9 90s TV Lady Crushes Who Changed My Life for the Gayer

The 90s were a beautiful time, heady with JNCO-clad Gwen Stefani, pretending to hate Britney Spears and The Spice Girls franchise. I also have many moist memories of the TV lady-crushes who ultimately catalyzed my queer identity. Let’s take a Skip-It down memory lane and explore my 9 most influential telecrushes (yes I just made that word up) from the 90s.

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Lisa Turtle, Saved By The Bell (1989-1992)

While everyone was pining over basic, boring Kelly Kapowski, Lisa Turtle was gettin’ slept on. Why? Maybe because the writers gave her the last name TURTLE! COME ON! It may as well have been Gartersnake or Gecko. Lisa was wealthy and trendy and had every reason to be a Mean Girl but instead skewed sweet and wise and why the hell wasn’t Zack in love with her instead of Kelly? What the fuck, Zack? Why choose style over substance when Lisa proved you can have both? I dedicated my Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper to Ms. Turtle.

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Brenda Walsh, 90210 (1990-2000)

First I was like, why does Andrea look like a teacher who owns a home and three cats? Then I thought, that Dylan guy is super cool; I might have a crush on him. But it turns out all I really wanted was to wear a leather jacket and ride a motorcycle and “go steady with” a snarky brunette named Brenda who would always pick fights with me right before a makeout session against said parked motorcycle. And since they wouldn’t sell kids Harleys back then (probably not now, either), I opted for a skateboard that I carried around with me for a month before losing it.

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Nelle Porter, Ally McBeal (1997-2002)

Did I watch all five seasons? No. Did I spend 100% of the episodes I did watch wishing that Nelle Porter would deposition me? Yes, because I didn’t know what that word meant but it sounded intense and sexy. Portia De Rossi’s character was a Manolo Blahnik-wearing, one-liner wielding ice queen with a heart of gold; a proverbial ball-buster whose only flaw was being romantically interested in mouse of a man John Cage. He felt she was out of his league and he was so fucking right. My high school mock trial wins and later infatuation with L&O SVU’s Alex Cabot wouldn’t have been made possible without Cage, Fish & Associates.

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Topanga Lawrence, Boy Meets World (1993-2000)

Topanga Lawrence was quirky, funny, sincere, and extremely ride-or-die for dorky ass Cory whose name really should be spelled with an “e” if we’re being completely honest. She was a hippie who spent the summer between junior high and high school becoming conventionally hot but still maintained her lovably granola personality. Topanga would have attended Lilith Fair, which I was definitely too young for and missed out on because parental control and wtf even is an allowance??? If the Lilith Fair reboot ever happens I’m there with organic free range bells on.

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Alex Mack, The Secret World Of Alex Mack (1994-1998)

Larisa Oleynik was Alex Mack. The premise of the show was simple enough: En route to the first day of school, ordinary tomboy Alex is splashed with a chemical that gives her superpowers. Said powers let her move stuff with her mind, zap shit with fingertip lightening bolts, and transform into a sentient puddle of silver-ish goop. Because evil goons are trying to identify and dissect her, NO ONE CAN KNOW HER SECRET, NOT EVEN HER PARENTS.

I envied Alex’s gender-neutral nickname and endless supply of hats and flannel shirts. Plus, the show was pretty progressive; the CEO of the evil chemical plant was a woman, and Alex’s sister Annie was a total STEMhead who constantly proved herself more capable than her professional scientist dad. In the end, Alex finally “comes out” to her parents about her secret superpowers and they’re chill and supportive about it. She was the archetype of every sporty straight girl I’ve ever crushed on who went on to marry a guy and have two kids and a dog named David.

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Rayanne Graff, My So-Called Life (1994-1995)

My So-Called Life, with a single season, remains without a doubt one of the top 10 teen dramas ever. Lead character Angela’s on-again/off-again best friend Rayanne Graff was nothing but trouble and the most irresistibly real human I’d ever encountered on the small screen. She was the stylistic gayby of Stevie Nicks and 80s-era Madonna who owned her sexuality, fearlessly stood up for everyone and everything she believed in, and never gave a single flying fuck. Of course I’d go on to have a crush on a girl in 11th grade who claimed to have done all of her own piercings with a safety pin; yes, even THAT one.

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Xena, Xena The Warrior Princess (1995-2001)

Xena and Gabrielle have the best ambiguously gay relationship of all time and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t literally dream that I got to be the third wheel in those hot tub scenes. Without Xena there’d be no Buffy; she was a strong, unapologetic, literal warrior who still found time for witty banter while slaying baddies and saving the world. Best. Role model. Ever. But also, all that chocolate leather.

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Jane Lane, Daria (1997-2001)

The only thing more confusing than my feelings for Jane Lane, animated resident misanthrope and platonic life partner of the title character, was the fact that I kinda wanted to be her brother Trent too. Daria and Jane made it cool for high school me to be uncool and I’ll never not be grateful for that.

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Willow Rosenberg, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

I prayed for serial-dead-guy-dater Buffy Summers to have a come-to-Shesus moment and realize that Willow was what she’d been waiting for all along. Thus began my foray into slashfic. When Faith entered the picture they became the holy trinity of teenage me’s perfect woman: Brawn meets Brains meets Scathing Wit.

BTVS was the first teen show with a lesbian couple who weren’t just there to boost the ratings for sweeps week. Sure, Tara died in the shittiest and most traumatic way possible, but their relationship was still a major milestone and held my hand from “Hey, this is life-affirming but scary” to “Hey, just don’t date any actual witches.”

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The takeaway from this is that I evolved from a brooding, moody teen into a sardonic, emotionally unavailable adult who spends a lot of time scribbling in notebooks, doing pushups, and staking trolls and that’s pretty much 101% spot on. All in all, I have my 90s TV crushes to thank for it.

31 Most Critically Acclaimed Queerish TV Shows Streaming On Netflix and Amazon

Television: a world of scripted stories, available through streaming services that enable you to completely check out of the modern world FOR WHATEVER REASON YOU MIGHT HAVE.

We have been in the business of alerting you to televised programming that contains queer women for quite some time, even when those shows are of middling quality or require you to suffer through endless hours of boring heterosexuals in order to reach the gay parts. Today we’re looking at shows that fit into both of these categories:

• Received the highest scores on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes compared to every other show with a queer female character
• Are available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon or Hulu

Here’s how the shows were ranked:

1. I looked up the Metacritic rating for every TV show with queer female characters that were available for streaming online, eventually narrowing the field to every show with a score over 65.
2. I got Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” scores for those same shows, as the Tomatometer judges reviews on a slightly different scale and I thought including both would help for more accurate results, and narrowed the list further.
3. I took a survey of Autostraddle staff, having them rank each show they’d seen from 1-10 on three scales: A) Quality of queer female representation, B) Quantity of queer female representation, C) Overall show quality regardless of queer female representation. I then averaged those three scores to come up with one score per show per person. This was my way of finding a numerical value that assessed the show both on overall quality and on its queerness.
4. I then averaged every person’s score per show, and multiplied that score by 100 to get a number compatible for averaging purposes (because I took math).
5. I then took the average of all three scores (or two, for shows without Tomatometers) to rank the shows below.

Also, a quick note: Metacritic didn’t have a ranking for Steven Universe so it’s not here.  Now it’s time to read the list!

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The Most Critically Acclaimed TV Shows With Lesbian, Bisexual or Queer Characters Available for Streaming On Netflix or Amazon, Ranked By The Scoring System I Just Explained That I Hope You Actually Read

31. The Walking Dead (2010-) (Seasons 1-6 on Netflix, Seasons 1-7 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 82 / Tomatometer: 82 / Autoscore: 40

The Walking Dead is a story about zombies that I have never seen but boy do people love this show and talk about it a lot! Regardless, it has a queer character named Tara who first appears in Season Four. But there’s a lot of Bury Your Gays going on, too.

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30. Broadchurch (2013-) (Seasons 1-2 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 91 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 30

The lesbian (and her eventual love interest) doesn’t show up until Season Two of this British drama that centers on the murder of a young boy in a small seaside town and the two detectives on the case.

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29. Veep (2012-) (Seasons 1-2 on Amazon Prime, 1-5 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 72 / Tomatometer: 90 / Autoscore: 55

The lesbian stuff doesn’t start until Season Five (Clea Duvall is involved, it’s great), but this Emmy favorite is funny and feminist and delightful in a million other ways throughout the lead-up.

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28. House of Cards (2013-) (Seasons 1-4 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 76 / Tomatometer: 84 / Autoscore: 59

House of Cards is mostly about powerful men — well, one powerful man, and his powerful wife, and all the other corrupt and powerful men and women who surround them. But there’s also a small side-storyline with queer female characters which doesn’t end well, but. Also, Frank Underwood, the show’s protagonist, is one of the few bisexual male characters on television.

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27. Hannibal (2013-2015) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon Prime)

Metacritic: 70 / Tomatometer: 89 / Autoscore: 60

Season Two of this psychological thriller introduces a recurring lesbian character, Margot Verger, who, after a detour into Unfortunate Tropesville, eventually gets a love interest and offspring. You’ll have to endure some cannibalism to get there, though.

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26. Call the Midwife (2012-) (Seasons 1-5 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 81 / Tomatometer: N/A / Autoscore: 66

In Season Four, we learn that recurring character Nurse Patience “Patsy” Mount is in a relationship with another lady, Delia Busby.

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25. Masters of Sex (2013-) (Seasons 1-4 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 86 / Tomatometer: 83 / Autoscore: 52

You will have to endure a LOT of hetero sex to get to the homosexy parts, which range from bold and sexy to “ascribing to a particularly unfortunate trope” in later seasons. But it’s certainly not every day that we get a little peak at what it was like to be a lesbian sex worker in the ’50s, and Lizzy Kaplan stars and Allison Janey kills it, so.

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24. Shameless (2011-) (Seasons 1-7 on Amazon, Seasons 1-6 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 66 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 63

Shameless has gay male storylines from the jump, as well as a few recurring and guest lesbian characters. But by Season Seven we get a full-blown triad, y’all! Plus the show’s just brilliant, with scrappy, multi-dimensional characters who are far from flawless yet generally manage to win your heart. Shameless looks at class politics with an unsentimental eye unlike anything else on television.

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23. UnREAL (2015-) (Seasons 1-2 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 78 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 61

UnREAL is real good, although it’s not real gay — but there is a lesbian character in Season One who had a spinoff webseries all about her super-gay life and it’s very very sweet.

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22. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003) (Seasons 1-7 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 80 / Tomatometer: N/A / Autoscore: 74

Buffy featured one of the first relationships between two women on television, ever, and the first queer female lead character, Willow. We all love Buffy and it changed all of our lives and oh my gosh do you listen to the podcast? It’s very witchy, very feminist, and very ’90s/early-00s.

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21. The Good Wife (2009 – 2016) (Seasons 1-7 on Amazon Prime)

Metacritic: 75 / Tomatometer: 97 / Autoscore: 60

The Good Wife began as a story about the loyal wife of a state’s attorney embroiled in a sex and corruption scandal she was forced to publicly endure. Then it becomes a story about the wife returning to her career as a lawyer, which brings us to her bisexual investigator Kalinda Sharma. Kalinda appears in 86% of the series episodes and sometimes even has involvements with ladies.

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20. How To Get Away With Murder (2014-) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon, Seasons 1-2 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 68 / Tomatometer: 89 / Autoscore: 75

In Season Two we learned that Annalise Keating, the law professor and criminal defense attorney at the heart of How To Get Away With Murder, is bisexual. I’m a million plot twists behind on this show so I can’t get much deeper than that but ANNALISE KEATING IS BISEXUAL AND HER EX IS EVE ROTHLO PLAYED BY FAMKE JANSSEN!

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19. Person of Interest (2011-2016) (Seasons 1-5 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 66 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 75

Smarter than your average crime procedural, Person of Interest commits to big arcs and big questions about surveillance and technology. In a rare move for any television show, the two white male leads aren’t given any substantial romantic storylines, BUT, in the final seasons, we get a very hot love connection between two female characters who are very skilled shooters.

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18. The Fall (2013-) (Seasons 1-3 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 81 / Tomatometer: 89/ Autoscore: 65

The Fall is a dark, quiet, suspenseful-and-creepy-as-hell crime series starring Gillian Anderson as a sexually fluid detective psychologically rattled by a bizarre serial killer case. She kicks ass and takes names, working alongside an adorable lesbian police constable who unfortunately she does not make out with.

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17. Jessica Jones (2015-) (Season One on Netflix)

Metacritic: 81 / Tomatometer: 93 / Autoscore: 63

Jessica Jones features Marvel’s first lesbian character — Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss), a lawyer who works with the title character, private investigator Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), who is described by Rolling Stone as “a bad-girl noir detective with a taste for rough sex, booze and sarcasm.” The show garnered rave reviews for its sex-positivity, queer inclusivity, and overall badassery.

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15. The Bridge (2013 – 2014) (Seasons 1-2 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 77 / Tomatometer: 88 / Autoscore: 70

Two detectives on either side of the US/Mexico border are forced to work together to find a serial killer who dumped a body on the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border. Out actress Emily Rios plays Adriana Mendez, a young lesbian reporter following the murder story for the El Paso Times.

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14. Last Tango In Halifax (2012-) (Seasons 1-3, Netflix & Amazon)

Metacritic: 78 / Tomatometer: 98  Autoscore: 64

Last Tango in Halifax is about two widows in their seventies who get a second chance with each other (their first shot was in the 1950s). They’re reunited by social media and get back together just as they’re also dealing with their adult children going through various mid-life struggles, including one daughter falling in love with a woman.

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13. Broad City (2014-) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 75 / Tomatometer: 98 / Autoscore: 67

Although Broad City, one of my favorite shows of all time, is pretty focused on male/female sexual relations, Ilana is also pretty definitely bisexual.

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12. Younger (2015-) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 75 / Tomatometer: 99 / Autoscore: 67

Debi Mazar plays Maggie, the lesbian best friend of Liza, the single Mom who decides to reboot her career and love life by posing as a 26-year-old. It’s a fun show with fun characters and Maggie does get some romantic storylines.

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11. Queen Sugar (2016-) (Season 1, Amazon)

Metacritic: 75 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 75

This co-creation from Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey is the story of three siblings who are left in charge of an 800-acre sugarcane farm when their father passes away. Rutina Wesley plays one of the sisters, Nova Bordelon, a bisexual journalist, activist and marijuana dealer.

(Also we really need somebody to write about this show for Autostraddle; hit us up if you could be that somebody!)

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10. The Wire (2002 – 2008) (Seasons 1-5 on Amazon Prime)

Metacritic: 79 / Tomatometer: 96 / Autoscore: 71

The Wire is easily one of the best television programs of all time — and broke ground with its Black lesbian detective character, Kima Greggs, who unlike so many other queer characters, actually appears in every episode. Each season looks at a different element of Baltimore and its relationship to law enforcement: the illegal drug trade, the seaport system, the school system, print news media and city government. Plus it’s got one of my favorite gay male characters of all time, Omar Little.

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9. Orphan Black (2013-) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon Prime, Season 4 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 73 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 83

This science fiction thriller stars Tatiana Maslany as a bunch of clones, including queer Experimental Evolutionary Developmental Biology Ph.D. student Cosima. She has a relationship with Delphine Cormier and maybe also with you in your imagination?

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8. Jane the Virgin (2014-) (Seasons 1-2 on Netflix, Seasons 1-3 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 80 / Tomatometer: 100 / Autoscore: 72

Jane the Virgin is an inventive one-hour dramedy with a cast dominated by women of color and a fresh, original style that’ll keep you entertained and delighted while you wonder to yourself if Gina Rodriguez might come out as bisexual one day, thus changing our collective lives. It’s hilarious and feminist as fuck. Luisa, the OB/GYN who accidentally impregnates Jane in the series pilot, is a lesbian, and her affair with a bisexual crime lordess is at the center of the show’s always-unraveling mystery.

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8. Supergirl (2015-)(Season 1 on Netflix, Seasons 1-2 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 75 / Tomatometer: 97 / Autoscore: 80

Supergirl‘s sister, Alex Danvers, comes out to herself and to her family as a lesbian in Season Two, after an awakening enabled by hot cop Maggie Sawyer.

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7. Master of None (2015-) (Season One on Netflix)

Metacritic: 91 / Tomatometer: 100 / Autoscore: 62

Aziz Ansari’s Netfilx show set a new standard for effortless diversity and also for its surprisingly refreshing take on a familiar tale (young struggling artists in a big city). Out lesbian writer/comic/actress Lena Waithe plays Ansari’s lesbian pal, Denise.

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6. Survivor’s Remorse (2014-) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon)

Metacritic: 81 / Tomatometer: 97 / Autoscore: 82

One of the most underrated shows on television, Survivor’s Remorse spotlights a family thrust out of a tough Boston neighborhood into a more glamorous lifestyle when their son makes it big in the NBA. Erica Ash plays M-Chuck, Cam’s lesbian sister, who gets all the ladies and makes me laugh a lot.

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5. One Mississippi (2016-) (Season 1 on Amazon Prime)

Metacritic: 77 / Tomatometer: 92 / Autoscore: 90

Tig Notaro’s semi-autobiographical comedy series follows a Los Angeles radio host “Tig Bavaro” as she returns home to Mississippi after a double mastectomy and a C. difficile infection to be with her family when her mother is taken off life support. She moves in with her brother and stepfather and begins learning things about her mother and her home that she never knew. But with jokes!

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4. Orange is the New Black (2013-) (Seasons 1-4 on Netflix)

Metacritic: 79 / Tomatometer: 100 / Autoscore: 84

Orange is The New Black has like a billion queer characters in it, enforces rampant misandry, boasts a nearly all-female cast, and has got racial diversity for days. It broke our hearts with a big-time fuck-up in Season Four, which I won’t spoil for you if you’re not already aware of it, but it was definitely enough to turn many fans off forever. Still, for four seasons, OITNB has showed up as an innovative and usually very well-written show. Laverne Cox‘s Sophia Burset is one of the first recurring transgender characters played by a transgender actress on television. We’ve got lots of queers playing queers (Samira Wiley, Lea DeLaria, Ruby Rose, Asia Kate Dillion, maybe Taylor Schilling), a not-so-hidden agenda to expose the draconian absurdity of the prison-industrial complex, and situations that’ll make you laugh, sob, and fall in love. With a television show.

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3. One Day at a Time (2017-) (Season One on Netflix)

Metacritic: 79 / Tomatometer: 96 / Autoscore: 92

In addition to being charming as fuck and giving Autostraddle a mid-season shout-out, Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time makes the case for an old-fashioned style of show taking up progressive causes. Three generations of a Cuban-American family endure the slings and errors of everyday life, including a daughter who comes out as a lesbian mid-Season One.

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2. Take My Wife (2016-) (Season One on Amazon)

Metacritic: 85 / Tomatometer: N/A / Autoscore: 95

Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito’s half-hour comedy is light and fun and delightful and sometimes deep and super gay and nobody dies. I loved every minute and you can too!

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1. Transparent (2014-) (Seasons 1-3 on Amazon Prime)

Metacritic: 92 / Tomatometer: 98 / Queerscore: 90

Coming in at the top is critical darling Transparent, centered on a Los Angeles based Jewish family who are basically all queer, except for the straight guy who can suck it so who cares. Transparent has trans women playing trans women, it has a bisexual Mom who gets kinky with Jiz Lee, it has a twenty-something daughter with a fluid sexuality and gender presentation, it has multiple lesbian trans women, it has Carrie Brownstein playing a bisexual named Syd and Cherry Jones playing, basically, Eileen Myles. It’s brilliantly written, employs more trans and queer folks behind the camera than any show in the history of the universe, and put Amazon Prime on the map.

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Of course, there are heaps of incredible shows available on streaming that did not make this list of critically acclaimed television programs — and two I left out because only one episode actually featured lesbian characters (Easy and Black Mirror). Wynnona Earp, recently rising star, just barely missed the cut.

9 Lesbian and Trans Women Activists In the Spotlight Of “When We Rise”

Monday night marks the debut of the first episode of When We Rise, Dustin Lance Black’s eight-hour miniseries documenting the history of the post-Stonewall U.S. LGBTQ Rights Movement, with a specific focus on San Francisco. I’ve spent the weekend knee-deep in this show and the stories that inspired it, and my review will go up tomorrow. But in the meantime, I thought this would be, you know, an excellent excuse for a HERSTORY LESSON.

First, I’ve got a quick summary of the series’ historical context, broken down by episode. Then we’ll look at the lives and accomplishments of some of the women most prominently featured in When We Rise.

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Series Overview: LGBT History Events & Milestones Featured in “When We Rise”

Episode One (2/27/17) – Early-to-Mid 1970s

Episode One is grounded in the politics and culture of the era but the focus is on establishing the backstories of its three protagonists, who discover and embark upon life journeys in the early 1970s that eventually land them all in San Francisco. We meet Cleve Jones, a young Quaker activist who fled Phoenix for San Francisco to meet other homos and join the peace movement; Ken Jones, an African-American member of the United States Navy, who earns a reassignment from Vietnam to San Francisco to work on a desegregation project and Roma Guy, freshly off her Peace Corps assignment in West Africa who moves to San Francisco from Boston after the National Organization for Women kicked out all the lesbians.

This episode also features the “Lavender Menace” disrupting the Second Congress to Unite Women to protest anti-lesbianism within the women’s movement and Betty Friedan’s lesbophobia. However, in real life, that action took place in 1970 in New York, before “When We Rise” begins (1972) and as far as I can tell from historical records available to me, Roma Guy was not present.

Episode Two (3/1/17) – Late ’70s to Mid ’80s

• The fight against Proposition 6, which threatened to bar gay and lesbian teachers from working in California Public Schools
• Harvey Milk’s campaign and election
• Protests following Harvey Milk’s assassination and the light sentencing of his killer, Dan White
• The emergence of a “gay cancer” that will eventually be identified as HIV and the response to the crisis from the LGBT community and its health workers as well as the lack of response from the U.S. government
• Anita Bryant launching the anti-gay Christian fundamentalist Save Our Children campaign
• The 1979 National March on Washington for lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington DC

Episode Three (3/2/17) – ’90s

• HIV/AIDS continuing to wipe out huge swaths of the LGBT community
• The launch and tour of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
• Bill Clinton becoming president and signing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell into law
• The 1993 March on Washington attracting nearly one million marchers protesting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Colorado’s Amendment 2, hate crimes and ongoing discrimination
• The emergence of ACT UP! The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
• The enactment of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act

Episode Four (3/3/17) – Late ’00s to early ’10s

• George W. Bush endorsing a constitutional amendment to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples
• Californians granted the right to marry in May 2008, followed by the passage of Prop 8 in November, during the same election that made Barack Obama the first African-American President of the United States, which overturned the pro-equality measure
• The 2009 National Equality March on Washington
• The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
• The Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage
• President Obama becoming the first U.S. President to come out in support of same-sex marriage

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The Women Of “When We Rise”

Roma Guy (played by Emily Skeggs and Mary Louise Parker)

Guy grew up on the US/Canadian border in a large working class family. After completing her college education in Maine and Detroit, she worked for nine years on public health projects in West Africa. In 1970, Guy moved to San Francisco and her career as a women’s health advocate began.

• Founder of the San Francisco Women’s Building
• Founding member of the Women’s Foundation of California, the San Francisco Women Against Rape and La Casa de las Madres
• Founding member of California Women’s Agenda, which advocates for universal culturally and linguistically competent health care and reproductive rights
• Faculty for the Department of Health Education at San Francisco State University & Health Commission of San Francisco
• Director of Bay Area Homeless Program
• Advisory Board member of the first national Lesbian Health & Research Center

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Cecelia Chung (played by Ivory Aquino)

Chung grew up in Hong Kong, moving to Los Angeles with her family in 1984 and promptly headed north to attend City College in San Francisco. After graduating from Golden Gate University in 1987, she worked as a court interpreter in Santa Clara County, but lost her job when she began presenting as female, which eventually led to homelessness. She engaged in survival sex work, was incarcerated, struggled with drug addiction, and was physically and sexually assaulted. Her mother was called to the hospital after Chung was stabbed, and this circumstance led to her mother paying for Chung’s 1998 gender affirmation surgery in Bangkok. Chung is now one of the most prominent activists fighting for better health care access and treatment for trans people, HIV-positive people, and people of color.

• Worked as an HIV test counselor at the USCF AIDS Health Project
• First transgender woman and first Asian-American elected to lead the Board of Directors of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration
• First trans woman to chair the San Francisco Human RIghts Commission
• Co-founder of the Trans March
• Founder of the San Francisco Transgender Advocacy and Mentorship program of the SF LGBT Community Center
• In 2013, through her appointment to the Health Commission, she made San Francisco the first city in the U.S. to cover gender reassignment surgery for uninsured transgender patients.
• Developed a “Transgender 101” training system for the Department of Public Health staff
• Currently, serves as Senior Strategist at the Transgender Law Center.

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Pat Norman (played by Whoopi Goldberg)

Norman, a U.S. navy veteran, was born into activism — her mother had received honors for her advocacy from Martin Luther King Jr and Jesse Jackson. She’s worked tirelessly as an advocate for people with AIDS, the LGBTQ and African-American community and all overlaps wherein.

• Founded the Lesbian Mothers Union in 1971 to address custody issues facing the gay community
• In 1978, became the first openly gay person hired by the San Francisco Department of Public Health to serve the lesbian/gay community.
• In 1984, first out lesbian and first lesbian of color to run for San Francisco city supervisor
• During the AIDS crisis, developed the “San Francisco Model” to meet the social, medical and emotional needs of people with AIDS.
• Co-chair of the California Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice Rally
• Community Health Worker at the Center for Special Problems in San Francisco
• Chair of the 1995 Lesbian & Gay Rights March on the United Nations in New York City
• Received awards from Ms. Magazine, the Bay Area Women’s Leadership Forum, the National Coalition of Black Lesbians & Gays, among others

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Del Martin (played by Rosie O’Donnell) & Phyllis Lyon (played by Maddie Corman)

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon are legendary lesbian activists who changed everybody’s lives forever and ever and also have really gay names. They both studied journalism at UC-Berkeley in the ’40s but didn’t meet until 1950, when both were working at the same magazine in Seattle. They began dating in 1952 and U-Hauled to San Francisco in 1953. They wore matching pantsuits to their weddings in 2004 and 2008.

• Founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first social and political organization for lesbians in the United States.
• Edited and published The Ladder, a seminal lesbian magazine birthed from the DOB, until 1963.
• First lesbian couple to join NOW (the National Organization For Women).
• Del was the first openly gay woman appointed to the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, where she teamed up with Ella Hill Hutch to “focus on the nexus of gay women’s rights and racial and ethnic discrimination.”
• Along with medical providers and health activists, founded the Lyon-Martin Health Services Center in 1979, which has become the gold standard for community-based culturally-sensitive health care.
• In 1995, became delegates to the White House Conference on Aging.

