Misogyny in Queer Media

Queer media has been a defining factor in our society for years. Popular movies and series such as “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), “Heartstopper” (2022), and “But I’m a Cheerleader” (1999), have all been significant milestones in normalizing queerness and spreading awareness of this lifestyle. This kind of media did not only begin in recent years, but an example of this being also the iconic classic literature book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” having been published in around 1890. This book was merely implied to have queer themes, since back in the time where it was released being homosexual, or transgender was illegal, however this book still made its way into being one of the most well-known classic literature books in modern day.  

However, even though queer media is becoming more popular nowadays, looking back at the examples I gave, you can see a clear pattern within them; most of these feature mostly queer men. The only example which was featuring women as the main protagonists in it being “But I’m a Cheerleader”. Among popular and classic media in the queer community it is clear to see that mostly gay men take the center stage, outshining representation for most of the rest of the community. One of the reasons for this may be embedded misogyny in our society.  

Throughout your life you will encounter misogyny or sexism, whether you are affected by it or simply a bystander. Thanks to misogyny being a present feature in our lives, we can also find ourselves falling a victim to accidental misogyny, casual misogyny, or even internalized misogyny.  All of these are features of being accidentally, or unconsciously misogynist. This is unfortunately, extremely common and normalized; an example may be subconsciously disliking a female character for the same traits which a male character has, the only difference being their gender.  

You can see this kind of thinking very commonly in fandoms. Fandoms are communities where people who are fans of a piece of media, form a community around said media. In said fandoms of queer media, it is most common to find people talking about the queer men present in whatever media they’re consuming, most of the time it’s common to find most fans obsessing over a ship (abbreviated slang term for relationships, usually romantic, within fandoms) between two men, which most of the time is not canon (established within the media). Most of the time there is no issue when people do this, since it is completely harmless. However, it is different when most people begin to hate a female character because she supposedly “gets in the way” of their ‘ship’. Most of the time, this character did nothing but interact with one of the two men, however, due to subtle misogyny engraved in our mindsets, most fans of this ship use this opportunity to hate this character. A popular example of this can be seen with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson, from the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. These two men are a very popular ship within their fandom, however, most of this fandom hates Mary Morstan. Mary is Watson’s wife in canon; however, most people disregard that completely and hate her because she gets in the way of a non-canonical ship. I could name multiple other examples off the top of my head, however, there is another issue present in these fandoms unfortunately. 

A less noticeable form we can see engraved misogyny in fandoms is when a piece of media has a main, canon relationship between two women- or a queer woman as a main character, and the fandom completely ignores it and flocks towards the most of the time non-canon male ship. There is no issue with preferences within media, however, most of the time these same people ignore the existence of the female characters or hate them, which simply becomes another issue which is probably caused by internalized misogyny. This doesn’t occur as much as my last point; however, this is due to the lack of female main characters in most media, especially queer ones. This could be used as another example of misogyny present in media. Since this is the issue, the example for the previous statement is from a lesser-known piece of media called “Alien Stage”. Alien Stage is an animated series depicting multiple relationships with different natures between the characters. Heavy and fleshed out themes are present, especially in said relationships. The main relationship of this series is between two girls, one of which being the main character. However, within the fandom, the most popular ship is one between two men, most people not paying any mind to the main relationship in the series. This is not an issue in itself, however, the fandom heavily mischaracterizes their relationship from the original, so what it seems like is that the fandom simply likes it because it’s between two men, and not for the actual relationship between them. That is just a brief overview and example of the situation in fandoms like these. 

Overall, subtle misogyny is present in media and fandoms and has become normalized to a point where we don’t notice it most of the time. It has also reached a point where we subconsciously participate in it. 

Bibliography:

“Fandom.” Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/English/fandom. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.