My last two posts have mainly focused on traditional media and queer representation, but for this post lets look beyond just books or television for queer representation and stories.

Social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and many others can serve as sites where queer people can connect, share their stories, and create content around the issues surrounding queer folks. Many of these sites can be a non-queer person’s first time learning and connecting with queer. Sites like these can also help people to discover their own queerness and serve as a safe space to telling others about themselves.

YouTube and Queer Representation

For this post, I want to discuss a video from the YouTube channel called JaidenAnimations and their video titled Being Not Straight. JaidenAnimations is a channel that mostly focuses on animations and telling stories through animated videos.

The video Being Not Straight serves as a coming out and admitting to the audience that she is aromantic and asexual. The video also details her journey and how they came to understand her identity. I would argue that this video serves as a great tool and introduction for understanding queerness, a tool for coming out, and a tool for making an audience more comfortable with queerness.

Amatonormativity

You may have the read the word above and are thinking what does that mean. Amatonormativity in basic terms means the normalization and belief that romantic/sexual love is normal and that everyone desires to be in romantic/sexual relationship with one person, and that romantic love is more important than other kinds of love. Our society does discriminate against people who do not conform to ideals of romantic love. JaidenAnimations video does help to highlight this form of discrimination that may be invisible to some.

Here is a great video in helping to understand what Amatonormativity is.

Why this Video?

I chose this video because I relate to JaidenAnimations struggle in finding out that she is aromantic and asexual. Like her I didn’t even know that these identities even existed up until and a few years ago. As someone who is aroace like JaidenAnimations I found comfort from this video. Videos like this are a great tool in normalizing queer identities due the growth and the power of the internet and non-traditional media.