You know Becky Albeteralli, who wrote the book that Love Simon is based on. Her most recent book Imogen, aCTUALLY involved a teenage girl who is dealing with her sexuality when she meets a queer girl on a college visit. In the course of her meeting, she has a long conversation with several friends who are all lesbians-bi-pan about a TV show that involves a lesbian teen love story that has undergone heavy criticism from the LGBTQ+ community as basically the same story Love Simon is. The writers are both lesbians and the lead actress has just come out as bisexual. bUT according to one of the teenage girls, none of this makes a difference in her eyes as to this being a queer story for straight people. wHEn one of her friends mentions the horrific abuse one of the performers has undergone and has basically been forced to come out as a result, she shrugs it off: "Biphobes are gonna biphobe."

I don't know if Albertalli is speaking directly to the backlash that came both about her book and Love Simon but it does speak volumes to the way that so many people - not just in the LGBTQ= communuity but all minoritiy groups - will often react to any show that tells a story that even if it represents them, they dismiss is because it doesn't meet their stories. When you consider that there's another circle of hell on the internet that argues any representation of characters in media that DOESN'T meet the white, heteronormative standards of society then we see the paradox that so many filmmakers do trying to tell any of these stories. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't, often by the very people they hope to represent.

I'm a white cis hetero male so I can't pretend to know what it's like to face the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community any more than any other minority. And I believe the best way to get these views more widespread is for more stories of the type of Love, Simon to be told. But if the very people whose struggles are being highlighted have decided that it's unrealistic, then one has to wonder what the point is. As someone who knows that even ten years ago, the idea of a relatively big budget Hollywood movie like this being greenlit, much less being released and successful would have been unthinakble - I honestly wonder if there's going to come a point when some people wonder if there's even a point making the effort. Considering we need these kinds of stroeis now more than ever, and that we've had to go decades without them being told at all - I don't like to use words like ungrateful to the loudest complainers, but sometimes no other word fits.