As a man, that fight scene with the belligerent woman where you can't effectively defend yourself is a nightmare scenario which is sad/pathetic when you consider what the average woman's worst nightmare is regarding aggressive male-female encounters.

That's true - I was a pretty big fan of the writing on the original show so i'm looking forward to seeing how they incorporate contemporary technology.

Well the other worry is that they'll address contemporary technology and the show will feel redundant by comparison to Black Mirror.

I wonder how the ubiquity of camera-phones and the internet will affect the X-Files - it was probably a lot easier to believe in the uncanny and supernatural before we all started documenting every second of our lives and sharing those (mostly boring) moments with the world.

See I totally agree with all that. The first two paragraphs talk about a choice - use an umbrella - that is socially perceived as gay. The last paragraph you acknowledge that mannerisms/voice are learned and then set. But I would also like to suggest to you the high probability that voice/speech/manner are…

You are wrong about that actually, but that's okay haha - there are linguistic differences but the stereotypical behavior is pretty consistent. Realize that all gay people grow up surrounded by straight people and if stereotypical mannerisms and speech manifest they manifest very early, sometimes as early as…

Yeah, but as I said before there are plenty of completely out gay men who are indistinguishable from straight men in their effortless "masculinity". They'd only be recognizable as gay when engaging with a potential sexual partner. Mannerisms, the sound of a man's speaking voice and the way he speaks (nasality, uptalk,…

Dude, I assure you no gay man i've ever met actively chose to adopt supposedly gay mannerisms. There are stylistic choices sure - like being into fashion or especially coiffed but almost every gay man i've ever met who self-presents with mannerisms deemed effeminate by straight society spent most of his teens…

Hmm, i'm going to have to respectfully disagree with a few of your points. Firstly, we're talking about a TV show that ostensibly depicts the reality of the time - I guarantee you that demographically speaking there were just as many "stereotypical" gay guys as heteronormatively self-presenting gay guys in the…

I don't disagree with any of your points. I just don't think it would have taken anything away from the scene to include a more subtle characterization of gay men as technically "in-your-face" gay really just means gay men that don't self-present the way straight men typically do. It's frustrating because in my lived…

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Watch it again if you can and check his mannerisms. There's more than one stereotype at play, but the most obvious the writers/director/actor chose to go with is the limp wrist.

I think I misremembered him having a sexual relationship with Joan when the truth is he was just flirtatious with and attentive to a number of women, potentially to hide his homosexuality.

You're probably right about that to a degree. To be honest I only have vague memories of the whole Bob Benson saga.

My issue isn't the stereotyping, it's that it feels like lazy writing - remember this is TV storytelling right, not a real world encounter. My reasoning is, yes I understand it's a short scene and you need to communicate to the viewer that they are gay, but since this is TV and we don't get to spend the afternoon with…

I think the writers are trying to find ways to communicate how social mores are changing with time now that it's the seventies. So I get why they included it but it could have been handled with a bit more nuance.

The interesting thing about Bob Benson is that he wasn't actually gay. He was bisexual. But the show managed to make him into a stereotypical trope as well - the common duplicitous Bisexual. It's the most well known way to characterize a bi person - not to be trusted, devious and self serving. But he was a fun…

I'm not denying that. But it is possible to have a light touch. Again, it's a short scene and they needed to work fast to establish that the two of them were gay, but the characterization may have felt a bit less lazy if say one man was a stereotype and the other man was less so. It's just frustrating when writers…

There's something a bit screwed up about the way this show depicts gay men. I understand that scene was extremely short and they wanted to telegraph their homosexuality to the viewer in as efficient a way as possible but it's always a bit irritating when you see a gay character on TV and they're just pure projections…

The problem with TV episodes like this combined with DVR is that I end up watching them in 30 second chunks because they're so uncomfortable that I have to pause regularly just to get a break from the discomfort/awkwardness.