Guest blog post from Matt Johnson -
First of all I’d like to make one thing clear. I am well aware that Kate as a character and Kana as a couple divide opinion but whatever side of that you are on, I’d ask to you put that to one side when you read this post as this isn’t about a character, or a ‘ship’, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about how a group of people has been made to feel by the scenes last night which saw Kate attempt to seduce Adam. While I am not a part of the LGBT community myself, I have many friends that are and I care about the community, seemingly more than Corrie do.
As well as Adam’s line ‘I’ll try not to get excited,’ playing to hugely damaging stereotypes about lesbians being a pervy male fantasy, they also retconned Kate’s entire history for the sake of supposed drama. From the day Kate first arrived on the cobbles, she has been an out and proud lesbian and had mentioned on at least two separate occasions that she has always been completely sure of who she is. Now she’s suggesting that her best kiss had been with a guy. Then there is her saying that she was only with Rana because she ‘liked the challenge’. I don’t even know where to begin with the problems with that.
Not only this, but it played on another very harmful stereotype that a lesbian will seduce a man in the right circumstances, in this case through being drunk. They won’t. Lesbians have no sexual interest in men in any circumstances. The show can try to justify this by the fact it was made clear how uncomfortable Kate was or the fact she was acting irrationally out of grief, but they could have shown that grief in so many different ways, they did not have to go down this route, but they chose to.
Since Kate and Rana’s storyline began I have seen many stories on social media of people who, thanks to the storyline, have felt able to come out to their families. Even when they haven’t it has at least enabled them to accept themselves. After what happened last night, I saw many young LGBT women say they felt invalidated. There is also young girls who are watching who are struggling to figure out or accept their sexuality, what kind of message does this send out to them? Corrie likes to show themselves to be caring about social issues, but on this one they have let people down very badly
By Matt Johnson
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