Fourteen-year-old actress Rowan Blanchard, who just last August wrote about her "personal feminism" and has tweets supporting Bernie Sanders all over her timeline, came out as "queer" on Twitter the other day. Blanchard plays Riley Matthews, the star of the Disney Channel's Girl Meets World, a spin-off of ABC's Boy Meets World. But while main characters Corey and Topanga famously waited to have sex until their wedding night on Boy Meets World, today's fans want their young daughter to "explore her sexuality" in Girl Meets World.
It all started when one GMW fan tweeted "BisexualRileyMatthews2k16" to which Blanchard replied, [the following tweets are verbatim, written by a 14-year-old, thus all the grammar problems] "would really be here for this! if not Riley- its vvv important to me, being queer, that there is representation on our show," then followed up in another tweet saying, "& being queer to me just means not putting a label on sexuality- just existing."
In another attempt to explain herself, she took a screenshot of a tweet she wrote that was too long to send that said, "in my life-only ever liked boys however i personally dont wanna label myself as straight gay or whateva so i am not gonna give myself labels to stick with- just existing :)" which only caused more confusion with fans. She finally tweeted, "yes open to liking any gender in future is why I identify as queer."
So apparently young Blanchard doesn't like labels, even while using a label like "queer" to describe herself, and doesn't fully know herself or understand her sexuality (which is totally normal for a 14-year-old kid!) But that isn't stopping adults from cheering her "coming out" and using it to push their own agenda.
The Daily Beast's Nico Lang advocates for normalizing homosexuality in young children through entertainment as a "solution" for vulnerable youth, in an article unambiguously titled "Disney, Say Yes to Queer Characters."
Ms. Blanchard is right: Queer inclusion is incredibly crucial for shows like Girl Meets World and companies like Disney, in order to represent the lived experiences of the queerest generation in history. ...
Disney’s first queer protagonist isn’t the only solution to these issues. LGBT youth need greater support networks across the country—whether that’s from schools, advocacy organizations, or local service providers—but media representation is absolutely a part of the movement for acceptance. Programs like Girl Meets World can open up a space for conversations in American households between parents and their children, normalizing queer sexuality for those who continue to lack crucial understanding. ...
It’s incredibly exciting that Rowan Blanchard came out—and that the inspiring young actress will be putting pressure on Disney to have her character follow suit. But what’s most inspiring is that gay teens are doing the same every day, coming out on their Twitter and Facebook accounts to their friends and family.
Those courageous youth deserve to see a girl like them on every TV in America.
It isn't enough that television and our culture have pushed to normalize being gay - gay marriage, gay adoption, gay everything - while less than 4 percent of the population is gay. Now they want to push it on our children. Literally. They want to encourage and celebrate kids coming out as LGBT. Being a kid and a teen is hard enough without all the pressures to "identify." Kids already are sexualized too early and, instead of resolving that problem, we're adding homosexualization in the name of inclusivity?
So, the bad news is Rowan Blanchard is young and influential with millions in her age group. The good news is she's young and could still change her mind and reject today's gender fluidity fad. Then again, she's a Disney Channel star **ahem, Miley Cyrus** so the future looks bleak for her.
