It's A Sin
We spoke about this UNREAL show when it came out over on our Instagram as well as on our emails because we thought everyone needed to hear about it. It's things like this that can greatly help reduce the stigma around HIV and educate us all to help understand it better. The series follows a group of friends through the aids epidemic and as you can imagine, it gets pretty heavy at times, but this is why it feels so important to watch.
Bojack Horseman
Okay this series covers so many important topics and I could VERY easily ramble on about how amazing it is for days. However, for the sake of this post (and your sanity) I'll just focus on one character - Todd. This is kind of a spoiler, but a few seasons in Todd realises that he is Asexual. They cover his own confusion with this as well as the misconceptions with everything surrounding it so well. I've seen writers and directors come out saying that a character is asexual after the release, but I'd never watched anything before this where they had explicitly said it within the show or film, which I think is what makes this so important.
Sex Education
Having said that, after this, Sex Education also covered Asexuality in their later season - along with a whole load of other LGBTQ+ topics. By now, nearly half of the cast is queer in some way or other and the show covers anything and everything - but in a way that doesn't feel forced at any point. Pretty impressive. If you haven't seen sex education I 100% recommend it but I will warn you, the level of second hand embarrassment is off the scale.
Love, Simon.
It's just an all round cute, wash over you, coming of age, romance film but without the usual heterosexual relationship. It was the first major film to cover a gay kid's coming out which is why it has to be included here. It's also kind of crazy that this didn't happen until 2018 but we're focussing on the positives here... It follows the story and fears (and later, acceptance) of a young guy who's not sure he's ready to be out yet - which is sure to be relatable to a ton of people! And even if you didn't go through it yourself, it's important to see how others feel.
Paranorman
Yes, it's a kids film. yes, it's about zombies. Yes, I still watch it every October. It seems an odd one out here, but I've put this in the list because it contains the most chilled out, throw away comment about a character's sexuality I've ever seen? It's mentioned once, right at the end of the film and that's it. It isn't made out to be the character's whole personality and it just feels real. This was also the first gay animated character so it only feels right to be mentioned!
Obviously, this is a very small list and there are a ton more that I could go through. So, here's a few extra bonus series - Atypical, Pose, Everything Sucks!, Glee, Schitt's Creek and Skins (really Skins walked so that Sex Education could run).
What else would you include in this list?
Bethan ROR xx
