Guest post: “The vacancy where same-sex families should be is blinding”

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This month is that of Pride, a time when the LGBTQ community commemorates the Stonewall Riots at the end of June 1969. It's a time when the community comes together to increase its visibility and raise awareness of the lack of equality LGBTQ people still receive.

We’ve actually come a long way since then, when it comes to LGBTQ achievements. In 1967 when the UK government decriminalised sex between two men (provided they were both over 21 and it happened in private), and continuing in 1992, when the World Health Organisation declassified same-sex attraction as a mental illness. LGBT individuals can now serve in the UK military, we can marry, we can adopt and, as of 2009, same-sex female couples now have equal rights on their child’s birth certificate (when that child is conceived via artificial insemination).

But, despite these huge achievements for the LGBTQ community, one area we - and many other minority groups - are still struggling in is equal representation in mainstream media. The amount of same-sex couples and heterosexual couples you see in the media is still so disproportionate. In the last decade, I can probably recall a few dozen adverts, films, or television programmes from mainstream media that have featured a same-sex couple. Worryingly, many of these were characters were presented in a negative light, perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

Now I’m a parent, I fear it’s even worse. Despite being ‘legal’ in every sense, my four-year-old son is unable to see himself or his parents on TV, in advertising or in films. We all know how important it is for children to see themselves in the world around them - it helps them to understand it and feel secure. And yet, in 2019 it is still so very rare to see a same-sex family on my screen. Even on Instagram I have to actively look for LGBTQ representation by using a hashtag or visiting a dedicated page.

Jump to June, however, and you can’t scroll a few seconds without a rainbow avatar or a rainbow-themed product popping up - everything from mouthwash to shoes, all in aid of ‘Pride’. Some brands are getting the balance right - 100% of the proceeds from the Levi’s Pride Collection went to OutRight Action, for example. But many are simply capitalizing on a season to increase their revenue and, once June is over, the rainbows disappear like Christmas trees in January and so do those supposed corporate allies. Dig deeper still and some of the companies celebrating Pride will often have poor LGBTQ representation or equality policies within their company - which is an even bigger issue.

Perhaps a better strategy then would be for brands not to focus on Pride, but to include LGBT families in their advertising as part of the norm rather than as a commodity. For example, Tiba and Marl’s #WeAreFamily campaign in March included several diverse families, Gilette recently featured a transgender male celebrating his first shave, and last year Vauxhall featured a same-sex couple going into labour - all without a rainbow in sight. To my knowledge, the inclusion of LGBT families in these campaigns didn’t harm their bottom line.

At the end of the day, we’re all people just trying to find our place in the world, and those of us who are parents are trying to help our children do the same. Unfortunately, we in the LGBT parenting community also find ourselves having to prove we are not harming our children, that we don’t have ‘an agenda’ and that we’re something safe for children to be ‘exposed’ to.

Society is now a vibrant, interesting, and colourful spectrum of people from all different backgrounds. So why are the media and brands failing to reflect reality? The vacancy where same-sex families should be is blinding, and the regular silence from media outlets, PR and marketing agencies, and brands is deafening. In today’s climate, where people are protesting outside primary schools, where a female couple is beaten on public transport for not carrying out the perverted wishes of a group of teenagers and violence against the LGBT community has doubled in recent years, more needs to be done - now, more than ever. Now is the time we need true allies. Everyone in this world deserves to be represented - all year round.

It's really bizarre to feel bullied because women are talking about things that make you feel uncomfortable.

Just to say, has nobody noticed the current Aldi advert? Which features a lesbian couple doing normal couple things in a very normal way :)

I notice it in children's books - nearly always Mum and Dad.
No Mum and Mums or single parent Dads etc
Are there any charities that might tweak and republish the existing books with the above.

OP doesn't seem to take on board that it's not a matter of saying that 5% of families have gay parents, so 5% of ads, books, TV series and films about families should be about gay families. Each ad, book, etc is financed on an individual basis, and naturally most want to aim at a big market. They are creating these products to make money, not to be "fair".

