In this strand of my work, which I am still developing in different directions, I focus on media and LGBTQ politics, examining how representational mechanisms draw boundaries of normality, legitimacy, and belonging, both in news discourse and in popular culture. In one context, for example, I argue that reality TV formats that place couplehood and family at the center of their narrative (such as Married at First Sight) often adopt a conservative and exclusionary ethos, to the point of an almost complete erasure of LGBTQ people and other groups from prime-time television. This can be understood as a form of “symbolic annihilation” that produces an ostensibly “natural” version of reality. In another context, in a separate study on the coverage of gay politicians in Israeli online news, I show that even when media visibility is present, it is frequently mediated through recurring frames that position sexual identity or orientation as a central marker. The study identifies six prominent framing patterns, including “rights and recognition,” “political representation,” “breaking social norms,” and a strong focus on the private sphere (family), alongside rarer frames of homophobia or an alleged “incongruence” between sexual identity and conservative politics. Taken together, my public writing and empirical research underscore that the key question is not only whether representation exists, but under what conditions it becomes possible, what is highlighted or silenced, and which heteronormative assumptions and standards of “respectability” and “normality” are embedded in media discourse, often implicitly yet with real consequences for power relations, public perceptions, and the boundaries of civic belonging.