This August marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of My So-Called Life, the short-lived but influential teen drama that was also one of the first network shows to have a gay character as a series regular. Rickie Vasquez (Wilson Cruz) faced some of the same adolescent woes as his peers Angela Chase (Claire Danes) and Rayanne Graff (A.J. Langer), but as an out teen, he also faced homophobia at home and school. Despite the show’s limited run, Rickie became a beacon for queer teen viewers, especially queer teens of color who’d waited a long time to see themselves on TV.
In the years since My So-Called Life premiered, teen dramas like Dawson’s Creek and Degrassi have featured gay characters, while Buffy The Vampire Slayer gave us one of the most memorable queer adolescent relationships in Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson). But representation remained spotty at best, as the focus remained primarily on cis queer teens and even some of the best shows gave in to the “bury your gays” trope.
In the 25 years since audiences first fell in love with Rickie Cruz, though, TV has made strides in LGBTQ+ representation—there are more queer teens, queer teens of color, trans teens, and nonbinary teens than ever before (which is still significantly fewer than straight or cis roles, but still an improvement!). Here, we highlight some of our favorite LGBTQ+ teens on TV, and the episodes that served as their showcases.
Theo Putnam, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina: “Chapter Thirteen: The Passion Of Sabrina Spellman” (season one, episode 13)
Even if it remained an enjoyable enough watch throughout, part two of Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina’s first season was plagued with uneven timing, plotting, and character development, and unfortunately no number of incantations could’ve spared Theo Putnam (Lachlan Watson), the series’ charming transgender teen, the same fate. Theo’s sudden interest in joining the basketball team, for example, felt forced and ill-explained, undercutting an important story that we rarely get to see on television. Still, it’s a testament to Watson’s performance that they were able to overcome the show’s larger issues to make Theo’s coming out a highlight of this season’s second half.
“Lupercalia” is the more satisfying episode for Theo’s storyline, but the difficult “The Passion Of Sabrina Spellman” is the better overall watch, as Theo gets plenty of screentime to contend with the immediate obstacles to living his truth—namely, trying to use the locker room that matches his gender expression. Entering the boys’ locker room for the first time, Theo is taunted by teammate Billy and his posse, who lecherously encourage him to “take it all off.” It is a harrowing, well-acted scene in which Watson conveys a heartbreaking blend of rage and humiliation. Returning to the girls’ locker room (a different kind of humiliation), Theo asks Sabrina for a “witchy way” to deal with his bullies, and she gives him a charm rope to trip Billy with. Theo tries braving the boys’ locker room one more time, but when he opens his locker to a downpour of tampons and maxipads, he reaches his breaking point. Literally: He finds Billy and uses the charm to send him tumbling down the stairs, snapping the jock’s leg.
It’s a gruesome ending, one that mirrors Sabrina’s larger storyline about giving into—and getting spooked by—our darkest impulses, but it also works: Even if he is assisted by Sabrina’s over-involvement (who among her mortal friends isn’t?), Theo asserts himself. And Billy, sobered by the accident, soon sees the errors of his ways and accepts Theo for who he is. [Kelsey J. Waite]
Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina season one is available on Netflix
Elena Alvarez, One Day At A Time: “The First Time” (season three, episode 7)
One Day At A Time’s future may be uncertain, but one thing’s for sure—the reboot has provided a nurturing environment for all members of the Alvarez family, including the college-bound intersectional feminist Elena (Isabella Gomez). She’s an overachiever and a ball of nerdy energy, not so much bouncing from cause to cause as accumulating ever more reasons to care about and engage with the world around her. Elena’s coming-out story in season one remains one of the most compelling arcs of the series, and the show has continued its nuanced exploration of queerness and romance in subsequent seasons.
In season two, Elena found her Syd-nificant other, Syd (Sheridan Pierce), a nonbinary teen and fellow activist with exactly zero chill. From their first sweet meeting, this couple has had the support of viewers, many of whom relate to these delightfully dorky teens, including queer teens of color. The third season developed their relationship further, culminating with the incredibly moving episode, “The First Time.” Elena and Syd steal away for the day to have sex with each other for the first time, an event that’s treated with a thoughtfulness that’s been a hallmark of the show. They’re both typically overly earnest, whether they’re cueing up The X-Files theme song to “set the mood” or giving each other enthusiastic consent. Elena gets cold feet, and her hyperverbal pep talk with herself elicits some laughs, but Syd is nothing but understanding. They reassure Elena that they’ll wait until the moment feels right for her, which turns out to be just a few seconds later.
