A supercut of every LGBTQ+ reference made on "The Simpsons"

[Rusty_Blazenhoff]

Originally published at: A supercut of every LGBTQ+ reference made on "The Simpsons" | Boing Boing

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[anon73430903]

And it has all the transphobic jokes too

There's Something About Marrying

[Anyhoo]

The Simpsons may be a riff on White suburban America. In this predominantly hetro-normative ‘yellow skinned’ universe the LGBTQI+ community is treated more as ‘subject matter’ than fully integrated into plot or characters.

It took years before the ‘show’ recognized that the Apu character was a horrible Jim Crow styled representation of Indian culture.

[bobtato]

I always felt welcomed by the Simpsons as a fagling. Not because it was filled with representation of people like me (which it wasn’t), but because its overall theme is “everyone is flawed and absurd and shouldn’t be taken too seriously”. That is an encouraging message for anyone who is being told they’re not as good as “normal” people.

Personally, if I’m watching something made primarily by and for straight people, I don’t expect it to reflect the gay specifics of my life. In recent years, mainstream media have mostly knocked it off with the toxic “tragic victim” and “comic cipher” representations, but it’s largely been replaced by representations that deny being queer is in any way different to being straight, which is just a different kind of erasure.

My message to straight TV writers would be “don’t worry about representing me, just represent human beings, while understanding how that category is wider than just your own experience”. I think the Simpsons doesn’t do too badly by that standard.

[Brainspore]

Yeah that episode in particular was so cringey because the message seemed to be “gay people and gay marriage is A-OK but watch out for those trannies because they’re trying to fool people about their biological sex.”