As a Young Lesbian Queer Representation Saved Me
[Music]
there are things i can’t force
[Music]
i must adjust there are times when the
greatest change needed
is a change of viewpoint
[Music]
before i begin i’d like to acknowledge a
content warning about my talk
as you can see my talk discusses themes
of suicide
homophobia homophobic slurs and
repeatedly uses the word queer
in a reclaimed sense if any of these
things are uncomfortable or triggering
for you i advise you to click away from
the video
for a moment thanks
every queer person has a story of the
first time they saw another queer person
the light bulb moment a flash of
recognition
something that lay dormant in themselves
that they see active
in another for me
it was season two episode four of fox’s
hit teen drama
glee the series follows a group of
misfit teens performing in a show choir
at their mainly conservative high school
the episode in question centers around
two cheerleaders
brittany and santana kissing for the
very first time
i’ll never forget the moment that i saw
that kiss
i remember thinking to myself wait a
minute two girls are allowed
to kiss it was something i never even
thought of before
but the more that i did think about it
the more that i realized it was
something
i kind of wanted to do before i ever
heard the word lesbian or even
sexuality that kiss remained present in
my mind
and it was that kiss that launched my
journey into self-identity
and discovery that would lost last
throughout my entire jet my entire
adolescence
the theme of these this year’s
convention is the new age of
enlightenment and i believe no one
represents that theme better than my
generation
generation z gen z babies were born
anywhere from 1996
to 2012 and despite our young age we
have already made our mark on this world
climate change activism the black lives
matter movement
anti-gun violence protests these are all
things that my generation has taken an
active part
in participating in fun fact about gen z
we are actually the queerest generation
to exist thus far
according to a 2017 study by ipsis mori
66 of jen’s ears identify as
strictly heterosexual in comparison to
71 percent of millennials and 85
percent of but why is this
going to talk to you a little bit about
why queer representations specifically
on screen
matter so much to me and regardless of
your identity
it should matter just as much to you
now in order to have an educated
conversation about queer representation
on screen we first need to get
a baseline level of knowledge about how
queer people have been treated by the
film industry
and to do that we need to look to the
past and begin
by taking a look at the golden age of
hollywood which lasted from the early
1930s
until the late 1960s the pinnacle of the
film industry during this era was
something known as the studio system
wealthy producers created studios such
as mgm
20th century fox and others each of
which
had their own company of actors writers
directors and designers
all contracted under the specific
specific studios
to make movies the suits the studio
system ensured that these creatives were
given fair
livable wages but it often meant that
they had to sacrifice creative control
over their projects
together the heads of these studios
created a strict set of moral guidelines
any film produced under the studio
system had to follow
in order to be given a wide release the
set of rules was known as the haze code
one no picture shall lower the moral
standards of those who view it
hence the sympathies of the audience
shall not be thrown to the side of crime
wrongdoing evil or sin
two correct standards of life subject to
the requirements of drama
and entertainment shall be presented and
three
law human and natural shall not be
ridiculed
nor shall sympathy be created for its
violation
the haze code put a prohibition on any
studio system produced film
of nudity suggestive dancing superfluous
use of liquor
miscegenation ridicule religion lustful
kissing
scenes of passion and of course
discussions of
sexual perversity aka homosexuality
these guidelines put into place a system
in which no queer character could be
existing on a screen
in a studio system produced film unless
they were in some way punished
for their queer identity imagine being a
queer person
during this era going to see a movie
seeing a character on screen that for
some reason and or another
reminds you a little bit of yourself
watching that character
be brutally defeated the protagonists
celebrating that their evil
has been vanquished that sends the
message to that queer audience member
that not only is their queerness
something that they should be ashamed of
but it’s something that they deserve to
be punished for
now imagine every single movie you see
with a character that reminds you a
little bit of yourself
ends the exact same way
this is what the haze code did to its
queer audience members
in a time in which queer people were
already being isolated
mocked and even killed for their
queerness they couldn’t even find the
solace
seeing a movie the studio system died in
the late 1960s and the haze code along
with it
however the set of ideals that made
something like the haze code possible
in the first place still remained very
much ingrained into american culture
arguably
until the late 1990s that’s when things
began to take a turn for the better
in 1998 the history of queer characters
on screen would forever be changed
by the success of nbc’s hit sitcom will
and grace
the series followed two best friends a
gay man and a straight woman
living in new york city navigating love
life friendship
and career it was a massive hit running
for seven seasons and even garnering
revival
in 2017. will and grace was so important
because it was the first time a
mainstream sitcom showcased a queer main
character
in a positive light the character in
question
was a gay man but he was also a
successful lawyer
he was rich intelligent well spoken
he was masculine and defied many of the
harmful stereotypes that existed about
gay men at the time and his actor
eric mccormick quickly became the
household crush of men
women and people of all different
genders all across the country
will and grace was so important for
queer audiences because it showed for
the first time
that queer life was more than just
sadness
and death and interestingly enough
it wasn’t just queer audiences who were
affected by it
according to a study conducted by edward
shiapa of the massachusetts institute of
technology
71 of will and grace viewers he
interviewed
believed homosexual relationships to be
just as normal
as heterosexual ones and that’s in
comparison to 45
of those who believe the same thing who
did not watch the show
i’m not trying to say that this one tv
show caused an
entire generation of people to become
less homophobic
but i do think that will and grace is an
incredibly important piece of media that
showcased a time in which queer
issues were finally coming to the
forefront of public knowledge