“The First Time” is heartwarming and revolutionary, but the story resonates so well because of all the groundwork the show had already done. And a good deal of that credit goes to Gomez, who brings such verve and charm to the character of Elena.
One Day At A Time seasons 1-3 are available on Netflix
Lionel Higgins, Dear White People: “Chapter III” (season two, episode three)
By the end of Dear White People season one, student reporter Lionel Higgins (DeRon Horton) had exposed a damning truth about the fictional Winchester University: “The administration is in bed with bigots!” But his coming-out earlier in the season was just as significant a development, as the erudite journalism major offered other socially awkward, black queer teens some much needed representation. Lionel began navigating his newly revealed queerness along with college life, a journey that’s proven to be immensely relatable and eminently watchable.
Season two of the series deepened that exploration, as Lionel hit it off with Wesley (Rudy Martinez), another hyperverbal Winchester student who has difficulty making small talk at parties. Their relationship hasn’t been strictly defined, though they have sex and clearly want to be together, but that could be Lionel’s response to all the labeling going on in the episode that first introduces Wesley, “Chapter III.” Lionel is trying to figure out what’s happening with Silvio (D.J. Blickenstaff), his prickly prick of a former editor who kissed Lionel in the season-one finale. So he follows Silvio around on Pride Night; while running this gamut of gay gatherings, Lionel is asked by everyone from Troy (Brandon P. Bell) who his “people” are. He himself often wonders where he bests fits. Horton’s frequently hushed delivery is perfect for Lionel’s responses, which regularly end in question marks: “They’re gay. They’re writers. Maybe?”
Like most episodes of Dear White People, “Chapter III” is full of incisive social commentary, including touching on the racism and anti-blackness that exists in marginalized groups. But creator Justin Simien is just as concerned with letting Lionel be a teen, which means not necessarily having all the answers.
Dear White People seasons one and two are available on Netflix
Eric Effiong, Sex Education: “Episode 7” (season one, episode seven)
The raunchy comedy of Laurie Nunn’s Sex Education is made all the more heartfelt by Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa, who should be cast in everything going forward), the gay teen at the center of season one’s most poignant episode. Eric is best friends with Otis (Asa Butterfield), the repressed but not unlikeable high school student turned ersatz sex counselor. The first season tests their friendship, as new crushes and revelations push them apart, but they’re mostly supportive of each other—they even have plans to attend a Hedwig And The Angry Inch show in drag.
Sadly, those plans go awry, and Eric is the victim of a homophobic attack. He rightly calls out Otis for letting him down (repeatedly, at that point), then he appears to inch his way back to the closet by dressing in what’s essentially hetero-guy drag for school the following day. Eric is not down for long, though—in “Episode 7,” he makes a beautiful and powerful statement to his family and his schoolmates. He wrestles with doubt for the first half of the episode, but finds comfort in his church’s message of acceptance. A huge smile on his face, Eric heads home to dress appropriately—meaning, with lots of metallic eyeshadow and a gorgeous headwrap—for the big dance. His father stops him on his way out, but at first it’s just to offer him a ride. Later, he tries to stop Eric from entering the dance in drag, telling his son that he fears for him, to which Eric responds: “Your fear doesn’t help me, Dad. It makes me feel weak.”
“Episode 7” is the most affecting episode of Sex Education yet, smartly subverting clichés about oppressive congregations and narrow-minded immigrant families. As Eric, Gatwa provides a strong emotional center, showing as much courage as compassion. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for him in season two.
Sex Education season one is available on Netflix
Nomi Segal, Grown-ish: “C.R.E.A.M.” (season one, episode five)
Grown-ish has inherited plenty from its parent series, Black-ish’s avoidance of easy answers and tidy conclusions especially. This frees up Zoey Johnson (Yara Shahidi) and friends to be messy and contradictory in ways that TV characters typically aren’t, but that does feel authentic to a group of kids sorting through their feelings and experiences to assemble an identity. That can lead the show down some ill-advised avenues, like the ongoing arc that finds Zoey’s friend Nomi (Emily Arlook) tumbling toward a romance with a gender studies professor played by L Word alum Kate Moennig—Nomi’s bisexuality made for less hackneyed material in the show’s first season, which often challenged her ostensibly open-minded peers to remember the “B” in “LGBTQ+” “Respect the letter, bitch!” she yells at the date who ditches her at the campus bar because she doesn’t want to be “some bi girl’s experiment.”
