Star Wars Gets Its First Canonical LGBT Character

[FogHornG36]

I don't care about love plots, people can be gay, straight, what ever, I like star wars for the sword fights, shoot outs, and space ship battles.

 

[Makabriel]

So this character is going to be Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans all at the same time? Wow. I guess being an alien has its perks.

The media should learn how to use their "catch all phrases". LGBT is not used as an adjective to describe someone's proclivities..

 

[faefrost]

The first "canonical gay character"? Well maybe male? But The Clone Wars had a few did it not? Asajj Ventriss? Barris Offee? I mean while they don't outright "say" there are a few moments with Ventriss that are of the "Captain Kirk pulling on his boots" variety.

 

[This Place is DEAD]

There is no way to satisfy some people.

'Star Wars has not enough gay/lesbian/trans characters'

'OK, maybe you are right. To change this we invented this lesbian...'

'Lesbian, I knew it. That's pandering to the male gaze too, sithlord!'

 

[Phil the Nervous]

Breaking news! Character sexuality more important than plot or story!
Film at eleven.

 

[joshuaayt]

Alright, everyone, you know what to do. I expect to see no less than 300 counts of "SJW" and 250 counts of "Tumblr" when I check back in a few hours, in addition to little to no meaningful discussion.

Cool, might read. Is she the protag? Because that'd actually be pretty neat, lgbt protagonist in a Star Wars book. Or, fuck, any book that's aimed at teens, really.

 

[Gorrath]

Why do they always have to mention things like this before hand? Can't they just have these characters be whatever without shining a bright light on them and saying "these are the gay characters, see?". I mean way treat something that's supposed to be "perfectly natural" the exact opposite way.

I would guess that it's because it's noteworthy? it shouldn't be, but it is. As you say this should be perfectly natural and yet it isn't treated as such by, well, nearly anyone. The detractors will be up in arms, the supporters too. This should not be newsworthy and yet it's a bit of novelty anyway. I don't think we'll ever treat these things as "no big deal" until most everyone treats these things as "no big deal." It's all the slow grind of culture.

 

[xaszatm]

I don't care about love plots, people can be gay, straight, what ever, I like star wars for the sword fights, shoot outs, and space ship battles.

Hey, the Han Solo frozen Carbonite scene in The Empire Strikes Back is awesome! Good love plots belong there in the Star Wars canon.

OT: Cool, more LGBT people in the Star Wars universe. Though, to be fair, Star Wars kind of didn't care about romances unless you were a Skywalker or a Solo.

 

[Lightspeaker]

The one thing I always find...I guess somewhat bizarre is that there's always this assumption of "straight until proven otherwise" for media of all kinds. I find it very perplexing as to why it should be the case for characters we just don't know about.

By that I mean...well look at it this way. I'm only really a movie person, I've not read any of the expanded universe book stuff so I might be off a bit or have missed something about a character. But anyway...in Star Wars Jedi are supposed to control their emotions, but they're still "there" to control. So Jedi are (presumably) still attracted to others. But it is rarely made a big deal about, which means we know nothing at all about who they're attracted to. So what is to say that Yoda isn't gay? Hell what about people who aren't Jedi but its just not a thing that came up? Maybe Grand Moff Tarkin is bisexual?

I mean...mentally I've always just assumed that the Star Wars universe was a mix of every kind of sexuality much like Earth is. Possibly a dash of "Captain Jack Harkness" effect thrown in there. So I guess I just find it a little jarring that the same isn't assumed by everyone else already; to the point that this explicitly needs to be spelled out like this.

 

[Fanghawk]

The one thing I always find...I guess somewhat bizarre is that there's always this assumption of "straight until proven otherwise" for media of all kinds. I find it very perplexing as to why it should be the case for characters we just don't know about.

By that I mean...well look at it this way. I'm only really a movie person, I've not read any of the expanded universe book stuff so I might be off a bit or have missed something about a character. But anyway...in Star Wars Jedi are supposed to control their emotions, but they're still "there" to control. So Jedi are (presumably) still attracted to others. But it is rarely made a big deal about, which means we know nothing at all about who they're attracted to. So what is to say that Yoda isn't gay? Hell what about people who aren't Jedi but its just not a thing that came up? Maybe Grand Moff Tarkin is bisexual?

