60 Best Queer and Lesbian Netflix TV Shows

Why simply marathon a good television show when you could marathon a good lesbian show on Netflix or a show with some element of lesbians, trans people, bisexuality, pansexuality or queerness within it? Netflix’s original programming is chock full of LGBTQ-inclusive TV shows, lesbian series and wlw TV shows, and although they also host a variety of content produced by other studios and networks, this list is focused on TV series developed by or in partnership with Netflix, because those are the shows you can mostly expect to find on Netflix channels worldwide and indefinitely. Because we are a website for LGBTQ women and trans people of all genders, that’s the type of representation we’ll be highlighting here, today.

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The Queerest Netflix Original LGBTQ Inclusive TV Shows:

These LGBT Netflix TV Shows and lesbian series have LGBTQ+ women and/or trans people either playing lead characters or simply in abundance and in general de-center cisgender heterosexual stories. If you want queer and trans stories front & center, these shows are for you!

Dead End: Paranormal Park

2022  // 2 Seasons // 20 Episodes

Barney Guttman (Zach Barack) is the lead character of this delightful comics-inspired animated series, playing a Jewish queer trans boy who lives in a haunted house and has a crush on his best friend, Logs. The show follows his adventures with his other pals Norma (who is pansexual and autistic) and Norma’s girlfriend, Badyah (Kathreen Khavari).

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Everything Now

(2023-) // 1+ Seasons // 8 Episodes

15-year-old protagonist Mia Polanco (Sophie Wilde) returns home after spending many months away for inpatient eating disorder treatment. Her friends have changed — they’re drinking, doing drugs and having sex, and Mia angles to catch up in this series full of messy teenage queers stumbling their way through it all.

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Everything Sucks!

(2018) // One Season // 10 episodes

We fell hard for this ’90s throwback lesbian Netflix TV show centered on a tomboy coming out to herself and the world (and crushing hard on an alternateeen drama queen played by Sydney Sweeny) — you can marathon the whole thing in a night and lament that it got cancelled.

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The Fall of the House of Usher

2023 // Limited Series // 8 Episodes

Mike Flanagan’s final project for Netflix is his most epic, precise and haunting: a limited series that weaves multiple Edgar Allen Poe stories into one grand tale of the Usher family: Roderick is the head of a major pharmaceutical company responsible for an addiction epidemic that has made his family very rich. Then, one by one, his children begin to die — and he has six of them, by five mothers, and at least four of them are queer, and there are other queers, too, you will see.

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Feel Good

Channel 4 // (2020-2021) // 2 Seasons //12 episodes 

Mae Martin is VERY cute and funny in this delightful little queer Netflix TV show in which they play Mae, a recovering cocaine addict and stand-up comic who falls for a straight girl in Season One and crawls out of a relapse in Season Two. It’s so smart and sweet and perfect.

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First Kill

(2022) // One Season // 8 Episodes

This “sweet (and sometimes bloody) story of firsts — first times, first kills, and first loves” only lasted one season at Netflix, but for that one season we had ourselves a lesbian protagonist and a central narrative of a vampire from a legendary lineage falling for a human girl, much to the chagrin of everybody else.

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Glamorous

(2023) // One Season // 10 episodes

The protagonist of Glamorous is a gender-non-conforming non-binary makeup artist (played by trans actress and social media star Miss Benny) working for makeup maven Madolyn Addison (Kim Catrall) in an office crawling with homosexuals and bisexuals, including her designer Britt, a Black masculine lesbian played by Ayesha Harris, and Britt’s crush Valentina. It’s a very queer show even if lesbians aren’t centered, but it’s also pretty mediocre!

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Gypsy

(2017) // One Season // 10 episodes

We got one entire season of this uneven, generally terrible yet still somehow totally addictive psychological thriller that starts Naomi Watts as a bisexual therapist who gets wrapped up in a thing with a girl she’s stalking for reasons too convoluted to get into here.

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The Haunting of Bly Manor

(2020) // Limited Series // 9 episodes

This follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House is entirely centered on Dani, the (bisexual!) live-in nanny for a weird family living in ye olde haunted manor. Housekeeper Hannah is played by queer actress T’Nia miller, and there’s also a very gay gardener in overalls, Jamie. The story between Dani and Jamie inspired Valerie to note that this show “isn’t a ghost story, it’s a lesbian love story — with ghosts.”

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Heartbreak High

(2022 – ) // 1+ Season // 8+ Episodes

In this Australian series we are once again confronted with the reality that everybody is gay now! We’ve got the autistic and queer Quinni (played by austistic actor and disability rights advocate Chloé Hayden), the mixed-race and nonbinary Darren (played by nonbinary actor James Majoos), lesbian lothario Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran), her Indigenous and queer best friend/ex Missy (Sherry-Lee Watson) and there’s even an (oh-so-rare) asexual male character. In her review, Kayla noted that these identities are used “not to check boxes but to paint a vibrant and varied world that covers the trials and tribulations of high school from the low-stakes shit like crushes and clique drama to much higher stakes conflicts like unsafe living conditions, sexual assault, and violence.”

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Heartstopper

(2022 – ) // 2+ Seasons // 16+ Episodes

Would you like to have your heart warmed to its very core by an adorable British LGBTQ+ romantic comedy series based on a webcomic/graphic novel by 27-year-old aromantic asexual writer Alice Oseman?? Now you can!!! Trans TikTok sensation Yasmin Finney plays Elle, one of Charlie’s best friends. Queer couple Tara (queer actor Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell) are also featured in the story! It’s a gay male couple at the forefront of the tale, but honestly they both have a lot of lesbian energy?

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I Am Not Okay With This

(2020) // One Season // 8 episodes

For Sydney (Sophia Lillis of Sharp Objects), the surly self-described “boring 17-year-old white girl” at the center of the lesbian Netflix series “I Am Not Okay With This,” her feelings of powerlessness around her father’s death have become augmented by something else she isn’t sure how to name, but the friend she confides in about it is quick to refer to it as “superpowers.” Also she’s in love with her best friends.

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Master of None (Select Episodes)

(2015 -2021) // 3 Seasons // 25 Episodes of which 14 include a lesbian character and 7 are 100% focused the lesbian character’s story

So the thing is that overall, Aziz Ansari’s critical smash Master of None is not a 100% lesbian TV show. BUT it’s possible to watch JUST the Denise-focused episodes and make it into your very own 100% lesbian TV show. Season One featured out lesbian writer/comic/actress Lena Waithe as Ansari’s lesbian pal, Denise, and although Season Two had less Denise overall as Aziz frolicked overseas, it also had one of the most important episodes in lesbian television history, “Thanksgiving,” for which Lena Waithe made history as the first Black woman to win an Emmy in Comedic Writing. The final season of Master of None, called “Moments in Love,” focuses entirely on Denise and her relationship. You can watch just “Thanksgiving” and Season Three and you won’t feel lost at all.

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Orange is the New Black

(2013 – 2019) // 7 Seasons // 91 Episodes

One of the first-ever Netflix original series was also one of the first lesbian TV shows on Netflix: Orange is The New Black has like a billion queer characters, including a bisexual protagonist as well as rampant misandry, a nearly all-female cast, and racial diversity for days. We’ve got a trans woman of color playing a trans woman of color (Laverne Cox), we’ve got queers playing queers (Samira Wiley, Lea DeLaria, Ruby Rose, Vicci Martinez, 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. Until Season Four, which ends in tragedy and heartbreak and is highly problematic and, well, it might turn you off the show forever!!! If you’re willing to forge forward, which many understandably were not, the show eventually regains its footing and adds more queers every year.

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Ratched

(2020-) // 1+ Seasons // 8 episodes

“[Ratched gives us] Sarah Paulson in all her dyke drag queen glory… this eight-episode series — that is supposedly season one of a four season arc — is absurd in its very existence and delicious in its classic movie concoction. There is so much to chew on, so much to celebrate, so much to critique, and yet the whole thing feels so completely Ryan Murphy it’s hard not to just delight in its very existence.” — Drew 

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The Sandman

(2022-) // 1+ Seasons // 11+ episodes

“The Sandman crafts a fantastical world where dreams are as real as the ground under your feet, where feelings are gods and rubies can make wishes come true, where nightmares walk among us and where everyone, it seems, is at least a little bit queer.” — Valerie

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She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

(2018 -2020 ) // 5 Seasons // 52 episodes

“Not everyone is queer at the end of the day on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power — but almost everyone is! There’s Bow’s gay dads, there’s longterm lesbian couple Netossa and Spinnerella, there’s non-binary Double Trouble, and, well, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there’s four more queers by the time this ragtag squad of rainbow rebels defeats fascism and restores Eternia to it’s pre-colonized natural state. But the queerness of She-Ra isn’t contained to the romantic storylines. There’s the joy and healing of found family, the trauma of being different in the families we’re born into, there’s pathways out of evangelical fascism, there’s guilt and shame and redemption, there’s mental illness, and good heavens the rainbows! Mostly, though, in some really dark days, there’s hope. Come for the ’80s nostalgia, stay for the storytelling that is as captivating and well-plotted as all the best stuff non-animated stuff you’re watching.” — Heather

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Sense8

(2014 – 2018) // 2 Seasons & 1 Movie // 25 episodes 

If you like ambitious, sprawling sci-fi epics with enormous budgets, assorted racial stereotypes and a refreshing transgender female character in an interracial lesbian relationship with another woman, then this show is for you. The show creators have confirmed that every character is pansexual and there’s also a a gay male couple. Season Three was wrapped up as a movie event that bestowed a very happy queer ending upon us all.

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Tales of the City

(2019) // One Season // 10 episodes

Picking up quite a bit of time after the original groundbreaking series left off, the Netflix reboot of gay Tales of the City, helmed by lesbian showrunner Lauren Morelli, returns to San Francisco and finds trans matriarch Anna Madrigal still played by a cis actress (although she’s played by trans actress Jen Richards in a flashback episode, one of the season’s strongest, which also features trans actress Daniela Vega) and surrounded by new and returning characters. One is Shawna, played by Elliot Page, and other residents of 28 Barbary Lane include a maybe-breaking-up couple comprised of Margot (May Hong), a queer woman, and Jake (Josiah Victoria Garcia), a trans man.

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XO, Kitty

(2023-) // 1+ Seasons // 8 Episodes

You might think that this show is kinda gay but it’s gayer than that, believe it or not! This spinoff of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before finds Kitty moving to South Korea to attend the same school her mother did and reunite with her long-distance boyfriend — only to learn he has another girlfriend, but their relationship is not exactly what it seems to be.

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More Gay, Queer and Lesbian Netflix TV Shows

These Netflix shows all have major trans, queer or lesbian characters, although they might not always be out from the first episode.

Arcane

(2021 – ) // 1+ Seasons // 9+ Episodes

“I’m not quite sure what I expected Arcane to be, but I didn’t expect it to be an epic sci-fi adventure about found family, queer badasses, and underground rebellion. And yet, to my delight, that’s exactly what it was.” — Valerie

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Atypical

(2017 – 2021) // 4 Seasons // 38 Episodes

Atypical is about a teenage boy named Sam who’s on the autistic spectrum and his family. One of those family members is his younger sister, Casey, who plays mostly a supporting role in season one. However, in season two she moves to a new school and starts getting her own storylines, one of which is queer, and it just keeps getting better from there!

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Baby-Sitters Club

(2020-2021) // 2 Seasons // 18 Episodes

Netflix’s reboot of The Baby-Sitter’s Club is about as wholesome as you’d expect, but without veering too corny, and is full of the “girls can do anything” energy that made the book series a classic for decades. In the first season, Mary-Anne babysits a young trans girl in an standout episode. In the second season, we’re treated to two teen coming outs: one via a casual mention from a BSC member and another in a much more substantial plot from Claudia’s big sister, Janine.

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Bienvenidos a Eden / Welcome to Eden

(2022-) // 2+ Seasons // 16+ Episodes

A bunch of attractive, stylish, hungry teenagers are lured to a mysterious island under the guise of it being the most exclusive influencer event ever, only to find themselves amid a terrifying murderous cult. Zoa (Amaia Aberasturi) is the bisexual daughter of an absent father and an addict mother, Bel (Begoña Vargas) is a badass lesbian in braids and Mayka (Lola Rodríguez) is a trans woman, hacker and DJ who discovered Eden’s existence all on her own. According to Into, “all the greatest characters —who support the rebellion and help people escape— are queer.”

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Big Mouth

(2017 – ) // 7+ Seasons //  51 Episodes

The majority of Big Mouth‘s queer content is focused on queer male characters, but it’s a beloved program by the community. “The series doesn’t turn into a hopeful after-school special just to validate its characters’ identities,” NBC Out wrote of this cartoon that aims to personify the creatures that drive puberty inside the teenage brain. “Rather, it commits to presenting their lives in full, complete with dick jokes and anxiety monsters and characters who are deeply problematic alongside characters who are kind and wise. Yes, they are LGBTQ, but at the end of the day, they’re teenagers — and teenagers are messy as hell.”

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Boca a Boca / The Kissing Game

(2020) // One Season // 6 Episodes

This Netflix LGBT TV Show from Brazil follows teenagers in a small ranching town who are falling ill, seemingly from a “kissing orgy” at a wild dance party held by a local cult. The lead character, Frances, is queer and has a crush on her friend, Bel, who is the first student to get sick.

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

(2018 – 2020) // 4 Seasons //  36 Episodes

“Given that Part One features actual cannibalism, it’s wild that CAOS’s Part Two is darker, bloodier, and more unsettling than the first, but this show loves to outdo its own extremities. Theo transitions in Part Two, and Sabrina fights for gender equality in the premiere, but the series does occasionally struggle with its own mythology and with uniting both sides of its storytelling, which whiplashes between grounded character work and sheer chaos. There are even magical orgies on this show, featuring the brilliant villain Prudence as well as Sabrina’s quippy cousin Ambrose. Pansexuality is normalized at Sabrina’s school, but sometimes that queerness doesn’t permeate the show’s main storylines. But if you’re looking for something spooky and cinematic, this is your show.” — Kayla

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Collateral

BBC Two // (2018) // 1 Season // 4 Episodes

This British thriller spends four parts investigating a murder that only has one witness — Linh, who’s having issues with her immigration status and is dating a vicar who’s way older than her. As the detectives delve deeper into a criminal underworld, the realities of the crime reveal themselves in unexpected ways.

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Control Z

(2020 – 2022) // 3 Seasons // 24 Episodes

This Mexican whodunit set in a high school where a hacker upends the social order by leaking students’ secrets co-stars Zion Moreno as Isabela de la Fuente (in Season One), a popular girl who’s trans status is revealed by aforementioned hacker. Samantha Acuña is Alex, a lesbian who struggles to fit in and make friends her own age.

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Dead to Me

(2019-2022) // 3 Seasons // 30 Episodes

In Season 2 of “Dead to Me” Is Flirting With You Via Natalie Morales, Valerie sings the praises of this dark comedy series from lesbian showrunner Liz Feldman about the friendship between two women who meet in a support group after Jen (Christina Applegate)’s husband dies in a car accident. Judy (Linda Cardellini) ends up moving in with Jen and becoming a second Mom to her kids as they get wound up in some pretty sketchy and f*cked up shit! In Season Two, it turns out that Judy is queer when she starts up a thing with a chef played by bisexual actress Natalie Morales. THEY’RE GAY and it’s GREAT.

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Dear White People

(2017 – 2021) // 4 Seasons // 40 Episodes

“It’s no secret that Dear White People has a checked history with its depiction of queer black women,” wrote Carmen, referring specifically to Season One’s problematic tropes. But Season Three saw this “incredibly smart and stylized” show finally “give us the nerdy Black Gay Girls we deserve.” After coming out in Season Two, supporting character Kelsey Phillips gets fully fleshed-out as a character and debuts a romance with Brooke, a media studies undergrad “whose main character traits up to this point have been: being nerdy, being very annoying, being an excellent student journalist.” But by Season 4, she’s gone!

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Degrassi: Next Class

F2N Canada // (2016 – 2018) // 4 Seasons // 40 Episodes

Seasons Three and Four debuted in 2017, bringing with them a cute romantic storyline between a Muslim Syrian immigrant, Rasha, and Degrassi’s Latina lesbian student council president, Zoe. Season Four’s journey for Yael was maybe the first-ever televised situation a young assigned-female-at-birth person realizing that they are non-binary.

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Derry Girls

Channel 4 // (2018 – 2022) // 3 Seasons // 19 Episodes

Derry Girls, a teen comedy set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles in the 1990, ended its first season with a great coming out episode for Clare and Season 2, while not really meeting our total expectations for exploring Clare’s sexuality, does give us one of the best lesbian prom episodes ever.

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Elite

(2018 – ) // 7+ Seasons //  56+ Episodes

This delicious sexy teen soap set in Spain, where scholarship kids clash with the town’s richest citizens at an exclusive private school, is basically about blackmail, and also murder! There’s a lot of gay-guy stuff, but the gay-girl stuff for the first three seasons is pretty light. In Season 4, we finally get the (of course, tragic and complicated) sapphic romance we’d been waiting for.

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Gentefied

(2020-2021) // Two seasons // 18 episodes

Gentefied is centered on three adult cousins — Chris, Erik, and Ana — as they work to keep their grandfather’s taco shop, Mama Fina’s, afloat amid rising rents. Ana, the queer youngest cousin, just wants to change the world through her art, continue her love story with Yessika, her girlfriend since high school, and keep the other two from killing each other with their macho pride. Gentefied is hellafied fun, smart, and has a lot of damn heart.

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Ginny & Georgia

(2021-) // 2+ Seasons // 20+ Episodes

15-year-old Ginny, her brother who never talks and her hot Mom Georgia move to a New England town where it’s like, perpetual autumn. Georgia schemes. Ginny is surprised to learn that being smart and pretty will actually garner you friends —  she’s never been very good at friends — and one of those friends (Maxine), my friends, is a LESBIAN.

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G.L.O.W.

(2017-2019) // 3 Seasons // 30 Episodes

Season One of this smart, quirky 1980s Jenji Kohan project about the “gorgeous ladies of wrestling” was almost maddeningly not queer despite having gay men and a pretty gay premise. But Season Two delivered a romance to remember between two women of color, which hit some pretty interesting complications in Season Three.

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The Haunting of Hill House

(2018) // One Season // 10 Episodes

“Based on Shirley Jackson’s iconic novel, this ten-part reimagining is noteworthy for its standout lesbian character: Theo Crain, wonderfully portrayed by Kate Siegel. Blessed (or cursed) with ESP, Theo can read minds and feelings with simply a touch. Her gift acts as a metaphor for any child who grew up in an abusive household and was forced to be hyperaware. She wears gloves that she keeps on even during one-night-stands. For Theo, sex is about distraction, not connection. She may not be the protagonist, but Theo is a relatable and deeply felt queer character that holds the whole series together.” —Kayla

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Human Resources

(2022-2023) // 2 Seasons // 20 Episodes

This Big Mouth spin-off follows the workplace dynamics of the hormone monsters which include pansexual Love Bug Sonya (Pamela Adlon) and pansexual Kitty Beaumont Bouchet the Depression Kitty (Jean Smart) and trans teen Natalie (Josie Totah). Plus there are lots of male queer characters as well!

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The Imperfects

(2022) // 1 Seasons // 10 Episodes

“If you like messy superpower origin stories, found family feels, comic-book-esque fight scenes, and slowly unraveling mysteries, with a bonus queer, asexual, South Asian woman, Netflix’s The Imperfects is the show for you.” — Valerie

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La Casa de las Flores / House of Flowers

(2018 – 2020) // 3 Seasons // 34 episodes

Behind a family-run flower enterprise lies SCANDALS and SECRETS, and Instinct writes that it was “a turning point for modern-day Mexican television” that “features non-traditional characters and dives deeply into sexuality, gender identity, and dysfunctional families.” Eldest sibling Paulina is shocked when her husband comes out as a trans woman (unfortunately played by a cis male actor), María José, who eventually has a thing with their family’s lawyer.

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Las Chicas Del Cable / Cable Girls

(2017-2019) // 6 Seasons //  42 Episodes

This period drama set in 1928 Madrid features a tight-knit group of women who work together at Spain’s only cable company (cable as in telephones, not television) — united for many reasons including their desire to work in the first place, which wasn’t a traditional desire for women at the time. One of the women, Carlotta, is bisexual, married to a man, and has feelings for Sara, another cable girl. The Dart describes it as “Netflix’s hidden gem.”

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Lucifer

Fox // (2015-2021) // 6 Seasons // 93 Episodes

“Long before they moved to Netflix, Lucifer‘s title character, and his best demon bud Maze have been openly bisexual. But I’ve discussed here and there on this very website that Lucifer the show seems to have a questionable hold on what that means. But, the show’s shift to Netflix also gave us a shift in perspective on bisexuality, specifically as it related to Maze. In fact, Maze’s entire arc in Season Four was centered around her feelings from Eve (yes, THAT Eve) and trying to get them across, despite being someone who isn’t all too familiar with the practice of sharing her feelings.” — Valerie

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Merry Happy Whatever

(2019) // 1 Season // 8 Episodes

When this charming if banal Netflix holiday sitcom opens with Kayla Quinn (Ashley Tisdale) and her husband Alan deciding to stay in different houses for the season in pursuit of an eventual divorce, and over the course of the season, Kayla comes out to herself and her family.  “ashley tisdale playing a lesbian is everything i never knew i needed but is now the best thing in the universe,” tweeted one fan, which about sums it up!