But one episode later, it’s Nomi who needs the reminder: She’d been seeing a guy, Dave (Barrett Carnahan), who’s also bi, but dumped him because she had doubts about him being attracted to women as well as men. “That’s not about me being bisexual,” Dave says near the end of “C.R.E.A.M.” “That’s about you, being insecure.” It’s an honest moment, and it’s to Grown-ish’s credit (Arlook’s performance) that it continues to portray this aspect of Nomi’s personality as insecurity and not some clichéd indecision or phase. Season two managed to find a motivation for this, even as it pointed Nomi down the rocky road of student-faculty fraternizing: She needed to come out to her parents.
Grown-ish airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EST on Freeform; seasons one and two are streaming on Hulu.
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The best depiction of gay teen love (or even teen love) I have seen is the third season of the Norwegian series SKAM. Following every day the relationship between Isak and Even was really magical. Pity the series is not well known (it got an international fandom through google drive!), and the inferior American remake is somewhere in the Facebook cesspool.
There’s a version of that show and couple in every part of Europe now.
Why would you go and mention Skam and make me miss that show all over again? That show was Tumblr’s best export, tbh. Man, that was some good TV. The only American show of its ilk is probably The Fosters.
The actresses obviously are not actually teenagers, but Cheryl & Toni on Riverdale at least deserve an acknowledgement as having a compelling, sweet relationship, and off and on some decent character development, when they aren’t getting brainwashed by cults
Riverdale is fun to watch. Although there is really no need for them to be in highschool at this point. It just serves as a function of grouping people together. They should just flash forward to them being all cooped up in the crazy town together.But how many more murder death cults can Riverdale have? What is it’s population?Cheryl is probably my favorite thing about the show. It’s like she is Margo from The Magicians, just unhinged.
Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl is definitely Riverdale’s MVP for me tooAnd it is completely insane that the kids are still in high school on the show, and aren’t even going to be seniors until NEXT season
I haven’t watched Riverdale, but that’s what always gets me about high school TV shows too. You’ll watch season 1 starring a bunch of 22-year-olds who could maybe, barely pass for 17 and suspend your disbelief. But then season 2 comes along and they move up to 11th grade and you realize they were supposed to be 15 and no, just no.
The 100 was starting to have a very serious version of this problem, which they fixed with a 6 year time jump between seasons 4 and 5, one of many good choices that show has made, along with a few really, really poor ones
And it was even worse in the 90s. I mean James Van Der Beek looked at least 25 when he was in the first few seasons as 15-16 year old. Not to mention sitcoms like saved by the bell, some of the students looked like 40 year olds, they looked older than their teachers!
Yeah. Van Der Beek was 21 when Dawson’s Creek started. I know some 21-year-olds who could pass for 17 or 18, but none who could pass for 14 or 15. Saved by the Bell is actually one of the few examples from that era where the actors were close in age to their characters. Mark Paul Gosselaar, Tiffani Amber Thiessen, and Lark Voorhies all turned 15 the year the show premiered and Dustin Diamond was only 13. Mario Lopez was a year older and Elizabeth Berkley was two years older, but still. That’s not bad at all. Now 90210 on the other hand… Yipes. Luke Perry was 24, Ian Ziering was 26, and Gabrielle Carteris was almost 30.
http://screenertv.com/television/beverly-hills-90210-ages-luke-perry-ian-ziering-shannen-doherty-tori-spelling/
Yeah, I actually do know some 21 year olds that could pass for 15 or 16 (especially women), but Van der Beek definitely couldn’t. The OC was another big offender on that area. Adam Brody migh have looked like a geeky teen early on, but Ben Mckenzie had huge grown up arms (Which was frustrating as a 15 year old scrawny kid doing push ups every day without success on that area).
