Quite often, as Goltz reminds us, the two stereotypes intersect, as in classic films such as Death in Venice, Gods and Monsters, or Love and Death on Long Island, toto name but a few, where ageism and homophobia combine to judge intergenerational relations as inappropriate and gay characters as "dirty old men" eager to recover their lost youth. If (older) gay men have recurrently been stereotyped as hypersexual and as sexually voracious, they have also been represented as weak and effeminate, miserable and lonely, and as less manly than their heterosexual counterparts (Goltz, 2014 Freeman, 2010). By addressing this gap in research, this article elucidates how gender (diversity) is being constructed for consumption on adolescent television and its potential for (re)thinking trans/gender, identity, and embodiment for young people in contemporary Western societies. The privileging of certain modes of trans personhood and embodiment over less normative (unseen, unacknowledged, and thus invisible) ones is at stake in these representations, but they also lay the groundwork for diverse future depictions. Both representations are grounded in material and emotional journeys (or movements) and the concept of the ‘moving body’ (Keegan, 2013) partly informs these readings. While challenging assumptions that trans lives are governed by negative emotional states, these representations continue to reify stereotypes, not only of transness, but also of boyhood, girlhood, race and their intersections. As such, the themes of ‘love’ and ‘hate’ manifest in interesting ways in both of these televisual texts and guide this article's analysis. Conversely, they also explore more positive aspects of the lives of young people, such as friendship and romance (even as these cause their own problems at times), also enjoyed by trans youth. As trans youth are highly vulnerable due to both systemic ageism and cisgenderism, it is not surprising that both detail narratives of discrimination and assault driven by bigotry and ignorance. Its most recent incarnation, Degrassi (previously Degrassi: The Next Generation) is discussed in this article, alongside Glee, in relation to their recent inclusions of two transgender-identified teenagers bringing transgenderism to the fore of these programmes' discussions of gender and identity. Likewise, Canada's Degrassi franchise has portrayed non-heterosexual characters in significant and controversial ways.
Glee represents a variety of masculine women and feminine men as well as gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters. The teen television shows Glee (2009-) and Degrassi (2001-) are notable for diversity in gender and sexuality representations. Finally, from these analysis and theoretical dialogues, I propose the notion of "heteronormative teleologies” in order to open the debate about the heterosexual prescriptive bases that tend to persuasively organize how the life course – in its transitions and in its entirety - is understood and negotiated in the contemporary. In a dialogue with a contemporary branch of the north american queer studies which is often called “queer time” and “queer temporalities” – while also presenting a review of these debates – I try to critically discuss how the transitions between the different periods of life are conceived and imagined as well as how they have some normative bases.
These narratives focused on social pressures towards the achievement of certain biographical milestones conceived as heterosexual and taken as essential to access happiness and fulfillment along the life course.
My research, in turn, focused on men between 45 and 70 years old who kept homoerotic sexual practices and / or who identified themselves as homosexuals. This article aims to examine some recurring elements that were present in the narratives that were collected throughout my ethnography.