Who
has better representation on TV, gay
men or gay women? This question is often debated within the gay
community, with each group usually complaining that the other
clearly has the upper hand.
The
reality is that as tempting as it is to make this a black-and-white
issue, it's ultimately both better and worse for gay
men vs. gay women on TV.
First,
in terms of sheer volume of characters, gay men
win every season by a landslide. This season,
for example, there will be 33 recurring or regular gay male characters
on TV between September of 2003 and August of 2004, compared to
only 22 lesbian or bisexual women during the same time period.
Here's
a snapshot of the regular or recurring (i.e. appear in at least
three episodes) gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters that are
or will be on TV this season (for ease of comparison, network
TV characters are in gray, cable/premium characters are in yellow):
| Gay
Men on TV* |
Lesbian
and Bisexual Women on TV* |
Will
& Jack on Will & Grace (2)
John on NYPD Blue (1)
Philip and Simon on It's All Relative (2)
Lou & Pete on A Minute with Stan Hooper
(2)
Adam on Half & Half (1)
Michael on Oliver Beene (1) |
Jane
on Coupling (1)
Judith on Two & Half
Men (1)
Dr. Kerry Weaver on ER (1)
Bianca and Lena on AMC (2)
Ellen Degeneres on The Ellen
Degeneres Show (1) |
Sanford on Sex & The City (1)
David & Keith on Six Feet Under
(2)
Julien and Tomas on The Shield (2)
The
cast of Queer as Folk (6)
8 of the 16 men on Boy Meets Boy (8)
The cast of
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (5) |
Vanessa
and Liz on Nip/Tuck
(2)
Maggie on K Street (1)
Melanie and Lindsay on Queer as Folk
(2)
Det. Greggs & Cheryl on The
Wire (2)
The cast of The L Word
(7)
|
| TOTAL
= 33 (9 Network TV/24 Cable or Premium TV) |
TOTAL
= 20 (6 Network TV/14 Cable or Premium TV) |
*does
not include the occasional gay reality-TV contestant, like Chip
& Reichen on The Amazing Race 4 and Ebony on Top
Model
Any
way you slice it, there are far more gay characters on TV than
female ones. If you look at only network TV, for example, it's
still 9 gay men to 6 gay women (3 of which are on daytime TV,
not primetime). If you look at only gay characters on cable &
premium channels, it's 24 to 14.
And
the ratio has been lopsided like this for years; in fact, it is
only the sheer volume of lesbian characters in the upcoming series
The L Word that saves gay men from outnumbering gay woman
as completely as they have in the last several seasons.
There
are also more gay men on sitcoms than gay women this season (8
to 2), since apparently there are no funny lesbians except Ellen
Degeneres. When lesbian or bisexual women are on sitcoms, they're
almost always relegated to very minor roles (Two and a Half
Men), while gay men are usually a more prominent part of
the cast (Will & Grace, It's All Relative,
Oliver Beene, etc.)
The
only sitcoms that ever revolved around a lesbian--Ellen
and The Ellen Show--didn't last very long.
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