How Queer YA Novels Taught Me to Write My Own Happy Ending

I.

The Girl knows there are no happy endings for people like her.

For girls who sit in cars with other girls on a dimly-lit street in Harlem and wonder why they want so badly to whisper a barely-there Yes instead of I have to go home when asked: Do you want to spend the night? The apartment is free. In the breaths between that question and The Girl’s answer is possibility. The type of possibility The Girl has never so much as allowed herself to imagine. The moment is so still, so quiet, it renders itself almost dreamlike in quality — a scene stolen out of time.

The Girl — who idles in the bus lane while the rain pelts her car, watching the person she will grow to love dash across the street, hands acting as a poor substitute for an umbrella — is our main character. Her story is one that you won’t find in any novel, because she, of course, has yet to write it. But she will.

Here, though, she is resigned. She is afraid. The blueprint that has been laid before her for what that almost-yes would mean for her life, for her happiness, has been clear. People like her do not get happy endings. This fear looks like a man on her college campus shouting that God hates queers. This fear looks like her mother’s face when she tells The Girl at fifteen to return the book to the shelves because the jacket copy mentions a lesbian character in the text. The fear looks like the movie with the queer character whose body is left broken by shame and violence.

There is no happy ending for a girl like her. She’s watched this story play out before.

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When her little sister tells her she’s reading a new book¹, the first YA novel that has managed to capture her attention in months, The Girl buys it from the bookstore off Central Park Avenue immediately, without stopping to look at the synopsis. She’s searching, desperately, for lightness, for joy. What she doesn’t expect is to be lured in by the text so quickly, so seamlessly.

The novel centers two boys, falling in love via email. The setting is a suburb far from where she currently lives, and even further from where she’s from, but she finds herself templating her experience on top of this white, teenage boy. It’s a coming-out story, a closeted kid in a backward place, holding the biggest secret of his life to his chest with both hands. This, she understands. This, she feels acutely.

What she is less familiar with is what comes next. The family who embraces him. The friends who come at the end of the novel to defend him. The happily-ever-after.

Maybe, she finds herself thinking, there could be space for joy in this new life. Maybe, she dreams, as she finishes the last page and immediately starts the book over again, this is not so hopeless after all. Maybe, she journals, when the main character in the book — the young boy who was, at first glance, so different from herself — says: We are out and we are alive, and everyone in the universe is out here right now, a line can be a type of instruction. Her story can be a new roadmap. A fresh blueprint. A different ending. She doesn’t quite believe it yet — won’t for some time.

But.

Maybe.

II.

In this one, a girl gets sent away.

The Girl left her hometown two years ago, fresh out of college and fresh out of ideas for how to fashion a life for herself out of a vain hope of becoming a writer. She landed at a school where people didn’t assume anything, least of all sexuality — a place where it was simply expected that one would ask questions of themselves and the world around them. For the first time in her life, she had the space to explore what it could look like to be anyone, herself, at least, without the artifice of who she’d always been.

Now, fresh out of the grad school that changed her life and a newly-minted New York City transplant, The Girl writes. She signed a contract for her debut novel months ago, mumbled what the plot was about as she celebrated the deal on the back porch of her parents’ Midwestern home with her mom and sister. It’s about a girl who runs for prom queen who falls in love with her competition, she explained, sped past, teary-eyed with joy and a terror she was still too afraid to name.

It’s months later and she has yet to finish her first draft — stalled by exhaustion and the city and no money and fear masquerading as writers’ block. She thinks she must not be queer enough to write the book she’s expected to write. She’s an imposter, a fraud, waiting to be found out by an editor who will see in her prose that she’s not the writer she purported herself to be.

She prays again, in this season, like she never has before. Over her contract. On the train headed to Manhattan. With people from a friend’s progressive church she seldom attends. These are not like the prayers of her childhood, self-assured in her place in the world and the one that will come after. These prayers sound like apologies, like concessions, to a God and a home that she’s not sure have room for her anymore.

When the prayers produce no answers, she researches. She walks from work to the bookstore that has loomed large in her imagination since she was sixteen and hopelessly bright-eyed about moving to the city one day. She goes to the second floor, to those messy, colorful shelves marked Teen and Young Adult LGBTQ Fiction.

She pulls off a thick paperback², one she’s heard about for years but never had reason enough to read, hoping that somewhere deep in the canon of queer YA is the answer she’s been looking for to a question she doesn’t have the language to ask. The book is adorned with the theatrical poster cover of the book’s recent indie film adaptation and she buys it without hesitation.

It’s widely hailed as a Sad Book, one of those novels where you must brace yourself for impact the moment you flip open the front cover. But she reads on. A teenage girl, a conversion camp, complicated webs of religion and desire and fear and emerging sexuality weave themselves throughout the pages. The Girl reads it in two days, and is moved by the prose — the sheer scope of the novel — but is rendered speechless by the friendship narrative once the main character reaches the conversion camp.

There is a pain in the main character’s exile from her home and what she’s expected to do and become in the camp, that is to be sure, but there is kinship as well. There, in a hyper-religious almost-prison in the rural heartland, she finds her people. She lives amongst the children of the discarded, the Island of Misfit Toys, the ones they want to “fix.” In the midst of great pain, trauma, she grows closer to the people who reveal her to herself — who finally give her something to cling to besides the rejection.

The Girl wonders: What does it mean when leaving the place where you were raised is something like coming home to yourself?

III.

The Girl’s fear has changed its face.

It no longer looks like the Evangelical man on her undergraduate campus or the rejected book in the library or the movie with the battered body. It now looks like the preacher in the pulpit on Father’s Day, telling the congregation what he’d do to another man in the event that they propositioned him. His glee in describing the way the blood would spill over his knuckles — the way that blood would be an act of God, of holy retribution. It looks like the nods of God’s people, the collective hum of their pleased agreement.

The preacher says queerness should be met with brutality, and that brutality is in and of itself an act of mercy. The preacher says that to go against the will of God is to incur His wrath on earth, and that wrath be justified. The preacher says to be soft, to be sweet, to be crooked is to condemn oneself to hell, forever and ever amen. The Girl sits in the congregation and has yet to free herself from the belief that the preacher might be correct. This, her relationship with God, is one of the remaining barriers she has yet to clear.

The fear looks like a secondhand YA paperback³ she picks up from a bookstore months later that sees her too well. She reads its dedication on the back patio of a cafe in Union Square: To those who believe in a loving God and those who struggle to love themselves. The pages are tear-stained before she even begins the story itself.

To believe what the book wants her to believe would be to finally release herself from the most potent vestiges of her fear — that the God she has spent her entire life reaching towards has already deemed her unclean, unsavable, unworthy. But the book says she is still deserving of love. The book says God molded her and shaped her in His image and to this end, God could not have been wrong. The book says she deserves to be held, to be cared for.

The book says she can stop holding onto the shame that she has carried with her for too many years of her adult life. The book says she is finally free.

Forever and ever, amen.

IV.

The Girl wrote the queer Black girl joy, happy-ending novel of her heart, but she couldn’t out-write her shame.

She recalls a scene from the book⁴ she carries with her these days like a Bible, well-worn and oft-referenced. There’s a moment in it, two boys under the stars, friends-but-perhaps-something-else, laying in the bed of a truck. It’s a turning point in the novel, this moment of clarity, of honesty. One boy says: I have to tell them, of his parents about his newfound queerness. He’s been holding on to this secret for too long, the reader intuits, and it’s time to let it go. Quickly, the other boy responds with a simple: Why?

Because I have to, the first boy answers. It is definitive, final — the last of the walls between himself and living the rest of his life honestly. He won’t waver. There is a life for him outside of these moments of openness he pilfers away with this almost-more-than-a-friend. It is a reckoning.

The night after The Girl’s book gets announced to the public, she’s at a tourist trap of a restaurant in Times Square, sitting across from her mother. Because I have to presses against the bounds of her chest; a levee, barely contained. When the truth rushes forth, unbidden, it’s over a plate of oversized barbeque chicken wings. She apologizes for being an embarrassment. For going against what she always believed was the will of God. For being the type of person her mother might not be able to love anymore. For not being able to change. And when she’s done, her mother watches her for a moment. Silent. Considering.

She says, There is nothing you could do that would make me ashamed to have you as a daughter. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I will always love you.

The Girl had held tight to the idea of love as transaction for so long, the boundlessness of this extension of grace stuns her silent. In this story, the mother was bigger than the cardboard cutout The Girl had made of her. In this story, there was character development past what The Girl could have imagined.

In this story, the happy ending wasn’t just wish-fulfillment, it was real.

1. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda x Becky Albertalli
2. The Miseducation of Cameron Post x Emily Danforth
3. The God Box x Alex Sanchez
4. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe x Benjamin Alire Saenz

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Leah Johnson’s best-selling debut YA novel You Should See Me In A Crown is available everywhere books are sold.

Boyshorts and Girltrunks 101: Your Queer Underwear Guide

Boyshorts and girltrunks are increasingly common in the drawers of women and otherwise-identified people. I’m very passionate about always having cute underwear in general and this specific style of underwear specifically — especially these days when a solid boxer-brief can completely eliminate the need to ever wear pants! My underwear drawer is half thongs and half “girl trunks” — two styles that also meet my other intimate need, which’s no panty lines. Boxers for women are where it’s at.

Now, as a lesbian, I find myself often surrounded by others with similar preferences for boxer-briefs and boyshorts because LGBTQ Women and non-binary people have, historically, been especially inclined to wear boys/men’s underwear or “boy” cuts from the women’s section — and these days, unisex items produced by gender-expansive clothing brands. Back in 2015, we asked our readers what style of underwear they wear: 12% said boxers, 22% said boxer-briefs and 33% said boyshorts. I have no data to compare this to but I feel like this is probably more than the heterosexual and/or cisgender population.

What are Boyshorts and Girltrunks?

For years we’ve seen boxer-briefs or “Girltrunks” made for people who are not adult cis men (as in; no pouch for external genitalia) consistently get discontinued, but a new awareness of the market for this style has transformed the field in recent years. Especially of course TomboyX.

Also, I know that gender is a spectrum and a solid quarter of you likely don’t identify as female, but those words will come up a lot in this post because that is how fashion describes itself!

Underpants who identify as “boyshorts” run the gamut, especially with respect to coverage, so when I say “girltrunks” I’m referring to “boyshorts” (and sometimes men’s boxer-briefs) that cover your whole entire butt and then some. Here, I made you a graphic to explain the different types of underpants!

As you know, we like to diversify the imagery as much as possible here, but unfortunately underwear vendors prefer to focus on skinny white cis girls exclusively, even when modeling plus-size underthings! So that’s how that is.

Let’s begin!

Traditional Medium Coverage Boyshorts

The most common style of boyshorts stops just short of full ass-coverage. What makes this style different from traditional women’s underpants is the cut — they generally reveal less of the thigh and ass than traditional women’s briefs and have short, straight-cut legs and usually a lower waist. They’re exceptionally flattering and also very sporty/sexy. Sportysexy, if you will.

High Coverage Boyshorts

Depending on precisely what you’ve got going on w/r/t your body and butt size, these boyshorts might cover up your whole damn butt!!!

Girl Trunks / Boxer-Briefs for All Bodies

But the fullest coverage of all — a pair of underpants that will encase your entire butt and encircle the tops of your thighs — are boxer-briefs. Boxers for women! For centuries, intrepid lesbians have been scouring mens/boys underwear offerings in search of something that’ll do the trick. In addition to being super comfortable and nixing bunching up or panty lines that divide your buttcheeks on a diagonal plane, this style enables you to safely slip on a banana peel in a dress without letting the whole world know whether or not you wax your bikini line. Over the years, many women’s takes on this men’s classic have come and gone, mostly from Hanes and Calvin Klein, but it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and we’ve got plenty of options.

At the top of the pack is, of course, lesbian-owned TomboyX, who sells the exact style of underwear I’ve always dreamed of in a variety of colors and cuts. But they are not the only horse in the race anymore!

