Heterosexism & The UK Media Historically

In an essay titled “Sexual Stereotyping In The Media,” which appeared in the 1986 book Bending Reality: The State Of The Media, Anna Durell and Andrew Lumsden offered the following criticism of the UK Big Media’s historic heterosexism:

“The `deluded children’ in charge of the bulk of the UK’s media know so little of the culture, history, or present lives of gay people (or if they do know, being lesbian or gay themselves, learn on the way up the career ladder to keep their mouths shut) that their `homosexuality’ (topic on an agenda) is rarely recognizable to me as my `homosexuality’ (experience).

“…Some steps can be taken to tease out what is exceptional about the gay condition in the media. We have been put to a very particular servitude, `we’ lesbian and gay people, not lesbian and gay media employees, though the bulk of the latter are forcibly enslaved to passing as straight. We aren’t regarded as existing in our own right. If we were, there would be `out’ reviewers, critics, interviewers and `name’ reporters scattered across quality and popular media alike in rough proportion to the numbers of us in media employment. We are subject matter, but are not, with the very rarest exceptions, permitted to be principals, writing or broadcasting in our real sexual persona. Journalistic objectivity is defined as the declared or taken-as read heterosexual experience…”

(Downtown 3/17/93)

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