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Queer people were largely ignored in the arts and media until relatively recently; their presence was merely insinuated and mostly in negative ways. This absence of queer people and presentation of negative stereotypes, which did not accurately reflect queer lives, served to undermine non queer people’s understanding of queer lives, fuelling prejudice, ignorance and a reliance on generalisations.
Stereotypes include:
From the 1990s to present day, there has been an increase in the positive depictions of queer people, issues, and concerns within mainstream media. The queer community have fought hard over the years, since the Stonewall riots in 1969, to counter negative stereotypes, including in the arts and media, with a large degree of success.
Further, queer communities have taken an increasingly proactive stand in defining their own culture, with a primary goal of achieving an affirmative visibility in mainstream media. The positive portrayal or increased presence of the queer communities in media has served to increase acceptance and support for queer communities, establish queer communities as a norm, and provide information on the topic.
The following discusses positive and negative depictions of queer people in art and media through time.
Throughout the early twentieth century, portrayals of homosexuality in film was uncommon, and when represented it was often used as a comic device; for example the camp cowboy character in Stan Laurel’s silent film The Soilers (1923), see: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=612085663869827 .
Negative sub-contexts regarding homosexuality were also common, such as in Alfred Hitchcock's films, whose villains used an implication of homosexuality to heighten their evilness and alienation. For example - a) in Rope (1948) Brandon and Philip are spoiled rich kids with a close intimate bond who murder a college classmate simply to prove their Nietzschean superiority; and b) In Strangers on a Train’ (1951) Bruno is a sleazy character who is a ‘mama’s boy’ and dresses in flamboyant clothes (cues of homosexuality at the time) that entraps Guy Haines (the stranger he meets on a train) into a reciprocal murder scheme.
Overt homophobia also existed with film scholar Robin Wood called David Lynch’s Dune Baron Harkonnen sexually assaults and kills a young man by bleeding him to death – charging it with ‘managing to associate with homosexuality in a single scene physical grossness, moral depravity, violence, and disease.’
These fictional representations of queer people as murderous and violent were common in film. Indeed, columnist Brent Hartinger observed that ‘big-budget Hollywood movies until, perhaps, Philadelphia in 1993 that featured major gay male characters portrayed them as insane villains and serial killers’.
Lesbians have also been poorly treated in US cinema and were largely erased in the era of the Hays Code (a series of censorship guidelines for filmmakers) which existed between 1930-1966. For almost 40 years, lesbianism was only ever insinuated and mostly in negative ways. A famous example of this is Mrs Danvers in Rebecca (1940) (another Hitchcock film) as the plain, repressed and twisted servant whose motivations are an unhealthy infatuation with her beautiful, dead employer, Rebecca. Dracula’s Daughter (1936), followed in this line of monstrous but unspoken lesbian villains with the main character giving into her vampiric desires with an especially telling scene in which the Countess has encouraged a beautiful young woman to remove her clothing with the pretext of painting her portrait.
The tragic lesbian was another trope, and featured in The Children’s Hour (1961) starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. Any hint of romantic lesbian feelings are accompanied by feelings of shame, wrongdoing and self-loathing. It gives the viewers the idea that lesbians live a dark and almost depressing lifestyle. The Killing of Sister George paints a similarly bleak portrait of a lesbian couple, one older and butch the other younger and femme, in an abusive dynamic fuelled by alcohol.
In a 2002 report GLAAD criticized the track record of the movie industry in the United States when it came to representation and inclusion of bisexuality, stating that often bisexual content is either ‘removed from novels that films are based on,’ removed from original screenplays when filming begins, or is taken out on the cutting room floor. The film Basic Instinct (1992) was described as ‘one of the worst examples of biphobia ever put on a screen’ while Inside Daisy Clover (1965) and Spartacus (1960) were criticized for their removal of scenes with bisexual content. Basic Instinct also received a negative response from the bisexual community for portraying a bisexual as a psychopathic killer.
In a 2018 report, the British Film Institute argued that bisexuals are often not explored in cinema, with the worse examples of films being ‘downright squeamish about their characters' bisexuality.’ They noted this was the case in films such as Alexander (2004), Caligula (1978), and Skyfall (2012), and added that bisexual women are ‘even less visible in Hollywood films,’ apart from Young Man with a Horn (1950). As such, BFI criticized portrayals in films like The Fox (1967) and Gia (1998).
There is little which might be called transgender cinema before the 1960s, disregarding cross-dressing farces such as I Was a Male War Bride (1949) or Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959).
After Ed Wood’s [ludicrous] Glen or Glenda (1953), which took the fame of American transsexual woman Christine Jorgensen and turned it into a semi-autobiographical story about a man who liked angora sweaters, came Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), based on Robert Bloch’s novel about serial killer Ed Gein, who killed over a dozen women and made a vest of their skins. The depiction of Norman Bates as a gender-troubled murderer set a template for the portrayal of trans people as psychopaths, with two further films based on Gein – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), besides Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980).