I'm also not convinced that children care very much. In my experience (my type of family is barely represented at all) they don't.

orchid, my post was directly at the people doing the oh-so-subtle twisting of the thread towards trans issues. It wasn't just you, and I did ask upthread whether or not posters commenting were lesbians or not, as it is quite relevant.

I'm not clear why you feel it's an outrage for you to have to defend an opinion different from mine. What exactly puts you above the norms that apply to the rest of us?! And where do you get the idea that I said your opinion was 'invalid'? I didn't say it was, and I don't think it is. What I do think is that it's unpleasant to jump on the OP and try to trap her into turning this thread into a 'trans people at Pride' thread. Which is what I think is happening.

Do you not see the stunning hypocrisy of what you are saying? You've flown into a tantrum because someone younger than you dared disagree with you. You've become furious because you were disagreed with. And yet, you say It's really bizarre to feel bullied because women are talking about things that make you feel uncomfortable.

Another lesbian parent chiming in to agree with SarahAndQuack and also the pp (sorry, am on the next page now so can’t check username) who re-registered to say this whole pride/pup/trans panic does not reflect her lived experiences, and I think some of the comments on this thread are just plain nasty.

It is absurd to generalise about pride being unsuitable for families because of one fuckup at Lancaster.

I had very mixed feelings about the lesbian protest at the start of London pride last year (year before? Had a baby, can’t remember) - I was at pride that year, I had a friend in that group, I hear where she was coming from and I recognise that there are some real and valid concerns about the impact of trans-inclusive progress for women and for lesbians in particular. (I also think there’s a hell of a lot of basic transphobia flying under that cover though.) Nonetheless, I don’t support that protest, and I don’t agree that as a straightforward old-fashioned dyke I am unwelcome or unsafe or invisible at pride. On the contrary I feel a sense of belonging and visibility and that is why I persevere, in spite of ambivalence around corporate sponsorship and pink-washing and pretending being gay is just about getting drunk and wearing glitter, and whether I want to march with organisations whose agenda might conflict with my own politics or whether I want to march in a parade where the organisers censor the sorts of LGBT folk they don’t approve of (a debate which is just as valid to eg should LGBT people in the military be represented, as it is to differing perspectives on trans politics). It’s complicated. It’s also joyous. And it is tremendously important to give kids the space to feel normal.

On the original point of representation... I mean, representation in advertising is an interesting barometer (how comfortable is society really with same-sex families, black men, women who wear hijab etc etc - so corporations expect them to help or hurt their profits?).
TV, film, books... I think this stuff matters. Good quality representation not only confirms you exist, it helps normalise that existence and challenges stereotypes. (This is why I say ‘good quality’ - as a lesbian growing up, I mainly had Zoe the depressed lesbian vet on emmerdale, which didn’t exactly fill me with hope for the future. Likewise given the concentration of black representation in ‘gritty urban drama’ stuff doesn’t particularly fill me with confidence for what TV is telling our children - of any ethnicity - about blackness.)

I don’t think it should be statistically matched on - 1 in 200 families, 13%, whatever. It doesn’t hurt majority groups to be proportionately underrepresented - in fact it might teach them something useful. (Rural white kids who never see anyone from another ethnic group in real life definitely benefit from seeing them represented in media; kids with heterosexual parents who will eventually meet LGB people, or may grow up to become LGB people, will only benefit from seeing that sort of diversity.) Ensuring your kids understand that people and families come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colours and configurations is an important thing for everyone. Unless of course you think same-sex relationships are ‘a bit inappropriate’.

No one I know (maybe because we're middle aged lesbians in our 40s) has been told we must take cock.

I think this may be key - it's the young lesbians I know who are told this, afraid to meet new partners or try dating for fear of who they may come across.

The older lesbians who have kids are not being directly told this but the ones I know are standing up for their younger selves, not saying "this isn't a thing".

If you're talking about public broadcasting, fair enough. Otherwise, fairness isn't relevant - it's about profit.

@drspouse, no one I know has been told that either, and I am not that old (30) and am single, have been dating (exclusively women) in recent years. I have plenty of ‘modern queer politics’ young footless fancy-free folk in my social circles, nonbinary pansexual yada yada (as well as younger common-or-garden lesbians), and still I do not know anyone for whom the cotton ceiling is a genuine concern.

