Sexuality

• Define sexuality

  Peoples sexual characteristics, behaviour and preferences
• Sexuality statistics in the UK - 2021 Census

  89.4% (43.4mil) identify as straight

  3.2% (1.5mil) identify as LGBTQ+

  (4mil of census respondents did not answer sexuality question)
• How is sexuality used in the media?

  “sex sells”

  Promotion of the hegemonic heterosexual feminine stereotype and male gaze

  McRobbie: Men also increasingly sexualised
• How has homosexuality traditionally been represented?

  • Homosexuality has been formed through the heterosexual media gaze
  • Gay & Lesbian people have been presented as marginal in society as camp figures of fun
• Moral Panic about gay people

  AIDS epidemic was blamed on homosexual people and called the “gay plague”
• How have gay and lesbian people been symbolically annihilated in the media ?

  Gross (1991): excluding them, trivialising, condemning or making fun of them

  Cowan & Valentine (2005): in the BBC gay people were 5x more likely to be portrayed negatively
• what did Stonewall find about representation of sexuality in the media

  Gay people were portrayed positively and realistically for just 46mins in 126hrs of Tv programmes

  BBC1 portrayed lesbians for just 29 seconds in 40hrs
• How have representations been changing

  Growing acceptance

  Media advocacy group- GLAAD (2022): LGBT representations on US Tv at a high. 12% of regular characters are LGBT up from 2.8%
• How would Pluralists argue the reason for changing representations

  Because the LGBTQ+ community are a large affluent group, ”pink pound”, whom media companies want to provide for
• Limitation of changing representations of sexuality in the media

  “rainbow washing”

  visibly celebrating (e.g. a rainbow logo pfp) LGBTQ+ during pride month while doing nothing else to support
• How has gay sexuality been sanitised in the media

  Gill (2007) to avoid offending heterosexual audiences or putting off advertisers, mainstream media represnet gay sexuality only in a sanitised way:

  • gay men rarely portrayed in a sexual way, mainly appear as stylish figures which appeal to women
  • Lesbians are portrayed in a highly sexualised manner, which appeals to heterosexual male fantasies