Understanding Our Queer Obsession with Childish Things
Source: Reddit
Years ago, I was in a gay bar for a screening of Steven Universe: The Movie (2019). It was being emceed by a local drag queen (shoutout to Vagenesis) who would pause the film so that local performers could lipsync their favorite Steven Universe characters. I loved every moment of it: the costumes, the singing, the emotionally intelligent cartoon show about intergalactic space rocks.
I remember looking around the room and seeing smiling, queer faces all around me. There were a lot of LGBTQIA+ adults who loved this show, and not just Steven Universe. I saw people with Adventure Time stickers and gushing about SheRa. There are active queer fandoms for all these shows and more. It’s not just TV either, but board games, stuffed animals, fan fiction, and video games. Several decades earlier, these impulses would have been perceived as childish and embarrassing, but now queer people talk about their young adult hobbies with pride.
This shift represents both a broader trend in our culture as well as elements specific to the queer community. Many people use media to cope with trauma — a refuge for a world that has rejected them as they rebuild their self-esteem — and queer people fall into this category a lot.
There has been a general shift in our society towards being comfortable with liking more “childish” things, and it has progressed very quickly. A little over five years ago, people were openly mocking Bronies (i.e., adult fans of the cartoon show My Little Pony) for liking a kid's show. As user AntagonistDC mocks in their video, My thoughts on BRONIES!!! “They’re all just a bunch of boys, you know, worshipping these ponies, you know, having some kind of autism over them…what’s going on in this generation?”
Nowadays, however, that type of reaction is largely perceived as mean. People may object to certain fringe elements of the community (e.g., bronies who create hyper-violent or over-sexualized fanart). Still, outside of radical conservative circles, it’s not seen as strange for a man to like “girly” things. “…the problem with bronies has nothing to do with grown men liking a children’s cartoon,” argues Gianna Decarlo in the Baltimore Sun in an article that is ultimately critical of the community.
In general, we do not shame people as much for liking “kid stuff.” When that mentality does resurface, it’s usually a minority opinion. When talk show host Bill Mahr lamented about how people who like comic books and superhero movies are childish, writers from Neil Gaiman to Fiona Staples were quick to decry this opinion as out of touch. As Tom Chang countered in Bleeding Cool:
“Maher’s naive message against adult comic fans diminishes the value of generations of visionaries that paved the way for the future. Comic books are beyond just superheroes, encompassing fantasy, science fiction, romance, westerns, historical-based stories: all serving as loose societal templates of what could be.”
Anyone who has followed pop culture for the last ten years knows that nostalgia for old childhood IP is the norm with movies and TV shows. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) first launched with Iron Man in 2008 and is still going strong 13 years later. It’s hard to turn on the channel without coming across the latest superhero franchise or reboot. LGBTQIA+ consumers are very much involved with this trend. There exists not only rampant speculation from outlets of when we will get queer representation in the MCU (probably The Eternals) but also indie creators who are trying to expand that representation themselves (see The Pride, The Young Protectors, etc.).
As another example, we are living through a renaissance for tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons. Partly, thanks to the podcast Critical Roll more people play this game (and other tabletops) than ever before. Queer people are among this trend, with podcasts like Join The Party, Queens of Adventure, and Godsfall reclaiming this space for the community. In the words of Linda H. Codega in Tor: “The power of queer people to interact with a game that does not question their existence, but molds itself to support it, is a hugely emancipating and rewarding experience.” These products are enjoyed because they give queer people the space to process their identities, and it's not a niche experience.
Overall, there has also been an increasing dominance in media when it comes to nostalgia and childlike wonder. When we look at a lot of the most popular shows in our culture — assuming they're not remakes of childhood movies, TV shows, comic books, or videogames — they usually have one or two characters brimming with kawaii goodness (see Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Shrek, etc.). Even the gritty world of The Mandalorian (2019 — present) has Baby Yoda to counterbalance that show’s edgy aesthetic. Cuteness has become so ingrained in our culture that there is an emerging field of Cute Studies.
A love for childhood nostalgia is everywhere. And so, it's not surprising that queer people, like the rest of society, would be interested in the cute things from our childhood. It is more socially acceptable to do so now than it has ever been before. We are not only permitted to engage with more childhood properties but encouraged to form identities around them.
However, I think there is another element that, while intersecting with this general trend, overlaps with queerness specifically. The greater queer community has had to grabble with a lot of trauma, and the products we consume are sometimes used to process that trauma.
Many queer people did not have the best childhoods. This fact is thankfully changing for some, but, for a long time, queer childhoods were filled with rejection, shame, and a disproportionate amount of abuse. A study by the LGBTQIA+ rights organization Stonewall, for example, found that families are a major source of abuse for lesbians, bisexual women, and transgender people, which partly explains why homelessness among LGBTQIA+ youth remains so disproportionately high.
