A refresher thread on all of the bad things that supergirl is doing to lgbt characters & fans

All of this is why the petition exists, make sure you’ve signed
http://chng.it/h56Y65bJ 

Before we start TW:
Homophobia
Transphobia
Burry your gays

Starting with the most recent issue which is the use of lgbt characters as tokenism

Kelly & Nia are the two affected the most by this with their screen time reduced to just enough for the show to still be praised for their existence

article on tokenism: https://link.medium.com/WSI8jxUxt5 

Erasure:
This is an issue we bring up in the petition but one that we can go further into

Supergirl has erased multiple lgbt characters
Most recently Ayla but it’s biggest price of erasure is actually Brainy who is supposed to be bi but has never been shown as bi on supergirl

Brainy’s treatment is noteworthy because he’s such a big part of the show & for some other reasons like

Jesse being openly supportive of it
& the female Brainy being shown as queer

Why is fem Brainy important for our Brainy? Because while she’s great much like if we got an alternate version of Kara who was lgbt it would still be a cop out for writers confirming our kara as queer

A queer Brainy is great but it is also a way around addressing main Brainy

Another victim of erasure would be Maxima

While this is more controversial because maxima used to be seen as just obsessed with marrying Superman right before supergirl s1 began airing Maxima had a coming out arc in supergirl comics

This couldn’t be expected to happen on the show but one would hope that supergirl would be willing to at the very least make sure they didn’t push maxima as focused on men

In her maybe minute long appearance though she was shown with her only trait being “wants to bang Superman”

Personally when it comes to any issue like this I have a 3 strike rule, every show makes mistakes & comic shows have to deal with a lot of continuity switches but as you can see supergirl used up all 3 strikes on erasure

Now the next subject Bury Your Gays:

Both supergirl & the flash seem to love this trope

I bring up the flash because our first 2 victims of this come from both the supergirl & flash writers

Only 1 is shown getting shot but the other is presumably shown dead in the road

The third victim of supergirl’s bury your gays pattern is the warden from 4x18

He was killed by Otis graves after appearing earlier just long enough for him to be shown as crooked & also for them to drop a mention that he was gay then kill him

Now we talk about the almost fourth victim of this

Female brainiac 5
While not technically dead she is reduced to only existing in the big brain

In her introduction she not only stated how her wife had died but that she was also willing to be absorbed
A very odd thing indeed

This is one of the few times supergirl has mentioned having lgbt characters die off screen & it’s the most notable

Killing off a lgbt character that never appeared makes it hard to figure out if the action is in fact homophobic & byg or of it fits into some other odd catagory

Now that we are into this sort of secondary catagory of bury your gays it’s time to talk about how supergirl has queercoded characters then killed them

This is a theme that seems to have been done only in s3 fingers crossed that supergirl doesn’t bring back this theme

The first victim of this was pestilence, yes the world killer

In her brief appearance as human she quickly took to flirting with Alex & subsequently infecting both Alex & Winn (cause ya know she’s evil & all)
Her death came just a few episodes later

The second victim was Livewire

Over her multiple appearances the writers never shied away from queer coding her
With her many remarks about men being unattractive & her remarks about women
She was Killed by heat vision which she was previously unaffected by

With that we now move to another one of supergirls problems

As you may have noticed from every one of the entries on byg supergirl has a pattern when it comes to back ground lgbt characters

That is making them criminals

When it comes to the trope of evil lgbt characters queercoded villains also count in it

Because this is a trope that paints lgbt characters (or caricatures) as bad.
3 of the 6 canon background lgbt characters were criminals in some shape
&queercoded characters were supervillains

The trope of making lgbt characters evil/ criminals is an old one

It’s one of many tropes that subtly paints lgbt people as bad
Though this trope is one that when done in a show or movie that gives other lgbt heroes prominence is fine
Supergirl doesn’t do that

This next topic is gonna require more of a trigger warning
We will be talking about brutalizing & needlessly traumatizing lgbt characters

The first part of this issue is putting lgbt characters in near death situations

This is something that happens in every action show but there are times when it’s more brutally shown to lgbt characters

I.E. Alex’s kidnapping, Nia’s capture, & Maggie getting shot

Along with Nia’s capture & torture also came Brainy’s torture which marked another time sg brutalized a PoC

Now to traumatizing lgbt characters

Supergirl has done this in a few ways but the biggest way is by giving lgbt characters horribly homophobic families

not only that but also forcing the lgbt characters to spend episodes face to face with said bigots in the most traumatic ways

Reducing screen time:

When 2 of the 3 main lgbt characters can have all their scenes for an episode fit into 1 twitter video it means the show has a problem

Both Nia & Kelly ate severely lacking in screen time this season with the two of them being absent in multiple episodes & averaging maybe a minute of screen time per episode that they are in (excluding the Nia & Alex centric eps)

Right along with cut screen time there is also the issue of lgbt characters having no storyline of their own

This season only Alex has gotten her own story arc a very small one of her leaving the Deo

Nia & Alex got one off stories for their centric episodes but that’s about it

Every other main character is getting their own storyline

Brainy slowly growing into his full potential & his story with Lex
Lena & her problematic storyline with Lex
Jonn & his brother
Kara & well everything
Even Lex & leviathan

But none for Nia & Kelly

This season all of kelly’s story & screen time has been her proping up or helping other characters

There has been no story about her
She is the only black woman to ever be a main character on supergirl & the only main lgbt character to actually be a PoC
Where’s her story

Nia has had near the exact same treatment as Kelly which really cemented how this season is only using the two of them for tokenism (see article at the start of the thread)

Now switching from canon lgbt to non canon it’s time to talk about supergirl & queerbaiting

While supercorp is the biggest queer bait there’s also one other borderline queerbaited ship we should talk about agentreign/agentarias

Agentreign is a somewhat special case because the ship does have one canon lgbt character in it, but that factor doesn’t change that it can be queerbait, as queerbait comes in many forms

Sam/Alex wasn’t heavily promoted like Kara/Lena & the shows canon couples are but the shows own heavy undertones with them painted a rather baity picture

With Sam showing up with Ruby just as Alex is realizing what she wants in her future

With each of Kara & Alex’s conversations about what Alex wanted in the future some of it got mirrored in Alex’s scenes with Sam & Ruby

the obvious flirting of the two characters their inherent closeness & the way that Sam seemed to fit perfectly for Alex make it feel like bait

The real kicker ended up being how Odette made it clear that they were open to the possibility of it happening even as the show itself began to plan writing off Sam