While a gay man who appeared heterosexual could pass as straight and had the luxury of not being too “visible”, this was not true of many other gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and those who for any number of reasons didn’t fit the mold of the more socially acceptable gays. Another concern was with the focus of the early gay liberation movement on assimilation, which sought kinship with the heterosexual mainstream on the basis of similarities. Their complaints were that the movement had, for the past twenty years focused exclusively on the concerns of gays who were primarily male, decidedly white, and overwhelmingly middle class. A major concern was voiced first by lesbians and then by gays and lesbians of colour, people with HIV/AIDS, and people of other sexual minorities. Over time, many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) and other sexual minorities people found earlier models of gay activism too narrow in focus. This model also assumed a certain amount of uniformity within the gay and lesbian community: that members shared similar characteristics relating to experiences, points of view, behaviour, desires, etc. This criticism was particularly concerned with negative portrayals of gays and lesbians as sissies, drag queens, butch lesbians, and other groups that didn’t fit into mainstream gender categories. As such, minority model criticism was particularly preoccupied not just with visibility in media, but with having the ‘right’ kind of visibility. Under this model gays and lesbians were seen as being subordinate to the heterosexual majority, with equality and acceptance hinging on their ability to show that they were “just like everyone else”. This type of criticism has its roots in the gay liberationist movements from the 1960s through the 1980s and is heavily influenced by the types of issues gays and lesbians were concerned with at the time. The first form of queer media criticism was articulated under a minority model of identity politics.
To begin, though, it is worthwhile to examine the trajectory of queer media criticism over the past thirty years. The following sections will examine how media produces and legitimizes or delegitimizes queer sexualities, as well as how queer media differs from its heterosexual counterpart. Queer people see their reflections on screen in a largely positive light: stable, employed, charming, attractive, well-liked, and successful. No longer relegated to the realms of innuendo and secrecy, we now see lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people represented on television and in mainstream film. How things have changed in thirty years: more than ever before, queer people have a media presence.