Apart from creator Stephen Hillenburg’s comment back in 2005, Nickelodeon also made our fave sponge’s asexuality official. Welcome to Pride 2020 with everyone’s new ace icon Spongebob Squarepants.
Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month 🌈
(🎨: by @ramzymasri) pic.twitter.com/pENmTaQB0h— Nickelodeon (@Nickelodeon) June 13, 2020
2020’s Pride month celebration is more important than ever. And of course, Nickelodeon acknowledges this and shows their solidarity. They took the opportunity to acknowledge their on-screen LGBTQ+ characters with a tweet and graphics, from Avatar Korra (“The Legend of Korra”), Swoz Schwartz (“Henry Danger”) and the network’s most iconic character Spongebob Squarepants.
After tweeting this, they turned off the comment section immediately. This is most likely to avoid any unnecessary debates with the characters’ sexuality. Like Buzzfeed reported, most fans thought Nickelodeon confirmed that Spongebob was gay. But they’re actually acknowledging Stephen Hillenburg’s canon that our sponge is ace and proud. To our biology majors out there, we all know it’s because real-life sea sponges are indeed asexual.
If this isn’t a Pride Month miracle, I don’t know what is.
Read more:
Watch 10 LGBTQ+ films where nobody dies
Know if your ‘Avatar’ nation is pro-gay rights in this graphic novel
4 fictional characters bringing the asexual representation we really, really need