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Diane Jones (played by Fiona Dourif and Rachel Griffiths)

Roma Guy met Diane Jones, her future wife, while working with the Peace Corps in Togo, West Africa. Jones, a Registered Nurse, pioneered the “San Francisco” model of HIV care in the 1980s, eventually spending 33 years serving people living with HIV/AIDS in Ward 86 of SF General.

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Sally Gearhart (played by Carrie Preston in a terrible wig)

Gearhart grew up in Appalachaia and studied theater and “public address” at Sweet Briar College, Bowling Green State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She worked as a teacher in Texas and the Midwest before moving to San Francisco in 1970. Eventually, she became a radical lesbian activist, working with Harvey Milk to defeat California Proposition 6 and later appearing in a number of documentaries and anthologies about LGBTQ activism in the 70s.

• In 1973, became the first out lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position at San Francisco State University, where she pioneered one of the country’s very first Womens and Gender Studies program.
• Co-author of Loving Women/Loving Men: Gay Liberation and the Church (1974)
• Channeled The Feminist Tarot in 1975
• Author of queer Science Fiction novels including The Wanderground and The Kanshou: Book One of Earthkeep
• In 2008, Sally Miller Gearhart Chair in Lesbian Studies established in her honor at the University of Oregon

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Bobbie Jean Baker (played by Jazzmum)

Baker moved to the Bay Area in the early ’90s, where she was active in the religious and nonprofit communities in capacities including peer advocate, case manager, mentor, domestic violence specialist and housing manager. Ordained as a minister at the City Refuge United Church of Christ, she also served as West Coast Regional TransSaints Minister of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries and lay minister at Transcending Transgender Ministries. Baker was also an incredible singer who performed with the Transcendence Gospel Choir.

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Bishop Yvette Flunder (plated by Phylicia Rashad)

Flunder, a San Francisco native, is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ with masters and doctorate degrees in Ministry from the Pacific School of Religion and the San Francisco Theological Seminary. Flunder currently serves as Senior Pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ, which she founded in 1991, and as Presiding Bishop for The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. Additionally, Flunder is a gospel recording artist, renowned speaker, and published author. Her work serving the African-American, LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS communities is too vast and exceptional to cover all of it here, now, but here’s some of what she’s done:

• Along with her staff and through the Ark of Refuge Inc, founded three facilities including the Restoration House in San Francisco to provide housing, direct services, education and training for persons affected by HIV/AIDS
• Active voice for the Religion Counsel of the Human Rights Campaign
• Board member of the National Sexuality Resource Center and The Shanti Project
• Co-Chair of the Religious Advisory Committee of the National Black Justice Coalition
• Chair of the San Francisco Inter-Religious Coalition on AIDS
• Founding Member of the African-American Interfaith Alliance on AIDS
• Member of the Alameda County Ryan White Consortium and the San Francisco HIV/AIDS Planning and Prevention Council
• Consultant to the Congressional Black Caucus Health Brain Trust
• Received a 2011 Robert C. Kirkwood Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Community Federation
• Trustee and Adjunct Professor and Speaker at the Pacific School of Religion
• Keynote Speaker for the White House observation of the 26th Anniversary of World AIDS Day

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When We Rise premieres Monday night, 2/27, at 9pm on ABC.

Winter 2017 TV Preview: All The Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans and Queer Women To Get Excited About

It’s a terrible time to be alive, but luckily we have our stories. You know, our shows! Our programs, our stories on the teevee. This year is chock-full of brand new and returning LGBTQ ladies (and one non-binary person!) to feast your eyes, hearts, and fanatically over-invested minds on. However, lesbian representation on network television is down from 33% of regular and recurring LGBTQ characters in 2015-2016 to 17% in the 2016-2017 season, although bisexual female and transgender representation on network TV is slightly up. “While much improvement has been made and TV remains incredibly far ahead of film in terms of LGBTQ representation,” says the GLAAD 2016-2017 Where We Are On TV Report, “It must be made clear that television – and broadcast series more specifically – failed queer women this year as character after character was killed.”

Let’s get started because the season already has, you know what I mean?

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NEW! Star – ABC, January 4th

Lee Daniels’ new project has opened to relatively tepid reviews, but there are two trans female characters — Cotton Brown, the daughter of Queen Latifah’s character Carlota Brown, and Miss Bruce, another employee of Carlota’s beauty shop.

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Portlandia – IFC, Thursday January 5th

Abbi Jacobson, who we all know is Carrie Brownstein’s secret girlfriend, is one of many guest stars this season — we can also look forward to guest turns from Maria Bamford, Rachel Dratch, Laurie Metcaf and Natasha Lyonne.

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Nashville – CMT, Thursday January 5th

Transgender actress Jen Richards has been cast in a recurring role as Allyson, a physical therapist helping a lead character through a serious injury.

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NEW! – One Day at a Time – Netflix, Friday January 6th

We’ve told you to watch this show with the most enthusiasm possible, because it’s really funny, really cute, and one of the main characters is a Latina lesbian feminist who comes out over the course of Season One. Also, Episode 11 features an Autostraddle name-drop. Go marathon this now! It’s the best! We promise!

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Rosewood – Fox – Friday, January 6th

Pippy and TMI are still broken up — but they’re also still in love. Their relationship has gotten more screentime since the breakup and hopefully that trend will continue until they get back together, right?

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Supergirl – The CW – Monday, January 23rd

Lesbian characters Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer will be back on your TV fighting the good fight very soon. I can’t tell you anything else about this show because I just started watching Season One and am afraid of spoilers.

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Jane The Virgin – The CW – Monday, January 23rd

Elizabeth Rohm (who played a surprise lesbian in Law & Order) has signed on for a major recurring role in Season Three as a soft-spoken guru who starts dating Luisa.

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Grey’s Anatomy – ABC – Thursday, January 26th

Jessica Capshaw will return as lesbian doctor Arizona for the second half of Season 13, which will see her character heading to a maximum security prison to see a patient who is too dangerous to be taken into the hospital.

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How To Get Away With Murder – ABC – Thursday, January 26th

Season Three will continue to “fill in the rest of the blanks” in the life of bisexual professor Annalise Keating.

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Black Sails – Starz – Sunday, January 29th

Eleanor is the bisexual female lead of this show about pirates that I have never seen, but I bet Season Four is gonna be a real plank-walker.

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The Fosters – Freeform – Tuesday, January 31st

After Season 4A ended with a thousand drama bombs and a hospital cliffhanger, we return to deal with the fallout. Despite rumors about Stef and Lena getting divorced, the pair made it through the rain intact and will continue to deal with the inevitable challenges of love, marriage, and family. Also Brandon is still on the show for some reason.

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The 100 – The CW – Wednesday, February 1st

Clarke will probably be wearing her RIP Lexa pin all season long.

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NEW! Imposters – Bravo – Tuesday, February 7th

This show about a con artist who marries people and then scams them stars Marianne Rendón as Jules, an artist devastated by her wife Cece’s sudden decision to leave her. She soon figures out that her perfect marriage wasn’t all that it seemed. Inka Malovic plays the elusive bisexual protagonist.

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The Mindy Project – Hulu – Tuesday, February 14th

Fortune Feimster’s character might even go on a date with another lady this season. My toes are already crossed for her.

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You Me Her – AT&T/DirectTV – Tuesday, February 14th

The AT&T/DirectTV “polyromantic comedy” returns for a second season in February, telling the story of a polyamorous married couple in Portland who start a relationship with another woman.

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NEW! Doubt – CBS – Wednesday, February 15th

Laverne Cox will become broadcast TV’s first transgender actress playing a transgender main character when this soapy legal procedural debuts. Her character, Cameron Wirth, is billed as “a lawyer who wants to help the underdog.”

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Billions – Showtime – Sunday, February 19th

Another show making queer history this season is Billions, which features Asia Kate Dillon as Taylor, an intern at hedge fund Axe Capital immediately noticed by the higher-ups as a brilliant and talented asset. Dillion identifies as non-binary, and so does Taylor. “As someone who is non-binary gender identifying, I feel a particular responsibility to portray members of my community on stage and on screen,” they told The Huffington Post, “Not only as fully fleshed-out characters who are integral to the plot, but as characters whose gender identity is just one of many parts that make up the whole person.”

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NEW! The Good Fight – CBS – Sunday, February 19th

A spin-off of The Good Wife finds Christine Baranski’s Diane heading into retirement when she learns her retirement account is empty due to a Ponzi scheme led by her trusted friend Henry Rindell. Henry was a mentor to Maia, a young lawyer and Diane’s goddaughter and a main character, it appears, a lady-loving lady. Her partner, Amy, is also heavily featured in the show’s initial trailers.

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NEW! When We Rise – ABC – Monday, February 27th

Finally the gay rights movement gets our very own well-produced star-studded miniseries! Written by Dustin Lance Black and starring actors including Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O’Donnell, Mary-Louise Parker, Rachel Griffiths, Michael K. Williams, who played Omar from The Wire, and transgender actress Ivory Aquino as transgender activist Cecilia Chung; the series will tell the story of the LGBT rights movement from Stonewall to the modern era through the personal and political struggles of a diverse group of LGBTQ people who shaped and lead that movement. Dee Rees, the black lesbian director and writer of Pariah, directs parts two and three.

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Empire – Fox – Wednesday, March 22nd

Bisexual singer Tiana Brown has rekindled her romance with Hakeem and Freda Gatz is out of jail and Jamal is in rehab and Andre wants to kill his father. Andre’s father is a terrible person, so.

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NEW! Harlots – Hulu – Wednesday, March 29th

Samantha Morton will play Margaret Wells, an 18th-century single mom in London who runs a very successful brothel. There’s no reports yet of there being a queer female character, but if there isn’t, we will be yelling about it loudly on twitter because COME ON it’s about an 18th-century brothel. There were lesbians and bisexuals there I GUARANTEE IT.

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Call the Midwife – PBS – Sunday, April 2nd

Patsy will be getting some distressing news about her father from Hong Kong in the premiere of Season 6, which we fear could mean a temporary departure from the main story.

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Pretty Little Liars – Freeform – Tuesday, April 18th

The final season of Pretty Little Liars promises to watch the Paige-Ali-Emily love triangle play out.

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NEW! The Handmaid’s Tale – Hulu – Thursday, April 26th

This particular debut has auspicious timing, eh? The much-anticipated adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s seminal dystopian feminist novel stars Alexis Bledel as a “subversive lesbian” and GLAAD has reported that Samira Wiley’s character on the show is also a lesbian character. This is the #1 thing I’m looking forward to in life right now.

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Sense8 – Netflix – Friday, May 5th

The first episode of Season Two is already on Netflix, but you’ll have to wait ’til May for the rest. If the world still exists in May!

The Best and Worst LGBTQ TV Characters of 2016

2016 was the best of times and worst of times. Just kidding, 2016 was the absolute worst of times. Moving through the world as a queer woman this year was a special kind of brutal. While we were getting acquainted our new post-truth Trumpian dystopia, we were losing our safe spaces even inside our fictional worlds. So many lesbian and bisexual characters fell victim to the Bury Your Gays trope this year that GLAAD had to step in and ask networks to put a pin in it. There were some bright spots, though, some girls kissing the girls they wanted to kiss. And so here is our list of best and worst queer women on TV in 2016. Below you’ll find familiar Autostraddle faces and some of your longtime favorite TV writers from AfterEllen, many of whom will be joining us in the New Year to keep writing about the shows that do us right. (Here’s our list from last year, for comparison’s sake.)

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THE BEST

Heather Hogan, Senior Editor

Annalise Keating, How to Get Away With Murder

I believe fully and truly and wholly with absolute and total conviction that if there were more TV characters like Annalise Keating in the world — in fact, if Shonda Rhimes were in charge of TV, full stop — Donald Trump would still be that blowhard billionaire nobody from The Apprentice tweeting weird shit about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. When everything in our culture centers on white men, when all our best TV show and books and movies are written by and star complicated white men, they are the only ones who receive the benefit of nuanced criticism in real life too. People love Don Draper and Walter White and Dexter Morgan (a literal serial killer!) but they hate Annalise Keating. Why is that, do you think? Because she’s a black woman, that’s why. A brilliant, successful, powerful, unapologetic black woman with complicated motivations and a capacity to do great good and great harm to herself and the people around her.

She also happens to be bisexual and the only time she lights up and lets go and exists without the smoke and mirrors and self-propaganda is when she’s with Eve. We need a thousand more characters like her on TV, a thousand more black women, a thousand more bi women, a thousand more fully realized women. It would be a whole other world if there were more Annalise Keatings. A whole other unrecognizable world.

Poussey Washington, Orange Is the New Black

Oh, Orange Is the New Black. She was the BEST CHARACTER ON THE SHOW. Tough but tender. Wise but so bad at love. Depressed but full of humor. She was relatable and real and wonderful and beautiful and just — ugh! WHY. WHY. WHY. Poussey Washington was murdered by an incompetent white man who will face no repercussions for extinguishing her brilliant light from this world. To what? Make a point? If a person made it four seasons into Orange Is the New Black without understanding that the Black Lives Matter movement is vital and that there’s a pandemic of violence perpetrated against black people by white law enforcement, seeing Poussey die wasn’t going to convince them. We lose so many minority characters to prove a point to the majority, and we still end up with Donald Trump. Maybe we could try to prove a point in a new way. Maybe we could let the black people and the queer people LIVE. This storyline was the worst but Poussey? She was the fucking best.

Luisa Alver, Jane the Virgin

Jane the Virgin remains the best and most feminist show on television and anyone who is not watching it is actively robbing themselves of joy. The show has always had trouble figuring out what exactly to do with Luisa. She’s only connected to Jane tangentially and that connection is rooted in Luisa accidentally artificially inseminating Jane in the pilot episode. But there’s something so wonderful about Luisa, something so innocent and raw and desperate to be seen and loved. Sure, her insecurity and desire sometimes lead her into an underwater submarine lair with the crime lord/lover who killed her father and shot Jane’s husband on his wedding night and dated Luisa under a fake identity (wearing a mask and a voice modulator!) for at least six months — but, you know, that’s life inside a telenova. Luisa is funny as heck and learning loyalty in the hardest ways. Watching her fall in love with Susanna and break free from Rose was a very special treat in a very bleak year for TV.

Ruby and Sapphire, Steven Universe

There were a handful of deeply romantic queer moments on TV this year, but nothing beats the flashback episode of Steven Universe where Garnet tells Steven a goodnight/birthday story about how Ruby and Sapphire met, fused, fell in love, and met his mother. Ruby’s pants caught on fire at one point! It’s called “The Answer” and love is the answer and every insecurity and hope you’ve ever had in the world are on full display in Ruby and Sapphire’s climactic duet. “Did you say I was different?” “And you hadn’t before?” “Of course not! When would I have ever?” Look, just watch it. You deserve four minutes of complete happiness.

Alex Danvers

Sheer perfection.

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Isabel Alcantara, Staff Writer

Lexa, The 100

How do I even begin to explain my undying love for Commander Lexa, leader of the 12 clans? I started watching The 100 back in season one and was all about it, instantly. I’m a huge fan of shows that don’t talk down to their audiences and for me, The 100 placed morally ambiguous questions in front of its characters and rarely gave them a clear-cut path to virtue. When Lexa barrelled into the story, army in tow and demanded blood for blood, I fell in love. When she left Clarke, the one girl she could be honest and vulnerable with, at the foot of Mt. Weather because an entire people’s livelihood rested on her shoulders, I loved her even more.

Season three of The 100 gave us one of the best queer characters TV had ever seen. In her throne room Lexa was tough and unyielding, able to silence a dude in one single push out a window. When she was with Clarke she was soft and earnest. Lexa didn’t love easily but she loved without boundaries, like many of us who have been hurt in the past and become increasingly guarded with our hearts. She represented a multi-faceted glance into the life of a leader who was given impossible circumstances, but extraordinary intelligence, patience and wisdom. She was well rounded, complex, and unabashedly queer.

So, when The 100 decided to throw away one of its most interesting character arcs, potential for further world-building and its entire queer fan base, all for the sake of “shock value,” I was absolutely livid. The second Lexa was hit by that stray bullet, The 100’s writing became shoddy, transparent and heavy-handed. The plotline became increasingly convoluted, with characters winding through its uninteresting ramifications, but one single glimmer of Lexa remained. The stupid City of Light goal meant that we might see her again, except I think everyone knew they payoff would be minimal, and we were right. The second that Clarke went into that control room, and Lexa stayed outside “fighting” or whatever the heck was happening in that scene, I knew the writers never had any clue how entangled Lexa’s storyline was with Clarke’s. They had the opportunity for a heart wrenching goodbye, and a chance for these characters to play out the narrative they’ve always struggled against: the good of the people at the expense of their own hearts. If Lexa had asked Clarke not to pull that lever, she would have brought The 100 back to its roots: moral ambiguity without a clear path to success.

Lexa represented far more than a well-written queer television character: she showed us that queer women could be ruthless leaders, compassionate teachers, brave warriors and soft-hearted lovers. She did it all at once and without a moment’s hesitation. It’s only appropriate that the loss of her character on TV sparked a revolution in real life with LGBT Fans Deserve Better raising almost $160,000 for The Trevor Project; too bad The 100 had to dismantle itself in the process. I don’t even know when the next season starts, and what’s worse, I don’t care.

Eve Rothlo, How to Get Away With Murder

Here’s my issue with How to Get Away With Murder: I hate it. So, here’s my issue with Eve Rothlo: I have none. I love her. I reluctantly stayed in the room when my girlfriend watched it this season, but every time Eve came on screen, I couldn’t look away. Not only was she a source of peace for Annalise, she was also a problem-solver, a kickass lawyer and, in some ways, a light at the end of the tunnel.

Here’s my second issue with Eve Rothlo: she looks just like X-Men’s Jean Grey, for some reason. So let me tell you, if you (like me) happen to hate How to Get Away With Murder, and cannot bring yourself to take yet another drink when any of the characters says, “Rebecca,” you can keep in mind that when Jean Grey isn’t a teacher at Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters; she’s a crooked lawyer with her former flame, Viola Davis and the show gets FAR more interesting.

Also, and this is completely unrelated, Karla Souza and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Mexico (when her name was Karla Olivares), and once when we were kids, my brother scratched her brother in the face. Do with that what you will.

Yara Greyjoy, Game of Thrones

I know that the writing behind Yara Greyjoy isn’t great. I know that the men who write Yara Greyjoy seem to think that the only way to represent wlw as equal in humanity to any other character is to represent her as they would a man, as if any shred of femininity would shatter the illusion of strength, and I’m not cool with that. However, I am extremely cool with Yara Greyjoy being touted as the rightful ruler of the Iron Islands, as the strongest of the Greyjoy children and most of all that her sexuality is just one of her many roguish behaviors that makes her a captain to her men.

I cannot even begin to describe the collective squeal that rang through our apartment when my girlfriend and I watched her unabashedly flirt with Daenerys Targaryen, and the wide-eyed appreciation we had when Daenerys cocked an eyebrow while feeling a tingling in her dragon-loins. When do we ever get that? Never. (I mean, we felt it once when Lexa and Clarke finally fell madly in bed, but we all know how that turned out.) Here’s my petition to Game of Thrones in this new year, let Yara Greyjoy be the Iron Queen that launched a thousand ships.

Delphine Cormier, Orphan Black

Delphine “I’m-French-We-Enjoy-Lovers” Cormier has been at the top of my favorites list since her first bonjour, but I’m mentioning her now because in this year of the modern era, 2016, she caught a bullet and lived.

Plus, in a total boss move, she proved that the “let’s take our clothes off to keep warm” move still works like a charm.

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Mey Rude, Trans Editor/Music Editor

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Drunk History

Drunk History gets things right where so many other shows and movies don’t. Not only did they highlight the fact that trans women of color (specifically these two) were leaders of the Stonewall Riots, but they got two trans women to play them. Alexandra Grey, who was all over TV this year, put in a hilarious and lively performance as Marsha and Trace Lysette was gorgeous and powerful as her co-riotor Sylvia. This was one of my favorite pieces of trans media ever.

Young Maura, Transparent

We got to see a trans kid on a show played by a trans kid actor! 12 year old Sophia Grace Gianna did a brilliant job playing young Maura in this flashback episode of Transparent where we see her exploring her gender as a young child and how her family dealt with that. Like the rest of the show, this episode isn’t super happy, but it is realistic, and it is brilliantly made and brilliantly written (by trans writer Our Lady J) and brilliantly acted. This is the kind of live action media about trans kids that I look forward to seeing more of.

Shea, Transparent

Trace Lysette shows up on my list for a second time, this time for her brilliant acting on season three of Transparent. She was so freaking great when she went on an ill-fated roadtrip with The Worst Pfefferman, Josh. Lysette’s moving and powerful performance in this episode showed the often depressing reality of dating men when you’re trans. Josh is his typical proudly ignorant and jerky self, and Shea ends up being disappointed by love once more.

Stevonnie, Steven Universe

Stevonnie is a straight-up non-binary character on a kids show! That alone is enough to make me include them on this list, but also they’re a wonderfully realized character who helps people watching the show learn some incredibly valuable lessons. This year we got to see them sing for the first time, in the song “Here Comes A Thought” where Garnet helps them practice mindfulness and learn to forgive themself and grow from their mistakes. It was a brilliant episode and it’s super important that a canonically non-binary character like Stevonnie was the one to teach us this lesson.

Lola, Difficult People

Lola, played by trans actor Shakina Nayfack, is a white trans woman who works at the same cafe as Billy in this show that’s about a bunch of horrible people and she might be the most difficult and horrible of them all. She’s a 9/11 turther, she thinks she’s allowed to use slurs because she’s a trans woman, she complains that everyone is transphobic when they don’t like something she says. She’s a terrific, barely heightened, version of a lot real life people. Also, her name is Lola, like the Kink’s song, which is a detail I love.

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Riese, Editor-in-Chief

Cameron Esposito & Rhea Butcher, Take My Wife

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve been missing ’til the real thing comes along, and that thing was Take My Wife. Lesbians don’t get relationship comedies, you know? That’s for straight people, for the Raymonds and the Seinfelds and the Kings of Queens. NOT ANYMORE, MY FRIENDS. Take My Wife exudes a rarely-witnessed authenticity, ALSO it’s hilarious and ALSO Rhea and Cameron are adorable and also they are not femme-presenting, which’s VERY rare on television.

Poussey Washington, Orange is the New Black

I mean duh. Poussey was my favorite character on television, full stop, for the last three years. Heather said enough that I feel comfortable not saying anything more, but fucking hell. YOU MESSED UP, OITNB.

Amy Raudenfield, Faking It

Yes, the Amy/Felix storyline drove me bananas this season, but Faking It got cancelled this year and I feel it’s my duty to mention Amy one last time. Amy, a queer woman at the dead-center of a television show that tackled the LGBTQIA+ alphabet soup with Glee-esque fervor. Amy, a tomboy femme with an annoying straight best friend she’s in love with. Amy, who actually managed to exit with a happy ending that involved her and another lady loving each other and becoming girlfriends. I’ll miss you, Amy, and your sarcasm and your donut shirts.

Root, Person of Interest

Another tragic loss this year was Root, a sexy genius who manages to win the heart of a sociopath assassin who previously considered herself incapable of love. What makes Root (and Shaw) so incredible is that Person of Interest just doesn’t have romantic storylines. At all. Ever. Seriously even Criminal Minds and Law & Order SVU pay more attention to the romantic entanglements of their main characters than Person of Interest. The show only broke this focus once, and they broke it for a lesbian couple. Four for you, POI. FOUR FOR YOU.

Molly, Faking It

I wanna take a minute for Karma’s Mom Molly because firstly, Molly’s life dream is to own a food truck that sells edibles, smoothies, and soap. But secondly because this year Karma’s parents came out to their daughter as poly and bisexual and introduced her to THEIR GIRLFRIEND, Diane! There is essentially zero poly representation on scripted television (seriously, I can’t think of a single example) so I will take this morsel and I will bake it into a pot brownie and I will have a kale smoothie with it and fondly remember Molly.

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Valerie Anne, Supergirl/Orphan Black/Wynonna Earp Recapper

Alex Danvers, Supergirl

Best coming out story. I originally had hoped that she was just going to have been out, and we just learned about it. “Hey I have a crush on this girl,” “Cool hope she’s not as bad as your last girlfriend.” So at the first signs of Gay Panic™, I flinched and braced myself for a tired old awkward tale. But Supergirl brought something new to the story, and gave Alex such heartfelt, meaningful mono- and dialogues during her albeit somewhat accelerated coming out process. It was truly something to behold. Not to mention Alex herself is fierce and loyal and brave and hilarious, it’s nice to have her on the team. (And she’s already got great taste in women.)

Cosima and Delphine, Orphan Black

Best reunion. Cosima and Delphine being reunited when everyone thought Delphine was dead and then them having to strip down and cuddle for warmth felt like a fever dream but wasn’t. I watched that episode with Heather and we literally jumped up and down and hugged like our team just won the superbowl. (And in this day and age, a queer woman being not dead does indeed feel like a win.)

Waverly Earp, Wynonna Earp

Best kiss. When Waverly Earp shut the door to the sheriff’s office and CLIMBED UP Nicole Haught like she was the sexiest tree on the planet, I just about died. And it only got better from there.

Max and Eleanor, Black Sails

Best head bitches in charge. Max and Eleanor from Black Sails. Eleanor is too busy reclaiming her position on top to bed anyone right now and Max is making a red-headed LadyPirate fall in love with her (and I do so love Anne Bonny) but I will never stop hoping these beautiful fools will someday get together, because I truly think they would be the power couple that ruled Nassau into greatness.

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Lucy Hallowell, The Fosters Recapper

Stef and Lena Adams Foster, The Fosters

The last year for the Adams Foster family of perpetual teenage insanity was typically bonkers. But amid the Hunger Games cornucopia of teen drama we still have the best lesbian moms ever on television. They are imperfect. They fight, they have a house that’s falling apart, and they don’t have sex enough. They are tired and snappish but also funny and loving. Most of all they’re committed.

Many shows (L Word I am looking at you) don’t know what to do with committed couples other than break them up, The Fosters continues to find ways to challenge Stef and Lena as a couple. They stretch and bend in ways that can be uncomfortable to watch but they always come back to each other. This season, Stef’s cancer storyline allowed Teri Polo and Sherri Saum to bring more depth, love, and humor to their characters. The scenes in which Stef confronts her fears that Lena will stop loving and desiring her post-surgery were especially poignant. These two characters (and the actors who play them) are meant for each other. I’ve come to expect nothing less from the lesbian Coach and Tami Taylor.

Nicole Haught, Wynonna Earp

Every once in awhile you get a fairy tale hero who is every bit as good as promised. Nicole Haught is one of the first times I have seen a lesbian character be that kind of knight in shining armor. She’s almost too good to be true. So much so that Wynonna calls her a walking bumper sticker. It’s about time the queer ladies got a feminist hot cop with a mean right hook (and who knows enough to put on a damn bulletproof vest).

Alex Danvers, Supergirl

When a story gets to me I feel it in my hands. I know it sounds super weird. But my hands tingle, and ache when a story or a character resonates with me. In general it’s extremely rare. But every week of Alex’s coming out arc had me pausing the show to try to shake the ache out of my hands.