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Mindhunter

(2017 – 2019) // 2 Seasons //19 Episodes

This thriller about the early days of the FBI’s criminal profiling department starred the always delightful Jonathan Groff and received largely positive reviews when it debuted on Netflix this fall. Anna Torv played Wendy Carr, a psychologist with a scholarly interest in interviewing imprisoned serial killers to determine what the hell is going on there. Her lesbianism is sidelined in Season One but in Season Two, Wendy gets a VERY hot girlfriend who looks nice in a tank top, and queer storylines bubble back up to the surface.

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Neon

2023 // One Season // 8 Episodes 

“….how rare is it to see a queer Puerto Rican girl on television? Let alone one that is three-dimensional and fully realized instead of someone’s pithy sidekick or one-liner? But I’d imagine it’s impossible for anyone to watch Neon and not fall in love with Emma Ferreira’s performance. As a comedy, Neon is not exactly laugh-out-loud funny (more of a enjoyable chuckle and vibe), but in Ferreira’s hands Ness’ warmth and goofiness finds perfect home.” – Carmen Phillips

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Never Have I Ever

(2020-2023) // 4 Seasons // 40 Episodes

Your mileage may vary on this coming-of-age comedy is centered on Devi Vishwakumar, a Tamil Indian-American teenager growing up in Sherman Oaks grappling with her father’s recent death and her burning desire to be cool. She’s got two best friends, and one of them is named Fabiola, and she’s an Afro-Latina and also SHE’S GAY.

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The OA

(2017 – 2019) // 2 Seasons // 16 episodes

Vulture writes that The OA “gently, but insistently, weaves a queer narrative,” with its themes of chosen family and “a secret language they share together, something that feels akin to drag culture.” But it’s also remarkable for the character of Buck, played by 15-year-old trans actor Ian Alexander, one of the only trans male characters on television when this deeply weird, impossible-to-describe and wholly immersive sci-fi show premiered in 2017, heralded as “the future of trans visibility in Hollywood.”

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One Day At A Time

(2017 – 2019) // 3 Seasons // 39 episodes 

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 and has her first queer relationship in Season Two.

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The One 

(2021) // One Season // 10 Episodes

In a loosely-constructed dystopian future, a corporation had created a DNA test capable of determining your sole perfect soulmate, and the temptation to find one’s “match” unleashes interpersonal chaos. Amid all this we have lesbian detective Kate (Zoë Tapper), investigating a murder that often muddles the far more interesting questions the show raises, whose soulmate gets in a car accident on her way to meet Kate and spends the series in a coma.

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The Politician

(2019 – 2021) // 2 Seasons // 15 Episodes

Ryan Murphy’s first project for Netflix is chock-full of gay, even if we can’t decide if we actually like it or not. The wealthy and glamorous mother of the show’s protagonist, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, has a lesbian affair. Queer black actress Rahne Jones plays lesbian candidate Skye Leighton, who has an affair of her own. Trans actor Theo Jermaine plays one of Payton’s political advisors. Season Two brings a bevy of throuples and casual sexual fluidity. Also most of the guys are queer too!

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REBƎLDE

(2022-) // 2+ Seasons // 16 Episodes

This series is based on a Mexican telenovela by the same name which was a massive hit, spawning an actual pop group that released nine studio albums. Netflix’s re-booted contemporary REBƎLDE follows a new crew of very hot and talented teen musicians enrolled at the Elite Way School. Amongst them is Andi (Lizbeth Selene), “a rocker at heart” and “a drummer who scoffs at any rulebook, from what she wears to whom she dates in between rehearsing for Battle of the Bands” who has a relationship with Emilia Alo (Giovanna Grigio), “the most popular girl at EWS.”

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Sex Education

(2019-2023) // 4 Seasons // 34 Episodes 

Come to have your life ruined by Gillian Anderson; stay for infectious teen drama laced with a very fun, weirdo sense of humor. Baby dykes learn to scissor, Gay Moms exist nonchalantly, and an awkward teenage boy who finds success walking in his mother’s footsteps by offering Sex Education to his classmates. As the show progresses, a lead character discovers her pansexual side all the way into a queer relationship and a Black non-binary character faces off against a new, conservative administrator. In its final season, basically everybody becomes queer and great fun is had by all.

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Santa Clarita Diet

(2017 – 2019) // 3 Seasons // 30 Episodes

“Santa Clarita Diet is an absurdly dark comedy featuring Drew Barrymore as a suburban real estate broker who’s also a zombie (just go with it). Her neighbor, Lisa, comes out in Season Two and starts dating Deputy Anne (played by queer actress Natalie Morales). As a couple they’re super sex positive and hilariously vocal about it. Sure they are both sort of just funny side characters to the main plot, but Natalie Morales is an underrated comedic talent in everything that she does, and in Santa Clarita Diet she puts in some of her finest work.” — Carmen

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Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 

2023 // One Season // 8 Episodes

“Despite its title, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is not about Scott Pilgrim, not entirely. It’s also about bisexual blader Ramona Flowers, who Scott Pilgrim wants to date — and her League of Evil Exes he has to contend with first.” – Valerie Anne

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She’s Gotta Have It

(2017 – 2018) // 2 Seasons // 19 Episodes

Nola Darling, the pansexual protagonist of this contemporary remake of the Spike Lee original film that made waves for its portrayal of black female sexuality, has a relationship with a lesbian named Opal in Season One and that was cool except that also it kinda wasn’t. But then Season Two came along and gave Nola the bright light she deserved, although it’s unfortunate that so much of her queer love story happened off-camera.

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Stranger Things

(2015 – 2023) // 4+ Seasons //  34+ Episodes

It takes three seasons to get there but once you do — this acclaimed and beloved ’80s-set series about mysterious forces and the children who battle them finally reveals a lesbian character — Robin, who Carmen describes as “the breakout star of a snarky teen nerd rebel.” The fifth and final season will air this year.

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Survival of the Thickest

2023- // 1+ Seasons // 8 Episodes

Based on Michelle Buteau’s memoir and thenceforth also starring Michelle Buteau, Survival of the Thickest is a fun romp of a show about Mavis Beaumont, plus-size stylist rebuilding her life after a breakup. One of her best friends is a bisexual woman exploring the possibility of actually dating women for the first time, and Mavis is often surrounded by queer community, working with queer people and attending queer events, including noted drag queen Peppermint.

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Teenage Bounty Hunters

(2020) // One Season // 10 Episodes

Jenji Kohan’s comedy about twins who become bounty hunters just to add a little bit of excitement to their lives has a gradually emerging bisexual storyline that hits a very sweet spot for us all.

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Top Boy

(2011 – 2023) // 5 Seasons // 32 Episodes

This British crime drama follows two drug dealers returning to London streets to find their pursuit of money and power threatened by a fresh new hustler on the scene. Jacqueline “Jaq” Lawrence is a masculine lesbian and a main character of the series starting in Season Three, as she moves from from number two to top dog. Her girlfriend, Becks, is played by model Adwoa Aboah.

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Trinkets

(2019 – 2020) // 2 Seasons // 20 Episodes

Brianna Hildebrand plays queer lead character Elodie, the shy new girl in town, in this show about teenage shoplifters. Of Season Two, Valerie wrote, “between the female friendships and sweet queer romance, Trinkets Season Two didn’t have to steal my heart because I gave it freely.”

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Tuca & Bertie

2019 // One Season on Netflix // 10 Episodes

Xtra said of this popular and cancelled-too-soon-by Netflix adult animated series that it was “not just explicitly queer — though Tuca is canonically bisexual — but thematically queer in its embrace of non-normalcy.” Following two birds in their 30s (voiced by Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong) entering a new stage in their friendship, guest voices include queer icons like Tessa Thompson, Nicole Byer and Laverne Cox. After its first season at Netflix, it spend its next two at Adult Swim.

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The Umbrella Academy

(2019-2023) // 3+ Seasons // 20+ Episodes

Elliot Page’s Viktor turns out to be the queer we hoped in Season Two and in Season Three, comes out as a trans man. The series, based on a comic book, centers on a dysfunctional family of adopted sibling superheroes who have reunited to stop the apocalypse and figure out how their father died. Its fourth and final season will air this year.

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Warrior Nun

(2020-2022) // 2 Seasons // 20 episodes

19-year-old Ava wakes up in a morgue with a divine artifact all up in her back and proceeds to fight demons on earth while heaven/hell tries to control her. Her friend Sister Beatrice is openly gay. In Season One, Ava’s relationship with Beatrice was teased but in the second season, it was able to truly blossom and grow.

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Valeria

(2020 – 2023) // 3 Seasons // 24 Episodes

This Spanish-language rom-com explores the sex lives and interpersonal drama of four best friends: the titular writer Valeria, who finds herself in an unhappy marriage, and Carmen, Lola and Nerea. According to Refinery 29, Nerea’s “lust for living as an out lesbian is one of the most important stories of Valeria (and adds some hot queer sex to the proceedings.)”

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Why Are You Like This?

ABC Australia // 2021 // One Season // 8 Episodes

This Australian comedy import into the LGBT Netflix shows cannon follows “three best friends navigate life in their early 20s — including work, fun, identity politics, hookups, and wild nights.” Mia is bisexual and part of this Extremely Online trio that will provide you with a delightful few hours of queer TV.

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Netflix Anthology Series With Notable LGBTQ+ Episodes

Black Mirror

Channel 4 // (2011 – ) // 5 Season Anthology Series // 22 Episodes // 

This sci-fi dystopian anthology series tells a new story every episode, usually taking place in the future and with a focus on technology. In Season Three, Black Mirror gave us a beautiful gift: San Junipero.

Easy

(2017 – 2019) // 3 Season Anthology Series // 25 Episodes

Joe Swanberg’s character-driven series that uses Chicago as central throughline bounces between different people, providing intimate snapshots of their lives. The recurring queer women on the show — Jo and Chase — provide some of the best episodes, covering a sprawling gay relationship arc of coming out to breaking up.

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Other good Netflix Original Programming with minor LBGTQ+ female and/or trans characters/stories: American Vandal, Archive 81, A Storm for Christmas, Beef, Bojack Horseman, Broadchurch, Chosen, Doctor Foster, Fuller House,Get Even, Grace & Frankie, Grand Army, Hollywood, House of Cards, How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast), Jupiter’s Legacy, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Manifest, Marcella, Midnight Mass, Raising Dion, Russian Doll, Self-Made, Shadow & Bone, Sky Rojo, Special, The End of the F*cking World, Tiny Pretty Things, Unorthodox

Other Medicore Netflix Original Programming with minor-to-medium LBGTQ+ female and/or trans characters/stories: 13 Reasons Why, The A-List, Altered Carbon, Anne With an “E”, Away, Cowboy Bebop, The Devil in Ohio, Godless, Hemlock Grove, Insatiable, Q-Force, Resident Evil, The I-Land, You

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Looking for more lesbian TV shows you can stream right now? Here you go:

• 2022-2023 Queer Television Hub
• 27 TV Shows with Lesbian and Bisexual Characters Streaming on Hulu
• 40 Queer TV Shows with Lesbian and Bisexual Characters Streaming on Amazon Prime
• The 40 Best TV Shows on HBO Max With Lesbian and Bisexual Characters

85 LGBTQ+ Owned Businesses and Queer Shops To Support This Holiday Season!

If you’re looking for LGBTQ-owned stores to put your hard-earned money where your gay mouth is, boy do we have the thing for you! This list highlights just some of the many stores produced by lesbian, queer and bisexual women and trans people of all genders, as that is the target audience of our website. I originally wrote this post in 2016 and updated it for 2023…  there are a billion new queer-owned stores out there now, so this is by no means all-encompassing — but it’s a start!

Criteria for inclusion:

• Store must have a website/storefront independent of etsy/society6/etc. (We have many other guides that are focused on etsy sellers!)
• Store must be an independent entity, rather than merchandise for a specific musician or celebrity or magazine. (Except for our own obviously)
• Store must offer products you can order online and have delivered to your home for you to hold in your hands.
• The store must be active — as in, appears to be mostly or recently stocked, has social media accounts that have been active within the past year, etc.

If your business is on this list and you’d like to inquire about advertising, hit up em [at] forthem [dot] com. If you wanna join our A+ marketplace and offer discounts to our members, hit up nico [at] forthem [dot] com. We offer discounted rates to queer-owned businesses!

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The Autostraddle Store

The merchandise wing of the best website in the history of the internet features apparel, enamel pins and other cool shit featuring illustrations and designs from independent queer artists. All profits come right back here to fund the words we write and the things we do.

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All She Wrote Books

Somerville, MA

All She Wrote is “an intersectional, inclusive feminist and queer bookstore that supports, celebrates, and amplifies underrepresented voices through our thoughtfully curated selection of books spanning across all genres.”

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Ash & Chess

Richmond, VA

Ash & Chess is a joyful, eye-popping stationary shop run by a queer and trans couple in Richmond, VA. They “create greeting cards and art prints that are bold, retro color palettes and they often use their artwork to make a political statement and to uplift the queer community.” You can also buy patches, t-shirts, candles and more!

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Automic Jewelry

Automic makes “radically wearable” jewelry for people of all genders and bodies. They hire size-inclusive, non-cis and non-white models and don’t photoshop a thing. All pieces are made from reclaimed gold and put in recyclable packaging.

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Babeland

New York, NY & Seattle, WA

A+ members get $25 off orders of $125+

In  1993, sex-positive lesbian feminists Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning, disappointed by the lack of female-friendly sex shops in Seattle, decided to launch their own. They succeeded! With locations in Seattle and New York; Babeland’s selection of sex toys and educational resources remains an industry standard. And we get a 20% commission on every Babeland sale made through our affiliate links!

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barb

This “community of non-conformists, game changers, and everyday heroes changing the face of hair and beauty” sells products for short hair of all textures and apparel to go along with it.

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Bella Books

The “premiere publisher of vibrant and irresistible fiction for and about lesbians” offers over 5,000 lesbian books and e-books in their online store, making it the largest website for lesbian readers. Founded in 1999 with the help of Naiad Press owners Barbara Grier and Donna McBride, Linda Hill has been the president of Bella Books since 2005.

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Black Market Vintage

Brooklyn, NY

This “curated love story” of a shop (the brick-and-mortar is in Bedford-Stuyvesant) grows out of a commitment from the queer couple who owns it (Kiyanna Stewart & Jannah Handy) to “build a collection that mirrors multifarious Black cultural expression, rooted in our love for Black people, Black culture and our own lived experiences.” As cultural historians, their store is stocked with vintage posters, literature, clothing, art, houseware/decor, furniture and other delightful ephemera.

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Black Queer Magic

VBM, LMSW is a self-taught jeweler who offers “handmade jewelry and workshop facilitations to aid in the adornment and reclamation of Black LGBTQ bodies” through BQMNY LLC. They work in a variety of materials, including custom-made crystal jewelry.

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Bluestockings Cooperative

New York, NY

Bluestockings is New York’s only queer, trans and sex worker run bookstore. The bookstore is organized with categories that make sense to us all: “Intro to Intersectional Feminism” “Gender Studies” “State Repression & Resistance.” Its online store is fully stocked with the latest releases in the topics nearest & dearest to your heart as well as with stationary, notebooks, tarot decks and more.

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Bold Strokes Books

Since 2004, Bold Strokes Books has been devoted to producing a diverse collection of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer general and genre fiction. The company is run by Len Barot with Senior Editor Sandy Lowe. Len is perhaps better known by her pen name, Radclyffe, with which she has published some of the most beloved titles in lesbian romance.

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Both & Apparel

A+ Members get 10% off

Finnegan Shepard, the trans founder of Both&, works in conversation with their community to ethically and sustainably produce evidence-based designs that exist outside of the traditional binary fit and sizing system, with small-batch, research-informed capsule drops that are accessible to all humans including transmasculine or gnc-identified people.

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Bowtie Behavior

Robbie Williams founded Bowtie Behavior in 2014 when unable to find bowties for her friend’s bridal shower that were both affordable and fit with her personal style. She made her own, got a lot of positive feedback, and thus Bowtie Behavior was born, with an “intent to create pieces that are bold and flavorful.”

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Brownie Points

Founder Rinny Perkins is known for their 70s-inspired collages and zines, and their shop celebrates showing up as your true self and staying honest about dating, sexuality and mental health. They aim for sustainability in all of their products and packaging.

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Brujita Skincare

This Latina LA-based brand “celebrates the misfits that the natural beauty market left behind.” It sources most of its ingredients from Mexico City, making sustainable, organic and unrefined masks, cleansers, hand care, healing balms, lip balms and more. You can take the Brujitas Skin Quiz to find out what products are best for you.

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Carmen Liu Lingerie

Intimates by and for trans folks and non-binary people like bras, bralettes, panties, tucking/flattening underwear. Carmen Liu Kids offers briefs, journals, workbooks and tees for trans girls and non-binary children with the aim of providing “children with the stepping stones to finding themselves, in a supportive, validating experience.”

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Charis Books and More

Decatur, GA

Located in Decatur, Georgia, the South’s oldest independent feminist bookstore has been “celebrating radical and independent voices in the heart of the south since 1974!” You can support Charis with personalized Charis merch, too: hoodies, tees, mugs and totes.

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Chromat

Chromat is high fashion lingerie with a tomboy femme twist and has attracted fans such as Beyonce! Becca McCharen-Tran, the experimental brand’s designer, is queer, and the online store has sportswear and swimwear, too. This past fall, they collaborated with Tourmaline for a “lifesaving” swimwear show.

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 Coco & Breezy

Corianna and Brianna are twin sisters who grew up in Minnesota and always had a passion for fashion. Together they founded Coco & Breezy, a “cutting edge eyewear brand based in New York City that aims to reach new fashion heights and introduce fashion connoisseurs all over the world to their unique sense of style and original accessories.” Prince, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and and Rihanna are fans, and their online interface enables you to try on their frames virtually.

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Collarbone Jewelry

A+ members get 15% off purchases of $75 or more

Cat Luck uses brass, bronze, base metals, raw stones and whimsical charms to handcraft a fashion jewelry collection that speaks to all walks of life. CAT LUCK brings together forged, minimalist, geometric, and personal pieces for humans of all gender expressions.

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Common Dear

Oklahoma City, OK

This bright, energetic online and IRL retail space is curated with women-owned, 2SLGBTQIA+-owned and BIPOC-owned brands that care about empowerment and making the world a better, more equal place for everyone. They stock the most delightful sweaters I have ever seen and assorted apparel, home goods, candles, accessories and so much more!

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Common Heir

Common Heir is a QWOC-owned clean beauty company for people looking to cultivate beauty in the world and transform traditions with clean, plastic-free, high-performance skincare. They sell serums, a facial sculptor and candles.

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Culture Flock

Springfield, MN

Since 2013, the Culture Flock founders have been “designing and creating colorful and inclusive apparel, goods, and accessories for friends of every shape, size, color, gender, and orientation.” With a brick-and-mortar store in Missouri, their online store has collections focused on homebodies, activists, zodiac lovers, star-gazers and artists.

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Dapper Boi

Dapper Boi got its start with a kickstarter to begin manufacturing slim-straight, androgynous jeans. Founded by Vicky and Charisse Pasche, “partners in business / crime / life,” Dapper Boi wants to “create an androgynous clothing line that is fashionable, functional, affordable and accessible to all.” They sell pants, button-ups, hats, socks, jackets and everything you could imagine putting on your body!

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Doll Parts Collective

Seattle, WA

Located in Seattle and launched during the pandemic, Doll Parts is “all about color, unique design, original pairings, and working with existing materials.” They offer “vintage clothing and housewares, handmade goods, and other sustainably sourced products.”

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Dom + Bomb

Spokane, WA

This Black-woman and queer-woman owned size-inclusive fashion brand is “fighting fatphobia and the gender binary through fashion” with shirts, hats and accessories. They also offer tailoring and personal styling by appointment.

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Domestic Domestic

Little Rock, AK

“We bring to you fine products with attention to quality, function and design,” boasts the website for Heather Smith’s Arkansas-based boutique. “Nothing is added without reason. The objects we curate tell a story and have a history. They’re potential heirlooms, unique in type, simply determined to be the best damn stuff on the market.”

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Early to Bed

Chicago, IL

Founded by Searah Deysach in Chicago over 20 years ago, Early2Bed was intended to be a sex toy shop that felt “friendly, educational and fun.”

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Equal Love

Puerto Rico based company Equal Love is “a genderless line of natural products with purpose” for “people who want high quality personal care and home products that allow any person to have a healthy and confident lifestyle.” Their exclusive essential oil blend is used across a line of personal care products.

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Equator Coffees & Teas

Bay Area, CA

The first-ever LGBT owned business to be named a “Small Business of the Year” by the U.S Small Business Association, Equator Coffees & Teas was started 21 years ago as a coffee roastery by life partners Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russell. It now has become “one of the few fully integrated coffee companies in the U.S.”

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Fempower Beauty

This lesbian-owned ethical beauty company specializes in lipstick and aims to “heal the harms of the beauty industry with luxury products that affirm and uplift.” Their products connect beauty with mental health and positive affirmations, and they also sell accessories and bags.

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Find Yr/Self Boxes

Focusing in mental health-focused self-care boxes, this queer-owned company supports the universal need of good mental health with curated packages for situations including depression, post-partum and being desperately in need of sleep!

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Flavt Streetwear

FLAVNT Streetwear is an independent clothing brand based in Austin, Texas created with “the goal of creating clothes that promote confidence and pride.” They sell binders, stickers and sweats and run fundraisers for organizations like Black Lives Matter as well as individual trans people who need money for surgery.

