this. so much this. when i see younger fans always boast about "oh wow, women are main eventing wrestlemania, and a trans person is in AEW, so progressive!! becky lynch and bailey are so good in the ring!!" when i, personally, am not inpressed at all with them, cause i've already seen the likes of manami toyota, aja kong, akira hokuto, sara del rey, cheerleader melissa and awesome kong wrestle way before this whole "diversity and equality" thing became a trend (which, personally, i find it sad and hypocritical that it took this to be a popular trend for women and Minorities to be respected by the same people in power who should have changed the world a lot earlier than nowadays.)
same thing with representation in fiction, as japan, despite being very backwards on a lot of things, had shit like sailor moon, ranma, boys love manga, serial experiments lain and other works of fiction that represented women, sexualities and mental health issues way earlier than western fiction did. hell, shun from saint sieya himself is a huge subvertion of manhood, that character's message being "it's okay to be openly gentle and sensitive when you're a man." hokuto no ken, berserk and ashita no joe often showed manly men being reduced to emotional wrecks, experiencing lots of mental health issues and crying a lot and showing their love and emotions to one another, while jojo is perhaps the LGBT community's wet dream anime, and it's loved by everyone, even the straightest of men that i know! if that isn't a perfect example of progressive works existing at the time and being way ahead of ths curve, then i don't know what is...
as for minority representiation...lets say that japan doesn't have a good track record...mr. popo, anyone? (though in video games, they have improved quite a bit. namco, in particular, with eddie gordo, raven, bruce irvin and leroy smith. even in manga, with bleach and its blind dreads-wearing captain and black lagoon and MHA, not to mention golden kamui and its pro-ainu stance... and i nnever thought mr. popo was black. the guy doesn't even look human!)
though then again, there aren't really a lot of black and latino people living in japan, so it's more about unfamiliarity than any outright racist intent.
yeah, that last part of this post should be posted on a different thread than a wrestling thread. i got out of hand, sorry, guys.