Stories help us make sense of our world, who we are, and where we fit. It was no surprise when Alex turned out to be the queer character the show promised us this season. She screamed queer from day one. But what was surprising was a story that was so true and real in the hands of a capable actress who broke my heart when she said “she doesn’t like me… like that.” I’ve been there. Probably you’ve been there.

“In the particular contains the universal.” By getting the details right — the reemergence of long forgotten feelings, the crushing sadness of unrequited feelings, the tumblers of a lock lining up and finally allowing us to understand what those feelings meant — Supergirl showed us that it understands us. It sees us, it knows us, and it invited us to come, sit down, and listen to a story that our hearts will recognize as our own. My hands hurt just thinking about it and I couldn’t be happier.

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Elaine Atwell

Bea Smith, Wentworth

Australian prison drama Wentworth is one of the greatest and queerest television shows ever made, but I almost never tell anyone to watch it. It doesn’t feel right to inflict it on a civilian; I worry they won’t understand how much it asks of you, how loving it means giving it permission to hurt you and accepting that something terrible is always either happening or about to happen. I’d been through three seasons of it, accompanied the toughest fandom on the internet and Franky Doyle (who makes Alex Vause look like Lover Cindy), and we survived because we always expected the worst. But none of us expected Bea Smith to fall in love with Allie Novak, and so we could not be prepared for what it did to us.

You have to understand that Bea was already a legendary character before she kissed a girl; she was the lead on the original Prisoner series, the Top Dog of Cell Block H, and the battered, resilient soul of Wentworth. This isn’t one of those cases where a boring character gets assigned remedial queerness to make them more interesting. But for all her badassery and hard-won power, Bea was and always had been miserable. So much horrible shit had happened to her (see paragraph one) that by this season she was all but lifeless, all but numb.

And then Allie Novak, another prisoner who’d been cruelly knocked around by the world, walked right up to the untouchable Top Dog and smiled. She made fun of her, even. She got her to FREESTYLE RAP. And even though she’d never been attracted to a woman before, it was enough to make Bea pry apart the bars of her heart and let in a love so strong it made them both forget they were in prison. You’ve never seen a character grow so much and so beautifully as Bea did during those episodes, confronted by the terrifying prospect of happiness, of a body and a heart that dared to want. The writing was a gift, the acting was a revelation, Danielle Cormack and Kate Jenkinson’s chemistry was without parallel. But it was clear, from our understanding of the laws of Wentworth, that our dizzying rise had to be accompanied by an equally spectacular fall.

Bea Smith died in the season finale, and on the one hand, that made her one more name added to a list that is already unbearably long. But she died bringing down her greatest foe. She died and her spirit rushed on to prepare a place in the afterlife for Allie.

How I make sense of it is: the writers started with the certainty that they would kill Bea this season. I don’t really agree with that decision, but if I take it as a given, I can give them some credit for the way they did it. She didn’t have to fall in love. She didn’t have to fall in love with a woman (especially since there was a hunky guard who’d been waiting in the wings for three seasons). Bea’s death broke my heart like my first love, in a sharper and deeper way than I’ll ever let a show break my heart again. But I can’t regret it any more than I regret the happy moments of love affairs that happened to end.

I won’t tell you to watch Wentworth, because I don’t like being responsible for other people’s tears. But if you do, Bea Smith (and Danielle Cormack) will make it worth the pain.

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Chelsea Steiner

Jenna Marshall, Pretty Little Liars

Consider the life of Jenna Marshall for just a moment. Imagine you were strolling around Rosewood, minding your own damn business, when this queen bitch Alison DiLaurentis and her cronies throw fireworks into your garage, blinding you for NO.FUCKING.REASON. Then, they proceed to A) accuse you of every crime in town B) kill all your lady lovers C) slap your sunglasses off of your perfect face and D) make fun of your disability to your face for the better part of a decade. THEN imagine that, in addition to these indignities, some Big Bad has tried to drown you the Lake of 1,000 Faces, bombs your childhood home into oblivion, and kidnaps you in a van. I think it’s safe to say that Jenna Marshall’s life has been one long blind 2016-style dumpster fire. In season 7A’s finale, Jenna lures the Liars to a spooky abandoned school for the blind (so on brand) and just starts terrorizing them with a handgun like a Scooby Doo villain. I even cheered when she kicked Noel Kahn’s decapitated head out of the way to chase after those bitches. With Pretty Little Liars nearing the end of their run, I would love to see a reboot told entirely from the perspective of Jenna Marshall. I guess I’ll just have to settle for her stabbing everyone in the heart with her flute and then playing some classic jazz. Bitch cannot see, but Bitch can be one of the best characters of all time.

Yorkie and Kelly, Black Mirror/San Junipero

Let’s be honest: no one is looking to Black Mirror for uplifting storylines, let alone uplifting queer storylines. The series focuses on the ways in which technology reveals our worst traits and impulses; it’s usually a downer. Who would have thought that the bleak waters of Black Mirror would give us one of the most enduring and uplifting queer love stories of 2016? “San Junipero” took us all by surprise with it’s twisty love story of Yorkie and Kelly, two women who traverse time and distance to find each other. While the conceit of the episode is classic sci-fi, it is the grounded, human love story that elevates the romance between the shy, introverted Yorkie and the wild party girl Kelly. Their tentative flirtations, fears, and very tender sex scene strike a chord of familiarity that every queer woman can relate too. If only we could all plug ourselves into San Junipero for the next four years, then heaven really would be a place on Earth.

Delphine Cormier, Orphan Black

In season 3, we watched Delphine Cormier get shot in the stomach and left to die in an empty parking lot. In season 4, we watched Cosima collapse when Evie Cho tells her that Delphine is dead. We assume she is dead, because this is what happens to queer female TV characters that we fall in love with: they die. That’s just how these things go. But in the season 4 finale, when it seems like Cosima is going to die in the frozen woods of that mysterious island, she is rescued by a very much alive Delphine Cormier! After getting saved by the Messengers, Delphine has been living in this tiny yurt village, working tirelessly towards a cure for Cosima and her sestras. When she finds Cosima dying of hypothermia, she strips down, gets into bed with her, and literally kisses her back to life. Cosima gives her the last bit of intel needed, and she cooks up and injects Cosima with the cure for her bloody lungs disease. It’s so rare for anyone on Orphan Black to get a happy ending, but here, just for a brief moment, naked and cuddled on a cot, Cophine gets theirs. It’s about damn time.

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Ali Davis

Willa Warren, The Family

The Family was crazymaking in lots of ways — the show literally never decided if it took place in a big city or a small town and characters would do completely ridiculous our out-of-character things because the plot needed them to happen — but I kept going back because of Willa Warren. Unlike another queer character on the show, Willa was written as a complex character first, with her sexuality just one aspect of who she was. You know, like a person.

She was the smartest character on the show, ferociously ambitious and running up against the fact that she was the closeted lesbian daughter of a “family values” gubernatorial candidate. Willa was also the peacemaker child from a dysfunctional family all grown up, still trying desperately to make everything perfect even after a tremendous loss. Her desperate scrabbling to be the good girl and make everything OK made her increasingly willing to do very, very bad things. Little things like knowingly allowing an impostor pretending to be her abducted brother into her home. Little things like perhaps calling in a murderous hit or two.

Willa was always a churn of anxiety and calculation and Alison Pill played her brilliantly. You could always see Willa thinking, holding back a storm of emotions, and wanting the exact woman she shouldn’t. And which of us hasn’t done that last one? I had huge problems with The Family, but I still hold out hope that one day Willa will get spun off into the series she deserves.

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Jenna Lykes, Gaming Columnist

Sameen Shaw, Person of Interest

Listen, there’s a chance I’m a little biased here because I would watch Sarah Shahi read the phone book, but her portrayal of Sameen Shaw in Person of Interest’s fifth and final season was a goddamn revelation. Shaw, who has a self-diagnosed Axis II Personality Disorder, was put through the ringer in the final episodes (I mean, she committed suicide in more than 6,741 simulations to protect Root and their mission), and Shahi brought heartbreaking and nuanced emotional depth to her performance. The show might have ended, but Shaw is still in my heart for a hundred reasons. She’s a straight line – an arrow (and I’m probably going to cry about that forever).

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Karly, Social Media Co-Editor/Carmilla Recapper

Lexa, The 100

We were so young and happy in early 2016. It was so amazing to see Lexa return in season three, somehow more capable and more attractive. I still feel butterflies in my stomach whenever I remember the bowing scene. I felt so lucky to be able to write about her here. Lexa was a wise leader, a badass warrior, and she obviously was the best girlfriend ever. She was willing to say goodbye to Clarke for the sake of peace between her people and the selfish, awful Sky People who didn’t deserve it. Sometimes it’s easier to remember the betrayal and grief after her death than it is to remember the good times. But do yourself a favor and remember how great she was, and how she captured our hearts and imaginations… or read some good fanfiction. Rest in Peace.

Alex Danvers, Supergirl

When word got out that a character in one of the CW superhero shows was going to come out of the closet, Alex was the first one I hoped for. But it felt unlikely. How sad is that? Alex is a smart, capable, and ambitious badass and she’s an amazing big sister. Who wouldn’t want her on our team? And what a coming out it was! Many of us realized we were gay in our 20s, when we’ve already figured out so much other stuff in our lives. Alex’s storyline felt so real and honest. Sometimes I feel like I’d rather take on an alien menace than tell a girl I like her. But Alex is so brave and she can do both!

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NEXT: THE WORST.

Top Nine Trans Characters Played by Trans Actors on Transparent

Trans representation is a big topic right now. Trans women of color are still being murdered at terrifying and heartbreaking rates, and quality trans stories are still rarely told. While some actors and filmmakers like Laverne Cox, Jen Richards, Angelica Ross and Sydney Freeland are fighting to get more roles for trans actors, much of Hollywood is ignoring them. That’s why it’s so important to celebrate shows that get it right and cast trans actors. If you’re looking for trans actors playing trans characters, the absolute best place on TV to look is Jill Soloway’s show for Amazon Prime, Transparent.

The new season, the show’s third, just debuted on Amazon and it is terrific. It also features several more trans characters played by trans actors. Some of these characters only have a few lines in one episode, but others have character growth and story arcs that span episodes and touch on really important topics. There have now been so many trans actors on this show, in just thirty episodes, that I can make this list of characters with names and multiple lines! That’s like, more trans characters than the rest of TV combined.

Just a warning: there are probably some mild spoilers in this post.

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9. Omar

Played by Rocco Kayiatos

Kayiatos, who also goes by the name Katastrophe when he raps, also shows up in the first episode. He’s working at the LA LGBT center, answering the suicide hotline alongside Maura.

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8. Eleanor

Played by Zackary Drucker

Drucker, who’s been a consultant on the show and also works as a co-producer, played the person moderating a trans support group all the way back in Season One.

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7. Adriana, Lorena and Carmen

Played by Hailie Sahar, Harmony Santana and Mariana Marroquin

These three only make one appearance, again, in the first episode of Season 3, but I LOVED them so much. They’re three Latinas hanging out at the Slauson Swap Meet, looking at hair, when Maura comes in and asks them for some help. Here we see Maura at Peak White Transness, first calling them “familia” and then asking if they’ve seen another trans woman of color, Elizah, “on the streets.” Their reaction is priceless and they seem like people I would love hanging out with. Plus, it’s super nice to see Harmony Santana back in acting after her absolutely brilliant performance in the movie Gun Hill Road a few years ago.

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6. Dale

Played by Ian Harvie

Dale served a very important role in the first season as one of the first trans people outside of their mother that any of the Pfefferman kids knowingly spent time with. Things weren’t exactly great for him, though, as Ali ends up fetishizing him as sort of the “ultimate man.”

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5. Elizah

Played by Alexandra Grey

The title character of the first episode of Season Three, Grey makes quite an impression and I really cannot wait to see her in more things. She plays a young trans woman who calls the suicide hotline and talks to Maura. We don’t see a lot of her, but whenever she’s on screen, she’s magnetic.

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4. Young Maura

Played by Sophia Grace Gianna

Wow. Just wow. There’s an episode in Season Three that’s maybe my all-time favorite episode of the show, and it’s a flashback to Maura’s childhood. Soloway made the correct decision and decided to cast a young trans girl as the young Maura, and the difference between her performance and when boys play young trans girls is clear. Sophia Grace brings a palpable honestly and reality to the role that taps into the truth of what it’s like to be a trans kid.

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3. Shea

Played by Trace Lysette

One of Maura’s first trans friends, Shea is young, full of life, and helps Maura get into trans culture and trans slang. Her role is expanded in Season Three and we get to see what she’s like when she’s not helping out babytrans Maura. There’s one episode in particular where Trace Lysette does an absolutely brilliant job and really highlights some huge issues that many, many trans women have when trying to date men. I’m super excited that we got to learn a lot more about Shea this season and I’m really, really glad that Trace Lysette is the one bringing her to life.

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2. Gittel

Played by Hari Nef

Hari Nef deserved an Emmy nomination, if not a win, for playing this Jewish trans woman who lived in Berlin before World War II. In Season Two we got a lot of flashbacks to Gittel’s story, as she’s Maura’s aunt, and we got to see the history of the Pfefferman family. Gittel’s story is so incredibly important. Thousands of LGBT people were rounded up and slaughtered by the Nazis and an entire generation of queer people and information about them was stolen. Nef plays the role to perfection. She’s a fighter and she knows who she is, and she won’t let anyone tell her she has to be someone else. Honestly, her performance in the episode “Man on the Land” is one of the best acting performances I’ve ever seen.

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1. Davina

Played by Alexandra Billings

In a lot of ways, Davina is the trans heart of the show. She’s Maura’s best friend and roommate, she’s a trans woman who’s been out for a while and is able to teach Maura (and the show’s audience) about what it’s like being a trans woman. Billings is a legend of trans acting, having pioneered much of the way for trans actors in Hollywood today, and it’s good to see a show like this pay respect to that. Davina acts as a grounding force in Maura’s life, constantly reminding her that being trans isn’t the same for everyone, especially if you’re not white and wealthy like Maura is. Davina’s the trans auntie so many of us have had in our lives and that Maura so desperately needs.

The 20 Best TV Shows About Ladies At Work

Happy Labor Day! Today is the unofficial end of summer and the official day of recognition for the American labor movement! One thing you can do to celebrate is read this very excellent labor history book called From The Folks Who Brought You The Weekend. Another thing you can do is read this really excellent list of the 20 best TV shows about ladies doing it for themselves in the workplace.

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Being Mary Jane

Being Mary Jane is one of the most underrated shows on TV. It started as a 90-minute pilot on BET and is still going strong — with 11 NAACP Image Award nominations — after three seasons. Gabrielle Union plays Mary Jane Paul, a successful TV anchor in Atlanta who is navigating the demands of of super stressful job in a very male-dominated industry and juggling all the expectations society and her family place on her as a single Black woman.

The Good Wife

It’s still unbelievable to me that CBS produced a critically acclaimed drama centered on three deeply flawed and remarkably powerful ladies, one of whom was a bisexual woman of color. If you can wipe Kalinda and Alicia’s last green-screened scene out of your mind, you’ll find great satisfaction here.

Living Single

Queen Latifah’s Khadijah James accomplished more in one season working as the editor of Flavor magazine than every single character on Friends accomplished at their jobs, combined, in ten seasons. Unlike aspiring actor Joey Tribbiani, Synclaire dreamed of stardom in her downtime, when she wasn’t working as the receptionist for Flavor. Regina was a buyer and a soap opera costume designer. Max was an attorney. And combining those incomes is how you actually afford an apartment in New York City.

Superstore

Superstore was one of the best sitcoms on TV last season, and not just because America Ferrera elevates every ensemble. It’s no-joke diverse. It’s smart and subversive. It takes on soulless corporations and celebrates chosen family. And it’s really funny. NBC plans to use it as its comedy anchor in 2016.

Supergirl

Kara Danvers and Cat Grant, a love story for the ages mentor/mentee workplace relationship we hardly ever get to see on TV! Kara is eager and earnest. Cat is curt and suspicious. What they have in common is their hardcore attraction to each other refusal to apologize for being ambitious. They succeed no matter what, and the men in their lives are there to help them thrive or get out of the way.

Ugly Betty

Ugly Betty took a dive near the end when it turned its focus toward Betty’s personal life and away from Mode, but the early seasons of the show mixed pathos and peculiarity with uncanny ease. Betty Suarez was smart and sweet and driven and she never backed down, no matter how many Mean Girls (or incompetent men) came after her.

Mad Men

It’s a Man’s World when we meet the employees of Sterling Cooper, but Peggy and Joan’s career trajectories are easily the most satisfying story arcs over the course of Mad Men’s seven seasons. They are boxed in by sexism at every turn, but they both emerge victorious in different ways. And they never even had to burn a Manhattan high rise to the ground.

Grey’s Anatomy

Meredith and Callie and Bailey and Cristina and Arizona and April and Addison and Lexie, oh my!

30 Rock

#Lizbianism

The West Wing

On a show dominated by men, CJ Cregg remains one of the fiercest feminists in TV history (and arguably the most universally beloved character on The West Wing). She refused to answer a question about whether or not she was “a homosexual,” refused to tell the press what designer she was wearing when she ended up in the briefing room in her State Dinner dress. Plus one of my favorite conversations:

Sam: They have bathrobes in the gym?
CJ: In the women’s locker room.
Sam: That’s outrageous; there’s a thousand men working here and 50 women!
CJ: Yeah, and it’s the bathrobes that are outrageous.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

A single 30-year-old woman who also is the boss of a primetime TV news show? In 1970? There’s a reason critics always point to Mary Tyler Moore as one of the women who changed it all.

How to Get Away With Murder

Viola Davis’ bisexual badass attorney/professor Annalise Keating is one of the most layered characters on TV. She’s in charge in class, in charge in court, in charge in her personal relationships. The only thing she can’t seem to control is herself, and that’s a fascinating juxtaposition of power.

Laverne and Shirley

Laverne and Shirley were roommates and bottle-cappers in a Milwaukee’s Shotz Brewery. They were also so popular that Mego released Laverne and Shirley dolls, and Hot Wheels manufactured a best-selling Shotz Brewery delivery van. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars no broadcast TV network on earth would pick up a pitch for this show today, especially not when one of the lead characters is a “tough-talking tomboy” and neither of them ever apologize for being single.

Murphy Brown

Dan Quayle ran half his presidential campaign in 1992 by yelling at Murphy Brown for being a single working mother. He lost. The show survived six more seasons.

Parks and Recreation

Leslie’s wall of inspirational women (which she kept with her all the way to the White House) included Jeannette Pickering Rankin, Hillary Clinton, Gertrude Stein, Nancy Pelosi, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Bella Abzug, Michelle Obama, Dianne Feinstein, Sandra O’Connor, Janet Reno, Sally Ride, Olympia Snow, and … Leslie Knope. SHE IS SO SUPER CHILL ALL THE TIME.

The Mindy Project

The Mindy Project gets a lot of comparisons to Bridget Jones’s Diary, which is fair, but Mindy is muuuuuch better at her job than Bridget Jones could ever hope to be, and a little bit luckier in love, and surrounded by a much more likable cast of co-workers. Plus Mindy Kaling writes and stars in and sometimes even directs this show!

Suits

Suits is about two men mainly, but Gina Torres’ Jessica Pearson is the character who rightly gets all the acclaim. Pearson is a Vassar girl, and a Harvard girl, and the first Black woman on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s the managing partner of Pearson Hardman. Jessica Pearson literally never loses (and if she seems to lose, it’s only because you haven’t watched her bend a setback into a win yet).

Jane the Virgin

Jane the Virgin is my favorite show on television. Jane’s gonna have it all! She’s going to be a successful romance writer, an exemplary mom, and loving daughter and granddaughter, a beloved wife, a best friend. She’s a lot of those things already, but career-wise, she’s making money at the Marbella, the most cursed workplace since Rosewood’s Radley Asylum. I’m still not sure exactly what her job is (general guest services, it seems like), but I know she manages to juggle it along with school, parenting, two full-time romances, familial obligations, murder mysteries, kidnappings, midwifing, breast pumping, and dance-offs with Britney Spears. Fourth wave feminism!

Scandal

Olivia Pope is very good at what she does. She is better at it than anyone else. And that’s not arrogance, that’s a fact. IT’S HANDLED.

Bomb Girls

If you pretend the movie doesn’t exist, this Canadian drama is second only to A League Of Their Own when it comes to stories about women making a way to change their own personal worlds on the homefront while the men are off at war.

21 Fictional Ghosts, Ranked

On July 15, the all-new all-female Ghostbusters will arrive in theaters and usher in the Matriarchy and destroy all evidence that men ever existed in movies or in the real world, according to what I’ve read on Twitter. Before that glorious day, however, let us remember the best ghosts we’ve ever known. (Your senior editors compiled this list together, because we love you.)

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21. Ghost Nicole Kidman, The Others

This is cautionary tale about why you should join an all-women’s baseball league when your husband goes away to World War II, instead of just sitting around and staring at your children.

20. Hamlet’s dad, Hamlet

Watching Hamlet go actually bonkers because he’s pretending to go bonkers to divert attention from the fact that he wants to kill his uncle which only makes it harder for him to get close enough to his uncle to kill him never stops being a hoot, and none of it would be possible without King Hamlet showing up in ghost form early on to set off his son’s doom spiral and encourage him to leave behind one of Shakespeare’s most prolific death piles.

19. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Field of Dreams

The ultimate ghost troll. “Watch how easy it is for me to haunt this mediocre white man and convince him to destroy his entire family and all his property with one little midnight whisper about how he’s destined for greatness.”

18. Ghost Juliana Hatfield, My So Called Life

The moral of this story is when a homeless ghost shows up strumming her guitar and reminding you that anyone can end up on the streets, you gotta give her your new Doc Martens and be a better friend to Ricky.

17. The Ghost Librarian, Ghostbusters

I’d also probably confuse heaven for a library if I were dead and could walk through walls. She’s pretty chill in the movies, but in the Library level of the video game she’s a truly superior Big Bad.

16. Jacob Marley’s ghost as played by Goofy, Mickey’s Christmas Carol

Don’t let Goofy’s puerility fool you; this movie is horrifying. I didn’t sleep for two weeks after I saw it when I was a kid.

15. Boo Berry, from the cereal

In the haunted cereal off-season, you know this guy runs a weed dispensary in Boulder, Colorado.

14. Moaning Myrtle, Harry Potter

Myrtle was one of the biggest creeps in the whole Harry Potter series, but I guess Harry would have died in the second challenge in the Triwizard Tournament if she hadn’t been stalking him and Cedric.

13. Ghost Lily Tomlin, The X-Files

Ghost Lily Tomlin tries to make Mulder and Scully kill each other so she can hang out with Gillian Anderson in the afterlife, but she really only ends up pushing those two crazy kids closer together at Christmas time. Nice try, though, Lils. Can’t blame a girl for trying.

12. Danny Phantom, Danny Phantom

My once and future lesbian style icon.

11. Ghost Geena Davis, Beetlejuice

How many times does the specter of a female protagonist get to ride a sandworm to victory? Not very many. Not nearly enough.

10. Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue, Ms. Pac-Man

They weren’t able to stop her from throwing her life away for Pac-Man, but they tried their darndest.

9. Space Ghost, Coast to Coast

“I’ll spank you smartly with my spank ray,” is a literal thing he said one time out loud on his talkshow.

8. Big Boo, Mario games

Vanilla Ghost House in Super Mario World is one of the top ten Super Mario Bros. levels of all time in any Mario game. If you didn’t get 20 extra lives out of this board, you weren’t trying.

7. Sassy Teen Girl Ghost, Goosebumps

I don’t know this ghost, but when Rachel mentioned that she exists (while also mentioning that Goosebumps and Zootopia are the only movies she’s seen in theaters this year), I knew she deserved a top ten spot.

6. Dawn’s Surfer Ghost, Baby-Sitter’s Club Mystery #12

Okay, spoiler alert, the ghost surfer is really that jackass Thrash who broke up Dawn’s lesbian summer fling with Sunny and then disguised himself as a concession stand worker so he could sabotage other surfers’ boards and burn off poor Stephanie’s eyebrows, but in the end he did end up giving Dawn a snake ring, which, of course, matches the snake bracelet Claudia already owns (as mentioned in Baby-Sitters Club #7: Claudia and Mean Janine) and they should wear that jewelry when they get married to each other.

5. Boo the Cat, The Funky Phantom

Boo the Cat is far superior to Scooby-Doo, fight me.

4. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca

Mrs. Danvers as Mona Vanderwaal and Rebecca as Alison DiLaurentis, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. (What I mean is: Mrs. Danvers had a big gay crush on Rebecca that caused her to burn down the world. You could argue that Rebecca wasn’t an actual phantom in this book, but you would be wrong.)

3. Mona Vanderwaal, Pretty Little Liars

Like I said: Rebecca (flipped).

2. Fa Family Ancestors, Mulan

Pretty sure they knew Mulan was gay before she left for war. Pretty sure they were okay with it.

1. Casper the Friendly Ghost

Duh.

10 Female Characters in The X-Files I’ve Decided Are Lesbians or Bisexual

For a show so beloved by lesbian and bisexual women everywhere, The X-Files sure didn’t have a lot of actual lesbians or bisexuals. OR DID IT??? At least IN MY IMAGINATION?? Not discussed is the sexual orientation of Scully herself, because my heart can’t take it, but feel free to cover the topic roundly in the comments.

1. Colleen Azar, “all things,” Season 7 Episode 17

I always remembered this as a subtextual lesbian episode — like here are Colleen Azar and her “friend,” two nice white lady “roommates” who live together and are really into chakras, wink wink nudge nudge. Imagine my surprise when I rewatched it a year or two ago and found out they are canonically lesbians who talk about their relationship! And kiss! This episode was directed by real-life lady who likes other ladies Gillian Anderson, so I am assuming we have her to thank for this lesbian representation way back in the year 2000. They seem like they take things super seriously in general and aren’t that fun to hang out with, but hey, at least they’re still alive at the end of the episode!

2. Karin Berquist, “Alpha,” Season 6 Episode 16

The best part of this episode is that one subplot is supposed to be Scully being jealous of what she perceives as romantic chemistry between Mulder and Karen Berquist — Karen Berquist, who lives in the middle of nowhere with her mullet and a young female assistant, training dogs and eschewing most human contact. Scully is a brilliant scientist, but we have to be real about the fact that gaydar is not a strength of hers.

3. Michelle Fazekas, “Detour,” Season 5 Episode 4

Michelle is a beautiful and powerful force for good in the world and looking at her makes me want to weep, and also she is a lesbian. She is the only person who understands how forests work on this whole show, she is extremely competent, and also her hair is perfect. Also she makes this face when talking to Mulder for the first time, which I find very gay and relatable.

4. Angela White, “Syzygy,” Season 3 Episode 13

Angela White has perfect cheekbones, wears shoulderpads with her skirt suits and drinks cheap whiskey out of the plastic pint bottle; I feel strongly that she is bisexual, and I would like to get a bottomless mimosa brunch with her.