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For Them

Founded by queer non-binary actor / producer / entrepreneur Kylo Freeman, For Them is a business pretty close to our hearts because they literally own us now but we liked them before that obviously! An honoree in the Fast Company 2022 Innovation by Design Awards, For Them binders were created to compress without sacrificing the wearer’s health or comfort. Their binders have a weightless feel with a rotatable neckline, a bounty of color options and a unique customization survey that ensures customers get the right binder for their body. The Binder MAX, debuted this year, offers more compression. You can also get a  For Them gift card that’ll enable your loved one to do the survey to get their ideal binder!

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Freck Beauty

On her super hip and playful vegan + cruelty-free line of products, inspired by founder Remi’s unique vision and diverse East LA neighborhood: “Freck stands for those who care about ingredients, respect the process and seek self-expression without rules. This community born from a single offbeat idea for a freckle cosmetic has flourished into a movement of trailblazers and rule-breakers who thrive on individualism and always find the courage to experiment.”

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Galaxy Brain Designs

Galaxy Brain Design is a queer-, woman-owned small business selling art, gifts, + home goods for folks that love a wikipedia deep dive, boozy brunch, or therapeutic breakthrough! They primarily make about queerness, mental health, and “what it means to be a good person in a broken society.” Major motifs include plants, space, and other natural elements,

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Girls Will Be Boys

A+ Members get 30% off

GWBB Girls Will Be Boys is active loungewear inspired by today’s modern tomboy. They focus on making high quality apparel that boldly fits all shapes and sizes.

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Good Light

Developed by David Yi, Good Light is a “personal care brand that believes in beauty beyond the binary” with “efficacious, yet gentle personal care products” including pimple patches, water cleansers with clean, dreamy style.

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Good Vibrations

multiple locations in California & Massachusetts

A+ Members get $25 off orders $125+ 

Since the first store opened in San Francisco in 1977, Good Vibrations has been providing “high-quality products, education, and information that promotes sexual health, pleasure and empowerment.” They were one of a handful of pioneers building a sex toy store that wasn’t hiding — clean, well-lit, sex-positive and easy to browse. Now Good Vibrations has eight stores, a wholesale private label and an innovative online store. Plus, they give Autostraddle 20% back on every purchase you make!

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Haute Butch

Selling “fierce dapper stud style” and “tomboy-style clothes,” Haute Butch features suits, vests, watches, belts, footwear, briefs and so much more at their online store. Karen Roberts, a U.S. Navy veteran, opened her store in April 2012 with a focus on becoming “a clothing, footwear and lifestyle destination for butch women, studs, bois and trans men who prefer ‘menswear’ inspired finishes.”

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Hella Thrifty

Avid thrift shopper and 80s/90s fashion blogger Dannie Cherie started Hella Thrifty to exchange and share unique thrift finds — but now the company has its own 80s/90s inspired original collections including tees, jackets and hats!

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Hey Mavens!

Hey Mavens sells lingerie in seizes from XXS to 10X that celebrate individual expression and diversity with products in bold colors and unique prints.

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Hinterland Empire

Portland, OR & Occidental, CA

“Seeing a gaping hole in the world of clothing for adventurous, badass human beings, we created Hinterland,” said lesbian couple Jolene and Trinia, who set out initially “to design empowering, irreverent imagery and print that onto American-made clothing.” Now Hinterlands is equally devoted to making and selling really great coffee and related accessories.

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House of Intuition

Los Angeles, CA

Lesbian couple Marlene Vargas and Alex Naranjo opened their first HOI in 2010, selling crystals and candles. Now, they’ve got six locations selling magic candles, beauty products and all the crystals a queer could ever dream of — and for the holidays, sign-specific and purpose-specific gift boxes will fit right under your tree.

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Humboldt House

Chicago, IL

This feminist store with a kickass team in Chicago features “a carefully-curated selection of locally found furniture and goods, as well as the work of local jewelry designers, ceramic artists, and apothecary makers” with an eye on self-care and daily rituals.

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Humankind Swimwear

Founded by lesbian entrepreneur Haily Marzullo, this company aims to make quality gender-neutral swimsuits and athletic gear for a variety of bodies and sizes.

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Jen Zeano Designs

Wife-and-wife team Jen and Vero started Jen Zeano Designs in 2014, the same year they got married, launching the store with a Pink Latina Power Tee. The brand celebrates Latina community & culture through tees, sweats, accessories, bags, stationary, drinkware and kids stuff with collections including Feel Your Feelings, Artesana Costias Curiosas, Latina to Latina, Growing Through It and Latina Power.

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Kards Unlimited

Pittsburgh, PA

Established in 1968, this Pittsburgh novelty shop has been passed on from the married couple who founded it to their daughter and then to an employee of 15 years. Cards, pins, coloring books, stickers, socks, mugs, games, books, cards, puzzles!!!

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Kirrin Finch

Kirrin Finch, started by Brooklyn-based lesbian couple Kelly and Laura Moffat, sells kickass menswear-inspired shirts, oxfords and bow-ties using sustainable fabrics and practices.

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Lockwood Shop

Brooklyn, NY

Starting out with one shop in Astoria in 2013, Lockwood now has five stores in NYC and a bustling online shop, filled with “unique decor, stationery, clothing, kid’s gifts, and affordable lifestyle goods, focusing on local makers and up-and-coming brands.” This includes the cutest slippers ever, Mr. Mets prayer candles, face masks, Legally Blonde coloring books, Latkes & Lights candles, pizza rat felt christmas tree ornament,  touchscreen gloves, a Reductress Play the Patriarchy game, I MEAN the list goes on. You can even make a custom gift box for your beloved. Their store is SO CUTE I could not pick a photo to use.

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Loyalty Bookstores

Washington DC

Founded by Black Queer bookseller Hannah Oliver Depp, Loyalty Bookstores in Silver Spring and Washington DC aim to “be the mid-Atlantic’s neighborhood spot for wonderful books and unique stationary, gifts and programming” and center Black, PoC and queer voices.

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Las Ofrendas

Las Ofrendas is a social enterprise featuring handmade accessories, apparel, games stationary and home goods designed or curated by their founder, tk tunchez, highlighting Latinx, BIPOC and queer art.

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Lucky Skivvies

A+ Members get 10% off

Luky Skivvies is a gender neutral boxer brief and loungewear brand created for all bodies, with sizes ranging from small to 3XL.

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Makoma the Brand

Makoma the Brand aims to “create one-of-a-kind, contemporary designs using a combination of African prints and classic silhouettes.” Everything is ethically made and was founded by Judith, who is also the co-owner of Brooklyn-based hair salon / barber shop Chokmah Hair Lab.

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Mestiza

Chicago, IL

Established in Chicago in 2004 by artists/entrepreneurs Lorena and Sugeiri, Mestiza offers ” unique selection of jewelry, clothing, accessories, housewares, stationery, and handmade local artisan goods” and a “selection of unique Latinx products that celebrate their traditions and culture.” This Millennial Lotería: El Puzzle is a must-have!

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Mi Vida

Los Angeles, CA

Noelle Reyes founded her LA-based store in 2008 “with the purpose of providing the surrounding the surrounding community a shopping experience that compliments their lifestyle, incorporating cultural elements into fashion and functional art.” They sell shirts, pins, hats, jewelry, incense, oils and so much more!

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Minna Goods

Minna is a textile brand that sells blankets, textiles, rugs, wall hangings and more while striving to “bridge the gap between ethically made goods and contemporary design.” Sara Berks launched her company in 2013, when she got tired of doing graphic design and wanted to start making things with her own two hands.

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Minus Moonshine

Brooklyn, NY

This “magical land of beverages and potions” are made for adults who want to participate in alcoholic-esque revelry, but without the alcohol itself! With a brick & mortar shop in Brooklyn, this trans-owned store sells non-alcoholic beers, spirits, wines, seltzers and mixers.

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Mud Witch

Queer Japanese/Mexican Artist Viviana Matsuda’s pottery studio makes unique, hand-thrown, brightly-colored ceramics: candle holders, mugs, vases, planters and bowls. You should follow her on instagram because every one of her products sparks immediate joy!

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Muka

This small Hamilton, Ontario-based company consists of four artists and life-long friends with big dreams who founded MUKA in 2018 to “build a more inclusive and creative future in fashion for people of intersectional identities,” selling pins, stickers, t-shirts and other accessories.

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Nicole Zizi

The NICOLE ZÏZI STUDIO™ is a brand with a new perspective on streetwear with a focus on eco-conscious, sustainable, innovative and gender-free premium streetwear. All the garments are hand-made garments with ethically produced fabrics.

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Nik Kacy Footwear

Los Angeles, CA

Nik Kacy couldn’t find “masculine-of-center” shoes in their size and that’s what inspired them to launch their own line of luxury footwear for people of all gender identities. They also sell harnesses and holsters.

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Noto Botanics

Los Angeles, CA

Gloria Noto’s eponymous line of serums, oils, cleansers, mists, moisturizers, creams and lip + cheek sticks are designed for all genders and skin types. Everything is vegan, cruelty free and eco-friendly. “Learning what ingredients were clean and beneficial for multiuse, multi-gendered folx is what makes Noto stand out,” Noto told The Cut.

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Octopied Mind Inc.

Established in 2018 and queer, woman and indigenous-owned; founders Jill and Sarah want every piece they produce to be a conversation starter, meticulously crafted with purpose and passion. Their fun totes, blankets, hats, mugs and stickers are perfect for weirdos who experience emotions like being Dead Inside and having Sunday Scaries.

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One DNA Apparel

Ypsilanti, MI

Headquartered in my beloved Ypsilanti, Michigan, this Black and queer-owned business sells gender-neutral apparel. Their super-wearable and very cozy premium tees and sweats are made from organic and recycled fabrics.

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Pa’lante Para

This “clothing brand created by a queer Latina who gets it” aims to “make space for affordable, trendy and forward thinking para options for Latinx and multicultural-based sororities.” Their Para Everyone designs are “made for everyone to rock, regardless of affiliation.”

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Pals Socks

The Pals Socks story begins in 2007, when then-girlfriends Hannah Lavon and Ashley Connors started “Hooray Hoopla,” a gift shop that specialized in “kitschy-cool paper products” and got popular selling mismatched animal mittens. The “Vs. Stuff” line put Predators and Prey on a set of hands and let them duke it out. Thus, Pals Socks were born, and the mismatched animal buddies have been a hit. Now they collaborate with artists and are always releasing new fun things for the feet!

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Portrai.Me

Portrai Me is “a visual art project that creates ‘portraits’ of people’s personalities through the various motifs in their lives.” They aim to produce one-of-a-kind artworks at accessible price-points, starting at just $59 each.

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Peau De Loup

Lifelong tomboys Adelle Renaud and Erin McLeod founded Peau De Loup in Vancouver and set out to “redefine feminine etiquette in womenswear by creating functional, well-made, timeless apparel.” You can get their super-cool ethically-sourced-and-produced signature button-ups (so much plaid, y’all!) and accessories online.

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The Phluid Project

Launched in March 2018, the Phluid Project aims to “amplify the rising voice of today’s youth, which rejects binary gender norms, and favors an inclusive world that allows individuals to wear what makes them feel good — that is, what best reflects who they really are inside.

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PlayOut

Abby Sugar and Sylvie Lardex launched PlayOut in 2011, offering two styles of underwear — boxer-briefs (the ‘boyshort’) and the trunk cut — for all genders. Now they sell tunics, pants, skirts, crop tops and all sorts of “gender-free apparel.”

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A Rainbow In Your Cloud

Black autistic visual artist Amina Mucciolo’s shop exudes rainbow bubblegum poppy excitement with affirming tees, masks, hoodies and iPhone cases.

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re-inc

Founded by legendary women’s soccer players Megan Rapinoe, Tobin Heath, Meghan Klingenberg, and Christen Press “with the mission of inspiring us all to boldly reimagine the status quo,” re-inc’s shop sells t-shirts, scarves, hats, mugs, hats, tumblrs and more, emblazoned with their logos and inspiring messages.

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Reparations Club

Los Angeles, CA

Reparations Club is a bookshop and creative space “curated by Blackness” in Los Angeles. The Black-owned and women-owned business curates an incredible list of books as well as selling vinyl and gifts like puzzles, games, honey, sage sticks and tarot decks.

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A Room of One’s Own

Madison, WI

This Madison-based bookstore, named after the Virginia Woolf essay, has been a thriving space for the local feminist community since 1975. It offers a variety of books and gifts, with plenty of women’s studies and LGBT fiction.

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Sabor a Libertad

Sabor a Libertad is the project of a graphic artist in San Juan, Puerto Rico, aiming to make clothes that represent them and other QTPOC Puerto Ricans. They sell a ton of cute original graphic tees in bright, fun colors in both Spanish and English like Aro Pride, Straight Was the Phase, La Futura Es Inclusiva and They Kiss Them.

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Sapphire Books Publishing

Founded by Christine Svedsen in 2010, Sapphire Books is dedicated to promoting and publishing “stories that accurately and respectfully reflect the diverse lives of the lesbian community.”

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Show & Tell Oakland

Oakland, CA

This concept shop, gallery and gathering space in downtown Oakland specializes in sustainable and socially responsible apparel, accessories and gift items. Alyah Baker started her store to share products she couldn’t find in big box retailers, things that “reflected [her] love for BIPOC and LGBTQIA community.” In their store and online they sell t-shirts, body salves & cremes, jewelry, candles, prints and yoga mats from a diverse group of makers.

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Smitten Kitten

Minneapolis, MN

Smitten Kitten opened in 2003 in Minneapolis, MN, hoping to bring “quality, body-friendly sex toys” to a store they’d enjoy shopping in themselves. Smitten Kitten is always on the city’s “Best Of” lists and promotes a sex-positive environment and a curated inventory of non-toxic, ethically produced and marketed products. Not just sex toys, though — they’ve got cute buttons, greeting cards, bandanas and so much more.

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Souk Bohemian

Atlanta, GA

Artists Morgan Ashley Bryant and Vanessa Coore Vernon partner with local and global artisans to bring aspirational ready-to-wear pieces, home goods, small-batch jewelry, and handmade accessories with minimal palettes and global aesthetics.

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South Street Art Market

Philadelphia, PA

The queer-women-owned South Street Art Market sports goods from 130+ indie artists in their store and online. From kitschy nostalgia to nerdy indulgences to the dark arts, their store includes Sick Sad 90s Pin Packs, Mystery Zine Bundles, Dolly Parton earrings, Unicorn Sculptures, Back to the Future Light Switch Plates and so so much more!

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Stealth Bros & Company

This luxury medical storage company creates Dopp kit supplies for travel and at-home personal storage for medical/personal necessities for the transgender, diabetic, TTC and other persona/medical communities in an attempt to revolutionize the way we see and feel about sharps disposal.

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Stuzo Clothing

This queer-owned, women-owned, Black-owned and Latin-owned gender-free brand is “designed to invoke thought and emotion.” DapperQ described them as “a line of androgynous, athleisure, and Cali-casual-cool style.” They sell t-shirts, candles, hats and other gender-free apparel “designed to invoke thought and emotion.” Celebrities like Lena Waithe and Jada Pinkett Smith have been spotted in Stuzo attire.

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Style is Freedom

This “Tomboi Lifestlye Brand” from designer Toni Branson sells snapbacks, beanies, sweatshirts, tees, wallets, slides and more. they collaborate with artists and have so much fun stuff this season, like a Wakanda Tomboi tee and the “Elephant in the room” collection.

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Tanaïs 

Tanaïs, author and prefumer and the host of perfume podcast MALA, promises “infinite beauty” with her recently-launched brand that ” imagines fragrance, beauty and jewelry as expressions of ritual, adornment and ancestors.”

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TomboyX

Founded by lesbian couple Fran and Naomi, Tomboy X sells underwear, bras, joggers, t-shirts, muscle tees, swimwear and so much more with a focus on “empowering our LGBTQ+ community year-round.”

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Under the Umbrella Bookstore

Salt Lake City, UT

Under the Umbrella Bookstore is a bookstore and a safe space for queer people of all ages in the Salt Lake City community, selling books across all genres as well as candles, teas, stickers, pins, tote bags, bookmarks, mugs, and jewelry by small queer-owned businesses and artists.

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Unicorn Feed Supply

Ypsilanti, MI

The queer woman who opened Unicorn Feed Supply in 2018 wanted an entire store that brought her as much joy as her childhood sticker collection (relate-able), Unicorn Feed Supply is queer as fuck: terrariums, fairy gardens, magical stuff, sparkly things, stuffed animals, novelty socks, knick-knacks, enamel pins, work from local artisans and fun stuff for Pride.

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Violet Valley Bookstore

Water Valley, MS

Mississippi’s “Only Queer Feminist Trans inclusive Bookstore” was founded by Jaime Harker, who found while working on her book The Lesbian South that there was a huge community of Southern queers who were “surprised and delighted to find that they were part of a long tradition of activists and writers.” She was inspired to start Violet Valley in 2017, aiming to “make feminist, queer, and multicultural books available to the Water Valley community, the state of Mississippi, and the South.”

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We’Moon

The We’Moon: Gaia Rhythms for Womyn astrological and lunar calendar datebook was founded in 1981 and is published in Oregon by Mother Tongue Ink. You can get the datebook and wall calendar in their online shop as well as other related products.

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West Side Kids

New York, NY

Since 1981, lesbian couple Alice and Jenny Bergman have been running this neighborhood favorite toy shop with a selection that emphasizes diversity, education, and ethically-made products for curious kiddos.

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Wet For Her

Proudly selling sex toys designed by women for women, Wet For Her not only sells dildos, massage oils and harnesses, but also “finger extenders” for purposes which are probably obvious to you.

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Wildfang

Portland, OR + Los Angeles, CA

These self-described “modern-day, female Robin Hoods raiding men’s closets and maniacally dispensing blazers, cardigans, wingtips and bowlers” launched their dapper-tomboy brand in early 2013. Their Wild Feminist tees became viral sensations, their smart suiting is beloved in the queer community and their jumpsuits have taken our televisions by storm.

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Wiselands

With Midwestern roots refined in Northern California, this queer & employee-owned company creates sustainable skincare using green chemistry and concentrated, renewable ingredients.

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Wolfe Video

This legend in lesbian movie culture was launched in 1985 by Kathy Wolfe and it is the largest exclusive distributor of LGBT films. They began as a mail order outlet distributing a Lily Tomlin film and are now an active distributor and releaser of pretty much every film with a lesbian in it, ever! Plus they’re just good people.

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Woxers

This QWOC-owned apparel company designed a boxer-brief tailored to women and focused on comfort, health and sustainability. They sell bralettes as well as boxer-briefs in different lengths in a variety of colors and patterns.

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Volition Beauty

Founders Brandy Hoffman (the queer one!) and Patricia Santos met working at a different skincare company and joined forces to create the now enormously successful Volition Beauty, featuring clean skincare products inspired by crowdsourced ideas, voted on by fans. And they have a lot of fans! You can also find Volition products at Sephora.

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And Finally: More Queer and LGBTQ+-Owned Bookstores To Support

There are so many bookstores owned by LGBTQ women and other trans people that I couldn’t possibly give them all blurbs. Here are some of the many I missed (I chose here only stores that have independent storefronts you can shop online)

• All She Wrote (Sommerville, MA)
• Astoria Bookshop (Astoria, NY)
• Big Blue Marble Books (Philadelphia, PA)
• Black Garnet Books (Twin Cities, Minnesota) (black owned)
• BookWoman (Austin,TX)
• Broadway Books (Portland, OR)
• Burdock Book Collective (Birmingham, Alabama)
• Dog Eared Books (San Francisco)
• Firestorm Books & Coffee (Asheville, NC)
• Foggy Pine Books (Boone, NC)
• The Irreverent Bookworm (Minneapolis, MN)
• Montana Book Company (Helena, MT)
• Omnivore Books (San Francisco, CA)
• The Ripped Bodice (Los Angeles, CA)
• Red Emmas (Baltimore, MD)
• Reparations Club (Los Angeles,CA)
• Rofhiwa Books & Cafe (Durham, NC)
• Tombolo Books (St. Petersburg, FL)
• Tubby & Coos (New Orleans)
• Women & Children First (Chicago, IL)
• Womencrafts (Provincetown)

Stunt Queens: The History and Cultural Significance of the “Queerleader” in Film and Television

Gays, let’s rally! I’m here, queer, and ready to dive real deep into a very important dyke media legacy: queer cheerleaders on screen.

I made a list of all the pom-pommed lesbian and bisexual moments from film and television I could think of off the top of my head, which it was already very long! I then researched further and uncovered even more. The Queerleader has long been an image used to both subvert and reinforce notions of girlhood and femininity. As with many tropes and stocktypes when it comes to queer images and stories in film and TV, the Queerleader is complicated: sometimes a powerful image of femme lesbianism and other times intentionally portrayed as disruptive and dangerous, a threat to not only men but the women in close proximity to her.

Before we get into the timeline, let’s start with the roots of the Queerleader’s legacy.

What makes the sport and spectacle of cheerleading a realm so rife with lesbian and bisexual activity? Well, I think the answer is as simple — and as complex when you really drill into it! — as the answer to why settings/contexts such as all-girl’s schools, convents, and sororities are also frequent playgrounds for queerness and sexual exploration. These are, conventionally, highly feminized spaces considered to be largely free of men. And that’s where things also get complicated, because such spaces are often fetishized by straight cis men for that exact reason. It is a place where they are forbidden, and therefore it’s a place where they cast their voyeuristic gaze, peering as if through a peephole. You might not be surprised that when researching this specific topic, I also encountered a lot of cheerleader-themed lesbian porn.

