of the people around me were older gay men. Of course, there is no way to truly know how someone identifies in terms of their gender or sexuality, but it felt like most queer individuals around me were cisgender gay men. This reflected what I had seen in the films, the majority of which featured cisgender gay men. And so, the films were reflecting their audience. This also might have been true for the smaller representations of transgender and nonbinary characters.

Although I did not see myself reflected in these films, I am still excited that we have entered into an era of greater queer representation, even if it is disproportionate. And although I am excited about this change, I have not settled. One day, I want to see representation of all queer identities, including those such as asexual, aromantic, genderqueer, genderfluid, and so many more beautiful identities which are worth sharing. This is vitally important for me so that those close to me and other individuals who share similar identities can see themselves represented on screen and feel validated.

Although we are finally experiencing an increase in queer representation in popular media, we have a long way to go and many improvements are needed.