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(This transcript was created from the original script uploaded as closed captioning. Differences where James skipped overdiverged from the script are highlighted.)

Good afternoon everyone.

One of the first questions we’re asked when we come out is “How did you know you were gay?” I… don’t know what most people are expecting when they ask this. Do they expect some thrilling love story with a sudden shock of discovery — a meeting of pure affection and yearning, seeing beyond the cultural conditioning of courtship rituals. Love, in spite of social standards.

Or are they fishing for an answer that has something to do with how you got a raging stiffy at summer camp whenever a certain camp counselor came around? Either way, it’s an obscenelyabsurdly personal question, and in the latter sense, a little inappropriate for water cooler smalltalk.

Yet, in most cases, people who ask this question seem a little… disappointed in the inevitable answer? You know, given that most of the time the question is asked, the answer will be: “well I just always knew.”

Some of us… don’t even put a whole lot of thought to it. We literally do just know. Like for me, I had a crush on Billy the blue power ranger when I was about 4 and that was that.

For others, it can takecomes with a little bit more… self-deduction. We see ourselves as being a little bit different than the rest of our friends and certainly different than how we are told we should be in media. Picture books, television, movies — stories in general. What we are told to feel about girls — is how we feel about boys. The nervousness, the confused obsessions, the… little butterflies in your yummy^{[sic: tummy]}.

And of course, naturally, the inverse for lesbians. And of course, the chaotic bisexual profile, where you feel that way about boys and girls. And, of course, all the ways in which this identity growth applies to trans and gender-nonconformiming children.

Between just knowing or piecing together our identity from hundreds of small, fragmented, otherwise unremarkable shreds of evidence — we figure it out. Sometimes, with no clear, discernable moment of grand realization. We wake up and say: “oh crap, I’ve been like this all along and I willI'm going to be like this all along.”

How much emotional turmoil this causes depends on how homophobic your parents and community are. Sometimes you come out into a gentle place, other times not. Mainstream culture has weird conceptions about how children ‘become’ gay. The general thought processes is that someone does not know or cannot know that they’re gay before they’re sexually active enough to develop a conscious preference. The question: “how do you know that you’re gay?” — or variants of said question — betrays a thought process that indicates that gay is an exception to the rule. That there is a human being who is normal, and that ‘gay’ or ‘trans’ or whatever else — is added later to this human being. A veneer, a tattoo — something that is added to the self and thus, not a fundamental part of the self.

So…. Because gay is an ‘additive’ component of the self — these people think — there must be a singular moment when you become gay. The reality is that attraction to women is just as remarkable as being attracted to men. In an objective sense. In fact, given that aromatic and asexual people do exist — we should consider it remarkable that we’re attracted to anyone at all.

So why is it such a fuss when it comes to letting children know that GAY exists? We expose young people to straightness all the time. Straight Public displays of affection are without taboo. The news loves depicting happy marriages. Picture books are riddled with affectionate moms and dads. Young people heterosexually kiss all the time in cartoons. The objective of like… 80% of YA novels is built around some pre-teen straight romance. Hell, As soon as a male and female toddler meet the first words out of SOMEONEs mouth is “aww they make such a cute couple.”

So it’s not like kid friendly romance isn’t available to young people. But why is it such an ordeal the second it’s about two boys or two girls? The answer is, somehow, that we musn’t expose children to sexuality.

Okay. Well how is two boys holding hands any more inherently sexual than a boy and a girl holding hands?

Bear in mind the Beatles owe their skyrocket to fame thanks to their song: “I want to hold your hand.” But at the time, this was essentially a scandal. “My daughter? Holding hands? Out of wedlock?” Rock music before this was about how pretty your girl was. Touching and kissing was considered to be absolutely unsuitable for even teenagers. Elvis was so racy because he made songs about dancing with girls. His gyrating pelvis had women fainting. (Imagine if they went to a BTS concert.)