I recognise from the sad and true tales told that for some (very) young lesbians it really is a thing, and that’s horrific, and I’m glad if they have people who are well placed to do so supporting them and defending their right to have only the sexual partners they choose, but I also think these situations shouldn’t be generalised and I think there are some people deliberately overstating them not only out of sympathy for those young women but because they keen to whip up transphobia.

Incidentally I do recall plenty of coercive sexual behaviour from other young lesbians, when I was newly out. I think lots of young people struggle to navigate sexual relationships and boundaries when they are first doing so. I don’t mean to defend it, but I think ‘if you won’t fuck me you’re a horrible person’ is something that lots of angry young people express in different ways, and the ‘you can’t exclude trans women from your sexual preferences’ line is just one form of that. Filled with misogynistic rage over a woman’s right to her own autonomy, yes - again, like many other expressions of sexual entitlement, across the spectrum.

If you're talking about public broadcasting, fair enough. Otherwise, fairness isn't relevant - it's about profit.

It’s not unreasonable to expect publishers, editors etc to display a bit of moral responsibility. Of course profit is a huge consideration but it’s not the only one and I suspect few broadcasters would like to think of themselves as treating fairness as an irrelevance.

It's very difficult to get a book published or TV series made. Profit is very much the prime consideration. I suggest that the OP lobbies the public broadcasting channels.

@NellWilsonsWhiteHair I don't think that the younger lesbians I know are exaggerating, they are genuinely both being told they are transphobic for not dating men, AND coming across men who place themselves in lesbian dating spaces (online, and out and about) expecting to be accepted.

So it's not just ranting in general online, nor is it one man aggressively pushing himself on a woman (I met one of these friends the other day off a train where she'd been harassed by a straight, non-trans bloke, and yes, men can get aggressive when turned down in person, one to one, by a woman of whatever sexuality, but I'm not talking particularly about those "why won't you talk to me and go out with me I'm right here and I'm fabulous" situations, more about the general fear, based on experience, that not everyone who says they are a lesbian is, in fact, female).

And of course the reaction to lesbians at Pride events is not helping.

But... with respect to advertising, campaigning has got advertising standards to ban sexist stereotypes, and the number of BAME individuals and families in ads has increased in response to society/pressure/own best interests, so it is worth pushing.

Even on Instagram I have to actively look for LGBTQ representation by using a hashtag or visiting a dedicated page.

Thanks for your post and I do agree. It isn't limited to LGBTQ though, pretty much all "minority" families are underrepresented. For example, in adoption. I don't watch tonnes of soaps but even a couple of years ago I remember thinking it was great that Hollyoaks was running an adoption storyline with Alfie. What happened? Well his adoptive mother was portrayed as being pretty shit and his father turned out to be his biological father. In Disney movies often non biological figures are shown to be evil. I've watched films where the 'joke' of "your adopted" is thrown out for laughs. I'm sure you can draw parallels with your own experience OP. A lot of the time, the only people blogging about adoption are ones who are having a terrible time of it. Most of the public's knowledge of adoption is woefully outdated or insulting.

So I do understand your concerns and frustrations but from a different place. It would be nice to live in a more inclusive world!

I work with young people, and I definitely recognise that there is a pressure on young women not to identify as lesbian, and I do think there is a pressure to perform a very specific kind of gender identity, in a way I don't recognise from when I was a teenager in the 90s/early 2000s.

I don't want to dismiss any of these issues.

But it is just so bloody tedious when someone (who's writing a guest post for MN) is subjected to this endless faux-concerned 'oh, but my lesbian friend says ...' kind of posts by people who think they're being subtle about their agenda.

It really doesn't matter who a child's parent has sex with or portrayed in the media to have sex with

I think that's true, but what does matter is that a child's parental relationships are portrayed.

My DD's just gone two, and she's currently really interested in the idea of 'daddy'. She keeps bringing me photos of us as a family and trying to work out where 'daddy' would be, or when we watch TV she wants confirmation of who the 'daddy' is in the show. I think this is good for her to learn, obviously, but it's a bit of a pity I can't find her a cartoon to watch that has two mummies, as it might help her get her mind around it.

