I bet they phrased it nicely, but yeah, pretty much. I really can't recommend the animated series enough, especially given the WuFlu. Free trial and binge watch it.
So this will be a long post on 'Representation' of minorities, especially in pop culture.
First, what is Representation? Now, it's activists saying that having minority/women characters doing X is needed so that people of the same minority have someone to look up to. Representation is the reason Iron Man became black, Thor became a woman, etc. It's also the reason behind the Scarlett Johansson getting people pissed at her for acting an The Major in Ghost in the Shell and almost playing a trans man in a Biopic of his life.
But the origins of 'Representation Matters' make some a lot of sense, and it did do a lot of good before becoming what it is today.
First, in a seemingly non-sequitur, let's talk about how bigotry works. I'm cribbing this from Shapiro here, but basically ways in which people are anti-semetic are very different from how they are racist against black people. Anti-semitism puts Jews as controlling the world, while anti-black racism puts them as brutes, and below humans. Similarly, homophobia has a unique method of hatred. The major homophobic tropes are that gays (and by extension the rest of LGBT+) don't exist, and the ones that do exist are depraved/unnatural.
So let's look at Gay activism. Actual gay activism, not the stupid shit you see today. The real start of Gay activism was the 1969 Stonewall Riot. Suddenly, being 'Out, Loud, and Proud' was the goal. And why was it important to rub peoples face in it? Because otherwise gays would be ignored, like they had been for centuries. They had to prove to the world that they existed. This is why Pride Parades are so bold (and to some, obnoxious and over-sexualized). During the AIDS crisis, this became even more important. AIDS was basically Corona that only hit gays, and they had no idea how it spread. And no media talked about it, the federal government didn't even acknowledge it. 'Silence = Death' became a slogan. All of this was targeted at the main homophobic trope of gays not existing, but they exacerbated the second trope of gays being unnatural or depraved.
Here is where gay rights got hooked to pop culture. Probably starting with Ellen Degeneres coming out on The Puppy Episode, we started celebrating representation, any representation. Because representation hit against both homophobic attacks. It shows we exist, and it usually shows that we are normalish. This includes stuff like Sweepsweek girl kisses, to the Sassy Gay Friend, to actually celebrities coming out, to functional gay characters like Oscar in the Office, or Modern Family. How did this stuff get on television? A couple of ways, but largely lesbians led the way, because lesbians are hot and women non-threatening, so men wouldn't object. All of this was celebrated by the gay community under 'Representation Matters', and it played a huge part in normalizing gay relationships.
Occasionally, one of the ways representation worked was by queering a character. This isn't as bad as what would follow. A character being bi and not realizing it/acting on it is truth in television, as is a character hiding that they are gay. Also, it meant no change to the character except who they were attracted to. We can see this with Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who no one really cares that her sexuality suddenly changed. But honestly, most gay characters weren't initially planned to be gay, but were just eventually queered.
And now we get to the spread of Representation Matters. And intersectionality is to blame. Basically, one of the precepts of intersectionality is that all hate is identical. Remember that discussion of how different bigotry is unique? The progressives tend to conflate all hate under one umbrella. So they conclude that the solutions must also be identical, and that we also are in a racist, misogynistic, homophobic culture that needs the solutions. And that's why people still call for black representation, or Asian representation, or Muslim representation, as if that will fix the problems those communities face.
