Gay ouran host club

Through the cuteness of the show and the balance between serious and fluffy storylines, Ouran endeared itself to me, but there was something more to it that made it one of my long-standing favorites. For me, it was one of the first times I saw queerness portrayed on the screen.

Yes, gay men could be found on TV, but other queer people just casually existing was virtually unheard of due to lingering hatred, views of queerness as taboo, etc. In a media landscape that lacked representation, Ouran opened my eyes to what queerness could be. It is, like so much media, a product of its time, rife with slurs, subpar representation, misogyny, and even queer fetishization.

Additionally, it must be remembered that the series is a product of early s Japan. While being gay was no longer criminalized at the time, it was still seen as a taboo within the culture.

♡My Ouran LGBTQ+ Headcannons♡

So while Ouran may have been seen as progressive to outside audiences, it was club a product of a time and host that, in general, saw queerness as something abnormal. So while Ouran was an eye-opening piece of media for me as a queer person, and while it may have been trying to bring some positive representation into a space that lacked it, it should certainly not be exempt from criticism, and its failures of representation should be noted.

In fact, they should not only be noted but used as a way to speak about the evolution of queer language and the possibilities gay future queer representation. This is simply a discussion of queer representation within a piece of fictional media, and when it comes to representation, it is nice to have the words and labels explicitly stated to show that yes, queer people of all kinds exist in the world.

Now, without further ado, here are my takes on the representation and misrepresentation within Ouran. Haruhi simply wants him to rest because his father regularly works himself to the point of exhaustion. So all in all, the series portrays Ranka in a positive way with its main problem being the usage of now outdated and negative language.

If the show were modernized or rebooted, obviously the language would shift, instead only calling Ranka a drag queen. Perhaps that is who Misuzu is. A gender-conforming ouran man who is comfortable and accepted as such. Or perhaps Misuzu is a drag queen who happens to now run a bed and breakfast and club participates in the art of drag.

Or maybe Misuzu is a trans woman and former, or host current, drag queen. Really, gay are many different routes of positive representation that the series could take with Misuzu if only an identity were explicitly given to him. Speaking of drag, the Lobelia Girls of the Zuka Club also participate in a form of drag. However, this is not because of a desire to ouran with gender but to stay within the confines of it.

All of this is to say that the portrayal of the Lobelia Girls makes me sad. In a show so full of queerness, why do lesbians have to be shown in such a horrifically negative way? Just like all groups of people, there are terrible lesbians, but the terrible few should not be the standard of representation for all.

In Episode 22, Ritsu Kasanoda is introduced. This leads him to be around the club, and Haruhi, quite often over the course of two episodes. In fact, he acts the same way around her once her identity is revealed, blushing, stumbling, etc.