But I think it’d be overly simplistic — prudish, even — to suggest the Queerleader and the homoeroticization of these other “feminine” spaces exist solely for the male gaze. It’d be a stretch to suggest straight men invented the Queerleader, even if the earliest examples of these filmic depictions were indeed constructed by men. While those might compose the majority of our pre-1999 examples, I think that has more to do with who had the means and power to make movies. There are lots of early- to mid-twentieth century examples of women writing lesbian narratives set in some of the aforementioned women’s spaces, including 1917’s Regiment of Women by Clemence Dane, set at an all-girls school. Radclyffe Hall drew from her friend Toupie Lowther’s experiences in a French World War I women’s unit for her famous novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). Prolific lesbian pulp novelist Ann Bannon realized her own sexuality while in a sorority in college and then went on to write Odd Girl Out (1957) about two sorority sisters in a relationship.

Sure, these are examples from literature, but in the early- and mid- 20th century, literature was a more accessible artform than film/television for women and queer people, especially because pen names allowed them to write somewhat anonymously and ambiguously. But on the cinematic side of things, Dorothy Arzner arguably invented the all-girls school film with The Wild Party in 1929, and while the movie features pre-Code compulsory heterosexuality, its lesbian erotics are impossible to miss.

So, cheerleading does seem to fit into this concept of “women’s spaces,” which make for ideal settings for lesbian narratives — especially in decades when homosexuality was widely criminalized and stigmatized — by allowing women to be in close proximity to each other. These are worlds in which women touching and being physically close can be seen as normal and even expected and not strictly forbidden or policed.

But when it comes to the Queerleader, I do think the reoccurrence of this image goes beyond cheerleading being a largely women-dominated sphere. At the risk of starting to sound like an academic paper (or perhaps that line has already been crossed lol), I argue that the cheerleader is an ideal symbol to inject with or project upon queerness due to the dichotomies cheerleaders have long culturally represented. In Go! Fight! Win!: Cheerleading in American Culture, Mary Ellen Hanson digs into these contradictions embodied by cheerleaders:

The cheerleader is an icon, an instantly recognized symbol of youthful prestige, wholesome attractiveness, peer leadership, and popularity. Equally recognized is the cheerleader as a symbol of mindless enthusiasm, shallow boosterism, objectified sexuality, and promiscuous availability. (Hanson, 2)

Indeed, cheerleaders are largely considered the most popular girls at school while simultaneously dismissed as vapid, empty-headed dolls. They’re portrayed as Good Girls who cheer on the boys but they’re also portrayed as scantily clad seductresses. Their femininity is a weapon and a beacon.

I’ll never forget the time a friend rudely dismissed another woman I barely knew and, when I asked why she’d done so, she simply said “she was a cheerleader in high school.” This ex-friend was parroting very common (and boring!) assumptions about cheerleaders that have been around for forever. She sounded not unlike this snide 1974 Esquire article about ex-cheerleaders, but it was 2014. (That Esquire article replicates additional persistent cultural expectations of cheerleaders, including that they be white, blonde, and have an ass in a manner that could read as tongue-in-cheek but is most certainly not.)

Do these dichotomies and paradoxes not sound familiar? Are they not evocative of the ways lesbians are also culturally regarded and portrayed throughout history? Simultaneously sexless and hypersexual. Queering the cheerleader becomes a way to both challenge and reify these dual narratives. Homophobic iterations of the Queerleader see her as a predator and an affront to the feminine ideal cheerleaders are meant to symbolize. But positive and queer-created iterations of the same character ultimately capitalize and play on the same assumptions and cultural symbols. The most successful and compelling ones just do so in a way that confronts those ideas rather than merely replicating them.

When I started writing this piece several months ago, I mostly meant for it to be, well, horny. Horny, funny, and detailed — my sweet spot! Now this final iteration has, like, lite citation work???? But listen I, not unlike a Queerleader, can be many things at once. Please let me live my best erotic-meets-scholarly life. Reference work can be horny, too!!! I’m engaged to a librarian after all.

And with all that context, here’s my painstaking timeline of the Queerleader in film and television.

This post was originally written in January 2023 and updated/republished in September 2023.

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1970s: The Sexploitation of Lesbian Cheerleaders

I tried very hard to find some readily available pre-Code films that 1. featured cheerleaders in a significant role and 2. had enough legible lesbian subtext to warrant a place in this timeline, but this proved difficult! Once I researched the actual history of cheerleading itself, the reason became clear.

Cheerleading has not always been a women-dominated sport. In fact, it was mostly for men prior to WWII. This makes sense, as cheerleading started at the college level in conjunction with intercollegiate sports. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, male volunteers would lead cheers to encourage spectator involvement during sporting events (Hanson, 11).

Stunts and jumps started becoming more popular in the 50s, and then the 70s saw the introduction of Title IX, which expanded athletic opportunities and funding for women’s sports. Cheerleading increasingly became more athletic and less about just shouting from the sidelines as a result. So, that’s your little mini history lesson on cheerleading and likely the reason why we don’t see a lot of filmic representations of women cheerleading in the pre-Code or Hays Code eras of Hollywood.

The first real instances I found of cheerleaders engaging in lesbian activity were the aforementioned 70s sexploitation movies in which hookups between women are used mostly as non-sequitur titillations. The Cheerleaders (1973) — in which high school cheerleaders decide to sleep with the rival team’s players so that they’ll be too tired to play well — and the absurdly titled The Great American Girl Robbery (1979), about a bus of cheerleaders taken hostage, were the most overt examples of these.

As that aforementioned Esquire article published in 1974 shows, the idea of the cheerleader as a sex symbol was already firmly in place during this decade, and it’s not at all shocking that we see Queerleaders cropping up in these soft core movies. I cannot in good conscience recommend these two particular films, but the lesbian sex scene in The Cheerleaders that prominently features an exercise bike is…very memorable! If you’ve seen any 70s-era titty movies, there’s nothing here that will shock you too much.

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But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)

Jamie Babbit’s satirical teen film starring Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall as friends-turned-lovers at a gay conversion camp is easily the most iconic entry on this list — and arguably the prototypical Queerleader Movie even if technically some depictions do predate it. But given that Babbit is queer herself, this feels like the true beginning.

In an interview in 2005, Babbit had this to say about the decision to make the lead character a cheerleader:

Well, the reason we wanted to have the lead character be a cheerleader is because, for us, it was sort of the pinnacle of the American dream, and the American dream of femininity.

Babbit utilizes and flips the same image and assumptions those 1970s sexploitation movies with Queerleaders also put forth — but in a way that’s distinctly queer and subversive. Those 70s movies assume that a cheerleader engaging in lesbian sex is inherently horny (and mainly for straight men) because it seems forbidden and wrong in the context of the All-American Good Girl the cheerleader has come to represent. Cheerleaders exist, by the definition adopted by those movies, to root for and devote themselves to men and men’s accomplishments. To see them having sex with each other (even with the secret presence of a male voyeur, as those 70s scenes tend to involve) is at odds with that. With But I’m a Cheerleader, the primary intent is not necessarily titilation, but there’s something similarly fraught in how Megan’s queerness is considered at odds with her identity as a cheerleader. Even its tongue-in-cheek title nods to this: She can’t be gay because she’s a cheerleader. Only here, Babbit is indeed making fun of such a silly declaration, challenging not only the dominant narrative of how queer women look and act but also of how cheerleaders act, too.

The movie is not just one of the best and earliest Queerleader texts but also one of the greatest lesbian films of all time; in fact, it’s in the number one spot on our list of the 200 best lesbian, bisexual, and queer films.

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Bring It On (2000)

This movie is the only one in this timeline that employs lesbian subtext rather than explicitly queer content, but it’d be silly to ignore Bring It On‘s ongoing popularity in the dyke community, especially since a lot of us who are over 30 and often clung to movies in our younger years that were not necessarily loudly queer but had an implied lesbian undercurrent to them (because some of us ourselves were not necessarily loudly queer but had an implied lesbian undercurrent to, like, every movement we made). Bring It On might not be an official Queerleader text, but it is almost too easy to project a Queerleader narrative onto it.

Bring It On, a very good movie, also inspired an entire multiverse of very bad straight-to-video/made-for-TV movies, and you’ll read a little more about that further down the timeline.

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Veronica Mars, “Versatile Toppings” (2006) / Heroes, “Hysterical Blindness” (2009)

Season two of Veronica Mars gave us gay cheerleading activity in the episode “Versatile Toppings,” which is, unfortunately, a reference to pizza and not to lesbian tops. The episode feels like a 2006 pop culture time capsule in that it stars Kristin Cavallari of Laguna Beach fame as a closeted cheerleader. There’s also some throwback high school homophobia on display, with Madison Sinclair taunting another closeted character, Marlena, for looking like an Indigo Girl? Anyway, while lesbian cheerleading isn’t exactly a main throughline of this show or even this episode, I’m interested in how the Queerleader trope’s appeal and ubiquity makes it so that it even shows up in small moments like this. We see another quasi-instance of this in the fourth season of Heroes, which manages to combine Queerleader and Sapphic sorority shenanigans. Sure, Claire is no longer a practicing cheerleader at this point, but her college roommate’s obsessive crush on her does seem to hinge on a romanticization of the All-American girl aesthetics that Claire gives off. I’m counting it!

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Degrassi: The Next Generation (2006)

Paige Michalchuk (Lauren Collins) is arguably television’s prototypical Queerleader. She first comes to terms with her bisexuality in season five, beginning a relationship with Alex Nuñez (Deanna Casaluce) in “The Lexicon of Love (2).” They have a classic enemies-to-lovers + opposites attract trope trajectory: Paige is the school’s Queen Bee and a popular cheerleader, while Alex is considered a “bad girl” from “the wrong side of the tracks.” They both have more layers to them than these stocktype categories suggest. It’s easy to interpret Paige’s attraction to Alex as directly connected to the fact that she’s different than the other girls Paige tends to associate with. A quick tumblr search reveals their ship portmanteau “Palex” is still popular to this day, and I found a few different fanfics that explicitly make use of Paige’s cheerleading uniform to erotic effect.

It’s quite easy to draw a line from Paige to Glee‘s Santana Lopez.

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Across the Universe (2007)

The chokehold this Beatles-themed musical movie had on me when I was 15 and in performing arts school? Impossible to overstate. Though I was too closeted at the time to admit it, a big component of this obsession was the movie’s recontextualization of the song “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to be about a closeted cheerleader’s queer longing. Prudence holds it down for all the small-town Midwestern queerleaders out there. Played by Chinese American actress T.V. Carpio, she also stands out on this list, which incidentally tracks how a lot of on-screen portrayals of cheerleading default to whiteness. After all, queerleaders are known for being many things at once, and oftentimes characters of color are not allowed to be as complex and contradiction-laden as their white counterparts.

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Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Underrated — and even maligned — at the time of its release and now accepted and celebrated as a classic after many years of cultural writing that has reconsidered and reframed the conversation around it, Jennifer’s Body is one of the best bisexual horror movies ever made. It was, by my memory, the first time I saw two women kiss on the big screen.

But even before that, Jennifer’s Body stirred within me some sort of feral animal force. It wasn’t the jumpscares or the body horror that got me; the thing that made me want to shut my eyes was the sexual tension between Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and her best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox). It was too much for my closeted self to bear. In their first scene together, Needy watches Jennifer do a routine in her cheerleading uniform — in slow motion — in the high school gym. Perhaps the slow motion is intended for the viewer’s own voyeurism, but my reading is that this is Needy’s perspective; she sees Jennifer’s body (*Beanie Feldstein voice* it’s the TITULAR ROLE) in aching, softened, sexy motion, so that’s what we see, too. She watches so closely, so intently, and with such unfiltered desire registering in her gaze that another student actually leans forward and says “you’re totally lesbi-gay.” To me, this entire moment is far more erotic than their eventual make out.

This is less a movie about cheerleading and more a movie about Jennifer turning into a flesh-eating succubus, but given that opening scene’s slowed-down, cheer uniform-clad, “lesbi-gay” iconic visuals, it’s an important film in this timeline. Jennifer’s status as a popular cheerleader is a big part of why she’s able to get close to men and subsequently kill them. She threatens natural social order at their school not because she’s maybe in love with her best friend but because she’s… a literal demon.

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Fired Up! (2009)

Do I regret the hour and a half I spent watching this movie? Mostly! Was it perhaps worth it for the scene where all of the attendees of a cheer camp recite lines verbatim in unison while watching Bring It On? NOT QUITE. Fired Up! is about two football dudes who decide to go to cheerleading camp in order to up their body counts, so perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that the humor here is of the crude, bro-y sort.

The only Queerleader in this movie is a textbook example of a predatory lesbian, and I almost didn’t include it in this timeline for that reason. But I ended up wanting this exploration to feel really comprehensive and layered, and that means including the bad shit, too.

There’s a running gag in the movie that one of the airhead cheerleaders doesn’t realize the Queerleader is aggressively hitting on her. Fired Up! positions the Queerleader as an impure perversion of the cheerleader, as a stark deviation from what Fired Up! believes cheerleaders should represent. In a way, there’s even a parallel between her and the straight dude protagonists, whose proximity to cheerleading is predicated on them just wanting to have access to cheerleaders and their bodies. Only, the guys get to be the goofy and ultimately redeemable protagonists, while she remains a bit character we’re meant to think is gross.

Fired Up! came out when I was in high school, and I don’t think I saw it at the time, but this was an image of lesbianism I was very familiar with, and it’s actually this sort of casual representation of the lesbian as inherently creepy and aggressive within feminine spaces that did way more psychic damage on me than any overt examples of the lesbian as a villain or even as a killer. Remember how I wanted to shut my eyes during the opening cheerleading scene of Jennifer’s Body? It was exactly because of this; because I felt like a creep for looking at her the way Needy does.

Fun Fact: There’s a blooper reel during the credits, and in it Juliette Goglia’s Poppy — who is one of the main guy’s little sisters — actually says the word Queerleader during a runner of various alternative punchlines. It’s absolutely meant as an insult in this context, but again, I’m looking at alllllll filmic representations of this topic, baby! The good, the bad, and the ugly!

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Glee (2009)

Ah, yes, if Across the Universe had a chokehold on me when I was a musical theater student in high school, well, Glee tightened that grip even more. Though about a glee club first and foremost and only sometimes about cheerleading by way of its central villain Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch, unfortunately not playing a queerleading coach), the image that comes to mind most readily and potently when I think of Glee is this: two girls in cheerleading uniforms, holding pinkies.

Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) and Brittany Pierce (Heather Morris) were formative queerleaders for me — and arguably they are THE Queerleaders in this timeline. The first time we ever see them kissing, they’re in bed together in their cheerleading uniforms. Those uniforms are inextricable from these characters. Brittany’s bisexuality isn’t really a source of conflict, and Santana’s whole thing is that on the surface she’s the prototypical Mean Girl trope but then there’s so much more to her. Indeed, she’s mean to just about everyone except Brittany. And they go from high school sweethearts to wives!

Fun Fact: One of the gayest things I ever did when still identifying adamantly as straight was when I wrote an “article” for a “pop culture zine” on my college campus about the merits and nuances of Santana Lopez’s coming out arc on Glee.

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Hellcats (2010)

This series about college cheerleaders only ran on the CW for one season and is nearly impossible to stream these days. But during that brief run, Elena Esovolova played Patty “The Wedge” Wedgerman, an out lesbian on the squad. However, Patty only appeared in five episodes and never really got a fully fleshed out storyline. Despite having a lesbian character, there are no lesbian relationships in the series, and if anything the gayest parts actually seem to be the subtext between the show’s main characters Marti (Aly Michalka) and Savannah (Ashley Tisdale).

Apparently during a press tour in 2011, Michalka noted that Patty had been dropped from the narrative because the writers “found that it was really hard to involve her with the Hellcats and dividing all the story lines.” While supposedly Michalka noted this had nothing to do with Patty being a lesbian………….I’m not convinced. It sounds to me like another instance of the Queerleader rendered an “outsider,” and instead of that becoming a meaningful and potentially even powerful image dismantling ingrained images, it becomes an inconvenience for the writers. I genuinely enjoy lesbian subtext, but if you’re only willing to go there and not into more explicit queerness WHEN THERE IS ALREADY A LESBIAN CHARACTER AROUND, that’s a no for me.

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All Cheerleaders Die (2013)

I watched this movie for the first time recently and was quite delighted by it! Is it perfect? No. But it’s fun horror trash with occasionally glimmers of brilliance. All Cheerleaders Die centers on Mäddy (Caitlin Stasey), a girl whose best friend dies during a cheerleading stunt gone wrong. (The found footage-style scene that establishes that death at the beginning of the movie is fantastic; I always love portrayals of cheerleading that acknowledge just how brutal the sport can be, which we’ll get into further down the timeline.) The following year, Mäddy joins the squad, which is very confusing to her recent ex-girlfriend Leena, who btw is a witch.

When an altercation with the football team leads to the cheerleading squad’s deaths, Leena brings them all back from the dead. The catch? They’re basically linked succubus/vampire-like creatures who have to collectively feed on men’s blood to maintain their strength. There’s body-swap shenanigans, body horror, all my favorite things. All the while, Leena seems to get a very kinky pleasure out of basically being in charge of the lives of these cheerleaders. And like a good monster lover, she lets Mäddy feed on her.

A double-feature screening of Jennifer’s Body and this movie would be very fun! I like my Queerleaders to be murderers of men!

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Wynonna Earp, “Gonna Getcha Good” (2017)

In season two, episode three of the beloved sci-fi Western series Wynonna Earp, bisexual character Waverly (Dom Provost-Chalkley) dons a cheerleading costume and puts on a seductive routine for her girlfriend Nicole (Katherine Barrell). This show isn’t even a little bit about cheerleading, but this is a very important Queerleader moment in that Waverly is explicitly doing cheerleader roleplay to turn on her girlfriend. The scene directly acknowledges the erotic appeal of cheerleading for lesbians and bisexual women.

“I didn’t know if it was your thing,” Waverly says after she’s done with the cheer. Nicole’s jaw is on the floor. “Baby, that’s everybody’s thing,” she says. Which is basically my entire thesis for this piece in a nutshell.

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Riverdale (2017)

Season two of Riverdale saw the official introduction of queer storylines for Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch), but some of us ahem SCHOLARS were picking up on the gay vibes emanating off of the red-haired and sharp-tongued cheerleader since basically episode one.

Indeed, Riverdale‘s pilot actually features a Queerleader moment — a kiss between Veronica (Camila Mendes) and Betty (Lili Reinhart) during their Vixens tryouts that Cheryl immediately dismisses as pandering and dated: “Faux lesbian kissing hasn’t been taboo since 1994.” But later in the series, Cheryl goes on to co-captain the Vixens with her literal girlfriend, the bisexual icon Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan). I strongly believe Cheryl is evidence of Santana Lopez’s lasting Queerleader impact. Here, too, is an on-the-surface Mean Girl stocktype who actually harbors a quiet vulnerability and softness in her, brought out by the fellow Queerleader she falls in love with.

In the final season of Riverdale, the characters are transported back to the 1950s and in high school again. In addition to on-and-off Vixens Betty and Veronica finally becoming canon — recontextualizing that kiss from the pilot — the series ends with Carol and Toni coming out as a couple to their fellow Vixens and a few of the other cheerleaders also coming out in response. Queerleading is inextricably baked into the wild world of Riverdale.

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The Babysitter (2017)

Here’s another slight stretch, but I’m nothing if not thorough. Horror-romp The Babysitter‘s only Queerleading-adjacent moment comes when Samara Weaving’s Bee tongues Bella Thorne’s Allison during a game of spin the bottle. Allison is in her cheerleading uniform for the purposefully over-the-top make out sequence, during which Bee puts her gum in Allison’s mouth???? There’s no overt textual evidence of Allison’s bisexuality or queerness in the film — unless you count her very apparent arousal during this extended kiss, WHICH I DO??? Plus, I feel like every Bella Thorne character just radiates Bella’s own bisexuality.

We do see this slow-motion scene unfold from the perspective of an adolescent boy, so I can see how it might be viewed as a continuation of the sort of male fantasy of Queerleaders from back in those 70s movies or in modern-day porn. But the scene is also so long and so exaggerated that it actually feels like its poking fun at the voyeur and quite LITERALLY being tongue-in-cheek.

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Dare Me (2019)

Yay, I get to now participate in one of my favorite hobbies: Screaming at people to watch Dare Me.

WATCH DARE ME!

No movie or show has captured the baked-in brutality of cheerleading as a sport as searingly as Dare Me, a slow-burn thriller full of blood, crunched bones, and contorted bodies. It also lives in another hyperspecific subgenre I’m drawn to: stories about toxic mentorship. In this instance, that takes the shape of a really fucked up coach-athlete dynamic. It doesn’t go the ways you think it might. But coach Colette French’s (Willa Fitzgerald) need for total control over the body and mind of Addy Hanlon (Herizen F. Guardiola) and the ways she manipulates the young girl are a true source of horror.

And that violent power dynamic never becomes overtly sexual, because queerness itself isn’t villainized in Dare Me — abuse of power is. Instead, there’s a slow-burn queer romance at the core of the show, sizzling just on the sidelines for much of the series. but ultimately hugely important for character motivation and development. Addy’s co-dependent friendship with bff Beth (Marlo Kelly) is gradually revealed to be something more. The subtext becomes bolder text in measured, scintillating increments rather than some gaudy big reveal, and it feels all the more real for that. And throughout, Dare Me explores just how dangerous and intense cheerleading itself can be, sticking up its middle finger to portrayals of the sport as something cute and fluffy. Femininity in Dare Me has sharp edges and bite.