They need to do that “Saved by the Bell” thing where they leap forward “in time” and suddenly everyone is in college and they do a “Riverdale: College Years” thing so these kids who are played by adults and act like adults can just be adults inside the show and not run speakeasies and escape death cults as HIGH SCHOOL JUNIORS etc. Just have them go to college near Riverdale or something, it isn’t like classes are anything more than a place for them to hang out anyway.
Escalation has been a major issue for the series. By ignoring the assorted sci-fi & fantasy hijinks the comics have
dabbled in, focusing on grounded crime has made it a grimdark Hellhole. When there’s an army of Boy Scouts wielding spears, however, it’ll be hard to raise the stakes without going straight to a Post-Apocalyptic iteration.A Cheryl, Margo, & Barbara Kean team-up would be unstoppable (providing they don’t see each other as rivals).
As fun as she is, and as stupidly entertaining the show is, Cheryl is clearly a mentally ill person, I wouldn’t qualify anything that happens around her as sweet.
Cheryl has some pretty serious issues, which make sense given her awful, almost loveless upbringing. Cheryl’s understanding and support for her I do find sweet and even somewhat heroic
Yeah, I guess that’s true. We should all find someone who can see past our demons.
Toni’s support, I meant. But you got it. (I hate not having the edit function)
Pretty much everybody in Riverdale could use a good psychotherapist, but at least Toni’s love has mellowed some of Cheryl’s more destructive behavior.
Cheryl & Toni are a lovely couple, but their relationship is butchered the same way Riverdale butchers any real moment. I still can’t get over how the big reveal went through on the Love, Simon self-promotion episode. Surreptitiously throwing that in there was such hackneyed bullshit.
I am still pulling for Cheryl & Toni but they have some challenges, primarily Cheryl herself
I have such a love/hate with Riverdale, mostly how their flip/flopping has gone to crazy levels nowadays. Despite that, Cheryl is likely my favourite character from episode 1 on. I’m a few episodes behind, but so far I am TEAM CHERYL (and by extension Toni) ALL THE WAY.
In my mind, Toni is too good for Batshit Queen Cheryl, but yeah, I agree they’ve possibly got the healthiest and sweetest relationship on that bloody show.
I know it’s unfair, but given how poorly Riverdale has treated their other queer characters, has left me unable to really invest in Toni and Cheryl and taking them seriously as a couple
I liked Theo’s story in Sabrina. I wish we had gotten a bit more of it in the first half.
People give Harvey grief for not being a very good boyfriend for Sabrina and Roz and fair enough. But I did appreciate that he is a good, supportive friend to Theo.
I… didn’t. It felt very forced to get it started, and even more forced in how it ended.
Theo really grew on me. I was annoyed by a lot of the transition plot because a lot of those choices seemed forced (like basketball) though I have no experience so I guess I can’t really say. But towards the end when he was in full Scooby Gang mode, picking up shotguns and ready to go to town on some demons, I turned to my husband was like, “Oh shit, is Theo my favorite?”
I do like Theo. I think the wish episode here he actually got a male body was incredible. I don’t have experience, but I do kind of agree that it was really quick. The whole nonbinary thing in the first half was a bit off… it was like something they just rattled off about the character every few lines of dialogue or so, but was largely not commented on. I kind of feel like they took the feedback from that and ramped it up to ludicrous speed. (Spaceballs reference, not a comment on the plotline.) Again, though, I want to stress this – I don’t have experience with this. I will happily be educated. I’m glad that there is representation. I work with kids, and I can really see the influence from Black Panther and Wonder Woman and Rey and Finn out there, and I’m happy for it.
Lachlan Watson identifies as genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns. I think the choice to make Theo initially nonbinary probably grew out of the actor themselves rather than out of a clear storytelling plan. Watson has said that they were given a lot of space to discuss how to identify the character in the first season. Once they got the greenlight for the second half, I suspect they decided to go the trans* route to ensure the audience had a clearer understanding of the stakes and Theo’s own wants/goals. I think that’s why the Theo stuff seemed more rushed because they hadn’t really been seeding it in the first half.
Thank you!
Did they ever do anything with Jughead as an ace on Riverdale? I don’t remember seeing anything about it reported, but that’s kinda par for the course for ace depictions in media…
The show made him allo, much to the chagrin of the ace community and its allies—which, stunningly, turned out to include Cole Sprouse.
