It's been an incredible decade for
queer and trans representation and
creation.
In TV and film, in music and
books and on the internet and social
media, it felt like everyone
in our communities was seizing
opportunities to shine and be more
visible than ever.
I'm Rachel Giese.
I'm the editorial director at
Xtra, and I'm talking about
the most significant moments in
popular culture for LGBTQ2
people in the last decade.
Pop music got super queer in the
2010s.
More rights and visibility for
LGBTQ2S people
and generational shifts and social
acceptance, plus an upheaval
in how music is made and shared—
this was the decade when musicians
flung open the closet door.
There was Laura Jane Grace from
Against Me and Anohni from Antony
and the Johnsons—they both came out
as trans.
Frank Ocean posted on Tumblr about
falling in love with a man.
Janelle Monet and Brendan Urie of
Panic at the Disco both came out as
pansexual.
And so many queer artists
went mainstream: Tegan and Sara,
St. Vincent,
Troye Sivan, Sam Smith,
Perfume Genius, Hayley Kiyoko,
King Princess and Big Freedia.
The 2010s were also the decade
of queer rights anthems by straight
allies. But one of the biggest
music stories in 2019, if
not the decade, was the incredible
rise of Old Town Road by Lil
Nas X—a gay Black
teenager in Georgia who made it
by fusing trap and country and
a $30 beat he downloaded.
It became the longest-reigning
Number 1 hit in the history of the
Billboard Hot 100, and spawned memes
and remixes and all kinds of
thinkpieces about race and country
music and who gets to be seen as a
country artist.
And it made Lil Nas X a star
and a fashion icon.
2010s were the decade of trans
empowerment and representation.
We saw a flourishing of trans
literature and memoir this
decade—stories by and about
trans and non-binary lives
by writers like Kai Cheng Thom and
Casey Plett and journalist and
activist Janet Mock.
And on TV, Laverne Cox
made history as the first openly
trans person nominated for an Emmy
for her role on Orange is the New
Black.
She became an icon in the 2010s,
gracing the cover of a 2014
issue of Time magazine for a
story entitled "The Transgender
Tipping Point." Now, the series
Transparent came out that year
featuring Jeffrey Tambor as Maura,
a trans woman who came out later
in life.
The show had trans folks in the cast
and in the writers' room and
directing.
But what was groundbreaking
when the show started felt
out of date by the time it wrapped
five years later.
First, Tambor
had been accused of sexual
harassment by trans women on
the set.
But it was also finally understood
that trans characters needed to be
played by trans people and more
trans creators needed to be behind
the camera.
By the end of the decade, we started
to see that happening in shows like
Pose and Tales of the City
and The L Word reboot.
The tipping point had finally
tipped.
A queer sensibility took over
Saturday Night Live.
Now, despite all the great talent on
Saturday Night Live, the show's
often had a kind of fratty, cheap
humour vibe.
It's never been as diverse as it
could be, nor as edgy
as it could be.
But a much cooler queerer
tone took over this past decade.
Much of the credit for that goes to
Kate McKinnon. She joined in 2012
as the show's first out lesbian.
Her impressions are uncanny and
her lesbian characters are flawless.
Kristen Stewart also used her
opening monologue on SNL in 2017
to confirm that she is "so
gay, dude." And
then there's writer and standup
comic Julio Torres, who has been
responsible for some of the show's
gayest sketches—like Wells for Boys,
a tribute to sensitive boys who
long to be understood.
His work is gorgeous and weird
and off-kilter—not just gay,
but queer in all senses
of the word.
Bowen Yang also joined the cast
this decade.
He's openly gay and the show's first
Asian cast member.
He and Torres wrote a sketch where
Harry Styles plays—wait
for it—a thirsty gay social
media manager who talks about his
post-threesome self-loathing on the
Sara Lee bread Instagram feed.
It was such a specific
slice of gay life—I mean, do
straight people even know a fashion
twink is? It felt like a little
insider gift to queer viewers.
We finally, finally
got mainstream stories with happy
endings.
For the longest time, movies and TV
shows with queer and trans
characters rendered our lives as
tragedy. I mean, think Philadelphia
or Brokeback Mountain: gay,
sad and dead.
Or consider all the beloved gay
TV characters, particularly queer
women, who were needlessly killed
off.
It's such a common trope that it
even has a name: bury your
gays.
Well, the 2010s did give us
a few more happy endings.
Moonlight told the story of a young
gay Black man who comes to terms
with his sexuality and in the end
wins over his childhood friend and
crush.
Lena Waithe gets the girl and her
family's love and acceptance in her
Emmy-winning Thanksgiving episode of
the series Master of None.
Lesbian love and lust also triumph
in The Kids Are All Right and Carol.
And young adults got Love, Simon, in
which a kid is outed to his entire
high school only to find the guy of
his dreams—and in true rom-com
fashion, they have a kiss at the top
of a ferris wheel.
Drag sashayed into the mainstream.
Who knew that drag—that gay
bar entertainment standard—would
take over the world in
the 2010s?
What was a subversive, sometimes
corny, exclusively gay art form
is now a global industry.
There are drag brunches,
conventions, cruises, touring
shows and drag queen story
hours for kids.
Drag performers are getting
lucrative sponsorships and hundreds
of thousands of followers on
YouTube.
You can credit—or blame—RuPaul
Charles.
The supermodel, singer and drag
performer transformed his niche
TV show RuPaul's Drag Race
into a cultural juggernaut.
It's been exported to more than 70
countries and spawned spinoffs in
Thailand, the UK and soon
in Canada.
Now, whether all this attention on
drag is a blessing or a curse, is up
for you to decide.
Some say drag success has
commercialized it and taken away
its bite. I mean, witness the
legions of middle-aged, straight
women screaming, "Yaaaaas queen!"
But having the world embrace a
uniquely queer tradition with such
love and reverence, well,
that calls for a con-drag-ulations.
Our sex symbols became
everyone's sex symbols.
Now, not that long ago,
a particular kind of queer
woman—short-haired, tomboyish, nice
biceps, strong hands, cocky
smile—had a niche appeal.
Those butch and gender-nonconforming
women made many, many, many dykes
melt, but they didn't get much
mainstream attention.
With rare exceptions, lesbian
celebrities had to be some degree of
femme to be seen as attractive.
Well, enter Ruby Rose and Megan
Rapinoe.
Rose, who identifies as
gender-fluid, had a breakout role on
Orange is the New Black and straight
women lost their
minds.
Memes about going gay for Ruby
flooded the internet, and the
reaction to openly gay U.S.
women's soccer champ Megan Rapinoe
was just as frantic.
She had an obvious appeal to queer
women. I mean, there was this
and this and this.
Even the unflappable Rachel Maddow
became tongue-tied at the sight of
Rapinoe in a pinstriped suit.
But the World Cup win and Rapinoe's
outspoken confidence made her one of
the most famous women and athletes
in America.
And soon straight women everywhere
lost it again,
swooning on Twitter, joking about
leaving their husbands for Rapinoe,
oversharing that they'd go gay for
her. Those girl crushes are cute—to
a point.
OK. It feels a little like Katy
Perry confessing that she kissed a
girl and liked it.
But it is great that the rest of
the world has finally woken up to
the charms of the non-femme
queer woman, because maybe
we'll see more celebration of women
who look like this and this.
And by the way, straight women: It's
not a girl crush.
It's just a crush.
What a decade for representation
and creation.
We really broke through in the
2010s, which is great.
But even if we hadn't, our lives and
stories are beautiful, invaluable
no matter what.
Thanks for watching for more great
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