Sofia Ailyn Navarro

ENGL1302

Ana Mendoza

19 April 2024

Discussion Answer to Amy Duenez Outline on “Coming out on Grey’s Anatomy: Industry

scandal, constructing a lesbian story line, and fan action”

Queer representation has always been something that many media struggle with or do not

include due to their discriminatory beliefs. Even today, in our modern world where people

actively try to decrease discrimination of certain cultures, sexualities, etc. people still find ways

not to include groups of people. These people include people of color (Native people, people of

African descent, Asian descent, etc.), and, especially, queer people. Frequently, the media will

poorly portray the LGBTQA+ community, or not even portray it at all. One example of poor

portraying includes Grey’s Anatomy. Amy Duenez’s presentation on the article “Coming out on

Grey’s Anatomy: Industry scandal, constructing a lesbian story line, and fan action” by Tanya D.

Zuk explained how the writers from Grey’s Anatomy were inevitably forced to include some sort

of LGBTQA+ community representation by its fans due to an incident between two of the

show’s actors. In the incident described by Amy in her presentation, two actors, Isaiah

Washington and Patrick Dempsey got into an argument on set, and Washington used a

homophobic slur against another actor, T. R. Knight. This caused his immediate expulsion from

the show. He tried to apologize multiple times, but it only made his situation worse for him.

Soon after, the Grey’s Anatomy writers were pressured into portraying the queer community by

fans after they pointed out the lack of representation. Amy continues the outline by describing

the lesbian storyline created between two characters in which one of them was written off of the
show, making the lesbian storyline vanish, and ultimately making fans question Grey’s

Anatomy’s LGBTQA+ community representation. Amy describes how the article’s author,

Tanya D. Zuk, gives other examples of shows that have the same issue: lack of representation.

Through Tanya’s article, one can conclude that although there is an ongoing increase in

representation of racial/ethnic minorities as well as queer representation, there still needs to be a

lot done to stop the low rates of representation and include different communities and groups of

people. Writers can use this article in their own creative writings to acknowledge and act on the

topic of low representation of all these different communities of people. My peer’s presentation

on this article can help me improve in my creative writing by encouraging me to include more

representation of smaller communities as well as not be so hateful to others, unlike Isaiah

Washington was towards his coworker. The article can also help me speak up for those who are

being discriminated against by spreading awareness and trying to help get writers of popular

media to listen to people’s requests for more representation of certain communities, which in this

article, is the queer community. The whole analysis of the incident proves that through

criticizing, a positive change can occur, changing the stereotype of media not having enough

representation.