5. Invisigoth, “Kill Switch,” Season 5 Episode 11

I mean, come on. She even dies at the end of the episode. Somewhere Invisigoth and Lexa are together in television lesbian heaven, smearing on eyeliner straight out of the gel pot with their whole palm.

6. Nancy Kline, “Arcadia,” Season 6 Episode 15

For many fans, the appeal of this episode was the fanservice plot point of having Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married plot point. Fair enough, but let’s not forget about Nancy Kline, who keeps her cool when her husband gets shouty about the azaleas by remembering the sweet embrace of Suzy Ferris, her college girlfriend that she met in ceramics class and dated for two years before Suzy joined the Peace Corps.

7. Kristen Kilar, “3,” Season 2 Episode 7

Kristen Kilar has to be bisexual because she’s a vampire, and all vampires are bisexual. I don’t make the rules. That’s just how it is.

8. Lab technician, “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” Season 1 Episode 24

She has lesbian voice and a general air of weariness that I suspect resonates with us all to some degree.

9. Phoebe, “First-Person Shooter,” Season 7 Episode 13

She has blunt-cut bangs, is the only woman in a world of annoying narcissistic software developers, and she secretly creates an avatar who looks like a leather domme from space and murders male gamers.

10. Monica Reyes

Why am I so sure Monica Reyes is queer? Is it because she lit candles and put on whale music to help a friend give birth? Is it because she’s sort of psychic and has a great haircut? Is it because of how far short the show fell in terms of doing her character justice? How natural a v-neck and blue jeans look on her? I don’t know, but if Monica Reyes is straight I will get in my car, drive to a hat store, purchase one and then eat it bite by bite with a knife and fork.

Every Major “Law & Order” Character Ranked In Order Of Lesbianism

27. Senior Detective Alexandra Eames

Is seemingly able to withstand extended periods of time (all of it, all the time, every minute of time) with #1 Mansplainer Robert Goren, so. Generally doesn’t ping.

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26. Junior Detective Megan Wheeler

Literally everybody on Criminal Intent bugged for me.

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25. Junior Detective Amanda Rollins

Can’t be a lesbian because her and Carisi are MTB. But she could be bisexual and have an affair with her babysitter. Olivia Benson wouldn’t like that but Olivia Benson isn’t the boss of Rollins’ personal life.

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24. Judge Lena Petrovsky

Has a deeply adversarial history with Alex Cabot, so probably she is homophobic.

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23. Assistant District Attorney Kim Greylek

Vaguely emenates a cylon vibe.

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22. Police Psychiatrist Paula Gyson

I have no memory of this character but if I did, it would be a memory of her driving away from her ex’s house on a motorcycle.

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21. Junior Detective Nina Cassady

Who? Statistically speaking, is probably gay.

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20. Junior Detective Monique Jeffries

Never truly fleshed out or given time to shine, leading her to be replaced by Ice-T. Also used to work out at my gym in Union Square. That has nothing to do with anything besides spandex in general.

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19. Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Borgia

Has “relatives in Venice.” Is brutally murdered.

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18. Assistant District Attorney Sonya Paxton

Elliot Stabler considered her “hungry for power.” Alcoholic. Lives by her own rules. Is brutally murdered by somebody else’s stalker.

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17. Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross

Her name is “Jamie.” Lesbian haircut. Intense custody battle with her ex.

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16. Medical Examiner Dr. Elizabeth Rogers

Longest-running recurring character in various Law & Order universes due to absolutely zero fear of commitment. Butch business casual. Easily frustrated by men.

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15. Judge / Bureau Chief Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Donnelly

“The ballsiest character the franchise has ever invented – male or female” –  Susan Green & Randee Dawn, The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit Companion

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14. Junior Detective Nola Falacci

Lesbian voice, bad with people, broad shoulders, wears tank tops to work.

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13. Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa

“De La Garza is, per the show’s distaff tradition, obliged to have Rubirosa scissor her legs around the DA’s office.” – Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly

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12. Lieutenant Anita Van Buren

That’s the same face she makes at the hospital when they’re like, “I’m sorry you have to be legally related to the patient in order to be granted visitation rights.” Nope, not today. NOT ON MY WATCH.

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11. Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid

Lesbian voice. Pro-choice feminist, Scully haircut. Died in a car crash while helping a drunk detective get home from the bar.

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10. Interim District Attorney Nora Lewin

First female DA. Definitely a kinky top who sleeps on a pile of money. Probably does “in contempt of court” role-playing.

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9. Junior Detective Carolyn Barek

This is a trick question because in addition to playing Carolyn Barek, this actress also played a lesbian in “ALTO – A Lesbian Romantic Comedy starring Diana Degarmo Of American Idol & Annabella Sciorra,” AND she played a lesbian in The L Word, and everybody who was in The L Word is gay now.

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8. Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael

Was on the track team at the University of Texas. Overall moral situation leans Log Cabin Republican.

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7. Psychologist Elizabeth Olivet

Blazer.

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6. Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak

Lesbian voice. In her first appearance on the show as ADA, lesbian doyenne Olivia Benson comes to Casey’s office to yell at her and finds Casey IS ALREADY CRYING. This is a unique lesbian trait, crying in anticipation of being yelled at by Olivia Benson. Also: plays softball, troubled ex, tense relationship with her former lover/mentor Elizabeth Donnelley.

In her former life as a straight woman, appeared as a witness in a case involving everybody’s favorite procedural topic, autoerotic asphyxiation.

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5. Medical Examiner Melinda Warner

Knows her way around a body, strategically buries the lede. Is the Heather Hogan of Law & Order in that every time she walks into a room I think, “Oh good, somebody has arrived to make sense of things.” Looks good in a lab coat.

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4. FBI Special Agent George Huang

SORRY IT’S TRUE.

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3. Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot

Lesbian voice. Has an off-screen fan-created deeply implied romantic relationship with Olivia Benson. The Ciara song “Like a Boy” was inspired by Alexandra Cabot, I think. In a press call, as reported by AfterEllen, Stephanie March said of Olivia/Cabot being in love, “I’m not saying we’re not… I’m not saying we’re not in love.” CLOSE ENOUGH.

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2. Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn

Good news here is that Serena Southerlyn, in addition to having my middle name as her last name but with the Southern term “Southern” in front of it, is actually a lesbian. We know this because HER LITERAL LAST LINE ON THE SHOW FOREVER was after she got fired and asked, “is this because I’m a lesbian?” We all know the answer to that is always yes. (Technically her last line is “good… good” after Branch says she’s not being fired for being a lesbian. But she is being fired for being too emotional about her cases, which is basically the same thing.)

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1. Olivia Benson

Straight girls hate her butch haircuts. Is Olivia Benson.

Which TV Shows Win The LGBTQIA Alphabet Soup Contest?

In the MTV series Faking It, best friends Karma and Amy pretend to be a lesbian couple in order to become popular — an idea which initially seemed a bit far-fetched to most LGBTQ viewers, to say the least. This charade leading Amy to realize that she has a genuine crush on her best friend, however? That felt very realistic! But a story like Faking It‘s could only really be told exactly where it’s being told — at the fictional Hester High, a sort of parody of ultra-liberal progressive educational institutions where everybody takes Yarn Arts and Reiki, grows their own lunch, eschews popularity contests, celebrates freedom of expression and scoffs at tradition. Although Amy’s character hasn’t exactly been handled perfectly, the show has been making strides in other areas, going ALL OUT with LGBTQIA representation. With this season’s introduction of a gay trans male character, it got us thinking — is Faking It winning the contest for who can represent the most letters in the LGBTQIA “alphabet soup”? And what does it mean that all these strides in representation have occurred just in time for the show to get cancelled?

Once upon a time, a show could really only get away with having one gay character and, if they were lucky, a few guest characters to date that one gay character. Although in life you often find lesbians in the same corners of the world where you find gay men or trans people, that’s not how it usually happened on television outside of specifically queer programs like The L Word or Queer as Folk. More and more these days, though, one queer character is not the beginning and end of that show’s attempt at representation, but a sign of more queers to come.

So let’s take a look at who’s really batting it out of the park when it comes to really unfurling the entire rainbow and then running around with it enthusiastically! It should be noted that none of these shows feature an “A”, outside of this one second of Faking It:

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Please note that these infographics are not objective truths, and I couldn’t figure out a blanket solution to categorizing regular vs. recurring vs. guest characters that worked for all these shows. It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and is absolutely impacted by how personally familiar I am with any given show. This data should not be used as containing concrete facts so much as a useful overview. If a character represents two demographics — like a gay trans man — then they are included twice, once for “gay” and once for “trans man.”

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Faking It – LGBTQI – 3 Seasons (MTV)

We’re only at Season Three and Faking It already scores big for representing a few identities rarely seen on screen: a gay trans man, a bisexual man and an intersex woman. ALSO a poly queer Mom! Also! ALSO. ALSO. Although I didn’t count her character as a trans woman because her character was not identified as such, trans actress of color Laverne Cox had a guest role in Season Two.

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Glee – LGBTQ – 6 Seasons (Fox)

Glee is the only show on this list to feature both a trans woman and a trans man in prominent roles, and the only show besides Transparent to feature both a trans man and a trans woman at all… although Glee’s treatment of their trans woman character was pretty appalling. Still Glee is a rare bird for having storylines that centered entirely on several queer characters, most notably Kurt, Blaine, Santana and Brittany.

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Degrassi: The Next Generation – LGBTQ – 14+ seasons (CTV)

Degrassi has the advantage of having several casts cycle through the show with turnover every few years. This provides a lot more opportunities for diversity, and they sure do go there. Starting with Marco, Degrassi has been telling the stories of teenage queers falling in love since the early ’00s. Adam remains one of the few trans male characters to be part of the main cast of any television show, ever. But uh, his story didn’t end too well.

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Orange is the New Black – LBTQ – 4+ seasons (Netflix)

Oh man I go crazy for a show that has shit-tons of queer women in it! Orange wins all the diversity awards for racial diversity and focusing unapologetically on women’s stories. Its regular cast represents a lot of people we rarely see on TV, like a queer transgender woman of color and a fat butch lesbian. Plus, there’s two black lesbian characters in the main cast and they aren’t even dating each other!

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Nip/Tuck – LGBTQI – 7 Seasons (FX)

Nip/Tuck was not afraid to be totally queer and also totally offensive to queer people. It was a real paradox of a program! This is why it’s a good thing that GLAAD has shifted its focus on evaluating media representation from quantity to quality.

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Transparent – LBTQ – 3+ Seasons (Amazon)

Transparent has changed the face of trans representation but it’s also been telling really interesting stories about queer sexual orientations, too. Every woman in the Pfefferman family is queer! Also, however, everybody is white. Seriously that one person of color in the “recurring” column is our very own Brittani Nichols, who once wrote, “I rarely see anyone that looks like me in movies/web series/TV. To the point that the most glaring examples of people that look like me ARE ACTUALLY ME.”

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The L Word – LGBTQ – 6 Seasons (Showtime)

The L Word has featured more lesbian and bisexual female characters than any other show in the history of time forever. It was also lauded for its inclusion of Max, one of the first trans male TV characters with a recurring role, but his character, much like Unique’s on Glee, was so mishandled that it likely did more harm than good. The L Word knocked it out of the park with lesbian representation, but definitely needed more racial diversity. Of the four lesbians of color indicated as “Main Cast or Series Regulars,” only one — Bette Porter, played by Jennifer Beals — was in all six seasons of the show.

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Sense8 – LGBTQ – 2+ Seasons (Netflix)

Sense8 scores for having a two gay men of color as well as a lesbian trans woman dating a black woman. Some of the representation here is based on the fact that the producers have said that all the Senses are pansexual, which so far hasn’t really been an element of their specific lives so much as an element of their ability to exist within the consciousness of other variously-gendered Senses.

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Empire – LGBQ – 3+ Seasons (Fox)

Empire is notable for having so many queer characters of color. And also for killing and/or shooting them.

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Pretty Little Liars – LBTQ – 7 Seasons (Freeform)

Along with Santana Lopez, Emily Fields is one of a few queer women of color in the main cast of a non-streaming television show.

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Skins – LGBQ – 7 Seasons (e4)

Not included in the infographic is the fact that in Series Five, Franky was presented as genderqueer, although that element of her character was kinda wiped out in what turned out to be the show’s final season.

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True Blood – LGB – 7 Seasons (HBO)

True Blood‘s numbers benefited significantly from vampires being pansexual. It also gets props for having a gay black man and a bisexual black woman in its main cast, both of whom had more than one same-sex relationship throughout the show. They killed Jesús, though, so.

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The Fosters – LBTQ- 4+ Seasons (Freeform)

In addition to giving us a story focused very tightly on a middle-aged interracial lesbian  relationship, The Fosters has also broken ground with its portrayal of a pre-teen gay boy coming into his identity.

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American Horror Story – LGBTQ – 5+ Seasons (FX)

With a new cast every season and a creator who loves creating offensive transgender characters, AHS has had many opportunities to showcase queer characters and subvert tropes. Its second season was notable for having a lesbian character be the only one left standing at the series end, subverting the dead lesbian trope.

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Shameless – LGBQ – 7+ Seasons (Showtime)

I’ve never seen this show! This data is based on Wikipedia. Educate me, friends!

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Wentworth – LBTQ – 4+ Seasons (Foxtel)

Wentworth is so good and its trans female character Maxine has been done really well. Also props for showing that prison staff, not just prisoners, can be gay too!

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Queer as Folk – LGBT – 5 Seasons (Showtime)

WHITER THAN FRIENDS. Also the trans woman character had like three lines in six seasons, so.

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105 Trans Women On American TV: A History and Analysis

Until about five years ago, it was nearly impossible to find even a mildly positive portrayal of trans women on American television. This widespread defamation has absolutely impacted the national perception of trans women as a group. It certainly had an impact on me growing up — not knowing any out trans women in real life, all I knew about them was what I saw on TV and in the movies. Trans women were pathetic, violent, disposable, or the butt of a joke. They endured misgendering and slurs from their loved ones and laughed along when humiliated. They were violently outed and interrogated about their penises, and this was considered okay. If any cis people in the story had a change of heart by the end of the episode, it was considered a positive portrayal, no matter what they’d already put the trans woman through. Trans women were treated as inhuman, basically. It remains acceptable, even today, to be openly transphobic and transmisogynistic on television.

This legacy of disrespect is what prompted an intense fan backlash when Pretty Little Liars revealed that its six-season villain, the mysterious “A,” was a trans woman named Charlotte, who the characters had previously known as Allison’s friend CeCe. It turned out that Charlotte was actually Allison’s long-lost sister, cast out of her family for being trans and subsequently gone bananas. Charlotte embodied every negative trans stereotype possible: she was deceptive about her trans status to a romantic partner and everybody who knew her, she manipulated and murdered innocent people, she wore disguises, she had mental health problems, she was referred to as “she/he/it,” she devoted her life to malicious and vengeful behavior and, after being outed, immediately turned suicidal. When the show returned in 2016, Charlotte lasted just long enough to embody one final trope: she got murdered.

The bar for positive representation is so low that in 2010, Seth MacFarlane described the following Family Guy storyline as “probably the most sympathetic portrayal of a transsexual character that has ever been on television, dare I say”: a main character’s parent comes out as a trans woman and then sleeps with another character who, when told about his lover’s trans status, vomits for 45 uninterrupted seconds.

So, I set out to do a thorough and comprehensive analysis of trans female representation on American television. Partially I’m motivated by wishing I’d had something definitive to point at when people argued the Charlotte reveal was no big deal, or that Caitlyn Jenner’s existence has summarily ended the misrepresentation conversation. But the deeper I got into the material, the more I just felt like this information needed to be gathered and presented in its entirety, because the repetitive tropes at play here are both truly horrible and rarely discussed. I was also unable to find any singularly comprehensive reference book for this topic, which surprised me.

Methodology:

Using The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television as well as Wikipedia, TV Tropes, Wikias, imdb, message boards and recaps, I was able to discover 105 characters who seemed to be, either overtly or subtextually, trans representations. [ETA: The comments on this post are filled with stories of other characters — many that could’ve been included here if I’d found them myself, and some that wouldn’t be but are interesting thoughts anyhow — so read those after you read this!] The majority of these 105 characters were one-episode appearances, and over the course of six weeks, I logged over 50 hours of television watching and reviewing. If I couldn’t find the episode anywhere online or at the library, I used the aforementioned sources to describe the episode. We did not include sci-fi/fantasy/supernatural characters, because that gets a little confusing/tricky, and it was hard to know where to draw the line there.

In some cases, it was difficult to discern who was or wasn’t a trans character because the language we use to talk about trans people (and even how trans people describe themselves) has evolved so rapidly and changed so dramatically over the past five decades, and many early portrayals were categorized as “cross-dressers” or “transvestites.” Some of those roles I left out, but some I included because regardless of terminology, those images contributed significantly to how people perceive trans women and I wanted to include at least a few.

This report is in two pieces, in the first I will discuss broadly what I discovered, and the second is a list of every trans character I looked at and a brief description of their role.

I. Data

By and large, trans women are rarely seen on television, and when they are, the context is either tragic or farcical. Trans women on TV do these things: they die or are dying, they kill other people or are killed, they are your old pal from college who presents as female now, they are in the hospital, they’ve come down to the station for questioning. They always wear dresses and lots of makeup, they usually date men, they’re usually white, and they’re rarely portrayed by actual trans women. They are remarkably understanding when potential partners are disgusted by them, and patient when friends make jokes about them. They speak openly about penises and any surgeries they may or may not have had to anybody at all who wants to know.

When GLAAD looked at ten years of trans male and female representation on television in 2012, they found 54% of the 102 episodes containing trans folks were categorized as containing negative representations, 35% ranged from “problematic” to “good” and 12% were considered groundbreaking, fair or accurate. 40% of the characters played a “victim,” 21% were killers or villains, 20% were sex workers, and hate speech appeared in at least 61% of the episodes.

Representation has definitely improved over the last five years, but it’s still nearly impossible to find a character who’s trans identity is an incidental element of her inclusion on the show. Still, the majority of trans characters are written by and played by cis actors, and were it not for Transparent, Orange is the New Black and Sense8, which not-so-coincidentally employ actual trans people to play parts and sometimes even to write words, the landscape would remain pretty barren. The only one-off episode I watched that really impressed me was the most recent episode on this list, from a show called Royal Pains.

This infographic, compiled for me by the fantastic Heather Hogan, presents an overview of compiled data. However, the characters from Bob’s Burger included in the appendix are not accounted for in the infographic, as they were added after the infographic had gone through so many tiny updates that we no longer had the mental or emotional capacity to proceed.

In Part II, I will walk you through the entire history of trans female characters on American television. I used the terminology used in the programs themselves, rather than updated terminology, to accurately reflect what was said at the time.

Thank you to our Trans Editor Mey Rude, who edited and vetted this entire piece and also helped me fill in some of the shows I wasn’t familiar with. LOVE YOU MEY.

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II. Appendix

Nurse Betty Ames, Alfred Hitchock Presents “An Unlocked Window,” 1965

Cis male actor

Nurse Stella Crosson is shocked to discover that their new nurse Betty Ames is not a nurse at all! In fact, she is the infamous nurse-killer on the loose! Betty poses as a victim and then tries to attack Stella. They pull off her wig for THE BIG REVEAL. This episode was so popular that they remade it in 1985!

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Beverly LaSalle, All in the Family, 1975-1977

Cis gay male actor

Archie is shocked to discover that Beverly, a performer who passed out in his cab, is “really a man.” They pull of her wig for the BIG REVEAL! Archie freaks out and unleashes a torrent of hate speech. Beverly eventually wins the Bunkers over with her winning personality and willingness to participate in jokes made at her own expense. Everybody continues using male pronouns for Beverly. Eventually she is beaten and killed by gay-bashers.

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Pat Caddison, Medical Center, “The Fourth Sex (Parts 1 and 2),” (1975)

Cis gay male actor

*Robert Reed, a closeted gay HIV-positive actor best known for playing Mr. Brady, won an Emmy for this role.*

Pat’s family is shocked when Pat, a surgeon, comes out as a “transsexual” and announces his intent to get surgery in Los Angeles, conducted by her old pal Dr. Gannon. Pat’s family freaks out and feel betrayed. Everybody continues using male pronouns for Pat. Pat delivers a compassionate appeal for understanding. Nobody supports her transition. Doctor’s wife suggests he get psychological help instead of surgery. Attempts suicide. Has surgery. Post-surgery, tells fellow doctors to consider being compassionate towards patients with their “psychological condition.”

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Al, Barney Miller “Vigilante” (1975)

Cis male actor

Al, a teamster held for arrest at the police station for “wearing a disguise,” functions as comic relief for the officers dealing with other crimes. Jokes about wigs! Jokes about girdles! Jokes about penises! Male pronouns! She plays along.

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Charlise Parker, Police Woman, “Night of the Full Moon” (1976)

Cis male actor

Pepper is shocked when the murderess she’s been chasing, Charlise, turns out to be “a man dressed as a woman.”

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Edie Stoke, The Jeffersons, “Once a Friend” (1977)

Cis female actress.

**GLAAD noted this episode as “one of the first positive portrayals of a transgender woman in entertainment media.”**

George is shocked to learn that his old Navy buddie “Eddie” is a “transsexual” and now goes by “Edie.” George freaks out and makes a lot of jokes. Eventually he comes around. Edie tells George to stop calling her “Eddie” and using male pronouns. He reluctantly agrees. The show ends on a hopeful note!

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Niki Gunter, Westside Medical, “The Mermaid” (1977)

Cis female actress

The doctors at a Los Angeles hospital are shocked when East German swimming champion Niki Gunter’s x-rays reveal that she is “transsexual.” Niki delivers a compassionate appeal for understanding — specifically, understanding that she cannot return to East Germany, where the East German government is preventing her from being socialized as a female. She confides in a female doctor about feeling like a “freak” inside and tells a male diver who’s crushing on her that she’s trans, which totally weirds him out. Reluctantly the Germans agree to be nicer to her.

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Linda Murkland, All That Glitters (1977)

Played by Linda Gray, cis female actress

**First recurring transgender female character on television.**

This short-lived but delightfully subversive sitcom featured a world with reversed gender roles — women took power positions, their husbands were secretaries and stay-at-home Dads. Murkland, who came to the company when they needed a “rugged and strong” image for the company’s new cigarette line, was the first transgender character to be a series regular on network television. The show was cancelled after only six episodes.

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Nikki, WKRP in Cincinnati, “Hotel Oceanview” (1980)

Cis female actress

Herb is shocked when the woman he’s about to make out with says “I used to be a man.” Furthermore, she’s actually his old buddy from high school. But that guy was so athletic! How could she be a woman! Herb feels betrayed. Sick to his stomach, he flees the room.

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Margo, Charlie’s Angels, “Angel on the Line” (1981)

Cis male actor

The Angels are shocked to learn that Margo, a killer they’re tracking down, is “really a man” in a wig! They rip off her wig and she cowers, bald, in a puddle of mud.

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Rachel Johnson, The Love Boat, “Gopher’s Roomate” (1982)

Cis female actress

Gopher is shocked to learn that his roommate from college, who used to present as male, is that lady he thought he recognized on the loveboat!

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Too Close For Comfort, “For Every Man There’s Two Women” (1982)

Cis male actor

A man is raped by two women, both of whom are “easily over 200 pounds and terrifying” and one of whom is identified as trans. His sexual assault is played for laughs. The episode never aired in syndication and no footage of the episode is available to the public.

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Bob, St. Elsewhere, “Release” (1983)

Cis male actor.

“Well, you may have convinced your wife, but not me, buddy. I know you too well to agree to anything so disgusting.”

Craig is shocked to learn that “Bob,” his athletic friend from college, has come to his hospital for a “sex change.” Craig feels betrayed. Bob delivers a compassionate appeal for understanding, but Craig, sticking to male pronouns, refuses to do the surgery. Craig’s friends urge him to reconsider while making penis jokes. Craig says he will never trust anybody ever again!

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Melissa, Gimme a Break!,“Melissa” (1983)

Cis female actress.

“You know when you told me being with Melissa was like being with one of the guys? Well, you were.”

Nell is shocked to learn that the woman she set Carl up with, Melissa, “used to be a man.” When Melissa tells Nell, in hopes that she’ll break the news to Carl before things get too serious, Nell repeats her birth name “Harvey Wallace” over and over in a trance. But Nell can barely stop laughing when she tells Carl, who freaks out and says he can’t believe he was going out with “a man”! And that he liked her, too!

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Charlene, Night Court, “Best of Friends” (1985)

Cis male actor

“I mean, so she has her life to lead, fine, but she doesn’t have to come here and rub YOUR face in it.” 

Dan is shocked to learn that his athletic lothario college buddy “Chip” is a woman and that her name is Charlene. Dan freaks out, especially about Charlene having her penis removed. She delivers a compassionate appeal for understanding but Dan continues freaking out, feeling sick, using male pronouns, and feeling betrayed. Nor will he attend her wedding! Charlene punches Dan so he’s face-down in the salad bar! Dan’s friends implore him to be nicer to his buddy while making jokes at her expense. Dan eventually comes around, but keeps on joking about penises!

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Georgette, Carol & Company, “Reunion” (1990)

Cis female actress.

Laurie is shocked to learn that her old flame the football player — who she considers the “love of her life” — is “now a woman.”  “Sex-change operations are 100 times as common on TV as they are in real life, but it’s a credit to Carol & Company that this one is played tenderly and melancholically, as well as for the usual broad laughs,” wrote The Philadelphia Inquirer. I bet!

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Denise Bryson, Twin Peaks (1990)

Played by cis male actor David Duchovny

When DEA Agent Denise Bryson shows up in Twin Peaks to help out on the case, the fact that she’s no longer presenting as “Dennis” isn’t a big deal to her colleagues.

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Susan, L.A. Law, “Speak, Lawyers For Me” (1991)

Cis female actress

“First he’s a guy, now he’s a girl, he or she or it deserves to get fired.”

The beauty company that employed model Susan Convers is shocked to learn that she is transgender. They freak out and fire her, causing her to take them to court, employing a lawyer who misgenders her and criticizes her dress and appearance. In court, she agrees that she hid her trans status from her friends to avoid them being “repulsed.” She delivers a compassionate appeal for understanding. Eventually the lawyer comes around in order to successfully argue her case, and wins.

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Louise, Picket Fences “Pageantry” (1992)

Cis female actress.

“She teaches gym! She goes into the showers! Why haven’t you arrested it? Is she a man or a woman?”

The citizens of Rome and especially Sheriff Jimmy Brock are shocked to learn that Louise, Rome’s beloved drama teacher, “is a man” who got her job with a phony resume. They’re livid. Jimmy’s wife, Louise’s doctor, implores him to reconsider. In court, Louise’s ex-boyfriend testifies that he was repulsed to learn that he “put his tongue in the mouth of a former man.” On the stand, Louise is forced to share her history of suicidal thoughts and describe her “sex change operation” in precise detail. The judge admits that she makes him “extremely squeamish, if not ill,” but that it is not okay ‘to indulge our own personal distaste at the expense of someone else’s civil rights.” Still, the parents oppose her performing in the pageant. Luckily, Rome’s children are more progressive than their parents and they revolt: they halt their performance to call out everybody for being an asshole to Louise and call her up to play her role. They’re dressed like angels! I cried a little.