when we look back on will and grace from
modern perspective it’s certainly not
perfect and there are absolutely aspects
of it that are outdated
but it arguably did more than any other
piece of media of its time
to further queer representation on
screen
so now you know a couple of examples of
what queer representation has looked
like in the past
but in order to fully understand why
this topic is so important i’d like to
talk to you a little bit about my
journey
to get here why i decided to start
speaking on this topic
in the first place
i grew up in southern california in an
area called orange county
and i was just like any other kid i like
to go to the mall
hang out with my friends eat pizza read
good books
but i always knew that there was
something different about me
i could never quite put my finger on it
but i just knew there was something that
set me apart from the rest of my friends
i felt disgusting and i had to kiss a
boy in the school play
my heart skipped a beat every time my
female best friend held my hand
when the boy i had a crush on asked me
out i completely panicked and stopped
talking to him altogether
and when i watched season 2 episode 4 of
glee
everything began to fall into place
now you would think of california as a
generally accepting open diverse
place and it is for the most part nobody
cares who you’re kissing in
san diego or l.a but in orange county
one of the state’s few historically
conservative districts
things are different they were nice
people
but i wasn’t anything like them
shortly after i came out one of my
classmates approached me
after jim and told me that i needed to
start changing
in the bathroom because it made her and
the rest of our female classmates
uncomfortable
to be sharing a locker room with a dyke
i was the only out queer woman i knew
and i felt completely and horribly alone
so i did what most lonely teenagers do
i went on the internet my google search
history was filled with
best lesbian movies tv shows with
lesbian characters best fictional
lesbian couples and on one particularly
frustrating day
oh my god why aren’t there any lesbian
rom-coms as good as the ones made for
straight people
i devoured every piece of queer media i
could get my hands on
one life was tough the fictional
lesbians of orange is the new black
imagine me and you but i’m a cheerleader
and buffy the vampire slayer
were there for me and they were enough
to get me through
at least for a while but my loneliness
always persisted
long after the end credits
along with a few other mental health
issues i was struggling with at the time
that loneliness eventually became so
overpowering
that in the spring of 2016 i attempted
to end my life
i’m still here as you can see
and my mental health has only gotten
better since then
but i got lucky i had a family that
supported me
when i came out with the financial means
to pay for my mental health treatment
and who have always strived to give me
the best
opportunities and support system that
they possibly could
not every queer kid has those things
and it’s a sad fact that suicide rates
amongst
queer youth are becoming dangerously
high
as of 2018 the cdc reports that 15
to 34 percent of queer students
have attempted suicide at least once in
their young lives
that’s in comparison to the three to
nine
percent suicide rate of their cisgender
heterosexual peers
my attempt to take my own life was
indicative of how i felt as a queer
person
existing in a straight world completely
alone
and the pieces of queer media that i
often relied on to help me feel less
alone
weren’t always quite right the movies
and tv shows that empowered my queer
identity were few and far between
most were hard to access painted a
negative stereotype about my identity or
were just
plain bad
the pieces of media that showed me that
my queerness was something to celebrate
help keep me alive during some of the
darkest points of my life
and the ones that told me it was
something to be ashamed of
worsened my pain
not all queer media is created equal but
there are ways we can assess it
the gay and lesbian alliance against
defamation
glaad was founded in 1985 and since its
origins
has strived to create a world with
impactful empowering queer media
one of the ways that they do this is
through the publication of their annual
studio responsibility index
a set of of modules and
and data that showcases every instance
of a queer character
in a mainstream film each year
according to the 2020 studio
responsibility index
the amount of queer characters present
in these films went up by 0.4 percent
which is amazing unfortunately it’s not
all perfect
more than half present had less than
three minutes of screen time each
bechtel test it’s a series of questions
composable
meant to assess how well any given movie
or tv show treats its female characters
named after their co-founder vito russo
to pass the veto russo test a film or tv
show
must have three big requirements one
it must contain an identifiably queer
character
two that character must not be solely
identified by their queer sexuality or
gender identity
and three that character must be tied to
the plot in such a way
that their removal would cause a
significant effect
with these three simple rules the
average consumer has the ability
to assess what any given piece of media
thinks
about its queer audience members and
as a young queer audience member
having a tool like that is an incredibly
empowering thing
growing up queer was not easy for me i
had a family that accepted me yes
my friends and peers did not and
honestly
i didn’t always accept myself
more often than not queer people have
been portrayed on screen as evil immoral
people who deserve to be punished
for their queer identities generations
of queer people have had to watch their
identities
mocked on screen for the purposes of
entertainment
and until today the media that society
has praised
has encouraged us to stay in the closet
the media of today paints a more
brighter picture
however it tells us queer audiences that
their queerness is not something to run
away from
but something to celebrate and it sends
the messages
to all of its audience members that
their identity is something that they
should be proud of
no matter what it may be
if what i had to say to you today has at
all
sparked your imagination
i have a challenge for you think
critically
about the media that you consume how it
treats its queer people
and specifically about what kind of
relationship it’s fostering
between the queer and cisgender
heterosexual communities
be an active consumer
you don’t have to pick something apart
to the point of no longer enjoying it
but be aware
of what messages the media you consume
is trying to tell you
because at least for me those meth
messages hold an incredible amount of
power
queer representation saved me and if we
think critically
about the media that we have access to
maybe it can save someone else
thank you
mental health resources for anyone for
anyone who might need it
thanks