LGBTQ Characters and Their Representation On Television: The GLAAD Report 2016/2017

Bethonie Butler of the Washington Post discusses GLAAD's annual report, Where We Are On TV, '16-'17, on the number of LBGTQ characters on TV, which notes that those numbers are increasing. GLAAD says that 43 of the 895 recurrring TV characters are identifiably LBGTQ. For example, as many as 16 on MSM, cable, and streaming shows are transgender. Representation of diabled characters is up from less than one percent to nearly two percent.

About twenty percent of TV recurring characters are black, although female black characters continue to be less highly represented than black men.

The report contains more interesting information, and breakdowns by legacy tv, cable, and streaming networks.

The 2015 report is available here.

Transgender Identity and Popular Culture: Images From Film

Sharon Cowan, University of Edinburgh School of Law, has published 'We Walk Among You': Trans Identity Politics Goes to the Movies as Edinburgh School of Law Research Paper No. 2013/39. Here is the abstract.

Recent legal and social acknowledgement of (some) trans citizenship claims demonstrates the continuing evolution of trans politics and identity, and the relationship between socio-political identities and popular culture. This article examines current debates over trans citizenship and identity, and argues that certain kinds of identity and citizenship claims have cultural currency in contemporary representations of sex/gender. In order to address these issues, this article highlights key disputes and tensions in contemporary debates about transgender identity, citizenship and claims to legal rights, by examining the ways in which sex/gender identity is portrayed in three films -- Cabaret, Transamerica and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Each film demonstrates various ways of interpreting and reworking the constraints of heteronormative binary notions of sex/gender, and these struggles over meaning are also reflected in the ways in which different articulations of trans identity and citizenship claims have been legally and culturally recognized. The article explores the ways in which particular accounts of trans identity are given primacy within law, and how film can help us to reflect upon questions about which sexed/gendered people get to count as legal citizens. The paper concludes by reminding us that despite discourses of recognition, it is important to remember the exclusionary as well as inclusionary tendencies of law.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.