Portrayals of gay people of any age have been rare and often negative ( Gross, 1991, 1996 Moritz, 1994), and portrayals of young nonheterosexuals are even less common ( Kielwasser & Wolf, 1992). This exclusion has been posited to contribute to keeping sexual minorities invisible and without power, a process which Gross refers to as “symbolic annihilation” ( Gross, 1991 Gerbner & Gross, 1976). Yet, sexual minorities are often ignored by the mainstream media and treated as if they do not exist. Most lesbians and gay men grow up in a straight community with few gay role models thus, they are particularly vulnerable to the portrayals of gay people in the mass media ( Fejes & Petrich, 1993 Ryan & Futterman, 1998). In fact, as many as one in five teens reports that “entertainment” is their most important source of sexual information (Gibbs, 1993 as cited in Brown & Steele, 1995).Īlthough television has been criticized for not providing good role models for adolescents-for example, abstinence among teens is rarely portrayed in a positive light ( Committee on Communications, 1995)-the lack of positive role models on television is more extreme for gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth ( Kielwasser & Wolf, 1992). Reliance on television shows for sexual scripts and television characters as models for behavior may be particularly strong among youth, who may not have much first-hand experience with sexuality, yet are starting to solidify their sexual identities and become interested in sexual relationships ( Chapin, 2000). A closely related idea is that the media-by depicting sexual scenarios that people might not be able to see anywhere else-provide scripts for enacting various sexual behaviors ( Gagnon & Simon, 1973) such as people having sex with a new partner.
Although these numbers represent an increase compared with the past, they are still quite small compared with the overall number of characters appearing on television shows broadcast each season.Īccording to social cognitive theory ( Bandura, 2001), one important way in which television influences viewers is by providing vicarious experiences on which to model beliefs, attitudes, and behavior when real-life experiences are more limited. In recent years, the number of shows with leading or recurring gay characters has varied from 16 in the 1997-1998 season to 29 in the 2000-2001 season (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, n.d.). The findings from this study provide empirical data about the prevalence of nonheterosexual sexual content across a broad range of television programming, as well as the frequency of such sexual content when it is presented.īefore 1970, almost no gay characters could be found on television, and their relative absence from the screen continued until the 1990s ( Wyatt, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to present quantitative data on sexual behavior and sexual talk related to nonheterosexuals across the 03 television seasons. Currently, most of what has been published about television and its portrayals of sexual minority themes and characters comes from qualitative writings. Little quantitative research has been conducted to document gay issues and characters on television. Despite the lifting of some longstanding taboos over the last several decades, television programming has been called “compulsory heterosexual” ( Wolf & Kielwasser, 1991), and depictions of the sexual issues associated with nonheterosexuals 1 may remain relatively rare ( Brown, 2002). One theme that has been especially ignored is the portrayal of sexual issues related to gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals. At its inception, television rarely presented sexual themes, and throughout the early decades of television, topics such as pregnancy, contraception, and other aspects of characters' sexuality were considered too sensitive to be portrayed or discussed in television shows.
Sexual content of programming on American television has changed substantially since the medium was first invented more than 50 years ago.