Before Friday’s episode of Degrassi aired, I wasn’t sure what to think about Adam and Fiona’s relationship. On the one hand, I thought it would be awesome for the show to portray Adam in a positive and mutually beneficial relationship with a girl who likes him for who is he, and, for this reason, I dreaded the way the storyline with Fiona seemed set to play out. Of course the girl hooking up with the trans guy would turn out to be a lesbian.
On the other hand, the storyline between Adam and Fiona is so uniquely complicated that I was honestly a bit shocked to see Degrassi tackling it in the first place. To see any show tackling it, really. Watching Degrassi do so with such integrity was inspiring, and I loved how the show has treated both its characters and its viewers with such respect.
Someday I’m confident Adam will be with a girl who actually likes him for who he is, but Fiona is not that girl. As this episode revealed, she – like many viewers, I’d guess – was still seeing Adam as a girl, not for the guy he knows himself to be.
So let’s go back to that.
The episode opens on what many of you accurately predicted to be a dream sequence. In it, Holly J tells Fiona she’s “luminous,” they exchange “I love yous,” and then, just as they move in for the kiss, Fiona wakes up in a sweat. Cue the Degrassi theme song.
Back at school, Holly J comes up to Fiona at her locker (while she’s checking out her hair in a mirror that, uh, mirrors her hair) and tells her that she looks “luminous.” Fiona wants to hang out, but Holly J admits she hasn’t hung out with her boyfriend, Sav, enough lately, so they agree to have a sleepover soon instead.
Spotting Adam over Holly J’s shoulder, Fiona calls him over. She owns up to being awful to him before and thanks him for helping get her to rehab. She also admits to missing him, to which he responds simply, “Well, that’s good,” before turning to walk away. She stops him with an invite to come over later for a movie, though, and he agrees with a smile.
Later that night, as Adam sits next to Fiona on the couch, he asks about her alcoholism. She explains that the alcohol “masked some bad feelings” and begins to list some things she had been feeling bad about. Adam tags “being with me” onto the end of her list, an addition that Fiona denies vehemently.
“You kissed a female-to-male trans kid, that’s why you freaked out,” he offers, perhaps trying to give her a way out before things get much further. “Being close made me freak out,” Fiona amends, “because I thought you’d see the real me.”
Sure enough, the closer they get that evening, the more Fiona’s “real me” peeks out. During a make-out session, she begins to un-tuck Adam’s shirt. “You’re so soft,” she says. It’s a loaded statement. Adam takes it well enough when she’s just stating a fact, but when Fiona says she likes it, he’s suddenly not so neutral anymore.
“I’m going to get a six-pack someday soon,” Adam swears, but Fiona tells him not to. “It’s so much better that you’re both,” she says. “Both what?” Adam demands suspiciously, sitting up abruptly and pulling away from her. “I told you, it doesn’t bother me,” Fiona tries to reassure him. “I like that you’re the best of both worlds: boyish and girlish.”
“No, I’m not, Fiona,” Adam retorts. “I’m a guy – why would you say something like that?” He questions whether she actually likes him or whether she just likes that he’s “stuck in a stupid girl’s body.”
When Fiona asks why it can’t be both, Adam responds, “‘Cause you’re using me. Face it, Fiona, you want a girl.” And, refusing to be a doormat, he walks out.
Let’s back up a moment, though. AfterEllen.com member Lindsay wrote in a comment a few weeks ago how she thinks it’s interesting that Degrassi is “really exploring what it means to be with someone who is FTM and also what it means to be a lesbian,” and I think this episode really captures that spirit.
As she put it, “It’s within Adam’s right to be with someone who thinks of him as completely male and is attracted to him as male. And likewise it’s Fiona’s right to be with someone who is completely female.” Most importantly, though, is the fact that Degrassi is doing so in a way that focuses on “what it means to the characters” themselves.
I remember when I started dating transmen. The first time was an accident. Well, an accident in that he didn’t identify as trans at the time so I didn’t realize I was dating a transman, but looking back, it made total sense that he had eventually come to identify that way.
When a bisexual woman starts dating a man, she’s not suddenly straight, and when she dates a woman, she doesn’t become a lesbian. Similarly, the people she dates can remain straight (or bisexual) or lesbian respectively. For me, I believed I could date transmen and lesbians while maintaining a queer identity, as long as I allowed them to maintain their respectively male and female identities.
So the second time I dated a transman, it wasn’t an accident. In fact, as someone who had been very overtly queer for a long time but not necessarily tied to the label “lesbian,” the only change was that I actively stopped identifying with that particular label.
However, you still need the person you’re dating to be on the same page as you are. In this second relationship, the guy I was with really wanted a straight girl on his arm. I liked him for him, but that didn’t change the fact that I still found my home to be within the queer community. I couldn’t be just a straight girl for him.