Something I have come to terms with about trauma by learning about the topic extensively in books, papers, and in therapy is that people will often try to recreate its conditions. We do not fully understand why this happens (it’s doubtful there is a singular reason). The literature varies from the Freudian idea of gaining mastery over it to an aspect of dissociation (see Dr. Sandra Bloom).
This phenomenon is sometimes given the label “repetition compulsion,” though I have also seen the term reenactment. A classic example of this compulsion is someone who has faced abuse as a child, becoming a more sexually provocative adult who places themselves into situations where a similar abuse can happen. People are not always consciously aware of this pattern. Since the nature of this compulsion places the person in similar situations, the trauma can be cumulative, as old experiences bleed into new ones.
A less harmful iteration of the same impulse is when a therapist recreates this behavior in a safer, more controlled environment via exposure therapy. This type of therapy can be used to treat a variety of problems, ranging from PTSD to Phobias to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The types of treatments are likewise varied. A therapist may ask a patient to recall a feared object or situation to reduce overall feelings of dread and anxiety (see Imaginal Exposure), or maybe they will combine exposure with relaxation exercises to make the situation feel more manageable (see systematic desensitization)
More controversially, I have seen reference to “trauma play” (not to be confused with play therapy), where people engage with their trauma safely. An obvious example is BDSM (short for bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism), where two or more individuals will engage in various forms of consensual power exchanges. I want to stress that BDSM is not something I have ever seen prescribed by a therapist directly; however, there are many kink-positive therapists that will work with patients to help them understand their various kinks in a non-judgemental way. People involved with the BDSM scene, or just kink in general, may be inflicting a form of harm onto themselves or others, but they are doing so with established boundaries and rules.
These types of behaviors are a useful lens for examining the queer obsession with childhood media. While it may be a bit much to label the vicarious consumption of queer, young adult media as exposure therapy, it does seem to come from a similar angle. Many queer people had terrible childhoods, where they could not do quintessential “childhood things.” We didn’t have first kisses or dates in primary school. We could not identify as queer into well into adulthood, if at all, and that oppression can be quite traumatic.
Queer media lets us revisit those terrible moments safely and with a better outcome. I see many LGBTQIA+ people watching queer shows so they can reimagine a safer, more inclusive childhood, not just for future generations, but for that kid-version of themselves inside their head.
For example, there is an entire genre of media devoted to the queer prom. First visible in the Indie movie G.B.F. over 8 years ago, the subgenre has ballooned in recent years. Buzzfeed launched its own Queer Prom in 2018 for all those high schoolers and college students able to make the trip to Manhattan. Ryan Murphy created an entire movie, with a star-studded cast, with a plot about how an Indiana girl who was denied her prom gets a queer one of her own. The movie received mixed reviews, but it quickly earned high marks from many LGTBQIA+ viewers. “This year I just need a film that would make me feel good about myself as a bisexual man…” writes a reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes. “As a lesbian, I loved it,” goes another.
The LGBTQIA+ community’s obsession with queer, young adult media is quite evident in the various products we support, and I think some of it comes back to this desire for safety. Many of us want to see queer young children who experience acceptance rather than rejection because it allows us to rewire those traumatic moments in our heads. We gush over Adora and Catra sharing their first kiss, Kora and Asami holding hands, or Ruby and Saphire getting married because that’s the past we wanted, not simply the future. It’s a salve to make us feel safe.
When people dismiss these activities as childish or unhealthy, I think they miss a vital element of the picture. This practice is about establishing a sense of control after a lifetime of trauma. When you think about all the unhealthy ways people process their baggage, escapist fantasies that create positive representations for queer people are probably one of the better coping mechanisms to exist.
When I was backed up against the wall of that crowded bar watching Steven Universe: The Movie, Vagenesis said, “look at all of us, having the queer sleepover we never had as kids.” It’s a comment that has stuck with me because it's true. Many of us wanted an accepting childhood, and we didn’t get it. We instead got ostracization, humiliation, and in some cases, physical abuse.
My queer childhood was a lonely one. I was sad, dysphoric, and depressed, and things didn’t get better until my late 20s. I had a lot of work to do, and yet that pain aside, I was a lucky one. I eventually found some semblance of stability, but the pain still lingers. I think about missed connections and disappointments often. I see so many other queer people likewise looking back at their childhoods with regret and longing, instinctually trying to rewrite that pain.
We can’t have those times back, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. We impossibly try to remake those moments over and over again, and in the process, we hopefully work towards making a better today and tomorrow for everybody else.