So in modern times, over half a century after the neo-puratin revival of the 1950s, why is gay hand holding sexual — but straight hand holding is not? Even among people who are pro-gay in their rhetoric, there seems to be a line drawn when it comes to all-audiences media that depicts any kind of gay representation.

Ah yes. Back to Disney.

Look, I’m sorry. But if you’re gonna go out of your way to develop a monopoly that’s a cross between an amoeba absorbing foreign bacteria and a black hole where IPs can never escape — you’re going to be the only place fingers get pointed.

In the past, studios and networks escaped criticism about lack of representation because there were a lot of them. So anger about lack of representation was not directed at a single corporation, but a cultural trend about the business of show.

Nowadays, since Disney’s been mustering its empire for the better part of the last 30 years, there’s so little competition that peoples’ ire about representation is laser-focused on specific executives in the company. Due to the size of the company and the command over as many intellectual properties as it has, people look to Disney in a unique way.

There is, yes, technically Illumination Entertainment, Dreamworks, and Laika who make animated films directed at children. Disney has the additional element of longevitylegacy.

A Disney movie is likely something that will carry over for generations — something that will not only be kept in a library of DVDs, but something from which we can expect sequels, spin-offs, theme park attractions, and endless merchandise. A Disney movie will stay around, and offer continued returns in a way the Sing franchise, for instance, is not expected to do.

And that’s due to the fact that when we look at a Disney movie, we compare it to every other Disney movie. Whereas we gauge a Shrek movie based on other elements within the Shrek franchise, and not necessarily against Shark Tale.

A single Disney movie will speak not only to this current day audience, but future audiences as well. A movie that comes out in 1980 will not be just a movie in 1980 because it will likely be re-watched for years to come. And even a Disney movie that is not successful upon release gets a legacy because it becomes a part of the Disney oeuvre. Available for kids and adults to watch on home video and Disney Plus forever.

So while there is additional security that a given Disney movie will have a consistent presence in the Disney Family, securing otherwise under performing films a cult fandom, there is the additional pressure that it must fit into the Disney family.

Suffice… this has created a bit of a problem for the House that Walt built. Disney, on one hand, owes its success to its brand. That’s the reason it became evergreen enough to just drop $4,000,000,000 on Star Wars on a whim. Disney didn’t need Star Wars. It was doing just fine. Disney’s brand was built up on the original values projected by Walt himself. Family-friendly, accessible to children, innovative animation, unabrasive, and timeless. Even if Walt himself didn’t have all of these qualities.

So. On one hand, Disney corporate isn’t stupid. They know that there are many gay and even trans-friendly families. By the principal of permitting children to see themselves in these films, and knowing that gay children and parents exist, there is an obligation to depict that.

However. Disney movies kind of need to be the film equivalent of easy listening radio. They don’t really want to rock the boat — the long-term success of the company, and being able to weather hardship is owed to possessing a library of material that is mostly inoffensive. As time has gone on, certain once-accepted tropes in storytelling have become problematic. But for the most part, Disney’s creative mandate was to remove as much provocative thought from a story as possible to allow the emotional simplicity to be very accessible to audiences of all ages.

And this is where the problem is developing. We’ve always expected media to reflect the social values we hold. It’s why early Disney was so white, so waify, so straight, and had an obsession with depicting monogamous love at first sight. And why older single women were so scary.

But the (majority) social climate of today leans towards social justice. Voices for the under-represented, healthy depictions of romance as opposed to idealized ones, freedom of identity, and — most importantly — fighting for these values in spite of resistance from established restrictions. Rock the boat if one has to.

So. Disney neither wants to make media that requires much thought, nor do they want to ruffle anyone’s feathers over a movie. But they also want to make media that is as reflective of all audiences as possible, which demands going out on a limb and depicting people over whom some of their audience will have their feathers ruffled. Doing one but not the other will violate the tenants that have allowed Disney to become as successful as it has.

The easy solution would be to bite the bullet, do your market research, and make a calculated gamble at catering to the demonstrably larger audience. Captain Marvel did not suffer a box office setback due to the picketing and protesting about Brie Larson’s outspoken attitude about representation or the fact that this was a strong female character in general. And neither did The Force Awakens suffer a box office backlash from the people protesting an apparent black protagonist. (Which was absolutely a JJ Abrams red herring and Boyega deserves better.)

