“The writers of Heartstopper want to get to the cute fluffy moments as fast they can. The audience isn’t given a compelling narrative where they have to decide who to root for. Instead, the writers blatantly hold up signs that say when to cheer and when to boo.”
“It’s time media takes a good look at itself and acknowledges that they don’t get gay and bisexual boys. The way they write them is to entertain an audience rather than to tell a compelling story about human lives.”
I didn't know Heartstopper would result in so many essays about how English boys don't even realize they have dicks until they're 17 or whatever, and that's why they can't kiss. Not realistic or something
I did not have gay sex in high school because the one open same sex couple in the entire school got punished by the school and their families in a terrible humiliating, and very public way, but I still experienced desire, and it occupied an enormous percentage of my mind at the time. I do believe you can show that in a non-exploitative, realistic way, especially if you are purporting to write feel-good fluff where none of the characters are going to be intentionally fed into the homophobia meat grinder. Because that's normal and common, and it would in fact be nice to see a complex middle ground somewhere between Euphoria and "modern teenagers scandalized by any display of passion (but not because it's gay I promise!)" Like I am just utterly uninterested in promise ring homos
Here's the thing characters ARE "intentionally fed into the homophobia meat grinder" one of the Lesbians is literally thrown out of her home for being gay. Charlie will not shut up about brutal, horrible, non-stop homophobic bullying he suffered (which weirdly is both a major part of his story and character, but we also aren't allowed to see) This bullying was so horrible Charlie used to cut himself, and he still has an eating disorder
we're TOLD the series is sweet, and "all-ages" "family friendly" etc but all that rests not on taking place in a mirror universe with no homophobia or whatever, or on never talking about hard topics
no, it rests on, no sex allowed.
tbf I only watched Heartstopper from Trixie and Katya and some teens do hold off on sex until they're older and out of high school, sure, but yeah the show does come across as anti-sex like they said. And I think they were saying too how we used to get a bunch of movies in the opposite direction, like I remember how American Pie was "you better lose your virginity before high school gradution!" the movie, but the pendulum has swung entirely the other way with this show having aromantic representation of all things, despite a very small amount of people experiencing that, but having no gay sexual intimacy whatsoever. it's like the show floods the young audience with a bunch of labels and portraying real things like the fear of coming out and homophobia while divorcing it all from sex to make it more appealing to a wider audience because we're still so afraid of gay sex
We're afraid of sex, period, but yes, especially gay sex.
"aromantic representation of all things, despite a very small amount of people experiencing that"
The absolute hypocrisy of someone wanting gay representation while complaining about Aro people getting representation because they're too much of a minority 💀
"some teens do hold off on sex"
No, the MAJORITY of teens do. In the UK, 70% of those under 16 do (recall Charlie & Nick are canonically 15/16)
For decades, gay men have been made out by media to be sex-crazed, and then to die or be split tragically. And now you're complaining that ONE show shows gay intimacy without sex (again, between 15/16 yos), that is generally up beat & happy?
Don't clutch your pearls & tell me "the pendulum has swung entirely the other way" when Red White and Royal Blue literally just came out & basically almost shows penetration on screen 🙄
So many uh Neo-Hays Code people swing to this (low-key homophobic) place of "you just want to watch teenagers fuck! you sicko"
To be clear I don't think anyone is saying that Nick and Charlie need to fuck, much less that we the viewers should watch in total detail as they do.
The objection is not that they don't have sex. The objection is the EXTREME lengths the show goes to make it clear they don't even want to, their kisses are always polite and chaste, hands politely above the waste, never grabbing or pulling at hair or clothing. cuddling is always done 200% clothed, laying in bed in jeans, socks, and long sleeves at one point, neither boy ever takes off his shirt during any closeness.
The one time they push past closed mouth kissing while fully clothed, the hickey EVERYONE, from Charlie, to Nick, to their friend Tao, acts as if Charlie has the MARK OF CAIN! upon his body! they are SOCKED! HORRIFIED! DISGUSTED! and the whole thing is a huge class wide scandal as if they'd caught Charlie giving head to a random French person in a public bathroom, rather than the world's smallest hickey.
After the hickey when Charlie goes to return the favor to Nick since they no longer need to worry about people knowing they're dating. Nick reacts with regret about having made a hickey and repents his sexual sin by declaring not just that he's not ready for sex, no no no because of course they never even say the word sex. No what Nick says is he's not ready for ANYTHING past kissing, and Charlie gamely declares that if Nick never wants to do anything past kissing he too is ready to be a monk for the rest of his life for his high school boyfriend. This all is framed as the highest level of romance.
Again no one is asking for them to get it on. But rather than a sweet conversation about sex and whats scary about it, what they want to do but are unsure of or even a promise to be ready sometime, it comes off like the abstinence only sex ed I suffered through where necking was called a "gateway activity" to sex that we should hold off on till (Christian) marriage. The intense feeling of the scene is repentance for the sin of giving a hickey.