I recently read the pilot script for Dare Me and was struck by some of the language it uses in its descriptions of actions. It describes the girls putting glitter on their faces as putting on their “cheer masks.” When a character falls, the script notes that this is what cheering really is. Here is a show that understands well the performance, risk, and almost battle-like stakes of cheerleading, which makes its exploration of Queerleading all the juicier.

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Knives and Skin (2019)

A surreal psychological thriller that has been described as like if David Lynch made a teen movie without ever really living up to that admittedly alluring interpretation, Knives and Skin is a very strange movie that includes clownfucking, haunting a cappella renditions of pop songs, and strong use of color. For an experimental film, it just doesn’t quite take enough risks and could also have done with a tighter edit.

One of its many teen girl characters (the movie is largely about, among other things, the unbearable sadness threaded through girlhood) is a Queerleader named Laurel (Kayla Carter). Presumably, she’s in the closet or otherwise still figuring out her sexuality. She’s in a highly visible relationship with a boy but a shadow relationship with another girl. Even if they never officially “date,” they find a lot of homoerotic things to do together, including passing handwritten notes to each other that were kept…inside their vaginas.

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The Prom (2020)

Ariana DeBose’s closeted Queerleader Alyssa is easily the best part of The Prom, a movie musical I wish I liked more! It is very heartwarming and lovely in moments, but there’s an emptiness to it that makes it almost instantly forgettable. But! Alyssa! Alyssa is a great character, and her relationship with her queerness is different than that of the film’s main character. The stakes are different for her.

Alyssa’s solo in the movie “Alyssa Greene” is all about her mother’s (Kerry Washington) molding of her into a perfect girl. She has to be beautiful and smart (“The hair has to be perfect / The As have to be straight”). She has to be the best at everything she does (“Trophies have to be first place / Ribbons have to be blue”). Cheerleading is one of the many things Alyssa has to ascribe to in order to achieve the level of perfection her mother demands and the level of perfection that ultimately buries her queerness deeper and deeper. It’s a tactic a lot of queer folks employed in our teenage years, myself included: You think there’s something “wrong” with you so you fight like hell to make everyone else see “perfection.” Her cheerleading uniform is like the rest of her life: a costume and an act. Or, maybe, armor to protect herself.

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The music video for “Cheerleader” by Sir Babygirl (2020)

Queerleading-themed music videos have become a very specific canon of art, so while they technically fall outside of the realm of movies and television, I have now encountered so many that I feel they undoubtedly belong on this list.

In this example from nonbinary pop singer Sir Babygirl, the Queerleader is present in both the text of the song and its visual accompaniment — a true delight of a music video in which cheerleaders of all genders and body types lust for each other in the locker room and beyond. “Everybody wants to watch the cheerleader,” Sir Babygirl sings over it, which is basically one of the theses of this piece.

My favorite thing about this music video, though, is that queer comedic genius-freak Meg Stalter is in it as one of the many Queerleaders!

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Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021)

I find Sam to frankly be the least interesting character in the Fear Street trilogy, but she is a Queerleader! We first meet Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) in the first installment. She’s in her cheerleading uniform on the football field at Sunnyvale High, where she has recently transferred from Shadyside. Up to this point, we know protagonist Deena (Kiana Madeira) is going through a dramatic high school breakup, but we don’t know it’s of the queer variety until this moment, Sam finally dropping the facade of her picturesque performance, wrapped in the arms of a football player, to have a full-on dyke fight away from everyone else with Deena. Sam’s clearly going through it, thinking that the only way she can have a happy and healthy life is to become this textbook, idealized cheerleader-dating-a-football-player high school trope. And frankly I think Deena should let Sam figure that out on her own and date someone more secure, but teens will be teens!

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The music videos for “Somebody I Fucked Once” by Zolita and “Silk Chiffon” by MUNA and Phoebe Bridgers (2021)

Two Queerleader music videos came out in 2021.

MUNA’s “Silk Chiffon” directly references and reproduces images and storylines from But I’m a Cheerleader, a cute and fun tribute that feels fitting for the bubbly queer love pop song that seemed inescapable the summer it debuted. Phoebe Bridgers also appears in the tribute.

Zolita’s take for “Somebody I Fucked Once” is arguably the campier video of the two. It’s less of a straight riff and more like a mix-and-match collage of early 2000s aesthetics, teen movie tropes, and Queerleader imagery! In it, the blonde, pink-clad cheerleader falls for the goth brunette who’s into pottery. Yes, there is a sensual pottery wheel moment! Simply put, this is the hornier of the two music videos, still bubblegum pink and corny throughout but with more teeth to it.

The main reason I wanted to include the Zolita music video is because I feel like it’s ultimately doing the same work I set out to do with this list by paying tribute to the Queerleader and recognizing her stronghold in lesbian pop culture in a way that acknowledges that, yes, some of us queer women do indeed find the mere concept of Queerleaders very sexy! The Queerleader as an erotic image does not solely belong to the realm of male fantasy. This music video gets that in the same way the scene from Wynonna Earp does.

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Bring It On: Cheer or Die (2022)

This made-for-TV entry in the Bring It On universe is not very good, despite having a solid hook (a cheerleading slasher) and being the first of ANY of the Bring It On movies to be directed by a woman (how!!!!). I did say going into it “if this movie doesn’t have a Queerleader, I’m rioting.” Thankfully, it does technically deliver, even if it’s only in the most minuscule way, near the end of the movie. But sure enough, one of the members of this cheer squad harbors a secret crush on a fellow cheerleader, and instead of leaning into the predatory vibes the way Fired Up! does, we get something much more sincere and sweet. Also, as far as slashers go, I didn’t hate the killer reveal here. But no, it’s not a very good movie, so consider yourself warned. Now, someone let me write Bring It On: Queerleaders Rise.

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The music videos for “Cheerleader” by Ashnikko and “Cheerleader” by Liza Anne (2023)

There are so many songs called “Cheerleader” out there by queer and trans artists! A specific sub-trend I found within this overall specific media trend.

Pansexual and genderfluid artist Ashnikko’s song “Cheerleader” makes direct references to the movie Bring It On, but the music video is decidedly more horror-leaning. In it, demonic cheerleaders do routines in the woods. The song is steeped in themes of beauty standards and gendered expectations. The music video is a Queerleader Nightmarescape.

Gay and nonbinary musician Liza Anne also has a “Cheerleader” song with a very gay music video to match. Queer makeouts happen in the locker room, in the stadium stands, and on the football field. The video recreates classic high school tropes with queer and punk aesthetics. I love that this entry also continues the niche trend of “Queerleader music videos starring queer alt comedians” established by Sir Babygirl — that’s Eva Victor making out with Liza Anne the whole time!

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Bottoms (2023)

Ah, yes, my personal movie of the summer for 2023. My Queerleader north star. The feature film Bottoms.

Directed by Emma Seligman, Bottoms is the latest Queerleader movie to grace our timeline, and it is quite the gem! In it, best friends Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Rachel Sennot, who co-wrote the movie with Seligman) start a fight club at their high school in order to woo hot cheerleaders Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber) into getting physical with them.

I found myself often thinking about 2009’s Fired Up! while watching the movie, as both belong to the genre of raunchy teen comedy. Whereas teen straight boys pretend to be cheerleaders in that movie in order to up their body count, here we have a movie about teen lesbians pretending to have gone to juvie and know how to fight in order to up their body count. Whereas the only lesbian or lesbian-coded character in that movie is very minor and is portrayed as a joke and a creep, here we have two lesbian protagonists whose queerness isn’t a joke but who are, indeed, kind of creeps! I think this comparison and deep dive into contextualizing Bottoms within the history of teen sex comedies rendering lesbians as predators deserves an entire separate essay from this timeline (at some point, I imagine there being an Appendix to this article). But what I’ll say for now is that while it might be controversial for some, I am delighted by the ways Bottoms doesn’t eschew those damaging tropes we see crop up in a movie like Fired Up! but rather lean in to the idea of manipulative queer teens and yet in a way that doesn’t ultimately feel homophobic but rather just true to horndog teenagehood in general.

***If you’re wondering where I got the idea for this piece, yes Bottoms was a huge source of inspiration starting when the film was first announced. But I am very much just personally interested in the topic, too! I was drawn to cheerleading before I was even close to being out and always as a spectator, never as a participant. In fact, I was interested in cheerleading specifically because it was expressly forbidden in my family. My grandmother had a rule that we were not allowed to ever cheerlead, because she deemed it too dangerous. My mother enforced the rule as well, but I think mainly because she thought cheerleading was stupid. After all, she let my brother play football, which isn’t exactly known for being a safe sport or one that isn’t also mired in performative gender. So yes, cheerleading was quite literally forbidden in my youth, and I also was attracted to it. Sounds more than a little gay if you ask me!!!!!!

During my research, I did not encounter any specifically trans representations of Queerleaders outside of the music videos, suggesting that even queer representations of cheerleaders come with rigid assumptions about gender, girlhood, and who gets to be a cheerleader. This was a disappointing finding. I’m glad music videos, at least, are holding it down for nonbinary and trans interpretations and visualizations of the trope.

Clearly, the Queerleader isn’t going anywhere — the character’s appeal is vast and lasting. Some stories use her to reinforce social rules and roles, some to subvert them. The built-in homoerotics of the sport makes it a terrific playground for lesbian activity, but it’s also the sheer position of the cheerleader as this mythical symbol of perfection and heightened femininity that makes it so enticing to inject queerness. The Queerleader is much more than a sex symbol, but at the same time, the character’s potential for distinctly lesbian erotics cannot be denied!

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If you think there’s anything I’ve missed, please let me know! I love an excuse to watch Queerleading movies for my job, and as I’ve demonstrated, I want this to be as comprehensive as possible! I know cheerleading is distinctly American but any international movies I should check out? Let me know!

41 Super-Hot Butches and Tomboys of the Early 20th Century

This article was originally written in 2017 and has been re-published for this special holiday, Butch and Stud Appreciation Day.

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There’s no day like today to cast our eyes upon some hot butch women and tomboys and otherwise-identified human beings who are unfortunately dead, but fortunately looked good and (in most cases) did cool shit while they still roamed the fields and valleys of this scorched earth. Before Shane McCutcheon was even a glimmer in Ilene’s eye, these people were putting on their top hats and/or trousers and giving the ladies something to whisper about in their journals.

Please note that not everybody in this was a lesbian or bisexual. Nor is everybody on this list a certified masc-of-center, butch or tomboy identified woman. Some of the women included herein didn’t typically dress “masculine-of-center” or exude a “butch vibe” but did for the picture I have included. Back in the day, women obviously had much less freedom regarding what they wore and how they presented, so it’s not always clear from archival photographs what anybody’s “authentic” gender presentation was.

I have included an asterisk before the names of the women who I’m pretty damn sure were lesbian, bisexual, or otherwise into the ladies. This is important in case any of you are into dating ghosts, which makes about as much sense as anything else these days, you know?

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*Ella Wesner (1851-1917)

Vaudeville Entertainer / Male Impersonator

Wesner’s popular stage routine included plucky monologues that imparted advice to male audience members on how to treat and/or seduce a lady.

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Vesta Tilley (1864-1952)

English Music Hall Performer, Male Impersonator

Vesta made her debut playing a male role onstage at the age of six, by which point her father, a successful performer himself, had already gifted her the custom-tailored suit she’d begged for as a child.

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*Maude Adams (1872-1953)

American Actress

Adams is best known for playing Peter Pan on Broadway.

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*Cicely Hamilton (1872-1952)

English Actress, Writer, Journalist, Suffragist

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*Romaine Brooks (1874-1970)

American painter

Romaine Brooks is best-known for her paintings of women in androgynous or “masculine” attire.

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Ella Shields (1879-1952)

Vaudeville Performer, Music Hall Singer, Male Impersonator

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Hetty King (1883-1972)

Entertainer/Male Impersonator

Hetty King was an asshole to her lesbian fans, telling an interviewer that she was “sickened” by letters she got from women in which “they declare that they can’t eat or sleep or are going to kill themselves for the love of me.”

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Lillyn Brown (1885-1969)

African-American/Native American Singer, Vaudeville Entertainer, Teacher and Actress

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*Agnes Smedley 1892-1950

American Journalist, Novelist, Activist & Socialist

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*Mercedes De Acosta (1893-1968)

Writer, Lover to the Stars

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Selika Lazevski (1890s – Unknown)

African Princess / 19th Century High Society Equestrian

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*Beatrice Lillie (1894 – 1989)

Canadian-born British actress, Singer and Comedic Performer

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*Moms Mabley (1894-1975)

American Standup Comedian

Mabley wore housedresses onstage, but in her off-time she presented butch, in tailored suits.

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Kitty Doner (1895-1988)

American Actress and Producer

Kitty’s parents were performers, too, and thus Kitty began performing onstage in male attire while she was a very young girl.

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*Alice DeLamar (1895-1983)

American Heiress

When her father died in 1918, DeLamar inherited $10 million, giving her the title of “richest bachelor girl.”

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*Nobuko Yoshiya (1896-1973)

Japanese Writer

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*Ethel Waters (1896-1977)

American Singer and Actress

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*Hope Williams (1897 – 1992)

American Actress

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*Dorothy Arzner (1897 – 1979)

American Film Director

Arzner was the only female film director working during her era, which was a tenuous position to be in — it’s why she wore dresses and skirts to work instead of the pants she wanted to wear.

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*Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991)

British-born American Stage Actress

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*Marion Barbara “Joe” Carstairs (1900 -1993)

Wealthy British Powerboat Racer

Carstairs wore men’s clothing, covered her arms in tattoos, drove ambulances during World War I, and, in the 1920s, started a womens-only car-hire and chauffering service staffed by women she met working during the war.

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*Thelma Wood (1901-1970)

American Sculptor

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*Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

German-American Actress and Singer

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*Greta Garbo (1905 – 1990)

Swedish-born American Film Actress

Her 1933 film Queen Christina won critical acclaim and slayed at the box office, but censors were disturbed by a scene in which Garbo dressed like a man in order to kiss a woman she wanted to kiss.

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*Anna May Wong (1905-1961)

Chinese-American Movie Star

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*Valentine Ackland (1906-1969)

English Poet

Born “Mary” and nicknamed “Molly,” Valentine’s father raised her like a son, and as an adult, she cut her hair short, wore men’s clothing, and adopted an androgynous name in order to be taken seriously as a poet.

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*Josephine Baker (1906-1975)

American Entertainer, Activist and French Resistance Agent of African and Native American descent

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*Louisa D’Andelot Carpenter (1907-1976)

DuPont Heiress

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*Gladys Bentley (1907 – 1960)

American Blues Singer, Pianist and Entertainer

At Harry Hansberry’s Clam House, Bentley performed in her signature tuxedo and top hat, sang racy versions of popular songs in a gravely deep voice, and flirted with ladies in the audience.

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*Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)

American Actress

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*Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)

Mexican Painter

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*Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942)

Swiss Writer, Journalist, Photographer and Traveler

Sidenote, this woman is a fashion icon and I am obsessed with her.

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*Tiny Davis (1909-1994)

American jazz Trumpeter and Vocalist

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*Beverly Shaw (1910-1990)

Nightclub Singer

The successful torch singer / male impersonator bought her own club in North Hollywood, called Club Laurel, which succeeded as a popular upscale gay night spot for 14 years.

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*Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

American Athlete (golf, basketball, baseball, track & field), Olympic gold medalist

In addition to excelling at athletics, Babe was a fantastic seamstress who made her own golfing outfits and won the sewing championship at the Texas State Fair.

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*Esther Eng (1914-1970)

Chinese-American Film Director

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*Stormé DeLarverie (1920-2014)

Bouncer, Drag King, MC, Civil Rights Icon, Entertainer

Lesbian Sex: Your 15 Favorite Ways To Have It

How do lesbians have sex? Well, lesbians have sex in many different ways, so we went ahead and asked over 13k+ queer women, “which of these activities has been a regular part of your sex life within the last year?” and now we’ve got the answers. The data below reflects the most popular answers given by lesbian-identified women in relationships (monogamous or non-monogamous).

The Top 15 Lesbian Sex Activities In Order Of Popularity

1. Clitoral Stimulation – 99%

In 1933, Sigmund Freud famously remarked “Elimination of clitoral sexuality is a necessary precondition for the development of femininity, since it is immature and masculine in its nature.” He was dead wrong. In fact, most women require clitoral stimulation to orgasm. Plus, it’s the only human organ that exists exclusively for pleasure! So unsurprisingly, doing stuff to your girlfriend’s clit is a very popular activity.

2. Fingering (genitals, internal) – 97.2%

Also known as: finger-banging, finger-fcking and, you know, “fcking.”

3. Oral sex (genitals) – 95.2%

We also asked readers for their favorite sex act in an open-ended question, and oral sex easily came out on top. Here’s some tips for first-timers.

4. Frottage/dry humping – 79.6%

Teenagers and lesbians: mastering the fine art of dry-humping since the dawn of time.

5. Nipple play – 73.1%

Research has shown that nipple stimulation activates the same region of the brain as clitoral and genital stimulation.

6. Strap-on play – 58.8%

Strap-on sex is very popular amongst lesbians, and we’re got a great guide for how to Have Strap-On Lesbian Sex. We get a lot of questions from readers about buying a strap-on harness and recommend, if you can afford it, a Spare Parts Joque Harness.  We’ve got a few guides to strap-on shopping:

• How to Buy a Strap-On Dildo for Lesbian Sex
• How To Buy A Strap-On Harness for Lesbian Sex
• It’s not just cis AFAB people who enjoy strap-on sex though — check out harnesses for trans women if you’re in the market.

Another 22% of y’all indicated that oral sex using a strap-on is a regular part of your sex life.

7. Vibrators – 55.5%

Lots of lesbians use vibrators during sex — for clitoral stimulation, inside a dildo, for penetration, or for mutual masturbation. If you’re buying a vibrator for the first time there can be a lot of intimidating options out there and hard to know which vibrators are the best — and the most famous and beloved vibrator is probably the Hitachi Magic Wand, which is not technically a vibrator at all, and not necessarily the best for partner sex. (Although they recently came out with a rechargeable edition you might like!) The Womanizer has gotten a lot of positive press as well. Couples vibrators are a thing too, like The We-Vibe 4.

Fun fact: 49% of survey-takers usually use vibrators while masturbating.

8. Dildos – 55%

Dildos are most often used with strap-ons, although we didn’t differentiate in the survey which may have led to confusing answers. These are the best dildos according to our lesbian sex experts. There are pros and cons to double-ended dildos . Dildos come in all shapes, styles (like the pack and play), sizes (including “VERY BIG“), and materials — glass, silicone, stainless steel, stone — many designed for stand-alone usage and many designed specifically for being used with a harness.

9. Spanking – 50%

Among survey-takers who indicated being interested in kink, 58% enjoy spanking their partner and 62% enjoy getting spanked. If you’re looking to get into spanking and other impact play, try this handy guide to spanking safely and effectively.

10. Scissoring – 34%

While many have argued that scissoring isn’t a thing, lesbian scissoring is in fact definitely a thing, in so many configurations: full-body scissoring, acrobatic sitting scissoring and classic scissoring. What can we say about scissoring that you haven’t already said about scissoring? Very little, honestly.

11. Anal play (external) – 31%

You can do a lot with your finger besides inserting it all the way into an asshole. 20% of lesbians also indicated that they regularly participated in “rimming” (oral anal play), aka eating ass.

12. Anal penetration – 25.2%

Anal penetration also was the most frequent sex act cited in our open-ended question “what is your least-favorite sex act?” Even if you’re not into anal, you really should read this review of the Njoy Pure Plug, because it’s hilarious. If you’re interested in trying anal, we have a post for how to have lesbian sex: the anal edition.

13. BDSM – 22.2%

The BDSM acronym represents Bondage & Discipline, Domination & Submission and Sadism & Masochism. Our Bondage 101 post is a great place to start when looking into starting to tie people up. Some of our most popular sex posts have been related to BDSM-related activities, such as Bondage For Beginners, How to Tie Someone Up, Read a F*cking Book About BDSM, Top Five Ways To Consensually Hit Your Sex Partner and What We Talk About When We Talk About Flogging.

14. Other sex toy play – 22%

Of survey-takers who use sex toys, 47% own four or more of them, 75% purchase them in stores and 64% have purchased sex toys online. Sex toys besides vibrators and dildos include kink-lite gear like nipple clamps, butt plugs,

15. Fisting (vaginal) – 18%

Admittedly we were pretty surprised by how low fisting ranked! If you can take it and have the body parts necessary to do so, I cannot recommend more highly the experience of having or receiving somebody’s entire hand inside you. You can get started with this Lesbian Fisting 101 post, or trying out these five tips for aspirational fisters.

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This post was originally written in 2015 based on survey data from 2015 and has been updated in August 2023.

All 100+ Gay Players and Coaches in the 2023 Women’s World Cup

Women’s World Cup gay players feature image photos: SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images // Erin Chang/ISI Photos/Getty Images // James Williamson – AMA/Getty Images

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is finally here! It kicks off on July 20th with co-hosts Australia (against Ireland) and New Zealand (against Norway)! And you, of course, are wondering if there are any Women’s World Cup gay players. Friends, yes! In fact, this just might be the most openly queer sporting event in history — which is saying something, as you know, if you’ve been following our WNBA coverage this year.

