Contents:
- HOW STRAIGHT FICTNAL WOMEN SHAPED MY GAY INTY
- MEET ALEX LANDI, THE ACTOR PLAYG GREY'S ANATOMY'S FIRST GAY MALE SURGEON
HOW STRAIGHT FICTNAL WOMEN SHAPED MY GAY INTY
Confed and lost my own inty a untry where gay marriage was still illegal, I had ltle to no chance of unrstandg the spectm of sexualy and my place wh . I'd survive the day, and then when I got home, I'd turn on the televisn to 's Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer): flamboyant, annoyg, and like many gay men on televisn, burned wh the heavy narrative load of homosexualy. As a teenager, the gay, male characters I saw on TV were so bary: feme or mascule?
Eher they embodied and attempted to refe a stereotype or rejected altogether, optg stead to "reclaim" tradnal masculy for gay men. In the ghts, gay men were rarely the protagonist; they were often wrten briefly the service of lead characters' storyl (and equently wrten out via ath), or clud specifilly for a "very special episo" on sexualy. Te Blood's Lafayette Reynolds (Nelsan Ellis) stands out as a rare outlier, a southern Black gay man who went beyond bari and genr his self-prentatn.
Of the shows I actually had the abily to watch, I only saw gay men reflect stereotyp I didn't want to be.
MEET ALEX LANDI, THE ACTOR PLAYG GREY'S ANATOMY'S FIRST GAY MALE SURGEON
Though medil surgery was not likely an optn for my own reer, I felt more nnected to the nuance their liv and the tharsis om the dramatic proclamatns of love scb rooms and back-door relatnship gossip than I did anywhere else my media nsumptn (I was too closeted to watch gay blockbters like Brokeback Mounta, and I'm not mad I still haven't seen ).
Richard Cartwright, ABC via Getty ImagThere is obv precent for gay men fdg empowerment through a non of gay ins, most of them (typilly straight, whe) women celebri: "stanng" culture has built the foundatn of reers across generatns (Donna Summer to Madonna to Julianne Moore to Carly Rae Jepson). The women barely place the pantheon of gay in culture, but were at the top of my personal list bee like me, they were mted to livg their own sk even when their narrativ wore them down to nothg.
As "I'm gay" me out of my mouth, I was as surprised as they were--that like Alicia, I had found myself willg to n headlong to risk to be myself rather than watch my own life pass me by om the Greatt LGBTQ TV Characters of All Time That said, the credible heterosexual (mostly whe) women only got me so far. Here, the actor and those who know him reveal the story of the man behd Grey's Anatomy's first openly gay male surgeon. Whether she’s gay is not necsarily the pot.