Transphobic media organisations are alienating the whole queer community

It's Lesbian Visibility Week 2024 and I’m here to tell you that the future is lesbian.

With every generation the LGBTQIA+ community is growing – and queer women and non-binary people are, by far, the fastest-growing demographic.

We’re also a very young market: one in 10 women under the age of 25 are LBQ+ and, although the trans community is small, 1% of under 25s are trans or non-binary.

You probably didn’t know that – most people don’t know much about queer women or non-binary people and that’s exactly why Lesbian Visibility Week was created. In a world that rarely looks our way, we have always needed to build our own stages to celebrate and uplift each other.

But we are a market you should care about. If you are selling to under 35s, you are selling to a lot of LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people. You are also selling to a market made up almost exclusively of people who know and love us – for younger millennials and Gen Z, LGBTQIA+ rights and inclusion are a matter of core principles.

So what do LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people want? We want brands that demonstrate authenticity and ads that feature people that look and act like the people we know – Outvertising’s Consumer Report shows that more than three-quarters of us want to see “real people” in campaigns. The only way for you to hit that note is to get to know us and reflect our fabulously diverse community back at us. Dove has consistently hit that brief over the past 20 years by using diverse and queer-coded models in all its campaigns, from Real Beauty to #TurnYourBack.

Beyond representation, LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people want to hear from brands that have values and talk about those values in the real world. The group most likely to agree that companies should have a point of view and share it? Lesbians. From issues such as human rights and the climate crisis to animal cruelty, we are drawn to brands that reflect the challenges in the world we all share. We have all the time in the world to support the brands that get this right, but we’re short on patience for the brands that get it wrong.

And we will absolutely walk if your values don’t align with ours – 65% of lesbians will stop buying if an ad has a point of view they don’t agree with. Brands need to be genuinely thoughtful when it comes to representing our community and the issues we care about.

This is a challenge for campaign creatives but it also sets a bar that every part of your campaign has to clear. At a time when adspend is firehosing into the “dirty attention” economy and helping fuel culture wars, brands need to understand how all of their campaign choices are landing.

It's worth taking a step back and thinking about scale here. Dysphorum Project found that there were approximately 60 stories in the national press that centred on trans people in 2012. In 2022, just 10 years later, there were more than 7,500. Today, in 2024, your adspend may be going to an outlet that is publishing multiple trans-hostile articles every day.

Media transphobia isn’t just a turn-off for trans people. Cis lesbian and bi women are more likely than any other demographic to feel positively about trans+ people and want to see trans+ people’s rights extended.

An adland that wants to sell to the LGBTQIA+ community needs to start by not harming us – any of us. If your adspend is funding the media organisations that are driving the culture wars, don’t expect us to put our hand in our pockets and don’t expect us to forget about it any time soon.

What’s the solution?

• Stop funding hate. In fact, consider working with and supporting organisations like Stop Funding Hate, which promotes ethical advertising and an end to the dirty attention economy. You can absolutely do better.
• Invest in visibility. Commit to creative that highlights diverse LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people and that speaks to, and about, our community in a voice we recognise and welcome.
• Hire, support and promote LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people with a range of identities and experiences. Work with partners who do the same – because there is simply no better route to creative that is real and meaningful. Support your staff networks and work with them to make sure everything you do embraces the LGBTQIA+ community and queer cultures.
• And build bridges instead of burning them. This year Diva [which organises Lesbian Visibility Week] celebrates 30 years of being the world’s leading media brand focused on telling stories for LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people. Have you worked with us? You absolutely should! You should also work with Autostraddle and Them. You should work with brilliant new outlets like QueerAF.

Our communities love us and trust us – we can help you tell stories they care about, and you can help us keep telling stories they need to have told. Remember: the future is lesbian.

Nancy Kelley is the director of Lesbian Visibility Week

Lesbian Visibility Week

April 22-28 2024

This year's Lesbian Visibility Week celebrates the power of sisterhood by uplifting incredible LGBTQIA women and non-binary people from every generation, in every field and in every country around the world. A community that is unified, not uniform. The aims are to build public understanding of LGBTQIA women and non-binary people’s lives, to increase lesbian visibility and to create a legacy that benefits the community everywhere.