Representation and media-viewing experiences

As mentioned in the background literature, the media produce and reproduce the image of how sexuality and gender are perceived (Chambers, 2009: 89, as cited by Sarkissian, 2014: 146-147).

The way in which a group is represented in public has an effect on how they see themselves and how other people see them (Dyer, 2002: 1). Guided by such observations, the respondents of the present study were asked if the way in which LGBT people are represented in the media has influenced their LGBT identities.

It turned out that the responses to this question varied quite a bit between respondents. Even though 16 respondents (30,19%) thought LGBT portrayals in the media had had a strong effect on them, 24 respondents (45,27%) did not feel as strongly about the matter, and 13 respondents (24,53%) did not think media portrayals had had any effect on their LGBT identity. The respondents whose experiences with LGBT representations had mainly been positive said that seeing media representations that they could relate to made them feel happy, validated, and confident. For some, LGBT representations took away some of the shame that they had regarding their identity. These people were helped by these representations and thought it was easier to communicate their feelings when they had seen the same on television. Media images had shown them that there were non-heteronormative ways of living and they knew better what they wanted in life thanks to LGBT characters in the media. This is all incredibly relevant: seeing characters that are similar to oneself can have a noticeable impact on one’s well-being. Television representations can change someone’s life by not only adding self-acceptance and self-love, but by showing that there are alternative ways to (cis-hetero)normative living in the first place. This shows how big an impact positive minority representation can truly have when it is done right.

It should, of course, be remembered that not everyone’s experiences with LGBT representations were positive. Some respondents who had critical or negative opinions on representational matters felt like they did not have any characters to relate to because the LGBT characters in the media were not diverse enough, regarding for example ethnicity and gender-expression. One respondent had been more affected by their friends than media representations. Others said that adverse representations had mainly caused frustration and continuous negative LGBT representations had

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had a negative influence on them. These responses show that we should not generalize the way in which minority individuals feel about representation and what they find important. In addition, LGBT individuals need representations where everyone can see themselves in and relate to.

Everyone deserves to be seen positively in the media they consume. For example, there should be more butch lesbian representations and representation of LGBT People of Color. LGBT

individuals would also benefit from fewer unhappy endings and otherwise negative

representations, for example, the writers abandoning harmful tropes, such as the “Bury Your Gays” trope (GLAAD, 2018: 3; Bingham, 2016: 145, Guerrero-Pico et al., 2018) and the negative representations of bisexuals (GLAAD, 2018: 24) and transgender people (Bingham, 2016: 154).

As many femslash fans find the representations of LGBT individuals and their relationships meaningful, the respondents were also asked if they had any specific media-viewing experiences that had influenced their self-perception as an LGBT individual or LGBT identities in general. The percentages were similar to the previous question’s: the respondents’ media-viewing experiences and how they rated them differed from one another quite a bit. The respondents were prompted to specify if there had been a specific character’s coming out that was meaningful for them or if a pairing had helped them realize that they are LGBT. The respondents specified meaningful fandoms, characters, and experiences and explained why they were meaningful, similarly to Collier et al. (2009) and Hanmer’s (2003) respondents.

It had been an important experience to many to see themselves represented on their television screen. There were a few specific media-viewing experiences that should be mentioned here.

Similarly to what was stated by Suddeth (2017: 31), some fans had found it incredibly important to see a family unit with two mothers on television. Seeing the possibility of forming a family with someone of the same gender without heteronormative expectations can thus be very meaningful to people who belong to sexual minorities and want to become parents. It should be noted that this kind of representation is also important to children whose parents are a same-sex couple – not just because it shows them a family that looks like theirs on television and validates them, but also because it shows it to other children and teaches them that it is perfectly fine if their peers have a family that has two mothers or fathers or some other kind of parenting unit that differs from the norm.

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There were other important, specific experiences in addition to seeing a family unit with two mothers. The character Elena Alvarez, a Cuban-American teenager who comes out as a lesbian in the first season of One Day at a Time, had resonated particularly well with some respondents because she is not white and she came out to a Cuban family. For some respondents, seeing characters who were attracted to multiple genders, especially those who explicitly stated that they were bisexual, had been important. Then again, displaying sexuality without it being made into a huge issue was important to some. A transgender respondent, in turn, pointed out that Laverne Cox’s character Sophia Burset on Orange is the New Black had started the kind of discussion on transgender issues that they had not seen before in fandom spaces. One character or a television show can thus have a remarkable impact on several people’s self-perception and perception of a group of people.

It should be remembered that even though the participants were asked about meaningful media-viewing experiences and characters, some of the respondents had listed negative experiences. The respondents mentioned the issues of bisexual erasure, the lack of transgender characters and the lack of LGBT characters of Color in their answers, which implies that these issues have had a strong negative impact on them. The “Bury Your Gays” trope and its negative effects on the respondents’ self-perception came up in the answers too. Negative representational issues such as these have thus had a noteworthy negative impact on the participants, an impact many of them see worth mentioning when they are asked about meaningful media-viewing experiences. These replies hence demonstrate the importance of diverse and positive representation. Media producers should hence give more thought to the images and narratives they want to enforce with their writing – positive representations can have significant positive effects on people, but negative representations can make matters worse for many and affect their well-being and the way they see themselves (and how others see them).

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