TV

“The L Word” Reinforces Negative Bisexual Stereotypes

Over the last three of its five seasons, The L Word has sent messages that erode positive representations of bisexuality by creating story lines and characters who reinforce myths that all bisexuals are crazy, in denial about their true sexual orientation, and likely to cheat on their partners for the other gender. The show didn’t always so flagrantly display this style of prejudice. It used to discount it.

When The L Word debuted in 2004, it featured two strong bisexual protagonists – the characters of Alice Pieszecki (Leisha Hailey) and Jenny Schecter (Mia Kirshner) – on very different sexual journeys. Alice was an out bisexual, always eager to defend the legitimacy of her orientation to her lesbian friends; Jenny was discovering her attraction to women while in a heterosexual relationship.

Through these two characters, particularly Alice, the writers addressed the lesbian community’s biphobia while still acknowledging the legitimacy of the orientation. Unfortunately, this informed depiction of bisexuality proved short-lived, surviving only the first season.

As a bisexual viewer, I kept tuning into The L Word in hope that it would magically revert to the beginning, when it portrayed bisexuality fairly. That hope officially died last Sunday during The L Word’s fifth season episode “Lay Down the Law,” when our former bisexual heroine, Alice, confirmed to viewers everywhere, under oath, that she’s now a lesbian.

Called to testify during a military hearing concerning her girlfriend Tasha’s sexual orientation, Alice is drilled by Col. Gillian Davis about her own sexuality. “So, you’re a lesbian, Miss Piezecki?” Davis asks.

Alice responds, “Last time I checked.”

Though Alice has been gay for more than a season now, I, like many bisexual viewers, maintained hope that her character wouldn’t fulfill the stereotype that all female fence-sitters transition into lesbians. My expectations were a little too optimistic.

Way Back When

During the first season of The L Word, someone’s bisexuality would be challenged by a lesbian character, and the recipient of the challenge would defend her sexual orientation. For instance, in the pilot episode when her friend Dana attacks Alice for her bisexuality, Alice fends off the accusation that she needs to pick a side:

Dana: Christ, Alice, when are you going to make up your mind between dick and pussy? And spare us the gory bisexual details, please. Alice: Well, for your information, Dana, I’m looking for the same qualities in a man that I am in a woman.

Later in the first season, Alice dates a man. True, it’s for comic relief – he’s “a lesbian-identified man” named Lisa – but her craving for male intimacy comes off as believable. Alice tells Tina, who questions Alice’s rationale for “going back to men,” that she’s “had enough drama and mindf—s, and women are f—ing crazy.”

Tina (Laurel Holloman), a recovering bisexual, reminds Alice that “men are boring.” Alice replies, “Yeah, well bring it on, ’cause I could use a little nice, uncomplicated boring boy-girl sex masquerading as love.”

In Season 1, we are also introduced to Jenny, who’s in love with Tim. She seems to enjoy having sex with him after describing the two naked lesbians she saw in Bette and Tina’s swimming pool. Later, she confirms her love of Tim to her lover Marina, saying: “I’m going to marry Tim. I can’t imagine my life without him. I don’t want to imagine my life without him.”

 

Even after Jenny and Tim’s relationship unravels, Jenny initiates sex with Tim and seems to want to get back together with him, but he rejects her. Jenny later tells her old college roommate Annette, who’s visiting from out of town, that she identifies as bisexual.

Jenny: I think I’m bisexual. Annette:Oh, brother. Jenny: I do, I really do.

The first season ends with Jenny dating both a man named Gene and a woman named Robin, and with Alice breaking up with Lisa (because he’s too much of a lesbian) before pursuing Dana. The character arcs and story lines for both bisexual characters proved accurate, fair and realistic. Too bad they didn’t last.

Don’t Ask Alice

By the beginning of Season 2, the show began to display a rather biphobic agenda, turning the visible bisexual characters into closeted lesbians who transition rather roughly into their gay identities. Instead of showing Jenny realistically exploring the gray areas of her sexuality further, Jenny’s boyfriend Gene tells her bluntly that she’s gay, and it’s accepted as fact for the rest of the series.

Alice’s bisexuality is mentioned in Season 2 purely for comic relief. During the episode “Labyrinth,” when Alice, Dana and Dana’s girlfriend, Tonya, visit a sex toy shop, Tonya jokingly shoves a chocolate, penis-shaped lollipop in and out of her mouth and says, “I guess this is a little more up your alley, isn’t it, Alice?”

Alice grabs a breast-shaped lollipop and responds, “Actually Tonya, this might be a little more up my alley.”

Tonya waves the penis-shaped lollipop before Alice and asks, “More than this?”

Alice replies, “Yeah, maybe a little.”

The confrontation ends when Dana asks Alice, “Which one would you rather put in your mouth, Al?” Alice glares at Dana and doesn’t choose.

But by Season 3, Alice begins to fulfill the “crazy bisexual” stereotype. After being dumped by Dana, she loses it – she pops pills, stalks her ex and refers to herself as “a gross bisexual love addict.” She also begins to blow off her attraction to men.

In the episode “Lost Weekend,” she discounts her heterosexual side as a safety blanket, telling a support group: “I think the reason I was with Lisa, the lesbian man, is because he wasn’t dangerous for me. I knew I wouldn’t get addicted to him. I knew I wouldn’t get addicted to a guy.”