Welp. Can’t say I’m surprised, the CW will be the CW… but nice to see Sprouse grew into such a menschy guy, at least!
He’s come a long way from little Fwankenstein.
Not a teen, but Todd in Bojack Horseman is a good character who happens to be ace.
i didn’t recognize a single character in the header image and apparently only saw a portion of one of the above shows. sort of surprised some more prominent or known characters/roles weren’t discussed.
I can’t speak for the rest as I haven’t seen them either, but Dear White People is definitely worth watching.
And that episode was a standout.
Sex Education is definitely worth the watch.
I really enjoyed One Day At A Time. It’s a liiiittle forced and overeager at first, but I sobbed my way through the S1 finale, and spent S2/3 alternately crying or laughing my ass off.
Dude, I was bawling during the S1 finale and it really took me by surprise how much I *felt* that, since it was totally a “put it on the background while I do dishes” show for me. That alone earns Elena a spot on the list. She’s kinda the best in the other ways listed but that would be enough.
Maybe because they don’t really need to be, because they are more prominent and known. If the most we can say is that they’re big and queer, what else is there to say that hasn’t been already?I like this list, largely because it’s talking about shows I haven’t really seen but also because it’s talking about parts of the LGBTIQ community that we don’t always see. This list includes a trans man, two black gay men, a bisexual black woman, and a teenage lesbian relationship including a non-binary character. That’s a lot more diversity than you usually get from TV, which is usually happy to do one main-cast gay character, usually white, and then a recurring love interest and call it a day.
Not exactly a coming out moment, but the scene in Halt and Catch Fire between Joe and Haley at the fast food restaurant is so powerfully nuanced and moving it absolutely deserves recognition here. Joe’s knowing glance is so beautifully captured. Honestly, HACF is just perfect and if you haven’t seen it you really should.
Weirdly I was thinking about the show earlier and I really need to rewatch it.Cameron and Donna’s exchange about Hayley in the finale was also a nice moment in its “let’s just give her the space to come to us when she’s ready” nature.
I was going to talk about this if nobody else had. Halt and Catch Fire is fantastic, especially once you get past the first season.
Lee Pace gave an all-time performance in that show, even when he was basically a caricature for the first season
I wholeheartedly agree. The acting in HACF was phenomenal, particularly in S3 and S4, but I’ve always been sort of shocked that Pace never really got singled out for his performance. The last two episodes of S3 (NIM and NeXT) were tremendous (honestly probably the best back-to-back episodes to end a season ever), due in large part to Joe’s arch, and Pace knocked it completely out of the park.
I’d hazard a guess that Pace doesn’t get singled out because all four of the leads give some of the best performances on TV. I mean, McNairy might be my favourite purely for his last few scenes in s4, which is some of the most powerful TV I’ve ever seen. Bishe and Davis sell some of the best arcs on TV and never feel like they’re betraying where the characters come from. I think Pace had the hardest stuff to sell of all, given he’s basically Don Draper in S1 and cult leader Steve Jobs for a lot of 2, but his character growth in 3 and 4 was so goddamn good I don’t even mind
But this list is about TEEN coming outs, isn’t it? That seems to be the common theme–non cis-gender/white teen gay or bi or trans storylines.
Hayley is a teen?
Added to that: the later scene where Haley is pumping herself up in the car to get the nerve to ask out her crush at the fast food place is just as great, despite being utterly crushing in the end. Even with the clear disappointment she feels, it’s played so true to life.
I haven’t watched most of these, but Lionel is amongst my most favourite gay characters ever. For a satirical show, the character has had such a great progression into a determined character, super witty, and has a complex mix of values and flaws. They could have made him into the stereotypical sensitive, weasely nerd that most shows would, but they made him into one of the best characters of the show.
Shout-out to the fourth season of Fresh Off the Boat, in which Eddie’s best friend/neighbor Nicole came out (shortly after wondering why all her friends would ditch a Jodie Foster movie to hang out with boys). It involves a lesbian bar called the Denim Turtle, Melissa Etheridge, Jessica’s continual gay-blindness, accepting parents, a softball game, and a pair of truly awful suits.
Nicole was my first thought, as well!
it’s such a nice storyline.
