Queer rep vs hetero rep

Amidst the hype, glory and supposed progressive nature that is modern day television, there is a stark and blaringly obvious contrast that the majority of the American audience is blind to: the difference between heterosexual and queer representation. Most people don't see the cruel marketing techniques meant to stall and confuse, don't find anything wrong with the harsh stereotypes and fetishization that the queer community is afflicted with, don't notice how the scales are not only unbalanced, but decidedly weighted. While the representation of the queer community in modern media has come far from what it was 50 years ago, the representation today is inaccurate and minimal at best, while heterosexual representation is variegated, plentiful and ubiquitous.
How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, Parks and Recreation, Supernatural. All of these shows are or were well-loved, long-running and relatively socially progressive, but all of them share one common inequality: the almost total vacancy of any queer characters, and certainly none that could be qualified as a main character. Scrubs, a sitcom that was cancelled in 2010 after 9 seasons, had a diverse cast with strong female characters and lovely friendships, but was utterly devoid of any queer characters. All of the main characters on the show and even all of the side cast were decidedly heterosexual, with the exception of the drawn out joke that the main character, JD, and his best friend, Turk, were in a friendship that maybe blurred the boundaries of platonic. It was never more than a joke, however, and Turk's relationship with Carla, a fiery and intelligent Hispanic nurse, was the one that morphed into marriage and a family.
There are some shows that do include a queer side plot or a queer relationship as a permanent fixture in their show, like the well-known still running sitcom Modern Family. While the show is a remarkably accurate depiction of American life for all types of families, the gay family that is featured on the show falls into a very stereotyped category of gay men: sassy, effeminate and dramatic. While they're both lovely characters and bode well as far as queer representation goes, they only represent a small fraction of the queer community and people still call that good enough. The show also features a heterosexual white family along with an interracial heterosexual family, each of these characters drawn out, unique and diverse.
Yes, it is an indisputable fact: heterosexual representation far outweighs queer representation in modern media.
So how do people not notice this, not recognize that there is a huge part of the world they refuse to acknowledge? The answer lies in marketing techniques, distractions, vague mentions, and the controversial topic of queerbaiting. Anyone who knows anything about fan culture knows the phenomena knows as "slash shipping". A "slash ship" refers to a fan pairing (or even canon pairing) of two male characters in a relationship of romantic or sexual nature. While this [practice] is dismissed and even admonished by many, the purpose behind it is to combat the oppressive nature, lack of representation and heavy baiting that is seen by the queer community on virtually every program on television.
Queerbaiting is usually as close to representation that the queer community has, and is why fan culture (which includes many members that identify as LGBTQIA) feeds off of it so much. It seems so trite, unimportant even, but compared to the explicitly stated and frequently asserted heterosexual couples on the same shows, it's an unfairness that needs to be addressed. Queerbaiting is a very real marketing technique used by networks and show creators to maximize profit, ratings and viewings without actually promising any real representation. A much-cited example of queerbaiting is the horror/comedy/cult show Supernatural. The canon tension and romantic moments between Dean Winchester and Castiel is not there to provide jokes, not there to draw out a love story, but there to draw in a queer audience without giving them complete representation. The queer audience members see the gay themes in the show, the innuendo and eye contact, because it's a part of their everyday lives and therefore watch the show for relatability. The heterosexual audience is blind to this, because they have no experience in queer romances and themes in television. The show baits the couple for as much ratings as possible, and the queer viewers are put down as they are ridiculed for "making everything gay". Heterosexual pairings are accepted in the mainstream, presented explicitly and any slow-burn romance is accepted as sexual and romantic tension between characters rather than the delusional wonderings of a fangirl.
Another big difference between heterosexual and queer representation is the way they're presented. Television programs don't seem to recognize the fluidity of sexuality, for instance, presenting all people as either gay, lesbian, or straight. Anything else is a passing mention, or a joke, lending the way for harmful erasure of anything other than monosexuality, such as bisexuality, pansexuality or asexuality. In the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Lily Aldrin, while married with two children by the end of the show, was canonically supposedly curious about exploring sexuality due to her attraction to her friend Robin Scherbatsky.
"Robin Scherbatsky is many things," she says in the episode entitled Robin 101, "Friend. Confidant. Occasional guest star in some confusing dreams that reminds me that a woman's sexuality is a moving target." Here again is the mention of a fluid sexuality as nothing more than a running joke, much like Turk and JD's relationship in Scrubs. This same problem effects the trans community as well, as most of supposed trans characters in sitcoms and other shows are presented as a joke or abnormal, when in fact, being trans is anything but.
Lily and Robin's relationship in HIMYM presents us with another problem that is not nearly made out to be as big a deal as it is: queer fetishization and, more specifically, lesbian fetishization. Queer fetishization is the sexualizing and objectification of queer people simply because of their sexuality. Their identification is demeaned until it becomes nothing more than a fetish for someone else, used for nothing more than perverse sexual pleasure, hence the term "fetishization".It is most commonly applied to the lesbian community, as it is a commonly accepted among heterosexual men and backed up by modern media that "girl on girl action" is "hot". The problem is that most people don't even recognize it as a problem. When lesbian characters appear on a show, most of the time they are the butt of a sex joke or reacted to inappropriately, and nothing is done to discourage this.
Perhaps the most damaging difference between heterosexual representation and queer representation is the elephant in the room, avoided and awkward: the issue of heteronormativity.
 "Not everything has to be gay."
This response is very familiar to people who actively campaign for more queer representation, or simply people who would very much like to see their "slash ships" canonized. No one questions the plethora of heterosexual characters that can be seen everywhere on every show, they ridicule those who say back "not everything has to be straight."
But the bigger question, the question that matters more than the why, is the one that remains: so what? Why does representation matter? Representation of minorities, whether it be ethnic, religious or queer minorities, is so important. 





Monosexuality: the attraction to one gender, whether it be the opposite or same gender as oneself.