'Cancel Your Gays' trend sees 2SLGBTQ+ characters disappearing from TV
CBC
TV shows with queer and trans characters are disappearing, sparking concerns that networks and streaming services are caving to anti-2SLGBTQ+ sentiment.
There were 468 2SLGBTQ+ characters in TV shows this year, according to an April report from the prominent advocacy organization GLAAD, 128 fewer than its last annual report. And of them, 36 per cent aren't returning next year because their shows have ended or been cancelled.
That's compared to an overall 14 per cent decline in new shows from 2022 to 2023, according to research from cable network FX, partly owing to the Hollywood writer's strike last year.
Frustrated fans have dubbed the trend "Cancel Your Gays," named after the "Bury Your Gays" trope that peaked in 2016, where many queer and trans characters, particularly women, were killed off in shows and denied a happy ending.
Dana Piccoli, an American 2SLGBTQ+ journalist, says seeing those characters disappear can be defeating for fans.
"I have some people I've talked to who, personally, this has been very destructive to their outlook on their queerness and/or their transness," she said.
"The fact that we have had queer representation and trans representation on television in a positive way for the last, say, 20 years, has really changed so much of how people understand and respect the LGBTQ community."
Piccoli said queer and trans representation in shows was improving from 2018 onwards, but shifted after the COVID-19 pandemic.
This coincided with a rise in anti-2SLGBTQ+ rhetoric, followed by waves of anti-trans legislation in North America. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted there were 86 anti-2SLGBTQ+ hate groups in the U.S. in 2023, a one-third increase and the highest number it has ever listed.
Piccoli was personally disappointed by the cancellation of the award-winning A League of Their Own, about a Second World War-era women's baseball team that explored the lives of queer women in the 1940s.
Amazon Prime renewed the show for a four-episode final season in 2023, but then scrapped it during the writer's strike.
Everyone has characters they see themselves in, she said, and for 2SLGBTQ+ people, that connection is "even more intense, because we have so much less of that sort of representation."
Toronto-based writer and producer Emily Andras says the contraction has been felt across the board, as TV studios have become "skittish" about buying queer and trans stories.
"It's very, very evident in the marketplace that people are kind of retreating back to what they would consider traditional storytelling," Andras said.