I just had a meeting with someone that is Elena Alvarez when she hits late 30’s/early 40’s. Including facial expressions and glasses similar to her character on One Day at a Time. Biggest difference was her voice.
I loved Theos arc in Sabrina, but one thing really bothered me about a choice the writers made: Why basketball? Theo was significantly smaller than everyone else on the team, and was frankly terrible at it. The resistance to Theo playing on the team was framed as bigotry, but even without issues with their gender it would have been very unlikely they would have made the team at all. It would have made more sense (to me at least) for Theo to be trying out for a sport that it would have been believable that they were good at; I think it would have made the conflict more obviously about who they were and not what they could do.
From a writing perspective, that might be in part because for his arc to work you need a team sport that’s generally got pretty hyper-masculine players, which throws away a lot of the more ‘realistic’ sports he might be better at given his frame, like… I dunno, tennis? I admit I’ve got no idea what sports are played in American schools other than ‘football, basketball, I think maybe hockey or baseball’.
I was thinking that wrestling could have been a good fit. It’s hyper-masculine, but with enough homoerotic undertones that there would be a lot of material to mine for the team mates gay or trans panic. It would also fit into the weird maybe-its-the-past-but-also-right-now? timeline the show has going on. But more importantly, it’s believable that Theo could be good at it, as their are different weight classes and with good technique wrestlers can overcome size differences.
And it had to be an indoor sport, so basketball is really the only one that makes sense. Wrestling is the only other one in most schools, but that’s so one-on-one that it wouldn’t make sense in the larger arc of the story.
Also, Riverdale’s already doing wrestling–and previously did football–so I can see the writers wanting to inject some variety into things by going with a sport that its sister show hasn’t touched.
Too bad that Riverdale seems now hung completely up on everything being boxing. Because all teens want to be boxers (especially when they routinely seem to have to box adults) right?
I am only just finishing episode 3 of the 2nd half right now and I don’t get how Theo remains on the team since we saw how he made the team in the first episode and I don’t believe it is sustainable. In the reviews section here someone said they should have done baseball or I would even say soccer which would make more sense with his size.
I fucking love Lachlan Watson’s performance in Sabrina. I’m hoping they’ll be around on our screens for a long time. I hope I’m not alone in finding the storylines for Theo and Roz to be that wee bit more compelling in the second half of season one. Elena kind-of irked me at first, but her storyline really showed promise. I cannot keep emphasising this: we need more storylines from PoC in LGBT entertainment, people. Not every boy is a sparkly-toothed blonde-haired-blue-eyed moppet and not every girl is a wind-tousled-beach-blonde (or Batshit Queen Cheryl. Yes, she’s my spirit animal and I hope they can find a way to get her onto Sabrina. Cheryl v Aunt Zelda? Yum…) and PoC kids need to see that. Mind you, unless One Day At A Time is somehow miraculously picked up by another service *cough* Amazon *cough* I think we’ve seen the last of her, unfortunately.Eric Effiong is another example I can give of needing to see more PoC kids in LGBT roles. I mean, he’s fucking fabulous. I mean, hello, he got to shag the big dicked son of the headmaster of his rather provincial English school (believe me, kids, I went to a rather provincial British high school, so I know how utterly fucking banal they are. Hogwarts they are not.) and he came back from a rather fucking brutal homophobic attack and gave his best friend a verbal pasting. *applause*What’s that? Oh, that kid from Dear White People was gay? Oh. Okay then.
Didn’t this site (or was it just several other sites) crap on Sex Education for the “dangerous” message of Eric getting involved with his former bully? Which… well seemed short sighted to criticize IMHO (especially given how, as teenagers, a lot of relationships–platonic and non–do start off with a confused teen acting against it, I don’t see it quite the same thing as, like some sites implied, sending a message that you should stay with your abusive partner).
Kinda off topic but how did we decide “LGBTQ+” is the acronym for this? I mean, the words are not in temporal order since “Gay” came before “Lesbian”. They aren’t in hierarchical order since “Bisexual” is (At least in terms of English) a subset of “Queer”. Not in alphabetical order. So was this acronym decided upon based on the ease of saying it and, if so, why is LGBTQ+ easier than, say, BGLQT+?