The Stonewall Riots in New York in 1969 was a resistance to the discrimination that LGBTQ+/queer people faced and marked the beginning of the modern LGBTQ+/queer movement that had taken an increasingly proactive stand in defining LGBTQ+/queer culture, specifically in mainstream media. LGBTQ+/queer political activists began to pressure Hollywood to end its consistent negative portrayals of homosexuality in media. Responding to the movement, growing visibility in films began to emerge.
From the 1970s a marked an increase in visibility for LGBTQ+/queer communities in film and media although representations remained stereotypical in many cases as has already been discussed earlier in this paper. An example that went against the grain was the 1972 movie ‘That Certain Summer’ about a gay man raising his family, and although it did not show any explicit relations between the men, it contained no negative stereotypes.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the 1990s with the breakthrough of ‘New Queer Cinema’ that queer lives began to be represented in film in a much more positive light, and from the point of view of queer people themselves. The term was first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe this movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking. Films of the movement typically share certain themes, such as the rejection of heteronormativity and the lives of LGBTQ+/queer protagonists living on the fringe of society.
Some examples cited by Rich were Todd Haynes’s Poison (1991), Laurie Lynd’s RSVP (1991), Isaac Julien’s Young Soul Rebels (1991), Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991), Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992), and Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992). All the films feature explicitly gay and lesbian protagonists and subjects; explicit and unapologetic depictions of or references to gay sex; and a confrontational and often antagonistic approach towards heterosexual culture.
One of the most significant trans-themed films of the 1990s is The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) a road movie about a trio of transgender performers navigating prejudice and exclusion with grace and wit on their travels. The film shows the challenges of appearing before a hostile audience on and off stage, moving the characters beyond stereotypical performers and making everything they do seem special and yet refreshingly normal.
The Crying Game (1992) is a love story involving a transwoman (Dil) who is not so passive, becoming caught up in a love triangle with an IRA member who has killed her previous partner but who emerges in the end with the most power. ’The Crying Game’ was one of several mainstream films to rethink the old stereotypes of trans people, encouraging it’s audience to empathise with Dil without asking only for sympathy.
Beginning in the 2010s a newer trend in LGBT filmmaking was identified where the influence of new queer cinema was evolving toward more universal audience appeal. Rich has identified the emergence in the late 2000s of LGBT-themed mainstream films such as Brokeback Mountain (2005), Milk (2008), and The Kids are Alright (2010) as a key moment in the evolution of the genre. Another good example of this trend is Stacie Passion’s Concussion (2013), a film about in which the central characters' lesbianism is a relatively minor aspect of a story and the primary theme is how a long-term relationship can become troubled and unfulfilling regardless of its gender configuration.
Ariel Sobel, in an article in The Advocate, praised Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) for portraying ‘the ultimate queer superhero’ and called her character, Lisbeth Salander ‘a testament to the brilliance of bisexual women.’[8] Sobel also pointed to Tully (2018) as a film about ‘a woman who happens to be queer’ and argued that it ‘showcases how LGBTQ people go through all sorts of milestones,’ then experiencing them.
The mainstreaming and centring of queer lives in mainstream film has reached a highpoint in recent times with Academy Award for Best Picture winners Moonlight (2016) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), both notable for prominently depicting queer characters.
In 2013, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, (GLAAD), started releasing a Studio Responsibility Index at the beginning of each year which reported on the quality, quantity, and diversity of LGBT characters in films released by 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Columbia, Universal Pictures, the Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Brothers the previous year. The most recent Index was published in 2022.
Across TV, gay or lesbian characters have tended to meet unhappy endings such as heartbreak, loss, insanity, depression or imprisonment. They commonly end up dying, either through suicide, homophobic attacks, illness or other means. Viewers call this trope ‘bury your gays’ and ‘dead lesbian syndrome’.
According to, Autostraddle which examined 1,779 scripted U.S. television series from 1976 to 2016, 11% (193) of them featured lesbian or bisexual female characters, and among these, 35% saw lesbian or bisexual characters dead, while only 16% provided a happy ending for them. Also, in a study of 242 character deaths in the 2015–2016 television season, Vox reported that ‘A full 10 percent of deaths [were] queer women.’ In one month of 2016, four lesbian or bisexual women were killed in four shows, further showcasing the prevalence of this occurrence on screen.
Such statistics led Variety to conclude in 2016 that ‘the trope is alive and well on TV, and fictional lesbian and bisexual women in particular have a very small chance of leading long and productive lives’.
‘While much improvement has been made and TV remains incredibly far ahead of film in terms of LGBTQ representation, it must be made clear that television – and broadcast series more specifically – failed queer women this year as character after character was killed. This is especially disappointing as this very report just last year called on broadcast content creators to do better by lesbian and bisexual women after superfluous deaths on Chicago Fire and Supernatural. This continues a decades-long trend of killing LGBTQ characters – often solely to further a straight, cisgender character's plotline – which sends a dangerous message to audiences. It is important that creators do not reinvigorate harmful tropes, which exploit an already marginalized community.’
[NB - Every year GLAAD releases a report, entitled Where We Are on TV, with percentages of expected regular and recurring LGBT characters on broadcast and cable, and the previous few years streaming and television.]
