However, despite all these revolutionary progressions made, there are still some aspects of sex and sexuality based discriminations present in todays media and attitudes. This is largely derived from the ‘heteronormativity’ that still purveys the elder generations. This heteronormative attitude is seen most clearly in the ‘coming out’ process, a process that requires a person to courageously ‘out’ themselves and clearly state they are something ‘other’ than the socially accepted norm. Over time this process has come to be met with praise and congratulations, rather than hatred, yet the implication of the procedure still remains - that gay is different. Ideally, the reaction to someone’s revealed sexuality would be indifference, or better yet, sexuality should not be inherently regarded as straight unless stated otherwise, but rather undefined. As Simone de Beauvoir explains ‘the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation’.
Therefore, bisexuality, or pansexuality, would be the ideal situation, however these sexualities are still somewhat shunned by both straight communities and LGBT communities, who tend to forget the ‘B’ in their name. The progressive liberal views towards gay men and lesbians have indeed seen an exceptional amount of progress, however the acceptance of all sexualities is yet to be fully achieved. Only 28% of bisexuals will ‘come out’ to important people in their lives, whilst 77% of gay men and 71% of lesbian women have told their closest friends and family. Furthermore, stereotypes still exist, and are not being tackled, for these sexualities that are not purely gay or purely straight but somewhere in the middle. These people are accused of attention seeking, being curious and using one label as a stepping stone into full homosexuality, being disloyal or polyamorous, being greedy or desperate in viewing anyone with the potential for a relationship, and so on. This is where the ‘sexuality spectrum’, a concept created by the youth of today, helps to destroy the idea that sexuality is a binary - straight or gay - and instead can be somewhere in the middle and also fluctuate throughout a person’s life.
Millennials.