The Rise of Ron Desantis & Anti-queer Hate

I believe that the most significant queer historical event of my lifetime has been the passage of queerphobic and anti-trans legislation starting with Ron Desantis’ Parental Rights in Education Act, more commonly known as the “Don't Say Gay” law.  The election of Trump gave people with conservative views to openly take a “more traditional” stance on political issues.  Ron Desantis was one of those people; an avid supporter of Trump who went on to become the face of the movement to demonize and legally attack queer (particularly trans) people in the United States.  Since that fateful 24th of Thursday in February 2022 when House Bill 1557 passed in the Florida House of Reps, there has been a drastic uptick in the amount of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, especially in conservative states.  There have been over 525 bills introduced across the country that target and/or stigmatize queer people, and this number only continues to rise every day.  This legislation has had devastating effects on the US queer community: people who were already out are losing access to vital resources and closeted people are far less likely to feel safe enough to openly express their identities.  

Writing Assignment #2 - Media Depictions of Sapphics

    Sexual minorities.  They’re everywhere.  You can’t escape them.  Especially in today’s media, which seems to be getting more and more progressive with each passing day (but I’m not complaining!).  However, despite the ever-growing emergence of new queer media, there are always hurtful tropes and harmful portrayals of LGBTQ+ people.  Or, media that centers queer characters simply won’t run for more than a single season before being canceled.  It seems we can never truly have fulfilling representations of ourselves on screens.  There’s always some kind of critique to be made.  The representation specifically of sapphics (non-men loving non-men) in media tends to be a hot topic of discussion and critique among the queer community due to prevalent tropes such as “bury your gays,” the violent lesbian/sapphic, and the more frequent cancellation of shows featuring and/or centering around sapphic characters.

    The “bury your gays” trope is far from new, it’s been stealing fan-favorite queer characters right out from under them for decades.  To put it simply, “bury your gays” is a trope that involves the queer (usually sapphic) characters in a TV show or movie being killed off at some point within the duration of the film.   Some examples are Rachel from The Sandman, Sissy Cooper from The Umbrella Academy, Villanelle from Killing Eve, and the list goes on.  This trope depraves sapphic characters of having the chance to live the full lives they deserve and presents only one ending for sapphics: death.  It also gives sapphic people the representation we so desperately crave, but only briefly before it’s gruesomely pried right out of our hands.  

Rachel from The Sandman 

    The violent lesbian/sapphic also has a long drawn-out history, which was briefly touched on in the Celluloid Closet and continues to exist to this day.  This trope is likely to have been a product of the Hays Code, which only permitted queerness on screen if it was “violent” or “evil.”  Since then, we’ve seen this trope manifest in several different ways, including the sapphics in unhealthy relationships who fight each other and the depraved, almost manic sapphic with an uncontrollable urge for violence.  Some examples of the first one are Jim an Sapphics d Archie from Our Flag Means Death and Princess Bubblegum and Marceline in Fiona and Cake, and, once again, Villanelle from Killing Eve as the second example of the trope.  Obviously, this is a harmful portrayal of queer people as it projects an image that sapphics are obsessed with violence and hurting each other and others.  There’s been a trend on TikTok that pushes the idea that cannibalism is a sapphic love language, and while I do think it’s often a silly little joke between sapphics, it could be used to manipulate the image of sapphics if it fell into the wrong hands.

              Yellow Jackets & Cannibalism                                 Jim and Archie from OFMD
                          as a love language                         

    Then there’s the fact that only a small minority of shows that feature sapphic characters make it past a season.  I can name so many, but I’ll only name a few for your sake: Everything Sucks, I Am Not Okay With This, First Kill, A League of Their Own, Willow, etc, etc.  This one makes me the most angry because it feels like we can never get our hopes up when a good sapphic show is released.  It’s bound to be canceled!!  In contrast, shows with gay male characters, such as Young Royals or Heartstopper, seem to have way higher rates of success and renewal.  I think this could be because gay men are fetishized within fandom spaces by cishet women, and they have the support of the general queer community as well because we like to see ourselves represented (duh!).  Whereas sapphic representation is mostly celebrated among ourselves, so we don’t get nearly as much attention and praise in fandoms.

                                                     Prevalence of cancellations for sapphic shows VS.

                                                               Success of shows with queer men

    Whatever the case may be, we still have a ways to go before queer people can be truly satisfied with how we are portrayed on screens.