And not just players; there are so many LGBTQ storylines to follow. It’s Megan Rapinoe’s (United States) final World Cup. It’s 37-year-old Marta’s (Brazil) sixth World Cup, and her last, and she continues to recover from an ACL tear she suffered in a NWSL Challenge Cup match. After becoming the first first Australian player to score a hat trick at a World Cup tournament in 2019, and becoming a household name among soccer fans and queer humans, Sam Kerr is looking to lead the co-host Matildas to a World Cup title. Canada, which boasts five queer players and coaches, is in an equal pay fight with its governing body, much like the one the USWNT battled for years. Also, Matilda Sam Kerr and USWNT star Kristie Mewis are probably the most famous couple of this World Cup, thanks in part to THEY’RE LESBIANS, STACEY.

The 2023 World Cup goes from July 20th through August 20th. It’ll be held in ten stadiums and nine cities, split almost evenly between Australia and New Zealand. The time difference is mind-bending: From the US east coast, Melbourne is 14 hours ahead and Auckland is 16 hours ahead. From the US west coast, Melbourne is 17 hours ahead and Auckland is 19 hours ahead, so: basically fully a whole day the future. In the United States, the World Cup will air on FOX, FS1, FOXSports dot com, and the FOX Sports App.

And now, onto the Women’s World Cup gay players! They’re listed below, sorted first by their World Cup Group and then by their country. As always, if we’ve missed anyone, please let us know in the comments!

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GROUP A

New Zealand

Michaela Foster

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Annalie Longo

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Ria Percival

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Hannah Wilkinson

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Norway

Frida Maanum

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Maren Mjelde

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Guro Reiten

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Anja Sønstevold

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Ingrid Syrstad Engen

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Philippines

Tahnai Annis

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Switzerland

Ramona Bachmann

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtZSbVAKwBE/

Head Coach Inka Grings

Alisha Lehmann

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Noelle Maritz

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Lia Wälti

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GROUP B

Australia

Mackenzie Arnold

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Ellie Carpenter

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Alex Chidiac

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Caitlin Foord

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Katrina Gorry

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Alanna Kennedy

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Sam Kerr

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Teagan Micah

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Hayley Raso

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Kyah Simon

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Emily van Egmond

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Cortnee Vine

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Tameka Yallop

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Republic of Ireland

Isibeal Atkinson

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Diane Caldwell

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Megan Connolly

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Sinead Farrelly

Ruesha Littlejohn

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Katie McCabe

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Grace Moloney

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Áine O’Gorman

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Louise Quinn

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Lucy Quinn

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Canada

Kadeisha Buchanan

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Head Coach Bev Priestman

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Quinn

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Kailen Sheridan

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Shelina Zadorsky

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No gays we know (yet?): Nigeria

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GROUP C

Spain

Teresa Abelleira

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Ivana Andrés

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Irene Paredes

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Alba Redondo

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Costa Rica

María Paula Elizondo

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Gabriela Guillén

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No gays we know (yet?): Zambia, Japan

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GROUP D

England

Lucy Bronze

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Jess Carter

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Rachel Daly

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Bethany England

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Lauren Hemp

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Jordan Nobbs

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Denmark

Pernille Harder

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Janni Thomsen

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No gays we know (yet?): Haiti, China PR

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Group E

United States

Kristie Mewis

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Kelley O’Hara

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Megan Rapinoe

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Netherlands

Kerstin Casparij

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Daniëlle van de Donk

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Stefanie van der Gragt

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Merel van Dongen

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Sherida Spitse

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Jacintha Weimar

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Lynn Wilms

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Portugal

Dolores Silva

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No gays we know (yet?): Vietnam

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Group F

France

Pauline Peyraud-Magnin

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Constance Picaud

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Brazil

Adriana

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Andressa

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Bárbara

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Debinha

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Kathellen

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Lauren

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Letícia Izidoro

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Marta

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Head Coach Pia Sundhage

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Tamires

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Jamaica

Becky Spencer

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No gays we know (yet?): Panama

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Group G

Sweden

Filippa Angeldahl

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Hanna Bennison

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Nathalie Björn

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Magdalena Eriksson

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Jennifer Falk

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Lina Hurtig

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Caroline Seger

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Linda Sembrant

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South Africa

Thembi Kgatlana

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Kaylin Swart

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Italy

Lisa Boattin

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Manuela Giugliano

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Elena Linari

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Argentina

Lorena Benítez

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Vanina Correa

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Julieta Cruz

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Yamila Rodríguez

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Vanesa Santana

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Group H

Germany

Ann-Katrin Berger

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Sara Doorsoun

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Svenja Huth

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Lena Oberdorf

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Felicitas Rauch

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Lea Schüller

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Head Coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg

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Morocco

Rosella Ayane

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Colombia

Linda Caicedo

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Daniela Montoya

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Leicy Santos

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No gays we know (yet?): South Korea

The Soft Butch That Couldn’t (Or: I Got COVID-19 in March 2020 and Never Got Better)

Today is Long Covid Awareness Day. It’s also the three-year anniversary of the beginning of my own Long Covid journey, which still continues. This article was originally published in August 2020. 

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I was already in a hospital the first time I realized I needed a wheelchair. A sprawling full city-block of a hospital in midtown Manhattan with a lobby that looks strikingly similar to the cavernous Ministry of Magic atrium. My neurosurgeon had sent me in for an emergency MRI three months after I’d been diagnosed with COVID-19. Death or a two-week flu were the only options for people who contracted COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and I wasn’t dead so surely lingering coronavirus wasn’t the thing that was causing my body to go so berserk. Racing heart, palpitations, stroke-high blood pressure, chest pain, weak legs, fatigue that felt like my body was made of lead, nausea, loss of appetite, extreme weight loss, shortness of breath, brain fog that caused me to forget how to form sentences, bladder dysfunction, and creeping numbness and tingling in my feet and legs.

It was those last things that caused my neurosurgeon’s alarm. I have what’s called “remarkable” cervical stenosis. When my neurosurgeon first showed me my CT scan and diagnosed me last fall, I thought he meant it in a good way. Exceptional. Impressive. Miraculous. He did not. Remarkable, he explained, in the sense that I have the spine of a person who is 300 years old. And with such a spine, when you can’t remember the word “carrot” or how to turn on the oven, and your legs are tingling all the way up to your knees, there’s a chance your vertebrae are crushing your spinal cord en route to paralysis. It could happen over time, or it could happen right now.

As I stood swaying in the hospital lobby while the nurses and security guards debated what to do with me, I realized I should have taken my neurosurgeon up on his offer to send an ambulance to my house to get me. But I’d already racked up one ambulance ride when my feet initially lost their feeling. An Uber was faster and, frankly, less expensive.

The problem was I didn’t have a positive COVID test or a negative COVID test, because when I’d gotten sick over 90 days before, no testing was available in New York City, unless you were admitted to the hospital, and the telemedicine doctor told me not to go to the hospital unless I couldn’t finish my sentences or my lips were turning blue. But also I still had COVID symptoms. But also I wasn’t there to be treated for COVID symptoms. I was there because my neurosurgeon told me to meet him there. Did I belong in the COVID triage tent? Did I belong in the regular emergency room? Was I a danger to everyone in the lobby? Were they a danger to me? Who did I think I was, anyway, walking in off the street demanding an MRI in the middle of a global pandemic?

“I’m sorry, I hate to be dramatic,” I said, as I waited to see if they were going to let me into the hospital to find out if my spine was squashing the feeling out of my legs permanently, “but is there anywhere I could possibly maybe please sit down?”

There was not. The visitor chairs had been removed for social distancing. I glanced over at the security guard’s stool. “Don’t,” he said.

I decided my only hope was utilizing my gift for defusing tense situations with humor, so I decided to do a Ministry of Magic gag. “Broom Regulatory Control, level six” is what I meant to say, but I couldn’t remember the word “broom.” I started my joke; “broom” fell out of my head; I made the motion of sweeping, then stepping over the handle of a broom, then lifting up off the ground and whooshing around. I heard myself make a vrooooooom sound, like when an airplane spoon is heading toward a child’s mouth.

“Ma’am,” the security guard said, even more apprehensive than he had been, “Have you been drinking?”

I called my neurosurgeon and he sent an intern down to get me.

---

My COVID onset was pretty normal, in terms of what’s considered normal for a novel coronavirus that shuts down the entire world. I started displaying symptoms a week after New York City went into lockdown in March. Slight chills and a mild sore throat that progressed to chest congestion and tightness, a cough, and shortness of breath. I was really tired and I didn’t have much of an appetite. I got winded just walking down the hallway to the bathroom. Hot showers left me hacky-coughing for hours. It was terrifying — hospitals were overflowing; the only sound outside my bedroom window was the constant scream of ambulance sirens; the death toll skyrocketed every day; the Empire State Building was programmed to flash red like a beating heart as a showcase of solidarity with healthcare workers, but it looked like some kind of apocalyptic lighthouse — but after two weeks, my body started feeling better. Slowly, the band around my chest seemed to loosen, my cough eased up, my breath came back and I could walk down the stairs again.

I thought, “I survived! It really was, for me, just a bad flu!”

But I never got all the way better. At some point, I started to feel like I was relapsing — and then: new symptoms. The heart stuff and lung stuff and fatigue stuff that had me woozy-wobbling that night in the hospital waiting for my MRI, and a whole new kind of panic attack where the adrenaline that flooded my body was so extreme it caused tremors in my legs and arms that lasted for hours.

My startle reflex started operating in overdrive. If a loud noise woke me up in the middle of the night, I’d immediately burst into a panic attack. Nothing I did could get them under control. Not meditation, not medication, and exercise was out of the question — the only way I could get down the stairs at that point was to basically fling myself forward from the top and hope for the best.

The weakness seemed to settle into my bones.

I lay in bed, day after day, week after week, too tired to sit up for more than a few minutes. Stacy made my meals and brought them to me. Each time, I ate a few bites and had to lie back down to gather up enough energy to sit up and eat a few more. I tried to work, but couldn’t make it through a full day, and then couldn’t make it through a full morning. I asked for an extended leave of absence. I moved all of my toiletries from the bathroom to my nightstand. I could hardly manage a two-minute shower.

The telemedicine doctors all told me I’d be fine; of course the virus would knock me out for a couple of weeks, but I’d bounce back in no time. I explained it had actually been quite a lot longer than “no time” and they smiled and thanked me for calling. My primary care physician said it was anxiety. My psychiatrist said it was depression. New York City’s newly opened Longterm COVID Care Center told me I didn’t have antibodies so I hadn’t had COVID. And anyway, my bloodwork was excellent.

“Is it possible,” I asked the doctor, “that this antibody test might not be a foolproof way to determine who actually had COVID? And that you might not have all the answers for this brand new global pandemic-causing virus we find out something new about every day?”

“No,” she said. “Not possible.”

I needed a wheelchair to leave the Longterm COVID Care Center, but I was scared to ask for one. The doctor seemed to think I was overreacting about having a simple flu. I paused and leaned against walls to steady my legs and catch my breath instead. It took me 20 minutes to finally make it out of the building, and as I waited for my Uber, I sat down on the sticky summer sidewalk right in the middle of Union Square.

---

My neurosurgeon is renowned. In the good way; not in the way that “remarkable” means “yikes” in spinal vernacular. When his team arrived in the emergency room to handle my emergency MRI, everyone stopped treating me like a woman who’d stumbled in and mimed flying a magical broom around in the lobby and started treating me like a quadruple sapphire iridium medallion frequent flyer. Harried nurses who’d been grumbling about demanding doctors behind their backs for an hour were happy to volunteer when my neurosurgeon’s intern announced that he needed someone to help him check my anal tone. Doctors suddenly had time to come by and offer me a kind word. Nurses kept bringing me juice.

It was the most attention I’d had from medical professionals in months, despite having spoken to dozens of doctors about my COVID symptoms by then. I asked every nurse and doctor who came to look in on me if they knew anything about people suffering from COVID long term, about unusual symptoms, about the antibody tests. What I found out over the course of my night in the ER is that doctors and nurses still had no idea what COVID was about, but they all agreed it was weird and getting infected in mid-March at the onset of the outbreak meant that I was one of the first people in the U.S. to be dealing with LongCovid symptoms; I was the science.

My neurosurgeon likes me, as a person; I can tell because in my after-visit notes from the first time I saw him, he wrote that I was “bright and amiable” and transcribed what I told him when he asked if my neck cracked when I moved it: “like an undead lich rising from an ancient throne in his tomb in the empire of necromancers.” I’d been in bad shape on my initial visit for a pinched nerve; I’d lost 70% of the strength in my left arm, shoulder, and hand. He’d told me I could try physical therapy but that surgery was probably inevitable. I went so hard at PT that the next time I saw him and he gave me the strength test, I sent his wheely chair whizzing across the room and smashed him into the wall. I said, “Now, that’s remarkable!”

The emergency MRI showed that my spine was a little worse than last time, not by much. Surgery was not urgent. But my neurosurgeon was still worried about me. He said I seemed heavy, faint, deeply exhausted, muted. And there was still the matter of words slipping out of my brain, pins and needles in my jelly legs, a wildly overactive bladder. He had the ER doctors run a battery of other tests; all of them were clear.

I said, “Do you think all this could be COVID?”

He leaned back in his chair, pinched his eyebrow and said, “I don’t know. But you’re not yourself. So maybe.” He studied me for a long minute and decided: “Yes.”

---

I knew exactly who I was before I got COVID: a woman disposed to rise to every occasion. A bitch who gets stuff done. The person everyone relies on to do the thing no one else has the heart or guts or fortitude to do. A soft butch holding my family and friends and my whole little world together with nothing but love and tenacity.

I had huge plans when lockdown started. I was going to finish my book, remake our outdoor furniture, grow fruits and vegetables in my container garden, learn to cook Stacy’s favorite pie (strawberry-rhubarb), run a delivery service for my neighbors for prescriptions and groceries, and connect (and re-connect) with my dearest family and friends.

I didn’t get a chance to do any of those things.

Stacy took over doing all the laundry and dishes and vacuuming and toilet cleaning and shopping and cat feeding and grooming — my jobs, the things I love to do, the homemaking projects I’d longed to be in charge of my entire life, the caretaking tasks made my days feel full and valuable — while working day and night from her makeshift editing suite in the living room. The only thing I saw beyond my bedroom walls was the sky outside my window: grey then blue then purple and gold and cinnamon and orange then black then grey again.

Before COVID, my friends and I spent glorious weekends gathered around a table in my living room, sharing meals and wine and stories from our weeks and hours and hours playing Dungeons & Dragons. The real world so often tried to rob us of our power, but inside our D&D campaign we were unstoppable heroes. We saved towns. We slayed beasts. We made an entire queer universe of inside jokes. We moved our game online during lockdown and I told my friends maybe next week I could play, and maybe next week I would feel better, and maybe next week I’d be back to my old self. When I finally told them they should start a new Dungeons & Dragons game without me, that I wasn’t really getting better and I didn’t know when I would feel okay again, I laid in Stacy’s lap and sobbed with such fierce and broken hoarseness I didn’t even recognize the sounds as my own. I told my therapist, over Zoom, in my bed in my pajamas, that I’d only ever heard people cry like that at funerals before.

“I’m losing everything,” I told Stacy. “I’m losing me.”

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My neurosurgeon called me on a Saturday, out of the blue, two weeks after my MRI and said, almost giddily, that he’d asked all of his colleagues and finally found something he thought explained what was going on with me: dysautonomia. That same day, during a Q&A with my LongCovid support group, a different neurologist made the same guess. And so I made an appointment with a cardiologist who specializes in dysautonomia and dragged myself back into Manhattan to be disbelieved by another doctor. I dressed nicely. I had all my paperwork in order in a crisp manila folder. I typed out the main words that kept falling out of my head in the Notes app on my phone, just in case. I’d taken a series of videos on my phone of my heart rate and blood pressure using five different devices total, over the course of two weeks.

I started listing off my symptoms as soon as I sat down in the cardiologist’s office, and within 30 seconds, she held up her hand to stop me. Here we go, I thought. She wants a positive COVID swab or a positive antibody test or this is just anxiety or what happens after a cold and buck up and take a nap and you’ll be fine.

Instead, she said, “I know exactly what’s wrong with you.”

I blinked at her, stunned into total silence.

“You have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. POTS.”

POTS is, in fact, a form of dysautonomia. A person’s autonomic nervous system controls all the things we don’t think about, like heart rate, blood pressure, circulation, digestion, body temperature. When people with POTS sit up or stand up, our autonomic nervous systems can’t properly control our circulation, so all the blood rushes out of our heads and down our bodies, ultimately pooling in our feet. This, of course, makes us very dizzy, to the point of passing out, and also causes our hearts to start beating like mad and our blood pressure to go berserk to try to get our blood back up into our brains. It also causes big time spikes in adrenaline, because our fight or flight systems are almost always activated. Our hearts are often in the cardio zone all day long, and so of course we’re exhausted.

POTS can be caused by many things, one of which is a viral infection. I was this specialist’s first post-COVID case; she said maybe I was the first diagnosed post-COVID POTS case in the entire city of New York.

I jumped up when she diagnosed me; nearly passed out; sat back down, hard; and started to cry so hard my tears soaked through my face mask.

“It’s called an ‘invisible illness,” the cardiologist explained, “because you look fine and your tests and lab work also look completely normal. But it affects every single system in your body. And you feel absolutely miserable. Doctors almost always write it off as depression or anxiety.”

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Every morning now when I wake up, I sit up slowly in bed and lean back against my headboard. I drink a full liter of water, eat some salted almonds, put on my compression socks for the day, and take a beta blocker for my heart and an SNRI to keep my adrenaline more in check. After 30 minutes, when my body has adjusted to sitting up, I can stand.

Downstairs, I make the first of three Liquid IV drinks of my day and eat a small breakfast. I drink four liters of water, total, and take more SNRIs and beta blockers as the day progresses. I sit on a stool when I take a shower. I sit down at a little portable table to do all the vegetable chopping and potato peeling for our meals. I wrap an ice scarf around me and sit down near the oven to cook. I use my office chair to wheel around the kitchen when I’m putting away groceries or dishes. I use a cane when I leave the house, which I only do for doctors appointments; it folds out into a stool so I don’t have to sit on the ground.

My cardiologist asked me on my second visit how I was adjusting, emotionally, to having a disability.

I said, “Do I have a disability?”

She said, “Well, yes. I thought you knew.”

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Before I left for my most recent trip to the hospital, Stacy checked my backpack to make sure I had everything I needed. She tucked my facemask straps behind my ears, and kissed me on the forehead. “If they don’t have your wheelchair ready when you get there, ask for it,” she said. “Okay?”

I said, “I will, I promise,” and smiled with my eyes so she could see it.

Stacy is scared to be overbearing, because I’ve always hated being told what to do. She’s scared to be underbearing, because my brain fog has made my cognitive functioning less sharp, especially in the morning and at night. She’s scared I’ll do too much, because I’ve always done too much my entire life, that I won’t listen to my body, that I don’t even know how to listen to my body. She’s scared I’ll begin to feel angry at her for what she can do that I can no longer do, that becoming a caretaker to me when I’ve always been a caretaker to everyone else will create an emotional wound that will grow and fester.

She watches me open my pillbox first thing in the morning and slowly work out what I need to take right then and what I need to save for later; she asks if I need a hand; she pretends not to notice that I clench my jaw against her offer and the knowledge that, actually, yes, I could use some help. She leaves my bike, my most prized possession and my lifetime beloved hobby, untouched in the living room on its stand, because maybe one day I’ll be able to ride it again.

I’m scared too. Overachieving isn’t something I do; it’s always been who I am. Now that my sympathetic nervous system is misfiring in a way that makes simply getting through the day out of bed an achievement, there’s no energy left to overdo anything.

What will happen to my career now that I can’t show up early and stay late to help our community survive? What will happen to mine and Stacy’s lease now that I can’t keep my landlord extra happy by doing all the yard work and fixing all the leaky, crumbly, broken things in our house? What will happen to my friendships if I never have the energy or brainpower to sit at a table for five hours and roleplay zombie battles and villager rescues again? What will happen to my relationships with my family when talking on the phone wears me out, and I don’t know how to answer the question about if I’m feeling better? How is it possible that Stacy won’t grow to resent me when I can’t even walk two blocks to pick up my own prescriptions, when my newly diagnosed illness is already eating into our savings, when I can’t stand in the hot kitchen long enough to make our favorite soup, when I can’t even really carry on a conversation at night because my brain and body are so spent?

What if I’m not disabled enough to use the word “disabled?” I’m a person with a huge platform; what if I talk about disability in the wrong way, or miss the mark on my advocacy because it’s (shamefully, mostly) new to me? What if I hurt people who are already hurting with my naïveté, or accidentally dishonor the work of the queer disabled activists who came before me, some of whom I love and cherish as dear friends? What if I can’t find the balance between hope and acceptance? What if I become one of the 30% of POTS patients who are too disabled to work at all?

Is a soft butch a soft butch if she can barely hold even herself together? Is a soft butch a soft butch without her swagger?

Yesterday, I called Stacy on a banana-phone; walked from the kitchen into the living room where her office is set up and ring-ring, ring-ring-ed. She looked up from her computer monitor and saw me holding a banana to my ear and quirked her eyebrow. “Hi yes,” I said, “This is the last banana and I was wondering if you were planning to go to the store for more bananas in the next few days and so I can go ahead and use this in my smoothie or should I save it for a banana emergency?” She wanted to be annoyed with me because I was interrupting her workday and she was on a deadline. She wanted to be miffed because I’d pulled her out of her creative flow. But her mouth twitched into a smile because I was asking her for something I needed and could not do for myself, and I was being ridiculous, and it’d been so long since I’d been ridiculous. She said she’d run out to the grocery store tomorrow. I thanked her for her time, hung up the banana-phone, and turned it into a microphone to interview our cat Socks about the rumors that he’s a marshmallow head.