Mens / Boys Boxer Briefs for Women

Prior to TomboyX entering my life, I got my underpants from the H&M boys section (size 12-14Y) because they’re completely a men’s style, but were spandexy enough to wear under leggings. Unfortunately H&M appears to be OUT OF STOCK of this item. Other longstanding favorites from the other side of the aisle, like Uniqlo’s seamless boxer-briefs and Target’s Mossimo boxer-briefs, have vanished from the earth. American Apparel had a very popular boxer-brief situation we even printed our own words upon, but apparently under new ownership, quality has degraded, and the new owner’s shop is currently sold out of the item. But we’ve still got American Eagle boxer-briefs, a consistent staple of a masc lesbian wardrobe, remains tried and true!

Some styles of men’s boxer briefs basically count as shorts as long as you never leave the house (which, these days, well). Depending on your between-the-legs situation, you may or may not be looking to avoid a generous penis pocket. I personally eschew boxer-briefs that offer “enhancing” or “sculpting” or even “support,” which means I generally stick to 95%-100% cotton boxer-briefs. Again I tend to loot the boy’s section for these (Fruit of The Loom), but here are some grown-up sized options:

Funderpants

Who doesn’t love fun? Everybody loves fun, and that’s a fact!

Fun Patterns and Graphics: Trunks and Boxer-Briefs

Funderpants: Boyshorts Edition

Rainbows!

 Okay what are you waiting for, TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS!!!!

24 Actions You NEED to Take to Help Trans Women of Color Survive

feature photo by Serichai Traipoom from 15,000 Stand Up For Black Trans Lives in Brooklyn, Show Us What Pride Month Should Always Look Like

This piece was originally published on 8/6/2015.

George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This month, Autostraddle is focusing on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.

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Author’s Note (06/18/20): Revisiting this 2016 piece feels timely, which is both maddening and depressing. We have made incredible progress in the respect, love, and support to work towards ending violence against trans women of color and support the survival of trans women of color under an oppressive government and interpersonal hate and violence that continues to this day. Black trans women are leading us at this moment and I hope you all can do everything you can to support them. Raquel Willis, Aria Sa’id, Hope Giselle, Indya Moore, LaLa Zannell, LaSia Wade, Ashley Lourdes Hunter, Janet Mock, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Janetta Johnson, and countless others are doing the important work of ensuring our survival and empowerment every day. Please consider putting your wallet, bodies, and resources on the line to support Black trans women and Black Lives Matter, because without Black liberation there will be no trans liberation. Additionally, remember the legacy of disabled activists, fat activists, undocumented activists, and more who have brought us to this moment where the divestment and defunding of police for the safety and wellness of everyone is a true possibility. This moment is incredibly important, so please stretch, expand, and challenge those horizons you might have like never before.

When I wrote this piece I was 24 years old. I’m a trans Latina and a bay area native. I graduated from San Francisco State University in 2013 and have worked in the nonprofit sector since I was 16. I have done research with/on trans women of color sex workers, trans women of color living with HIV, and transgender history. I previously worked in direct service with trans women of color living with HIV. I have been privileged growing up in a middle class white household, which has also given me my own unique struggles (as a transracial adoptee) of learning to love my brown skin and claim my femininity, which almost left me homeless. I have had access to doctors and therapists, since I started my transition and have been blessed to have my father’s rock solid support unconditionally these past few years. I also have been raped, threatened, harassed, almost jumped, tokenized, and abused. My privileges have not protected me and my young body has survived a lot. The subjects in this article are not to be generalized into each trans woman of color’s life, but it is my experience that many of us have experienced these issues and will continue to struggle without drastic transformative change.

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K.C. Haggard. India Clarke. Mercedes Williamson. London Chanel. Kristina Gomez Reinwald. Penny Proud. Taja DeJesus. Yazmin Vash Payne. Ty Underwood. Lamia Beard. Papi Edwards. As of July 25^th, this is the list of trans women murdered in 2015. However, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. The trans community knows that we lose our sisters to more than just murder. Suicide. Overdose. Domestic Violence. HIV/AIDS. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This isn’t just exhausting. This is intergenerational trauma, oppression, and maybe even genocide. This violence is specifically targeted against black and brown women, gender non-conforming folks, and especially trans women of color. Living at the intersection of blackness and browness and transcendence of gender normativity leaves us particularly visible and vulnerable to a lot of violence. We lose our jobs. Housing. Family. Support systems. We have to rely on sex work to get by. We have to rely on social services by nonprofits that fall short of meeting all of our needs. We welcome dangerous lovers into our lives because we don’t have intimacy or human touch. We think not using a condom will keep him with us and swallowing his cum will make him want to cuddle us a bit longer. (Not that all of us are straight or even attracted to men.) We are left starving for love, touch, intimacy, appreciations, and human contact. We might turn to drugs to escape the monstrous reality that awaits us when we wake up. This is the lived reality of trans women of color’s daily lives.

With all of this in mind in one of the most visibly bloody years we’ve witnessed of violence against trans women of color, I wanted to make a list of things you can do to begin to change the culture of violence against trans women of color into one of love, appreciation, and transformative change.

1. Listen. Trans women of color are brilliant, strong, powerful, and know our own experiences. When we tell you something has hurt us, you need to listen and work to understand what we’re saying instead of glossing over it. Also, listen to our stories, our histories, our tales of resilience and survival as well as our tales of violence and loss.

Essential Things to Think About for the Best Possible First Date with a Trans Woman

GLAAD adds transgender equality to its mission

LGBT activists call for new focus on violence against transgender community

Jewlyes Gutierrez Enters Conflict Resolution Program, But Systemic Violence Against Trans Women of Color Remains

Graduation to Womanhood: Navigating Trans Identity at a Southern College

2. Read. Read the books that have been written and published by trans women of color. There are a number of them that talk about the author’s history and life journey. Other books also capture the brilliance and raw emotion of academics and artists. Redefining Realness by Janet Mock is strongly recommended. Decolonizing trans/gender 101 by b. binaohan. Trauma Queen by Lovemme Corazon. Seasonal Velocities by Ryka Aoki. I Rise by Toni Newman. Cooking in Heels by Ceyenne Doroshow. Other writers include Morgan Collado, Micha Cardenas, Dane Figueroa Edidi, TS Madison, and soon Laverne Cox!

3. Volunteer. There are numerous organizations across the country that serve trans women of color and are under resourced. Volunteering your time, energy, skills, ears, and money are all welcome to many of these organizations. You can also find one closer to home but these are some of my favorites:

Transgender, Gender-Variant, Intersex Justice Project

Trans Women of Color Collective

Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Audre Lorde Project

Gender Justice LA

Casa Ruby

Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement

4. Donate! Many organizations don’t receive grants, sustained funding, or major donors and have to rely on community wallets to sustain their programming. We can change this!

5. Hire us. Give trans women of color jobs! Job security, benefits, consistency in schedules can help someone turn their life around.

6. Nurture our brilliance. Give us professional development opportunities. Help us dream and manifest magic in the world. Trans women of color are some of the most brilliant, powerful, and biggest change-makers this world has ever seen. We need the opportunity to shine, grow, and create. If you work in a clinic give them a job or volunteer opportunity. Have them run your programs or intern for you. Teach us the process you go through to make things happen. Teach us the skills that you have learned.

7. Allow us to be our full crazy-beautiful selves. So often we don’t want to know the entire person and we just want to know the ‘good’ parts. Employees. Partners. Friends. Family. We need to be there for each other and learn to fully accept each other for our flaws, troubled pasts, traumas, and insecurities that we all hold. These are sacred pieces that make the complete picture of who we are. Welcome our whole selves into the light.

8. Increase stipends/gift cards for participation in studies. We offer up our lived experiences, trauma, blood, opinions, and thoughts for $50 gift cards. Non-trans women of color often make careers off of our struggles. Our lives are sacred and many of us are unemployed, living off social security,  and/or sex workers. Bring trans women of color into the fold and teach us these skills/give us an opportunity to learn and conduct the research ourselves. Figure out a way to funnel more money into our pockets.

9. Work against the erasure and white washing of our community history. Recently there has been a movie and a number of claims that white gay men played a significant role in Stonewall. The Stonewall riots were led by trans women of color, primarily Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. We have historical accounts and evidence that this is the case (shoutout to Tourmaline, who has done the important work to save this herstory!) We also have a surviving veteran in Miss Major, who was there.

The Stonewall movie that erases trans women of color

Meet Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera

10. Organize with us. There has been an increased effort from the amazing trans activists to organize die-ins and other actions bringing awareness to the epidemic of violence our community has faced. Fight for our federal and state protections in housing, employment, access to health care and more! We need YOUR help to bring this awareness to the mainstream consciousness. We need to begin to make a cultural shift towards valuing all trans women of color lives.

11. Love us. Romantically. Platonically. Appreciate us. Fall in love with us. Be our best friend. Go out in public with us. Claim that you are dating/loving/friends with/attracted to a trans woman of color. And DEMAND that we are treated with respect.

12. Refuse to give up on us. We all make mistakes. Given the pure amount of trauma, violence, and abuse we hold, we’ve often been unaware of the impact these moments have had on us, and our behaviors. Bring this behavior to light and if you’re able, help us work on creating healthier habits that are not destructive.

13. Get over our looks. In the end we will never look like a cisgender woman. And that’s totally, absolutely ok. It’s okay to still have facial hair. It’s ok that your body fat is still moving around and if you don’t have wide hips and are still struggling with having broad shoulders. Unless we ask for it specifically, don’t give us advice or tips on being feminine and passing. Not passing is okay. We are still beautiful and goddesses that are fortunate to grace this world.

14. Ask us what we want. From this life. From this world. From you. We all have dreams, wants, and needs. Trans women of color NEED to have these met. I need you to challenge yourself to make a difference in our lives.

15. Create a scholarship fund for trans women of color. So often we have to face decisions between our survival, housing, healthcare, food, or our femininity. If each community and nonprofit that works for the betterment of our lives put aside a small pot of money after each fundraising event to help cover cost of living expenses or 1-2% from your paychecks, we could make a real difference in a lot of trans women of color lives.

16. Spread your resources/assets around. Personally, I’m preparing to undergo a career change and am intentionally sharing some of my books from college with trans women of color as a gift. When cleaning out your closets, ask where you can donate clothes and other lightly used items that can go to a trans woman of color.

17. Safety plan and follow-up with your trans women of color friends to make sure they are safe and okay. This means going out of your way to pick them up, walk with them, text them after they leave you, and asking them what support they might need to get to a location.

18. Reflect on and challenge your own internalized trans misogyny. Be intentional with your friendships, actions, and thoughts about trans women.

19. Fight larger institutional systems that commit violence against us, like the prison industrial complex, deportations and ICE, the policing of sex work and drugs, laws that fail to protect gender identity and expression in employment and housing, and the medical industrial complex.

20. Remember that there are trans women of color who have survived and are thriving now. We even have a hashtag, #twocthriving (twitter and tumblr), created by the amazing Luna Merbruja.

21. Pay/Center/Include Trans women of color to talk about our own issues. There is a very deep ocean of trans women of color leadership out there that has been doing this work for decades to fight for this change. We need the visibility, resources, and space to hold these conversations about our needs and the change that needs to happen.

Brouhaha’s Trans Women of Color Storytelling is Healing, is the Revolution

22. Re-frame the ‘fight for equality’ to something more foundational, like the right to survive. That’s our struggle right now. Surviving in a world that cannot handle our black and brown gender transcendence.

23.Take the next year to implement some of these things into your life. Challenge yourself in ways that you didn’t imagine. Trans women of color are losing our lives. Our community is under attack. We are an endangered species.

24.Trans women of color: Add your own to this list. What do you NEED from the world to help you survive?

There is a myth that trans women of color can only pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty and violence. It’s a direct parallel to the American dream mythology of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” This doesn’t work in a cycle of violence. I have seen too many trans women of color think they are out of the cycle but get sucked back in because they quickly lost their housing, failed to get a job, were arrested, or fell back into drug use; the reasons are endless. We need to learn to communally take care of trans women of color and support them so we can move to dismantle the institutional cycles of oppression that we are caught up in.

This piece is dedicated to the trans women of color ancestors that fought hard and gave their lives so I could be here to write this piece today, my trans women of color elders who continue to share their brilliance and herstories with the world, my trans women of color sisters who have survived, cried, struggled, and helped change this world for the better just by being themselves. Finally, I hope that this can help build communities that are safe and uplifting for future generations of trans women of color. We cannot continue to lose our sisters at such an astronomical rate. Please remember, your actions have consequences.

