With the end of LGBTQ+ Pride month, and companies and brands strip their logos and marketing of rainbow flags, the Starz hit drama series “P-Valley” continues on to create representation and reflection for the LGBTQ+ community with its newest season. The series follows the story of The Pynk, a fictional strip club in Chucalissa, Mississippi, and the host of dynamic workers therein. From Mercedes, a single mother and dance instructor dancing at The Pynk to save up for a gym/studio, to Uncle Clifford, the animated, colorful, nonbinary owner of the establishment, The Pynk highlights the stories of the members of society we often don’t see beyond their job description.
Although in its second season, since its airing, the drama series has always had LGBTQ+ characters and depicted the real-world experiences of the community. From the entanglement of Uncle Clifford with her down-low lover to a heated moment of passionate queer sex, “P-Valley” has always depicted LGBTQ+ stories. But in a most recent gay sex scene, some of the series’ heterosexual viewers have begun to criticize the show for being “too gay.” With TikTok think pieces, Twitter threads and spaces, and even celebrity tweets, heterosexual viewers have been in a frenzy over the scene, with statements like “P-Valley would be better without all the gay s***” and stating the show was making them “uncomfortable.”
While this is disheartening, it comes as no shock to the LGBTQ+ community and queer folk such as myself. As a trans nonbinary person whose been consuming media filled with heterosexual imagery since I first discovered what TV and film were, it did not surprise me that “P-Valley” has come under siege for being “too gay.” The true problem has always been that amongst the public verbal tolerance of the LGBTQ+ community is the private, silent disgust for queer identities and sexualities. And while many claim it to be a mere lack of exposure or lack of knowledge, the issue is deeper than that. For it is not a lack of knowledge, it’s a distortion of perception.
Much of our collective early understanding of what it means or meant to be LGBTQ+ in the 21st century of US western civilization and culture, was the public demonization of queer identities. This public, generally-held opinion emerged from the long and complicated past of America. Founded on the early principles which allowed the inhumane enslavement of Africans, much of our gender roles, norms, and expectations were equally founded in favor of white European ideologies and norms. Norms of gender and sexuality practiced by white Europeans became the standard while culturally indigenous norms became acts of “barbarity” worthy to be demonized. While many indigenous communities have a long history of holding space for LGBTQ+ identities within their culture, with a long history of eugenics (the “scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations” – National Human Genome Research Institute) and colonial powers wanting to distance themselves from native cultural groups, much of America’s historical perception of LGBTQ+ identities throughout the years have been influenced off of the original racist and colonial founding notions.
These original ideas surrounding the rigidness of gender and sexuality, left over by America’s white colonial history, bled into modern-day religions and cultural perceptions and norms, and these perceptions directly affected the LGBTQ+ community. During the American AIDS epidemic, AIDS and HIV took on the label of “gay cancer” or the “gay disease” due to the social and cultural stigmas surrounding gay and queer identities. These cultural beliefs backed up with Christian rhetoric of HIV being “God’s wrath” or “punishment” due to the “sexual immorality” of gay sex created the social landscape of not only demonizing the gay community, leaving them helpless to the effect of AIDS, and HIV but also created a social stigma of disgust relating to the community. And just as the ideologies of colonial gender norms and sexuality seeped into cultural consciousness, so has the negative social stigma of dirtiness, disgust and religious immorality toward LGBTQ+ communities seeped into media, TV and film.
Negative cultural stigmas of the LGBTQ+ community left media to be filled with limited images of the community and, even when placed on display, became distorted and twisted reflections of the community. The social stigma surrounding bisexuals, specifically bisexual men, created images of hypersexuality, promiscuity, and a lack of an ability to commit to one partner like, in the “Games of Thrones” character Oberyn Martell. Social stigmas like transgender women being frauds, men in wigs trying to trick society, and being mentally unstable translated into cross-dressing serial killer villains like Lois Einhorn from “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” Buffalo Bill from “Silence of the Lambs,” and Doctor Robert Elliot from “Dressed to Kill.” Social stigmas of feminine gay men not having natural femininity but “off-brand” femininity and being sidekicks to women translated into tropes like the queer-coded villains of Jafar in “Aladdin,” Scar from “The Lion King,” and Captain Hook in “Peter Pan,” or gay best friend accessories like in the film “GBF.” If it wasn’t these distortions of queer identities on screen then it was the complete erasure of queer folk completely. Not including LGBTQ+ stories and populating media with only heterosexual characters created the media landscape we watch on TV and film today. Whereas queer sex scenes can be deemed “unexpected” or just “not used to being seen,” it is because of the lack of authentic queer sex scenes. So if you’re wondering why gay sex scenes like those in “P-Valley” are still causing “straight panic” and discomfort, it is – simply – because of this history.
These are the founding pillars of not only LGBTQ+ cultural perception but also its portrayal in the media. Based on twisted and skewed images of either the half-truths of queer and gender expansive folk, or no truths and no stories, “P-Valley” shatters that through an unfiltered lens and shows the totality of what it means to be queer and what those stories can look like. So, yes, sometimes queer people own strip clubs and help their girls make money while also serving themselves. And yes, sometimes queer folk have a hard time coming out and being themselves, causing them to try and find love in the dark. Yes, sometimes that love looks like Uncle Clifford getting bent over a karaoke machine, and yes, sometimes it looks like two “masculine” men getting it on in a hotel room. It’s time to stop placing gay and queer sex in the closet because that is a part of what it means to be queer. The same way queer people have watched straight sex scenes and viewed them for what they were – an extension of two characters’ love, lust, or misty area in between – is the same way the straight community has to start to see queer sex: as the same thing. It is simply sex. So, if a queer sex scene is still making you uncomfortable, well, that’s not the show’s problem, that’s yours.