I’m scared, but I’m alive.

I’m scared, but I’m not broken.

In LongCovid support groups, we say our name and where we’re from and how long we’ve been sick. I’m Heather Hogan from New York City. Week 19/Day 133.

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Week 156/Day 1,095 Update: You can buy a copy of The Long Covid Survival Guide, which I contributed to, if you’re looking for a good resource to help yourself or a friend/family member suffering with Long Covid. It might also make you happy to know that while I am still fighting Long Covid, I was finally able to get back on my bike! 

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Race and Appropriation at the Academy Awards: A 95 Year History

In 2016, inspired by the #OscarsSoWhite conversation and other conversations about racial diversity at the Oscars that started around it, I volunteered to write a post listing all the white actors who had been nominated for Oscars for playing people of color.  As I did the research for that post, however, a few other things came up that I wanted to look into, and thus this project quickly evolved into something more.

Firstly, I wanted to add milestones to the timeline about when actual people of color were nominated for Oscars, but what I was learning in order to pinpoint these milestones was so interesting that I started looking further. Before long, I’d created an extensive spreadsheet situation holding a wealth of data I’ve only just begun to analyze.

Secondly, throughout my research I grew increasingly interested in other ways white people have acquired Oscars on the backs of people of color or otherwise refused to cede the floor, like through white savior narratives. I noticed alarming patterns like the Academy’s habit of nominating films with majority-Asian casts for Best Picture and not a single acting nomination.

Now, it has become an annual ritual to assess and update this post after each subsequent Oscars ceremony. Let’s get into it.

This post was most recently updated in March 2023.

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East, Southeast and South Asian Actors

2023 was a huge year for Asian actors — Everything Everywhere All At Once earned more acting nominations and wins than any previous film with a majority-Asian cast and became the first to win multiple Acting Awards as well as Best Picture. Also, Hong Chau was nominated for her role in The Whale. Previously, biggest gains in this category happened in 2021, when Youn Yuh-jung and Steven Yeun were both nominated for Minari, and Youn won, making her the first Korean actor to win an Academy Award.

Patterns throughout history: many of the actors are white-passing and/or play white roles, a lot of Ben Kingsley, and a lot of movies about war. I also found a troubling trend in Best Picture nominees: films with majority-Asian casts that were nominated for Best Picture failed to garner any acting nominations. This happened again in 2020 when Parasite was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Best Production Design and Best Editing — without a single solitary nomination for Acting. There have been major snubs in recent years, includingThe Handmaiden, Crazy Rich Asians,The Farewell, Coming Home, Burning, The Grandmaster, Court, The Big Sick, Downsizing, A Taxi Driver and Decision to Leave.

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Latinx and Latin American Actors

There were no stand-out patterns amongst performances that garnered nominations for Latinx actors, aside from the fact that a lot of them were playing white/anglo characters. Four nominations come from Alejandro González Iñárritu movies. The only updates required for this infographic since 2016 were to account for two actresses nominated for Roma, Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira; and for Ariana DeBose’s 2022 win for West Side Story (which made her the first openly queer woman of color to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting.) Aparicio, who is of Mixtec and Trique descent, is also the first Indigenous American woman to receive a nomination for Best Actress. Snubs in recent years include actors in Knives Out, Hustlers and Beatriz at Dinner.

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Black Actors

Quite a few Black actors and actresses have been nominated for Academy Awards, but it’s still pretty paltry, especially when so many films featuring black actors are snubbed year after year. As discussed in What Does The Academy Value in a Black Performance?, there are certain themes that emerge when looking at what the films earning nominations were about: celebrities (e.g., Ray Charles, Muhammad Ali, Tina Turner, Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey), criminal behavior and incarceration, slavery, black people working for or taking care of white people and narratives centered on white saviors and/or white sidekicks. Also, a lot of Martin Ritt and Stanley Kramer movies.

This was the area that required the most updates from 2016 to 2023 — 25 Black actors were nominated for Academy Awards in the last six years, and several won. Films written and directed by Black people like Mudbound, Judas and the Black Messiah, Get Out, Black Panther, Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night in Miami and BlacKkKlansman  received nominations in various categories. Still, major snubs abounded in the 2020s: Lupita Nyong’o for Us, Eddie Murphy for Dolemite is My Name, Jennifer Hudson for Respect, Viola Davis for The Woman King and Danielle Deadwyler for Till, among others. In 2023, Jordan Peele’s Nope was shut out altogether and at the ceremony, Angela Bassett was amongst three women of color passed over for the Supporting Actress win.

The Lead Actress category continues to offer Black women nominations but never a win.

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North African and Middle Eastern Actors

North African and Middle Eastern Acting Nominees are few and far between. There are four who have been nominated (included in the timeline below): Omar Sharif in 1962 and Shohreh Aghdashloo in 2003. In 2019, Rami Malek became the first actor of Egyptian heritage to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Bohemian Rhapsody. In the 2021 ceremony, British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed was nominated for Best Actor for Sound of Metal. The lack of representation in this area is especially egregious considering the accolades heaped upon multiple all-white editions of Cleopatra and the fact that a lot of Academy Award winning films are set in the Middle East.  (Here’s a great article about typecasting of Muslim-American actors specifically: You May Know Me From Such Roles as Terrorist #4.)

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Native American / Indigenous / First Nation Actors

Only four Native American / Indigenous / First Nation actors have been nominated for Academy Awards, which is particularly shameful when you consider Hollywood’s rich legacy of redface and the number of films about Native Americans that have garnered awards for white people, such as Dances With Wolves, The Lone Ranger, The Last of the Mohicans, Broken Arrow, Pocahontas, The Revenant and Stagecoach. In 2019, Yalitza Aparicio became the first Indigenous and second Mexican woman nominated for a Best Actress award.

Actress Keisha Castle-Hughes is the only Pacific Islander nominated for an Academy Award I could find — for the really kickass movie Whale Rider.

Some sources count Russell Crowe, nominated for Gladiator, because he has a Māori great grandmother.

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Racism at the Academy Awards: A Timeline

Now, let’s get into the timeline, which I hope will give a good overview of how the Academy has handled race and how white people are often more celebrated for stories about people of color than the people of color themselves. Feel free to add more conversation in the comments!

1928

White actor Warner Baxter wins Best Actor for his portrayal of Mexican character The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona.

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1930

White actor George Arliss wins Best Actor for playing South Asian character The Raja in The Green Goddess.

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1932

Shanghai Express, nominated for Best Picture, features Marlene Dietrich as a courtesan named Shanghai Lily and Swedish actor Warner Oland playing an ostensibly East Asian character Henry Chang. Oland, who was Swedish, had great success playing Asian characters throughout his career, including 16 films in which he played Chinese detective “Charlie Chan.” Chinese-American actress Anna Mae Wong played Hui Fei, one of her few leading roles. Despite taking place in China, very few Chinese actors appeared in the film.

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1934

Cleopatra, an Egyptian queen of North African and Greek heritage, is pretty much always played by white actresses, like Claudette Colbert did in this version. It was nominated for Best Picture.

Also in 1934, The Hays Code, which strongly recommended against onscreen depictions of relationships between white people and black people, went into effect and lasted into the ’50s.

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1935

First Asian-American Nominated For an Academy Award for Acting: Merle Oberon becomes the first Asian actor nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel.  She is also the first Asian actress nominated for Best Lead Actress. However, Oberon claimed to be white throughout her career and passed as white. Merle was born in Bombay and raised by a part-Sinhalese and possibly part-Maori mother. The intricacies of Merle’s background and family situation are reported differently by every source I have consulted, and much of it remains muddled, although all agree that Merle’s actual mother was the woman she believed to be her half-sister, who had birthed Merle following a sexual assault at the age of 12.

Oberon didn’t reveal her Indian heritage until 1978, a year before her death.

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1936

Russian-born Armenian actor Akim Tamiroff is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Chinese warlord General Yang in The General Died at Dawn. According to Wikipedia, “makeup artist Charles Gemora applied sponge rubber eyelids for one of the actors.”

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1937

White actress Louise Rainer wins Best Actress for playing Chinese servant O-Lan in the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s novel The Good Earth. The Good Earth was also nominated for Best Picture. Every main character in the cast was played by a white actor in heavy prosthetics and makeup.

White actor H.B Warner is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Chinese character Chang in Lost Horizon.

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1939

First Black Actor and First Black Woman to be Nominated for or to Win an Academy Award for Acting, First Person of Color to Win An Academy Award For Acting: Black Actress Hattie McDaniel becomes the first black actor to be nominated for and to win an acting Academy Award for playing Mammy, the house slave of Scarlett O’Hara’s family, in Gone With The Wind. She and her escort were made to sit at a segregated table for two in the back at the Ambassador Hotel during the Oscars ceremony and she was prohibited from entering the after-party attended by her cast mates.

It would be 50 years before another Black woman would win an Academy Award for Acting.

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1943

Two white actors, Armenian actor Akim Tamiroff and Greek actress Katina Paxinou, both get Supporting Actor/Actress nominations for playing Pablo and Pilar in For Whom The Bell Tolls. The characters were of Spanish descent and therefore not necessarily dark-skinned, but the filmmakers went all-out with the bronzer regardless.

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1944

White actress Aline MacMahon gets a Best Supporting Actress Nomination for playing Chinese character “Ling Tan’s Wife” in Dragon Seed. Her daughter was played by Katherine Hepburn in one of the most egregious examples of yellowface ever.

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1946

White actress Jennifer Jones is a Best Actress Nominee for playing Mestiza character Pearl Chavez in Duel in the Sun.

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1946

White actress Gale Sondergaard is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Siamese character Lady Thiang in Anna and the King of Siam. White actors Rex Harrison and Linda Darnell also played Siamese characters in the film. (Siam is now known as Thailand.)

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1947

First Hispanic Person Nominated For an Academy Award for Acting: Thomas Gomez is nominated as Best Supporting Actor for playing Pancho in Ride the Pink Horse. The white lead character befriends Pancho and is rewarded with Pancho’s loyalty and devotion. White actress Wanda Hendrix played Mexican-American character Pila.

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1949

White actress Jeanne Crain is nominated for a Best Actress for playing half African-American woman Pinky Johnson in Pinky. In the film, the grandmother who raised Pinky, an illiterate black laundress, is played by Ethel Waters, who was also nominated for an Academy Award. Black actresses Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge were interested in the role of Pinky, but were turned down in favor of Jeanne Crain. A fight over the censorship of this film by racist assholes in Texas went all the way to the Supreme Court.

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1950

White actor Jeff Chandler is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise in Broken Arrow. White actress Debra Paget also played a Native American role in the film. Canadian First Nations actor Jay Silverheels was cast as Geronimo. Silverheels later went on to an iconic television role as Tonto, the faithful companion to The Lone Ranger.

First Latino Person To Win An Academy Award for Acting: José Ferrer became the first Puerto Rican nominated for Best Supporting Actor when he got a nod in 1948 for playing the King of France in Joan of Arc, but he makes history again in 1950 when he wins Best Actor for playing another French character, Cyrano de Bergerac. He’d later be nominated for playing the French poet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rogue. He was the first Latino actor to be nominated more than once for an Academy Award.

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1952

Marlon Brando is nominated for Best Actor for his role as Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! A blog I stumbled across while looking for images managed to encapsulate everything wrong with this type of casting when they wrote, “The black and white cinematography (and that glorious mustache) help make [Brando] look more like a Mexican, but it’s his acting deserves the credit for making his performance so believable. It’s not just that he is convincing in the role, he was even nominated for Best Actor, meaning that his performance as a Mexican was one of the best of the year.”

First Mexican Person To Win an Academy Award for Acting, First Latino Person To Win For Playing a Latino Character: Mexican-Irish actor Anthony Quinn was a three-time Oscar nominee; in 1957 for Wild Is the Wind (he played an Italian character), in 1964 for Zorba the Greek (he played a Greek character) and — the time he won — for “Viva Zapata! in 1952. This would be the first time a Latino actor would win an Academy Award for playing a Latino character. Most of the film’s other main characters were played by white actors — in fact, Pancho Villa was played by the same guy who voices Fred Flintstone.

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1954

First Mexican Woman To Be Nominated For An Academy Award for Acting: Mexican-American actress Katy Jurado was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing American Indian character Señora Devereaux in Broken Lace, the Comanche wife of Spencer Tracy’s character, Matt Devereaux. Her character is called “Señora” because, as her son tells his girlfriend, “people in town like to pretend she’s Spanish, figure it looks better.” The film is mostly centered on how racism against American Indians impacts her half-white son and white husband.

First Black Person Nominated For Lead Actress: Dorothy Dandridge is nominated for her role as Carmen Jones in Carmen Jones. 

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1955

White actress Jennifer Jones is nominated for Best Actress for playing Chinese doctor Dr. Han Suyin in Love is a Many Splendored Thing.

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1956

The Ten Commandments, a film based on a Biblical story where characters of Middle Eastern descent were played by white actors, wins Best Picture. 

Also in 1956, the legendary Russian actor Yul Brynnr earns a Best Actor Academy Award for playing King Mongkut of Siam (Siam is now known as Thailand) in The King and I, a role he played on Broadway and on screen and was very well known for.

Brynner also portrayed Egyptian character Rameses II in The Ten Commandments.

But here’s a twist: Brynner claimed to be of part-Mongol parentage, but this probably wasn’t altogether true. Sources are conflicting on this matter, but it’s pretty intriguing, as Brynnr is one of only two actors listed on Wikipedia as an Asian Best Lead Actor nominee. (The other is Ben Kingsley, who is half-Indian.)

Sometimes Brynner said he was half-Japanese and half-Swiss. He consistently claimed that he was born “Taidje Khan” on a Russian island, which wasn’t true. In truth, he was born in the Far Eastern Republic of Russia, moved to China when he was 6, and Paris shortly thereafter. His father was Swiss/German/Russian and his mother was Russian. His paternal grandmother was said to maybe be of part Mongolian/Buryat ancestry.

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1957

First Openly Asian-American Woman To Win An Academy Award for Acting, First Japanese-American Woman Nominated for an Academy Award for Acting: Japanese-American actress Miyoshi Umeki wns Best Actress for playing Katsumi, the wife of an American Airman, in Sayonara. The movie’s plot centered around two white soldiers who fell in love with Japanese women and are ostracized because of it it.

First Japanese-American man nominated for an Academy Award for Acting: Sessue Hayakawa, considered “the first Asian-American leading man,” is nominated for his role as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai.

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1958

First Black man nominated for an Academy Award for Acting: Sidney Poitier receives his first of three nominations for playing Noah Cullen, a black prisoner shackled to a white prisoner (played by Tony Curtis). The two escape prison when a truck crashes in The Defiant Ones and are forced to overcome their differences and work together to survive.

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1959

White actor Hugh Griffith wins Best Supporting Actor for playing Middle Eastern character Sheik Ilderim in Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur also wins Best Picture.

Susan Kohner, a Czech-Mexican actress, is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing a white-passing African-American woman in the wildly successful film Imitation of Life. Black actress Juanita Moore is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing the single mother Sarah Jane rejects in order to pass as white.

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1961

White actor George Chakiris wins Best Supporting Actor for playing Puerto Rican gang member Bernardo Nuñez in West Side Story. Natalie Wood, a white actress, plays the Puerto Rican female lead in West Side Story, which also won Best Picture.

First Puerto Rican and first Latina Woman to Win an Academy Award for Acting for playing a Latina character: Rita Moreno wins Best Supporting Actress for playing Anita in West Side Story.

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1962

White actor Alec Guinness gets a Best Actor Nomination for playing the Middle Eastern Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence of Arabia also wins Best Picture.

Omar Sharif becomes the first Egyptian and the first North African actor nominated for an Oscar with a Best Supporting Actor nod for Lawrence of Arabia.

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1963

White actress Patricia Neal wins Best Actress for playing Alma in Hud. In the original novel, Alma’s character was a black housekeeper named “Halema,” but the director changed the character to be white because they didn’t think the film would sell with a Black actress at the helm.

Another whitewashed remake of Cleopatra, this one starring Liz Taylor, wins Best Picture in 1963.

Sidney Poitier becomes the first black actor to win a Lead Acting Oscar for his performance in Lilies in the Field, where he plays a handyman who helps a bunch of nuns build a church.

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1965

White actor Laurence Olivier is nominated for Best Actor for playing Othello in Othello. Othello was described as “Moorish,” a term used at the time of the play’s writing to describe a wide array of darker-skinned people. This is just ridiculous:

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1967

Black actress Beah Richards is nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing Mrs. Prentice in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, the mother of a black doctor played by Sidney Poitier whose white fiancé’s parents are not excited about the possibility of their daughter marrying a black person.

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1970

First Native American Nominated for an Academy Award for Acting: Chief Dan George becomes the first Native American nominated for an Academy Award when he’s up for Best Supporting Actor for playing Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man. Little Big Man is the story of Jack, a white boy raised by the compassionate Old Lodge Skins in his Cheyenne village after Jack’s parents are massacred by Pawnees. Prior to giving the role to George, it was offered to Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield and Laurence Olivier. All the extras were played by American Indians, however.

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1971

Cherokee/Irish actor Ben Johnson wins Best Supporting Actor for playing a white pool hall owner in The Last Picture Show.

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1972

Marlon Brando boycotts the Academy Awards ceremony to protest the treatment of Native Americans by the film industry, and sends Apache-Yaqui-Pueblo-French-German-Dutch actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept his award for Best Actor for The Godfather. Brando had written a 15-page speech inspired by the Wounded Knee Siege but the producer only gives Littlefeather 60 seconds, so she improvises and reads the rest backstage. The Academy forbids proxy acceptance going forward. This remains the only time a Native American woman has given an Oscar acceptance speech, although technically the Oscar was declined.

First film with African-American nominees for Best Actress and Best Actor: Black actor Paul Wildfield is nominated for Best Actor and Cicely Tyson for Best Actress for Sounder, about a sharecropping family in Louisiana whose father is sent to prison camp for a petty crime. It was well-reviewed, and according to Wikipedia “was praised as a welcome antidote to the contemporaneous wave of black films, most of which were considered low quality, low budget and exploitative. The film’s depiction of a loving family was hailed as a banner accomplishment for black filmmakers and audiences.”

Diana Ross is nominated for Best Actress for playing Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. This was the first time more than one black actress was nominated for Best Actress in the same year.

They lost to Liza Minelli for Cabaret.

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Between 1975 and 1980, no actors of color are nominated for Oscars.

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1981

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is nominated for Best Picture. It includes a Welsh actor, John Rhys-Davies, playing an Arab-Egyptian character named Sallah Mohammed Faisel el-Kahir.

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1982

Linda Hunt wins Best Supporting Actress for playing an Chinese-Australian person with dwarfism named Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously. Yup.

Ben Kingsley wins a Best Actor statue for starring in Gandhi, which also wins Best Picture. In doing so, he becomes the first East, Southeast or South Asian actor to win an Academy Award for Lead Actor. Kingsley’s mother is British and his father is Indian, and his skin was darkened to play the role.

Louis Gossett, Jr, is the first black man to win Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing a Naval Officer Trainer in An Officer and a Gentleman.

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1984

This was a big year for movies that weren’t (just) about white people: Best Picture nominees included A Soldier’s Story, with a mostly-black cast set in Louisiana near the end of World War II; The Killing Fields, set in Democratic Kampuchea during Vietnam with a Cambodian actor, Haing S. Ngor, winning Best Supporting Actor; and A Passage to India, set in India during the British Raj. Although only white actors were nominated for A Passage to India, three actors of color were nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1984. Japanese-American actor Pat Morita was nominated for playing Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid.

Between Haing S. Ngor’s win in 1984 and Youn Yuh-jung’s in 2021; no East, Southeast or South Asian actors would win an Oscar.

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1985

The Color Purple is nominated for 11 awards, including Best Picture and acting nods for black actresses Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery. It does not win in any category.

Kiss of the Spider Woman, a book adaptation from Brazilian director Héctor Eduardo Babenco, is nominated for Best Picture, and white actor William Hurt wins a Best Actor Oscar for playing a gay Latino character named Luis Molina. Molina is in a Brazilian prison with leftist revolutionary Valentin Arregui, played by Puerto Rican actor Raúl Juliá. 

But Best Picture and a bunch of other awards went to Out of Africa, an intensely problematic colonialist fantasy that has since inspired many themed weddings and a Taylor Swift music video.

In fact, despite the many people of color represented in top feature film categories that year, all the winners were white.

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1987

The Last Emperor, produced by Jeremy Thomas, wins Best Picture without acquiring a single acting award nomination, one of 11 films in Oscar History to do so. It also becomes one of the most nominated films of all time. All in all, The Last Emperor wins 9 Oscars, representing 15 different human beings, 13 of whom were white. (The two non-white winners were Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and Chinese composter Cong Su.)

At this point in Oscar history we start seeing a lot less white people playing people of color and a lot more white people telling stories about people of color that are centered on white people or include white savior elements.

Cry Freedom, a standby on the white savior list, earns Denzel Washington his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.

Morgan Freeman is also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing a pimp named “Fast Black” in Street Smart.

Argentinian actress Norma Aleandro is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing a Mexican character, Florencia Sánchez Morales, in Gaby: A True Story.