So I think it’s safe to say that erring on the side of increasing visible, meaningful representation would not generate a significant setback.

But, when it comes to the LGBTs, Instead, Disney has been… trying to play the field. With little snibbits^{[sic: snippets]} of queer representation here and there, but with the plausible deniability to insist that they haven’t actually put gays in their movies. But at the same time, not saying that they’re not putting gays in their movies.

So it goes, that people who follow movie media news are a little bit more socially-minded then the average Joanne and Cletus. So Disney promotes a film withand their first gay character, knowing that it will really only be picked up by mostly very online audiences. And then upon release, there’s so little gay there that parent groups won’t boycot^{[sic: boycott]} it because they don’t notice it.

And it was cute, at first. The gays were patient. We know what Disney is. And we know the kind of people who oppose us, and we know that they scream family values at the slightest inkling of gay hand-holding.

But I think we assumed that Disney would, at some point, stop dipping their toes in and dive head first when they realized how warm the water was. Especially after realizing how much money we gays spend on Disney branded everything. Disney’s consistent reluctance to butt heads with the shrinking numbers and waning power of Gay-Avoidant Parents Groups has led to a culmination of very… ungraceful stabs at projecting queer messaging.

The defence now, apparently? Kids just can’t be gay.

We just went through a lot of media analysis of Disney movies in the last video, so we don’t have to do that here. Link in the description though, if you missed it.

But I am absolutely sick of the straights telling me that Disney’s not going to have out-and-proud queer characters in their movies because their movies are ‘for kids.’ I’d like to know what about being gay makes us unsuitable for children.

To all the allies who rush to disney’s defence, they really ought to know this is the exact same argument that was used when gays weren’t allowed to adopt or even raise their own children for the longest time. Why we weren't allowed to be teachers. What about mythe gay lifestyle is so different from athe straight one? Really? Why are you so afraid of having your little brats exposed to two kissing cartoon ladies? Are we still in the era of being worried that seeing gay media is gonna turn your kids gay?

I do want to point out that, in lieu of the prior video about Disney’s ongoing vendetta against gay characters, that they are perfectly comfortable depicting queer stories. As long as they don’t have queer characters. Queer stories around alienation, isolation, societal prejudice, and walking into a small town and having to ask yourself if you’re going to die there. And it’s not like we want to swarm children’s media. Even in 2021, straight people do exist these days. For now.

But the difficulty becomes how Luca is essentially the perfect gay youth love story. Yet any instance of it being intentionally mentioned is omitted from the final edit. We’re on screen in all but name and identity, and though some may argue that should be enough — that really is the most important step.

And yes, there is a… clump of gay people — usually gay men of a certain age — who are gonna hold out and insist that it’s never going to count as properly gay until there’s sex on screen. Dicks in butts. We really don’t need that toxicity in our lives though. And I mean, they-- they're too busy going on gay party boats to watch movies anyway.

Most of us though aren’t asking for that. We’re not asking for a lot, actually. I dunno. Holding hands? Specifically romantic language? Maybe a tiny little peck on the cheek? Something like that? Nothing more than what you’d get in a straight cartoon?that wasn't in the early Disney movies.

For these reasons, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that GAY content is inherently unsuitable for kidschildren. If being gay wasn’t suitable for children, then these obviously queer expiriences and obviously queer characters would be rejected by purity groups everywhere.

However, they arethey're not. And they instantly find themselves among the library of Disney classics. So if we arewe're accepted in everything but name, why is just outing these characters that’s the hard part?

It’s hard to figure out what Disney executives intentions are because… they're rich white Hollywood liberals who, on one hand, love gay money. They want the gays to show up at Disneyland and buy their overpriced water, and rainbow mouse ears. They love gay cruises and make a heap of money off thatthem. They recognize that gays will never have accidental babies, and both surrogacy and adoption requires a stable, high income. So… when gays do have families, they are families with a lot of expendable income. Which is the marketeer’s wet dream. The Merchandise sells itself.

