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Are gay men more acceptable than lesbians on TV?

This year’s GLAAD Network Responsibility Index has been released and the results aren’t all that shocking. HBO, The CW, MTV and ABC Family are all doing quite well when it comes to positive portrayals of LGBT issues and characters and networks like TBS, A&E and USA are failing.

What’s more interesting this year, however, are the percentages of gay male vs. lesbian representation on these networks. While it’s not so shocking that there are more men playing gay roles than women, it does beg the question of why gay men seem to be more acceptable and longstanding characters on TV shows, while queer women are often portrayed in one-offs or brief storylines that don’t last much more than a few episodes.

Even on the most gay-friendly networks, gay men have much stronger percentages of visibility. The networks on which gay women come out on top (TBS and USA) have in common the fact that both had only one show with a lesbian personality (Ellen DeGeneres’ special, Bigger, Wider and Longer and White Collar, respectively).

Recently, Ilene Chaiken told Salon:

…I do think that gay male characters have traditionally been represented in comedies because it’s easier to take. The culture at large can handle gay men being funny… Lesbians have been more invisible than gay men, but you’ll notice that The L Word was probably a more successful show than Queer as Folk in a mainstream sense because gay men are more threatening to the culture at large than gay women.

It’s a hard-to-ignore fact, with The CW announcing that one of the regular male characters on 90210 will be coming out on the new season. Entertainment Weekly reports:

“We want to address the issue in a real and relatable way,” says co-EP Jennie Urman, who says the coming-out plot is but one of several “great story lines” fans can look forward to in season 3.

And they seem to be thinking exactly what I’m thinking when they note that this is somehow going to be different from the brief Adrianna/Gia fling:

And this isn’t some sort of angst-fueled, bi-curious sweeps arc à la Adrianna’s season 2 flirtation with Rumer Willis. We will learn that the straight-acting character in question – let the record show that we’re referring to Matt Lanter’s recovering rebel Liam, Michael Steger’s smart and tenderhearted Navid, or Trevor Donovan’s tennis pro Teddy – is actually gay.

“Actually gay” – as in Adrianna’s foray into bisexuality was something less than. The sad part is that this is a trend that has been happening for a long time in television – ever since gays were written into scripts for the screen. Gay men are much more acceptable for TV audiences than lesbians or bisexual women and shows that have both gay male and female characters at one time or another are prime examples of this rationale.

On the ABC Family show Huge, the main character might be a tomboy who refers to herself as Will, but her sexuality comes into question only for an episode (as perceived by a boy she likes). The actual gay person on the show? A boy.

On Desperate Housewives, the gay couple are major characters. On the last season, Catherine came to realize she was a lesbian and promptly left the show with her new girlfriend, Robin. While she was straight, Catherine was a major part of the show. Her being gay was part of her exit strategy. She was shipped off to Paris with her new lover in tow.

On United States of Tara, Glee, Degrassi, Nurse Jackie and even reality shows like Big Brother and The Real World, gay males are regular characters and at the center of the series while women who flirt with sexual fluidity are bit parts or only make mere mention to their interest in women as a soundbyte or titillation factor. (Degrassi did have Palex, but once Paige and Alex split, Paige’s bisexuality became non-existent.)

There are also plenty of shows that have no mention of queer women at all but have major gay male characters, including primetime network series Modern Family, Brothers and Sisters and the recently cancelled Ugly Betty. Those characters and shows are definitely great for LGBT visibility. But the problem is that when lesbian storylines are not treated with the same respect and reliability that the gay male ones are, it gives more ammunition to the uniformed argument that being a gay woman is fleeting – that we are all just looking for the right man – or that bisexual women are just wishy washy. And lesbians can be your best friend or a co-worker, but that’s about all you need from them in your life – we don’t need to see what happens behind their closed doors.

I’m not asking that every time a show includes a gay character they also include a lesbian for fairness, or that it has to be “either/or” and they might as well make it a a gay woman – I’m saying that the weight lesbian and bisexual characters are given on television is still minimal and writers are missing out on a prime opportunity. There are so many new things they could be doing – getting us right, for once – and the great actors involved to develop it.

There are a few exceptions. Current shows doing justice to their regular lesbian characters include Grey’s Anatomy, Pretty Little Liars, Stargate Universe and Skins, but think of how rare those are in the grand scheme of television. (I’m speaking specifically of American television and including Skins because it airs on BBC America.) And while we have a few lesbian characters in smaller recurring roles on Nurse Jackie, and the upcoming seasons of Weeds and Hellcats, it’d be great to see them expand their roles, as Pam was able to on True Blood. If The Good Wife‘s Kalinda actually shows any other hint of bisexuality on the new season, I’ll applaud CBS whole-heartedly – she’s a character with depth, and one I’m glad to have on our team. However, a new male love interest for her has been cast, so it’s unlikely we’ll end up pleased come season 2.

On the new season of White Collar, we see the return of Detective Diana Lancing, but she’s still a bit part compared to the show’s main characters – both straight men (on screen, that is.) And despite The Bridge’s Jill having a girlfriend in the first episode, the publicist told me she would make no other mention of her bisexuality on the show as she continued to sleep with her male co-worker. In the end, the show was recently canceled after just three episodes.

It remains to be seen how the lesbian moms and Eve Best’s bisexual character will be handled on a new season of Nurse Jackie. And with Olivia Wilde taking time off from House to work on movies, it’s definitely time to add some more gay women to the fall roster.

So networks, I propose to you that you take these brilliant characters that you’ve already created and give them something more than a one-off line on their sexuality or simply subtext. In case you are unaware, there are just as many lesbians as gay men and, if your own theories prove to be true, there’s a little bit of lesbian in every straight girl – at least during sweeps week.

Ilene Chaiken told Salon she thinks there has been some progress with LGBT characters over the last 25 years.

… Gay characters are no longer portrayed as tragic and pathetic and destined for suicide or the odd quirky best friends. But there’s still remarkably few prominent gay characters who are as enfranchised as the straight characters we’ve seen on TV all of our lives. We’re slowly populating the TV landscape, but we still lag far behind our actual numbers relative to the population at large.

Well that’s partly true – we may not be the suicidal ones anymore, but writers aren’t afraid to pluck bisexual characters right back into heterosexuality or keep lesbians as a subplot, useful for a limited amount of time only. The lesbian and bisexual characters that do stick around are often much smaller parts than their gay counterparts. For example, True Blood is a very gay show, but the two queer female characters (Pam and Sophie-Ann) have limited screentime, even if they make an appearance in each episode. The gay Lafayette, however, is much more of a mainstay with more developed storylines and even a new love interest in season 3.

As GLAAD notes in their report,

Consistently, the most common area of improvement among broadcast and cable is diversity. It is clear from our findings that gay white men still dominate the television landscape on the broadcast networks. Though programs such as Brothers & Sisters and Glee deserve accolades for their high-profile gay characters (and have in fact received them from GLAAD), these shows – and many more – offer only gay white male representations. Cable networks are slowly improving in this area with shows like True Blood and GREEK, but more improvement is needed before overall LGBT representation reflects the various cultural back- grounds and experiences of the LGBT community. Until that happens, broadcast and cable networks are leaving many LGBT viewers struggling to find images that reflect their lives and communities.

I hope that the networks will pay attention to GLAAD’s research and begin to give us the gay female characters that we feel reflect our “lives and communities.” Until then, we’ll continue to be glad for the few we do have on a weekly basis.

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