Responding to the LGBTQ/queer efforts for an increased positive presence and to end homophobic portrayals of homosexuality in media led to the National Association of Broadcasters Code Authority agreeing to adopt a Code to guarantee that the LGBTQ/queer community would be fairly treated in media. This led to the presence of LGBTQ characters beginning in prime-time television, although in minimal amounts or in episodes that concentrated on homosexuality. Nevertheless, such presentations were greeted as signs of greater social acceptance.
Despite the stereotypical depictions of gay people, the media has at times promoted acceptance with television shows such as Will and Grace and Queer Eye. The increased publicity reflects the coming-out movement of LGBT communities. As more celebrities come out, more LGBT-friendly shows develop, such as the 2004 show The L Word.
The television series The L Word was a milestone prime time drama roundly welcomed for centring and making visible lesbian life, portrayed a long-term lesbian couple attempting to start a family, countering the negative ‘U-Haul’ lesbian stereotype, which is that lesbians move in on the second date. The series however also came under heavy criticism for reinforcing numerous other negative stereotype lesbian such as, e.g. lesbians preying on and seducing straight women in relationships with men; shunning bisexual women (e.g. to the point where Alice Pieszecki, a bisexual character, refers to bisexuality as ‘gross’); for downplaying the main characters' misdeeds and unexplained tendency for adultery and instead focusing on their physical beauty and sex scenes.
Some examples of positive coverage are shows like Ellen and Ru Paul’s Drag Race, both of which assists in giving the LGBTQ/queer community a more positive outlook.[ One of the most famous TV milestones LGBTQ/queer communities was Ellen DeGeneres coming out, which has been lauded for encouraging other LGBTQ/queer people to come out and feel better about being themselves.
Similarly, because of Will & Grace, there are now more gay characters on television. Will & Grace showed a wider audience that television shows with gay characters do not have to be all about the gay community, but can deal with more mainstream problems such as romance and fights with friends. Now, more television shows have gay characters without focusing on their sexuality, but rather making it another facet of the character such as their hair eye colour or age. Indeed, gay homonormativity is becoming a mainstay on broadcast television with hits like Modern Family indicating a cultural shift from white, gay men being depicted as non-monogamous sex-seekers, to being ‘just like everyone else’ in their quest to be fathers.
In 2018, Star Trek: Discovery aired an episode in which a gay character was killed. Immediately after the episode aired, Cruz, GLAAD, and the showrunners released reassuring statements intimating that the character's death may not be final, with specific reference to avoiding the ‘bury your gays’ trope. Also, Schitt’s Creek writer and creator Dan Levy acknowledged that he wanted the relationship between David and Patrick to steer clear of tragedy and heartbreak in an open response to the growing trend of unhappy queer characters across the media landscape.
In sum the change in the portrayal of LGBT people over time in TV has been positive. To illustrate, in the 1990s a show called Roseanne featured an episode in which a woman briefly kissed another woman and this was preceded by a viewer discretion warning. In 2011 an episode of Grey's Anatomy in 2011 (‘White Wedding’) showed a lesbian wedding between the characters Callie and Arizona with no such warning, indicating a leap in positive representation and viewer acceptance of queer lives.
Netflix has been responsible for streaming queer orientated/friendly shows that talk openly and positively about sex and identity. For example, Sex Education consistently increased inclusion throughout its four seasons with the final season introducing Roman and Abbi, two trans characters who were in a relationship, and asexual character O, while continuing to tell the story of nonbinary student Cal and established queer characters Eric and Adam. Also, Heartstopper, follows the romance between teen boys Nick and Charlie as well as their group of friends, which include trans teen Elle, asexual teen Isaac, lesbian couple Tara and Darcy, and new trans characters added this year. These shows have been important.
Soap operas were important in bringing LBGTQ/queer characters to the fore on UK TV, helping to make queerness more visible and ‘normal’ to a mass audience. For example, Eastenders is a British soap opera broadcast on BBC One, which has aired since 19 February 1985. The show has used various homosexual characters to highlight gay issues since the 1980s, including homophobia, bisexuality, age of sexual consent, and HIV/AIDS among others. It was the first UK soap to screen a gay kiss in 1987, and despite initial negativity, the characters had a powerful impact on public attitudes, and the show's handling of Colin and Barry's relationship was deemed by many gay activists as something of a breakthrough. Actor turned politician Michael Cashman believes the storyline started ‘the social change’ in opinion towards homosexuals, which ‘happened alongside the legal reform’ in the 1980s
The first lesbian kiss on UK TV was between the characters Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence in Brookside with Beth subsequently revealing to her mother and friends that she was a lesbian. Brookside was commended for its ‘positive and non-cliched portrayal’ of lesbianism, with Graham Kibble-White stating in his book, Phil Redmond's 20 Years of Brookside, that ‘lipstick lesbians’ became fashionable during the 1990s because of Beth. Watched by six million viewers in 1994, her kiss with Margaret was a clear turning point for LGBTQ/queer representation in the media, and is recognised as one of the all-time memorable moments of British television.