But, on the other hand, Disney is terrified of what has consistently proven to be a small tiny... tiiiiny little audience of family traditionalists and homophobes. I… have a hard time blaming the corporate body that is Disney. The company has survived a number of very long periods of near-destitution. We look at Disney as an Empire now, but between Walt’s death and the renaissance of the late 80’s and early 90’s, everyone looked at the company as a belly-up library of once-great innovations.

Corporations in creative industries that have survived financial crashes are ones which honour the value of the stuff that made them popular in the first place. Take Nintendo, for instance, which is so allergic to adjusting its own brand and image that it took years for them to move Pokemon to consoles, in spite of high consumer demand. Steps to adjust existing IPs are extremely incremental, because they understand what makes these video games sell well, and a complete upset of format is a huge risk — a greater risk than a film studio takes on a single movie.

Video game studios are not as robust, and cannot absorb a flop as easily as Hollywood can. (Not as good with the accounting.)

Nintendo has also been burned bad over instances where they have… let other creators mess around with their IPs.

(I don’t know, I think that one is kind of iconic.)

Regardless of Nintendo’s totalitarian approach to streaming and fan art, the company sees it’s financial security in the future based around the ability to maintainmainstream the core components of their IPs. Disney functions in the same way. However, unlike Nintendo making the 68th Mario game, Disney can’t just tack on sequels ad infinitum. They tried that. It didn’t go great.

Every Disney movie, in this respect, needs to somehow be a spiritual successor to the prior library of great Disney movies. Every new Disney Movie needs to both aesthetically and thematically be able to ‘fit in’ with prior entires. This is clear in the marketing, as the Princesses don’t need to be completely redesigned whenever they make a Princess and the Frog, Tangled, andor Frozen.

At other times, this makes its way into their own content. Which is good for creating consistently entertaining movies. —but it does mean that the archaic values of Snow White by mandate must exist in modern films in some way.

Which means that films are still constructed in ways that are bound by Hayes Code values. Principal among them is that Gays are not suitable for audiences. Let alone children.

And while it is not necessarily the corporate body of Disney that is to blame for the lack of representation, the responsibility is on the shoulders of a handful of executives who could have had the guts to stand up and fight against the existing governing principles of the company. Whether they are personally adverse to homosexuality, or whether they want to run a tight ship, the real problem that I see with lack of Disney-versity is the audience.

Yes, I know that queer folks, and many of our allies, have been clambering for representation, but even with our staunchest of allies, we make up far from the majority of movie-goers. And while many Disney fans are likely supportive of Queer rights, there are many who rush to offer Disney the usual defence.

“The fish-boys can’t be gay. This is a movie for children.” “Maybe if they were a few years older. Maybe 16. Then they could be gay.” “Why does everything have to be about making things gay? Can’t you just let kids be kids?”

[Nick in the background:] "Go home kids!" [James laughs, Nick continues:] "[Inaudible] go home!"

At this point, Disney doesn’t even need to defend its own lack of diversity because they have an audience making arguments that Disney itself could not officially make without getting ripped apart by GLADD and the HRC. A lot of these people are likely very much of the right mind about gay rights, gay families, gay acceptance.

However, while they may also watch The Trixie and Katya on YouTube, they hold the belief that there is a time and a place for gay stuff, and Disney is just not the right place. I would ask why, exactly, Luca the fishboy is too ‘young’ to be gay? I knew I was gay when I was 10!

This is no doubt due to the conflation between same-gender attraction and sex itself. Which, you wouldn’t know this from looking at the way our culture has this discussion, but they are absolutely not the same thing. As a gay child, I didn’t want to suddenly put on a full face of makeup and vogue my way into a bathhouse.

