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GLAAD finds the film industry doesn’t do gay or bi women justice

GLAAD has released its Studio Responsibility Index for 2014, which surveys the major film releases from 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount, Warner Brothers and Sony Columbia from the last year (January 1 to December 31, 2013). With 102 films released nationwide in America in the last year, only 17 included LGBT characters, and most often they were barely on screen or were “outright defamatory representations.”

Out of the films surveyed in 2013, only 23.5% featured lesbian characters and 17.7% contained bisexual characters, male and female combined. 76% of all LGBT characters (whom GLAAD notes “were onscreen for no more than a few seconds”) were white. In short, the lesbian or bi women in studio films this year were bit parts and not representative of the community.

“LGBT people come from all walks of life; we’re your family members, coworkers, neighbors, and peers” said GLAAD’s Sarah Kate Ellis. “Hollywood should strive to reflect that truth, rather than turn us into jokes or simply edit us out.”

Here’s how LGBT women faired.

The Good: -20th Century Fox semi-counted Cameron Diaz’s character in The Counselor as bisexual, “…though the film does little more than tease this as a possibility. Malkina is the girlfriend of a drug kingpin, and in one scene caresses another female character while they lay by a pool, but it appears to be an attempt to make the other woman uncomfortable. Upon review, there ultimately wasn’t enough content in the film to identify this character as bisexual, which is probably for the better. Since she’s a duplicitous, murderous sociopath, Malkina certainly wouldn’t do anything to improve on defamatory stereotypes of bisexual people that have long permeated popular culture.”

-Lionsgate’s

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