Hayley Cropper who appeared in Coronation Street between 1998 and 2014, was a transgender woman and the first regular transgender character to be introduced into soap opera. She enters a relationship with and later marries Roy Cropper, firstly in a blessing ceremony at Roy’s Rolls, presided over by a female vicar in 1999, and then legally at a stately home in Cheshire following Hayley’s receipt of her new birth certificate by way of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. A much-loved character she was even praised by the UK Parliament.
A Wikipedia list of queer characters in soaps worldwide illustrates the proliferation of queers characters in soaps from the early 1990s to the present day can be accessed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_characters_in_soap_operas.
The following provides a basic picture of queer representation in popular music throughout the 20th century.
1920s – 1930s
Blues artists of this era were known for their risqué lyrics, a good illustration of which is Bessie Jackson’s song B.D. Woman Blues (the B.D. standing for Bull Daggers) released in 1935. The lyrics, ‘Comin' a time, B.D. women ain't gonna to need no men’, and ‘They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural man’, is a proud assertion of butch lesbian life.
The Pansy Craze was a period in the late 1920s and 1930s where openly gay performers suddenly became popular in major city nightclubs in the US. Two of the most popular performers to emerge from this craze were Jean Malin, who sang I'd Rather Be Spanish Than Mannish, and Bruz Fletcher in 1937 with She's My Most Intimate Friend whose titles are self-explanatory.
1950s – 1960s
Self-assertion and queer pride continued into the 30s through to the 1960s.
Ray Bourbon was a well-known female impersonator in the 1950s who changed his name to Rae Bourbon and released and album titled Let Me Tell You About My Operation, in response to Christine Jorgensen’s famous sex change, which had been dominating the news.
In the early 1960s Camp Records was a record label based in California that specialized in producing anonymous gay-themed novelty records and singles, mostly sold out of the backs of beefcake magazines. The songs they released comically portrayed the world of the American homosexual subculture, often relying on broad stereotypes gay slang, and saucy double entendres for their comic effect. They released two full albums which featured artists like Sandy Beech, Max Minty & the Gay Blades, and a song by Byrd E Bath called Homer the Happy Little Homo.
Jackie Shane was an American soul and rhythm and blues singer, who was most prominent in the local music scene of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the 1960s. Considered to be a pioneer transgender performer, she was a contributor to the Toronto Sound and is best known for the single Any Other Way, which was a regional Top 10 hit in Toronto in 1963 and a modest national chart hit across Canada in 1967. The lyrics included ‘tell her that I'm happy, tell her that I'm gay, tell her that I wouldn't have it, any other way’ which reached #2 on the Canadian charts.
The Kink’s song Lola details a romantic encounter in a Soho bar between a young man and the eponymous Lola, who is likely a trans woman or cross-dresser. In the song, the narrator describes his confusion towards Lola, who ‘walked like a woman but talked like a man’, yet he remains infatuated with her. The song was released as a single in the United Kingdom on 12 June 1970 and reached number two on the UK Singles Chart [7] such was its popularity. Indeed, writing a contemporary review in Creem, critic Dave Marsh recognized it as ‘the first significantly blatant gay-rock ballad’.
1970s – 1980s
Following on from the Stonewall riots and LGBTQ/queer and the development of an assertive rights movement/culture, the 70s saw a proliferation of queer themed popular music through to the 80s.
The 70s was the era of glam rock which centred camp aesthetics. David Bowie’s infamous Starman performance on Top of the Pops in 1972, with his arm draped over the guitarist Mick Ronson suggesting an ambiguous sexuality, caused panic in the living rooms of the British public. One of Bowie’s most homoerotic songs John, I’m Only Dancing was released in the same year. Although glam rock utilised camp aesthetics, artists in this genre such as Marc Bolan were not necessarily queer LGBTQ community or produce explicitly queer songs but were transgressive nevertheless in terms of their looks and presentation.
In parallel with the glam rock movement, queer people themselves sought to represent their experience in music. In 1973, the first openly gay rock album was produced by Chris Robison and his Many Hand Band, which included the song Lookin' for a Boy Tonight, and Alix Dobkin formed her own record label called Women's Wax Words. She then went on to produce the album Lavender Jane Loves Women, which was the first album to be produced, financed, performed, and engineered entirely by lesbians. Further, in 1974, Steven Grossman became the first artist to have a lyrically gay album, titled Caravan Tonight released by the major record label called Mercury. This album featured the song Out and was the first album with openly gay lyrics to be produced by a major record label.
At the end of the 1970s, Olivia Records was set up to release the first various artist album that featured solely lesbian performers. The album, Lesbian Concentrate, was produced in reaction to the bigotry of Anita Bryant and her anti-LGBT rights crusade.
The 1970s also produced perhaps the most strident gay rights anthem ever to have been made. Tom Robinson's single Glad To Be Gay (1978) was connected to the gay-liberational activities both in New York and London's musical scenes. The song’s lyrics were essentially a rally call for solidarity among queer people and allies to stand firm against the homophobia that existed at that time.
