Tag: clexakru

Six months ago, our journey began with a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, which was barely expected to reach one or two thousand dollars.

After the ignition of our movement, sparked by the ferocious support of individuals from a diverse array of fandoms, and using various projects and initiatives that would raise funds while providing something to comfort those who were hurt deeply by the media… we have hit a new milestone which we should all be proud of.

So far we have raised over 18k with the Clexa Books project for a total of 
$157,814 have been donated to the Trevor Project to help LGBTQIA youth. With September being Suicide Prevention month, these funds are going to where they will matter the most, for whom they will matter the most.

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The journey, however, is far from over and in many ways has only just begun. The team behind LGBTfans has been working day and night on a flurry of other projects, both in view of our continued desire to support young LGBTQIA community members via Trevor, as well as our aim to foster long-term change in how LGBTQIA characters and storylines are portrayed and written on film and television in particular.

In fact, one of these projects is coming to fruition very soon, and if you’re new, we’d invite you to hop on for the ride and continue this amazing journey alongside us. If you’ve been here from the beginning, stick with us. We’re not done yet!

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A couple of weeks ago, we made a post about representation across all network TV.  In case you wanted to look at specific networks, we’re posting them individually. The CW is up next.

The now infamous CW Network had 11 Lesbian and Bisexual women of which 8 were Main or recurring roles. For some perspective the network featured 298 Main and Recurring characters across 14 primetime scripted shows, which amounts to being 2.68% of Main/Recurring characters being Lesbian or Bisexual. Over the course of the 2015-2016 television season, 5 were killed off giving the Network a 45% death rate. Juxtaposed with Straight characters, they constituted 10.5% of all deaths. 

To qualify for the analysis the character had to appear in more than 1 episode, aired between June 1st 2015 and May 31st 2016. 

If you want to delve deeper into the CW’s record, check out The CW Breakdown. While not the deadliest Network, their record is abysmal no less and characters lost on the CW arguably had some of the heaviest impact. Given that their target demographics are overwhelmingly teenagers and young adults, some of the most vulnerable viewers out there, representation is an even more pressing matter here.

*We did our best to make sure all the information is accurate – if you see anything that should be changed, please let us know.  We do not watch every episode of every show so we may not have picked up on something.

The new 2016-2017 television season started off with the same old trope. A month ago, Orange is the New Black killed off Poussey Washington. Two weeks ago, Bea Smith was killed off on Wentworth and last week, Pretty Little Liars killed off a queer woman again.  All are shows that featured other queer women. Yet that representation does not negate these shows adding to the ever increasing number of dead lesbian or bisexual characters in stark contrast to the always constant number of happy endings, and in Poussey’s case killing off one of the few queer women of color on screen.

A trope is by definition, a pattern in storytelling. Lesbian and bisexual women are killed off at alarming rates, usually soon after finding happiness. TV shows don’t exist in a vacuum and each of these shows add to the trope and contribute to the overall TV landscape in the same way.

Whenever a lesbian or bisexual character is killed off, the same arguments come up over and over again when discussing the death in the context of Bury your Gays trope. We examine these arguments and offer rebuttals over here.