#cal bowman

@lgbtqcreators​ creator bingo — 8/10 lgbtq+ characters ↳ Dua Saleh as Cal Bowman in Sex Education (2019—)

HAPPY TRANS DAY OF VISIBILITY!!! 💛🤍💜🖤

couldn’t resist also making nonbinary pride icons of my fav canon nonbinary characters

Starts the season off by going after Otis and Maeve to nip the 2 obvious trouble makers before moving on to focus on the black, queer and neurodivergent students, and there’s a clear intent in how she talks to the 3.

She does not respect Cal as a non binary person and sees them as a women, which makes the continuous assaults clearly misogynoir on top of transphobia and erasure.

She dismisses and then initially sees Jackson as useful particularly for image purposes before dumping him because of Jackson’s own sense of justice getting in her way.

Viv is the most useful for a lot of the season because as a neurodivergent coded character Viv is vulnerable to authority due to how isolating it can be, as well as her desire for structure and good prospects. Hopes treatment of Viv gets so comfortable that she finally says some gross stuff right before the open day. This ultimately destroys her plan cause us neurodivergent folk have a strong sense of justice when rattled, when something is wrong we hate it.

Then there’s the sign hanging scene. Truly monstrous attempt to tamp down on the school, force every student to follow the rules by directly separating the black (cal) queer (cal, lily, Adam) and nuerodivergent (it’s coding but lily and Adam have a lot of coding) students and labelling them as outcasts and freaks.

This all doesn’t work mainly because the students destroy hopes power the only way you can: make clear that you embrace being a loud proud deviant and are not going to be silenced

And right at the end when Hope is attempting to tut tut Otis with her ‘I’m older and wiser and everyone from back when agrees with me’ Otis destroys her logic calmly by saying ‘no, they just weren’t allowed to speak up back then’.

Pro tip: a useful trick to destroying a fascist is to make it clear they’re views are not popular and they are in the minority.