2<\/sup> that looked into attitudes and perception of opposite-sex and same-sex couples by straight and gay participants. Whether the respondents were straight or gay, they were all more comfortable with public displays of affection between straight couples, and least comfortable with gay male couples kissing or holding hands. The study authors noted \u201cthe findings suggest that people seem to think of loving relationships in a hierarchy, with heterosexual couples being the most \u201cin love,\u201d followed by lesbian couples and then gay couples.\u201d
Even the terminology highlights a difference between how men and women are perceived. Women-Loving-Women (WLW) are categorised by their romantic and affectional attraction, but Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) are defined by who they prefer to have sex with. Odets presents many cases of men who were held back by their belief that their connections with other men were necessarily restricted to \u2018sport sex\u2019 \u2013 thrilling, often althletic sex with new partners focused on novelty. He talks about how important it has been for his clients to develop a \u2018gay sensibility\u2019 \u2013 a man\u2019s internal experience of himself as a gay man combined with his expression of himself to others, and the way that makes him relate to others as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe history of \u2018homosexuality\u2019 and its focus on a single aspect of connection with others has robbed generations of men of the chance of affectionate and romantic experiences with men, and many gay men who haven\u2019t developed that gay sensibility acutely feel the absence of intimate emotional connection in their lives. So many of us of all sexualities and genders have been led to believe, as though it were a fundamental truth, that men are not capable of romance with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Beat That My Heart Skipped<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Enter Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson; two teenage boys in year 10 and 11 respectively at Truham Grammar School. The story is queer in many ways, but I\u2019m focusing on Nick and Charlie because their story holds the most important message for boys and young men in particular, and society at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heartstopper isn\u2019t a story about a hook-up. It\u2019s not explicit. In fact, we see how sad and inadequate Charlie feels as a result of a series of clandestine meet-ups with one of his other classmates, where he\u2019s nothing more than a dirty homosexual secret. But that\u2019s not how things are with Nick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In case you\u2019re reading before watching or finishing the show, I won\u2019t go into detail and spoil how it comes together. What I will say is how incredibly urgent and important it is right now, at a time when queerphobia is on the rise and people continue to believe that gay men are nothing more than two sex drives pointed at each other, to have a portrayal of gay romance in all its innocent sweetness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The show isn\u2019t unrealistic. It doesn\u2019t hold back from showing the ways in which some people Nick and Charlie encounter demonstrate the same discomfort with same-sex affection as the people surveyed for the 2014 study I mentioned above. But it also shows more than that. Much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It shows that a boy who is attracted to boys can be good at sports. You see that it\u2019s possible to be a good friend to someone you are attracted to. On mutiple occasions we see that being kind and thoughtful isn\u2019t a \u2018girl thing.\u2019 We see that boys can feel nervous and excited and giddy about their crushes, and that they aren\u2019t just motivated by sex. There\u2019s a strong message that boys\u2019 attraction to other boys can be romantic and affectionate and is not purely sexual. We see deep emotional connections. We see love and care and affection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Romance is for everyone who wants it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
On the one hand, I want to say that Heartstopper isn\u2019t a gay romance; it\u2019s just a romance full stop.<\/em> But I don\u2019t want to detract from how very, very <\/em>important it is that Charlie and Nick are two boys who are innocently, sweetly, nervously, ecstatically into each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe need to spread the word that romance is an option available to everyone who wants it; not just the narrowly defined group of people so many of us \u2013 straight and otherwise \u2013 have decided are capable of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charlie \u2764 Nick<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
1<\/sup>Odets, W (2019).Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men\u2019s Lives<\/em>. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
2<\/sup>Doan, L., Loehr, A., and Miller L.R. (2014) Formal Rights and Informal Privileges for Same-Sex Couples: Evidence from a National Survey Experiment<\/em>. American Sociological Review 79, no. 6: 1172\u201395.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Somewhat late to the party, I\u2019ve recently caught up with Heartstopper, the Netflix queer teen drama based on Alice Oseman\u2019s graphic novels and original Tumblr comic series. Rather than focusing on reviewing the show, critiquing its plot and examining the themes, I am instead going to talk about why it is so vitally, searingly important that it was made and is being seen by so many people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,32],"tags":[29,27,30],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lgbtqia","category-relationship-diversity","tag-fandom","tag-lgbtqia","tag-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapywithzoe.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}