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TV’s Negative Portrayal of Pregnant Lesbians Continues

Five years after Sarah Warn wrote about “TV’s Lesbian Baby Boom,” examining the way that television used motherhood story lines to desexualize lesbian characters and keep them firmly within normal standards of womanliness, the trend has not only continued, but has gone one step further.

On television shows such as ABC’s Cashmere Mafia, Showtime’s The L Word, Logo’s Exes & Ohs and Showcase Australia’s Satisfaction, story lines about lesbian mothers focus excessively on acquiring sperm, and present the process of lesbians becoming mothers as being at odds with happy lesbian relationships.

A recent example of this can be seen in Australian series Satisfaction, which is set in a brothel and includes among its characters lesbian sex worker Heather (Peta Sergeant) and her girlfriend, Ally (Jesse Spence).

Peta Sergeant (top) and Jesse Spence

No indication is given that Heather, the brothel’s fetish specialist, is a lesbian until the third episode, the disturbingly titled “Jizz” (written by Matt Ford), which opens with Heather having sex with her girlfriend, Ally. Moments later, Ally’s donor friend Garry shows up for an insemination (of Ally), and Heather and Ally’s interactions thereafter are limited to brief scenes where they are mostly fighting about donors and pregnancy.

Garry’s planned donation quickly falls through due to a homophobic girlfriend, thus allowing the narrative to refocus on TV’s favorite element of lesbian motherhood: the search for sperm. Soon afterward, Heather is at work and calls Ally, telling her to meet her in the brothel’s bathrooms in half an hour. Heather then has sex with an elderly client, fishes his used condom out of the rubbish bin, and meets Ally in the bathrooms, proposing to inseminate there and then.

Ally is disgusted by this proposal and upbraids Heather for the idea. But Ally’s repulsion has no effect, and Heather later has unprotected sex with a client (whose fetish is to be a baby and considers Heather his “Mummy”) in order to get pregnant, without Ally’s knowledge or consent.

That a woman who should be well-versed in the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases would be perfectly willing to inseminate her partner with the sperm of an untested 60-something-year-old, and then have unprotected sex herself, seems farcical. The story line is evidence of the way that the hunt for sperm seems to drive television’s lesbians to do strange and reckless things.

Similar behavior took place during the first episode of The L Word, when Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Holloman) invite a male stranger to have unprotected sex with Tina in order to get her pregnant. And this is after hosting a sperm-hunting party where the couple desperately trawls for any male donor. The idea that the desperation for sperm is so intense that it overrides one’s sense of dignity – or even fears of contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases – is more than troubling. In a world full of sperm banks, it is unrealistic and seeks to place men at the center of a scenario that does not, by definition, involve them.

A few weeks after Heather’s unprotected sex on Satisfaction, she joyfully announces to Ally that she is pregnant. As one might imagine, Ally is not at all happy that Heather has done this, especially without communicating with her about it. This is the beginning of the end of their relationship.

Jennifer Beals (left) and Laurel Holloman

In The L Word, too, baby-making does not exactly seem conducive to happy relationships. During the first season, Bette and Tina repeatedly fight over donors and other pregnancy-related issues, and shortly after Tina’s miscarriage, Bette cheats on her and they break up.

In Queer as Folk, Melanie (Michelle Clunie) cheats on Lindsay (Thea Gill) just after she has baby Gus, largely because Melanie feels rejected by Lindsay and excluded by Brian (Gus’ biological father) from her role as Gus’ second parent. Lindsay then later cheats on Melanie with a man while Melanie is pregnant with their daughter. These are not exactly encouraging story lines for a pregnant lesbian.

Michelle Clunie (left) and Thea Gill

Back on The L Word, after her breakup with Bette, Tina uses the residual stored sperm to get pregnant without Bette’s knowledge. The trend of lesbians not informing their partners about their attempts to get pregnant – thus leading to disastrous results – is followed not only in Satisfaction and The L Word but also on Cashmere Mafia.

In Cashmere Mafia, Caitlin (Bonnie Somerville) is only just starting to explore her attraction to Alicia when the prospect of sperm looms. After only a few minutes of screen time together that center more on Caitlin’s confusion over her sexuality than on the developing relationship with Alicia, in Episode 4 Caitlin meets Alicia’s friends at a lesbian bridal shower.

Lourdes Benedicto (left) and Bonnie Somerville

Alicia comments that she is constantly going to bridal or baby showers, and the first thing Alicia’s friends ask Caitlin is when they’re thinking of starting a family, followed by, “Where will you get your sperm from?” Caitlin, who is startled and discomfited by this question, retreats to the bathroom, where she meets a man who asks for her phone number – and she gives it to him.

