Despite attempts to implement more comprehensive rating systems for streaming content, many television shows for young children still feature a significant amount of LGBTQ+ themes.
A report from the activist organization Concerned Women for America (CWA) indicated that 41% of Netflix’s G-rated children’s programming includes openly gay content, such as discussions around transgender issues.
The findings revealed that 21% of TV-Y categorized shows, which target children up to age 7, contain LGBTQ+ themes. This percentage rises considerably for TV-Y7 programming aimed at those aged 7 and older, reaching 41%. Overall, across various children’s categories like TV-G, TV-Y, and TV-Y7, 33% of the shows include such content.
CWA categorized the extremity of the content as ranging from “meta” to “implicit,” “queer-coded,” and then “explicit,” discovering that 24% of TV-Y7 rated shows presented explicit gay sexual content, including overt discussions of homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexual activities.
The organization noted that reboots of classic shows have increased the presence of LGBTQ+ characters, even if the originals did not feature them.
“It’s interesting to see that ‘reboots’ of earlier series and later seasons of long-running shows often introduce LGBTQ characters who were not in the original iterations, as seen in titles like The Magic School Bus, Power Rangers, The Baby-Sitters Club, She-Ra, and The Fairly OddParents,” stated the CWA report.
The CWA also pointed out that over the last five years, there has been a noticeable increase in LGBTQ representation in media. They referenced Ellen DeGeneres’ character Ellen Morgan as the first openly gay lead on a network sitcom in 1997, highlighting how something that was once groundbreaking has since become a norm. GLAAD has pushed for greater representation in media for many years, tracking its progress with their annual “We Are on TV” report, which noted a 4% rise in LGBTQ representation in the past year.
The report contends that the growing amount of LGBTQ content in children’s programming, coupled with the strong defenses from creators of such content, suggests that “content creators perceive children’s programming as a medium for cultural transformation rather than merely mirroring existing societal norms.”
