TV Tuesday: Streaming Is The New Queer (Inclusive Media)

With series like Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black, Amazon’s Transparent, and Hulu’s Difficult People, streaming series have become a noted haven for LGBTQ+ audiences yearning for increased visibility in television series.

Although the amount of original shows produced by streaming companies is growing each year, there are still far more original broadcast series currently on the air. Check out the infographic below to see how streaming series are doing when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation, and how broadcast series compare.

The amount of LGBTQ+ representation present in a relatively small number of streaming series is pretty impressive (and very much appreciated). Even though there's only two more leading LGBTQ+ characters across streaming series than featured in broadcast series, there are far more broadcast series than there are streaming series. I think it's safe to say that broadcast television really needs to step its game up.

I'm mostly impressed by the transgender representation in streaming series. Transgender people are extremely vulnerable in our society today, with 41% of transgender people reporting having attempted suicide at least once.

Providing representation of transgender characters can help educate people on what being transgender means and hopefully accelerate acceptance of the community. That's why I was so glad to see that 11% of the LGBTQ+ leading characters in streaming series identify as transgender.

As great as some of these stats are, I'm hoping that LGBTQ+ representation continues to increase and improve each year to the point where it would seems silly to write a blog post highlighting the representation.