All I can think is that LGBT (as it was when I was a kid) has a nice rhythm to it that the other combinations might lack.Edit: Also I’m never sure if ‘Q’ is ‘Queer’ or ‘Questioning’.
It was just something that occurred to me… I mean, as is, “LGBTQ” has a ring to it but I am not sure if that is because I use it all the time and if I had been using “BGLQT” it might not have that same ring at this point.
>I mean, the words are not in temporal order since “Gay” came before “Lesbian”. Not really. Both are attested to from the mid-19th century onwards. Lesbian may actually be older than gay, as far as terms for homosexuality go. In regard to the acronym, it’s changed numerous times. GLBT used to be more common, and the first two letters were swapped as an intentional attempt to subvert sexism by rhetorically prioritizing women in the community. That happened (off the top of my head, as a widespread thing) in the ‘90s. It’s been stationary ever since, and I would assume that’s got a lot to do with the way that the internet spreads terminology more rapidly (i.e., local communities/groups don’t have the same kind of power to change terminology once it’s gained steam online.) As a result, you don’t see the first several letters moved around anymore, but you do see additional letters tacked onto the end.
“Q” is typically for queer or questioning.The truth is that later letters were added to the end. LGB became LGBT became LGBTQ became LGBTQI became LGBTQIA and eventually became LGBTQ+I don’t think nearly as much thought went into it as went into your questions, tbh.
I ask just out of curiosity. Personally I fall into the “+” part since I identify as Asexual, but I was just curious as to how the order came about.
Maybe drop Elena since the show has been cancelled and put Casey from Atypical in instead.
Not only is Elena’s and Syd’s relationship heartwarmingly nerdy and precious, I loved the intro to the episode that showed Elena is an Esports fan rooting for the Overwatch League team LA Gladiators! The writers on that show clearly know their shit, and it will be missed dearly.
No mention of Isaiah Stannard in Good Girls? Heck they even brought his transition into the story line
https://www.distractify.com/p/isaiah-stannard-good-girls
I think Ricky identified as bisexual if I remember (it was a long time ago), that may have been the character trying to soft-pedal it into something that was marginally more acceptable at the time or it might have been the studio saying he couldn’t be all-the-way-gay (like what was that movie recently where all the gay female characters had to talk about how they still really wanted to sleep with the macho man main character?)
God it’s time for a rewatch of MSCL but yes–when it started I think he was basically in the closet and then moved to (as many of us did especially back then) saying we were bi. But by the time he was kicked out and taken in by his gay teacher I think it was established he had come out basically as gay. (I mainly remember the episode where he thought he had met another gay kid–I believe while working on the sets for a school play–and then found out the guy was into one of the girls.) Man, it’s embarrassing, I watched MSCL over and over with friends when it came out, and now am fuzzy on some of the major details. Wasn’t it more Angela’s mom, in her typical style, who asked Angela about Ricky’s sexuality? I liked that Angela and Rayanne (partly due to typical teenager self-absorption) didn’t seem to really care.
In ep. 7 of Sex Education, when Eric’s dad said, “Maybe I am learning from my brave son,” my wife and I both started bawling our eyes out.
An appropriate response!
I don’t think the character is even 13 yet, but Darlene’s son Mark on Rosanne/The Conners is out. There was a scene that showcased John Goodman’s acting skills as Dan at first didn’t want to get involved then came around and helped his grandson decide which boy he should sit on the bus with.
Ncuti Gatwa was definitely my faaaavorite part of Sex Education! He was absolutely amazing and I’m definitely tuning into anything he’s in in the future.
All of the black ones on the list exclusively date white people. That is NOT representative of actual gay black men but it perpetuates the narrative that gay black men in RuPaul’s and Billy Porter’s generation have forced us to accept.That white men are trophies of some sort.
Trail-blazin’!
I gave up on Sabrina because it was so poorly paced (and had fairly shallow characters through the first half season + christmas special), so someone who’s watched can hopefully clarify here, but for this basketball episode, was the transphobic bully’s change of heart really predicated on breaking his leg by falling down the stairs? That seems a thin motivation to suddenly gain empathy.Meanwhile ‘Brina’s chosen way of helping her friend seems on brand. Always looking for that quick fix. Although I guess she’s evil(?) now, so it’s even more on brand.