Here we are celebrating Pride Month by spreading cheer and proudly showing off rainbows and kids channel Nickelodeon decides to join in and reveal something about one of it’s most popular characters. Yup, I’m talking about SpongeBob SquarePants. While fans of the show have been speculating that the character is gay for the longest time, there was no mention of the sexuality of the character up until now.
Recently, Nickelodeon‘s Twitter handle tweeted in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community with pictures of Henry Danger’s Michael D. Cohen who is transgender, Avatar Korra from The Legend of Korra who is bisexual, and SpongeBob too. This sparked further discussion about the character’s sexuality and whether he was actually gay.
But back in 2005, the creator of the show Stephen Hillenburg had said that SpongeBob is neither gay nor straight. He emphasized that it has got nothing to do with what they were trying to do. He said the show was purely for entertainment basis and they were trying to be funny. As a final note, he added that if anything, SpongeBob was asexual.
Asexual people often desire strong, emotionally-intimate relationships without any interest in sex.
How amazing is that? Asexual representation in pop culture is quite rare even in Hollywood and we love that one of the most famous animated characters is now going to be hailed asexual.