In the 1980s the New romantic movement in the UK and was heavily influenced by former glam rock stars of the 1970s such as David Bowie and Roxy Music. It was fashion led with both sexes often dressed in androgynous clothing and wore cosmetics such as eyeliner and lipstick, partly derived from earlier punk fashions. This so called ‘gender bending’ was particularly evident in figures such as Boy George of Culture Club and Marilyn (Peter Robinson).
Groups like Bronski Beat and The Communards produced music that was overtly political gay within the 1980s dance culture. Songs such as Smalltown Boy (1984) openly depicted the gay experience; indeed, the video for the song showed the lead singer Jimmy Somerville trying to befriend an attractive diver at a swimming pool, then being attacked by the diver’s homophobic associates, being returned to his family by the police and having to leave home. At the end of 1984 Bronski Beat produced their album Age of Consent with the inner sleeve listing the various ages of consent for consensual gay sex in different countries throughout the world, reflecting the political struggle to lower the age of consent in the UK at that time.
The Smiths were the ultimate student band of the 1980s whose focus on a guitar, bass and drum sound, fusing 1960s rock and post-punk, was a rejection of the synth-pop New Romantic sound predominant at the time. Their first single Hand in Glove, released by independent label Rough Trade, had a strong homoerotic element although ambiguously/poetically expressed; ‘Hand in glove / The sun shines out of our behinds / No, it’s NOT like any other love / This one is different because it’s us!’. For the cover, Morrissey insisted on a homoerotic photograph by Jim French which he had found in Margaret Walters' The Nude Male underlining the queer sensibility of the song.
The 1970s and 80s was also the period of punk and post punk music genres with some examples of songs and bands that centred LGBTQ lives as follows.
The Ramones 53rd and 3rd (1976) was an ode to queer male hustling in mid-town Manhattan’s Loop and was written by Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone allegedly form life experience ‘trying to turn a trick’ in a notorious cruising area, but being ‘the one they never pick’. The sone exposes the brutal realities of prostitution, shedding light on the experiencers of individuals forced into such circumstances.
Jayne County was a Warhol superstar and mainstay of the scene around Max’s Kansas City, the famous 1970s club in downtown Manhattan. Also involved in experimental theatre, County was the most visible, and audible, transgender performer in New York punk. Her most famous song Man Enough to Be A Woman (1978) deals with her struggles with her gender and refusal to conform to societal norms. The lyric ‘I am what I am, I don’t give a damn’ is a rallying call for the LGBTQ community that remains as relevant today as it was when County first wrote it.
Castration Squad was Alice Bag of The Bags on bass and Nervous Gender’s Phranc occasionally sitting in. Castration Squad was the most influential all-female punk band in the 1970s LA to never release a record. Live footage and demos of songs like The X-Girlfriend make clear why they would influence riot grrl and queercore decades later, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um2D07ylrXU .
1990s – present
The 1990s saw a proliferation of pop songs that were explicitly queer became hits, examples of which include Go West by Pet Shop Boys, a remake of the camp hit originally sung by The Village People; Vogue by Madonna which is based on a style of dance from Harlem’s ‘House Ball’ and inspired by queer vogueing subculture; Constant Craving by K D Lang was an embrace of her own same-sex desire.
Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Cher’s’ Do You Believe in Life After Love? and Whitney Houston’s It’s Not Right, But That’s Ok were all mainstream hits that were embraced by the LGBTQ community and adopted as queer anthems. More solemnly, artists like Crystal Waters and Janet Jackson released tracks in the ’90s that reflected LGBTQ issues like homelessness and the AIDS crisis and such songs allowed affected individuals to be seen at a time when their deaths were literally being denied by scientists.
One of the biggest pop artists of the 1990s George Michael was arrested by undercover police officers for performing a lewd act in public, which prompted him to come out as gay. The lyrics to his first single after his arrest Outside (1998) disparage the incident and include the lines ‘I’d service the community, but I already have, you see’ (he was given community service for the incident). Michael has said he wanted to lighten the stigma around cruising, and, for others, it lightened the stigma around being queer in general. The music video features a police helicopter flying around Los Angeles, catching people, gay and straight, kissing or having sex in public. George Michael is dressed as a police officer and dances in a public toilet that looks more like a nightclub.
Another example of a well-known queer artist is Meshell Ndegeocello who entered the hip-hop scene in the 1990s. Her song ‘Leviticus: Faggot’ talks about the sexist and misogynist violence experienced by young, Black, gay men due to their identities.
Riot grrrl was an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington, and combined feminism, punk music, and politics, It is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement. Perhaps the most famous band to come out of this scene were Bikini Kill whose song Rebel Girl (1993) give voice to an unconcealed lesbian perspective, a frank and explicit tribute to and love song for another woman ‘rebel girl / you’re the queen of my world’ and ‘in her kiss I taste revolution’. The Gossip also emerged from the Olympia scene with their hit Standing in the Way of Control (2006) becoming a worldwide phenomenon. The song was written by lead singer Beth Ditto as a response to the Federal Marriage Amendment which would have constitutionally outlawed same-sex marriage in the United States, a message of defiance and call to arms for queer people never to give up in their struggle for equal rights.