But Alice does get addicted to women, as evidenced by her inability to let go of her relationship with Dana. Alice’s love addiction is used to make the point that she only gets addicted to those she falls in love with, and that she’s incapable of falling in love with men; thus, she cannot be bisexual. The logic is flawed, given that many bisexuals who don’t fall in love with both genders still self-identify as bisexual based on their ability to enjoy sex with both men and women. It seemed clear that Alice enjoyed sex with Lisa, and so to bisexuals like me, that means she’s not gay.

In Season 3, Bette’s partner, Tina, also starts to fulfill a bisexual stereotype: that bisexual women will always leave their lesbian partners for men. After Bette catches her having an online sexual relationship with a man identified as “DaddyOf2,” Tina admits her craving for men. After much heartache, Bette encourages Tina to explore her attraction. Tina is quickly painted as the villain in the relationship and begins to discount her lesbian side, reminding Bette that she was heterosexual before she met her.

Although Tina’s desire to stray is more likely due to her dissatisfaction with her relationship with Bette than some unpreventable compulsion for bisexual women to cheat on their lesbian partners with men, that underlying truth is never overtly addressed. By the end of the third season, Tina is in a relationship with Henry, a single dad, and most of her lesbian friends express their disgust with her behavior. That, unfortunately, is one of the most realistic components of this story line.

From Defender to Attacker

Alice’s transition from bisexual to lesbian is completed by the end of Season 3 with a distasteful deathbed joke that uses bisexuality as the punch line.

In Episode 3.10, “Losing the Light,” Alice is sitting at Dana’s hospital bedside when Tina pops in for a visit before a date with Henry.

Tina: How do I look? Am I too dressed up? I feel dressed up. Alice: You look good. Tina: OK, bye. Alice: [to Dana] You’re right. Bisexuality is gross. I see it now.

Though Alice was joking to cheer up her dying friend, the joke was at the expense of an entire minority group. I couldn’t imagine African Americans or Jews being referred to as “gross” on national television without having an organization advocating on their behalf demand an apology from producers. But no LGBT organization spoke out to publicly condemn the offensive joke.

By the second episode of Season 4, Alice has completed her transformation into a bisexual-hating lesbian, as demonstrated by an exchange she has with Tina at the Planet:

Alice: Where have you been? Oh right, stuck in the far reaches of Heteroville, that’s right. Tina: It’s so scary. Alice: Ooh, scary. Tina: I think I remember you lurking around there a couple years ago. Alice: But I did come to my senses, see, that’s the difference between you and me.

Having bisexual characters eat their own develops into something of a pattern in Season 4. In the episode “Layup,” Jenny, who once identified as bisexual, accosts Tina for wanting to play on their lesbian basketball team. Instead of using the B-word, Tina tells Jenny that she still identifies as a lesbian.

“Yeah, but when you walk down the street with your boyfriend holding your boyfriend’s hands enjoying all the heterosexual privileges, you stopped being a lesbian,” argues Jenny.

Alice suggests Tina use the bisexual label. Tina tells her she considers the lesbian label to be a political identity, which prompts Jenny to respond angrily: “It’s not about who you vote for. It’s about who you f—.”

In the scene, both Jenny and Tina are written to be extremely unlikable – Jenny for her intolerance and Tina for her refusal to admit she’s no longer gay. Both of the unflattering and inaccurate representations reinforce stereotypes that most bisexuals are either transitional or in denial.

But Jenny’s criticisms of Tina don’t matter for long. By the end of Season 4, Tina has dismissed her heterosexual side and her relationship with Henry as an aberration, telling Bette she’d prefer her control freak tendencies. “I’ll take it over the same boring man I’ve been seeing any day,” Tina says.

Yet again, the show simplifies a complex area of sexuality into a simple, disparaging adjective: boring. What’s not boring is the irony that at least one of the actors forced to betray her character’s bisexual orientation has publicly stated her support for the bisexual community.

Leisha Hailey, who plays Alice, told The Advocate in February 2004 that “I’ve really come to learn that bisexuality is a true, legitimate sexual orientation. It’s not about crossing over from straight to gay.” Too bad the show’s writers couldn’t enable Hailey to impart this wisdom through her character.

During an interview with AfterEllen.com just before the premiere of Season 5, Alice’s previous bisexuality was mentioned, and Hailey joked that she didn’t remember that her character was bisexual. She then continued: “It’s not up to me if they don’t wanna play the guy thing. I can’t help that. Maybe that perfect guy would be out there [for Alice], you never know. I just kinda forgot about that. I’ve been trained to forget.”

And that’s clearly the problem – L Word viewers have been trained to forget the show used to depict bisexuality with more realism and less stereotype. It’s just that some of us – the ones who stomach the biphobic remarks in hope that someday we’ll be represented fairly once again – remember. And that’s why we foolishly keep tuning in.

As one of the few queer shows on television, The L Word has a responsibility to remember and to be inclusive (or at least scientifically accurate) in its representations of bisexuals, instead of glossing over our orientation to push the biphobic and outdated belief that bisexuality is a gateway drug and an impetus for infidelity.

Perhaps the producers of the show should read the recently published findings by researcher Lisa M. Diamond of the University of Utah, who conducted a 10-year study of 79 “non-heterosexual women” and discovered that bisexuality is a “distinctive orientation.” According to her findings, women who labeled themselves as bi or “unlabeled” maintained stable attractions to both men and women over the years.

Perhaps The L Word‘s writers could also ponder this: Diamond found that bisexual women were capable of successful long-term monogamous relationships, and a larger percentage of them were in relationships at the conclusion of the study than their lesbian or heterosexual counterparts. That might not lend itself to soap opera-style melodrama, but that’s a show that I – and I’d wager a few other viewers – would rather watch.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button