Living While Black, Queer and Sometimes Mistaken for Male

This piece was originally published on 7/23/2013.

George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This month, Autostraddle is focusing on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.

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Author’s Note (06/15/20): I’ve had my thoughts published on the internet since I was 21. It’s a wild experience to look back and see myself trying to process the world around me during a time period when our collective understanding of everything from race to class to gender continues at an ever increasing pace. I have stances today that I literally didn’t have a week ago. It’s for this reason, I’ve decided not to note the content of this essay. If you can find 2013 Brittani to take something up with her, be my guest. 2020 Brittani is fighting big fights and looking for people willing to join her. I no longer have a white girlfriend or breasts. Defund the police and have a great day.

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Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (The Roots, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, large black man) recently posted on Facebook in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Strangely enough, his post on being seen as a menacing figure in his own luxurious apartment building made me examine my own experiences. Not in being a black male. But in sometimes being mistaken for one.

In the year since I’ve cut my hair, I’ve been pulled over twice for no reason AKA “randomly stopped.” This may not seem like a lot (especially for all those people in New York where stop and frisk is alive and well) but it’s been enough for me to change a few things about how I operate. I’ll ask my white girlfriend to drive if I notice a lot of cops are out. I try not to wear hats or hoodies at night for fear of looking too much like a black male and therefore, “too suspicious.” Of course I can’t say this is why I was pulled over. I can’t say that the officers in question thought I was male. But I can say this isn’t really something my queer white friends have ever complained to me about. When I talk about it, it’s not really an experience they relate to or a fear that they have every time they get into a car to leave somewhere late at night. They don’t know why it’s such a big deal for them to not do any of the stupid and obviously illegal things they tend to do if I’m the one behind the wheel.

I have nowhere near the stature of Questlove but I’m not a small woman. If I’m wearing a hoodie or some other sort of clothing that puts my gender up for discussion (more than it already usually is despite the watermelons strapped to my chest) I try to do things that won’t scare people. I walk a reasonable distance away and if I’m walking faster than they are, I make some sort of noise before reaching them so they won’t be surprised. Actual black males have some sort of safety net in their maleness because honestly, a black male of my size is most likely faster and stronger than a black woman of my size (for example: me). If my lack of maleness is revealed, my safety net disappears. I’m not afraid to say that when I’m alone late at night, I would rather they be afraid of me than angry at me. As a black male, I might threaten their safety but as a gender non-conforming black lesbian, I might threaten their ideals. Questlove:

Seriously, imagine a life in which you think of other people’s safety and comfort first, before your own. You’re programmed and taught that from the gate. It’s like the opposite of entitlement.

I think a lot of males lack the awareness that Questlove so poignantly speaks about. Male privilege allows them to carry on with the knowledge that they’re one of the “good ones” that won’t attack women and so whatever hangups anyone else has is their problem to deal with. Why should men have to respect other people’s possible fear? And why should black men have to respect that AND someone else’s possible racism? Rather than being upset that this happens, maybe this will give more men of color the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of women, to come to terms with the fact that some of those women aren’t racist and crossing the street from them The Individual. They’re crossing the street to get away from Men because Men attack women, queers, and trans* people.

Hasn’t Trayvon taught us (again) that even men aren’t safe if they’re black? That they also invoke a sense of irrational anger just by their presence? Haven’t I been wrong this entire time? I mean, how silly am I that I thought by passing as a black male, I’d ruled out all threats. The sad truth is I have no identity to retreat to. Unless you’re a straight white cis male, you have a reason to be scared. I’m not saying that you should be, I’m just being honest about the fact that I constantly calculate the potential threats of situations. And if you think I don’t have good reason to, you’re wrong. Because when you’re black, it goes beyond never feeling truly safe. You don’t even have the right to protect yourself.

These fears and reactions have been ingrained in us from the moment we were born into a homophobic, racist, sexist, classist, etcist society that makes no qualms about letting us know we’re not safe and furthermore, not deserving of safety. I know it doesn’t feel great to watch the process of someone identifying you as a threat but I’m not the kind of person who’s going to get mad at someone trying to peaceably keep themselves out of harm’s way. Because if something happens, that’s exactly what everyone is going to ask. Why didn’t YOU do something? AKA why didn’t Trayvon just run home? AKA why was your skirt so short? How mad can I get when someone crosses the street or walks a little faster when they notice my presence when I know that if my girlfriend/sister/friend was walking home late at night by herself, I’d want her to do the same thing? Questlove:

Inside I cried. But if I cried at every insensitive act that goes on in the name of safety, I’d have to be committed to a psych ward. I’ve just taught myself throughout the years to just accept it and maybe even see it as funny. But it kept eating at me…It’s a bajillion thoughts, all of them self-depreciating voices slowly eating my soul away.

If feelings get hurt in the pursuit of safety, I’m ok with that. Sometimes our hurt feelings are incidentals. But Trayvon Martin should not have been collateral damage for one man’s pursuit of something he already had and something I’ll likely never feel: Safety.

Police and Prison Abolition 101: A Syllabus and FAQ

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How did we get our current system of policing & prisons?

Some readings associated with these concepts are:

• [PDF] The Prison Industry: How It Started, How It Works, How It Harms, from Worth Rises
• Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America
• Cruel and Unusual: Punishment and US Culture
• American Prisons: A History of Good Intentions
• Slavery by Another Name
• The Prison and the American Imagination
• The New Jim Crow

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What does abolition mean?

For further reading on what abolition means as a project, some brief, digestible digital reads:

• Decarceral Syllabus, from Project NIA
• The Case for Abolition
• What Abolitionists Do
• What Does Police Abolition Mean?
• Abolish the Police? Organizers Say It’s Less Crazy Than It Sounds
• You Are Already an Abolitionist

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Why the extreme measure of abolition when we could try reform, at least for right now, and return to the ideal of abolition in the future?

How advocates for abolition justify getting rid of consequences for violence or abuse?

Some resources to get started:

• How I Became a Police Abolitionist, Derecka Purnell
• Aching for Abolition, Camonghne Felix
• [PDF] The Critical Resistance Abolition Toolkit, especially p. 28-31
• [PDF] Community Accountability for Survivors of Sexual Violence Toolkit
• Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence
• [PDF] Toward Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Child Sexual Abuse and Other Forms of Intimate and Community Violence
• [PDF] Inside the Politics and Poetics of Transformative Justice and Community Accountability in Sexual Assault Situations
• The Revolution Starts at Home

What other options are there besides police? What advocates for abolition replace it with?

Some resources to get started:

• Alternatives to Calling the Police
• More Alternatives to Police
• [PDF] Harm Free Zone Project
• [PDF] Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Handbook
• Fumbling Toward Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators
• [PDF] Transformative Justice: A Curriculum Guide from Project NIA
• [PDF] Technologies for Liberation: Toward Abolitionist Futures, from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice

What does the process of abolition & decarceration actually look like?

This looks like:

• Refusing to call the police, talk to the police, or work with the police
• Pushing community organizations to divest from the police and refuse to work with them
• Using any social currency or personal privilege to resist the presence of police in your communities through practices like copwatching
• Defunding police and prisons at every level
• Opposing the construction of and investment in new policing and prison initiatives and buildings
• Opposing laws and policies, even ones with ends that we agree with, that rely on arrests and threats of incarceration as a means to those ends
• Voting out and fighting against elected officials that work with police, prioritize “law and order,” or prison reform; voting in and holding accountable elected officials that vow to defund and decarcerate, and refuse to work with police or ICE
• Fighting to end cash bail and working with bail funds to free people in jail right now and always
• Prioritizing resources, care and community support to formerly and currently incarcerated people
• Joining and following the lead of community movements led by formerly incarcerated people
• Providing resources, protection and material support to criminalized people targeted by the PIC, including drug users, sex workers, trans people, undocumented immigrants, and all Black people, helping them to stay out of contact with police
• Building strong local communities that know one another, communicate with one another, can ask each other for resources and reach out for one another in times of crisis
• Tapping into or building networks that are actively engaging in building infrastructure around conflict resolution, community safety, accountability, intervention and harm prevention

For more reading, try these resources:

• [PDF] Critical Resistance Abolitionist Toolkit
• TransformHarm.org
• No One Is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Police Abolition
• Against Carceral Feminism
• Decarceral Syllabus, from Project NIA
• Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture

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• Prison Abolition Syllabus 2.0
• Prison Culture Essential Reading
• If You’re New to Abolition: Study Group Guide

Top 10 Lesbian Chapsticks for Chapstick Lesbians

Chapstick Lesbians Definition

What’s the meaning of “chapstick lesbian”? We know that “lipstick lesbian” is a thing because we have seen it on the Internet and on The L Word. But the definition of “chapstick lesbian” is harder to nail, but we’re gonna try: “chapstick lesbian” is generally assumed to describe a lesbian who presents somewhere between masculine and feminine, which overlaps with the “tomboy femme” gender presentation. Chapstick lesbians are low-key and practical. Chapstick lesbians don’t wear lipstick unless it’s a very special occasion. The default outfit of a chapstick lesbian is “t-shirt and jeans.” They value comfort and, you guessed it, VALUE.

We are all about chapstick for ever and ever, world without end, amen. Working on the assumption that chapstick lesbians are a thing, here are some chapsticks we have positive feelings about. And they have positive feelings about us. It’s all pretty gay.

1. Classic Cherry Chapstick

OR IS THAT THE BISEXUAL CHAPSTICK? Thanks Katy Perry!

2. Burt’s Bees Beeswax: The Best Chapstick That Rachel Can’t Afford

Burt’s Bees Beeswax has menthol or something in it, which is nice for kissing because it makes the other person’s lips slightly tingly. Just for the record. Burt’s Bees works best for chapstick lesbians who don’t want their lip balm to add any color of shine to their lips, they just want the long-lasting impact of a quality chapstick.

3. Burt’s Bees Honey Lip Balm

This smells a little funny but tastes really sweet when you kiss someone.

4. Blistex Medicated Ointment

Not a chapstick at all, this lip product is for when it’s really cold and windy and you have no intention of making out with anyone within the next half hour and/or ever. Blistex Medicated Ointment is all business, despite the super sweet taste.

5. Blistex Daily Conditioning Treatment

Also not necessarily chapstick, as it comes in a pot. It’s nearly impossible to find Blistex DCT in a reliable way. If you ever see DCT at a drug store, you should buy two, because they won’t be back for another three months and even then they’ll be in an entirely different, nonsensical location, usually just out of reach behind a box of tampons for some reason.

6. Aquaphor Lip Repair Ointment: Pure Medicine for Practical Chapstick Lesbians

Our final entry in the “not actually chapstick” category. It’s cheap and it works on the dryest of lips. Music to a chapstick lesbian’s ears.

7. Bonne Bell Watermelon Lip Smackers

For when you want everyone within a three-foot radius to think you’re enjoying the most delicious piece of watermelon bubblegum on this fine planet, but without the gum. No one can resist the allure of a chapstick lesbian with Watermelon Lip Smackers. No one.

8. Melixir Vegan Lip Butter Trio

God, vegan chapstick lesbians.

9. Carmex Lip Balm

The sweatpants of lip products.

10. Sun Bum Lip Balm SPF 30

For when you’re playing softball and need some SPF. Don’t want any flavor on your lips? Try Banana Boat.

11. C.O. Bigelow Mentha Lip Balm

Usually you have to go to the mall at least once a year, and it’s a heinous experience, and you can’t believe you ever did this voluntarily or with any excitement. There are two things that make mandatory mall stops endurable: Auntie Anne’s pretzels and getting a tube of Bigelow’s mint lip balm from Bath & Body Works. As chapsticks for chapstick lesbians go, this one is a little pricey, and also not chapstick, but well worth it because it’s the only balm that acts as a breath freshener. Other balms are minty, yes, but Bigelow’s is superior in every way.

The Illusion Of Safety

Just about two months ago, I was driving up the 101 to record a conversation with Nicole Kelly for her podcast, The Heart, and Asha Grant, of the Free Black Women’s Library LA (a branch of Olaronke Akinmowo’s Free Black Women’s Library project). That afternoon we had a conversation on the topic of people pleasing, and how it has informed our youths, and the kinds of queer women we have become now.