None of that is about sex.

I’m a lesbian.

The major political parties have all implied (or in the case of Lib Dems, explicitly states) that I’m a bigot because I won’t have sex with someone with a penis. Many businesses and organizations are also stating this. I feel deflated. I used to be proud to be gay, but now I’m terrified of saying my anything.

But it is just so bloody tedious when someone (who's writing a guest post for MN) is subjected to this endless faux-concerned 'oh, but my lesbian friend says ...' kind of posts by people who think they're being subtle about their agenda.

I’m one of Orchid’s lesbian friends and quite apart from her own experiences, she’s heard everything I have to say about it.

Good for you. And at the point when I discover all of the posts on this thread claiming huge concern about Pride and its treatment of lesbians are written by lesbians, I'll perhaps feel differently. But my hunch is that they are not.

Look, I get that people have views on the trans thing. I really do. But must it be the subject of every single thread here, however tenuously related?

You really don’t think it’s relevant here? Why some lesbians might not just feel unwelcome at Pride but see the rainbow as a symbol of homophobia?

I came out in the days of Section 28 & yes, it was shit, but at least then there was a lesbian community to come out into.

I’m also friends with Anne Ruzylo & the extraordinarily eloquent Julia Long. I saw Stonewall repeatedly summoning the police to arrest us when we protested and I saw their frustration when the police repeatedly told them we were doing nothing wrong. If you can make it to an event where Julia’s speaking, then I really would recommend it.

The only reason everything has got this bad is that people either didn’t realise it was happening, or ignored it. That’s why we need to be making as much noise as possible now. I’m old enough & secure enough not to give a fuck for myself personally. I’m fighting back for my younger sisters who aren’t.

I really don't think it's relevant to make the thread about Pride, no.

The OP's post is about representation in adverts. She mentions Pride as a point of contrast. It's not necessary or helpful to drag it all round to 'ooh, but but, Pride can be so worrying, I won't spell it out, but I'll hint how terrible it is! Then you must reply, OP, and I'll bring you round to my real point'. It's so tedious. If people must bang on about these issues, at least cut out all the waffle around the edges.

And yes, I came out during the days of Section 28 too. As surely did many of us, it not being the deep Dark Ages.

I have, as I have said upthread, heard Julia Long speak.

Frankly, a few years ago I used to be an awful lot more sympathetic to her point of view, and to that sort of protest.

I'm not, now.

Mainly because I am so sick of hearing about it on here, dressed up as pretend concern, peddled mostly by straight women claiming to be protecting the young lesbians. I do accept that's not you; I do (as I said upthread) share concerns about what it is like to be a young woman thinking about coming out today. However, I am still really angry that most of this thread has turned into 'ooh, don't go to Pride! You must be a bad mother!' hints from posters who are patently not all lesbians.

I’m sorry for forgetting about the post where you mentioned that you’d already heard Julia.

I agree insinuations don’t help, we need plain speaking. But straight women have been asking - both on & off the boards - if it’s ok for them to get involved, if they should be standing back & leaving it to us. And I’ve been saying, please, get involved, we need all the help we can get!

Also, again, Orchid is an old friend & rock solid. She’s coming at this from a place of concern for young lesbians, not as an opportunity to have a go.

It's fine - it's a long thread.

I don't see how it is 'help' to anyone to shame a lesbian mother for admitting she takes her children to Pride. I'm really appalled by that. And I'm pretty sure the poster who started that isn't a lesbian, based on the way she wrote her post.

It is really unpleasant to make lesbian mothers feel as if they're damaging their children by exposing them to deviant sexuality. This is an old, old form of homophobia.

I'm really shocked you think this is excusable. If you don't like Pride, or aspects of Pride, fine. Talk about them. Stand on your soapbox if you must. But that isn't what's happened on this thread. What's happened here is a nastily disingenuous pretence to engage with the OP - who responded quite politely - in order to subvert her thread and her point, and to imply she was a bad mother.