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Queer erasure
Queer erasure or LGBTQ erasure refers to the tendency to intentionally or unintentionally remove LGBTQ groups or people from record, or downplay their significance, which includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. This erasure can be found in a number of written and oral texts, including popular and scholarly texts.
Queer historian Gregory Samantha Rosenthal refers to queer erasure in describing the exclusion of LGBTQ history from public history that can occur in urban contexts via gentrification. Rosenthal says this results in the "displacement of queer peoples from public view". Cáel Keegan describes the lack of appropriate and realistic representation of queer people, HIV-positive people, and queer people of color as being a type of aesthetic gentrification, where space is being appropriated from queer people's communities where queer people are not given any cultural representation.
Erasure of LGBTQ people has taken place in medical research and schools as well, such as in the case of AIDS research that does not include lesbian populations.[citation needed] Medicine and academia can be places where visibility is produced or erased, such as the exclusion of gay and bisexual women in HIV discourses and studies or the lack of attention to LGBTQ identities in dealing with anti-bullying discourse in schools.[citation needed]
Straightwashing is a form of queer erasure that refers to the portrayal of LGBTQ people, fictional characters, or historical figures as heterosexual. It is most prominently seen in works of fiction, whereby characters who were originally portrayed as or intended to be homosexual, bisexual, or asexual are misrepresented as heterosexual.
Bisexual erasure (or bi erasure), also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality (or similar identities, such as pansexuality) in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.
In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can include the belief that bisexuality itself does not exist, and that individuals who identify as bisexual are either heterosexual or homosexual. People who believe that bisexuality does not exist typically claim that bisexuals are simply confused, or in denial, about their own sexuality. In the case of bisexual men, this commonly manifests in a stereotype that bisexual men are simply closeted gay men. Bisexual individuals are also sometimes dismissed or stereotyped as hypersexual.
In 2007, Julia Serano discusses trans-erasure in the transfeminist book Whipping Girl. Serano says that transgender people are "effectively erased from public awareness" due to the assumption that everyone is cisgender (non-transgender) or that transgender identification is rare. The notion of transgender erasure has been backed up by later studies.
In 2025, transgender erasure has intensified, particularly in the United States, due to significant policy shifts and executive actions. On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14168, titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government." This order mandates federal agencies to recognize only two sexes, male and female, as determined at conception, effectively disregarding the existence of transgender and nonbinary identities.
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Queer erasure
Queer erasure or LGBTQ erasure refers to the tendency to intentionally or unintentionally remove LGBTQ groups or people from record, or downplay their significance, which includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. This erasure can be found in a number of written and oral texts, including popular and scholarly texts.
Queer historian Gregory Samantha Rosenthal refers to queer erasure in describing the exclusion of LGBTQ history from public history that can occur in urban contexts via gentrification. Rosenthal says this results in the "displacement of queer peoples from public view". Cáel Keegan describes the lack of appropriate and realistic representation of queer people, HIV-positive people, and queer people of color as being a type of aesthetic gentrification, where space is being appropriated from queer people's communities where queer people are not given any cultural representation.
Erasure of LGBTQ people has taken place in medical research and schools as well, such as in the case of AIDS research that does not include lesbian populations.[citation needed] Medicine and academia can be places where visibility is produced or erased, such as the exclusion of gay and bisexual women in HIV discourses and studies or the lack of attention to LGBTQ identities in dealing with anti-bullying discourse in schools.[citation needed]
Straightwashing is a form of queer erasure that refers to the portrayal of LGBTQ people, fictional characters, or historical figures as heterosexual. It is most prominently seen in works of fiction, whereby characters who were originally portrayed as or intended to be homosexual, bisexual, or asexual are misrepresented as heterosexual.
Bisexual erasure (or bi erasure), also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality (or similar identities, such as pansexuality) in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.
In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can include the belief that bisexuality itself does not exist, and that individuals who identify as bisexual are either heterosexual or homosexual. People who believe that bisexuality does not exist typically claim that bisexuals are simply confused, or in denial, about their own sexuality. In the case of bisexual men, this commonly manifests in a stereotype that bisexual men are simply closeted gay men. Bisexual individuals are also sometimes dismissed or stereotyped as hypersexual.
In 2007, Julia Serano discusses trans-erasure in the transfeminist book Whipping Girl. Serano says that transgender people are "effectively erased from public awareness" due to the assumption that everyone is cisgender (non-transgender) or that transgender identification is rare. The notion of transgender erasure has been backed up by later studies.
In 2025, transgender erasure has intensified, particularly in the United States, due to significant policy shifts and executive actions. On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14168, titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government." This order mandates federal agencies to recognize only two sexes, male and female, as determined at conception, effectively disregarding the existence of transgender and nonbinary identities.