Looking for Representation in All the Wrong Places

Challenging questions of intersectionality in Queer Media

https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/a35x5a/50-best-queer-films-that-defined-the-2010s

Queer Films played an essential role as I began to understand my sexuality in non-heteronormative terms. I recall seeing a poster for the film Blue is the Warmest Color at a theater my family and I would frequent when I was younger. The image that stood before me showed two women, one with bright blue short hair and another with long brown hair, about to kiss. I quickly averted my eyes and joined the rest of my family in watching what was most likely an awful romantic comedy. However brief that moment was, that image stayed with me.

Still, in my prepubescent years, I recall scrolling through OnDemand for something to watch. The gay and lesbian category caught my eye and after checking to make sure the coast was clear in my living room, I pressed “OK” on the remote control. I decided on But I’m a Cheerleader and sneakily began watching my first lesbian film. I don’t think I quite made it to halfway before I exited the movie, cleared my tv’s history, and attempted to continue business as usual. Who cares if I resonated with the closeted main character and too wondered what it would be like if I actualized my same-sex feelings? That wasn’t who I was. I’d grow out of this. Or so I thought…

As streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu became household staples, my opportunities for watching queer films were significantly broadened. I began to watch every gay and lesbian film I could get my hands on. It didn’t matter what the main characters looked like, in what country they lived in, or what language they spoke. The only requirement was that same-sex attraction or the subversion of gender were centered. So I finally finished But I’m a Cheerleader and revisited Blue is the Warmest Color, both of which had catalyzed my interest in queer romances. I watched Tomboy, The Way He Looks, Blackbird, Princess Cyd, Elisa y Marcela, Pariah, The Slums of Beverly Hills (can we get a warm queer round of applause for Natasha Lyonne?), and the list goes on. Beyond films, I watched any show that featured queerness: The L Word (original), The Fosters and Orange Is the New Black are some of the prominent ones that come to mind. These series of queer films and tv shows witnessed my transition from a self-identified heterosexual who believed attraction to all genders was just a symptom of puberty that would fade, to one who was “just 5% gay,” and that 5% consisted of Ruby Rose and Ruby Rose only, to an empowered queer woman in at the time, a long term same-sex relationship.

Queer media showed me that another world was possible. The feelings I had for women weren’t just a phase that I would grow out of nor was it an identity that needed to be kept hidden from the world. I could live a fulfilling life with another woman full of the ups and downs I saw on television. But if you noticed, only three pieces of the media I listed included fully Black women: Pariah, Orange is the New Black, and very briefly, The L Word (looking at you Tasha). However instrumental LGBTQ+ films and tv shows were in helping me to conceptualize my sexual identity, I would often have to separate my queerness from my blackness in being an avid fan of this genre. Very rarely did I see the coexistence of two of my most salient identities. What seemed to fulfill this longing I had to see same-sex love stories on television turned into questions of intersectionality and representation. I began to wonder if Black women could be gay.

Well of course they can! I’m a queer Black woman who knows a handful of others who find themselves at this highly marginalized intersection of race, gender, sex, sexuality, and often class. But if there are so many of us, why are we so disproportionately absent from queer media? Though there have been significant improvements in broadcasting the stories of queer Black women and genderqueer individuals, Black media continues to be overwhelmingly straight and Queer media overwhelmingly white. We have to remember that the media mimics real-life dynamics. Queerness continues to be a controversial subject in many Black spaces, especially in African and Caribbean ones. Additionally, because of white supremacy and unequal power dynamics in society, white queer people get to represent the entire LGBTQ+ community despite holding the most privilege within this group. Issues of beauty standards, respectability politics, featurism, misogynoir, classism, etc., superimpose in the erasure of Black queer women and genderqueer people in LGBTQ+ media representation.

As a young Black queer kid looking to movies like Blue is the Warmest Color and But I'm a Cheerleader as my only source of queer empowerment, I left lost and misunderstood. Despite relating to the queer characters I saw on TV such as their feelings of hopelessness in navigating romance and difficulties with coming out, the general absence of Black queer characters felt like the stories I needed to be told were only ever partially represented.

Coming to college and meeting other queer Black people of marginalized gender identities has made me feel seen in ways I can’t quite describe. Contrary to representations of queerness in the media, Black Queers do exist and can have happy endings unlike those represented in Black queer films like Pariah or Rafiki. I’ll always be a big queer media fan but I'm also aware that this society makes little room for representation of Blackness or Queerness, let alone the intersection of both. So I’ll continue to watch any queer media I can find whether or not they can fully capture the way I move through this world as both a Black and Queer woman. And in the meantime, I can either write some more articles about it, or perhaps I can inspire some intersectional queer films and tv shows myself.