I highly recommend listening to NK’s series, Divesting From People Pleasing, for a deeper dive, but “pleasing” as we’re considering it, is not about being nice. It’s about all of the ways that we, as queer women of color, deny, curate, bury, criticize and otherwise create a public presentation of ourselves in order to move through the world. It planted a seed in my mind about what it means to be Asian American: about the values that are most important in my family, about the ways I was taught to protect myself and succeed, about how those strategies are perceived by larger American culture.

After the the podcast episode aired, I got a text from an artist friend, Chloë Bass, that said, “My response thought (IN CASE YOU WERE ASKING, which you weren’t) to something you said is that actually we are being protected using strategies that people in the past wished they had known before the bad thing happened to them. If they had known to protect themselves from that thing, they feel like they would have been ok. So they imagine the thing they wish they had (long hair, correct clothes, whatever) and use that as the protection into the future. But in the future, we face different problems that need different protections that we don’t know yet. And it’s always going to be like that.”

“Does it have to always be like that?” I asked Chloë. I couldn’t help but wonder: Is safety ever more than an illusion? What is true safety?

This was at the end of March and COVID-19 was buzzing like a low ominous bass line beneath everything, shaking out a hysteria that was erupting in all sorts of ways, from hoarding obscene amounts of toilet paper and water to a rise in brutal violence and open hatred of Asian Americans in public. Plus, there were just a lot of people dying from illness. I kept thinking about what Chloe had said. I kept thinking about this present/future that I lived in. I was well aware that it was different from the past that produced my grandparents and my parents, that I wouldn’t otherwise exist.

But it was also true that the same discriminatory sentiments against Asian people, from the past, had been carried on, as a kind of cultural protection among The Rest, which is how I consider everyone else who isn’t “Asian”.

But it was also true that the same discriminatory sentiments against Asian people, from the past, had been carried on, as a kind of cultural protection among The Rest, which is how I consider everyone else who isn’t “Asian” — a designation that of course Westerners would make to attempt to homogenize the majority of the world’s population. So am I ignorant or optimistic for thinking that I am less vulnerable than my Japanese American grandma Sumi — Betty, as she called herself to please in white company (a name I used at the milkshake shack at my summer camp because Kamala was too pretty to let them butcher)?

I wanted to track down the past-future protections that had gotten me to where I’m at now in my identities. I also wanted to know how to better face the unknown of my own future — I don’t want to be caught parading around in last generation’s false sense of security. So last weekend, I got my parents and my sister on a Zoom call to discuss the values that had been instilled in us by my grandparents, and what the culture of our family was about.

I had an idea of the general values in my family culture — I did grow up in it — but it was illuminating to have my parents put these things into context for me. It boiled down to four main values: education, family, pride in your identity, equity & justice. There is a way that all of these ideas meld together to create the general container of the world I know. If I think about them as one protective strategy, the goal is to gather as much knowledge and legitimized qualification as possible, use it to enlighten your family in a cultural and social way, gain access to money and opportunity, and then feel confident enough to extend this same protection to as many other people as possible.

When I see it laid out like this, I understand how easy it would be to create the narrative that Asian Americans are complicit in upholding white supremacy culture. I know a lot of Asian Americans who do. I also see how easy it would be to cast this strategy as simply protective, conservative, self-interested, rather than forward-thinking or inclusive.

When I was in high school I found my family strategy constraining in its singular focus on academic achievement, with some room for sports, as the most important value in a person’s whole entire life — “what about the way I feel?” I was always writing in my journals and my creative writing classes, “what if succeeding means sacrificing who I want to be?” Then, in college, having been radicalized by a winning combination of campus orgs and post-colonial theory, and also starting to come out, I found this strategy short-sighted and arrogant. “How dare we find a comfortable life within the systems that oppress us while people continue to die?!” was my totally cliched, self-righteous college vibe. Without understanding that comfort is necessary to survival, without looking at how lucky I was to have been gifted an extremely expensive experience of learning to articulate who I was, how I thought, and what I stood for.

My parents met in my dad’s dorm room at Oberlin College in the 70s because he was a popular calculus tutor, and my mom and her roommate needed help with their problem sets. When it was my turn to go to Oberlin College (and my sister would join me three years later), I didn’t quite understand what a huge accomplishment it was for both of my parents to have been there, but also how well it fit their own parents’ plans.

My mom is sansei and grew up in California. When I ask her about what expectations there were of her growing up, she says it was very clear. “Just like you, we were born with college funds, and the expectation was that we would go to college. Sometimes, as a treat, we got to work to add money to our college fund.” My mom’s mom had grown up on a strawberry farm in Oregon and she’d told me about how much manual labor filled her life. “It was extra for the women and girls because we also had to do housework and take care of the men — don’t get married to a man, unless you want to waste your time,” my grandma had told me. I’ve taken her advice to heart.

I know my grandma saw education as her way out, as a means to develop her own independence and to fortify herself against inevitable racism and discrimination. Sumi went to college, and then in the midst of internment, was one of the few Japanese American women to earn a master’s degree, and went on to earn a teaching credential, so that she could influence as many young minds as possible. I read an essay she published in the 80s in a UC Berkeley review about how, when she was applying for secretarial work, for which she was overqualified, she was told that they didn’t hire Japanese people and she should “go be a waitress.” But she would just not accept that. It occurs to me that my grandma was accruing an official record to back her up when she went to break the rules. I come from people who never intended, I see now, to accept safety as enough.

It occurs to me that my grandma was accruing an official record to back her up when she went to break the rules. I come from people who never intended, I see now, to accept safety as enough.

My dad’s family did not have the discipline, steady-paying jobs nor the financial-planning that my mom’s did. But my dad says his own dad clearly had designs on him getting an education, and leading an intellectual life. We’ll be generous and say first that my grandfather is a charming, intellectual powerhouse with mastery of both the sciences and the humanities, and was a professor of Eastern philosophy for many years. But what is hard for me to forget is that he’s also a narcissist, philanderer, misogynist, party monster and just generally irresponsible. When I ask my dad about his dad’s expectations of him, he tells me this story: “My dad, first of all, did not come to the graduation ceremony when I got my M.D. Instead he asked me when I was going to get a Ph.D. and I had to tell him I probably won’t! I think he saw medicine, and all professional degrees, as technical work, as not requiring a great mind.”

At the age of 7, my dad came to the U.S. with my grandma and his two younger sisters to join my grandfather, who was teaching math and physics at Yankton College, in that well-known American city, Yankton, SD. My dad says Yankton’s small town Americana made it a really smooth transition, people were welcoming and helpful. When my dad’s family moved to Houston, TX in 1964, it was the first time they had experienced segregation in the U.S. and it shocked them. My dad says, “We saw the U.S. from an academic perspective, as this place of innovation and new ideas, and especially my mom, was horrified to see African American people treated so poorly.”

As a dark-skinned Indian person, my dad lived in this liminal space, where he was technically allowed into places that denied Black people entry, but everyone was angry about it, convinced he was lying, that he had snuck in and wasn’t supposed to be there. Both of my grandparents, my dad reported to me, held gatherings with Black leaders from Texas Southern University, where my grandfather taught in the summers, to organize around passing the Civil Rights Act. My dad says of my grandfather, “He was always asking, ‘Why do people stand for this, why do you let them treat you this way?’ and they’d say ‘Well, if we resist they kill us.’ So that was sort of our introduction to the U.S.” That my family has long seen their own proximity to Blackness as a relationship to consciously cultivate and build power with was news to me, but also a message I grew up with, that was always implicitly there.

All of this reframes the narrative I had of what my grandparents and parents were doing with their lives, and with me, their latest iteration. Before I began this mini-journey, I thought I came from a family that hung on pretty tightly to protective measures. It seemed like the risks I was willing to take in my own life were bigger than the ones that people had taken before me: I’m very gay with a mohawk, I’m a writer who doesn’t write for white people, I’m not invested in marriage or the couple form. I am actively looking to discard a kind of superficial safety for another that was built around being exactly who I am, to living the change I seek. That is what true safety looks like to me now: being secure in my ability to adapt, to create my own path where there is none, to set goals that nobody else can see, to pick the people who give me strength and bring them along with me. I’m starting to understand now that so many people in my family before me were taking these same risks, building this same kind of security, it just looked different then than it does now.

I can’t claim that this is how all Asian American families work.That would be as absurd as believing myself to be performing the role of model minority when I achieve success — and I maintain that I would be just as smart, as funny, as hot, if white supremacy never existed. I recognize the ways that my personal Asian American culture is strange, in my family we’re all weird, but we are also a part of Asian America and I know we aren’t the only ones.

I’m very gay with a mohawk, I’m a writer who doesn’t write for white people, I’m not invested in marriage or the couple form. I am actively looking to discard a kind of superficial safety for another that was built around being exactly who I am, to living the change I seek.

What I think I am saying is that so much of American culture is a performance. I was working with a hypothesis that a good portion of what we call Asian American culture, is a fearful protective response to living in the U.S. That living under capitalism, that contending with the prevailing notion that we were all the same and all expendable, had produced a monolithic Asian American culture meant to prove our financial value and therefore human value, to commodify ourselves in order to buy our safety in white America. In essence, to pretend that we’re committed to their rigged game. I don’t know, now, that it was always based in fear. I think so many of the best parts of our cultures, the most safe and the most dangerous, are still protected, just for us. But the performance worked, they believe it.

Some among us apparently believe it too. There are an unseemly number of Asian American people who are fully committed to the violent, tragic cause of the original America. When I see Asian Americans suing Harvard to get rid of Affirmative Action, because they see it as the highest level of protection I think to myself, “Oh shit, these assholes forgot that complete assimilation is a performance.” And when I see Andrew Yang wearing an American flag around and telling us to “prove our Americanness” I think to myself, “To whom does he belong?” I think somebody needs to remind them. I think they forgot. That you will never be protected, you will never be safe here, not by accepting values that don’t value you.

I used to think it was my own security and safety, my privilege, that allowed me to decide that I didn’t want to participate in anyone’s monolithic culture — queer, Japanese, South Asian, literary, womanhood, romance. In many ways, it’s true. My parents and grandparents have a built all kinds of safety nets to catch me, should I fall, and as long as we’re alive, we will have each other. But it’s also clear that they also passed down to me the permission to live beyond the things we know, to take the risks that I see fit, and to invent my own version of security and comfort in the world, because that’s what they did. That’s my family legacy.

I still agree that we can’t know what protections our future selves will need, but maybe we just don’t expect to hold on to safety, especially not to find it in the status quo. The version of safety that’s an illusion is the one that pretends to protect you no matter what. Instead, maybe we just accept that none of us are safe unless all of us are safe, that to keep living our cultures and identities comfortably, we’ll always have to take risks and keep looking out for the costs of our sense of security.

The Top 100 Queer and Trans Women of Color Television Characters in TV History

Just a decade ago it was rare to have more than one queer woman of color on television at all. Now, not only have an abundance of such characters turned up on our screens in the last few years, we also have celebrated queer and trans women of color creators behind the scenes like Janet Mock and Tanya Saracho crafting our stories from the inside-out.

We’re standing at the crossroads of a new era. As the TV Team noted earlier in this week in our Annual List of Favorite Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans Characters: “Politics and pop culture have always had a symbiotic relationship, which is why representation — legitimately good representation that explores the fullness of humanity of all LGBTQ+ people at the intersections of the myriad of oppressions we face — is more important than it ever has been.”

That begged the question: What does legitimately good representation for lesbian, bisexual, queer and trans women of color look like? How does that fundamentally differ (or potentially, overlap) with lesbian or queer women’s representation on television overall? The television landscape is changing rapidly. Where does that leave lesbian, bisexual, and trans women of color on TV? Where have been, and more importantly — where are we going?

Those are the questions that we’ve been obsessed with over the last month. We wanted to create a rubric that — while not definitive (we look forward to arguing with you in the comments) — would at least be an opening to the broader conversation. From that rubric came this list, a first of its kind exploration into the 100 Top Queer and Trans Women of Color Characters in Television History.

Some Notes on Ranking Methodology:

Considering what makes the best representation for any television character, but especially for queer people of color, whose identities fall across a variety of intersections, is necessarily qualitative and cannot be solved by a simple set of numbers. That said, it was important to us that we have a system of checks and balances to counter any of our own biases… otherwise, Annalise Keating would just win everything.

