Villainization, Censorship, and Representation of the LGBTQ+ Community Over the Years

A common way for working around restrictions is known as queer coding. Queer coding isn’t inherently negative or positive, it’s simply “a term used to say that characters were given traits/behaviors to suggest they are not heterosexual/cisgender, without the character being outright confirmed to have a queer identity.”1 It’s common for characters to be queer coded because their identities weren’t/aren’t accepted. On the other hand, queer baiting is a term that was created by academic queer theorists in the 1990s.2 It’s the practice of trying to draw in a queer audience by hinting at or “baiting” a queer relationship or otherwise LGBTQ+ character, then never actually depicting it, turning it into a joke, or eventually making it obvious that the character is, in fact, not queer. Many see this as taking advantage of the queer audience they are trying to bring in, and many queer people feel a sense of betrayal when a cursory heterosexual love interest appears or there’s a joke about how the baiting relationship or character in question was never and could never be canon. Regardless of opinions on either of these occurrences, they have often been used to avoid censorship. Outright LGBTQ+ characters used to be entirely unacceptable in children's entertainment. The 1950s television code cited a “responsibility towards children,” “decency and decorum,” as well as saying “sex crimes and abnormalities are generally unacceptable as program material.”3

Regardless of the difficulties, many people have worked hard over the years to make children’s cartoons more inclusive. Some of the most popular cartoons over the last few years have had implicit or explicit queerness, and even decades ago some of the most popular cartoons outside of the US included queer characters. The 90s anime Sailor Moon featured lesbian, gay, and nonbinary characters,4 but these characters were completely erased in the American dub.5 The lesbian couple Michelle and Amara were even turned into cousins in this version to excuse how close they were. However, a few decades past this censorship, creators like Rebecca Sugar, Dana Terrace, Alex Hirsh, and Noelle Stevenson have been working on cartoons for popular networks like Netflix, Cartoon Network, and Disney. She-ra: Princess of Power creator Noelle Stevenson has even said that every single character in the show is LGBTQ+, meaning even the characters in heterosexual relationships (which are the minority in this case) are confirmed to be bi/pan, trans, or asexual.6 In addition, the nonbinary bisexual Rebecca Sugar, cocreator of Adventure Time and creator of Steven Universe, was a trailblazer of representation. The first series featured a sapphic couple that was only confirmed in the last episode but have been the main characters of recent miniseries, and the second show featured a cast of almost entirely nonbinary characters, as well as the first gay wedding to be animated in a kids show. 

The artists previously mentioned and more have opened the door for future representation and for kids of today to feel more accepted and normal. As Rebecca Sugar says, “If you can only exist as a villain or a joke, I mean, that’s a really heavy thing to be saturated with,” and it’s clear they have dedicated themselves to making sure children's media of today doesn’t fall victim to the same patterns of villainizing and erasing queerness. Queerness has existed forever, and in turn it has been featured in children's cartoons for a long time too, but the positivity of most modern representation is a new phenomenon. 

References: 

1. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Queer-coding

2. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Queerbaiting

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXeG-LGx25Y 

4. https://www.glaad.org/blog/hulu-streams-sailor-moon-previously-censored-lgbt-content 

5. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/sailor-moons-erasure-lgbtq-characters 

6. https://www.insider.com/lgbtq-cartoon-characters-kids-database-2021-06?page=explore-database