Our new study reveals trends in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary representation on Australian scripted television in the 2000s and 2010s. The new study, which I co-authored with Dr Whitney Monaghan, found growing trends in representing multiple queer characters in one series, and emerging trends of including queer community contexts, and even examples of queer story worlds.
We found 72 series with representations of gender and sexually diverse characters between 2000–2019. There were 44 with gay men, three with bisexual men, 32 with lesbians, and 15 with bisexual women. Appearances of out transgender and nonbinary characters were mostly in the 2010s (with one exception), with eight transgender women (one in the 2000s and seven in the 2010s), three transgender men, and one nonbinary person.
The study is open access and freely available to read in full: ‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and nonbinary representation on Australian scripted television in the 2000s and 2010s‘ in the journal Media International Australia.
If you would like to discuss further you can contact me through my university email.