We began this project by scouring Autostraddle’s television database of queer and trans women characters of television. This database has been researched for years and, to the best of our knowledge, has the basic information covered of every lesbian, bisexual, queer or trans woman character ever on television (It’s the same database we use as a baseline for our yearly TV reports). We narrowed the database to women of color and came up with 400 names.

We quelled that list down to 300 by limiting it to regular or reoccurring cast members. Then we brought together our particularly obsessive knowledge of pop culture, along with LezWatchTV, LGBT Fans Deserve Better, YouTube, and Wikipedia. We narrowed the list from 300 to 110 names, and then we applied the following system for ranking the Top 100.

+ How well-developed the character’s story arc was on their television show, along with two separate overall collaborative scores from Autostraddle’s TV Team and Autostraddle’s Speakeasy, the collective of our writers of color. (These three were the heaviest weighted categories and worth 5 points each, for a grand total of 15 points.) Natalie and Carmen debated story arc together. The other two categories were selected for consideration to both the craft of creating television, along with the equal importance of the ability for the characters to connect to audiences of color.

+ The following categories were each weighted at one point each (3 points total) — if the show in question was critically acclaimed; if the character was written by a queer person (or if the show had a queer person in the writers’ room that we could find via research); and if the character existed on a POC dominant cast (because in real life most people of color don’t spend all of their time surrounded by white people with no family or friends that look like them).

+ We also gave one bonus point for each of the following (4 potential bonus points total) — if the performance won or was nominated for an Emmy Award (importantly, the spread of queer women characters that have been Emmy nominated in recent years includes quite a few QWOC characters compared to their white counterparts); if the character had a woman love interest (this is designed to measure the ways that women of color’s queer sex and sexualities are erased on screen. It is not our interest in contributing to bisexual erasure. Our list includes bisexual and queer women who sleep with men, straight trans women, along with lesbians who where never once given a woman love interest); and if that woman love interest was also another woman of color. And finally, we gave a bonus point if the character was portrayed by an out queer or trans actor of color.

+ We subtracted one point if the character in question died. No rewards for bury your gays on our watch.

What surprised both of us was that our original presumptive winners ended up — well, not being the winners at all. We think that has a lot to do with beloved characters who came earlier in our queer television lives not being allowed by Hollywood the same room for growth as those who came after. It’s similar to the old adage that each new generation goes further than the one before.

Interestingly, no character on this list reached a “perfect score”. The #1 ranked character came up short by about 2 points! Furthermore, the top 25 ranked characters all shared a spread of only four points total! The difference between #25 and the Top 10 almost came down to decimals.

Enough talking! Lets get to the list!

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100. Sam Black Crow, American Gods

Starting off our list at #100 is Sam Black Crow from American Gods. Sam actually made this list by the skin of their teeth because the character is much more prominently featured in the book than the actual television series. In both, Sam is a two-spirit college student who’s cynical about a lot of the “warring Gods” happening around them. Actress Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs is queer, and said that was part of why she wanted to play Sam on American Gods in to begin with. You love to see it. — Carmen

99. Natalia Rivera, Guiding Light

When Natalia Rivera’s husband, Gus, died, she was forced to make a life or death decision: to give Gus’ heart to the woman who nearly stole him from her, Olivia Spencer, or to let her die from heart failure. Natalia opted to save Olivia’s life — much to the chagrin of a grieving Olivia — and became her assistant at home and at work so Olivia wouldn’t squander the gift she was given. The more time the pair spent together, the closer they grew… and their love affair continued until Guiding Light‘s cancellation in 2009. — Natalie

98. Rana Habeeb, Coronation Street

When Rana’s husband, Zeedan, discovers that his wife’s been carrying on an affair with one of their best friends, Kate Connor, he lashes out: outing her to her conservative Muslim parents and emotionally blackmailing her into continuing their marriage. But even then, Rana’s connection to Kate is undeniable and the pair reconnect, much to the dismay of her parents. From there, Corrie delves into a story that few shows have tried to tackle: religious homophobia and the lengths which some people will go to save face. — Natalie

97. Louise Taggart, Clique

Clique, the British series from Skins writer Jess Brittain, feels a bit like Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl had a baby. Only now that baby’s brought up in an ultra-competitive world that forces you to define yourself in the real world and online. The pressure and the desire to fit in are next level. Enter Louise, the self-assured, pragmatic, gay mathematics genius who creates her own luck. But even though she’s always the smartest girl in the room, the social game isn’t something she excels at and she’s too honest to fake it. — Natalie

96. Luna Spence, Burden of Truth

There’s a moment in Burden of Truth‘s second season where, just before she goes to the police to face questioning for her father’s murder, Luna Spence, who is Cree from Long Grass First Nation, goes out in her mother’s backyard and makes an offering of tobacco to the spirits as she prays. It’s a quick moment punctuated by a beautiful score that both reaffirms the show’s commitment to tell the stories of Indigenous people — a queer Indigenous woman, no less! — and reminds the audience of the power of representation on television to give you a glimpse into cultures that you might not have seen otherwise. — Natalie

95. Sophie Moore, Batwoman

Years ago, just as Sophie and Kate Kane are about to graduate from Point Rock Academy, their relationship is discovered. Facing expulsion under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Kate opts to tell the truth and gets expelled, while Sophie, fearing the consequences both personal and professional, lies. But years later when she hears that Sophie’s been kidnapped and her life is in danger, Kate comes rushing back to Gotham. We’re just over a quarter of the way into Batwoman‘s first season and it seems like we’re just scratching the surface with Sophie. Since the show’s version of Sophie is so different from the comic books, I’m anxious to see what more there is to “Sophie Freaking Moore.” — Natalie

94. Jacqueline “Jax” Zhou, Pandora

Pandora was pretty universally panned when it came out earlier this year. But do you know what’s cool about it, anyway? The queer woman of color lead? She IS Pandora. Any queer woman of color who’s also the title character of her own show was definitely going to earn a spot on this list. I’m sure you understand. After the loss of her home, the New Portland Colony, Jax leaves for the Earth Space Training Academy. There she and her friends learn to defend the galaxy from threats – both alien and human. Also? Gay stuff. — Carmen

93. Rosetta Reide/ Danny Gates, Courthouse

Years before Gina Price-Blythewood would hire an unknown Lena Waithe as her production assistant on The Secret Life of Bees, she penned and co-produced shortlived series for CBS called Courthouse. From descriptions — since the show isn’t yet available for viewing anywhere, I cannot personally confirm — the show feels like a precursor to those Shondaland series we’ve come to love: Beautiful, highly talented people working in the pressure-filled crucible of a Clark County courthouse. And just like in Shondaland, the gays were represented. Judge Rosetta Reide and her housekeeper, Danny Gates, became the first-ever black lesbian couple on television. — Natalie

92. Kay Sedia, Marry Me

Sometimes, while doing this job, you stumble upon a record of a show or character you’ve never heard of and, as you dig more into it, you find yourself wondering, “Why did no one tell me about this?” That’s how I felt when I discovered Kay Sedia, the black lesbian character on NBC’s shortlived sitcom, Marry Me. The “soft butch lipstick flannel queen” comes out on the show by announcing that she’s got a match on Boobr, “a dating app for lesbians, like Grindr is for gay men or Tindr is for straight men and whores.” Hilarious. And, she was dating Ana Ortiz?! How did no one tell me about this? — Natalie

91. Nasreen “Nas” Paracha, Ackley Bridge

Depictions of everyday Muslim characters of television remain elusive; depictions of everyday queer Muslim characters, even moreso. But of the handful of queer Muslim women we’ve seen on English language television, none has been more robustly portrayed, in my estimation, as Nasreen “Nas” Paracha. Born to Pakistani immigrants, Nas grows up a working class town West Yorkshire and attends to Ackley Bridge College, a new academy forged by the merger of two previously segregated schools. Ackley Bridge does as good a job as any show on television of grappling with our intersectional identities…and for Nas, that means learning how to exist as a lesbian, as a Muslimah and as an ordinary teenager in Ackley Bridge. — Natalie

90. Tea Marvelli, Skins US

When MTV debuted the trailer for the American version of the British series, Skins, they made one crucial change to the first series roster: Instead of Maxxie, the white gay character featured in the British version, or Teo, the Latino gay character mentioned in the original Skins USA sides, there was Tea, a young, beautiful Latina lesbian. Sofia Black-D’Elia — who’d go onto play queer again in The Mick — is magnetic in the role, capturing the attention of critics early in the shows run, but the show, much to my consternation, never really lived up to its potential… or the high bar set by Skins UK. (Carmen also wishes she had been played by a Latinx actor.) — Natalie

89. Amanda Weston, Stichers

In Stichers there’s a mysterious government agency who has the ability to “stick” people into the memories of the recently dead in order to solve murders and crimes. Which is totally normal and not at all creepy! Amanda, a medical examiner, calls it like she sees it. She don’t like have their emotions toyed with and is just has happy alone as she is a part of a relationship. Which is why she ultimately calls it quits with Camille, who wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment Amanda was ultimately looking for. — Carmen

88. Christina ‘Chris’ Alonso, S.W.A.T.

One feature of police procedurals — and, honestly, most of the reason I hate them so much — is that they center men to an annoying degree. Sure, there are women involved in the operation but when it comes to the takedown, the sometimes aggressive moment where the cops finally subdue the suspect, it’s left to the central male characters. But that’s not the case on S.W.A.T. where Chris Alonso is allowed to be every bit the badass as her male counterparts. And while Chris’ polyamory story ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth, it doesn’t take away from how groundbreaking it was to see the story told on a CBS procedural. — Natalie

87. Shana Bring, Pretty Little Liars

Oh Shana Costumeshop. That’s not her name, of course, but I think that she’s become more famous for her nickname inside the Pretty Little Liars fandom than her actual name itself (I literally didn’t know her last name was even “Fring” until we made this list) says a lot about both how loved and a little iconic Shana is for a specific niche of queer television watchers, and how badly developed or thought out her character was overall. Saying that Pretty Little Liars was badly thought out is sort of a given at this point in our television lives, but for while it really was a delightful rollercoaster of crazy. Shana joined at the peak and was a big part of that ride. Part costume shop worker/ part ex-girlfriend/ part Psycho-style stalker and potential murder suspect, who says that we can’t have it all? — Carmen

86. Bill Potts, Doctor Who

Optimism overflowed when it was announced that Bill Potts would join the Twelfth Doctor on his journeys. It was miraculous: A show that premiered back when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain now had a black lesbian woman as the Doctor’s companion. Unfortunately, though, that enthusiasm was short-lived as, despite some companions lasting multiple seasons, Bill was shot through the heart in her season’s pentultimate episode. Eventually, though, she reunites — as a sentient oil — with the Doctor and convinces him to regenerate, producing the Thirteenth Doctor, as portrayed by Jodie Whittaker. — Natalie

85. Mazikeen “Maze” Lucifer

Before Lucifer had even debuted in January 2016, the American Family Association/One Million Moms had launched a campaign against it. The show, they said was glorifying Satan and demons by making them caring and likable… and having them look like Lesley-Ann Brandt. Thankfully that campaign failed and we got to meet Mazikeen, Lucifer’s former right-hand — “the most skilled torturer Hell’s ever known,” he calls her. When Lucifer ascends to Earth, Maze sticks by his side…helping him solve cases and operate his nightclub. Eventually, though, Maze strikes out on her own, becoming a bounty hunter… a job that allows her to use her hunting skills and get paid. — Natalie

84. Keelin, The Originals

A werewolf ER doctor, Keelin’s the last of the Malraux bloodline after the rest of her family was hunted to extinction. At first she’s held captive by Freya, but later they combine their powers to destroy Marcel’s venom. Of course that leads to them dating. And then they have the most beautiful, fair tale gone witches, picturesque wedding! Oh and after the series ended, we learned they had a son together. Extra cute! — Carmen

83. LaVerne “Jukebox” Thomas, Power

I really can’t explain why I loved Jukebox so much. She was a dirty cop, she pimped her girlfriend out to see if her cousin (a man) would have sex with her — for reasons that are now very hazy to me — and she kidnapped a kid. To be fair, that kid was very annoying. But all the rest of it is real bad. Jukebox was every single “lesbians are evil” trope, wrapped up in a bow. And then they killed her! Shot dead. OK there’s really no reason you should watch Jukebox, except, hear me out: Anika Noni Rose playing gay. ALSO, Power is one of the few shows that has built a near religious following in black households and white people almost never have even heard of. That means that Anika Noni Rose, real life Disney Princess, having sex with women was seen all across black America. I guess that’s enough of a reason for her to be on this list. — Carmen