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1988

White actors Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand are nominated for Acting Oscars for Mississippi Burning, a white savior narrative which sees two FBI agents investigating the murder of a black Civil Rights Organizer in the south. Director Alan Parker said of the choice to center the story on white people, “The two heroes in the story had to be white. That is a reflection of our society as much as of the film industry. At this point in time, it could not have been made in any other way.”

Mexican-American actor Edward James Olmos is nominated for Best Actor for playing math teacher Jamie Escalante in Stand and Deliver. 

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1989

Denzel Washington wins an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Glory, playing an escaped slave who joins a platoon during the Civil War. It’s a good movie but like many of Ed Zwick’s flicks, there’s some serious white savior narratives going on.

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1990

Dances With Wolves, the epitome of a white savior narrative, wins Best Picture. Canadian First Nations actor Graham Greene is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role and many other Native actors appeared in the film. White actors Kevin Costner and Mary McDonnell also earn nominations, and Kevin Costner wins for Best Director.

Whoopi Goldberg wins Best Supporting Actress for playing Oda Mae Brown in Ghost, a con artist posing as a medium who helps Patrick Swayze’s ghost communicate with his wife.

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1992 – 1994

Over this span of time six black actors, one Puerto Rican actress (Rosie Perez, Fearless) and one Chinese-Canadian actress (Jennifer Tilly, Bullets Over Broadway) are nominated for Academy Awards for acting in films including Shawshank Redemption, Malcom X, What’s Love Got To Do With It, The Crying Game and Pulp Fiction. All acting winners for all three years are white. No actors of color were nominated in 1995 or 1997.

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1996

Cuba Gooding Jr. triumphantly wins Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire, a rare case of a black actor nominated or winning for a comedic role. (Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost might be the other best example of this.)

Black British actress Marianne Jean-Baptise is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Secrets & Lies, the first Black British actress to get a nomination.

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2000

The Green Mile, a film described by AlterNet as “so racist because its storyline is one of the most unbelievable in Hollywood history. It is only believable through the illogic of racist ideas,” is nominated for Best Picture. Black actor Michael Clarke Duncan is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing John Coffey, a character Alternet describes as a “picture perfect rendition of racists beloved archetypal ‘Magic Negro.'”

Denzel Washington is also nominated for Best Actor for playing boxer Rubin Cartner in the The Hurricaine. All acting winners are white.

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2001

Benicio del Toro wins Best Supporting Actor for Traffic. 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is nominated for Best Picture and nine other Academy Awards. Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee wins Best Director, but no actors from the film are nominated for Academy Awards.

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2002

First Black Woman to Win Lead Actress Oscar: Halle Berry wins Best Actress for Monster’s Ball!  

First Black Actor to Win an Oscar for a Movie Directed By A Black Person: Denzel Washington wins Best Actor for Training Day (beating Will Smith, nominated for Ali).

White actress Jennifer Connelly wins Best Supporting Actress for playing El Salvadorian Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind.

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2003

Queen Latifah is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Best Picture winner Chicago.

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2004

First Pacific Islander Nominated for an Acting Award: Australian-Māori actress Keisha Castle-Hughes becomes the first Pacific Islander nominated for an Academy Award for Acting when she is nominated for her performance in Whale Rider, as a 12-year-old Māori girl who wants to be chief of her tribe. This also makes her the youngest Academy Award nominee for Lead Actress.

First Middle Eastern Actress Nominated for an Academy Award for Acting: Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo is nominated for playing Nadereh “Nadi” Behrani in The House of Sand and Fog.

Black actor Djimon Hounsou is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for In America. He is the first black actor born in Africa to be nominated.

Benecio Del Toro is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for 21 Grams.

Japanese actor Ken Watanabe is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Lord Katsumoto in The Last Samurai. It’s another film from Glory‘s Ed Zwick, with similar white savior overtones (white army official personally embodies an effort to liberate people of color).  Tom Cruise, despite not being the Last Samurai referenced in the title, was made to seem that way on the movie poster, to much confusion.

All acting winners are white.

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2005

Six actors of color are nominated in 2004. Morgan Freeman wins Best Supporting Actor for Million Dollar Baby and Jamie Foxx is nominated twice — Supporting for Collateral, and Best Actor for Ray, which he wins. AND Don Cheadle is nominated for Best Actor for Hotel Rwanda! AND AND AND Sophie Okonedo is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Hotel Rwanda! Also, Catalina Sandino Moreno is the first Colombian actress nominated for an oscar when she gets a Best Actress nod for Maria Full of Grace.

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2006

Black actor Terrence Howard is nominated for Best Actor for Hustle & Flow.

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2007

Six actors of color are nominated in 2006.

Forest Whittaker wins Best Actor for Last King of Scotland, Jennifer Hudson wins Supporting Actress for Dreamgirls, Will Smith is nominated for Best Actor for The Pursuit of Happyness and Eddie Murphy for Best Supporting for Dreamgirls.

Mexican actress Adriana Barraza and Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi are nominated for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel.

White director Paul Greengrass is nominated for United 23, which features British-Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla.

Letters From Iwo Jima, a Japanese-American film based on a book by Tadamichi Kuribayashi, is nominated for Best Picture and its director, Clint Eastwood, is nominated for Best Director. The film was produced by Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, and Steven Spielberg, with an Oscar-nominated Screenplay by Japanese-American screenwriter Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis. The majority of the film’s cast are Japanese characters played by Japanese actors, including Ken Watanabe. No actors are nominated for Academy Awards for Letters From Iwo Jima.

Leonardo DiCaprio is nominated for Best Actor in Blood Diamond, a white savior narrative in which he plays a racist white mercenary who rescues a Sierra Leonese prisoner and his son from revolting rebels. As written in a review of the film in The Age, “If there is anything black people the world over have learned from Hollywood – and there isn’t a whole lot – it’s that no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely on some resourceful, charismatic white person to bail them out.” Black actor Djimon Hounsou, who played the prisoner befriended by DiCaprio, is also nominated for an Oscar.

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2008

Black actress Ruby Dee is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing the mother of an up-and-coming crime lord in American Gangster.

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2009

Taraji P. Henson is nominated for Supporting Actress for playing Queenie, Benjamin Button’s caretaker in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Viola Davis is nominated for playing Mrs. Miller in Doubt.

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2010

Sandra Bullock wins Best Actress for The Blind Side, another pitch-perfect example of a white savior narrative. Her character is a white mother and football fan who takes in and raises black future Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Micheal Oher. The Blind Side is also nominated for Best Picture.

Also nominated for Best Picture in 2009 is Avatar, which embodies every white savior narrative ever. In i09, Annalee Newitz writes that Avatar “is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare.”

Mo’Nique wins Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing Precious’s abusive mother in Precious, for which Gabourey Sidibe is also nominated but loses (to Sandra Bullock). Morgan Freeman gets a Best Actor nod for playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus.

Slumdog Millionaire, a British film shot in India with a majority Indian cast, wins Best Picture! It is one of 11 films to win Best Picture without acquiring any acting nominations.

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2011

Pilipina-Jewish actress Hailee Steinfeld is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for True Grit.

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2012

The Help, another white savior story, is nominated for Best Picture. Black actress Octavia Spencer wins Best Supporting Actress for playing outspoken maid Minny Jackson.

Viola Davis is nominated for Best Actress for playing maid Aibileen Clark. In The New York Times’ recent analysis of which black characters earn Oscar nominations, it is noted that “in the history of the Oscars, 10 black women have been nominated for best actress, and nine of them played characters who are homeless or might soon become so. (The exception is Viola Davis, for the 2011 drama “The Help.”)”

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2013

White actor Ben Affleck plays Hispanic CIA Agent Tony Mendez in Argo, which inexplicably wins Best Picture.  

White director Quentin Tarantino and white actor Christopher Waltz win Oscars for Django Unchained, the story of a white bounty hunter and the slave he freed, Django, who set out to free Django’s wife from a sadistic plantation owner. No black actors are nominated.

Black actress Quvenzhané Wallis becomes the youngest actress nominated for a Lead Actor Oscar for Beasts of the Southern Wild. Denzel Washington is nominated for Best Actor for Flight, but loses to Daniel Day-Lewis‘s Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln.

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is nominated for Best Picture. Although it has a notably small cast (mostly just um, a boy and his tiger), this is now the fifth time a movie with a majority-Asian cast was nominated for Best Picture but not any acting awards.

All acting winners are white.

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2014

12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Director Steve McQueen becomes the first black director to have their movie win Best Picture.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is nominated for Best Actor for playing Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave and Lupita Nyong’o wins for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film. Barkhad Abdi is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing a Somali pirate in Captain Phillips. Also, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón wins for Best Director for Gravity, a movie about a white woman lost in outer space.

No black actors have been nominated since this year.

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2015

Selma receives a Best Picture nominee but nobody in the majority-black cast receives an acting nomination, nor does their black female director Ava DuVernay. In fact, no actors of color are nominated in 2014.

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2016

In Best Picture Nominee The Martian, white actress Mackenzie Davis plays Mission Control satellite planner Mindy Park, who was Korean-American in the novel upon which the movie is based.

The #OscarsSoWhite campaign begins in reaction to the complete exclusion of people of color from Oscar nominations.

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2017

The Oscars take a giant leap forward when Moonlight becomes the first film with an all-black cast and the first LGBT-themed film to win Best Picture. Black actor Mahershala Ali becomes the first Muslim actor to win an Academy Award when he takes Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight.

Viola Davis wins Best Supporting Actress for Fences, making her the first black person to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting with her Oscar, Emmy and Tony wins. In all, seven people of color (six Black actors and one Indian actor) are nominated for acting awards.

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2018

Get Out is nominated in four categories — Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, with Jordan Peele winning for Best Screenplay and becoming the first black director to earn three nominations. Denzel Washington is nominated for Roman J. Israel, Esq, Mary J Blige for Mudbound and Octavia Spencer for The Shape of Water. Mudbound‘s Black lesbian writer/director Dee Rees is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, but snubbed for Best Director or Best Picture. Coco, which had a Latinx cast, wins Best Animated Film. No Latinx or Asian actors received nominations.

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2019

Green Book, which Wesley Morris describes as being part of “a style of American storytelling in which the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment, in which prolonged exposure to the black half of the duo enhances the humanity of his white, frequently racist counterpart,” wins Best Picture. Thwarted nominees include Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Black Panther.

Mahershala Ali wins for playing Don Shirley, whose family reports they were left out of the filmmaking process (headed up by a white director and producer). Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón‘s Roma is the first Mexican submission to win Best Foreign Language Film, and Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio, who is of Mixtec and Trique descent, is the first Indigenous American woman to receive a nomination for Best Actress. Rami Said Malek becomes the first actor of Egyptian heritage to win an Oscar, for Bohemian Rhapsody.

All in all, it is the most racially inclusive group of winners in Academy history — people of color win solely or as part of a group for Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Documentary (Short Subject), Best Documentary (Feature), Best Animated Short Film, Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design.

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2020 Oscars

The Academy Awards several steps back in terms of representation of people of color but also takes one step forward. All Best Picture nominees are white, except for Parasite — but Parasite wins! Taika Waititi, a self-identified “Polynesian Jew” with Māori ancestry, wins best Adapted Screenplay for JoJo Rabbit, and Parasite writers Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won win for Best Original Screenplay, with Bong Joon-ho also picking up a Best Director win. It is the first year South Korean films are nominated for Oscars (another is nominated in the Documentary category).

Also: Parasite becomes the sixth film with an Asian cast to be nominated for Best Picture but not pick up any acting nominations. One person of color — Cynthia Erivo for Harriet — is nominated for acting. Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce is nominated for playing an Argentinian character in The Two Popes, for which an actual Spanish speaker was hired to dub over Pryce’s Spanish lines.

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2021 Oscars

Chinese Director Chloé Zhao is the first woman of color to win Best Director for Nomadland, which also won Best Picture. Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung are the first Korean actors nominated for acting Oscars, for Minari, and Youn yuh-jung wins. Three Best Picture nominees are focused on characters of color.

Judas and the Black Messiah becomes the first film to have multiple black men nominated in the same category for the same film. Daniel Kaluuya is the first Black British actor to win an acting Oscar, Leslie Odom Jr is the first Black man nominated for songwriting and acting in the same year and Viola Davis is the first Black woman to receive two nominations for Best actress.

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2022 Oscars

Will Smith wins Lead Actor for King Richard, which was also nominated for Best Picture. Ariana DeBose wins Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story, the same role that won Rita Moreno the Oscar in 1962. This makes DeBose the first openly queer woman of color to win an Oscar for Acting, the first Afro-Latina actress to win an Academy Award and the first Black queer actress to win an Oscar for Acting.

Drive my Car becomes the seventh film with a majority-Asian cast to be nominated for Best Picture but no acting awards. It wins for Best International Feature Film.

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2023 Oscars

Michelle Yeoh wins Lead Actress and Ke Huy Quan wins Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All At Once, which also wins for Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay. This is the first time a film with a majority-Asian cast has won Best Picture and three acting awards. It’s also the first time a movie with queer woman main character has won Best Picture. Stephanie Hsu is the first time a queer actor has been nominated for playing an explicitly queer character, although that depends on how you read Angelina Jolie’s character in Girl Interrupted.

Openly queer actor Brian Tyree Henry is nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the queer film Causeway.

Also, Ruth E. Carter became the first Black woman to win two Oscars, winning for Costume Design for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Yeoh is the first Asian woman and the second woman of color to win Lead Actress in the Academy Awards entire 95-year history.

All 235 Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Characters On TV, And How They Died

People die. Characters die. This is perhaps life’s most unfortunate fact: that people will die and leave the rest of us behind. It’s incredibly rare that any dramatic television series lasting over three seasons will never kill a main or recurring character, and all those deaths have driven a stake through the heart of fandom: Joyce on Buffy, Lady Sybil on Downton Abby, Charlie on Lost, Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, Jen on Dawson’s Creek, Nate on Six Feet Under — but when the person who dies is a lesbian or bisexual character, queer fandom takes it pretty hard.

The history of lesbian representation on television is rocky — in the beginning, we seemed exclusively relegated to roles that saw us getting killed/attacked or doing the killing/attacking. And until the last five or so years, lesbian and bisexual characters seemed entirely unable to date an actual woman or stay alive for more than three episodes, let alone an entire run, of a show. Gay and lesbian characters are so often murdered on television that we have our very own trope: Bury Your Gays. We comprise such a teeny-tiny fraction of characters on television to begin with that killing us off so haphazardly feels especially cruel.

Not every death listed below was wholly uncalled for. In many genres, like soap operas and shows about vampires, zombies, criminals, or games of thrones, characters are killed on the reg. That’s a different trope — Anyone Can Die. Furthermore, shows composed entirely of queer characters will inevitably kill one. But regardless, they still add to the body count weighing down our history of misrepresentation.

And, due to the recent untimely death of Lexa on The 100, this week seemed like a good one to count down everybody we have lost over the years.

This list contains every television death of an OPENLY lesbian or bisexual or queer female character on a television show. With a handful of exceptions, these are all characters who appeared for more than one episode. The exceptions were deemed exceptional because something about the characterization still fits in with the Bury Your Gays trope. Victims-of-the-week from crime procedurals (Law & Order, Cold Case, CSI, Criminal Minds or older shows) or patients-of-the-week from hospital dramas (Chicago Hope, E.R.), aren’t on this list, as that is an entirely different kind of list, but recurring characters from those shows are on this list. Nor is subtext on this list, because we’re not gonna give Xena showrunners Queer Character Credit for a character they refused to make openly queer when she was really so obviously queer. You know? [ETA: Okay, I’ve added Xena after doing further research and because if one more commenter takes up space on this thread — a thread I’m using to find more characters to add, and also to engage with thoughtful/funny readers who have opinions and feelings — to tell me that I “forgot” Xena without reading this introduction, I will become the 200th dead lesbian and the cause of death will be “Walked off a cliff with a commenter in her arms. Murder-suicide.” But Xena will be the one and only inclusion based on subtext.] Also, although I’ve done tons of research, I haven’t personally seen all of these shows, so mistakes may very well exist, and feel free to politely inform me of them in the comments, or tell me about characters I may have missed — it’s especially helpful if you can tell me the cause of death and the year.

Unsure if this needs to be said but… SPOILER ALERT.

Special thanks to the LezWatchTV Database for providing info on shows I haven’t seen or heard about directly!

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Every Regular or Recurring Lesbian or Bisexual Female Character Killed On Television

Julie, Executive Suite (1976)

Cause of death: Hit by a car. Her love interest had just walked into traffic after realizing her lesbianism and Julie was chasing her.

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Franky Doyle, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1980)

Cause of death: Shot by a police officer after escaping from prison

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Sharon Gilmour, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1980)

Cause of death: Pushed down the stairs by a corrections officer

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Karen O’Malley, Casualty (1987)

Cause of death: Head Injury

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Cecília, Vale Tudo (1988)

Cause of death: Car Accident

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Cicely, Northern Exposure (1992)

Cause of death: Shot by a gunman employed by the town’s evil overlord who doesn’t want to let the lesbians change his town. The shot was intended for her girlfriend Roslyn, but Cicely, who was already sick, blocked the bullet and died in Roslyn’s arms, thus magically healing the town’s long-simmering feuds and leading them to re-name the town “Cicely.”

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Talia Winters, Babylon 5 (1995)

Cause of death: Activated a sleeper personality that wiped out her actual personality, effectively killing her

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Beth Jordache, Brookside (1995)

Cause of death: Genetic heart condition, died in prison

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Susan Ross, Seinfeld (1996)

Cause of death: Toxic envelope glue

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Naomi “Tracy” Richards, Band of Gold (1996)

Cause of death: Stabbed herself

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Lucy, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996)

Cause of death: Caught thieving and hanged

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Kathy, NYPD Blue (1997)

Cause of death: Shot by a hit man hired by her girlfriend Abby’s ex, who wanted to get rid of Kathy so she could get back together with Abby. Abby was pregnant at the time.

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Sondra Westwood, Pacific Drive (1997)

Cause of death: Murdered by a serial killer

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Jadzia Dax, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998)

Cause of death: Blasted by an alien-possessed alien

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Sonia Besirky, Lindenstraße (1998)

Cause of death: Drug overdose from medication given to her by her ex-lover’s husband

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Leila and Rafaela, Torre de Babel (1998)

Cause of death: Explosion in a shopping mall

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Susanne Teubner, Hinter Gittern (1999)

Cause of death: Shot during a bank robbery (she was a customer)

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Shaz Wiley, Bad Girls (2000)

Cause of death: Bomb, died in resulting fire

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Laura Hall, Shortland Street (2000)

Cause of death: Heart attack

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Diamond, Dark Angel (2001)

Cause of death: Used as a lab rat for research that killed her

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Xena, Xena the Warrior Princess (2001)

Cause of death: Beheaded

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Beate “Bea” Hansen, Hinter Gittern (2001)

Cause of death: Injuries from an explosion

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Jule Neumann, Hinter Gittern (2001)

Cause of death: Suicide

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Frankie Stone, All My Children (2001)

Cause of death: Murder Mystery!

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Bridgit, 24 (2001)

Cause of death: Shot by a man in front of her girlfriend

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Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002)

Cause of death: Shot in the heart by a stray bullet

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Kelly Hurst, Family Affairs (2002)

Cause of death: Pushed down the stairs by her lover’s husband

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Megan Hartnoll, At Home With The Braithwaites (2003)

Cause of death: Electrocuted in the bathtub

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Juliet Becker, The Bill (2003)

Cause of death: Stabbed

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Tina Greer, Smallville (2003)

Cause of death: Impaled through the chest on a large piece of wood during a fight with a male character

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Sandy Lopez, E.R. (2004)

Cause of death: Injuries sustained from fighting a fire in an abandoned warehouse

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Al Mackenzie, Bad Girls (2004)

Cause of death: Poisoned

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Hanna Novak, Verbotene Liebe (2004)

Cause of death: Stroke, died in her girlfriend’s arms

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Ines Führbringer, Hinter Gittern (2004)

Cause of death: Throat slit, died in girlfriend’s arms

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Thelma Bates, Hex (2004)

Cause of death: Murdered by a demon

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Flora, Deadwood (2004)

Cause of death: Beaten by a man who then forced a woman to shoot her with his gun

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Brenda Castillo, Charmed (2004)

Cause of death: Stabbed with a cursed blade by a man, causing her to rapidly age and then die

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Tosha, The Wire (2004)

Cause of death: Shot during a heist gone wrong

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Marissa Cooper, The O.C. (2005)

Cause of death: Car crash after being driven off the road by her drunk ex-boyfriend

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Servilla, Rome (2005)

Cause of death: Stabs herself in front of her rival house, inhabited by the mother of her lover

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Dusty, Queer As Folk (2005)

Cause of death: At a benefit at a gay club when a bomb went off

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Dana Fairbanks, The L Word (2006)

Cause of death: Breast cancer

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Helena Cain, Battlestar Galactica (2006)

Cause of death: Shot by her ex-lady-lover

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Manuela Wellmann, Hinter Gittern (2006)

Cause of death: Stabbed, died in girlfriend’s arms

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Maya Robertson, Hex (2006)

Cause of death: Hit by a car

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Natalie, Bad Girls (2006)

Cause of death: Bludgeoned to death with a brick

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Gina Inviere/#6, Battlestar Galactica (2006)

Cause of death: Set off a nuclear weapon

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Eve Jacobson/Zoe McAllister, Home & Away (2006)

Cause of death: Inside a building when it was blown up

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Van, Dante’s Cove (2006)

Cause of Death: Killed by the Shadows

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Angie Morton, Stritctly Confidential (2006)

Cause of death: Suicide. Jumped off a building.

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The 50 Best Lesbian Movies Of All Time

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