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Rena, E.R.,“ER Confidential” (1994)

Cis male actor

The doctors are shocked to discover that their apparently female patient has a penis. Dr. Carter is visibly angry at his patient, ignoring her as she monologues about how friends and strangers are disgusted by her and it takes three hours to put her makeup on. “Maybe they’re right,” she concludes. “Maybe I am disgusting.” Apropos of nothing, she escapes to the hospital roof, tells doctors that she’s too old now to pass as a woman, and then jumps off the roof.

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Ginger, Evening Shade, “The Perfect Woman” (1994)

Cis female actress.

Diahann Caroll plays a “transsexual” who Ponder’s friends set him up with. Ossie Davis played Ponder.

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Thad, Married…With Children, “Dud Bowl” (1995)

Cis male actor.

Al and his co-players are shocked when their Dud Bowl quarterback, Thad, shows up presenting as a woman. Thad now speaks with a distinct “gay lisp” and is playful when jokes are made at her expense, even when Al lifts her skirt in front of the boys to inspect her genitals! She’s still a great quarterback, though! And isn’t that really all that matters, in the end.

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Vicky, Diagnosis Murder, “All-American Murder” (1995)

Cis female actress

Mark is shocked to learn that Vicky, the foxy neighbor he likes watching run down the beach, was formerly known as “Victor,” a US Marines recruit who was bullied non-stop for three weeks, causing her to leave the military. Turns out she was killed by her ex-girlfriend when she found out that Vicky had transitioned.

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Azure C. Lee, The City (1995-1997)

Cis female actress

First recurring trans character on a soap opera

The first recurring transgender character on an American soap, Carlotta Chang played fashion model Azure Lee on the short-lived Morgan Fairchild vehicle The City. Apparently she was “revealed to be a male-to-female transsexual in 1996, much to the shock of her Latino fiancé Bernardo.” The Sun-Sentinal promised the episode would “serve up a shocker.” According to The Lavender Screen, trans activists found the role a sensationalized ratings tool, that of “a flamboyant gay male cross-dressing.”

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Annie, Chicago Hope,“Informed Consent” (1995) and “Women on the Verge” (1996)

Cis actress

“If you’d told me you’d been married I could handle that sure. If you had a criminal record? Sure. But you tell me you had a penis? A penis? Forgive me for being just a little bit thrown.”

Bill is shocked to learn that his girlfriend, Mia, is a trans woman and that she was his best friend / hockey teammate in high school while presenting as male. He freaks out, is horrified he had sex with her. A female doctor tells him to reconsider and explains what it means to be transgender.

Bill: “You really think I could look at her without puking my intestines out?”
Doctor: “Just give this thing a chance.”
Bill: “That’s the problem — I don’t know what this thing is. A freak?  A mutant? You tell me. How could I possibly be with that?”
Doctor: “Funny. I was feeling bad for her, but now I kinda feel sorry for you.”

Ultimately, he can’t get over it and continue their relationship. In a later episode, she’s a patient at the hospital and she’s diagnosed with a tumor and a condition related to her hormones. If she wants to survive, she has to stop taking hormones. She kills herself instead. Bill is devastated.

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Crystal Clark, Married With Children, “Calendar Girl” (1996)

Cis female actress

Bud and Al Bundy are shocked when Crystal, the cover model for their calendar, announces on television that she was “born a man.” Bud, who’d kissed her, and the boys, who’d mooned over her calendar, flee the room to throw up.

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Stephanie, Ally McBeal, “Boy To The World” (1997)

Cis queer actor.

“This boy needs help. He is the most fragile person living in the harshest of worlds. He is obviously not well.”

Ally McBeal is shocked to learn that her client, Stephanie, who has been arrested for solicitation, is transgender. Behind her back, everybody misgenders Stephanie and discusses her need for psychological help. Ally hires Stephanie to work at their law firm to save her from doing prison time, but she’s murdered before she has a chance to start her new job.

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Simone Dubois, Nash Bridges, “Javelin Catcher” (1998)

Gay male drag queen actor

RuPaul plays Simone Dubois, a representative of Transsexual Sex Workers, who helps an investigator work undercover in drag for a crime involving a gangster attempting to pick up “transsexual prostitutes.”

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Becker, “He Said, He Said” (1999)

From IMBD: “Becker is visited by a friend of an old friend who turns out to be the old friend.”

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Inez, NYPD Blue, “A Whole In Juan” (2000)

Cis male actor

The cops find a dead baby in a trash can, and soon discover that the child’s mother, a “crack whore,” left her baby in the care of a trans prostitute for what she said would be a few hours. A few days later, the Mom hadn’t shown up, so Inez left the baby alone to go to a check-up with the doctor who installed her “feminine equipment.” While she was gone, the baby choked on its own vomit and died.

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Haley and Jackie, Law & Order SVU, “Transitions” (2000)

Cis male actor and cis female actor

The detectives are shocked to learn that Hailey, the “son” of their assault victim is female, and the assault victim is estranged from Hailey and Hailey’s mother for refusing to accept Hailey’s gender. The NYPD Psychologist, perfect human BD Wong, explains to the detectives what it means to be transgender. Although a group of radical hormone-stealing trans activists she runs with aren’t good for it, it turns out that her school counselor did. On the stand, the prosecutor pushes Hailey’s guidance counselor Jackie ’til she reveals that she is trans and shares her own stories of assault, abuse, suicide attempts and misery. The father sees the error of his ways and asks the DA’s office to drop the charges, but they can’t.

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Cindy McCauliff, Ally McBeal, “Girls’ Night Out” “Two’s a Crowd” “Without a Net” (2000)

Cis female actress

“I have nothing against transgender people, I really don’t, but no one should ever touch one, much less — [makes noise of disgust]”

Fish and Ling are shocked when their client, who is battling a discrimination lawsuit over a mandated physical, tells them, “I’m really a man.” Turns out she’d avoided the physical to avoid her penis being discovered. She’s forced to describe her entire medical transition. Unaware of her trans status, she starts dating Mark, but Fish is OBSESSED and FURIOUS that Mark’s in the dark. When she does tell Mark, he feels betrayed, calls her a man, and is sick to his stomach. He apologizes, they reunite, but ultimately he just can’t date her because Penis. His friends make jokes at her expense.

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Louise, Dark Angel, “Out” (2000)

First trans woman to play a trans character on television.

“The part of Kings Road where she lives is very genderfluid. It’s where all the Mister Sisters reside. The lesbian mind can get hella tampered with in that neighborhood.”

Normal’s friends are shocked when they discover that Louise, the girl he’s going on a date with, is a trans woman. They anticipate an entertaining reveal, only to find that Normal’s unconcerned with her trans status. Unfortunately, Louise realizes that she’s a lesbian, and wants Normal to set her up with Original Cindy. Original Cindy declines because she doesn’t want to date a trans woman.

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Family Law, “Are You My Father” (2000)

A transgender woman fights for the right to see her child.

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Brandi, Just Shoot Me!, “Brandi, You’re a Fine Girl” (2000)

Cis female actress

“He had boobs. Two of ’em, big as yours. And God knows what’s going on downstairs.”

Finch is shocked to learn that his dear ‘ol buddy Burt is that girl “Brandi” he’s been hitting on at the bar. Finch freaks out, thinks it’s a joke, and screams running from the bar. Finch’s female friend/co-worker tells him to reconsider. Eventually he realizes they can still do dude-bro shit together despite her transition and so they do, and then he realizes he’s got feelings for her. He tries to kiss her several times and she rebuffs him with martial arts several times and says she’s not into him like that, she just wants to be friends.

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Cindy McCauliff, Ally McBeal, “Hats Off To Larry” (2001)

Cis female actress

The lawyers of Cage & Fish, but especially Mark, are shocked to learn that Cindy, Mark’s transgender ex, has a fiancé with whom she’d like to sue for the right to marry despite being, in the eyes of the law, a same-sex couple. Mark can’t believe that anybody would love a woman with a penis. In court, Fish refers to their partnership as a “gay couple,” but Mark interrupts with an inspirational speech about how Cindy is a woman.

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Helena Handbasket, Friends (2001 – 2002)

“Don’t you have a little too much penis to be wearing a dress like that?”

Cis female actress.

Monica encourages Chandler to reunite with and accept his father, who, according to Chandler’s childhood memories, has presented as a woman full-time since her son’s childhood, although he refers to her as a “drag performer” and everybody uses male pronouns. Everybody makes jokes at her expense and she plays along.

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Sasha Wilmer, Judging Amy, “Between the Wanting and the Getting” (2001)

Cis male actor

“Maybe Sasha is transgender. Maybe he thinks that his mother or his grandmother or the Powerpuff Girls represent good qualities that he wants in his personality… or maybe he just likes girls’ clothes? At this point we can’t know any more than this child can. It’s just too soon.”

Amy is shocked to discover that the eight-year-old child who Child Welfare Services say is being neglected by their parents says that she is a girl despite being “born biologically male” and only being eight years old. Her parents allow her to dress and present female, which led to bullying, which led to them pulling her out of school. Amy rules that she can remain with her family but recommends that she dresses as a boy.

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Valerie Thomlinson, Gideon’s Crossing, “Freak Show” (2001)

Cis female actress

A husband is shocked when his wife of twenty years, who is dying of cancer, reveals that she is transgender — a revelation she’s forced to make ’cause her estrogen is feeding the cancer and she’s gotta stop taking them to begin cancer treatment. But she tells doctors she’d rather die a young woman than an old man. Her husband leaves her, she tries to kill herself, and then her husband decides he’s gonna try to be her husband again.

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Erica, The Education of Max Bickford (2001-2002)

Played by cisgender actress Helen Shaver

**The first TV show to include a transgender character as part of the regular cast.**

Max is shocked when his best friend Steve comes back into his life as Erica, a transgender woman, but he’s cool with it. Although largely praised as a respectful characterization, her primarily storylines consisted of: “Erica’s boyfriend (Boyd Gaines) accidentally learns that she was once a man,” “Erica’s ex returns to town, unaware that her former husband is now a woman and Max refuses to tell her the truth” and “Erica starts dating a man who tells her all about his past, but she can’t bring herself to tell him that she was once a man.”

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Cheryl, Law & Order SVU, “Fallacy” (2002)

Cis queer female actress

“My problem is this he/she and her lies is the reason we have two bodies on our hands.”

Stabler and Benson are shocked to learn that Cheryl, a victim who allegedly killed her boyfriend’s brother for trying to rape her, is transgender. They refer to her as a man and out her to her boyfriend, who freaks out, feels betrayed, calls her a “freak,” gets sick to his stomach, and then goes ahead and KILLS HIMSELF.

The attorneys are sympathetic to her plight, thanks to the expertise of perfect human BD Wong. It’s clear she’s been assaulted and bullied all her life but because in this case, it wasn’t physical self-defense but fear of being outed that inspired her to attack, she’s sentenced to prison — a men’s prison, of course. On her first night she’s beaten and gang raped.

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Sofia Lopez, Nip/Tuck, “Sofia Lopez” and “Sofia Lopez II” (2003)

Cis male actor

“It’d be wonderful if we could look beyond the wrapping for the real person inside. But I work in  a plastic surgeon’s office, I know more than anyone that doesn’t really happen.” 

Sofia needs a her tracheal shave fixed, and the doctor eventually agrees to do it despite being disgusted by her transsexual status. Later, he’s called to the ER to help a friend of Sofia’s with botched “sex change” surgery, when he learns his prior mentor is performing unsanitary surgery on trans clients while drunk, so he shuts the old doc down. She returns for “SRS,” but after a hook-up with a lesbian nurse, she questions her desire to undergo surgery, claiming a “sexual preference crisis.” It’s never explained why falling for a lesbian would make her hesitate to live as a woman, which literally makes zero sense. Anyhow, she eventually gets the surgery, so.

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Lois, Karen Sisco, “Nobody’s Perfect” (2003)

Trans female actress

The U.S. Marshals are shocked to learn that the fugitive murderer and thief they’re hunting down, Louis DiMarco, is a transgender woman named “Lois” who stole $300k for her surgery.

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Morgan, E.R., “Next Of Kin” (2003)

Cis female actress

Pratt: A 12-year-old cross-dresser?
Harkins: All I know is that, anatomically, she’s a he.
Pratt: And you’re sure about that?
Harkins: I’ve seen my fair share of penises.

Doctors are shocked when they learn that Morgan, a 12-year-old girl who’s just been in a car accident with her father, has a penis! This inspires the doctors to ask her “what’s the deal,” refer to her as his “son” and use male pronouns exclusively. Her father dies, and her mother — estranged from the fam due to her refusal to let Morgan present as female — shows up to chop Morgan’s hair off so she’ll be presentable to her new stepfather and calls her “my little boy.” The one doctor on Morgan’s side shows up too late to stop her from taking Morgan away. This episode is devastatingly depressing.

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Julia Smith, Veronica Mars, “Meet John Smith” (2004)

Cis female actress

“So it turns out my Mom is a liar and my Dad is a circus freak.”

Justin is shocked to discover that his father, who his mother always told him was dead, is a woman named Julia living with her husband in San Diego. He freaks out. Turns out she’s the one who’s been visiting his video store every weekend just to see him for 45 seconds even though he never knew it was her, which Veronica Mars points out is pretty dedicated so maybe he shouldn’t be an asshole. He comes around.

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Wendy, Mamosa and Mona, CSI, “C-C-Changes” (2004)

Cis actresses.

“We all get work done. Doesn’t matter if it’s up top or down low, pretty is pretty.”

The detectives are shocked to discover that their murder victim, Wendy, is “a transsexual” and the “Walter” her car is registered to. Over the course of their investigation, the detectives find an underground silicone-injection operation operated by sex workers, a group of cis and trans showgirls bragging about getting work done, a “how to act feminine” class seemingly attended by actual trans female actors, a beautiful dancer named Mamosa who tells Gil it’s hard for trans girls to find love and that everybody thinks they’re psycho and a trans female doctor lying about her identity who performs “sex change” surgery without a license, which led to a girl dying in her care, and then her Trans Ally husband going out to murder Wendy to keep her quiet. “Killed by someone in our own community,” Mamosa laments to Gil. “As if we don’t have enough enemies.”

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Theresa, Judging Amy, “Slade’s Chophouse” (2004)

Cis male actor

Bruce is shocked when his old priest friend Father Ted shows up and comes out as Father Teresa, explaining that she’d been saving up her salary for a “sex-change.” Along with the recent priest-abuse scandal, Bruce says this piece of news is shaking his faith. Teresa tells him, “if you can hold on to your faith, you’ve got some hope that it’ll all make sense in the end.” Bruce says he’ll come around eventually.

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Daniela, Cold Case, “Daniela” (2004)

Cis female actress

Chris’s Dad is shocked to learn that his son Chris’s girlfriend, Daniela, is transgender, and demands Chris not take her to the prom. Daniela kills herself and Chris buries her, then throws away her dress and corsage.

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Kiki, Queer As Folk (2004-2005)

Cis gay male actor

Kiki, “formerly Kenny,” is a waitress at the Liberty Diner who takes over when Deb retries, but she’s not very good at it. After announcing “I’m a tranny on the verge of a nervous breakdown!” Deb saves her from a brutal lunch rush and eventually returns to her position, with Kiki returning to waitress. In the finale, she brings her “tranny support group” to a political rally.

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Ava Moore, Nip/Tuck (2003-2006)

Played by cisgender actress Famke Janssen

Ava was in love with heterosexual surgeon Barrett Moore, and asked him to “transform Avery into Ava” so they could be together, which he did. The two had a child via a surrogate, and the evening before the surgery intended to make her “artificial vagina deep enough to pass as biologically natural,” she kidnapped their 12-year-old son and began a sexual relationship with him, believing he’d be too young to notice the difference in her vagina. We meet Ava when she shows up in Season Two, a life coach hired by Sean to help his wife.  Sean is drawn to Ava, and unable to see that she is a devious and sociopathic sexual predator. She begins a relationship with 17-year-old Matt. She also attempts to have sex with Christian Troy, who calls her vagina “the goddamn Hope Diamond of transsexuals.” Then her husband performs surgery to give her a deeper vagina. She begs her son to run away to France with her, but instead he stabs himself to death and dies in her arms. She leaves him and flees. In later episodes, Matt deals with the “trauma” of having been involved with a transgender woman, which includes trolling bars for a trans woman who, when he realizes she is pre-op, beats her violently, which brings us to….

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Cherry Peck, Nip/Tuck (2004)

Cis gay male actor

Matt is shocked to learn that Cherry Peck, a trans woman he picked up at a bar, has a penis, and results by beating her savagely. She and her friends go to his high school, chase him out, beat him up, and pee on him. She goes to Dr. McNamara, Matt’s father, demanding he fix her face for free. Her and Matt become friends. Matt’s ex-girlfriend’s father kidnaps and tortures them and forces them to perform sex acts for him, but they escape and shoot their captor.

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Carmen, It’s Always Sunny (2005)

Played by cis actress Brittany Daniel

A guy who’s attracted to Carmen is shocked to learn she is transgender, but he maintains his pursuit of her in order to be “first in line” when she gets sexual reassignment surgery. According to the It’s Sunny Wikia, she “displayed an obvious bulge in her pants until she had her penis removed.” The guy hides his ongoing relationship with Carmen from his friends to the point where they suspect he is a serial killer. After her surgery, though, she decides to date a different guy who wasn’t such a jerk.

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Ms. Mitchell, ER,“Skin” (2005)

Trans female actress

Ms. Mitchell’s doctor is shocked to hear that his patient requested a different doctor due to the fact that, as the different doctor tells him, “she is a he and she didn’t feel comfortable telling you that.” She’s diagnosed with testicular cancer but is okay with it ’cause she was “getting rid of the equipment anyway.”

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 Stephanie, Without a Trace, “Transitions” (2005)

Cis female actress

Stephanie’s boyfriend is shocked to learn that Stephanie is trans and responds by freaking out, feeling sick to his stomach, and pushing her onto the floor. She goes missing the next day. We learn that her family shunned/disowned her, she abandoned her wife and kids, and since then she has moved from place to place, changing her appearance to “keep her secret.” Turns out it wasn’t her ex who murdered her — it was her ex-wife’s transphobic and abusive husband!

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Zarf/Zoe, All My Children (2006)

Played by cisgender male actor Jeffery Carlson

Bianca is shocked when Zarf, a glam rock star she’s agreed to go on a date with, shows up for their date in a dress and comes out to her as Zoe, a transgender lesbian. This is really good news because Zarf is a terrible name. She thinks Zoe is mocking her lesbian sexuality, but nope. Also, she’s in love with Bianca. The rest of the town doesn’t take to Zoe all that well, ranging from distrusting her to misgendering her to accusing her of being a serial killer — then the actual serial killer attacks her. GLAAD and trans activists worked with the show to ensure Zoe’s character was treated with respect and accuracy, even including a scene with a trans support group featuring actual trans people. (This might be becoming its own trope at this point? We don’t wanna cast trans actors, but we’ll get about 10 of them together for a support group scene!) Eventually her and Bianca left for Europe at the same time and grew apart.

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MILF, Veronica Mars, “Ain’t No Magic Mountain High Enough” (2006)

Cis female actress

Dickie is shocked when the hot Mom he’s hooking up with in a car outside the carnival — a woman his friends found online to hook him up with — turns out to have a penis. He stumbles from the car, sick to his stomach, spitting all over the street while his friends — who knew she was trans — laugh at him.

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Donna, Grey’s Anatomy, “Where the Boys Are” (2006)

Trans female actress

Meredith Grey is shocked to learn that they have a patient undergoing gender confirmation surgery, but Mark is really politically correct and educated and kind when explaining the situation. The patient’s wife says she’ll miss the penis. It turns out Donna has breast cancer and will need to stop taking her hormones, which’ll make her “become a man again.” She goes ahead with the surgery anyhow.

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Alexis Meade, Ugly Betty (2006-2008)

Played by cis female actress Rebecca Romijn

Alexis, the daughter of the founder of MODE magazine, fakes her own death, transitions, and then comes back and takes over half the magazine. Her colleagues misgender her and anti-trans jokes exist in abundance. At one point she connects with a man at a bar only to have him laugh in her face and say he was only flirting with her as a dare. She pushes a pregnant woman down the stairs and goes to jail and then gets off and moves to Europe.

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Regina Dunn, Psych, “Who You Gonna Call?” (2006)

Cis male actor

Shawn and Gus are shocked to learn that the person haunting their client’s home isn’t a ghost — it’s the client’s other two personalities, one of whom is a trans woman named Regina, who was in the process of seeking transition-related medical services when the third violent male personality thwarted her efforts by killing her doctor. Shawn and Gus make vomiting noises discussing the possibility of her “removing her parts.” Robert, dressed as Regina, makes another doctor’s appointment in order to kill yet another doctor and stop the surgery.

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Carmelita, Dirty Sexy Money (2007-2009)

Played by trans female actress Candis Cayne

Patrick Darling is in love with Carmelita, and has nothing but respect for her despite the fact that his friends and family call her a “she-he” and a “tranny hooker” and seem to believe his relationship with her suggests homosexuality despite the fact that he is completely heterosexual. (As he later argues when another gay guy says he must be a little gay to date a transsexual, Carmelita “had female parts.”) Initially Carmelita is portrayed as pathetic — begging him not to leave her, as his family wants him to in order to save his marriage and political career — but eventually she emerges as a strong and powerful woman over the show’s run. Patrick’s wife Ellen discovers the affair and attacks Patrick, only to be killed by him in self-defense. Later, Patrick, against his family’s wishes, insists she accompany him to his inauguration as senator, where she is shot and killed by Ellen’s brother.

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Patty, Bones, “The He In The She” (2008)

Cis female actress

Forensic anthropologists are shocked to discover the skeleton washed ashore contains both male and female indicators, leading them to realize their victim is transgender. The female scientists school the male scientist on how to respectfully talk about trans people. They theorize she was killed when her trans status was revealed, but they turn out to be wrong. In the end, her evangelical son returns to honor her by joining the church where she worked as a pastor.

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Lois, ER, “Tandem Repeats” (2008)

Cis female actress

Lois’s Mom is shocked when she’s called to the emergency room because her child is very sick and the son she expected to see is a daughter. She’s sick mostly due to the black market hormones she’s been taking, and needs a liver transplant that Dad is VERY hesitant to provide.

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Joanna, Eli Stone, “Two Ministers” (2008)

Trans female actress

Alexandra Billings plays a member of a support group attended by a male transgender Reverend who Keith is representing in a lawsuit for wrongful termination. They hope the group will help Keith overcome his intolerance of his client. She talks about how her boyfriend and her family left her.

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Alexis Stone, Nip/Tuck, “Alexis Stone” and “Alexis Stone II” (2009)

Trans female actress

The plastic surgeon who sleeps with Alexis is shocked to hear that she is a “male-to-female transsexual” who would like surgery to “become a gay man.” The character then returns after realizing that they’d like their boobs back to better attract straight men. Although this means she’s not really a transgender character, this characterization embodies so many damaging tropes that I wanted to mention it even if it’s not part of the statistics we tallied in the infographic. Those stereotypes include: that being trans is really about being gay, that people who get surgery often regret it and are wrong to feel they require it, and that it’s a cosmetic choice.

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Georgette, The Closer,“Make Over” (2009)

Cis male actor

“Just because Empty Pants here won’t bite the bullet and put on the clothes that he was born to wear doesn’t mean that we can’t have somebody read his testimony in court.”

Louie and the other detectives are shocked to learn that Detective Andrews, his old buddy and former police partner, is transgender. Everybody freaks out, calls her a man, asks her about her genital surgery, and determine her trans status prevents her from being a reliable witness for their case. She eventually wins people over with her willingness to present male for an interrogation and her ability to gamely handle jokes made on her behalf. The character is a lesbian, which is rare.

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Auntie Momma, The Cleveland Show (2009)

“Her real name is Kevin. And she’s been hiding the candy for 36 years.”

Cleveland is shocked when he sees Auntie Momma in the bathroom and notices that she has a penis. He vomits for about 45 seconds after his father and Auntie Momma have sex. Later, Cleveland tells his Dad that Auntie Momma is a man with a penis, and his Dad vomits for 45 seconds.

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Ida Davis, The Family Guy, “Quagmire’s Dad” (2010)

cis male actor

“What are you gonna name it, eh? What are you gonna name your he-she father-mother?”

Quagmire is shocked when his Dad, who his friends think is “super fucking gay,” comes out as a trans woman. She has surgery and is immediately good-to-go. At dinner, Lois throws out the crumble Ida brought (nothing makes me sadder than people throwing out un-eaten food somebody brought to a group meal!) and the Griffins quiz her about her surgery and how to make a vagina out of a penis. Quagmire tells Dad he just can’t accept her, so she goes for a drink at the Marriot, where she meets Brian and they hit it off. The next day he learns that she’s transgender and vomits for a solid 60 seconds and screams in terror. But! Quagmire apologizes to his Dad and tells her that he loves her. But! Then we cut to Brian scrubbing himself vigorously in the shower.

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Allison Webb, Drop Dead Diva, “Queen of Mean” (2010)

Trans female actress

Grieving widow: She was everything to me.
Her Dead Wife’s Mom: You did this to yourself.

The lawyers are shocked, but react professionally, when Allison reveals that she and her wife married when she “was a man.” Now Allison’s wife has died in a car crash without a will and her parents are challenging her right to her estate now that Allison has transitioned. It has a really sweet ending.

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Cha Cha, Glitter and Marbles, Bob’s Burgers, “Sheesh! Cab, Bob?” and “Lobsterfest” (2011)

Cis male actors

These are three sex workers that Bob picks up in his taxi when he gets a second job as a late-night cab driver. When we first see them, the camera zooms in on their adam’s apples, hairy faces and hairy arms and the characters repeatedly call them “transvestite hookers.” Other than that, they are largely treated with kindness and respect and treated as women. Glitter makes a joke about living in a “town full of doctors who refuse to cut off your penis” and after Marbles and Mort kiss, Mort looks confused and disturbed and says that he kissed a boy. Cha Cha had an unspeaking cameo in another episode.

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Marshmallow, Bob’s Burgers (2011->)

cis male actor

Another trans sex worker who first appears in the same episode as Glitter, Cha Cha and Marbles, Marshmallow has made several reappearances, being in seven episodes in total. She’s treated with kindness and respect by Bob and the other characters, but her deep voice and appearance embody the “humorous trans woman” trope. She usually only has a cameo, but the show has a running gag where Bob always greets her with “Oh, hey, Marshmallow” and she’s become something of a fan favorite.

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Amanda Knott, Harry’s Law, “Send In The Clowns” (2011)

Cis gay male actor

Adam and Jenna are shocked to learn that their client, Amanda, is “anatomically male” and that she’s been fired for having an affair with her cis male boss! Jenna calls her a “he-she” and a “man-woman.” Amanda’s unlawful termination case fails, though, due to the fact that she’s had plenty of offers from other clubs but only wants this job to stay close to the boss, who she has called 20+ times in the last three days begging to get back together. She cries about having a penis.