In the next episode, Alicia tells Caitlin that she is three months pregnant: “My ex and I had been trying for a while, and after we split up I was still in such a place of wanting a child I tried one last time.” Once again we have a lesbian who fails to communicate with her partner – whether it be her ex or current girlfriend – about her pregnancy.

Caitlin, struggling with this unexpected news, goes on a date with the man she met at the shower and ends up sleeping with him. She confesses the infidelity to Alicia, who surprisingly seems willing to accept it and continue to be with Caitlin. But their relationship is short-lived.

In Episode 6, Alicia’s ex-girlfriend returns and the two reconcile, causing Alicia to break up with Caitlin just after she had accepted Alicia’s pregnancy.

While getting pregnant and having a baby is almost always portrayed as bringing heterosexual couples together, even when they hate each other (as can be seen in recent film Knocked Up), childbearing is generally presented as incompatible with happy, stable lesbian relationships. Indeed, if television is to be believed, having a baby tears lesbian couples apart.

These story lines may be a deliberate device to discourage lesbians from having children, or they may arise from an internalized hetero-centric worldview that sees heterosexuality as the only natural means of reproduction. These story lines reinforce the idea that it is unnatural and wrong for lesbians to bear children together.

During the Satisfaction episode “Jizz,” Heather even confesses to Alex (her client and now the father of her child) that she wonders whether “God or whoever” has decided that she, as a lesbian and a sex worker, is not meant to be a mother. She says that when she began this process with Ally, “it started out so normal, two people who love each other wanting to start a family,” but now her desire for Ally has become mixed up with her desire to be a mother, and she doesn’t know where one begins and the other ends.

Lesbian desire in a continuum with the desire to be a mother? How exactly did the writer come up with this idea? He is certainly not alone, however, for in the first seasons of both Queer as Folk and The L Word, desire to have a baby seems to completely overwhelm Lindsay and Tina’s desires for their partners.

Shows with multiple lesbian characters such as Exes & Ohs or The L Word do not seem as problematic in this regard as Satisfaction or Queer as Folk, because having several lesbian characters allows them to show a diversity of lesbian experiences. However, each does still follow the same formula.

Each series features one long-term couple among its single characters, and this couple’s major story line – at least at first – revolves around having a baby, usually accompanied by some discussion of “lesbian bed death,” as if the natural outcome of any long-term lesbian relationship is babies and bed death.

In Exes & Ohs, the long-term lesbian couple, Chris (Megan Cavanagh) and Kris (Angela Featherstone), decide that they are ready to graduate from being “puppy parents” to “people parents.” Almost as soon as the subject is broached, cracks in their relationship begin to appear. Kris starts to feel that she’s “given up” things for her relationship with Chris, and she reinstitutes her daily meditation time.

Angela Featherstone (left) and Megan Cavanagh

While Chris lovingly accepts this and also takes up an old hobby, later comments insinuate that the two are experiencing “lesbian bed death.” This suggests that the seeds are being sown for baby-making—induced problems between the couple should Exes & Ohs continue on for a second season.

In this case, Kris and Chris’ search for sperm is neither as bizarre nor as difficult as in Satisfaction or The L Word. Nevertheless, they go after their proposed veterinarian donor, Dr. Bob, as it were a courtship, inviting him to a champagne brunch in the name of thanking him for taking care of their dogs before revealing that they have “ulterior motives.”

Unlike the donors on Satisfaction, The L Word or even Queer as Folk, Bob agrees to be their donor with relatively little fuss. It remains to be seen, though, whether the donation and pregnancy will cause more serious problems between the couple.

Hopefully as a more realistic and less soapy series than The L Word, Exes & Ohs‘ writers will avoid the now usual associations between lesbian pregnancies, fighting and heartbreak.

The fact that none of these characters uses an anonymous donation from a sperm bank (with the exception of Alicia, whose insemination process occurred entirely off-screen) means that they do need to rely on a walking, talking male character in order to fulfill their desires for motherhood, and I think that is the point.

It is just too disquieting – even radical – for heterosexual viewers to consider the possibility that women might manage to have children through adoption, IVF or other means, without involving and getting the permission of a man. That is why these story lines emphasize the sperm and “the father” over all other aspects of having a child, as if to reassure male viewers that they are still needed.

Lesbian motherhood so firmly disrupts the heterosexual cultural norm that it is nearly impossible for the process to be presented positively on television. Instead, it almost always leads to the breakup of long-term lesbian relationships and makes certain, along the way, to assure men that they are essential.

This presents an especially skewed perception of lesbians in long-term relationships. It denies the possibility that they could be perfectly content together without a baby, and it denies the fact that lesbians in long-term relationships can and do have children – without having sex with men in order to get pregnant.

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