82. Sandy Lopez, ER

Before we met Hen Wilson on 9-1-1 or Maya Bishop on Station 18, Sandy Lopez was television’s most prominent queer firefighter. She meets Dr. Kerry Weaver on a call to help a pregnant woman out of a crashed ambulance in the middle of a thunderstorm. They develop a rapport and when Sandy returns to County General for treatment with her hand, Kerry asks Sandy out on a date. It’s the start of a beautiful relationship for a groundbreaking character on a show that, at the time, was still the third most watched show in the country (22.1M viewers!). — Natalie

81. Angela Montenegro, Bones

When Angela Montenegro broke the heart of her art school girlfriend, Roxie, lost her muse and went eight years without publicly displaying her work. Meanwhile, Angela put her classical art training to work at the Jeffersonian Institute in forensic facial reconstruction. But then the exes cross paths after Roxie’s implicated a crime, Montenegro is reminded that the only thing between them that’s changed is time…and once Roxie’s vindicated, the pair share a kiss. — Natalie

80. Kith Lyonne, Jessica Jones

Becoming a go-to actress for queer South Asian representation, Sarita Choudhury — who also previously played queer on Blindspot — stepped into the role of Kith Lyonne in Jessica Jones‘ final season. Lyonne dated Jeri Hogarth in college but the pair broke up after Kith found out that her girlfriend had been cheating on her (with Wendy, who Jeri would go on to marry and also cheat on). By the time they reconnect, Lyonne is married but still carrying around the pain of having lost her daughter and Jeri was dying of ALS… but, for a little while at least, they make beautiful music together. — Natalie

79. Allison Wong,The Real O’Neals

When compiling this list, it was very important to us that we represented a variety of television mediums. I’m explaining that because when we first winnowed this list from 400 to 100, somehow Allison Wong wasn’t on it! She almost slipped through the cracks, which would have been our loss. As Kenny O’Neal’s best friend, one of the only Asian people and the only lesbian in her Catholic high school, Allison complicated the The Real O’Neal’s sitcom set up in delightful ways. The original premise was that Kenny was the only gay teen in his straight, Midwestern existence. But it actually turned out that he only thought that because he was blinded by his own whiteness and male-centric point of view. Lucky for us, Allison was there to force his self-awareness and turn his world upside down. If you love your gay teens crafted in the existence of Daria Morgendorffer’s pitch-perfect deadpan, then Allison is definitely the girl for you. — Carmen

78. Kat Sandoval, Madam Secretary

CBS regularly ranks last among the five broadcast networks when it comes to the inclusion of LGBTQ characters. Last year, the network had just three queer female characters in its entire primetime lineup, only two of who got regular storylines and screentime: Chris Alonso from S.W.A.T. and Kat Sandoval on Madam Secretary. And while it’s necessary to take CBS to task for falling behind when it comes to diversity, it makes moments like Kat’s coming out to her colleague, Jay, on Madam Secretary feel even more groundbreaking. It’s as if the “good guys” snuck one past the gatekeepers and, in Kat’s case, gave an unsuspecting audience a real education on what it means to be queer in this country. — Natalie

77. Prudence Blackwood (Also Known as Prudence Night), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

In a piece about the lack of respect afforded to black witches, Angelica Jade Bastién wrote, “The lack of powerful black witches in film and TV is a symptom of a larger problem that has existed in America since its very beginning: the fear of black women’s autonomy and prowess.” Prudence Blackwood may be the exception to the rule. On CAOS, the teen witch, whose style pays homage to the great Eartha Kitt, is afforded more depth than prior black witches have been afforded. Write her off as a mean girl at your peril, Prudence has a tendency to surprise. — Natalie

72. Captain Philippa Georgiou, Star Trek: Discovery

Technically, Captain Philippa Georgiou is dead. BUT — and this is important! — not this Captain Philippa Georgiou. Michael Burnham brought this version of Philippa home from the Mirror Universe to the regular Star Trek one to save her life, because Michael felt guilty for her own Capt. Georgiou’s death. Are you keeping up with me? Good. Somehow everyone on board was shocked to learn the evil Mirror Universe version of her commander was … well, you know … evil. But she’s really been turning around lately. And she’s a complete badass (who’s getting her own spin off show soon). In her universe, apparently everyone is Pansexual, but she’s the only one who’s made it clear so far, having sex with a pair of male and female Orions during the show’s first season. — Carmen

73. Toni Topaz, Riverdale

Do I personally wish we got to see more of Toni Topaz on Riverdale? Of course I do. No offense to Cheryl Blossom, but Toni’s always been my favorite Vixen (or Pretty Poison? Whatever those crazy kids are calling themselves today). I still believe Toni and Cheryl could’ve been Riverdale’s most iconic couple — and Toni their best Sea Serpent — if they ever would just let her off the bench sometimes and get deeper into the Scooby mystery of the week. — Carmen

74. Sameen Shaw, Person of Interest

Dr. Sameen Shaw, otherwise known as Indigo Five Alpha, or simply Shaw, is a physician and a former operative for the U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity. Shaw describes herself as having Axis II Personality Disorder, and which basically means lacks empathy with most people. She has feelings, they’re just tuned on low. The exception that is of course her beloved Root. Together Root & Shaw performed the impossible — they went from being a fan relationship to a real canon one, on CBS no less! If that’s not magic, I truly don’t what is. — Carmen

73. Rasha Zuabi, Degrassi:Next Class

Degrassi‘s always been a show invested in queer representation and telling stories that dovetail with current events. Rarely have they been as relevant as when, at the height of the refugee crisis and the debate over accepting refugees, Rasha Zuabi ends up in as part of Degrassi High’s senior class. The Syrian transplant finds freedom at Degrassi, shedding her hijab and, eventually, being able to come out to her closest friends and family. — Natalie

72. Valencia Perez, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

From the moment that audiences first meet Valencia Perez — flirting with Josh Chan in the grocery store freezer section — she’s really, really wants to get married. She and Josh have been together, on and off, for 15 years and she’s ready for him to put a ring on it. But when no amount of prodding works, Valencia breaks things off. Fast-forward four seasons of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Valencia’s found the woman of her dreams and, again, she really, really wants to get married…. and, again, the person who she’s expecting a proposal from doesn’t take the hint. But then she’s reminded by her girlfriend that gender roles are tired and if and when she wants to, she can propose. — Natalie

71. Maggie Sawyer, Supergirl

This is my list, that Natalie and I spent the better part of a month pouring over in obsessive detail, so I will stand in my truth: I don’t like Maggie Sawyer. If I had my pick, she wouldn’t be here at all. This is probably going to send droves of angry shippers after me, but that’s fine. I know how to work a mute button. Clearly there 30 other people on this list who ranked even lower than Maggie, so not everyone shares my opinion. And yes, she was brave and strong and a good girlfriend to Alex Danvers. I love the part she played in Alex’s coming out (I could watch the “kiss the girls you want to kiss” scene forever). But people of color shouldn’t be played by white actors, and Maggie Sawyer was. That’s my line in the sand. It’s 2019 and I don’t have to pretend its ok for white people to “act” or “play” people of color. Our culture is not a costume. — Carmen

70. Abby, Abby’s

With its bar setting, multi-cam format and live studio audience, Abby’s has all the hallmarks of a television sitcom classic. But the show’s diverse cast, led by the immitable Natalie Morales in the titular role, injected new life into a stale old premise and broke a lot of ground along the way. With Abby’s, Morales became the first openly queer woman and the first woman of color to play an openly bisexual main character on a network sitcom. And if that weren’t enough, Morales was also the first Cuban since Desi Arnaz to lead a comedy. — Natalie

69. Cotton Brown, Star

As Cotton Brown in Star,  Amiyah Scott made history as the first out trans person to star as a series regular on network television. Particularly in the early seasons, Cotton was given more plot to chew through than any black trans woman role we’d seen before Pose. Those are two groundbreaking reasons that mean Cotton earned her spot on this list. Unfortunately, as years progressed Star — and Cotton’s role specifically — ran off the rails quickly from being a delightfully fun hot mess to being… just an awful hot mess.— Carmen

68. Aneela Kin Fit, Killjoys

When Delle Seyah Kendry started to relentlessly flirt with Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen) and set shipper hearts ablaze, the writers of Killjoys gifted us with Aneela. Also played by Hannah John-Kamen, Aneela is physically identical  to Dutch, but in reality she’s different in just about every other way. With Aneela and Delle, we get to see the former villains of an epic tale begin to fight side by side with the heroes — without ever losing the murderous edge that made fans fall in love with them in the first place. It’s redemption story that actually isn’t about redemption at all: It’s about doing good, learning to really love, and also learning to be yourself instead of what others expect from you in the first place. — Carmen

67. Daysi Cantu, East Los High

Before we ever got to know Ser Anzoátegui as Eddy on Vida, they were Daysi Cantu on East Los High. Whereas other queer characters on the show — namely Camila and Jocelyn — hid their identities from their families fearing a backlash, Daysi was out and proud as a queer woman from a supportive family. After presenting to Jocelyn’s life skills class, she and Daysi begin flirting heavily with each other, much to the consternation of Camila, Jocelyn’s former best friend and first love. — Natalie

66. Alex Nuñez, Degrassi TNG

In hindsight, when Alex Nuñez first shows up in Degrassi, with her penchant for tank tops and starting fights with other girls, we should have seen the gay coming. And, of course, her threats to out Marco Del Rossi during their campaigns for class president were just a reflection of her internalized homophobia, spawned by her new complicated feelings for Paige. But everything finally becomes clear, after the premiere of Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh!, when Paige and Alex share their first kiss. — Natalie

65. Kennedy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Few things provoke as much fervor among Buffy fans as a discussion about Kennedy, who joined the cast in the show’s seventh season. Tara’s body had barely cooled from the assassin’s bullet when Kennedy showed up in Sunnydale — a Potential Slayer seeking Buffy’s protection — to cozy up to Willow. She was such a contrast from Tara, personality wise: Kennedy was a self-proclaimed brat who was unapologetically aggressive in… well, everything… including her pursuit of Willow. But, perhaps, that’s what Willow needed at that moment: someone completely different from Tara to help her work through her grief and anger and, of course, to reaffirm her sexuality. — Natalie

64. Heather Novak, The Sinner

Of all the shows we hadn’t personally watched and had to deep dive research over the course of this project, I’m most mad about Heather Novak. I didn’t watch the first season of The Sinner, so I’m sure I missed it as it aired that they switched protagonists between the first and second years. But there’s a black lesbian LEAD in a True Dectetive style moody whodunit and no one told me? And the central mystery involves her first love/ ex-girlfriend? And she has to deal with the racial politics of being a legal authority figure in a small town where there are very few black people? And she’s the quiet, brooding type, with lots of emotions just beneath the surface? Sign me up. — Carmen

63. Ximena SinFuego, The Fosters

 Ximena Sinfuego immigrated to the United States when she was barely old enough to remember it. Originally, she had DACA, but she  let her DACA status lapse because she was afraid that with the increased ICE raids happening in immigrant communities under the Trump Administration, she would be tipping agents off to her family’s new address. That leads to Ximena being on the run from ICE, and here’s the thing: No one is better at humanizing political issues than The Fosters. In the middle of all our recent debates about how to best protect immigrants, the show put forth this character. A face that you can name and see and love and learn from. When they rise to the occasion, nothing tops The Fosters and when it came to Ximena’s immigration case, they were at their best. — Carmen

62. Maya St. Germain, Pretty Little Liars

At first, I was very surprised at Maya’s relative low ranking on this list, I mean who doesn’t love Emily Fields’ dearly departed girlfriend? But Natalie reminded me of a lot that I forgot about how little of Maya’s life made sense. She was raised by supposedly hippie parents, but then they freak out and sent her to rehab over smoking a little bit of pot? She’s barely given a life outside of Emily or any plots to call her own. Overall, she is broadly (and pretty badly) developed. OK. All that said, damn she was really cute with Emily! — Carmen

