12 LGBTQIA+ tropes we don’t want to see in pop culture anymore

Predatory stereotypes

We’ve already been through the problematic age gap in Call Me by Your Name. However, creating a narrative that features a gay couple where one significant other is underage is obviously problematic because it conflates negative depictions of the community with real-life LGBTQIA+ people.

Aside from Call Me by Your Name, the predatory tropes in media are, unfortunately, as disparate as they are multifaceted. In Loving Annabelle, the film depicts an older woman who falls in love with and dates her underaged student. Not only does this reiterate a pedophilic stereotype, but it also insights an abuse of power in regards to how an adult woman pursues a student.

Then, there’s Gypsy. Aside from the troubling title of the canceled Netflix series, which features a Romani slur, its portrayal of bisexuality includes a storyline involving a therapist’s unethical abuse of power.

It should be self-explanatory why a series about a therapist who stalks a patient she’s in love with is wrong. Not only does it show a bisexual character who violates her trusted relationship with her patients, but it’s also an illustration of a trope so pervasive it has a name: the Depraved Bisexual.

There’s already an extended list of anti-gay rhetoric both in and outside of cinema, and predatory tropes implicitly correlate harmful stereotypes on the LGBTQIA+ community.