An internet-based survey conducted by South Africa’s Triangle Project in April has revealed that most of the respondents felt that the country’s mass media contribute to prejudice against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
The survey, which ran on Health24.com for three weeks but only received 79 replies, asked respondents six questions about their perceptions of the way gay and lesbian people are portrayed in the mass media.
The Triangle Project’s mission, according to its website, is to contribute towards eradicating discrimination against and within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
A total of 72,2% of the respondents were aged below 35, 31,6% reported being gay and 26,5% were lesbian.
You and Huisgenoot magazines (27,8%) were named as the most prejudiced against the LGBT community, with South African Broadcasting Corporation TV in second place (16,4%). Nine percent voted for Die Son. Die Burger, Rapport and the Sunday Times each received 2,5% of the votes.
The Mail & Guardian was mentioned by one respondent as not being prejudiced against gay people.
When asked if the media have a potential role to play in helping to challenge society’s prejudice against the LGBT community, 84,8% of respondents agreed, 1,2% disagreed and 14% were unsure.
Fifteen percent had written a letter to the media to comment on an article that they thought was prejudiced, 73,4% had felt offended by an item in the mass media they saw as prejudiced during the previous year, and a dismal 7,6% thought the mass media represent gay, lesbian and bisexual people objectively.
Glenn de Swardt, manager of health services and research for the Triangle Project told the M&G Online on Monday that the media are prejudiced against the LGBT community ”particularly in terms of imagery used to portray gay and lesbian people”.
”They ignorantly confuse transgender issues with gay and lesbian people. For example, by portraying gay men as very effeminate — using an image of a man in a dress to represent gay people is akin to taking a photo of an American at a Halloween party with a pumpkin on his head, and using this image every time the media refers to Americans,” he said.
He highlighted Health24.com‘s gay, lesbian and bisexual experts’ forum and said it is ”a rare resource for people to gain support, information and advice and to learn more about the complexities of sexual orientation”.
However, De Swardt strongly believes that the media operate from a ”staunchly heterosexist paradigm” and should engage with the LGBT community to create better awareness and understanding.
”As a community we often challenge the media on their prejudiced attitudes, but I suspect the media haven’t engaged sufficiently with the issue of sexual orientation and sexual identity and possibly don’t know how to address the issue objectively,” he said.