61. Carmen de la Pica Morales, The L Word 

Carmen de la Pica Morales is so beloved despite how much she had working against her: she was a late addition “diversity” member of a show that was pretty famously white; she played into a lot of stereotypes about Latinas being “good” and “family oriented” while also being “spicy bombshell sexpots;” oh and she wasn’t even played by a Latina! Still, regardless, our love for Carmen pushes on. Sarah Shahi brought warmth and familiarity to the role and we all wanted to be Carmen’s friend (or girlfriend), how could we not? — Carmen

60. Nola Darling, She’s Gotta Have It

In terms of raw camera time, you’ll be hard pressed to find another character on this list who beats out Nola Darling. After all, the pansexual Brooklyn artist is the protagonist, narrator, and titular character of her own show. This also makes her a perfect case study as to why quality, and not just quantity, matters. Nola’s one of the most famous queer black women in popular culture (stemming from the original She’s Gotta Have It film in the ’80s), but her characterization remains tied up in the imagination of filmmaker Spike Lee. His vice grip on Nola, and unwillingness to allow a black woman (specifically a black queer woman) leave their mark on her writing ultimately hampers Nola before she even reaches the screen. It prevents her from becoming the iconic character she really could be. — Carmen

59. Shani Abboud, Orange is the New Black

Though it’s very important to note that not all Muslim women, and not all women from Africa, are required to go through genital mutilation — it’s nonetheless significant that Orange is the New Black decided to tell that experience with such tender care through Shani. It’s also vitally important that we experienced ICE custody through the eyes of a Muslim woman, and that we also got to know Shani’s life in Egypt – that she lived in a city, that she had an Instagram account, and a girlfriend. It’s breaks down the one-dimensional stereotypes that we often receive about Muslim women from television.— Carmen

58. Yolanda Rivas, G.L.O.W.

The way Yolanda Rivas comes out to her fellow wrestler, Ruth, is cavalier, even by today’s standards. She offers to spice up their matches by wearing a string bikini but Ruth balks at the idea: Yolanda’s left her stripping days behind, Ruth points out, there’s no need to go back. She’s not, Yolanda says, except once a week when her ex bartends; she likes to torture her by taking off her clothes.
“You like girls?” Ruth asks.
“I love girls,” Yolanda answers.
That audacity would be refreshing today… but in the 1980’s, where real-life wrestler Tiffany Melon was forced out of GLOW for being suspected of being a lesbian? Yolanda’s brashness would be unheard of. — Natalie

57. Felicia  “Snoop” Pearson, The Wire

There’s this thing we say sometimes on the TV Team: “I love a queer villain, but I hate when queerness is villainized.” I’m not sure that Snoop is a villain, though she is very violent, but what I most loved about her is how much she was woven into the fabric of her neighborhood. Snoop is never singled out for her masc gender presentation or her sexuality. It’s never brought up as an issue, not even once, in all six seasons of The Wire. She just gets to be who she is. If that person happens to be a gangster with an affinity for hiding bodies. Well, that’s a potential problem for a different day. — Carmen

56. Violet Cross, Harlots

Against the backdrop of two competing brothels, you don’t expect to witness a genuine love story emerge, but that’s what Harlots offers with Amelia Scanwell, the daughter of a religious zealot who preaches outside the brothels, and Violet Cross, the audacious, unapologetic street girl that catches her eye. Surprisingly, Cross’ role in the British period piece is loosely based on the true story of Ann Duck, the biracial woman who followed her father into gang life and built a lengthy criminal resume. — Natalie

55. Tess Pearson, This Is Us 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Tess Pearson is the coolest gay tween in America. It’s not every day — well actually, it’s literally never — that we get to see a black tween come out to her parents and they respond with nothing but loving her and supporting her. It’s one of a kind, and over a year later I still can’t stop thinking about it. On top of that, Tess also struggles with high anxiety and panic attacks, centering yet another important conversation in black communities that often gets overlooked. And her celebrity crush is Zendaya? My girl has taste. — Carmen

54. Deniz, The Bisexual

 The Bisexual  is billed as a half hour comedy, but I didn’t really laugh that much while watching it. The exception, of course, is when Deniz takes the screen. She’s brilliant and dry and sarcastic. Her bullshit detector is on a hundred at all times. She’s hard on Leila (the titular bisexual), but she’s also loyal. To her friends, and also her parents.  When Leila pushes that Deniz should leave her her family liquor store to pursue her dreams of becoming a chef, Denis retorts “stop being so fucking middle class” — please give me more queer Muslims telling hard truths with a punchline like this, thank you very much. — Carmen

53. Cruz, Vida

Ah Cruz and her beautiful shoulder tattoo. Yes, I realize that sounds incredibly superficial of me, but honestly? What a great, queer, costuming choice on behalf of Vida. Anyway, in Vida’s first season Cruz stands out because she’s a lesbian who didn’t move away from her home neighborhood in order to come out. She made home gay all around her, and she’s fiercely protective of it. She’s tough, but patient, and at first seems like everything Emma needs as she works through her own internalized homophobia. Unfortunately that character development falls greatly in Vida’s second season, where Cruz becomes a zombie of her former self as she purposefully pushes Emma away. It’s that abrupt shift in characterization that finds her on the bottom half of this list. — Carmen

52. Nico Minoru, Marvel’s Runaways

One of the themes we see repeated with Asian characters on film and television — queer or not — is the concept of “saving face.” The idea, explicitly named in the iconic lesbian romantic comedy and implicitly evoked in last year’s Crazy Rich Asians, is about the ways in which people modulate themselves to avoid bringing undue attention to themselves, their parents or their communities. Part of what makes Nico Minoru’s Runaways character so noteworthy is that she’s turning that trope on its head. She goes beyond just being the disobedient high school student or being candid about her sexuality…she’s literally battling her parents and her community who are the embodiment of evil. — Natalie

51. Alice Kwan, Good Trouble

When Freeform announced Good Trouble, a spin-off of The Fosters that would take Callie and Mariana, post-graduation, to downtown Los Angeles, I expected a world centered around those characters. That is not what I got. Instead the Adams-Foster girls are just a gateway to introduce the audience to a compelling set of new characters, including Alice Kwan, the house manager of the intentional community where Callie and Mariana live. In the show’s second season, Alice is learning to define herself, both as a newly out lesbian and as a new comedienne. — Natalie

Toward an Applicable Theory of Just Not

The year after I get divorced, I am more tired than I’ve ever been. I want it to be something more than that — I am recovering, I am in a period of contemplation, I am processing — but really, I’m just tired. You would think I would be tired during the divorce: traveling back and forth from Minnesota to Wisconsin because you have to be physically in the same courtroom for so many things, going to Office Depot to print out the paperwork, fielding the late night calls and emails and texts and and and, carrying two bursting bags of groceries the four blocks from the bus stop to my apartment, trying to figure out the dollar amount of the pots and pans I took (because let’s be honest he didn’t cook) for the Wisconsin court system, carrying my laundry three flights of stairs. But no; some kind of grim momentum carried me through all that, through the weird sad meeting at the coffeeshop where we compared our financial statements and through the lunch after the courthouse at the gentrified taco place we both secretly liked. As I was leaving the courtroom — the one that had a sign saying DIVORCE COURT over the door — a man in the courthouse hallway catcalled me, crooned Hey beautiful. My friend was furious upon hearing this — I’ll kill him, she said — but I wasn’t. I was just so tired, delirious really, that it was hilarious; it tinged my whole day with hallucinatory sweetness.

I’m exhausted but unable to rest, exactly — in either the literal and figurative sense. I take a sleeping pill and wake up at 4 am anyway, humming with grief or rage or just aimless anxiety. When I’m awake, I’m more, and more chaotically, connected to my friends and the sticky, flickering network of queer community than I’ve ever been. I’m getting texts late at night about girl problems, I’m sending outfit selfies before I go out, I’m telling the group chat the address of the apartment I’m headed to at 11 pm (why? What will they do, exactly, if I don’t come home?). I feel on edge, vibrating like I’m on day three awake no matter how much I sleep — which isn’t much, if I’m being honest. I try, but I just keep vibrating awake in the dark, a blender whose motor won’t turn off. My friends and I are constantly exchanging screenshots, texts, copy/pastes and DMs — crushes, exes, ex-crushes, friends, ex-friends, B-list celebrities who are out of line, oversharing, doing too much, exposing something cringeworthy. Do they know you can just not, I text. It becomes something of a catchphrase — when my ex-husband calls at 1 am on a weeknight, when someone gets too familiar with the unsolicited advice, when someone follows me off the bus, when someone asks how I’m really doing. You know you can just not?

I’m reading a lot of Anne Boyer. We had a fight about her, my ex-husband and I, before he was my ex-husband. I tried reading something from Garments Against Women to him, and he told me it was bourgeois; an objectively bizarre statement considering the heavy emphasis on a labor lens and anticapitalist critique in Boyer’s work. Maybe I just did a bad job contextualizing it; maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if I had or not. In the year after the divorce I’m reading Boyer on the bus, in my little bed in my little safe apartment in the basement of this gentrified building, in the waiting area of the barbershop. She makes me feel dumb in a way I savor, rattling the sentences around in my empty little bird skull without pushing myself to understand it all. I love her aphorisms, the grace and authority of making a declarative statement with no context, no buttressing facts, no defense. I am drawn to a poem/essay found not in a book, but at the Poetry Foundation, “No”:

“History is full of people who just didn’t. They said no thank you, turned away, ran away to the desert, stood on the streets in rags, lived in barrels, burned down their own houses, walked barefoot through town, killed their rapists, pushed away dinner, meditated into the light. Even babies refuse, and the elderly, too. All types of animals refuse: at the zoo they gaze dead-eyed through plexiglass, fling feces at the human faces, stop having babies. Classes refuse. The poor throw their lives onto barricades. Workers slow the line. Enslaved people have always refused, poisoning the feasts, aborting the embryos. And the diligent, flamboyant jaywalkers assert themselves against traffic as the first and foremost visible, daily lesson in just not.”

I read Boyer on love and work, the mechanics and the cruelty of them; the possibilities beyond capitalistic foundations for both and whether we are being realistic with ourselves about those possibilities. “One of the things that happens in a world in which we are so alienated and atomized is that romantic love can seem like it might be a little communism of two,” she says in an interview with Mythos. “But this thing that feels so good also becomes the thing that causes women to spend thirty years doing the dishes after work instead of writing a great symphony, and this thing that feels so good can also lead to the deaths of women at the hands of their partners, or a deadening of life in general.” I did all the dishes when I lived with my ex-husband; he would leave them in the sink for four, five days at a time, until the kitchen stank, if I didn’t just do it myself. Now that I’m alone, I still do all the dishes. I do the dishes after work, and during work, and before I start the workday; I often take “breaks” from my job to do housework, relaxing into a different kind of labor that lets my brain and heart unspool a bit. I cannot speak to whether I have experienced a deadening of life in general; everything about life after you have upturned yours completely becomes a new challenge to interpret. There’s the quiet indescribable joy of washing only your own coffee cup, cleaning only your own dirt off the floor; there’s also everything else. I work all the time, and also feel like I never actually produce anything. I do not write a great symphony; this, what you’re reading, is the first essay I’ve published in two years. I work; I edit and take calls; I dog- and housesit for extra money, take the bus to Powderhorn and sleep in the bed of a clinically depressed grad student on a cruise with her mom while her pug snuffles underneath the bed; I write copy for shampoo and weightless hydrating conditioner. I lie awake at night and worry the borders of my barely-contained heartbreak like my tongue around a loose tooth.

Miles away from where I lay awake, in Shakopee MN, workers at an Amazon fulfillment center coordinate a rare, for the company, work stoppage. Employees at the Shakopee location walk out of their shifts during the Prime Day sale to protest unsafe high-pressure work conditions; some wear shirts that read “We’re humans, not robots.” In Germany, Amazon workers strike. Local coverage of the Shakopee stoppage is patronizing at best: “A handful of Amazon workers in Shakopee, far fewer than the 100-plus organizers had expected, walked off the job in the middle of their shifts to protest work conditions at the sprawling fulfillment center on Monday;” it includes a quote from an Amazon spokeswoman saying “Amazon already provides a lot of things the protesters are asking for… There are certain outside organizations that are taking the opportunity today to try to elevate the awareness of their cause to try to potentially gain membership and to get people to pay union dues.” I think about the strange thrill I get from reading the single stark observation from Boyer: Workers slow the line.

