It might seem kind of strange that Japan, a country not especially known for its society’s particularly progressive attitudes towards LGBT+ people for the most part, plays host to arguably the most prolific community of LGBT-friendly creators in the world - and some of the best LGBT-friendly creative works of all time. And that’s important, but there are better ways the same effect can be achieved than we’ve seen in many modern creative works - particularly from western creators. To some of those people, having a high profile character that is unashamedly LGBT+ makes them feel heard, represented and appreciated. There’s an argument to be made in favour of lifting up LGBT+ voices, of course, in that many people who fall into these categories are not comfortable with “outing” themselves to certain parts of their family and friendship groups. And the more we use “this character is gay” as a marketing bullet-point - explicitly or otherwise - the more it seems like tokenism rather than a genuine desire to represent the full spectrum of human existence. In many ways, we can say that the bigger a deal we make of a character being LGBT+ - anything seen to be outside of that “norm” - the further away we get from actually normalising the existence of LGBT+ people in today’s society. But in some ways, that’s part of the problem, really why should it be a “spoiler” that a character is LGBT+? This perspective effectively asserts that being straight is “normal” and that anything outside that is somehow “unusual” or “other”.
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