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With each passing year, pop culture seems to make a little more space at the table for queer people. We’ve come a long way from the days of the Hays Code1, a regulating force that dictated exactly how writers were allowed to portray queer characters. As queer representation grows more commonplace in media, new conflicts arise between queer and straight fans, as well as the writers behind the screen.
When a queer character is introduced to a movie or TV show, there’s always some degree of backlash from straight audiences — but support from straight fans can also be unnerving for queer people. What happens when a straight audience becomes too enthusiastic about gay romance?
The Spotlight On Gay Male Romance In 2025
2025 was a banner year for slow-burn gay romance. The Emmy-awarded Netflix saga Stranger Things2 (2016-2025; The Duffer Brothers) resolved a long-awaited storyline for a character whose queerness was previously implicit — culminating in a coming-out scene that played before an audience of over 100 million people.
With its first season premiering in 2025, Heated Rivalry (Jacob Tierney)3 — the long-awaited adaptation of Rachel Reid’s 2019 novel by the same name — debuted to an average of 9 million viewers per episode, a stunning breakout for a queer romance.
Even on the small screen, a gay love story found closure: Dan Howell and Phil Lester, two famous British YouTubers, went public with their romantic relationship. The pair revealed they had been secretly in love for sixteen years4 — just as long as their fans have speculated about them.
This representation is crucial for queer fans who want to see themselves on screen. These fans are steadfast in their support of gay love stories, even if it requires patience and a little reading between the lines.
But these stories don’t go viral at the hands of queer people alone; gay romance is also popular with female audiences. Despite their lack of representation in these relationships, female fans make up a majority of gay romance readers, according to a 2020 survey.
Why Do Female Fans Love Romance Without Women In It?
When a love story strictly involves gay men, what’s in it for female fans?
Some may write this off as fetishization — fans merely gawking at something they consider exotic or taboo. While there is often an element of attraction for straight women — after all, two handsome men are better than one — there are a host of other reasons for women to enjoy or even prefer gay male romance.
One unique quality of this genre is its contrast to toxic masculinity. In straight romance, it’s common to see the woman emote openly while the man stares into the distance or silences her with a kiss. In a gay relationship, however, at least one of the men is going to have to emote — perhaps even verbalize their emotions. Female fans appreciate this unfortunately rare opportunity to see two men be vulnerable and demonstrative with one another.
Another common issue in straight romance is misogyny. Female audiences are constantly subjected to media involving sexist language, infidelity, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. Even in the absence of these tropes, male writers lean on misogynistic archetypes when creating female characters — the manic pixie dream girl, the bored housewife, the slut, the shrew, and so on.
Women are so conditioned to witnessing misogyny onscreen that any removal of this theme, even by omission of women altogether, relieves that subconscious pressure and allows female fans to relax. They can bask in the safety of a love story in which both partners appear to be complex individuals on equal footing with each other.
The Rose-Colored Microscope — When Queer Reality Becomes Straight Fantasy
Though female fans seem to have a positive view of gay romance, that doesn’t necessarily indicate this representation is successful. Romance writing and marketing creates warped images of gay men and queer relationships — and when these relationships are still relatively uncommon onscreen, those images are extremely potent. Well-meaning allies can easily veer into fetishization and caricaturization.
One criticism of straight female fandom is its heightened emphasis on gay male “roles.” Fans engage in extensive discussion: Is this gay character a top or a bottom? Is he a bear or a twink? Queer people push back against the rigidity of these tropes, which are frequently misused by straight people to reflect heterosexual relationships.
Designating one partner as the “man” and the other as the “woman” is reductive for gay romance, especially when this framing comes from straight people. Female fans lack experience with the reality of being a gay man in a straight world. These fans often sanitize gay characters as “soft boys” who experience no real conflict with each other or society.
Because straight women don’t directly experience homophobia, it’s easy to gloss over this part of queer life and create a fantasy out of someone else’s daily life. When the struggles of gay people are trivialized, queer romance cannot serve as good representation — merely a daydream for straight women.
The Offscreen Impact On Queer Men
Due to this missing perspective on homophobia, many straight female fans engage with queer-made media in a harmful way. Fandom often drifts into obsession, and this behavior is especially dangerous for queer people behind the scenes. Straight actors and writers may consider fandom harassment a nuisance, but queer people — who are five times more likely to be victims of violence — experience it very differently.
Heated Rivalry cast member François Arnaud recently received a deluge of death threats from fans of the show. These threats came on the heels of dating rumors between Arnaud and his costar, Connor Storrie.
Fans perceived this real-life relationship as a threat to the show’s fictional romance between Storrie’s character, Ilya, and co-star Hudson Williams’ character, Shane. Arnaud, an openly bisexual man, now plans to move into a building with heightened security.
Over on Netflix, compounding pressure was building for the highly anticipated final season of Stranger Things. Season 5, Episode 7, “The Bridge” features main character Will Byers coming out as gay5. The sexuality of the character, played by gay actor Noah Schnapp, has been teased since the first season. Schnapp himself came out in 2023, after nearly a decade of journalists asking him about his sexuality — beginning when he was only twelve years old.
Schnapp was highly emotional about his character coming out of the closet, a scene which took twelve hours to film. After it aired, this episode received the worst rating of the entire series — panned by both homophobic viewers and allies who found the script rushed or impersonal. Fans made fun of the coming-out scene and Schnapp’s performance for weeks afterward.
Dan Howell and Phil Lester’s relationship announcement came with a tinge of frustration, as the two internet personalities parodied the invasive and dehumanizing treatment they received over the past sixteen years. Howell described fans’ speculation on their relationship as “hostile,” “violating,” and “apocalyptic,” resulting in constant panic attacks as he struggled to hide his sexuality from his loved ones and the prying eyes of the internet.
How This Conflict Shapes The Future Of Queer Representation
Queer love is reaching center stage now more than ever, and with this growing representation comes a new set of challenges. Queer stories are being written by straight authors and screenwriters, creating and reinforcing harmful tropes that water down the queer experience.
LGBTQ+ actors, musicians, and influencers are still in the closet in the 2020s despite growing support and demand for them. And though there is surface-level support for queer stories, straight fans’ empathy often stops short of actual queer creators, who receive adoration onscreen and harassment offscreen.
Yet 2025 proved one thing: gay figures are wanted (and needed) in media, and support for these stories is strong enough to create waves. Queer people finally have a space at the table — and this new representation clearly requires careful navigation.
Footnotes
- Rosenfeld, and Jordana. “Hays Code | Hollywood History, Films, Years, Rules, Era, & Definition.” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 28, 2024. ↩︎
- The Duffer Brothers, creators. Stranger Things. Netflix, 2016-2025. ↩︎
- Jacob Tierney, creator. Heated Rivalry. HBO Max, 2025. ↩︎
- “Are Dan and Phil in a Relationship? The Truth.” YouTube, October 13, 2025. ↩︎
- Stranger Things. “The Bridge.” Netflix. 66:00, December 25, 2025.
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