Readers are turning to Lisa M. Stulberg's new book, How to Win a Culture War, for a timely look at how LGBTQ+ stories, performers and creators reshape public attitudes. Drawing on 14 years of research and 170 interviews, the book explores why entertainment can reach people emotionally, even when political debate leaves them cold.

Essential Takeaways

  • Pop culture builds empathy: Characters, athletes and musicians can make unfamiliar experiences feel personal.
  • The book is deeply researched: Stulberg interviewed 170 people across entertainment, sport and activism.
  • Visibility is complicated: Being public can create community and opportunity, but it can also bring danger and backlash.
  • Behind-the-scenes workers matter: Writers, producers and directors often determine which LGBTQ+ stories reach audiences.
  • Progress still has gaps: Queer women, trans and non-binary people, and LGBTQ+ people of colour remain underrepresented.

Why stories can succeed where politics struggles

A good television drama or film can slip past a viewer's defences in a way a political speech rarely does. We spend time with fictional families, cheer for athletes and invite musicians into our homes, so emotional connections can form almost unnoticed.

That is the central argument of Lisa M. Stulberg's How to Win a Culture War: LGBTQ+ Social Change Through Pop Culture, published by the University of Chicago Press. The book examines how entertainment can make difference feel familiar, human and even joyful.

The idea is hardly abstract. A viewer might begin watching for the jokes, the romance or the competition, then finish with a deeper understanding of someone else's life. It isn't a lecture, and that's rather the point.

Fourteen years of conversations reveal the real engine of change

Stulberg's research is built around interviews with 170 actors, writers, athletes, musicians and activists. The result is less a parade of celebrity names than a look at the many hands involved in creating cultural change.

Publishers describe the book as an exploration of LGBTQ+ social change through popular culture, with attention to both famous figures and less visible creative workers. Those conversations underline a useful truth: representation doesn't happen by magic. Someone has to write the scene, commission the project, cast the performer and fight to keep the story intact.

Stulberg also found that many people she interviewed didn't describe their work as political. They wanted to make excellent art or compete at the highest level. Yet that commitment, expressed publicly, could still challenge prejudice. Sometimes doing your job brilliantly is its own kind of cultural intervention.

The six strategies behind lasting LGBTQ+ representation

The book identifies six approaches used by LGBTQ+ culture workers: becoming visible, using available platforms, changing the workplace, overachieving, becoming normal and staying queer.

Some of these strategies sit comfortably together, while others pull in opposite directions. Becoming normal can create acceptance, but staying queer protects difference, independence and the sharp perspective that often comes from living outside the mainstream.

The workplace may be the hardest area to shift. As publishers and booksellers note, the entertainment industry remains sensitive to perceived commercial risk, while diversity initiatives have faced growing political pressure. That can make ambitious LGBTQ+ storytelling harder to commission, particularly when executives are looking for the safest possible choice.

For readers choosing between books about LGBTQ+ media representation, this is where Stulberg's approach stands out. It isn't only about counting characters on screen. It asks who controls the room, who gets heard and whose experience is treated as commercially valuable.

Visibility can open doors, but it isn't a duty

Public visibility has always carried a double edge. It can offer solidarity, recognition and a chance to shape the story, but social media has also made harassment immediate and relentless.

Stulberg is careful not to present visibility as a universal obligation. A person's control over coming out or speaking publicly depends on safety, work, family, race, class and other forms of privilege. For some people, staying private isn't cowardice; it can be a necessary survival choice.

That nuance matters in a culture that often treats visibility as automatically empowering. The strongest representation gives people agency rather than demanding that everyone become a symbol. A public figure can speak out, stay quiet or change their mind, and none of those choices should be made lightly.

Queer joy is commercially powerful, too

The success of recent queer-led entertainment offers a useful reminder for cautious decision-makers: audiences don't merely tolerate LGBTQ+ stories. They actively want compelling ones.

Stulberg points to the television phenomenon Heated Rivalry as an example of queer romance and joy reaching a broad audience. Its popularity suggests that inclusion isn't simply a moral or political project. It can also be good business when the storytelling is confident, emotionally rich and genuinely entertaining.

Still, one hit cannot stand in for a fully inclusive industry. Mainstream media continues to underrepresent queer women, trans and non-binary people, and LGBTQ+ people of colour. The next challenge is making room for more kinds of stories, not congratulating ourselves for a single breakthrough.

Why the margins still have something important to say

"Staying queer" is perhaps the book's most intriguing idea. It argues that marginalised communities can bring a valuable outsider's view, noticing the habits and blind spots of the mainstream more clearly than those at its centre.

That perspective can produce humour, empathy and creative risk. It can also stop inclusion from becoming simple assimilation, where acceptance arrives only on the condition that difference becomes less visible.

The historical context strengthens the argument. LGBTQ+ communities have repeatedly faced hostile political narratives, from government purges and the AIDS crisis to modern attacks on trans and non-binary people. Yet television, film, music and sport have often offered education and connection when institutions failed.

For anyone wondering whether culture can still change minds, the answer is reassuringly practical. Make the story good, let people feel something and give creators enough room to tell the truth. That may not settle a culture war overnight, but it can change who audiences see as fully human.

It's a thoughtful reminder that social change often begins with the story someone chooses to tell.

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