If Fiona doesn’t like Adam for being him, then that’s a problem, but, in the end, I don’t think it’s any more problematic than the situations I’ve been in. Adam wants a straight girl; Fiona wants a girl. I wanted the person I was dating; he wanted a straight girl. In the former situation, two things don’t line up. In the latter, one thing didn’t line up. In both, it just ain’t gonna work out.
Sexuality is just as complicated for trans people as it is for everyone else, and in tonight’s episode of Degrassi, what I thought they did best was allow each character their individual autonomy to label their own gender and their own sexuality and to only date people who they believed best aligned with that.
As such, after the end of her relationship with Adam, Fiona is left struggling to define her own sexuality. The next day at school, Fiona joins Holly J for lunch and tries to hint that maybe the sleepover isn’t such a good idea after all. “Oh, if you want some Adam time,” Holly J begins, but Fiona explains that she and Adam are over – it just didn’t work when Fiona was sober. “Poor Adam,” Holly J empathizes. Poor Adam, indeed.
“I thought I liked him,” Fiona says almost wearily. “I wish I did.” Holly J encourages her to like who she likes, and re-poses the invitation for a sleepover.
The two of them enjoy their girls’ night by watching The Notebook, and Fiona wonders if that’s what love is like. Holly J teases back that Fiona’s in love, but Fiona just shakes her comment off.
An exhausted Holly J goes to bed early, but Fiona stays up. When her mom arrives home, she finds Fiona staring at an unopened bottle of champagne. “I don’t want to drink it, Mom, I really don’t,” she promises, and, after shutting the door to her bedroom where Holly J is sleeping, she makes another confession to her mother.
“I’m in love with her, and she’s a girl,” Fiona declares, and her mom replies, “Oh.” Then, “Oh, OK.”
“Are you shocked? Are you disappointed?” Fiona worries, but her mom rushes over to promise that all she wants is for Fiona to be happy, no matter who she loves. “But do I have to love her?” Fiona complains. Holly J is straight. Even Fiona knows “it can’t go anywhere.”
“I just don’t want to go back to how I was – angry, lonely, drink-y,” Fiona admits. Her mom reassures her that she’s so much stronger than even she gives her credit for. She can handle this.
If Burt on Glee gets the award for Best TV Dad Ever, I’m giving the award for Best TV Mom Ever to Ms. Coyne here. It’s the perfect response and the perfect reassurance.
Fiona walks to her bedroom and climbs in bed next to Holly J, next to her best friend who she loves “more than anyone in the world,” who is sleeping in her room, in her bed, so close but so far, and turns away to cry silent tears. Well, damn. That has to hurt.
Shortly after, Fiona shows up to Holly J’s dialysis appointment (kidney damage from strep throat, Degrassi? You couldn’t just give her mono? That comes with exploding spleens!) with something to tell her.
“I don’t want to date any more boys,” Fiona declares. “I like girls. I guess I’m gay, or lesbian. I haven’t chosen nomenclature yet.” Score one for over-the-top awesome political correctness! “I always thought I’d meet a guy and understand how other girls felt, but it’s just not going to happen,” she continues. It was “a relief” to tell her mom, Fiona explains, and she doubts her twin brother will be surprised by the news.
Holly J tells Fiona she’s glad she came to her with this, and asks if this was why Fiona was with Adam, “since he’s kind of a girl – I mean, physically.” Fiona immediately tells Holly J never to say anything like that. “I should have realized what I was doing, using him,” she explains.
But she did eventually realize the difference between Adam being a guy and her wanting him as a not-quite-girl, not-quite-guy. She gets it now, and that’s the important thing.
This episode raises the question of where one draws the line in between lesbians and transmen, and it did so by focusing on individuals.
One way of asking that question is: where do individual people draw that line? Adam knew where he drew the line, and Fiona eventually came to that same conclusion. I drew the line one way, while my ex-boyfriend saw it differently.
In any case, after coming out to Holly J, Fiona asks for reassurance that her coming out won’t change anything between them, and Holly J promises that she loves Fiona, no matter what. As they hug, however, Holly J seems to remember their earlier conversation where Fiona deferred the question about being in love, and her face suddenly transforms into one of glee. “Hold up,” she says. “Is there an actual love interest here?!”
And Fiona – brave, strong Fiona – lets her straight best friend just be her straight best friend, at least for this episode. “Right now,” she says to Holly J, “I’m just happy to have my friend.”
Right now, I’m just happy this show exists.
Degrassi being Degrassi, I’d guess this is where Adam, Fiona, and Holly J’s storylines will be left for the season. The season finale airs in two parts over the next two weeks, and we’ll have interviews with Jordan Todosey (Adam) and Annie Clark (Fiona) coming soon, so stay tuned!
What did everyone else think of Friday’s episode? You can watch it online at TeenNick.com.
