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2018 was a banner year for queers in film - a fact upon which The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber has already dutifully reported. While we’ve seen queer people portrayed in movies before, in major roles even (think Milk, Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica), what this years movies have in common, as Kornhaber notes, is that they focus on coming out and the declaring of one’s nascent queer self. 

This storyline has been much awaited. Even the most queer-centric films of the past have presented queer characters in a state of being that is taken for granted, encouraging audiences to see queerness as a binary of existence or non-existence: there are gay people in the world and here they are. For liberal audiences, this characterization is an opportunity to declare sympathetic allegiance to the marginalized. 

In the presence of more side-lined roles, this is an opportunity for stereotyping and segregation. Growing up, many movies and television shows I watched depicted the insidiousness of lesbianism as a threat. Typically this was in the form of a character who, for the purposes of slap comedy, presents her sexuality with such brazen confidence one might mistake her for a straight white man. I assumed that queer people were so self-possessed that they simply came into being - and then came to fuck up your straight life.

Alternately, lesbianism appeared in the form of punishment for failing to be the right kind of woman. Liz Lemon is appalled Jack Donaghy set her up on a date with his female friend; he explains his assumption of her sexuality by pointing to her sneakers that are “definitely bicurious.” That was how the media depicted sexuality before I was ready to accept my own queerness. No wonder it took me so long to say those words aloud. 

What this year’s films have done well is presenting gay people in a state of change that almost all queer people have had to confront (if not in action, then at least in contemplation): coming out of the closet.