Sense8

The Representation of Gay Men in Sense8 and Other Television Shows 

Character: Lito Rodriguez

Lito is a very lively character on Sense8, who also loves his profession despite the fact that he has to hide his true identity. That part is easy, after all, since he's an actor and must lie all the time. But eventually, when Lito has no choice but to come out to the world after an explicit image of he and his boyfriend is released to the media, he grows and learns to embrace his true self in front of the public.

This show in itself is amazing with how, even though Lito himself is the gay character, the rest of the people he is connected to within his cluster (those he's connected to around the world) feel his identity too. They are what he is. They feel the impact of his coming out to the media. They stand up for him as he stands up for himself.

Certain scenes throughout all of the 2 seasons out right now for the show make this message powerful. For example, the video below is one of the first scenes where he embraces his sexuality publicly with his entire cluster, his boyfriend, and his supportive friend, Dani:

There's another significant scene, where Lito goes to see his mother for the first time since the big news of his public coming out was released. He's afraid because he doesn't know whether or not she'll support him or disown him, which is an issue many LGBTQ members in today's society face. She does end up supporting him, claiming that she's known about his sexuality at a young age. This sends out a positive message of hope to LGBTQ youth who watch the show, and awareness to those who need it:

The representation of gay men in television shows and the media when first represented in 1967, according to the journal article "Representing Gay Men on American Television", compared to the Lito's character as 1) a gay person of color and 2) a gay man has made much progress. Though the first airing in 1967 was a documentary and not a television show called "The Homosexuals", it represented gay men as shameful of their sexuality, and as one gay man said, "sick". 

Lito, compared to that documentary, embraces his sexuality publicly even though it does take him a long time to do it. It takes up until the second season of Sense8 for Lito to be prepared in having the whole world know he's gay. Despite the negative responses he receives and the rejection from the acting industry--an industry that is his dream--he faces, he still accepts himself.

The characterization of Lito as a gay man would be a "sissy", as referred to in the textbook "Sexual Identities and the Media". This is ironic due to the typical roles he would take prior to his coming out, since he did play the classic "manly" man, posing as heterosexual, and as the hero who gets the girl in the end. Off-screen and in his personal life with his boyfriend Hernando, Lito is a dramatic man who gets emotional often and overreacts to many things and is stubborn.

Keep in mind, this dramatic and emotional part of him is only shown to those close to him, so the front he puts up is to keep up the heterosexual image he has made for himself in Season One. This goes hand-in-hand with the stereotype that men who do exhibit these mannerisms or behaviors that they are, in fact, queer ("Queer Representations of Gay Males and Masculinities in the Media").

The progress of how the representation of gay men in general in the media, not just Lito, is astounding, since when they were first represented, they were only to be "objects of ridicule". It wasn't until the late 1970s and 80s that there were really positive images of gay men put out there, but they could hardly be effective with the AIDS epidemic taking place and being linked mostly to gay men.

Gay men have always been linked to tragedy throughout the years of when they first started being represented within television shows, but not Lito, despite his hardships.

The Representation of Transgenders in Sense8 and Other Television Shows

Character: Nomi Marks 

Nomi is a very passionate character in Sense8, with what she does as a political blogger and hacker, though she has been arrested for her enjoyment in hacking. 

Despite living in the very progressive city of San Fransisco, California, Nomi's parents were not open to the idea of accepting her as a transgender woman. She had also went through hardships in high school when she was forced to join a swimming team by her father, who wanted to teach her how to be a "real man". Being in locker rooms with boys and having to shower with them around, she was insecure about her body, and eventually experienced harassment by her teammates, who made her shower in scalding hot water, with which she still has burn scars for.

She has grown happy with her long-term girlfriend Amanita, trying to leave her painful past behind her, which even means not staying as close with her family, and especially her parents. In Season Two, she is granted to be her sister Teagan's maid of honor, where she must face the discrimination her family has against transgender persons.

This is a clip of Nomi toasting her sister's marriage, where she is wildly anxious to make a speech in front of her family, family friends, and especially her parents again. It shows the discrimination and discomfort Nomi's parents still have with her, and how upset they still are with her despite how long they have had to live with the fact that they have a transgender daughter:

There is positive development from her parents in this season, where they accept her, and her father refers to Nomi as his daughter for the very first time, rather than his son or by his birth name Michael. This scene involves a detective trying to get Nomi arrested in the middle of her sister Teagan getting married, dressed up at the altar and all. She has been a fugitive for a while now, hiding with her girlfriend and being careful in her actions, using her skills at hacking to her advantage. 

This scene is powerful in how Nomi's father, despite pushing her to "be a man" when she was younger, has a sudden character development, becoming very protective over her when she is about to get arrested. Even though it doesn't really show that her mother has developed in the same way, as she is the parent who shows the most discrimination between the two, it is assumed that she is silenced by the fact that she must try to finally accept her daughter as who she is.

Overall, despite the fact that everyone from their cluster are from differing backgrounds, none of them discriminate against Lito or Nomi; they accept them completely. This sends out the message that anybody of any background can be accepting of LGBTQ members.

Nothing media wise was able to be let out in the past, let alone be included in a television show, so the fact that Nomi is a main character in a show that isn't even revolved around LGBTQ and has a totally different and complex plot line is astounding for our time. With more representations on transgender people in television shows like Sense8, their visibility obviously grows, especially positively since Nomi is such a strong character. There aren't many transgender representations in television shows today, but when they are, they're strong every time. 

Transgender people have been known to objects of "ridicule or pity" in television shows, but Sense8 is a great opposite of that for characters like Nomi Marks.

Representations like her have a positive impact on transgender people, not only giving them hope, but exposing non-transgender people on who they are and why they should be accepted. With every transgender role in a television show that makes it, there will be more open doors and clear paths to go through for transgender people and more generally LGBTQ.