I mean...mentally I've always just assumed that the Star Wars universe was a mix of every kind of sexuality much like Earth is. Possibly a dash of "Captain Jack Harkness" effect thrown in there. So I guess I just find it a little jarring that the same isn't assumed by everyone else already; to the point that this explicitly needs to be spelled out like this.

We can certainly make that assumption about Star Wars, although even in the expanded universe it's brought up remarkably rarely.

I think of it this way - In the US about 3.8 of the population identifes as some point on the LGBT scale. Given the current population, that's about 9 million people - easily enough to be noticed and recognized (even among groups that don't approve and try to argue it's wrong or sinful). Even though it's relatively small, it's large enough that you can't just ignore it. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States

Now let's assume a similar stat carries over into Star Wars, which has a population of roughly 1 quadrillion life forms within Imperial space alone. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy

If I'm doing the math right, that's roughly 3800 billion gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered life forms. And we have what, three instances where it's mentioned at best? Barely an explanation to suggest "yeah it's the one thing the Empire DOESN'T oppress"? Maybe at best, you could point to the fact that Hutts are technically hermaphrodites? (Yeah, that's a thing... In the old EU anyway.)

I'm personally not crusading for this myself, but there are a lot of LGBT Star Wars fans out there who don't identify with anything they've seen in the franchise and it means so much to have something reflecting their life experience, even if is a Moff from a fictional space empire.

Anyway, that's why this stuff is newsworthy to me. But I guess not everyone will agree.

 

[Ukomba]

The one thing I always find...I guess somewhat bizarre is that there's always this assumption of "straight until proven otherwise" for media of all kinds. I find it very perplexing as to why it should be the case for characters we just don't know about.

By that I mean...well look at it this way. I'm only really a movie person, I've not read any of the expanded universe book stuff so I might be off a bit or have missed something about a character. But anyway...in Star Wars Jedi are supposed to control their emotions, but they're still "there" to control. So Jedi are (presumably) still attracted to others. But it is rarely made a big deal about, which means we know nothing at all about who they're attracted to. So what is to say that Yoda isn't gay? Hell what about people who aren't Jedi but its just not a thing that came up? Maybe Grand Moff Tarkin is bisexual?

I mean...mentally I've always just assumed that the Star Wars universe was a mix of every kind of sexuality much like Earth is. Possibly a dash of "Captain Jack Harkness" effect thrown in there. So I guess I just find it a little jarring that the same isn't assumed by everyone else already; to the point that this explicitly needs to be spelled out like this.

Probability. Same reason, if talking to someone on the phone with a British accent, you'd assume they where white since 91% of people living in England are White. Likewise, 96.6% of Americans identify as straight so that tends to be the baseline assumption. If an assumption has to be made, it isn't unusual to default to what a person internally believes is most likely to be true.

That or they default to what they want to be true.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Well I remember the Mandalorian couple. But of course most people tend to ignore those books because of Karen Traviss....

 

[Ukomba]

The one thing I always find...I guess somewhat bizarre is that there's always this assumption of "straight until proven otherwise" for media of all kinds. I find it very perplexing as to why it should be the case for characters we just don't know about.

By that I mean...well look at it this way. I'm only really a movie person, I've not read any of the expanded universe book stuff so I might be off a bit or have missed something about a character. But anyway...in Star Wars Jedi are supposed to control their emotions, but they're still "there" to control. So Jedi are (presumably) still attracted to others. But it is rarely made a big deal about, which means we know nothing at all about who they're attracted to. So what is to say that Yoda isn't gay? Hell what about people who aren't Jedi but its just not a thing that came up? Maybe Grand Moff Tarkin is bisexual?

I mean...mentally I've always just assumed that the Star Wars universe was a mix of every kind of sexuality much like Earth is. Possibly a dash of "Captain Jack Harkness" effect thrown in there. So I guess I just find it a little jarring that the same isn't assumed by everyone else already; to the point that this explicitly needs to be spelled out like this.

We can certainly make that assumption about Star Wars, although even in the expanded universe it's brought up remarkably rarely.

