#it's also interesting that we get a lot of queer men relative to... ronnie and her partner as the only evident queer women?

[templeofshame]

i was gonna wait until i finish schitt’s creek and make one post with thoughts, but then this is nagging at me so... i definitely wanna preface this by saying that i’m really enjoying the show and i definitely think its and its creators’ intentions, especially with regard to queer people, are good. no need to defend it to me!

in s2, the thoughts i had on bi rep in schitt’s creek were fully summed up by “jake would definitely read as a problematic bi stereotype if david weren’t also bi/pan. #dangerofasinglestory.“ and the s1 manner of establishing david’s pansexuality and his family’s acceptance were cute and well done imo. it plays with the assumptions we societally have that someone who presents and behaves as david does would be gay. and even with jake as a poly casual-sex stereotype with questionable communication, it’s only an issue for david and stevie because they know each other (and have past hookups they’re awkward about), not because he’s dating a man and a woman at the same time.

but then in s5, we get some rockier stuff for me re: bisexuality. we get antonio, who is a david copycat immediately clocked as checking out men while (falsely) assumed to be engaged to a woman. he’s a con artist, as thus defined by his deception, and ultimately there’s no reason to particularly think he’s bi, but even when people think he’s engaged to a woman, the fact that he’s ostensibly queer is immediately grabbed as evidence that he’s conning wendy. (which he is, but not in a way that has to do with his sexuality.) and then once we establish that he isn’t wendy’s fiance and his sexuality isn’t relevant to the con, we still throw a queer man under the bus because wendy’s actual fiance, brad, is revealed to be antonio’s partner. we don’t get much discussion of this, but the implication is that either brad is a bi man cheating on his female fiance with a man or he’s a gay man pretending to be interested in women, and both of those feed into biphobic stereotypes.

the other thing in s5 so far is that multiple characters refer to patrick as gay without him ever describing himself that way. the characters, who are presented sympathetically and supportive of him, never seem to consider that he could be bi/pan. which he may well not be, and i don’t know if this is clearer later on in the show, but they all met his female fiance the season before and they’re all pretty comfortable with david being pan so they might have at least thought about it?

idk it’s all little stuff but it did make me double-check that dan levy is gay, not bi/pan, and it does make me wonder if they actually had any bi/pan people writing for the show.