Beliefs Barney the Dinosaur Was Feminine or Queer-Coded Fueled 1993 Hate Campaign Against the Character

Mar. 15, 2025

“Barney & Friends”.

Barney had love for everyone, but the same couldn’t be said for the big, purple dinosaur.

Dr. Emily Contois, who teaches media studies at the University of Tulsa and has studied anti-fandom, appears on the Nov. 19 episode ofGeneration Barney, a podcast that looks back at the show and character, to discuss the backlash.

“Understanding particularly why adult men didn’t like Barney reveals a lot about gender and power in our current society. There were women who didn’t like Barney, but the high-profile hate was really coming from men,” hostSabrina Herreraexplains.

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Barney at the 55th annual Golden Globes in 1998.Bob Riha, Jr./Getty

Bob Riha, Jr./Getty

“He offered up a different model for masculinity, even as a purple dinosaur and not a human. This message about love, about nurturing, about looking after others, that these are emotions and also sort of social practices and responsibilities that in our culture are constructed and understood to be sort of feminine and feminizing,” Contois says.

“Barney could be understood as resisting that, pushing back against that, offering a different model of sexuality and gender and size all coming together. And so for some of these men who reacted very poorly to him, that could be a piece of their reaction,” Contois notes.

“Barney & Friends”.Mark Perlstein/Getty

Mark Perlstein/Getty

“A part of that White masculine sort of set of authorities is also this incredible resistance to homosexuality,” she adds.

source: people.com