Gender Trouble on "The L Word"

Upper class lesbians, in contrast, have historically been feminine in appearance, allowing them to blend in with heterosexual society. On The L Word, these women are clearly upper class or are at least aping an upper-class existence, and their discomfort with difference in gender expression is also a discomfort with class difference.

In episode 3.03, when Jenny's friends welcome her back to Los Angeles with dinner at a very expensive restaurant, all of her friends are put off by Moira's appearance as a working-class butch dyke. Bette offers, “She comes from a place where you know you have to define yourself as either/or; it's probably just the only language that she has to describe herself.”

This reveals that Bette comes from a place where traditional feminine standards of beauty is the only acceptable language for lesbians, marking a curious lack of sophistication in her character, who is supposedly a nationally known art expert. If anyone at the dinner table that night should be expected to understand differences in gender expression, it should be Bette.

Alternatively, one would expect Shane, who is physically the least feminine of the group, to understand at a more emotional, personal level that Moira's appearance is a kind of nontraditional gender expression. But Shane reacts to the group's attempt to categorize Moira as butch by dismissing the notion of butch or femme: “What difference does it make whether someone's butch or femme? We should just leave the labels alone and let people be who they are.”

Shane essentially contradicts herself in these statements, advocating a world free of labels while simultaneously insisting that people should be allowed to be who they are, eliding the fact that people often want to take on identities such as “butch” or “femme.” Speaking those words in a positive light and identifying on a personal level with those identities are ways that individuals act on a daily basis to resist gender norms.

But The L Word continues to conflate gender expression with “role playing.” In Season 1, Kit sarcastically dismissed “butch and femme role playing” when Bette warned her that Ivan the drag king was courting her “old school.” In Season 3, again at the same dinner scene, Tina muses wonderingly, “I'm just surprised that she wanted to role play like that, especially after everything that Jenny's been through.”

This misunderstanding that butch and femme are roles that are played rather than identities that are lived situates The L Word in a world of 1970s lesbian feminism that denigrated such personal identities as unfeminist. It positions The L Word as mainstream, even conservative in its understanding of gender. It is increasingly understandable for men or women to want to change their sex, but it is still difficult for the mainstream to grasp the concept that within one sex, there can be many different gender expressions.

But to say that I was disappointed with the way that The L Word handled the question of gender is inaccurate, because that would imply that I had higher expectations.

The Showtime series, in its first two seasons, demonstrated that it is not particularly invested in telling complicated stories about complicated issues. The L Word is at its heart a soap opera, more Days of Our Lives than Six Feet Under. This is not unexpected, given the fact that series creator Ilene Chaiken spent five years of her pre-L Word career working as an executive at Aaron Spelling Television, the production company that brought us soapy hits such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Dynasty.

I expected the show to deal with these storylines in a well-meaning but ultimately poorly executed manner. I expected The L Word to further underline its commitment to traditional feminine gender norms. I expected butches to continue to be marginalized in The L Word's fantasy of Los Angeles. And The L Word met all my expectations.