Believe it or not, but psychological development among gay people happens at the same rate as straight people. We want to start having sex roughly at the same time that straight people doas our straight peers. It’s just that given that there are still elements of taboo around gayness, we also reject the taboo stigma of virginity. So we’re more likely to start going at it when our straight peers still want to [granny voice] keep their legs closed for Jesus.

And given that sex attraction is the socially-defining element of homosexuality, this is when the straight hegemony SEES us growing out of being otherwise perfectly normal boys and girls. And this is also roughly the age when our little brains begin to deconstruct the concept of gender roles, so also the age when we begin to question our gender.

Recently, I read a study that tracked a number of trans people and their parents. The question asked to both parents and the children was ‘before coming out, how long did you notice gender-nonconforming traits?’ Parents of children answered that they saw absolutely no indication that their child was trans before they came out. Whereas the trans people themselves said that they had known about their gender identity for years, or even their entire life.

The observation here is that regardless of how we are perceived to be, we have always been here. Just because so much of this process is internal, does not mean it’s not happening. In the same way, we don’t suddenly become gay at a sleepover. We’ve always been sharing affection with friends of the same gender in some way or another.

However, as we mature through puberty, sex becomes an option for how we express that affection. Just because sex-acts with the same gender are how the straight hegemony qualifies us as homo-hemosexuals— [blooper]

Just because sex acts between two people of the same gender are how the straight hegimony qualifies us as homosexuals, does not mean that is the beginning and end of what we are. One of the misconceptions the straights seem to have is due to a misunderstanding of the term: homo-sexual. They seem to read it as if the key element to being gay is sex, how we want to have it, and who we have it with. When in reality, sex is the common ground we share with straight people. Hetero-sexuals. We have sex with people who we are attracted to (if we’re lucky) the difference is who we are attracted to.

So no, there is no ‘age’ where it’s appropriate to be gay, because there is no age when we're suddenly gay when we weren't before. And saying that fictional characters are too young to be gay — I am sorry — that’s homophobic.

Take, for instance, the fish boys, again. That’s the one that’s... really gotten under my skin for some reason. You had otherwise supportive allies saying that this story wasn’t gay. Absolutely not gay. No no no. No gay. No gay, nogaynogay.

But that it could be, if they were a few years older. Me, a former, openly gay 12 year-old — from a small community no less — can’t really… wrap my head around that thought process. You telling me I wasn’t allowed to be gay, much less openly gay for another what? Four years? 6 years? Tell me the hard cutoff age for when it’s okay to be gay and I will find you someone that says it should be higher.

We’ve got… lawmakers in the southern states saying that you shouldn’t be legally allowed to say you’re trans until you’re 28. No, that’s a bad argument. Because it sets up a hierarchy of sexuality. If 10 is too young to be gay, the implication is that you are straight. This line of thinking is built off an argument which depicts ‘straight’ as the default — and gay is a mutation on that default. Putting an age on gayness or transness — whether it’s how old you can be before you can see yourself in media, or how old you can be before coming out — is presenting a world where that is an abnormality against the ‘natural’ state of being straight.

And I realize that many straight people who argue against having gay characters in children’s media may not explicitly feel this way. But this statement is built off of those homophobic beliefs that underpin their oppinions. Which itself is a leftover value of Christian Puritanism, which has enjoyed a fabulously prolific cultural monopoly over Europe, and by proxy, the Americas, since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

This puratinsim is defined by an avid rejection of non-christian values. Specifically sex. This repulsion of sex and sexuality in all branches of life, has historically set up specifically restrictive enviroments for women and all queer people. People who conform to puritan values usually reject sexuality on principal, so it’s exceptionally difficult to explain human sociology or science to them.

And, as homosexuals and bisexuals are mistakenly separated from straight puritan values on merrits of sex alone, they understand us as nothing more than sexual deviants and perverts. As there is nothing more to us than sex, they fear and reject us the way they fear and reject sex itself.

To that end, I realize that when audiences rush to Disney’s defence to say ‘Disney can’t show the kids gay people’ they are parroting centuries worth of cultural indoctrination.