I think of it this way - In the US about 3.8 of the population identifes as some point on the LGBT scale. Given the current population, that's about 9 million people - easily enough to be noticed and recognized (even among groups that don't approve and try to argue it's wrong or sinful). Even though it's relatively small, it's large enough that you can't just ignore it. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States

Now let's assume a similar stat carries over into Star Wars, which has a population of roughly 1 quadrillion life forms within Imperial space alone. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy

If I'm doing the math right, that's roughly 3800 billion gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered life forms. And we have what, three instances where it's mentioned at best? Barely an explanation to suggest "yeah it's the one thing the Empire DOESN'T oppress"? Maybe at best, you could point to the fact that Hutts are technically hermaphrodites? (Yeah, that's a thing... In the old EU anyway.)

I'm personally not crusading for this myself, but there are a lot of LGBT Star Wars fans out there who don't identify with anything they've seen in the franchise and it means so much to have something reflecting their life experience, even if is a Moff from a fictional space empire.

Anyway, that's why this stuff is newsworthy to me. But I guess not everyone will agree.

Your math is a bit fuzzy. While it's true that that may may exist, you can't take the total population of the galaxy and do the math with that. Take the number of characters that have appeared long enough to get any kind of information about them, and it should be human characters only since the rates in other species are impossible to know, or might infact be impossible (as with the hutts or droids). Since we have 3 or so examples, that would support a population of ~100 defined human characters.

 

[Pr0]

This was necessary.

Yes that was sarcastic.

First don't get me wrong, I'm all for diversity and all that. But the collective western mindset is going down a very weird road.

Lets look at all the recent LGBT, female empowering. body type diversity, headmate tolerating and all these other things we're dealing with in our media culture these days.

At what point do we go....yes people are gay...but, it doesn't really matter? I mean think about it, as a relatively heterosexual male....I don't wander around throwing my straight maleness in peoples face, I'm not like...WHATS UP BABY, BY THE WAY ALL THIS MAN IS TOTALLY STRAIGHT AND REALLY LIKES GIRLS.

Now that sounds fucking asinine but think about it from a character development standpoint. I'm hetero, this needs no real expansion or expression. I am what I am....as a "character" it makes very little sense to simply display me as a raging hetero for the point of ensuring people know I really like women.

Conversely the entire "diversity" bullet train we seem to be on over the last few years (not that there wasn't a diversity movement or a call for diversity before that, it just seems like over the last few years things have gotten extremely militant) has stopped respecting the fact that people are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered and is simply putting them on display as window dressing to appeal to the LGBT demographic.

An Imperial Moff that just happens to be visually communicated as a lesbian is meaningless fluff, its a pointless character definition that is simply there to be there, its simply there to say "Look...we have a lesbian".

Lets be fair, I'm pretty sure the Star Wars galaxy is full of all manner of interesting sexualities and hilarious bigendered cantina mix ups...I mean it just stands to reason...its a freaking galaxy of course.

Do I really need to know who is sticking who's ovipositor into who's cloaca? Is this relevant? Does it serve a point in defining the Star Wars galaxy at all other than to wave a little rainbow flag and say "yay" in a flat, monotone voice?

I think there is one thing that is a tumblrism that I feel is nearly relevant here and its the term "cultural appropriation"...the LGBT community may feel like its getting a lot of diversity and equality passed to it finally, but what is really happening is the entire alt culture of what being LGBT is, is being appropriated, politicized and turned into meaningless bullet points on a "diversity for profit" check list.

Do I need to know someone is gay to appreciate them as a person? No....just like you don't have to know if I have a large penis to respect my viewpoints or disagree with them...its an unspoken understanding....I have a penis, it might be large, it might not be, its irrelevant to what you may or may not care about in regards to who I am as a person.

Characters being gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered in most representations, unless directly relevant to what their character does, is a meaningless fluff definition which isn't required other than to force a character under the LGBT communities scrutiny and give "them" their own "self insert" character into a fictional franchise....which is ludicrous and unnecessary.

I mean since when did a gay man not want to be Obi-Wan just cause it wasn't specifically defined that Obi-Wan was gay? I can't think of any gay men I knew that feel Obi-Wan was any less of a relatable character because nobody specifically told them he liked men.