The 00s saw the introduction of an array of key queer rights in the UK and US such as same sex marriage, which was mirrored by the emergence of many queer singers, songwriters and musicians that belong to many genres.
The following presents a number of examples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Vbgwk2nV4.
A high point for queer popular music came at the 65th Grammy Awards in February 2023, Sam Smith and Kim Petras won the award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for their single Unholy making the first openly non-binary and first openly transgender woman to win a Grammy award, and also the first ones to get a number-one song on the US and UK
Same sex relationships date back to prehistoric times and throughout history expressions of queerness have existed alongside heterosexuality. The portrayal of homosexuality in art varied depending on the culture and historical period. Depictions of same-sex intimacy provides clues about the loves and experiences of queer people in the past.
The following is a list of queer art works through time which provide a flavour of positive and negative depictions of queer lives through time.
The earliest evidence of human art are cave paintings. The oldest cave drawings or paintings in Europe are found in the Spanish El Castillo Cave (ca. 40,000 years B.P., early Aurignacian) and in the collapsed Abri Castanet in France (Department Dordogne). The people in the Upper Palaeolithic period have left artefacts and works of art that have been interpreted in terms of same sex eroticism. Examples include some cave paintings and hundreds of phallic ‘rods’. Among these is a carved object from Gorge d'Enfer in present-day France, in which two penises connect at an angle of about 120°, similar to a modern double dildo.
Another possible example of homosexual eroticism in the art of the European Mesolithic might be a drawing found in the cave of Addura in Sicily. In this cave between 12,000 to 6,000 years ago humans depicted men only wearing bird masks dancing in a circle with erect penises. In the centre of the circle two men with erect penises are positioned on top of one another. The archaeologist, who discovered the cave in 1952, Jole Bovio Marconi year assumed that this was a homoerotic image; indeed, a homoerotic ritual for a god or deity.
Ancient Egyptian literature describes gods and deities as having same-sex relationships. One of the potential gay couples of Ancient Eqypt could be Niankhkhnum and Chnumhotep, two high officials in Ancient Egypt who both held the title of overseer of the royal manicure. In 1964 archaeologists in Egypt discovered the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Chnumhotep, two men who lived there around 2380 BCE. In the tomb, they would find what could be the oldest existing evidence of queer lives. Their period of life is dated to the 5th dynasty (c. 2450-2410 B.C.) during the reign of Niuserre or Menkauhor. They are known today mainly through their joint tomb, in which they are depicted on reliefs in an intimate embrace, kissing, or holding hands.
A painted Kylix Vase dated from 500 BCE in Greece depicts Achilles binding Patroclus’ wounds. Achilles and Patroclus are one of the most celebrated male warrior pairs in Greek literature after the Trojan War and portrayed by Homer in the Iliad as two friends with a tender relationship later deemed as pederastic by the Greeks. This is where in which an older male figure mentors and cares for the younger as a ‘rite of passage’ that could include sexual relations. The vase does not directly indicate any sexual relations but strongly demonstrates male to male. intimacy. See:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifact?name=Berlin+F+2278&object=Vase
This relief sculpture from around 550 BC, Italy shows the famed Medusa with her characteristic serpentine hair as well as a beard and tusks, which is not uncommon for images of her made in Ancient Greece. In Greek mythology Medusa is one of the Gorgon sisters born to two sea gods, Keto and Phorkys, and is famously killed by Perseus who reflects her gaze in his shield. She is often taken up as a feminist symbol. Her hybridity, transformation, and the queer mode through which she creates her children also have queer potential. These bearded early representation further take this legendary figure beyond binary bounds. https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/feminine-power-divine-demonic?gclid=CjwKCAjwh-CVBhB8EiwAjFEPGZJSM9YuvvhpwewYRbwklHNZo7b_57YKrh_hP5nhpkgxZNAyfkN4yhoCtl0QAvD_BwE#&gid=1&pid=2
Homosexuality seems to have been universally denounced by the Church during the Middle Ages, with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah providing a salutary lesson on the dangers therein. Nevertheless, exceptions did exist. For example, an icon from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Israel depicts a homosexual couple officially married in a church. The two men on the icon are Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus, two who were Roman soldiers and later Christian martyrs. While the pairing of saints, especially in early Christianity, was not uncommon, the partnership of two men was considered particularly close. The Patriarch of Antioch, Severus [512 – 518 AD] stated that ‘we should not separate them [Sergius and Bacchus], who were united in life, in speech.’ In the most critical 10th century account of their lives, St Sergius is openly referred to as the ‘sweet companion and lover’ of Bacchus.
https://unibam.org/2012/03/20/when-same-sex-marriage-was-rite/
The Visions of Tondal is an illuminated manuscript with 20 miniatures by Simon Marmion which describes the Knight Tondal’s journeys through the afterlife. In the miniature ‘Torment of Unchaste Monks and Nuns’ the souls are devoured by a frightening beast and excreted into a frozen lake in Hell as punishment for their lust. Although we do not know the nature of their sexual encounters, it is poignant that their sins resulted in both men and women becoming pregnant with entrail-eating monsters. While this illumination depicts those guilty of breaking their vows of chastity, the punishment is doled out to anyone guilty of lust.
