Trans And Black LGBTQ Stories Shine In 33rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards

The list of this year’s nominees for the 33rd annual GLAAD Media Awards feature some of the biggest names as well as a wide variety of diverse and marginalized identities in LGBTQ Hollywood, in music and even at Forbes.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 13 finalist Gottmik announced the nominees live Wednesday via the TikTok channel of GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer media advocacy organization.

The awards honor fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of LGBTQ people and issues in popular and news media.

“After decades of LGBTQ characters being excluded, sidelined, or misrepresented on television, it is incredibly powerful to see how many series introduced fresh, impactful, and fully developed LGBTQ characters and storylines in their first season, many of which were some of the most beloved shows of the year,” said GLAAD president & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “The introduction of the Outstanding New TV Series category recognizes the shows and creators getting LGBTQ inclusion right from the beginning, and encourages other showrunners to include LGBTQ characters and stories that enlighten and entertain in new projects.”

Among this year’s nominees: Lil Nas X, Pose, West Side Story, Eternals, Sex Education, RuPaul’s Drag Race, We’re Here, Saved by the Bell, 9-1-1: Lone Star, Star Trek: Discovery, Batwoman, Changing the Game, I Am Jazz, Harlem, With Love, Twenties, tick, tick… BOOM!, Trans In Trumpland, Hacks, Yellowjackets, Love, Victor, Sesame Street, Muppet Babies, Rugrats, Dickinson, The Other Two, Dancing with the Stars, 12 Dates of Christmas, The Oprah Conversation with actor Elliot Page, Demi Lovato, Halsey, Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, BROCKHAMPTON, Mykki Blanco, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Ernest Owens, Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart.

Among the news outlets and bloggers honored with nominations are The View for its interview with Emmy winner Mj Rodriguez, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Univision, Telemundo, the Washington Blade, TIME, People, Out, The Advocate, Mombian, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, My Fabulous Disease and POZ.

In addition, many talk show and journalism nominees feature trans people and/or highlighted issues affecting the trans community.

For example, one of the nominees is a story in Forbes based on the exclusive first interview of HHS Asst. Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine by a transgender journalist, who is this reporter.

Of the 30 television shows nominated across Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Drama Series, and Outstanding New TV Series, 18 feature transgender and/or nonbinary characters, including: Pose, 9-1-1: Lone Star, The Chi, Good Trouble, Grey’s Anatomy, The L Word: Generation Q, Star Trek: Discovery, Supergirl, Gentified, Saved by the Bell, Sex Education, Shrill, Work in Progress, 4400, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Sort Of, With Love, and Y: The Last Man.

Other nominated shows and films featuring trans and/or nonbinary people or characters include: West Side Story, Changing the Game, Pier Kids, Gossamer Folds, Port Authority, The Lady and The Dale, No Ordinary Man, Pride, Nash Bridges, Rurangi, I Am Jazz, Legendary, MTV’s Following: Bretman Rock, Queer Eye, RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Voice, We’re Here, Ridley Jones, “Whatever Floats Your Float” Madagascar: A Little Wild, The Loud House, and “Manlee Men” Danger Force starring Michael D. Cohen.

Streaming services saw a total of 63 nominees, with cable receiving 39 nominations, and broadcast networks receiving 17 nominations. HBO/HBO Max scored the most nominations of any network with a total of 19 nominees, followed by Netflix with 17 nominees. Hulu received 7 nominations, while ABC, MSNBC, and Peacock all received 4 nominations. In the Spanish-language categories, Univision and Telemundo both received two nominations.

Transgender and nonbinary characters appear in the nominated comic books and graphic novels as well.

Six of the 10 games nominated for Outstanding Video Game also feature trans and/or nonbinary characters, including: Boyfriend Dungeon, Far Cry 6, The Gardener and the Wild Vines, Life is Strange: True Colors, Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.

For those media projects that do not fit into one of the existing GLAAD Media Awards categories, Special Recognition honors were awarded to Jeopardy! Champion Amy Schneider, The Laverne Cox Show podcast, the memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, the 4D with Demi Lovato podcast episode with Alok Vaid-Menon, the documentary short CODED: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker, the Life Out Loud with LZ Granderson podcast, Outsports.com coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, and Telemundo’s Celebrando el Mes del Orgullo.

GLAAD’s Barbara Gittings Award for Excellence in LGBTQ Media will be presented to Franco Stevens, a pioneering lesbian journalist who founded Curve Magazine and The Curve Foundation.

The other nominees in the category in which Forbes was nominated, Outstanding Online Journalism, are:

• Across the South, a Trans Housing Movement Grows by Raquel Willis (VOGUE.com)
• As Anti-Trans Violence Surges, Advocates Demand Policy Reform by Jo Yurcaba (NBCNews.com)
• Let’s Talk About (Queer) Sex: The Importance of LGBTQ-inclusive Sex Education in Schools by David Oliver (USAToday.com)
• LGBT+ Afghans Fear Being Forgotten 100 Days Since Taliban Takeover by Hugo Greenhalgh (Openlynews.com)
• Megan Rohrer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s First Trans Bishop, Wants to Get Messy by Nico Lang (them.us)
• No, DaBaby, HIV Will Not ‘Make You Die in 2 to 3 weeks.’ Here’s the Truth. by David Artavia (Yahoo.com)
• T.J. Osborne is Ready to Tell His Story by Sam Lansky (TIME.com)
• What I’ve Learned After Living with HIV in Secret for Years by Tony Morrison (GoodMorningAmerica.com)
• The Word Missing From the Vast Majority of Anti-Trans Legislation? Transgender by Orion Rummler & Kate Sosin (19thnews.org)

The 33rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards ceremonies will take place in Los Angeles on April 2 and in New York City on May 6.

For a full list of nominees, go to: glaad.org/mediaawards/nominees.