hey, anyone noticed that television is kind of weird about gay men?

[pocochina]

This is something that I think about a fair amount, but various media/fandom developments of the last few weeks have brought it to the front of my mind. The first half of this post is about ~stuff generally; the second half is specific to how it's apparently the Dean/Cas week of our ~cycle in Supernatural fandom.

Comments

[waltzmatildah]

I think your whole second paragraph ties in neatly to Poco's Willa Paskin point right at the top that female sexuality in general still doesn't carry the same 'weight' as male sexuality and so Television People (whoever they might be) feel like they can be more flippant with it, like it doesn't have the same impact as male sexuality. Female homosexuality is also more likely to be treated as little more than indulgent titilation. Have I understood that correctly? So yeah, contrast this attitude regarding female sexuality with attitudes regarding male sexuality and what equals masculinity, and you get, well, you get modern television, I guess.

Of all the relationships I've seen in my (admittedly pretty limited in the grand scheme of things) television watching life, the ONLY network television characters I've seen treated with the Suddenly Gay trope have been female. Callie Torres (Grey's Anatomy), Gail Peck (Rookie Blue), Willow (BtVS), several Australian soaps, etc. I'm seriously struggling to think of a single instance where this has happened to a male character in a show that I watch. I might have missed one, but yeah...

[goldenusagi]

I think your whole second paragraph ties in neatly to Poco's Willa Paskin point right at the top that female sexuality in general still doesn't carry the same 'weight' as male sexuality

Yeah, I just got a bit rambly with it, but that's basically it.

the ONLY network television characters I've seen treated with the Suddenly Gay trope have been female

Ditto for my TV watching. I was actually going to make a post about this, about how it only happens to women, but I thought I'd better look it up first, and TV Tropes tells me it happens to men, too, though not on any of the shows I've watched, and not with as much regularity, I don't think. And not being familiar with any of the shows where a man was Suddenly Gay, I can't say how much of a main character they were or not.

[waltzmatildah]

I just went through that Tropes page and I'm not familiar with any of the male Suddenly Gay characters, so I can't help there either.