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Visibility Matters: Talk of the Nation

Visibility Matters is a monthly column by AfterEllen.com Founder Sarah Warn about larger trends affecting lesbian/bi women in entertainment and the media.

Yesterday I participated in an interesting live, 30-minute discussion about The L Word and lesbian/bi visibility in general on National Public Radio‘s national radio show “Talk of the Nation.”

With interviews like this, where you have multiple guests and callers and a lot of ground to cover, you usually don’t get to mention more than 10% of what you had planned to, and you say “um” more frequently than you would like (or maybe that’s just me).

But I think the resulting discussion overall was interesting and revealing – and hopefully enlightening to some of the show’s straight listeners. (NPR overall reportedly skews white and male, and averages about 20 million listeners a week, according to a 2003 study).

The host, Neal Conan, kicked thing off by asking me some questions about The L Word (what it meant to lesbians/bi women, reactions to the finale, etc.), and that led to a discussion with segment’s other guest, Larry Gross – a professor and director of the School of Communication at USC Annenberg, and the author of the 2002 book Up From Invisibility – about the role of television in validating minority groups. Presence on television, said Gross, confers full membership in American society.

Interspersed throughout were calls and emails from listeners, most of whom were queer women, but a few of whom were men.

Opinions on The L Word were diverse: Amy called in to say she was ambivalent about the show, because the storylines were too unbelievable; Susan called in to praise the show, saying she felt like the show gave us a voice in a mostly heterosexual society; bisexual listener Katie emailed to say the show was her lesbian Sex and the City, but tended to oversexualize the characters; and Joey called in to express her disappointment in the show’s lack of butch lesbians.

The conversation then moved from The L Word to the current lack of lesbian characters on TV.

I was impressed that NPR did at least some basic homework on the subject (even if Conan did mix up Shane and Tina when talking about The L Word, which was funny). Most people are clueless about the lack of lesbian characters on TV, but Conan asserted this fact repeatedly, which was a nice change from the usual erroneous “lesbians are all over TV!” mantra I hear from straight people who think we’re everywhere because they watch Ellen.

But – and this gets to the heart of the problem – several listeners emailed Conan during the show to claim there are lesbians on TV, by citing Callie on Grey’s Anatomy and Thirteen on House.

Conan’s response was to point out that these characters aren’t very prominent, and Gross provided an interesting analysis of how minorities (including LGBT characters) usually begin in supporting roles, then graduate to more prominent roles over time. But neither Conan nor Gross addressed the most glaring problem with using Callie and Thirteen as examples of lesbian characters: they’re bisexual, not lesbians.

Either Conan, Gross, and the emailers didn’t know this fact, and/or they didn’t think it was an important distinction. TV writers and showrunners enable this confusion by consistently refusing to differentiate between lesbian and bi women, as I noted during the show and as we’ve already addressed at length on this site.

But making the distinction is important because bisexual TV characters overwhelmingly end up dating mostly men; because conflating the two promotes the idea that lesbians sleep with men; and because it leads to people emailing NPR to claim there are prominent lesbian characters on TV, when there aren’t.

Another recurring topic of discussion was Ellen DeGeneres, and what Larry referred to as her “bargain” with the American public that she’ll downplay her sexuality in exchange for popularity.

I don’t think that’s quite accurate anymore, given how much Ellen has spoken out about and publicly supported gay marriage over the last year. But I also think we need shows like The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Rachel Maddow Show and Iron Chef – where the sexual orientation of the LGBT person or character is just a minor facet of the show – as much as we need more in-your-face shows like The L Word.

Every movement needs to work both within the system and outside it to succeed.

The comments made by a caller named Randy from Hoover, Alabama, illustrate this point:

I am a heterosexual man, I’m married with two kids, I’ve been somewhat of a homophobe, mainly because I just didn’t know too much about it, or how to appreciate people despite their differences…my set of beliefs have taught me to appreciate people, but not necessarily everything they do, so I’m not here to bash or anything like that, it’s actually a positive comment I have.

Basically, I believe in a straight philosophy, and what I’ve seen, though, with Ellen DeGeneres is that I myself can relate to just being a human being, it has nothing to do with homosexuality, but seeing her on TV, dancing to music and enjoying people, talking to people, and looking at myself and going “Well, I do the same thing.” You know, I’m not on TV but I turn on music and I dance and have a good time. I love talking to people, I love being in front of people. It gave me a chance to relate to a different type of person. It took the difference away…I can’t say I really appreciate when the focus of somebody’s national appeal or show is their sexual preference, you know, it doesn’t really make any sense to me, but … I like the fact that she’s down to earth…

I do have homosexual friends who – we don’t agree on the same things, but we’re still able to respect each other on a human level. And Ellen DeGeneres is kinda like that example for me.

It’s too bad Randy thinks being gay is a choice – which isn’t supported by science, most gay people, and a lot of straight people – but I found his honesty about his own homophobia, and his sincere willingness to try and relate to gay people even though he doesn’t understand/agree with their “choice,” to be both refreshing and heartening.

Sometimes it feels like the only voices that get heard are the ones from the rabidly anti-gay preachers, because they have the megaphones and the agendas.

But I suspect – hope? – there are more Randys than Jerry Falwells out there, and more national discussions like this one might help bring them out of the closet, so to speak.

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