poneezi:

For people who don’t think LGBTQ+ people need representation in the media

For the first 18 years of my life I was too afraid to even question my sexuality, only after seeing Santana come out in Glee, a beautiful and feminine girl who wasn’t labelled as creepy or a dyke after doing so, was I able to even QUESTION my sexual identity.

I grew up beliveing that if I liked girls that made me unfeminine, and a predator to women or a sex object to men. And this is somebody who grew up with a very close lesbian aunt in a extremely accepting family.

I needed someone I could identify with, somebody who had to figure everything out and understood the shame that I felt, not just a random lesbian couple or a butch girl in a highschool drama who everybody avoids because she is a “dyke” (I fucking despise that word) who is never given any real character development beyond a bad dress sense and longing glances at other women, and I didn’t need incredibly straight women hooking up while drunk for the experience. I needed to see myself on screen and not feel ashamed.

It was so powerful to see Santana come out that an 18 year old girl who couldn’t admit, even in my mind, that I might not be straight, came out to my mother and a few friends three months later.

So please don’t tell me that homosexuality is inappropriate for children’s movies and that people shouldn’t be taught about sexuality and gender in schools because I fucking needed it. That is why I get so pissed off when I hear movie critics chastising ParaNorman for a single gay sentence, maybe there is a little boy out there who needed to hear it.

Maybe if there was just one lesbian or LGBTQ Disney princess that I could look up to as a little girl maybe I wouldn’t have hated myself for such a long time for something I can’t change.

thegreenpea:

astral-radiance:

spacevirgil:

Reblog if you think trans women:

A. Are women

B. Can be lesbians

C. Deserve love and respect

I think there should only be D where it’s all the above

transpeter:

most of us know how important representation is, but i feel like we don’t always realize how vital it is for white cishet people to see representation as well. like my white cishet 65 year old mom’s favorite show is brooklyn nine nine, and when she first began watching it she was so perplexed by ray holt. she had never really seen black gay characters in television before, and the very few times she has they were stereotypes, so she was just so interested by him bc “gay people can be like this?”

like obviously it would be great if she already knew lgbt+ people aren’t the tired stereotypes that society tries to portray us as, and it would be great if she was more educated that Yes black gay men exist and are common. but she didn’t know that, because she’s never really seen it. but just watching brooklyn nine nine has educated her so much!! she’s seeing a black gay man run a police squad, she’s seeing a large black man be one of the most gentle people ever, she’s seeing women of color empowering each other and totally kicking ass, she’s seeing a jewish man repeatedly talking about issues such as transphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, racism, and she’s also seeing all these characters understand when it ISNT their place to talk about certain issues

so my mom sees stuff like this and thinks “oh i was so wrong about these groups” and then she recommends these types of shows to her other ignorant friends, and she also corrects people when they say bigoted things that enforce the toxic stereotypes she is now educated on. all from some proper representation on a half-hour tv show!! like representation doesn’t just help minorities, it helps the privelage people who have ingrained bigotry in them to see what minorities are really like and what they can be and it’s so important!! and then these privelage people can move forward and use their privelage to try and help minorities. representation of minorities helps the privileged too, and helps society to evolve!! so can bigots stop saying that it only benefits minorities. even if it did only help minorities that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but that isn’t the case so?? stop??