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RZ3
In the Renaissance era, the wealthy cities of northern Italy such as Florence and Venice were known for their widespread practice of same-sex love within a significant portion of the male population. This was reflected in the artists and art works produced during this era.
Abrecht Durer’s Woodcut ‘The Bathhouse’ has as its theme a same-sex environment of drinking, music-making and flirting and which depicts Durer’s experiences in bathhouse and similar spaces of the time. The pictorial language is made explicitly homoerotic by way of the placement of a fountain at the crotch of the man on the left of the picture.
https://www.rct.uk/collection/800195/the-bath-house
The Creation of Adam, a fresco in the Sistine Ceiling, Vatican City, Rome (1508 – 1512), was painted by Michelangelo Buonarotti during Renaissance Italy. This fresco was a very homosocial culture for aristocratic men, and it was public knowledge that younger men (such as apprentices) often had intimate and sexual relationships with their mentors. Michelangelo was openly a part of this culture. The kissing men in the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel are likewise relevant as representations of queer desire as well as Michelangelo’s concern for his soul
https://wtfarthistory.com/post/6109220645/gay-make-out-session-sistine-chapel
This painting in a fresco at Villa Farnesina in Rome by Giovanni Bazzi depicts Alexander the Great’s marriage to Roxana. Alexander is featured in the middle, gazing at his soon to be wife, Roxana as she is undressed by cupids for their consummation of marriage. Meanwhile, on the right, a clothed Hephaestion (Alexander’s best man) leans upon the marriage god, Hymen. Hephaestion was a general in Alexander’s army along with being his intimate partner and personal body guard. The two were inseparable throughout life. This fresco by Bazzi, exemplifies Alexander the Great’s bisexuality through Hephaestion’s closeness to the marriage god. While not married by law, Alexander and Hephaestion’s closeness during the marriage of Roxana and Alexander remains.
Caravaggio’s works are characteristically sensual and dreamlike, using dramatic contrast of light and dark in which figures emerge from the shadows. The painting ‘The Concert of Youths’ typifies this sensuality which concerns a same-sex happening in music and love, symbolised by Cupido at the left edge of the painting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Musicians_%28Caravaggio%29#/media/File:Caravaggio_-_I_Musici.jpg
Saint Wilgefortis, known as the 'Bearded Lady' was, according to legend, being forced into marriage by her father but she wished to remain a virgin married only to God. She prayed to God to save her from her fate and he responded to her prayers by giving her masculine features, such as a beard, so that no one would want to marry her. Her father sentenced her to death for her disobedience and had her crucified. She is commonly seen as the Patron Saint of Abused Women and highlights the existence of medieval constructions of gender and sexuality, and transformation between binary genders.
A good example of St Wilgeforts in medieval art is an image painted in pigments and ink on a wooden panel kept at Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig, Germany.
https://www.queerarthistory.com/transgender-gender-non-conforming/saint-wilgefortis/.
Another example is a wooden sculpture c.1520 kept at Gwynedd Museum and Art Gallery https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/saint-wilgefortis-275088
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864)
The painting by Simeon Solomon is inspired by fragmented poems written by a woman named Sappho in the 4th century BC, in which she pleads that Aphrodite help her in her same-sex relationship. The term ‘lesbian’ derives directly from this poet, as her homeland was the Greek Island of Lesbos. Sappho’s story points to a longer history of same-sex desire. It’s perhaps for this reason that Simeon Solomon, a man who was attracted to men in defiance of the law, painted her. While a depiction of two men kissing would have been completely taboo, this is a passionate depiction of same-sex desire. Solomon’s own sexual preferences eventually lead to his incarceration. When he was released from prison, he was rejected by many of his acquaintances, struggled to find work and soon became homeless; a painful reminder of our repressive past. This painting is a touching image of female love.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/solomon-sappho-and-erinna-in-a-garden-at-mytilene-t03063
The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa (Paul Gaugin 1902)
This painting’s inspiration was drawn from Paul Gauguin’s travels from France to the Polynesian Islands where Gauguin thought the lives and surroundings would be ‘untouched’ by European influence and colonization. This painting depicts a māhū individual from Hiva Oa who identifies with a third gender that can encompass both male and female roles, presentation, and even some spiritual aspects as māhū individuals were revered as healers as this person that Gauguin describes as a ‘sorcerer’. The conversing fox and bird at the bottom right of the image are natural enemies with many differences. This is perhaps Gauguin’s way of portraying male and female genders ‘conversing’ and getting along with one another to symbolize the māhū individual’s gender.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Paul_Gauguin_-_Le_Sorcier_d%27Hiva_Oa.jpg
Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore
Born as Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, this fascinating artist tried a few different names before settling on Claude Cahun. Her stepsister, partner and collaborator Suzanne Malherbe chose a similarly asexual name, Marcel Moore. Together and individually, the pair created a subversive body of work that has often been associated with surrealism. Their art explored new possibilities for gender, sexuality and personal identity. Cahun used female pronouns, hence our reference to her as female, but in her autobiography Aveux non Avenus she clearly states that ‘neuter is the only gender that always suits me’. Perhaps one of the most inspiring things about Cahun was her constant and fearless subversion of ‘normality.’ She rejected all possible categorisation as either a woman, lesbian, artist or writer. Her portrait series are particular reminder of this as she transmutes from one version of herself to another.