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Geraldine, Necessary Roughness, “Dream On” (2011)

Trans female actress

Jeanette is shocked, but not upset, when the hot blonde girl she’s talking to at her high school reunion outs herself as Geraldine, who Jeanette knew in high school as Gerald and was hoping to run into at the reunion to reconnect and ride off together into the sunset. They catch up, everything is fun and light, and Geraldine confesses that she was in love with her in high school, loved her “effortless femininity,” and wanted to be her, and then kinda did her best to live that dream, which makes Jeanette feel really good about herself.

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Kyla, Hung, “What’s Going On Downstairs?” and “Money on the Floor” (2011)

Trans female actress

“The woman Ray’s on a date with is a man. She’s a man.”

Ray is shocked to learn that Kyla, the girl who hired him as an escort, “is really a man.” He learns this ’cause his booker is so disturbed to learn this info that she tracks them down at a skating rink and chases him around wildly until she’s able to tell him the truth. He freaks out and ends their date prematurely and backs out on the next date — to her high school reunion — despite having had an amazing time with her. When a competing escort is given the job, Ray wants the gig back … but refuses to dance with her and lays low as she’s outed to her classmates. He just sits there at a table full of guys making trans jokes while she stands alone on the dance floor, crowded with people whispering about her. Forced to leave the dance floor in tears, he finally gets up, tells her she’s beautiful, and asks her to dance.

Real talk: This episode broke my heart and pissed me off in a way I wasn’t expecting. Part of a sex worker’s JOB is to make the client feel sexy and desired, no matter what they look like, how repulsive their personality, even if they smell like a sweaty gym locker. That’s as big a part of the job as the sex itself is, and that’s why we see storylines on TV all the time about people perceived as “undesirable” hiring sex workers and enjoying themselves. Never before have I seen a storyline like this where the sex worker refused to do his job because of something relating to his client’s body. She paid him $1,000 to come to her high school reunion and he refused to even dance with her, or even defend her when the guys at his table realized “who she was.” Sure, he came around in the last 30 seconds, but I’m sorry, no. The message here, that even a trans girl who is as normatively attractive as Jamie Clayton can’t even PAY for it…. Jesus Christ. Disgusting.

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Mia, Hit or Miss (2012)

Played by cis female actress Chloe Sevigny

“You look really nice, Mia…. not bad for a cock in a frock.”

The audience is shocked when a figure in a dark hoodie kills someone, goes home, removes her hoodie — she’s a woman! — and then removes all of her clothing — she has a penis! — and gets into the shower. The woman herself, Mia, is shocked about five minutes later to learn that she has a son, sired by her ex who has recently died of cancer. The short-lived Direct TV series is an intersection of these circumstances: Mia’s job as a contract killer, her new duty as a mother to one child and three step-children and her pursuit of a romantic life — which includes, of course, a potential love interest being repulsed when she comes out to him. Luckily, he does eventually have a change of heart.

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Sophia Bursett, Orange is the New Black (2012->)

Played by trans female actress Laverne Cox

Sophia is a hairdresser and former fire-fighter imprisoned for credit card fraud, which she perpetuated largely to fund her surgical transition. Her straight wife struggled to accept her and tried to be a good sport, but her son got angry and embarrassed about it. Once in jail, Sophia’s wife leaves her for a man. For the first two seasons, she’s one of a few characters who rises above the manipulative, reckless and territorial behavior exhibited by other inmates but things take a turn in Season Three, a storyline which leads to her being attacked and beaten by a group of inmates. The prison deals with this conflict by putting her in solitary confinement.

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Venus Van Damme, Sons of Anarchy (2012-2014)

Played by cis male actor Walton Goggins

Venus was raised with an abusive mother who pimped out her child and also made and distributed child pornography. She plays a sex worker who develops a romance with one of the mean guys on this show that I guess is about people shooting each other and riding motorcycles.

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Sally, Fugget About It, “The Broadfather” (2013)

Jimmy is shocked when a woman he meets is like, “Hey, I’m your father!” She tells Jimmy how she killed and stole to protect her secret, then faked her own death and got surgery. She also smashes Jimmy’s face into her breasts, which gives him a hard-on.

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Lucette, Mike & Molly, “The First and Last Ride-Along” (2013)

Cis gay male actor

Lucette: I have nothing to hide.
Carl: To hell you don’t! You managed to hide it for three hours and a carriage ride!

Molly is shocked when the beautiful woman who sent a milkshake to her husband’s partner (as in; police partner) turns out to be “a he,” according to everybody besides her. Molly asks her questions about penis-tucking while Carl gets defensive about a kiss they shared on New Year’s Eve. What’s better? The show already got in trouble with GLAAD for joking about the NYE kiss six months earlier, described as “the shemale incident of ’08.”

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Paula, Two and a Half Men, “Numero Uno Accidente Lawyer” (2013)

Cis female actress

Alan is shocked to learn that the woman he’s dating, Paula, is transgender. He has a lot of questions about her genitals, mostly ensuring she won’t sprout a penis and become undateable. In her review, Mey Rude wrote that, “This episode was still filled to the brim with insulting “jokes” and problematic lines directed at the expense of not only the character of Paula, but all trans women who might see, or even hear about, the show.”

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Ms. Hudson, Elementary, “Snow Angels” (2013)

Trans female actress

Here we have a trans woman played by a trans actress and her trans status is not the focus of her story or relevant to the plot! What a revelation! As Mey wrote, “she’s just another person in Sherlock’s life.”

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Jess, Grey’s Anatomy, “The Face of Change” (2013)

Cis male actor

Brian’s father is shocked to learn that his child is having top surgery and that his girlfriend, Jess, is also trans. Jess enables Brian and his father to reconcile.

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Marlena, Love That Girl, “What He Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Him” (2013)

Cis female actress

“Well listen, MISS MISTER, you better tell him, because if you don’t, I will.”

Latrell’s gay roommate Fabian is shocked to learn that Marlena, the girl Latrell’s about to go on a date with, is a woman he once knew as “Marvin.” She begs him to keep her secret, so Fabian recruits their friends to follow them on their date to “save” Latrell from unknowingly dating “a man.” At least fifteen penis and balls jokes are made. None of Latrell’s friends are capable of telling him that Marlena is trans, so instead his old flame hooks up with him for the night (after watching The Crying Game) in order to stop him from going back to Marlena.

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Unique Adams, Glee (2013-2015)

Played by cis gay male actor Alex Newell

Unique is a talented singer who joins the McKinley High Glee Club. She’s frequently ridiculed and teased by classmates and teachers, catfishes the boy she has a crush on (who is repulsed when he discovers the true identity of his online girlfriend), is bullied and is subject to a really fucked up bathroom-related storyline. Over the course of the show she eventually bonds with the other girls but is the only female cast member to never get a romantic storyline.

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Angelique, Penny Dreadful (2014-2015)

Played by cis gay male actor Johnny Beaucamp

Dorian is not shocked when Angelique, the prostitute he sought out after meeting her earlier that day, disrobes to reveal her penis. The two enjoy an unpaid fling and seem to really like each other. Dorian throws her a ball so others may “gape at [their] uniqueness.” Then he basically leaves her for another woman. When Angelique discovers one of his secrets, he kills her.

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Transparent (2014 ->)

Maura Pfefferman, played by cis male actor Jeffery Tambour

Maura’s family — her ex-wife, two daughters and one son — is shocked when she comes out to them as transgender and begins presenting as a woman full-time. Maura deals with coming out and handling her selfish and also very queer children as well as a myriad of other issues, thoughts and feelings, over the course of this show that you probably have already seen!

Davina, played by trans actress Alexandra Billings

Davina becomes Maura’s “trans mentor” and has a boyfriend in jail who gets out and moves back in with her midway through Season Two. She is HIV-positive, a former sex worker, and currently works at the LGBT center.

Shea, played by trans actress Trace Lysette

Shea is another friend of Maura’s. She is a yoga instructor. In the second season, her role gets even bigger and we get to see that she has a rich, full life where she volunteers at a suicide hotline, sleeps with sexy Marines and hangs out with her trans friends.

Eleanor, played by trans actress Zackary Drucker

Eleanor leads the support group that Maura joins when she first comes out.

Gittel, played by trans actress Hari Nef

Gittel is an ancestor of the Pfeffermans who lived in the famous Hirschfeld Institute in Berlin and transitioned against the wishes of her mother. Gittel was arrested by the Nazis for being trans and eventually died in the Holocaust.

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Maya Avant, The Bold and The Beautiful (2013->)

Played by cis female actress Karla Mosley

**The first regular transgender character in the history of American daytime television.**

Maya’s boyfriend Rick is shocked when she comes out to him as a trans woman after he has proposed to her, and he freaks out. They eventually reconcile and do get married. Maya’s character, which came to the show in 2013 (she came out in 2015), has always been ruthless and manipulative, and Rick is pretty shitty as a human too. Other crappy stuff happens: her sister blackmails her and outs her before she tells Rick, her trans status is leaked to the press, her Dad calls her wedding a “freak show,” etc.

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Adele, Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce, “Fantasyland: A Great Place To Visit” (2015)

Trans female actress

Lt. Adele Northrup is a former award recipient who gives a speech at the Family Equality Council ball to introduce this year’s winner of the same award. The beginning of her speech is somewhat overpowered by a group of cis straight white women fighting at their table about divorce-related anger.

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Avery, Law & Order: SVU, “Transgender Bridge” (2015)

Cis male actor

When we first see Avery, she’s topless, which is super weird thing for a 15-year-old girl to be on primetime TV. Things only go downhill from there, as she’s bullied and called “he-she,” “tranny” and “freak” while a group of teenage boys pulls at her skirt to try to see what’s under there. One of the boys pushes her off a bridge, and she eventually dies from the wounds. She’s misgendered throughout the rest of the episode, both by the boys and by police officers and detectives.

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Sheena, The Mindy Project, “What to Expect When You’re Expanding” (2015)

Trans female actress

Sheena, the cousin of Mindy’s friend Tamra, comes to visit and helps inspire Mindy to feel better about her body and regain the confidence she’s lost since getting pregnant. Tamra tells Mindy to listen to Sheena because “She had to overcome a lot to be the beautiful woman she is today.” When Mindy replies “Like what? Having too hot a face and body?” Tamra and Sheena exchange a knowing look. This was a pretty great episode.

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Jill, How To Get Away With Murder, “Two Birds, One Milestone” (2015)

Trans female actress

Alexandra Billings, a trans woman, plays a trans female professor who is friends with Annalise and goes to her for help when she kills her abusive husband. Mey called it “…the best Very Special Trans Episode of a show that I’ve ever seen.”

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Rosalind, Grey’s Anatomy, “The Great Pretender” (2015)

Cis male actor

Ben is shocked when his wife Bailey tells him that his brother, Rosalind, is transgender and is taking hormones after 25 years of lying about who she is. Ben freaks out. Bailey implores Ben to stop being an asshole.

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Jordan, The Carmichael Show, “Gender” (2015)

Cis male actor

“Transgender? You mean he like to dress up like a little mini RuPaul?”

Jerrod is shocked when Jordan, the mentee he’s been assigned in the Big Brother/Big Sister program, comes out as gay… and then admits that she isn’t actually gay, she was just testing the waters for the real reveal: that she’s trans. Jerrod freaks out, but after a long talk with his family and some reckoning, he comes around. While Jerrod and his family misgender Jordan a bit, Mey said “it was maybe the most slept on piece of trans media of the year.”

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Whiterose, Mr. Robot (2015)

Cis gay male actor

Whiterose is a legendary computer hacker obsessed with time. When accepting the role, perfect human BD Wong was clear that he did not “want to be a man disguised as a woman trying to get away with something” and playing into the “deceptive” stereotype, that he only would take it if he was assured the character was a trans woman. We’ve only seen a little bit of Whiterose so far, but she will return for Season Two.

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Gisele, Blunt Talk (2015)

Trans female actress

Gisele, a trans sex worker who’s just been released from jail, has a nice catching-up dinner with Captain Picard, during which she says she’s leaving sex work and is in a really awesome relationship.

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Nomi Marks, Sense8 (2015)

played by transgender actress Jamie Clayton

Nomi is a political blogger and “hacktivist” living in San Francisco with her girlfriend, Amanita, who is very supportive of her and stands up for her in front of transphobic bullies. Nomi was bullied as a child and still has scars from where she was burnt in a scalding hot shower by a group of boys. Her family is not accepting of her transition, including her mother, who continues to misgender her.

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Liz Taylor, American Horror Story: Hotel (2015)

Played by gay male cis actor Dennis O’Hare

Once upon a time, Liz Taylor was a married salesman with kids, only letting her real self out in the privacy of hotel rooms. In this particular hotel, Elizabeth walked in on her, announced “you look like a man but smell like a woman” and enabled her to live her true self forever, working there as a bartender and leaving her family. When she’s bullied by other hotel workers, Elizabeth kills them. She falls in love with a male model who worries that being with her makes him gay. Elizabeth kills him too. Liz and Iris decide to kill themselves and then change their mind and decide to kill other people. Etc.

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Charlotte, Pretty Little Liars (2012-2016)

Played by cisgender female actress Vanessa Ray

In 2015, Charlotte is revealed to be a criminal mastermind who has manipulated, tortured, and been involved in the murders of numerous people, mostly women. In 2016, she is murdered.

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Anna, Royal Pains, “Prince of Nucleotides” (2015)

Trans actress

This episode was fantastic. Anna’s experiencing pains and shortness of breath that suggest a blood-clotting problem, exacerbated by the hormones she’s started secretly taking. Her doctor is patient, respectful and caring, and comes to her aid when she’s outed at camp and punched by another camper. He talks to Anna’s parents for her, and although he initially told her he couldn’t start her on HRT with her condition, he comes back in the last scene of the episode to tell her that he’s going to figure out a way to make it work so that she can start HRT without risking her health. This episode is probably the best one on the list.

13 TV Shows With Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters Who Are Getting It Right

by Riese & Heather

We’ve spent a lot of time over the past month talking about how not to write (or kill off) a queer female television character, so it seemed like it’d be worth taking a minute to applaud the shows who are actively getting it right.

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1. Degrassi: The Next Generation

Back in 2005 when almost nobody was getting it right, Degrassi brought us Palex. It’s a franchise that’s been a trailblazer since its initial incarnation in the ’80s, and remains so today. The relationship between Paige and Alex was fresh and angsty and the show stayed loyal both to Paige’s bisexuality and Alex’s lesbianism. Degrassi has consistently introduced new queer female characters every season — Fiona, Imogen, Jack — even providing some with more than one love interest (!!!) over the course of her time on the show.

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2. Rosewood

Rosewood is mainstream and formulaic, with a cocky male lead, a sexy/stubborn female lead, shiny cars, dead bodies, and lots of beach scenes. And then, buried inside this relatively uninspired premise is this interracial lesbian couple who work together and could probably kiss more but they’re never, not ever, obscuring or playing down exactly who they are to each other. There’s also been a really nice storyline with Pippy’s Mom trying to stop TMI’s Mom from being the asshole about her daughter being gay that Pippy’s Mom was once upon a time. It’s gonna be a hella cute wedding, y’all.

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3. Orange is the New Black

My jaw fell right off my face within 45 seconds of Season One, Episode One — was this really happening? The relationship that started the story that started the show is a relationship between two women? This couldn’t possibly be happening! Turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg, though. Underneath all that we have one of the most racially and generationally diverse shows of all time, a cast that is 90% women, and twelve lead or recurring queer female characters. Look: we do well in prison. As a people.

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4. Transparent

So basically we’ve only made it to Season Two and already pretty much every single Pfefferman is queer. THE WHOLE DAMN FAMILY. Moppa is a trans woman named Maura, Mom starts hooking up with Maura again even though they’d been divorced and both daughters are bisexual. There’s explicit lesbian sex and no privileging of straight relationships over gay ones — so much so that Josh’s mere existence and his relentlessly heterosexual pairings feel, irrationally, like a personal insult. There are more trans women actresses playing trans women characters on this show than ever before in the history of television. Queer and trans icons like Carrie Brownstein and Trace Lysette have recurring roles, and others have shown up for guest spots, like Eileen Myles, Cherry Jones, Zackary Drucker, Ali Liebegott, Brittani Nichols, Our Lady J, Jiz Lee and Ian Harvie.

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5. Orphan Black

Like so many TV shows in the news right now, Orphan Black made the dangerous decision to kill of a beloved bisexual character at the end of last season. Or at least to shoot in her in the head and leave the rest to our imaginations. However, Oprhan Black is the only show I can think of that preemptively addressed every issue queer women have with killing off queer TV characters. They introduced another love interest for Cosima very early on in the season and gave them a plenty of romantic scenes, more than any straight character received in season three. They killed off Paul, a straight male character whose story mirrored Delphine’s from day one, several episodes before Delphine was shot. And, like Paul, they gave Delphine a hero’s death, one that signified the ending of a season-long redemptive arc. When you add those things to the fact that Cosima is one of the main four clones and receives equal screen time and story depth, and that Orphan Black is the only show that shrugs at the Born This Way debate because sexual orientation is a non-issue in their universe, and the unapologetic misandry on display on the regular, the sum is an exhilarating and progressive drama.

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6. Person of Interest

Person of Interest walks the line between being a procedural and being something else altogether, which’s maybe why despite its evident quality, it’s never garnered the audience it deserves. But the romance between computer hacker Root and sociopathic assassin Shaw deserves recognition here because it has been allowed to proceed and flourish on a show in which nobody gets a love story (aside from the never-consumated sexual/romantic tension between Reese and Joss). Root and Shaw get sexual tension when nobody else is even thinking about sex. This is unprecedented. Every episode where the potential fling between Root and Shaw is explored and literally nobody else’s relationship is explored makes me feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.

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7. The Fosters

The Fosters isn’t flawless in its depiction of queer characters. Season three, for example, set up an unnecessary and troubling conflict between bisexual Anchor Beach principal Monte and a student who said Monte made inappropriate advances at her. (The result of which was either going to be a predatorial bisexual educator or a young woman lying about assault, neither of which false stereotypes need anymore play on television.)

However, The Fosters is the only show in the history of TV to orbit a cast of dramatic teenage storylines around a married lesbian couple. Stef and Lena are Coach and Tami Taylor, they’re Mike and Carol Brady, they’re Elyse and Steven Keaton. Their relationship is central to the show, and the writers don’t shy away from exploring the ups and downs of their relationship — even sexually. They struggle to make time for each other; they have different communication styles; they suffer through sickness and depression. But at the end of the day, they lean into each other and their children lean into them. They are home with each other, right where they belong. (Bonus: The Fosters features Cole, one of television’s few trans male characters, and he’s played by a trans male actor!)

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8. Wentworth

Bless Netflix for bringing this Australian drama — a remake of one of the first shows to ever have multiple central lesbian characters, Prisoner, which aired in Australia from 1979-1986 — to the states so we can all enjoy some lady-prisoners in hoodies. Despite being a show about criminals that takes place in prison, no queer women have died yet (even the one who I really was hoping would die in a fire) (literally). It’s not quite as queer as Orange is the New Black, but it’s still centered entirely on women, has a queer hearththrob (Frankie Doyle) and a surprising number of queer prison employees. Plus there’s transgender inmate Maxine, who manages to defy tropes and is accepted as “one of the girls” in a way we see all too rarely with trans characters on television, even prison shows.

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9. Sense8

There’s a lot to criticize about Sense8, particularly its handling of race and non-Western cultures. But when it comes its treatment of sexual orientation and gender identity, the show really excels. (In my opinion the gay male couple and their female companion was the only story that I found even vaguely entertaining, but that is perhaps neither here nor there.) It’s doing a revolutionary thing by showing a healthy, functional and openly sexual romantic relationship between a black lesbian and a trans lesbian.

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10. Grey’s Anatomy

Back when only Degrassi was doing multi-character arcs for queer characters on mainstream primetime American television, Grey’s introduced Erica Hahn, a character who enabled Callie to realize her bisexuality. The way they handled her departure was very much not “getting it right” but since then, Grey’s has remained pretty dedicated to its queer characters, even giving us a long-term love story for Callie and Arizona, from love to tragedy to marriage to children to cheating to an eventual divorce. Unfortunately Callie is now dating a piece of actual cardboard named “Penny,” but you know… it happens!

Sometimes our favorite bisexuals date pieces of dry toast. As Heather wrote in our post on the most influential queer television shows of the last seven years, “when the majority of Americans were making up their minds about marriage equality, Callie and Arizona were the most-watched lesbian couple on TV, and they were enjoying the same kind of emotionally dense and sexy relationship as all the straight couples at Seattle Grace.” Grey’s has also done a few episodes about trans issues that were handled really well for their time, including one involving Ben’s sister last year.

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11. East Los High

You’re maybe not even aware that this show exists, but you could fix that right now! It’s on Hulu and NPR describes it as “a Latino Degrassi meets Gossip Girl meets Glee.” Although the coming out storyline in Season Two fell into a few of our least favorite tropes, Jocelyn recovered from a tumultuous situation with her best friend Camilla and is now dating Daysi, a masculine-of-center Latino lesbian — not the type of character you usually see on television, let alone on a teen soap.

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12. How To Get Away With Murder

There’s never been a black bisexual character headlining her own show on broadcast network television until How to Get Away With Murder. And it’s on TGIT, the most consistently popular night of TV. And it’s the incomparable Viola Davis! I honestly don’t think it’s possible to oversell what a big deal this year. The Golden Age of Television was ushered in and sustained by stories about straight white male antiheroes doing both dastardly and compassionate things, and asking the audience to trace their decision-making skills back to their origin points and empathize with these guys. How to Get Away With Murder brilliantly, subversively asks if our culture will extend that same interest and compassion when it’s a black bisexual woman playing the role of Don Draper. Annalise’s relationship with Eve is the most emotionally resonant and solid one on the show, so much so that we all kind of want her to quit the show and D.C. and move away with Eve to New York!

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13. Steven Universe

Steven Universe isn’t just getting gay stuff right; it’s consistently one of the most brilliant shows on television, full-stop. When the show revealed that Crystal Gem Garnet is actually the marriage and intimate full-time fuse of Crystal Gems Ruby and Sapphire, I honestly couldn’t believe it. That they continue to explore that relationship in more depth blows my mind every time. Their relationship may be animated, but it feels more real than 98 percent of the live-actions queer relationships I’ve seen in my time. One is fire, the other is ice. One is royalty, the other is a peasant. One is the brains, one is the heart. Together, they form the soul around which every person and Gem on the show rotates.

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Honorable Mentions:

+ Master of None: Your girlfriend Lena Waithe is awesome as Denise in this new Netflix series.

+ Grandfathered: Other Annalise doesn’t get as much screen time as she deserves, but for reasons I don’t understand, lesbians on sitcoms have never really recovered from Ellen coming out. Only about ten, total, have existed since 1996. So Annalie is a big deal, even if she only plays a small part.

+ Survivor’s Remorse: M-Chuck needs more screen time but the time she does get is time very well spent.

+ Younger: The first original TV Land show to feature a queer woman. Like with Grandfathered, she doesn’t have enough to do, but the fact of her existence — sandwiched between reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond, on your granmda’s favorite channel — is a pretty big dang deal.

+ Jessica Jones: They did a rare thing — took a male character from the comics and turned her into a lesbian for the TV show! This should happen more often.

60 Incredible Titles Of Very Special Lesbian and Bisexual TV Episodes

We’ve been digging deep into television history for many many reasons this week (the fruits of some of our labors exist here and here), and I’ve been struck again and again by how goshdarn clever writers are when they title episodes with Lesbian/bisexual/queer lady content, theme or characters! No seriously… some of these are legit genius. And some of these are… something else. Which shows are they from? Some are shows with queer lady characters and some are shows that only entertained our persuasion for one or two episodes. Figuring out where these titles came from could be a fun game for you to play this weekend!

So below, ripped mercilessly out of context from the TV shows that birthed them, I present 60 titles of queer lady TV episodes from 1976-2016.

1. “Flowers of Evil”

2. “From San Francisco With Love”

3. “The Devil Wears Land’s End”

4. “Significant Others”

5. “Guess Who’s Coming Out to Dinner?”

6. “Spermin’ Herman”

7. “Sex With Pudding”

8. “The Deadlier Sex”

9. “Ladies Choice”

10. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

11. “Trial by Prejudice”

12. “Sugar and Spice”

13. “Wish You Were Queer”

14. “Passion Plundered”

15. “Norm and the Hopeless Case”

16. “Oy Vey, You’re Gay”

17. “Three Girls and a Baby”

18. “Lez be Friends”

19. “Ovulation Day”

20. “The Odds Couple”

21. “Woman to Woman”

22. “I Was a Teenage Lesbian”

23. “He’s a Crowd”

24. “Not Particularly Desperate Housewives”

25. “The One With the Lesbian Wedding”

26. “Rough Housing”

27. “I’ll Show You Mine”

28. “What Women Want”

29. “About Being Gay”

31. “Single Fright Female”

32. “Shorties in Love”

33. “Finger in the Dyke”

34. “Riding Bi-Cycles”

35. “The Wiener, the Bun and the Boob”

36. “Passion Fish”

37. “Bring Down the Hoe”

38. “The Penalty Box”

39. “Suzanne Goes Looking For a Friend”

40. “Lesbians Out Loud”

41. “Free To Be You and Me”

42. “Divine Secrets and the ZBZ Sisterhood”

43. “I Kissed A Girl”

44. “Homecoming Out”

45. “Lt. Jane Doe”

46. “P.C.”

47. “Strap-On”

48. “Girl’s Guide to Dating”

49. “New Moon Rising”

50. “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

51. “Holy Lesbo Batman!”

52. “Two Girls, One Code”

53. “Lesbian Request Denied”

54. “The Rainy Day Women”

55. “Portraits of Lauren Gray”

56. “Coming and Going”

57. “She’s Got A Habit”

58. “A Very Strange Triangle”

59. “It’s Who You Sleep With”

60. “Looks Like A Lesbian Attack To Me!”

All 29 Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters Who Got Happy Endings

On Friday, Riese compiled a list of all 65 lesbian and bisexual TV characters who have been victims of the Bury Your Gays trope. Every single character we could think of. SIXTY-FIVE of them. Thanks to contributions from our readers (and Riese’s willingness to spend a sleepless weekend filling in the blanks), that list now includes 133 lesbian/bisexual characters. It doubled in size in one weekend.

You asked us to complement that list with one like this that counts down happy endings. Not just “the show got cancelled and the gay lady was still alive” endings, but truly triumphant story resolutions. Lesbian and bisexual characters who received fitting and worthy send-offs that were comparable to the ones the show’s straight characters received.

