The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has released a report bemoaning the decline of LGBT characters in film.
“We are in an era of increased censorship efforts – including most recently and outrageously the Federal Communications Commission opening an inquiry for public comment on whether TV ratings should warn audiences about LGBTQ families and transgender and nonbinary characters in TV programming,” GLAAD CEO and President Sarah Kate Ellis wrote. “It is clear that our advocacy must evolve to meet the gravity of this moment.”
“Our stories are disappearing,” GLAAD wrote Sunday on Instagram.
The study, Where We Are in Film, “maps the quantity, quality and diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) characters in films released by ten major motion picture studios during the 2025 calendar year.”
All told, GLAAD tracked 225 films released in 2025.
“Of those 225 films, 46 contained LGBTQ characters (20.4%),” the report read. “This is a decrease from the 23.6% inclusive films (59 of 250) counted in 2024.”
Furthermore, “GLAAD counted a total of 112 LGBTQ characters in these 46 films, a decrease of 69 characters from the 181 LGBTQ characters in 2024 inclusive films.”
LGBT “characters of color” also decreased by six percent from 2024 to 2025.
More troubling to Ellis is the fact that this decline in representation amounts to a trend.
“The overall percentage of [LGBT-inclusive] films is down to 20.4%, a 28% decrease in percentage of inclusive films in just three years from the record high 28.5% of films in our 2023 study,” she wrote.
In the report’s “Observations and Recommendations” section, GLAAD lamented this overall decline in representation, particularly among “characters of color.”
But the organization took special aim at the studios for excluding transgender characters altogether.
“Recent editions of this study have found that almost all transgender characters counted were either portrayed offensively and/or were cast inauthentically, with cisgender actors portraying trans characters,” the report read. “In 2025, zero films across the 10 distributors tracked included trans characters.”
GLAAD attributed this to a hostile political climate.
“Given the current attacks on the trans community, it is extremely disappointing that studios have either released films that cause harm to the transgender community or excluded trans characters entirely, neither of which increases the familiarity and acceptance we know is the result of authentic and inclusive media representation,” the report read. “The misrepresentation and exclusion of transgender characters and stories in entertainment, while politicians and anti-LGBTQ activists are fixated on targeting trans people through misinformation, anti-trans legislation, and violence, is unconscionable.”
But the organization did not stop at mere complaints. Instead, it threatened Hollywood’s bottom line.
“If film studios continue to ignore trans people and stories — particularly in content made for Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and Millennial audiences, who are both more likely to personally know a trans person and who are driving the box office today – these companies risk declining relevance with audiences and the loss of key demographics essential for industry sustainability,” the report read.
GLAAD provided no statistical evidence to support its claim that studios must make LGBT-friendly movies in order to sustain themselves.
Conversely, substantial evidence suggests that the pre-2024 advance of wokeness in Hollywood caused moviegoers to flee. As a result of this and similar trends in other industries, conservatives coined the phrase “Go Woke, Go Broke.”
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