TV has more LGBTQ representations than ever before, but lesbian and bisexual women still suffer
By Darren Mew
There is some good news in the TV department as the representation of LGBTQ people is at a record high, however gay women are being killed off far too often.
Since GLAAD started tracking LGBTI characters in broadcast television 12 years ago, the company have found that this year 4.8% of regular characters are LGBTI.
The representation of transgender characters has doubled across all the platforms looked at, while one fifth of all series regulars are black and a record-high 1.7% of characters had some form of disability.
However, over 25 gay and bisexual female character have been killed off on scripted series since the start of 2016.
Lesbian representation have dropped dramatically from last years report; representations have gone down to 17% in regular and recurring LGBTQ characters. This is a drops 16% from last year’s 33% of 23 characters.
GLAAD said in the Where We Are On TV report: “This sends a dangerous message to audiences that LGBTI people are secondary and disposable,
“It is important that creators do not reinvigorate harmful tropes, which exploit and already marginalized community”.
On top of this, bisexual representations have risen by 10% making the percentage up to 30% this year. The majority of bi characters where women and men taking up less than a third of bi roles.
Sadly, the LGBTI representations are still not very diverse with 71% of characters being white. However the report said “Overall racial diversity has improved with 36% (325) of 895 regular characters counted on broadcast programming being people of color, a three-point increase from the previous year.”