Making this list was a mixed bag of emotions. It was uplifting to relive this handful of stories, but it was also a reminder that these beacons of hope only make up a fraction of the overall lesbian and bisexual TV canon. What’s particularly striking is that most of these happy endings involve couples — while 29 characters are represented, only 15 total shows made the list. (That’s 15 shows in the whole entire history of television.) It’s also important to note that happy endings and death aren’t the only options for lesbian and bisexual TV characters. We’ll be taking a closer look at this in the next few days as Riese and I work through a comprehensive statistical analysis of the totality of lesbian/bi TV, but according to our research so far, around a third of lesbian/bi characters are written off, disappeared, or not important enough to the show to be gifted a farewell narrative.

Here are 29 TV characters who actually did get their final moments in the sun.

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Ellen, Ellen (1994-1998)

Ellen‘s season five series finale drew ire from critics because it (rightly) predicted a future world in which the sitcom would be heralded as a groundbreaking, watershed series. The finale called back to I Love Lucy, and the fact that Lucy couldn’t say the word “pregnant” on-air, same as Ellen hadn’t been able to say “lesbian” for so long. It created a ’50s-style gameshow called Who’s the Commie, comparing McCarthyism to the family values rhetoric of the ’80s and ’90s. It also drew comparisons to civil rights fights in the ’60s and ’70s. Critics called it “self-important” and “pushing the gay agenda.” My all-time favorite review of the finale said: “She has done more harm than good. Ellen has left the TV a less desirable place for gays.” In fact, everything Ellen hoped would be true about her show 20 years later is true. She’s now the queen of her own creative empire and she hangs out every American’s living room. She did more for gay people on TV than anyone in history, just as her swaggering season finale predicted she would.

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Mel and Lindsay, Queer as Folk (2000-2005)

Mel and Lindsay weren’t exactly a paragon of domestic bliss, but the Queer as Folk finale saw them putting aside their differences and deciding to give it another go. What’s an affair or two, an angry word spoken here or there, an occasional dish thrown at the wall compared to one of your lesbian best friends getting blown up in a hate crime bombing at a gay and lesbian convention. Dusty’s death really challenged them to sort out their priorities. Mel and Lindsay were the only two main female characters on a show made for and aimed at gay men; they could easily have been part of the body count. But they lived and decided to try to love again.

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Helen and Nikki, Bad Girls (1999-2001)

Helen and Nikki’s relationship should have been a disaster that ended in heartache. A lesbian in jail for killing a man who tried to rape her girlfriend falls in love with the straight governing governor. But there’s was a fairytale romance for the ages. It remains, to this day, one of the most satisfying queer storylines in TV history, and it ends with Nikki getting released from jail (after her crime is ruled self-defense) and chasing Helen down in the street, where Helen says to her: “[My boyfriend] Thomas is gorgeous, and he’s everything you’d want in a man. But I want a woman.” The last scene of season three, their last appearance on-screen, fades to black as they make out against a storefront in the middle of the day on a crowded street. Free to just be with each other. Free to be.

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Katie and Jessie, Once and Again (1999-2002)

Katie and Jessie confessed their feelings for each other in the most authentic queer coming of age moment TV had displayed up until that point. 15-year-old Katie tells Jessie she is in love with her in a note (of course), and although Jessie reciprocates her best friend’s feelings (of course), she’s terrified to do anything about it. After a pep talk from her step-sister (“God, just go for it! No one will care!”) Jessie decides to tell Katie that she feels romantical toward her too, with a couple of kisses right on the mouth. Almost immediately afterward, the series was cancelled. I’m counting this one because it was the first ever multi-episode relationship between two teenage girls, and it ended happily after a season of will-they/won’t-they angst. They will! And they did!

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Willow and Kennedy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

Despite the fact that Entertainment Weekly has deemed Kennedy one of the 21 most annoying TV characters ever, and despite the fact that she is nearly universally found wanting by queer women, and despite the fact that her presence feels like an inadequate apology for the decision to kill Tara, Kennedy was standing in the end, right alongside Willow. Sure all their friends were dead, but they still had each other. They saved the world and also became the first lesbian couple to have overt sex on primetime network TV.

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Kerry Weaver, ER (1994-2009)

Nobody who worked in the ER on ER had it easy. Everyone saw a loved one come rushing through the doors on a gurney at one time or another, and Kerry Weaver was no exception. The love of her life died right there on the table. And then she got demoted from Chief of Staff to ER Attending Physician. But nothing could keep Kerry down! When a medical documentary crew arrived with a lesbian producer in tow, Kerry fell in love with Courtney, their producer. And Courtney fell in love right back. Dr. Weaver decided she’d had enough drama to last a lifetime, so when Courtney asked her to leave her job and follow her to Florida for a life of sunshine and domestic bliss, she pounced on the opportunity. She got the girl and landed a job being a TV doctor. Kerry Weaver literally stole the show!

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Spencer and Ashley, South of Nowhere (2005-2008)

Spencer and Ashley were a bright light in a dark time for queer women on TV. It was The L Word or nothing back in those days. They engaged in a constant push-pull for several seasons, always loving each other but hardly ever being on the same page about it. In the end, though, Spencer is out and proud (and her formerly homophobic mom is finally proud too), and Ashley has worked through her commitment issues, so they move into a loft in Los Angeles and start their life together. (SoN even offered up a post-finale webisode to prove to viewers that Spencer and Ashley made it.)

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Kima Greggs, The Wire (2002-2008)

Kima’s life on The Wire wasn’t easy, and she seemed more destined than Shane McCutcheon to blow up her relationships with awesome women, but at the end of the series — and she was one of the only characters to appear in the majority of episodes every season — she finally got partnered up with Bunk, the best detective in Baltimore besides her. The two of them rode off into the sunset together to keep fighting the good fight in complicated ways.

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Bette and Tina, The L Word (2004-2009)

After a whole lot of lying, fucking, fighting, and cheating, Bette and Tina decided that they were right for each other (or, at the very least, that they weren’t ever going to be right for anybody else). Tina was a successful movie producer. Bette was a successful museum curator. And they were packing their bags with Angelica to get the hell out of West Hollywood. Tibette Takes Manhattan. A much better spin-off than the rejected one where Alice goes to jail for murdering Jenny.

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Tasha and Alice, The L Word (2004-2009)

Speaking of that rejected pilot: Tasha came back to Alice right before Jenny got killed! They’d had some good times and some bad times, but the whole world was ahead of them and they were in love and there sure as sugar cubes wasn’t going to be a sequel to Lez Girls to ruin their lives.

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Betty McRae, Bomb Girls (2012-2013)

I think we can all admit that the Bomb Girls movie was a mess, but it did give Betty a mostly happy ending. No one knows for sure if Kate moved into the house Betty bought for her because she finally reciprocated Betty’s big gay feelings, but everyone can say for absolute sure that Betty bought a house, a thing she’d been trying to do since the very beginning of season one! And she did it by winning a boxing match like a regular ol’ Rocky Balboa!

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Korra and Asami, Legend of Korra (2012-2015)

We’ve seen some pretty intense subtext between female friends in all-ages media over the last several years. Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra were up there with Marceline and Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time when it came to passionate shippers believing their love was real. But the strangest thing happened in the Legend of Korra series finale: The writers confirmed that queer fans were right, that Korra and Asami weren’t just friends, that they were in love. They held hands and gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes and walked into the Spirit World together. It was a shocking, groundbreaking moment in queer TV history.

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Brittany and Santana, Glee (2009-2015)

For all the missteps Glee made over the years, they got one thing right in the end: They threw a wedding and let Brittany and Santana say “I do.” It was a triumph not only for the characters inside the show, but also for but for lesbian fandom out here in the real world. This group of dedicated, resourceful women learned how to use social media to their advantage long before any other fandom, and they refused to back down in the face of mockery, criticism, and scorn from the show’s creative team. Fandom fought for every touch, every kiss, every declaration of love or identity. And they won, big time.

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Cricket, Hart of Dixie (2011-2015)

After Cricket surprised everyone by coming out as a lesbian at her own (straight) wedding, Hart of Dixie didn’t exactly know how to continue to fold her into the larger narrative of the show. To their great credit, though, when it became obvious the CW wasn’t going to bring it back for a fourth season, the show made a point of spending two episodes sending everyone off on their own happy endings, including Cricket. She moved in with her girlfriend, Jayceen, and everyone was surprisingly excited for them both.

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Margot and Alana, Hannibal (2013-2015)

It seemed highly unlikely that Margot and Alana were going to make it out of Hannibal alive. They’d defied one of fiction’s most terrifying serial killers multiple times, and Alana took it upon herself to humiliate him repeatedly in the final season of the show. Hannibal kept threatening them; their demise seemed inevitable. But in the series finale, the two of them and their son boarded a helicopter, flanked on all sides by armed guards, and flew the fuck away forever. Honestly, more lesbian characters should probably implement this tactic for staying alive. Armor, machine guns, and a chartered flight to a private island.

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Bo and Lauren, Lost Girl (2010-2015)

Either one of them could have died. They both could have died! They could have decided not to try again, that they were doomed, that there was no way to really forgive and forget everything they put each other through. But Bo and Lauren’s love was too strong; not even literal Hades could keep them apart. After five seasons and a love triangle that could have easily tipped the other way, Bo and Lauren chose each other. For better or for worse. In hellshoes or in leather. For so long as they both shall live.

The Seven Most Influential Queer Girl TV Shows Of The Last Seven Years

by Riese & Heather

It’s our seventh birthday today! If you would like to give us a birthday present, you should join Autostraddle Plus. It is a gift that keeps on giving to the staff who keeps on giving themselves to you!

In celebration of today’s occasion, we’re looking back on the seven most significant movies and TV shows with lesbian, bisexual or queer female characters of the last seven years. There are many shows that didn’t make this list that I’m sure there is a very good case to be made for why they should have made this list, which’s why I hope we’re still around to celebrate our 12th birthday.

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Grey’s Anatomy (2005 ->)

Riese: Grey’s Anatomy was wildly popular when it debuted in 2005 — the show, and its soundtrack, and its stars. Back when queer women on television remained few and far between and we never got season-long character development really anywhere but Degrassi, Grey’s introduced Erica Hahn in 2006, who eventually helped Callie realize her bisexuality. Their storyline was handled really clumsily, though, and Hahn was hastily written off under pressure from ABC. That could’ve been the end of Callie’s lady-loving adventures… but it was not because then Arizona showed up in 2009.

Heather: While the first lesbian wedding on primetime TV happened in 1996 between Carol and Susan on Friends, Callie and Arizona’s 2011 wedding was special because it was the first primetime lesbian wedding between two leading characters. But what is particularly significant about their relationship is that it blossomed on the heels of Proposition 8, in front of an astronomical average of 14 million viewers.

Callie and Arizona may have fallen apart in later days (though I’m giving the show major kudos for continuing to allow them explore queer relationships with other people), but when the majority of Americans were making up their minds about marriage equality, Callie and Arizona were the most-watched lesbian couple on TV, and they were enjoying the same kind of emotionally dense and sexy relationship as all the straight couples at Seattle Grace. Arizona gave her now-famous “Good man in a storm” speech to Callie’s dad only five months after Autostraddle was born. Coincidence, or manifestation?

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Skins (2008-2013)

Riese: In the end of August, Crystal (who lived in Australia then) emailed about this UK Show Skins that everybody was talking about. In September, she turned in her first recap of Skins season three — just the Naomi & Emily parts. I’d never seen the show but after editing her recaps I got curious, and got just as invested in the lesbian-free first cast as I did in the next. This show was so good and so different! For Season Four, Crystal and I recapped together — she’d do a first draft and then I would add more jokes and and feelings. It was a really fun collaboration.

Heather: There’s never been anything like Naomi and Emily’s season three relationship on Skins, and I honestly doubt I’ll ever see anything like it again in my lifetime. Because of the way the series is structured around individual character episodes, their story actually ends up feeling more like a movie than a TV show. In fact, episode 306, “Naomi” (written by Jack Thorne, who also co-wrote the new Harry Potter play with J.K. Rowling, just FYI), packs more heart-wrenching, soul-sustaining lesbian relationship storytelling into one hour than most shows with queer characters do in every episode of every season combined.

Riese: Skins remains in its very own league, for all its eventual tragic mistakes. It was willing to get ugly and dark with its inept, acne-scarred, sloppily drunk teenage characters and catastrophic parents in a violently honest way. It got queer straight away, and it was fascinating to see that play out with Naomi and Emily in the second cast. How would they be responsible to what we required from queer representation while also being responsible to the spirit of the show, which was that everybody fucks up everything eventually? They wouldn’t be, ultimately. Which was sometimes great, and sometimes not so much.

Heather: Skins season three is the first and only show I have never had to grade lesbian TV on a curve. We make exceptions and concessions for all shows with queer characters, whether we realize it or not. Maybe the acting’s not that good or the chemistry isn’t that great or the writing’s sloppy or directing’s weird or they only kiss with their mouths closed or with their hair in their faces or from wide angles with quick cutaways. season three didn’t need the cushion; everything about it was — and I don’t say this lightly — magical. I have never, ever, ever felt a story in my bones the way I did with Naomi and Emily’s.

Riese: Then… Skins USA happened. We broke the story that the US Skins reboot was turning the gay male character into a lesbian character, but we didn’t know what they were gonna do with her, which turned out to be literally THE WORST THING YOU COULD EVER DO WITH A LESBIAN CHARACTER.

Heather: The way I handled U.S. Skins is the biggest regret of my career, and something I will never forgive myself for. I thought, you know, a team that created Naomi and Emily, they had to pull it back and somehow transform it into something great. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Riese: After the US show got cancelled, the UK edition continued going strong. Season Five started out pretty good, they were doing something cool, interesting and different with Franky. But Season Six ret-conned her and the romance ended there.

Heather: Skins was always so great at creating characters. So, so good. And they were showing us characters that we’d never seen on TV before. Franky was one of freshest and most charged characters I’d met in my life. While the single-character episode format worked well for the show, it allowed it to mask the major flaw of its writing team: They absolutely had no idea how to grow their characters. Each writer could tell a single story exceptionally well, but as a whole, the show could not seem to think through and execute organic growth for anyone. That’s why the second series for each generation was always so much worse than the first. A thing like that is a glaring showrunning flaw.

I don’t want to ever talk about Skins Fire again. It is, in my opinion, the worst betrayal by any creative team in the history of storytelling.

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Glee (2009 – 2015)

Riese: We started writing about this show when it premiered because we like singing and dancing and it felt like this really fun convergence of Broadway people and television people, and we had Broadway friends and there was just so! much! buzz! Then this innovative stuff was happening with Kurt, how they were handling his gay bullying storyline was just unprecedented. I wasn’t prepared for Santana to come out and for me to relate to her so hard, or for her story to continue on through every season, although never getting the screentime she deserved! I mean, the two popular cheerleaders got together and became girlfriends, I’m pretty sure that before Glee, that plot really only happened in porn.

Heather: For all the missteps Glee made, and lord there were so many, it’s the show that changed everything. I mean it. Everything. It was so popular in the beginning, and so unapologetically gay, that other shows started to emulate it (Parents Television Council be damned) because everyone wanted a piece of those ratings. It also caused GLAAD to really up its game when it came to pushing for LGBT TV characters because if Kurt Hummel could happen on Fox at 8pm, and then Brittany and Santana too, no one had an excuse anymore.

Riese: Glee’s most notable misstep was its clumsy and wildly offensive handling of Unique, the first trans woman of color recurring character on network television. Still, the show was ambitious and fresh and groundbreaking and it relentlessly released really well-arranged covers of popular songs we sometimes accidentally love more than the original. We’ve had a lot of Glee recappers over the years: Carly, Ashleigh, Alex, Kate and Lizz all took a turn, I recapped most of the episodes, and then Heather Hogan joined me for the end of the series this past year. Remember when we used to write an article literally every time anything happened relating to Glee? A lot of you didn’t like that very much.

Heather: Also, for all its missteps, at the end of the day, Brittany and Santana got married. They are one of the very, very, very few lesbian couples on TV to live happily ever after.

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Pretty Little Liars (2009 ->)

Riese: The fact that Emily made it through an entire season without going back to men was a minor miracle at the time, deserving of an article entitled “Pretty Little Liars Successfully Maintains Lesbian Storyline For Entire Season and Probably Longer.” I liked the show a whole lot though! So I did recaps whenever gay stuff happened, and Lizz did fashion-caps and then eventually took over recapping when my plate got too full. Emily kept having girlfriends and stuff! I mean, it never got as much screen time as the hetero pairs, but still, her sexuality was eventually so incidental. Hansen took over when Lizz went to med school, and then we had a little gap in coverage until Heather Hogan showed up. I think honestly I was really excited about the show when it premiered and promised Alex that writing about it would be a good way to spend my time even though nobody else we knew was watching it and so I wanted to continue covering it as an ongoing reminder that I was right. FINGER ON THE PULSE.

Heather: The funny/sad thing about this list is how many shows stayed too long. That’s a problem with all shows, not just queer ones (and movies now, too): just not knowing when to pull the plug. PLL should have ended after season five; it had stretched even the believable elements of the show to their breaking point by then. Season six has been pretty universally terrible. Only three real standout episodes in the whole thing, and those are overshadowed by the terrible decision to make their ultimate villain a trans woman, and the fact that Emily hasn’t had an actual love interest in 24 episodes. (The longest any other Liars has gone without a love interest is three episodes.)

HOWEVER. For five glorious years, Pretty Little Liars was the queerest thing on TV. The lesbian/bi women total more than any other TV show besides The L Word and Orange Is the New Black. Emily, Maya, Paige, Samara, Ali, Jenna, Shana, Talia, Zoe, and a whole lesbian bar full of Pink Drink-ers at one point. And Emily’s gayness was such a non-issue. When she came out, Hanna said, “You were Emily when you were with Ben, and you’re Emily when you’re with Maya. No one cares who you’re with; we love Emily.” That statement was woven beautifully into the show’s ethos for so long. She dated like the other Liars, and casually joked about her lesbianism all the time. (No one ever directed a joke at her; the laughs all came as inside jokes from her.)

Emily is a leading character whose gayness was a huge part of her identity for 120 episodes. Callie and Arizona from Grey’s Anatomy are the only queer TV characters who can boast more screen time than her, in the whole entire history of television. She is the gayest character ever in a show aimed at teenagers.

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Orange is the New Black (2013 ->)

Riese: Brittani put a trailer in the Video Party and that was the first we’d heard of it — did we need to write a whole post about it? Maybe Kate would like it? Then we were in Big Bear for our staff retreat when it came out and figured we’d seen Animal Odd Couples enough times, let’s give it a go. It’s not often that I actually get to watch shows with the humans I work with, but I’m so glad I was sitting there with Laneia, Rachel, Laura Wooley and Alex, as we got slack-jawed, one by one, as each episode passed — is this really happening? This show? How is a show this diverse and yet so chock-full of girls who want to kiss girls? We couldn’t even wait for the first recap (which we told Kate to rush), we had to tell you about it right away, and then later that day we had the first recap.

Heather: I don’t generally believe the hype about queer TV because I’ve just been doing this for so long and we’re so starved for representation that a hundred people will tell me to watch a thing, it’ll  the be best thing I’ve ever seen, so gay, and then it turns out it’s like six seasons of a thing for five seconds of two girls touching each other’s hands. It’s ridiculous to think about it now, but I didn’t actually believe Netflix could make a TV show. People were talking about House of Cards, but only insider TV people and they also couldn’t shut the heck up about Breaking Bad. I only watched the first episode of Orange Is the New Black because I was sick and confined to my bed; 13 sleepless hours later, I felt like I was on the other side of a revolution. (And I was!)

Riese: After Kate powered through the first 1.5 seasons, recaps of the show have been spotty, honestly, ’cause it’s SO MUCH to recap, so many scenes, so many characters, a full hour (network TV, unlike Netflix, only really makes 44 minute episodes, ’cause of commercials, and those extra 15 minutes add so much recapping time! Ditto for The L Word b/c Showtime.), issues, jokes, sad parts, happy parts… so much territory to cover, so many different tones and styles to adopt as you do it.

Heather: One of the hardest parts about recapping OITNB is that it’s not really a comedy, and there aren’t really a lot of things to clown on. The best jokes happen inside the show itself. And because it’s so self-aware and makes a concerted and conscious effort to tell women’s stories in a way that generally align with our values, there’s no need to really add social commentary. Again, the show does it better inside than we would do on the outside.

Riese: But also, we talk about it constantly, recaps or no, including two of our most popular posts ever: How Real Is Orange is the New Black? and And Now, Every Character From Orange is the New Black As They Appear on “Law and Order.” Lauren Morelli came to A-Camp, we’ve pretty much dedicated ourselves to being your #1 source of Samira Wiley related news, and have worked the show into every list we’ve ever made since. Including this one! Look, this show changed the game and it will continue to. It’s not perfect, but really, nothing is.

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The Fosters (2013 ->)

Riese: In early 2013, ABC Family approached us about putting together an ad proposal for this new show J-Lo was making called The Fosters, and although we were ultimately rejected for the campaign because of our scandalous content, this show sounded so up our alley! Two women raising kids in prime-time television! This really had not been a thing before, had it? We got our very own Lesbian Den Mom, Vikki, to recap the show, but she had to drop it when her cable company dropped ABC Family. I wasn’t really watching it anymore either, mostly ’cause Brandon was so insufferable I wished I could go back in time and add him to this post of the 10 Most Insufferable Men on Television.

Heather: The Fosters is one of those shows that isn’t always perfect, but it gets it consistently more right than any non-streaming TV show. Even the theme song still makes me cry, every time. Coming out narratives are always going to be important, and they universally land with lesbian/bi audiences, but there are so many more stories to tell about gay women. Stef and Lena are the only lesbian characters who have ever reminded me of myself in my grown-up life (only with cats and dogs instead of children). I didn’t have anything in common with the women on The L Word, and while I love the grown-up queer women on Transparent, they are way too Slytherin to really resonate with me. Stef and Lena are actually the way I live and love, and they’re the only TV couple I’ve ever been able to say that about.

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Transparent (2014 ->)

Riese: Much like Orange is the New Black, the pilot to Transparent shocked me because it wasn’t advertised as a show about lesbian and bisexual people specifically (e.g, The L Word, Lip Service, Exes and Ohs), it was a show about a family and the honest truth of that family was that a lot of them are a little queer. It just feels so risky, all the time, because straight people have generally made it abundantly clear that they can only handle so much gay in their television (see: Glee, Empire) before it becomes gay television and HOW IN THE WORLD CAN THEY RELATE TO STORIES ABOUT GAY PEOPLE. (The same way we’ve all related to your stories, weirdos!)

We’re only 5% of the population, are there enough of us to build a fanbase for shows like OITNB and Transparent, which refuse to sideline their gay storylines in favor of centering the straight ones, which Glee and Pretty Little Liars and even The Fosters have been guilty of. Then there’s the most game-changing element of all: the protagonist is a trans woman. The show and its production are far from perfect, but they do have more trans people working behind the scenes than any other show by a landslide. It succeeds, it gets SO MANY awards, it gets renewed… and it came back SO GAY in Season Two that I can hardly believe my eyes! And everybody loved it!

Heather: It took me a long time to watch the first season of Transparent because the backlash against it from so many trans women was so strong, but after talking to Mey Rude about it, I decided to give it a go, and I am SO HAPPY I did. We hardly ever get to see women acting like real humans on TV, real humans with complicated emotions who make sometimes dubious decisions, and also selfish ones too. The Golden Age of TV is all about men doing those things (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Dexter, Game of Thrones). And to get to see that on a show where the main character is a trans woman, and so many of her dear friends are trans women played by trans women, and so many of the supporting characters are queer: It’s what I hope the future looks like.

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Lost Girl

Heather: Lost Girl is another one of those shows that stayed too long, but in its heyday, it was revolutionary for so many reasons. It’s an action show with a female lead, which is remarkable enough. But also Bo Dennis is bisexual, and her relationship with Dr. Lauren Lewis was given as much screen time (and as many emotional beats and sex scenes) as her relationship with Dyson. It was a will-they/won’t-they in which either relationship seemed plausible. I couldn’t even believe it the first time Bo and Lauren had sex on the show. It was filmed and edited as passionately as the one with her male love interest, and they did it with the lights on. Even on The L Word, it was hard to get a sex scene with the lights on!

Lost Girl also started a really great trend of Canadian networks partnering with U.S. networks to get some money for production in exchange for sending the show across the border. It was the catalyst for both Bomb Girls and Rookie Blue (both of which featured engaging queer characters) making their way to us.

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Orphan Black

Heather: I can’t believe, after three stellar seasons, Orphan Black hasn’t achieved more than “cult classic” status. In a world of remakes (and remakes of remakes) Orphan Black stands alone. There has never been a show like this on TV! It is a feminist masterwork, and it’s also a misandrist masterwork. (Men hardly ever talk to each other about anything besides women.) But what really sets Orphan Black apart is how it engaged with the “Born the Way” debate. Every TV show that has taken on the task of talking about biological gayness has gone to painstaking lengths to prove that its queer character is absolutely positively 100 percent no doubt born gay, and there’s no way they could have made a choice to be otherwise. Orphan Black — in which every woman is a clone, meaning they share the same exact DNA — is the first show to take look at the nature vs. nurture conversation and say, “Who cares?”

When Delphine finds herself falling for Cosima (notably the only gay clone), she says, “As a scientist I know that sexuality is a spectrum, but social biases codify sexual attraction, contrary to the biological facts.” Which is to say: Nature can place you anywhere along the spectrum, and no matter where that place is, we should have the freedom to choose which relationships to pursue. That’s a pretty hefty idea, and one that the gay community has rejected as a talking point for, well, forever, because black-and-white notions about sexuality make equality activism a lot simpler. Orphan Black is interested in a having a different kind of conversation, and modern and evolved one. And it’s doing it with a once-in-a-generation character actress in Tatiana Maslany.

Last season they killed Delphine (supposedly), but I’m not convinced she’s really dead. At least they also killed her male counterpart on the show, and introduced another queer character to romance Cosima. Still, though. Firmly in denial about Delphine’s fate until I see a body.

25 Unsolved Lesbian TV Mysteries Sarah Shahi’s Nancy Drew Should Investigate

Today CBS announced that Sarah Shahi will play a grown-up Nancy Drew in an upcoming reboot of the beloved book series. According to Entertainment Weekly:

Now in her 30s, Nancy is a detective for the NYPD where she investigates and solves crimes using her uncanny observational skills, all while navigating the complexities of life in a modern world.

It’s hard to oversell what a big deal it is for CBS to greenlight a female-fronted mystery series, and even harder to oversell the brilliant coup of casting a woman of color to play a character who has always been depicted as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white girl. CBS has traditionally been a network for straight white men, rolling out NCIS after NCIS and CSI after CSI. They’ve certainly enjoyed critical acclaim with The Good Wife, but even with that show’s ratings and awards season successes, CBS has only recently begun testing the female-fronted waters with shows like Madam Secretary and Supergirl.

Why the big leap forward with a drama fronted by a woman of color? A quick look at ABC’s Shondaland ratings and social media prowess answers that question!

I admit to feeling doubly optimistic by the fact that Sarah Shahi has played a queer woman not once, but twice in her career. As  Carmen de la Pica Morales on The L Word she was left at the altar by Shane McCutcheon. And as Sameen Shaw on Person of Interest, she has investigated the complexities of the universe while falling for Root. (It’s interesting to note that Root and Shaw are the only two characters on POI who have really enjoyed a romantic storyline.)