That said, protecting children from the gays is a relatively new phenomenon. Anti-gay propaganda has only been focused at protecting children since legal processes in society have become more secular. As we could no longer justify actions solely on what God feels is morally reprehensible, other arguments needed to exist to justify guilt to a court of law. And from here, arose the belief that we had to protect children from the sodomites, lest the child become corrupted… and also become a sodomite… Simply by the knowledge that it was an option.

Which says to me something very telling about the way European ancestors saw sex and sexuality. If someone could be corrupted to be gay simply by the knowledge that it was possible, shouldn’t that suggest that our antiquated forebears understood how easy it could be for a man — any man — to slip into gay thoughts. Or women... but historical legal and scientific documents did remarkably little to leave records of women when it didn’t directly relate to how they affected a man’s life.

This, to me, suggests that on some level, these lawmakers were aware that gay thought and actions were somehow natural. And that in order to keep people away from them, they needed a very artificial network of shutting queers out of everyday life to protect the next generation from opening the floodgates to gay. If gayness was unnatural, the human race would not have required such a stringent and organized effort to stop us from being gay. We’d just… not be gay. Like we are told not to be. Because there’s certainly isn’t very much formative media that’s telling us that it’s okay to be gay.

Gay children, trans children, nonbinary children, and all queer children are allowed to exist. And I think a lot of them need to hear that message. But consider for a second, being a gay ten-year old. You know you’re gay. You’ve known you’re gay for some time. Your parents know you’re gay. But some movie critic on YouTube is saying that movie characters your age can’t be gay. Because they’re not old enough.

But to this young person, they internalize the way that when society looks at them, all they see is the action of being gay. This is still the age when kids think kissing is gross and they’re already being judged by a purity squad. Consider how that internalizes this sexual shame. Not even out of the gate and there’s a deep-seeded hang up around sex because puritin America has passed on it’s fear of sex.

Now… consider this same child but in a home where their parents do not know they arethey're gay. And where that element of self would not be welcome among their family or community. And then consider if this child is trans instead — one of the most vulnerable groups of the queer community. And all the while, media constantly berates the public — saying these are things not suitable to be portrayed to all audiences.

To this child, the messaging that they’re receiving through media signals is that there’s something inherently wrong with them, who they are. Queer children aren’t so inherently different that they don’t deserve to be able to see themselves without having to write a thesis paper on why Rya is a lesbian. Nobody’s asking for any explicit acts of sexuality to be in a film directed at children.

And contrary to popular belief, boys don’t need to ‘kiss’ or go any further than that in order for it to be an adequate display of identity....representation! Because there is more to homosexuality than sex. And if you, a straight person or even a gay person cannot tell the difference, please begin making steps to change your thinking.

Every year, the demographic of ‘LGBTQ Youth’ increases. Every year, the number of adults who identify as bi-or-pansexual increases. This isn’t an issue that’s going to go away and soon there will be an even greater demand to see these people as human beings with different social perspectives, rather than sexual deviants.

And Disney? They’ve gone out of their way to establish themselves as the largest producer not only of children's’ media — but maybe even just media in general. Disney has more cultural sway over global media than any other single institution on the planet – especially given how ubiquitous their formative material is. Disney has a hand in shaping the coming culture of the world.

I’d say they have a pretty big obligation to fight back against the repressive purity values that are still internalizing shame in children. Against the illogical puritan fear of sex and it's even more illogical connection to gay people.

So their active silence of the it’s-okay-to-be-gay topic is beginning to echo louder than if they just came out condemning non-straight, non-cis identities. It’s like they think they’re being sneaky, but they’re not. Even younger people are beginning to pick up on it. If we want the next generation of lesbians, gays, bis, and trans people to grow up feeling normal, we need to stop putting conditions and age restrictions on their very identitiesexistence.

And it starts with us — the audiences — deciding that we’re not going to tolerate this clear cultural division between straight and everything else. This isn’t a phase, it’s not a condition, it’s not a choice, and it’s not a development. We’re never going to be able to be who we are, if everyone else expects us to be what they’re afraid of.