Again, diversity is amazing, its a beautiful thing, but its not diversity when labels are used to separate people, its just oppression from entirely another direction. Its like saying....30 years ago you had to stay in the closet, now, heres your little box weirdo...get in your box and stay in it with your weirdo toys we made specifically for you so you could feel "equal" to the other kids....but thats not equality, thats not acceptance, thats pandering and dishonest.....equality is a world where no one has to be different. Even a celebration of differences is a direct and loud announcement of "LOOK AT HOW DIFFERENT THIS PERSON IS".

If I was gay...I probably wouldn't want to be forcefully demarcated via social and media definitions as "different
, I'd just want to be a person and judged as a person, not as a person who happens to like other men....perhaps people that self identify as LGBT feel differently and I respect peoples right to disagree or even find my point of view offensive...but if I was gay..I wouldn't want to be treated any differently than anyone else is treated. My true victory wouldn't be "diversity" or at least not the freak show that the western media calls "diversity" at least.

Thats a lot of fucking typing in response to something that is effectively minor, but its just a large idea thats been banging around in my head for the last few years as media and creative culture has been shifting around this entire "social revolution" that is called "diversity". Heavy clang on the quotation marks in both cases....cause its not a social revolution, its the assumption of a social revolution, for the purposes of profit, by companies that could care less if people are gay or not, they're simply pandering to demographics to make a profit, and its hardly diversity when everyone is being herded, like cattle, into their own personally labeled pens where they can be targeted and sold what they think/live/believe.

Blah I need to shut up. I apologize if anyone finds this offensive, I'm not intending to be offensive, I'm expressing an idea which says that true acceptance and diversity is different than all this....fakeness, that we're being sold, as long term creative franchises simply adapt to cultural changes in the last 50 years.

 

[Fanghawk]

Your math is a bit fuzzy. While it's true that that may may exist, you can't take the total population of the galaxy and do the math with that. Take the number of characters that have appeared long enough to get any kind of information about them, and it should be human characters only since the rates in other species are impossible to know, or might infact be impossible (as with the hutts or droids). Since we have 3 or so examples, that would support a population of ~100 defined human characters.

Oh, I'm making a crapton of assumptions there, just making the point that this huge thing in the lives of so many people isn't really reflected in Star Wars at all.

 

[mariosonicfan5]

Seriously though, fine article and all but one black guy?

Come on now I know people on this site hate on the prequels a lot but Mace Windu was freakin awesome...and he was Samuel L. Jackson! Why do people consistently leave him out!?

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I OBJECT!!!!!

What? No, not to that. I was actually just thinking about this the other day, trying to see if there was a gay character anywhere in Star Wars that I remembered, and I drew a blank. I found that rather odd, but whatever.

No, the part I object to is Lando being the only black man in Star Wars for decades!! Lies! There is a black X-Wing pilot in Return of the Jedi. Yes, he is there for maybe two seconds before his fighter blows up, but he is there! There are two black people in the original Star Wars. Ha-HA!

 

[Zontar]

I guess the EU really is dead, given how there already where LGBT characters in Star Wars.

This wasn't the first LGBT character in Star Wars, it was the first LGBT character in DISNY'S Star Wars. Big difference.

 

[Ukomba]

Your math is a bit fuzzy. While it's true that that may may exist, you can't take the total population of the galaxy and do the math with that. Take the number of characters that have appeared long enough to get any kind of information about them, and it should be human characters only since the rates in other species are impossible to know, or might infact be impossible (as with the hutts or droids). Since we have 3 or so examples, that would support a population of ~100 defined human characters.

Oh, I'm making a crapton of assumptions there, just making the point that this huge thing in the lives of so many people isn't really reflected in Star Wars at all.

Except that we already established that it is addressed, and given the sample size we have of characters, it's pretty close to the right percentage too. There being '3800 billion' of them is irrelevant since it's all sample size and percentage. for every 100 or so character who you get to know well enough to know their preferences, ~3-4 won't be straight. I'm not sure what more they could do on the subject. Would you really want a "Millennium Falcon" style book delving into it's history through a succession of characters?

 

[BonGookKumBop]

Yay! One more besides Juhani... There's still a statistically ridiculous absence of LGBT characters in that universe. I guess the Force makes everyone super straight.

Not straight, abstinent. Remember, Anikan was being bad by being heterosexual, or sexual in any form. I guess his kids were just carrying on the family tradition in episodes 4-6.