All of which means Sarah Shahi is perfectly positioned to solve these other 25 lesbian TV mysteries when she takes up the mantle of Nancy Drew.

1. Who killed Jenny Schecter?

2. Why does every Liar in Rosewood get a boyfriend, but Emily can’t keep a girlfriend?

3. Why wasn’t Quinn Fabray at Santana and Brittany’s wedding, and why did no one even mention her?

4. Did a bear eat Erica Hahn in the Seattle Grace parking lot or what?

5. When are Clarke and Lexa gonna do it, but like for real do it?

6. What evil, horrible, malevolent demon spirits possessed the creators of Skins to do what they did with Skins Fire?

7. Are you kidding me that Jessica Jones and Trish Walker aren’t in love?

8. What happened between Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies that made the The Good Wife‘s writers destroy Kalinda?

9. Why is Ryan Murphy still allowed to write about trans women?

10. How come One Big Happy felt like it was made in 1994?

11. Was mowing Cat down with a car really the best way to write her off of Lip Service?

12. Why can Canadian TV lesbians make out with the lights on, but in the United States they have to lip-peck in the dark with hair covering their faces?

13. Is Mulan wearing an invisibility cloak or did she drink an invisibility potion?

14. When is CBS going to put Person of Interest season five on its schedule?

15. Is Delphine actually dead?

16. How does Laura not burst into flames when Carmilla looks at her like that?

17. Why did ABC Family let the CW usurp its title a Gayest TV Network?

18. Seriously, what did Annalise and Eve do to Wes and his mom?

19. If Karma isn’t gay for Amy, why does she act so gay for Amy?

20. How come Nicky went to max and never came back?

21. Why did Mimi Whiteman go from being the poor man’s Helen Peabody into the lecherous sloppy man’s Helen Peabody?

22. Did Peggy Peabody turn gay because of Sarah Paulson or did The L Word make her gay long before that?

23.Why perfect, innocent, beautiful, revolutionary, singular Tara, though? WHY?

24. When’s Betty McRae coming to Legends of Tomorrow to hook up with Sara Lance?

25. Really, Papi? Really?

10 Sexiest Lesbian TV Scenes That Got Everybody Wet (Because Pools)

by heather & riese

10 Sexiest Lesbian TV Scenes That Happened In Pools or Lakes

In 1998, Denise Richards and Neve Campbell locked lips in a pool in Wild Things, and fictional lesbians have been making out in and around bodies of water ever since, especially on TV. Some of the waterside hookups have ended in heartache. Some of them have ended in eternal love. All of them have proven Regina George’s worst nightmare to be true: You invite a lesbian to a pool party, and it’s gonna get gay. Here are Riese and Heather’s top ten sexiest lesbian TV scenes that happened in pools and lakes.

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Shane and Cherie Jaffe, The L Word, Episode 305

Certifiably one of The L Word‘s hottest sex scenes, even if it did the unthinkable: gave Shane an opportunity to cheat on Carmen De La Pica Morales. I mean, when you show up at your ex’s house wearing a strap-on under those jeans and a white shirt and she’s gotta get out of bed to let you in — but she doesn’t let you in right away, not just yet — not until they’ve had a brief dip in the pool and gotten completely naked. Except for the harness. That stays on. (-Riese)

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Amy and Karma, Faking It, Episode 219

In this moment, Karma, drunk and distraught, betrayed herself and maybe Amy, too, when she went for the kiss, and then another, without any concept of where she was or who was watching. Who was watching, by the way? EVERYBODY. But the only person who couldn’t remember what happened the next day was Karma herself. (-Riese)

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Naomi & Emily, Skins, Episode 306

Look, Naomi’s straight, okay? She only kissed Emily that one time because they were hopped on MDMA. She only let Emily sleep over that night because they were drunk. She only reached for Emily first thing the next morning because — um, she was hungover? Yeah, that’s it. Hungover. Naomi was all denial and a caged heart, until Emily took her swimming at her favorite pond. (“It’s lovely. It’s a lovely place.”) They stripped down, they jumped in, they splashed around. And when night closed in on them and no one was around and the fire crackled and the waterfall trickled, Naomi ran out of excuses and crashed into Emily once and for all. She hadn’t summoned her full courage yet, but that was moment she began to Be Brave. (-Heather)

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Paige & Emily, Pretty Little Liars, Episode 308

The pool is where it always happened with Emily and Paige. The day Paige’s internalized homophobia got the best of her and she shoved Emily’s head underwater. The day Paige started her penance and came to cheer on Emily anchoring the relay team. Early mornings and late nights and poisoned sports cream. The pool is where they fell apart and came together (and together again), most especially after Emily began to heal from losing Maya and opened up her heart to Paige once more. She couldn’t stop talking, you know that girl, but Emily told her two things: Listen. Don’t look away. “I was looking for something. I was looking for somebody. And I came here,” Emily said, and they kissed and they kissed and they kissed. And then they swam, but as a metaphor. (-Heather)

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Luisa & Rose, Jane the Virgin, Episode 114

Ah, Rose. Luisa’s stepmother, who also was the step-daughter of Luisa’s first step-mother, and a crime lord (and the step-daughter of a crime lord). It was complicated. Also, though, it was pretty simple. Luisa and Rose were hardcore into each other, couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and sometimes when they were in the throes of forbidden passion — like this time in the pool at the Marbella — even the sky would light itself up with fireworks because the air couldn’t contain the intensity of their spark. (-Heather)

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Rebecca & Marlene, Verbotene Liebe

Their love affair started, as these things always do, when Rebecca was hired to design a Wet Fantasy swimsuit line and needed someone to model with her for a photoshoot. She convinced Marlene to give it a try, and they had so much fun posing for the camera together, finally falling into the pool and hugging and not even worrying about their makeup. Rebecca tried to convince everyone in her life it was just a job, but the pictures didn’t lie. “Look at your expression!” her friend told her. “That’s not professional, that’s real!” Rebecca went home and daydreamed about their photoshoot taking a NSFW turn, and then she went kissed Marlene for real, in real life.

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Stef & Lena, The Fosters, Episode 313

It’s hard to find alone time when you live in a house with half a dozen teenagers, so after Stef’s breast cancer diagnosis, when what she needed most was to just be with her wife, Lena broke into their neighbor’s backyard to take Stef swimming. Stef was worried; she is a cop, after all — but she doesn’t always mind breaking the rules, and when Lena shouted, “Last one in has to be on top tonight!” it was a race to nakedness. Here’s to lesbian moms making time for themselves, and to two full-on bottoms making it work. (-Heather)

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Maya & Emily, Pretty Little Liars, Episode 218

Maya and Emily didn’t technically rekindle their romance in a pool or a lake, but Maya did decorate her bedroom like the ocean so they could scissor under the sea. (And anyway, cut Maya some slack; she’s had it hard enough without you getting pedantic about what constitutes the ocean!) “If the Sharks won’t let you back in the water,” Maya told Emily, after leading her into the sea with her eyes closed, “I’ll bring the water to you.” They confessed their love to each other that night and sank down onto Maya’s bed to make it official. (-Heather)

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Soso/Poussey & Suzanne/Maureen, Orange is the New Black, Episode 313

The last episode of Season Three of Orange is the New Black is one of my favorite episodes of television, ever. It comments on the prison-industrial complex as new prisoners are unloaded to inhabit the building (scenes which recalled, to me, the final scenes of Battlestar Galactica) AND gifts us with ecstatic scenes of love and friendship enabled by a temporary jailbreak towards a nearby lake. In the lake, Suzanne lets her guard down to accept Maureen’s long-standing crush on her, and Poussey and Soso literally drift towards each other, starfishing and hand-holding, maybe finding the companionship they’ve been lacking in each other. It’s maybe the happiest we’ve seen any of the inmates since they arrived at Litchfield. (-Riese)

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Tina & Helena, The L Word, Episode 206

The L Word really committed to showing us types of sex we didn’t normally see on television, and one of Helena and Tina’s earliest hookups in Season Two was no exception. Helena lures Tina away from a boring business dinner for a dip in her private pool. “I don’t have a bathing suit,” Tina protests. “And?” Helena responds. Tina’s timid about showing her very pregnant body, but Helena insists, “This is what I find most beautiful.” (-Riese)

8 Things I Can’t Wait to Watch Dana Scully Do on My TV Again

Our lady of skepticism, Dana Scully, played by the marvelous Gillian Anderson is returning to television and laptop screens all over the world this month.

With Fox’s announcement last year about an X-Files revival, I have been impatiently waiting for what will be the first time I actually get to see Dana Scully on currently-airing television. I was about ten when the X-Files went off air, and like most ten-year-old baby queers, I was obsessed with America Ferrera in Gotta Kick it Up! (“Sí se puede!”), not whatever was coming on Fox at 8pm. Once I finally binged it (it’s available on both Netflix and Amazon Prime if you need to get caught up) I fell in love with Dana Scully like every other Good American Queer. She is small, takes no nonsense, especially from men, always wears some sort of oversized pantsuit and can seriously kick ass. Scully is who I want to be when I grow up, minus the whole being-a-part-of-the-FBI thing.

It’s not just Dana Scully that I’m excited about. Gillian Anderson is a gem on social media! She puts out that she loves her fans just as much as they love her, and works hard to communicate with them. The show hasn’t even started yet and she’s full of excitement about it on Twitter. I can’t wait to see what she’s like when the show is actually on.

Here are the Dana Scully/Gillian Anderson moments I’m most excited to see with this revival.

1. Scully having no patience for men

when it’s been 20 years and you’re still fed up of listening to men pic.twitter.com/TUCV9mFMCp

— was alexdrakes (@karenmoodys) July 11, 2015

Scully works with a man that even the most patient person on (or off) Earth would be fed up with in no time. And Dana Scully is not the most patient person. She has no time for Mulder and his belief that everything is part of a government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials (even though technically he’s not wrong). It’s so refreshing on television to see a woman who isn’t afraid to show a man just how ridiculous she thinks his ideas are. “Oh, really Mulder? A chupacabra? Okay. Sure.”

2. Scully kicking ass in high heels

#mondaymotivation #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/vctzQc9QAf

— The X-Files (@thexfiles) January 4, 2016

Scully is such a badass, y’all. She comes into work every day with a freshly ironed pantsuit, perfect hair, flawless 90s makeup, and will still kick the shit out of you — IN HEELS! She’s my #everydaymotivation.

3. Scully and Monica Reyes 4ever

I want this couple back. While they were never canon, who can forget Monica Reyes gently helping Dana Scully prepare for childbirth by singing her whale song? I’ve seen clips of Scully talking to Reyes in the new episodes, here’s hoping their storyline revolves around them confessing their love for one another and adopting a child to raise in Georgetown.

If Scully and Reyes don’t get together, I’m putting the rest of my hope into Scully and this random woman who keeps getting abducted by aliens. I mean, she’s existed alongside Mulder this long, she’d probably hold her own. Gillian’s no stranger to queer roles; just let us have this, Fox.

4. Scully is a medical doctor

Did you know Dana Scully is a medical doctor? Did you know she was trained in hard science? Did you? She’s a medical doctor.

5. Scully rescuing Mulder

Scully is constantly saving the day. Either with medicine and hard science, or with her will to fight people who are trying to harm her friends. Especially Mulder. Scully is constantly saving Mulder’s ass. I want more of that this season.

6. Classic Scully skepticism

Scully does not want to believe. She is hoping the truth is not out there. She has got real world shit to do. She doesn’t want the answer to be aliens. Ever. Even after she was abducted and impregnated with an alien baby. There’s gotta be some other reasoning behind it, according to Scully. She eventually comes around to it, but where would we be without her refreshing dose of skepticism? Keeps Mulder on his toes, at least.

7. Scully’s glasses

Oh man, those glasses! Is there anything more serious and adorable than Scully in her glasses? Whenever she wears them, something serious is always about to happen. Glasses mean SERIOUS BUSINESS. This is one of my favorite Scully looks. I hope we get more of this look.

8. Scully can do this herself, dammit

So what if she’s 5 feet tall? She wants to drive and is just as capable as any man.

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No matter how we get to see her, I’m just excited to see Dana Scully back on the television. She’s smart, beautiful and opinionated; which is everything I want in a girlfriend, and definitely everything I want in a lead of a sci-fi show. In such a guy’s club, Dana holds her own and is an inspiration for all of us who deal with men who don’t think we’re capable enough.

If the truth is out there, Dana Scully will be there to find it, and what a gift that is to us all.

Every Queer TV Storyline of 2015, Ranked

2015 was the first year history that one critic could not possibly watch every hour of every TV show featuring a queer female character — a far cry from the zero hours it took to watch all the queer female characters on primetime broadcast TV when I started doing this job back in 2008. Thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, and a generation of voting-aged humans who started watching Glee out-gay itself week-after-week when they were in the sixth grade, the landscape of TV has been changed forever over the last few years.

The two most remarkable things about queer women on TV in 2015 were: 1) How unremarkable it was for a show to include a main character who was a lesbian or bisexual woman. Lesbian/bi women were dynamic main characters and boring supporting characters, they were virtuous heroes and they were dubious antiheroes, they were on broadcast TV and they were on cable TV. They were everywhere and it was no big deal. 2) How many of the very best queer characters were women of color, particularly black women. In fact, when we asked our TV writers to weigh in on their favorite TV characters of the year, women of color dominated our roundtable for the first time ever. It’s an exciting trend I hope continues to grow in exponential ways.

Things weren’t quite as universally revolutionary, however, for trans women on TV this year. Later today, we’ll look back at the year in trans TV, specifically, and parse out how the most trans women ever appeared on TV in the same year the most trans women ever were murdered in the United States. We’ve still got a long way to go with queer representation on TV, especially for trans characters.

Riese captured the state of queer TV perfectly earlier this year in her piece about GLAAD’s decision to drop its Network Responsibility Index.

Now the focus has shifted to misrepresentation and underrepresentation. Outside of ABC Family, we rarely see a lesbian or bisexual female character at the forefront of any particular cast (which is part of why Faking It is so precious to us), especially not on broadcast television. We don’t have our Jamal on Empire, Mitchell and Cameron on Modern Family or our Cyrus on Scandal. Also, when it comes to lesbian representation: why must so many lesbian characters sleep with men? Will we ever see a diversity of gender presentation amongst female queer TV characters, or just a bunch of thin femmes? WHY SO MANY WHITE PEOPLE?

But mostly these days it’s not the simple existence of queer characters that we’re fighting for, it’s for screen time for those characters and their romances. It’s so tiring, this back-and-forth we play with the people who tell the loudest stories. This is what we want to look like! Stop making us look like [other thing]! Straight white men save so much time not worrying about that shit.

With that in mind, we’ve ranked every storyline on American TV this year featuring a queer female character. (We’re pretty sure we got them all, but if we missed any, let us know.) For the first time in a long time, I’m really excited about what the future of TV holds.

WARNING: Spoilers for every single TV show featuring a queer TV character this year, including major character deaths. 

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83. Big A is Charlotte DiLaurentis, Pretty Little Liars

I have confirmed with multiple sources that this story was three years in the making, which makes the egregious missteps even worse than I thought when I first watched the Big Reveal back in August. Every damaging trans trope you can imagine (topes that people in real life use to justify committing horrific violence against trans women) rolled into a single episode and amplified retroactively over five seasons of what was once my favorite show on TV. I’m still heartbroken about it.

82. Another Ryan Murphy shitshow, American Horror Story: Hotel

Mey Rude said it all.

81. Sara Harvey is the ultimate deus ex machina, Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars brought on Sara Harvey at the last second to be the answer to a dozen questions, and tried to shoehorn her into a relationship with Emily to lend emotional impact to the reveal that she was every single faceless bad guy we’ve wondered about over the past five years. It was cheap and lazy, and her presence robbed us of Emily exploring a relationship that had the same emotional resonance as the other main (straight) characters. I’m mad at myself for how happy I was when Emily punched her in the face.

80. Rene Montoya disappears, Gotham

The fanboys couldn’t handle that a queer woman of color (and one of two most beloved lesbians in DC’s entire universe) was a legitimate romantic foil for Jim Gordon, so they canned her without explanation or apology.

79. Charlie gets stuffed in a refrigerator, Supernatural

This was some straight up ’90s-style bullshit storytelling: Violently killing one of the only women on the show (and definitely the only queer person on the show) to advance the plot of the straight white men. If I never see this trope again, it will be too soon.

78. A Very Special Trans Murder Episode, Law & Order: SVU

This episode had more problems than I can count. Mey Rude did the hard work and listed them for us.

77. Maya is every damaging trans trope, Bold & the Beautiful

She’s been lying about being trans her whole life to trick a rich man into marrying her. Every character misgenders her and misnames her repeatedly when they start to find out. Violence against her is justified because she’s deceitful and duplicitous. To make it even worse, Maya is the only trans character on daytime TV.

76. Mimi Whiteman takes over Empire, has horrible threesome, Empire

Come on, Ilene.

75. Barbara is a bisexual psychopath, Gotham

After writing off Rene Montoya, Gotham turned Barbara into a full-on sociopath. She had her own family murdered, tortured Jim’s new girlfriend, stalked Jim, was a co-conspirator in a plan to murder every police officer in Gotham city, and continued to be addicted to every pill known to man. It’s time to retire this played cliche too.

74. Kalinda exits on a green screen, The Good Wife

CGI? What CGI? There was a time when Kalinda Sharma was the most nuanced, exciting bisexual character on TV. Her last two seasons were rubbish, and her last episode was a joke.

73. Amy lies to sidestep Reagan’s biphobic ire, Faking It

Faking It really struggled with the biphobia this year, and Reagan was the original perpetrator, refusing to entertain the idea that she could be in a relationship with a woman who’d had sex with a man. And so, in typical Amy fashion, she just lied about it over and over until she and Reagan broke up about it. With Amy’s sexual orientation up in the air, Reagan became the only bona-fide lesbian character on the show, which made her biphobia even more egregious as it played into the stereotype that all lesbians are biphobic.

72. Nicky spends the whole season in max, Orange Is the New Black

We hardly got to see her knowing smirk at all this season!

71. Tamsin dies, Lost Girl

After being raped by Bo’s dad masquerading as Bo and having his baby, Tamisn died. And sure, she was never going to be Bo’s forever love, but she deserved so much better. She was one of the best queer sci-fi characters in TV history.

70. Sam is a “predatory lez,” Scream Queens

Just stop writing women, please, Ryan Murphy. Thank you.

69. Mulan comes back, Once Upon a Time

Mulan stopped by for her yearly five minutes of screentime on Once Upon a Time, and despite the producers’ promises that a gay relationship is going to happen this season for absolute sure no question don’t even worry about it, the only action Mulan got was Red sitting near her on the ground, breathlessly heaving her bosom for 15 seconds.

68. Mary and Nora have been together a thousand years, Vampire Diaries

It’s always nice to have a new couple to add to the canon of lesbian vampires.

67. Ellen and Liz Feldman get trapped in the ’90s, One Big Happy

Siiiigh. We wanted so much from this show. It wasn’t offensive or anything; it was just 15 years behind its time.

66. Lesbian directors are everywhere, BoJack Horseman

Lesbian director Kelsey Jannings, (most famous for her critically acclaimed indie drama Women Who Love Women Who Love Recycling) came back for a bigger role in season two; she was the director of BoJack’s Secretariat film, which paid her exactly one thousand dollars per minute.

65. Bird and Madison kiss, Finding Carter

Mandatory queer kiss on an MTV scripted show.

64. Jane directs Valerie’s new reality show, The Comeback

She is to Valerie what Kelsey Jennings is to BoJack Horseman: super talented, thirsty, misanthropic, and secretly shielding a marshmallow heart.

63. Cricket gets a girlfriend, Hart of Dixie

When Cricket came out at her wedding on Hart of Dixie, it was a truly shocking moment. Not because it was her wedding, but because everyone had always assumed her fiance was gay. The show didn’t do much with her before it was canned, but it did send her off with a girlfriend, even though they never did more than hold hands on-screen.

62. Mayfair’s ex is a lady, Blindspot

Mayfair’s storyline on Blindspot was indicative of how so many supporting queer storylines were treated this year: It added a layer to her characterization, made her more relatable to the audience, and ultimately was a non-issue.

61. Gail tries to adopt a kid, Rookie Blue

She also made out with her archnemesis at work; sadly, it happened off-screen.

60. Betty bakes a bun in her oven, Masters of Sex

I had higher hopes for Betty after she was made a series regular, but this season of Masters of Sex, overall, paled in comparison to the previous two seasons. Betty’s weak storyline was par for the course for all characters in season three.

59. Tituba has lesbian leanings, Salem

If you read my weekly TV round-ups in Boob(s In Your) Tube, you know I cannot watch gory shows, and Salem earns top marks in both of that area. Tituba did smooch on another lady this season, but I couldn’t bring myself to look for a screencap because it’s always so bloody. Luckily, this photo existed in WordPress when I searched “Salem.”

58. Lucy Lawless does it again and again, Salem and Ash vs. Evil Dead

Lucy Lawless has kissed more women on-screen now than I have ever (or will ever) kiss in my entire life. Four for you, Xena. You go, Xena.

57. Alex and Piper’s whole toxic deal, Orange Is the New Black

It’s not even sexy anymore, y’all. It’s time to move on to orange-er pastures.

56. Kay is a soft butch flannel queen, Marry Me

Marry Me had all the makings of a great comedy, but NBC pulled the plug on it before it really found its footing. The biggest travesty was that we lost Kay, one of a the very few main lesbian characters in broadcast TV sitcoms, and my favorite part of the show. And she’d just started dating Anna Ortiz!

55. Transphobia lands Sophia in max, Orange Is the New Black

Riese said it really well in her recap:

Here’s the thing, though: the Sophia we’ve followed through 2.5 seasons would’ve apologized to Gloria when she found out it was Michael’s fault the kids got in trouble, not Benny’s. Orange wants to tell a story about violence against trans women in prison, and so here it is, but the thing about violence against trans women in prison is that it doesn’t need a reason, it happens all the time for no reason. Trans women get beat up and raped in prison just for being trans women.

54. Callie moves on with Penny, Grey’s Anatomy

We hates Penny. WE HATES HER PRECIOUS.

53. STELLLAAAA, Orange Is the New Black

It’s always good on a queer woman’s eyeballs to see Ruby Rose on-screen, but that’s as deep as my interest in Stella went. I’d trade ten Stellas for one Nicky, coming home from max.

52. Pippy and TMI exist, Rosewood

The most boring lesbian couple on television, which is pretty damn revolutionary.

51. Another Annalise, Grandfathered

John Stamons’ right hand woman is a lesbian restaurant manager named Annalise. She doesn’t have much to do, and hasn’t had a love interest yet, but she’s the only woman of color on the show and easily one of the best and funniest parts.

50. Dr. Pineda has a living girlfriend and dying ex-girlfriend, Code Black

Another casual mention of lesbianism and no protests or bloodshed or trigger warnings before the episode aired. It’s like networks have finally figured out that if you’ve got a group of five super smart women hanging out together, at least one of them is going to be gay.

49. Tara lives, scores a lady kiss, The Walking Dead

Not all lesbians die in the zombie apocalypse!

48. Audrey is a final girl, Scream

She’s also maybe the ultimate bad guy; only time will tell! At least she’s an interesting queer killer on a show about killers. The lesbians are always the first to go in horror stories.

47. Karma and Amy stay trapped in their kissing-confusion loop, Faking It

After which Amy finally drove away.

46. Ben’s sister comes out as a trans woman, Grey’s Anatomy

The story was handled with a lot of heart, and definitely came down on the side of Rosalind and not Ben, but it had the trappings of: a cis man playing a trans woman, Bailey outing a trans woman to her family, and focusing on Ben’s feelings about the whole thing and not his sister’s. I hope Rosalind comes back around this season. She needs more!

45. Jessica’s favorite hangout is a lesbian bar, Fresh off the Boat

Jessica not knowing that her favorite place to chill out is a girl bar is one of the funniest gags on one of the funniest shows on TV. The stereotyping is gentle, and played as if lesbian viewers are in on the joke.

44. Sara comes back to life, Arrow

I was excited about this at like a five, and then I found out she’s going to romance Ali “Betty McRae” Liebert on Legends of Tomorrow, and now I’m at like a nine and half.

43. Faith is a secret queer lady, UNreal

This show was the opposite of its name: It was one of the most real things on TV in 2015, and Faith realizing she’s gay but being coaxed into staying silent about it for ratings was a huge part of that realness.

42. Piper becomes Walter White, Orange Is the New Black

Of course Piper would become the white person exploiting women of color to make a buck, and getting off the whole time on how brilliant she is. Of course that’s who she was destined to be. I’m done with her, though. Her story, I mean. I’m ready for Suzanne to become the centerpiece of this show.

41. Talia comes out, kisses Emily, is married to a man, Pretty Little Liars

Emily Fields’ game makes Shane McCuteheon look like she’s a little league rookie. How has she not made the other three Liars completely homosexual by now?

40. Gretchen is the vigilante we deserve, Complications

USA axed Complications after only one summer, which is a real shame; Gretchen was halfway to becoming Batman when the first season ended.

39. Margot and Alana scissor inside a kaleidoscope, Hannibal

They also made the very wise decision to hire armored guards to helicopter them the fuck out of this story universe when they realized they were in danger. Every queer women on television should take note!

38. Sarah and Tammy get married, breakup, Transparent

It was almost too real.

37. Jordan comes out as a trans girl, The Carmichael Show

From Mey:

While this episode isn’t exactly perfect (they misgender Jordan a lot), I do think it was maybe the most slept on piece of trans media of the year. What I really love about it is that it’s pretty real. It doesn’t pretend that Jerrod’s family, or Jerrod himself, are perfect when it comes to understanding trans people. But they do try, and they do learn, and they do accept Jordan. Honestly, this is a really funny episode, and they made a bunch of jokes about trans people, and they made them mostly without putting trans people down or being transphobic.

36. Lena kisses Monty and never tells Stef, The Fosters

Monty was such a fascinating character, and her stupid chemistry with Lena was stupid good, but she needs to take her recently awakened sapphic tendencies to another charter school in another city, far away from Stef and Lena.

35. Pima tries to get into Peggy’s pants, Mad Men

No man on Mad Men was ever good enough for Peggy, and for a hot second, it looked like Pima was going to turn her head. Goodness, she tried. Peggy was flattered, but she turned her down. If she were going to be with a woman, it would have been Joyce anyway.

34. Maggie is TV Land’s first lesbian character, Younger

Holler for a middle aged lesbian for a change!

33. Ilana sleeps with her doppelgänger, Broad City

Obviously she was practing for Abbi, but it was still (very) good fun.

32. Lesley is Eileen Myles, Transparent

This fictional relationship worked out pretty dang well for real life Eileen Myles and Transparent creator Jill Soloway.

31. Clarke and Lexa smooch a little bit, The 100

Juliet and Juliet for the post-apocalyptic Hunger Games crowd.

Next page: The top 30!