A quick scan of headlines on any given day reveals a predictable narrative when it comes to the LGBTQ community: From the pope using a homophobic slur to multiple anti-transgender bills in state legislatures, publications tend to center the struggles and hardships that queer and trans people face.
And while this is an unfortunate reality for many, it omits an entire range of realities experienced by a vast and diverse community.
Koa Beck, a queer journalist and the author of “White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind,” believes mainstream coverage of LGBTQ people “has the capacity to message to both straight and queer people that queer lives are depressing, violent, scary and abusive.” And while their lives can be, Beck said, “they are also so very joyous and special.”
When the dominant media stories about queer and transgender people are focused on inequity and despair, a dangerous and discordant precedent is set.
Outside of June, when outlets publish queer content pegged to Pride Month, profiles of thriving LGBTQ people are often less visible than tales of strife. And when the dominant media stories about queer and transgender people are focused on inequity and despair, a dangerous and discordant precedent is set.
“The media sets the tone in terms of how we see the worth of people and what we find acceptable in terms of how we talk about LGBTQ+ life,” said Kate Sosin, a transgender reporter who covers LGBTQ issues for The 19th. “That translates to not necessarily our joy internally, but externally, and how we’re allowed to display that.”
Queer joy is the notion that LGBTQ people can and do experience joy despite the harrowing hostility they continue to face; that their lives are not solely tragic; and that, instead of relentless suffering, community members have found endless ways to thrive in creative resilience for generations.
Without narratives of queer joy, “you can’t cope,” said Sara Angevine, an associate professor of political science at Whittier College. She likened the lack of positive queer coverage to being caught in a thunderstorm: “You’re not gonna feel like going anywhere because you’re drenched,” she said. “You need to have an umbrella to say, ‘I’m singing it in the rain.’ If you’re isolated and the media is your only window into the world, the media should also play a role in saying, ‘There is a house over there that you can get to, and they’re having a party.’”
Homophobia and transphobia have been well documented, but queer joy has a history that has often been overlooked, rewritten or ignored in favor of antiquated ideas about what kind of love or desire is allowed to be expressed in public and by whom.
“So much of a media agenda will be connected to ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’” Angevine said.
Angevine’s research concentrates on global LGBTQ policies and says that for many Americans, themes around sexuality and gender have always been titillating in a way that has, more often than not, skewed toward spectacle. She finds that her students look outside of mainstream media to alternative and social media where collectives such as the Lesbian Herstory Archives use publications and ephemera to highlight the full lives of queer people in the past.
“It’s not the same idea of the history of marginalization and oppression,” Angevine said. “It’s the history of attraction, flirtation, dances — things so critically important for agency, too.”
Pieces like Ariel Levy’s exploration of “Lesbian Nation” for The New Yorker in 2009 and Richard Just’s “Hidden Lives” in 2013, which tracks how gay students at Princeton University found love and friendship in the 1950s, are modern takes on historical accounts of queer life that can offer journalists a lesson in how to present stories that celebrate difference rather than question it. Whether it’s queer people experiencing the joy of stealing a kiss in a photo booth, holding hands at a secret beach or participating in political actions, queer history is prescient today. “Records of these experiences and strategies are deeply valuable,” Beck said, “and have the capacity to inform.”
In an election cycle where anti-LGBTQ initiatives and talking points are at an all-time high, narratives to combat the bleakness are more pertinent than ever. “I want stories where queer people are just doing normal things, which is not that queer people are just like everybody else and are completely homogenized,” Sosin said, “but that their queerness is not the most central thing or is not a point of contention, but just a part of the fabric of the rest of their story.”
Sosin pointed to their profile of Black transgender former Massachusetts state Rep. Althea Garrison as the type of nuanced piece that presents joy without ignoring or centering hardships. Stories like these aren’t just critical for visibility and representation, but follow journalistic standards of news that don’t reduce people to tragic stereotypes. Stories of success — like the boom of support around women’s sports and lesbian-owned spaces, songs from openly gay musicians being added to the National Recording Registry and trans people finding community in even the most conservative of red states — mark important moments in a wider movement toward integration.
Angevine believes readers are interested in more than just stories of marginalization, harm and violence and sees how her students connect with “the ways people resist, cope and overcome obstacles.” Stories that highlight chosen family units, queer movements like the Radical Faeries and allyship in unexpected places are just a few topics underexplored by the media.
“A lot of joy is about, in my mind, creating new narratives, and that’s interesting,” Angevine said. “Regardless of your status, it’s how you’re bending and breaking and playing with things to imagine new worlds.”
Substantial cuts have been made to underresourced and understaffed newsrooms, which ultimately affects who and what gets published. With that, Sosin said, “comes a lack of time and a lack of imagination, and then an inability to slow down enough to stop and take stock of what is really happening.”
This undeniably affects how the LGBTQ community, much less queer joy, is covered. “I think the mainstream media does not even have a language for queer joy,” Sosin said. “I think that that’s not even on their register.”
Being connected to the community on a local and national level makes finding these stories easier. Becoming a trusted reporter whose work reflects respect for LGBTQ people can bring tips to a reporter’s inbox, including from organizations like Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAAD, which have a long history of advocating for the community and resources to connect reporters with the right experts and sources. Notably, this all takes time, resources and trust on the part of news outlets to develop one’s craft and reputation.
And it’s not just about how many LGBTQ reporters are in a newsroom; it’s about the initiative taken by people Angevine calls “critical actors,” no matter their personal identities, to hold basic journalistic standards — including telling a good story that is of interest to readers, queer and straight.
Beck said that “a landscape of scarcity and a lack of queer literacy from the top” still prevents stories of queer joy from being a priority, but that “agency on behalf of individual reporters and editors cannot compensate for a diminishing industry — nor should they be asked to.” That’s where the “critical actors” come into play, where people both within and outside of the LGBTQ community must recognize the value of documenting and reporting on queer joy, in order to push more stories of it into the mainstream media.
“Your goal is not necessarily to only be with what was,” Angevine said, “but to lead with something better and new.”