Its not that there's no sex, its that EVERY scene is intensely afraid of and ashamed of sex
FACTS! I’m 20 years old and I know so many people my age and older who are not only virgins, but haven’t even had their first kiss. And that’s totally normal. Also Nick and Charlie have only been dating for like 2 months?? That’s a perfectly normal progression for a relationship, Euphoria and Riverdale have just rotted people’s brains so hard that they’ve forgotten about normal, tame teenagers
and there it is
all these comments point to what critics of Heartstopper's attitude to sex are really saying, indeed from the article itself:
no one is saying Nick and Charlie should have sex or that we are desperate to watch them have sex. It's this attitude displayed in all these posts that queer sexuality is in some way deviant, that being interested in a more open depiction of sexuality, or having characters more openly talk about sex (which is what the article is actually about) is the same as wanting teenage characters/actors fuck. That wanting positive depictions of queer sexuality is in someway prurient and dirty.
The complaint people have is two fold. The show is sexless, which is fine. But is aggressively praised as "wholesome" "heart warming" or this headline:
"a new dose of queer joy" this season, season 2 deals with Charlie having been so badly bullied for being gay that he used to cut himself, he has an eating disorder that is spiraling out of control and oh yeah a kid gets throw out of her home for being gay. I wish I could re-find it for a screen shot, but I saw a Tumblr post that described Heartstopper as "all-ages" and "family friendly".... and this is our objection that gay sex or the implication of it is the ONE and only qualifier for if something is "wholesome" other shows, like say Euphoria that deal with heavy teenage topics like a serious eating disorder for example are not talked about as "all-ages". Indeed if you want a better example, Love Victor, Young Royals, Skam, were/are all YA focused tv shows centering on a gay lead/gay couple which deal with heavy topics as well as first relationship and coming out. I've NEVER seen them talked about as "wholesome" even though they are sweet and beautifully done. Why? because the characters are sexually active, we don't WATCH them but we know something happened. There's just something alarming about gay sex or even the hint of it being the one and only test for "family friendly" (for the record I would say the topics in Heartstopper even as it is are NOT all-ages)
the second part of the problem is this, the implication or sometimes outright statement ("why does this middle aged guy care?!") that people, adults who are interested in positive depictions of youth queer sexuality are..... perverts, pedophiles, sickos, weirdos, gross. That is... the oldest and most dangerous slur against the gay community. In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s the gays were out to "recruit" your children to "the homosexual life style" by molesting them of course. Today we have "groomers" they're "grooming our children". This idea that queer adults only want to see teenagers fuck on TV is a homophobic assault on all queer people. It seems to have never crossed people's minds that we maybe want the next generation of queer young people to come of age without the crippling sexual shame many many gay people have where they feel like wanting to do the things we want sexually is disgusting (ironically Charlie says that his bullies called him disgusting, because of what he wants to do, gay sex is being called disgusting) and indeed this narrative that "no actually! its totally normal! and only SICKOS! who have BRAIN ROT! think otherwise" (being gay was listed as a mental illness, and indeed I know someone who was sent to a camp to "cure" his gay illness) strongly implies indeed says that 15/16 year olds who are thinking about sex, gay sex, wanting to have gay sex, or even just thinking about it are prurient, outside the norm, which circles back to what I said about gay shame around sex and how amazingly intense it is.
like I said I don't think anyone is saying Charlie and Nick should fuck and we should watch in every thrusty detail, Heartstopper is not that show, we all know. What people are saying is that while the show is dealing with other heavy topics, it remains weirdly Disney Channel about sex. Every nick and Charlie kiss is carefully shot to avoid too much contact, too much passion. When Nick gives Charlie the hickey everyone reacts with HORROR and DISGUST no one has a sense of humor about it other than ironically the bullies who find it funny, Nick, Charlie and Tao all act as if Charlie has the Scarlet Letter on him. Indeed their conversation about sex never once uses the word "sex" or admits in any way that either of them have a serious interest in it, or have thought about it. No one is saying the scene should have gone differently in the basics, but rather than a tender moment where two boys face and deal with their feelings about sex its an awkwardly rushed through scene that avoids the word sex at all costs in an effort to make sure we know they won't be doing the nasty because they're not "like that"
finally this doesn't fit into what I'm talking about but thought was a very good point so I'm putting it in
For a show about a Genz Queer friend group it is UTTERLY TOTALLY devoid of ANY sense of humor about being gay. Queer GenZ and millennials have a irreverent sense of humor around their sexualities and genders, the number of times a day I say "I'm having a full faggot crisis" or say to a friend "you are gay as hell" it is frankly very odd to see teenage queer friends who never joke about it, ever at all.
I feel like... if I declared that Charlie Spring was a top and Nick Nelson was a bottom the resulting discourse would cause major destruction as two different waves of internalized/subconscious homophobia would be unleashed from with-in the Heartstopper fandom and at least one person would try to hire a hit man off the internet to kill me, and that person might be Alice Oseman tbh.
*Artist Note* Fell in love with #Heartstopper. Wanted to celebrate with redraws of some my favorite panels
Art by jmbad_art
Posted with Permission (reprint/edit and/or commercial use prohibited)