https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/7358/claude-cahun-a-very-curious-spirit
Dora Carrington’s most famous female lover was Henrietta Bingham, the sitter for . When they met Carrington wrote to Strachey about a woman with the ‘face of a Giotto Madonna’, who ‘made such wonderful cocktails that I became completely drunk and almost made love to her in public’ (quoted in Emily Bingham, Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham, 2015). Within the context of this painting, Female Figure Lying on her Back 1912 takes on an undertone of lesbian desire, emphasised by the fact that it was still deemed inappropriate by many for women to draw nudes from life. The Slade did not abide by this rule, however women still had to take their classes separately from men. Each of these paintings hold a strong emotional power, hinting at the unconventional loves held by this remarkably unconventional woman.
Francis Bacon and David Hockney
The most fearless depictions of male same-sex desire in the years before 1967 are in the work of Francis Bacon and David Hockney.
Francis Bacon was a figurative painter who was known for his crude, disturbing images of male bodies and were considered extremely upsetting for the time. For decades he explored the theme of wrestlers in different variations which provided camouflage for his sexuality and allowed him to explore his lifestyle through his art. His painting ‘Two Figures’ (1953) is his most famous painting of this theme.
https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/two-figures
David Hockney David Hockney is an artist who integrated queer themes into his work, even though homosexuality was criminalized at the time. Through subtle symbolism and imagery, his paintings provided a sanctuary for the exploration of homosexual desire and love, challenging the oppressive structures that existed during his era. His work is figurative including self-portraiture, depicting his life in Los Angeles where he made his home from 1964 and found a lively queer community. His famous paintings of sun-drenched swimming pools and exposed male figures captured the essence of Californian hedonism, offering viewers an insight into queer culture in 1970s America by celebrating the beauty of diversity. ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ is one of his most famous works, and it captures the essence of his journey in California. The painting immortalizes his relationship with his partner at the time, Peter Schlesinger. By showing Schlesinger emerging from the pool, the painting serves as a metaphor for queer desire, encouraging viewers to delve into the complexities of their connections.
Bacon’s 1955 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts was investigated by the police for obscenity while Hockney once described his early paintings as ‘homosexual propaganda’. They both continued to push the boundaries of what could be depicted in art, breaking new ground.
Greer Lankton (1958 -1996)
Greer Lankton was an American Artist based in East Village in New York City. She created and re-purposed dolls as expressions and interpretations of herself, her imagination, friends, and influential celebrities. Lankton, a transgender woman, was born in 1958 and physically transitioned and was subject of a few news articles in this time before college at the age of 21. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Pratt. Lankton, since left a legacy of her work having been featured in the Whittney Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 1995 before her death in 1996. Her work has since been featured and remembered in the US with the 2014 exhibition, titled: ‘LOVE ME’. The Bust of Candy Darling made in 1989 in New York : Candy Darling, a transgender actress who was featured in several of Andy Warhol’s films was one of Lankton’s icons that she also looked up to as a trans woman.
https://www.villagepreservation.org/2021/12/09/greer-lankton/
Corpus Queer: Bodies of Resistance (1996 – 2011) by Del LaGrace Volcano
Del LaGrace Volcano is a self-described ‘gender variant visual artist’ who has created a powerful body of work exploring themes of gender and identity. Corpus Queer: Bodies of Resistance is a photographic portrait series that show a diverse group of individuals in various stages of transitioning to a different gender. These androgynous figures, who appear both powerful and vulnerable, show the unique and personal identification with gender. Grace declares ‘As a gender variant visual artist I access ‘technologies of gender in order to amplify rather than erase the hermaphroditic traces of my body. I name myself. An intentional mutation and intersex by design. I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhHBVj5ZePU
Cassils’ ‘Becoming and Image’
Cassils is a gender-fluid performance artist who uses their own body to create powerful and challenging performances that expose the limitations of traditional gender roles. In their 2011 performance piece Becoming an Image, Cassils uses their body to explore the boundaries of gender, using bodybuilding and weightlifting to create a hyper-masculine figure that challenges traditional notions of femininity and masculinity.
https://www.cassils.net/cassils-artwork-becoming-an-image
Narcissister’s ‘Organ Player’
The work of performance artist Narcissister often employs the use of masks and costumes to explore the fluidity of gender identity. In their 2018 performance piece ‘Organ Player,’ Narcissister creates a surreal and playful world in which gender identity is malleable and constantly shifting. Through the use of costumes and props, Narcissister invites the audience to participate in the creation of their own gender identity, challenging the idea that gender is a fixed and immutable quality. In both cases, these artists use performance as a means of creating an immersive experience that challenges traditional gender roles and expectations. By highlighting the performativity of gender, they create a space for the reimagining and celebration of gender identity, allowing individuals to explore the complexities and fluidity of their own gender identity.