Gay Actors Don’t Owe Us Anything →

theglowpt2:

My point is not that we need to protect actors who are actually straight who play gay characters. They are not the ones who are put at risk. The people who stand to be adversely affected by this trend are the actors who aren’t straight (the ones who are gay, bi, pan, etc.) and do not wish to make their sexuality public knowledge. This could be for a wide variety of perfectly valid reasons. Maybe they simply feel that their sexuality is their private business and don’t feel the need to share it with the world. They could also be concerned that coming out could damage their career in ways such as being denied roles as a leading man or romantic lead, or pigeonholed into only playing gay characters for the rest of their career (concerns which both have a very solid basis.)

Besides actors who are comfortable with their sexuality but simply don’t wish to share it with the public, there is also the issue of actors who may not be quite comfortable with their own sexual identity yet, or who may still be questioning or not even have realized that they aren’t straight. These actors may gravitate consciously or subconsciously towards roles like these as a way to figure out and express their sexuality before they themselves are even sure of it. In cases like this, they likely already have people accusing them of being another straight person“stealing” gay roles from “real” gay actors. Once again, while the rationale behind this is well-meant, it doesn’t do any favors for actors who may be widely assumed to be straight, but are actually not. On top of all that, the last thing actors need in situations like this are people in the media interrogating them about their sexuality in order to get a juicy scoop.

This issue creates a dichotomy for actors in gay roles who prefer to keep their personal lives private: they are either presumed to be straight and criticized for playing a gay role, or they are questioned endlessly about their sexuality in order to justify them playing gay characters. Such has been the case for actors like Andrew Garfield, who stars alongside Lee Pace in Angels in America, and Jake Gyllenhaal, who famously played a gay man in Brokeback Mountain. I don’t presume to know either man’s sexuality, but I don’t think that requiring them to share it in order to play gay roles is something that benefits anyone.

I agree that we need more gay actors playing gay roles. Gay actors deserve a chance to play characters that represent them and tell stories that reflect their own, and audiences deserve to see that as well. However, if your goal is to help gay actors, I don’t believe the best way to go about that is by demanding they out themselves to satisfy public curiosity.

i wrote a thing about lee pace