There are a lot of answers to the question about why I got divorced. I got divorced because I got married at 24, because of alcoholism, because he wouldn’t go to therapy, because I wasn’t being honest in therapy, because I wanted something else, because even if I wanted this it wasn’t working, because because because. I also got divorced because I did every single household chore, had to be on call to announce the location of every single item in the fridge or else he couldn’t make himself a sandwich, and was responsible for figuring out every administrative task in our shared life, from talking to our landlord to negotiating our health insurance package. The night things began to really fall apart, at least in one possible telling, I was on a work retreat when he called, probably drunk, from home. I miss you so much, he said. You know I hate it when you aren’t here. I can’t function. This is awful. In my memory, I say nothing; I can’t. I just close my eyes and breathe. Are you hearing me? I said I miss you. Don’t you miss me?

You haven’t even asked how the trip is going, I said finally. I’m working here. I think at the end of things, I was just so tired.

A work stoppage is one of the most well-known redresses for workers when a labor dispute has come to an impasse; in the US, at least, they are often also controversial. Stigma and scaremongering around unions after generations of concentrated campaigning against them by business interests means that any labor organizing feels suspect to many; just straight up refusing to work can feel offensively un-American, even though its aim is to secure prosperity and rights for American laborers. Most upsetting to many are when care workers, like teachers or nurses, go on strike. These workers aren’t always women, but often are; their work is presumed more than maybe any other kind of labor to be motivated by passion and sentiment more than the need to earn a living. To strike seems to betray this edict, both because pay is often at issue and because it reveals a willingness to stop doing caring work if the tradeoff of doing so is too high for the care-r. 2019 saw a number of highly publicized teacher’s walkouts and strikes, from West Virginia to Chicago; while higher salaries were often a demand, so were increased school resources to benefit students: more nurses, more librarians, more funding. The public attitude toward striking care workers is often linked to how well the workers make the case that their bargaining will benefit the recipients of their care as well as themselves — nurses picketing the University of Chicago held up signs that read “On strike for my patients.” “Teachers are not in it for the money,” [Leslie Russell, an English teacher at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School] said. “We are the catalyst for great things kids can do when in optimized conditions.”

By the time my marriage ended, we talked a lot about emotional labor. I compiled a list of resources about it for him, because of course I did. It didn’t make a difference, and couldn’t have; the phrase gets at a surface-level problem that sprouts from the roots of something much deeper. Something about work and love, but not just who does more of it and who does less; that there are some kinds of work that should never have to be done at all, by anyone, and for which there is no fair compensation or possible reciprocity. There is an American saying about work: I wouldn’t do that for love or money.

One way of telling the story of why I got divorced goes like this: One day, my husband stopped speaking to me. Things had been tense already, for weeks, for months; we were in a holding pattern and it wasn’t clear what would get us out of it, for better or for worse. We slept in separate rooms. I was still surprised when I came home and he didn’t acknowledge me; nothing beyond a nod when I said hello. After the first day I asked if he wanted to talk, said it seemed like he might be upset about something; he said he wanted to give me space, polite and cold.

This was, as my father would say, disingenuous; I had not asked for space, certainly not like this. It was a power play; his own little work stoppage, maybe, to say you don’t want me anymore, fine, see how you like it.

I could have done something, then. I could have chosen to respond to this as what it was, an expression of hurt and fear, albeit a childish one. I could have gone into the room to sit next to him on the twin mattress, rest a hand on the sheet next to his; I could have waited quietly for him to turn to face me, asked gently if we could talk. I think if I had, I could still be married. I don’t want to be. But I do think still about the person I could have been in that moment, and maybe am in another timeline — what endless fortitude she has, her saintlike patience for working it out.

Instead, I walked away to the other end of the apartment, and let him sit there in silence for three days. I could have done a lot of things in that moment and in those months, but after years of doing a lot of things the only thing I hadn’t tried was to just not at all. And when I just didn’t, it was over.

Another popular American saying is that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Our definitions of work and love are in complex and inexorable orbits around each other: our career (if we have the privilege of a ‘career’ rather than a ‘job’) should be something we love; our personal relationships are work; we ask ourselves gravely whether we’re ‘doing the work’ or whether she’s ready to ‘work on herself’; the necessity of laboring to survive under capitalism means that we often best serve the material needs of the people we love by working away from them so they can eat. The power of love — love of our families, love for our professional interests — should make work outside the home a joy; the power of work — making the daily effort of actively maintaining a relationship, of committing to one’s own personal growth to be the best partner or family member possible — should ensure that love flourishes. Attempts to clarify or structure these relationships get complicated. The explosion of Emotional Labor Discourse spoke powerfully to something that was clearly already under the skin of many people, especially women, about how much work was involved in trying to experience love; the more recent backlash to Emotional Labor Discourse speaks to something else, a deep frustration and resentment with the way that the most human and intimate parts of us, our ability to care, have become something we understand best as commodities. It’s not that those dichotomies are impossible to reconcile; it’s that it’s so difficult as to maybe be impossible to conceptualize an American sense of self outside of work, and to have a sense of what contentment or relationships or building a life and a self might look like that isn’t defined by embracing work joyfully, as loving working so much that you wake up grateful for it every day.

The logistics and concrete realities of work stoppages and related demonstrations of refusal under capitalism are widely misunderstood. On top of the common stigmatized assumptions that workers strike because they’re greedy for higher wages, or just lazy, there is a temptation to see refusal as an isolated and individual act, one rooted in sentiment rather than strategy. Most of us are no longer aware of the enormous communal organizing and effort that enabled historical labor milestones like the grape boycott, or the efforts of contemporary organizers to provide resources or childcare so that boycotts or strikes can be sustainable enough to be effective. Perhaps the most famous example is the myth many American schoolchildren learn, that Rosa Parks sat down in the whites only section of her city bus because she was “tired,” and that a movement rose out of her decision instantaneously. In reality, Rosa Parks’ act of resistance was carefully strategized for maximum impact, and supported by the tireless work of others — the bus boycott that followed in Montgomery was undergirded by an intensely committed network of rides and transportation alternatives so that the community could pull off a bus boycott long enough to impact those in power without losing their jobs or completely giving up their day-to-day life. Erasing this organization helps ensure that most people will see refusal as a personal quirk at best and a personal failing at worst, and certainly not a concerted and viable challenge to consolidated power. It minimizes both how hard it is and how powerful. To refuse to participate often takes much more dedicated effort than continuing as usual; it’s a risky endeavor, to just not.

The last three years has seen a greater awareness of a politics of refusal in the general American public than we’ve seen perhaps since the ’60s. Generations of especially white Americans raised on a narrative of civic engagement are being urged to call their senators and to vote, but also learning the power in just not: not attending the rally, not turning on the TV to give the speech its ratings; not buying from the store that donates to the candidate you don’t like. Stop going home for the holidays to parents who would see your loved ones incarcerated or deported, we (the children of white middle-class families) are advised; lose your kin. I find an illustrated essay on the internet about a passenger plane flight being used to transport migrant children separated from their families for detention. What would it take, the piece asks, for the flight attendant to refuse to seat them? For the pilot to refuse to take off? How do we get to a place, it asks, where our natural response to being asked to work for something sick is refusal? A new organization has begun a campaign to convince ICE employees to quit their jobs, promising to help make the process manageable. History is full of people who just didn’t. How many does it take for something that needs badly to fall apart to do so?

What’s difficult to see from the outside looking in is how hard it is to just not. We do, many of us, love what we do. Many of us love to work — I reminisce with my friend about how much I loved food service, the deep satisfaction of preparing everything just right and watching hungry people get full; if only it weren’t for the punishing hours and abusive customers and desperately hoping for tips so I could make rent. After the revolution, I joke, I hope I get to make coffee and sandwiches for free. We love what we do, at least sometimes; we love the people our work provides for — the teachers and nurses who strike are worried about their students and patients as well, moreso than the critics who feel like they’re abandoning them. We love the idea of stability we feel working hard and well might afford; in a culture obsessed with the bootstraps fantasy, it can be hard even for those who know better to totally abandon it. There’s something beyond those logistical attachments, though; a way in which work makes a kind of home for us, a birds’ nest painstakingly pieced together out of scraps and found matter. You could call it a sunk cost fallacy, or Stockholm syndrome, or you could see something more human in it: that the American religion of work is a disease and that at the same time work is a kind of devotion, and devotion is the backbone of love.

The year after my divorce I am tired in a way I could never have imagined before, but I can’t stop working. I spend my time between tasks thinking about how I can find more work; I’m deeply over frivolous problems and unnecessary interpersonal backbending and yet can’t stop seeking them out, desperate for more to solve, to fix. I ask for homework in therapy, frustrated when I’m not assigned books to read or dysfunctional coping mechanisms to research and am instead told to sit with my feelings. I should be relieved at finally completing a seemingly endless interstate separation and finally living independently, part of a network of people who love me; I am, and I also feel a kind of grief that’s bigger than my marriage or the end of it. Like many people who grew up the way I did — eldest daughter, child of an unstable parent, overachieving millennial, pick your poison — I had always believed that if I worked hard enough, did everything right, I could keep everything going, make everything work. I had spent so long being so committed to that edict I had never wanted to consider its inverse: If I stopped working, everything could fall apart. I have proven it true, in this instance; when I stopped doing the heavy lifting in my marriage, it collapsed. If I could lose that, what else can I lose? What else in my life is being held together only by my round-the-clock effort, gone the moment I relax my grip?

Lately there’s been a resurgence of interest in the Amazon strike last year in Shakopee; WIRED’s profile on it and the East African immigrants who led it then and still do now came out last month.

“I’ve had many jobs,” [Rep. Ilhan Omar] told the crowd. “I cleaned offices, I worked on assembly lines, I was even a security guard once. I’ve had jobs where we did not have enough breaks, where we used to try to go to the bathroom just so that we could pray.” The East African community, she said, demanded better. “Amazon doesn’t work if you don’t work,” she said. “It’s about time we make Amazon understand that.”

Since their initial walkout in 2018, the Somali-led workers’ group has “staged walkouts, brought management to the negotiating table twice, demanded concessions to accommodate Muslim religious practice, and commanded national attention;” the Awood Center, named from the Somali word for power, was also just covered in the New York Times. The workers who have organized with the Awood Center have also seen retaliatory firings, suffered threats from managers and alienation from fellow workers. They’ve made it clear they will continue their campaign.

There’s a saying that anything that could be destroyed by the truth should be; it suggests a cousin proverb, that what could be destroyed by your declining to break your back over it should be. There is so much held together at the seams only by the worst kind of work — not the labor of production, creation, or caretaking, but of smoothing over, choking back, reaching past any limits to be that which will sustain something unsustainable. The scope of it is so vast as to be truly challenging to even process. The power that so many of us have to change the deeply fucked systems we’re part of by abstaining from them — a more active and dangerous prospect than the language makes it sound — is immense, and it is terrifying. It is harder to do than is possible to explicate here; it is the most honest work there is. ⚡
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How to Have Lesbian Sex For the First Time

How do you have lesbian sex? We get asked this question all the time from lesbians of all ages who haven’t had lesbian sex and are worried they don’t know “how.” Well, listen: enjoying sex isn’t about memorizing 16 positions or knowing the best angle to fuck from, enjoying lesbian sex is half-animal half-heart and only rarely has it got anything to do with your rational brain, or cognitive reasoning, or anything a person could tell you or anything you could read on the internet.

And while it’s true that one day you’ll be more confident and experienced than you are now, it’s also true that your body was born knowing how to have sex like it was born knowing how to eat. Your first time doesn’t have to be a big deal, some of us don’t even remember our first times. Alternately, if you want it to be a big deal, it can be. But ultimately every partner is different — totally, completely, entirely different — from the next. So what could we tell you, really?

However — at the same time, many of us recall a period of time when lesbian sex felt like fumbling, or improv, trying to play a sport we didn’t understand, like badminton. Or a sport everyone thought we should be good at but we weren’t. Meanwhile, others recall hopping into bed and instinctually knowing what to do from the moment of entry. Many of us had sex with boys in our teens and didn’t bang a lady ’til our mid-to-late-twenties, and felt like rookies all over again. So we can understand how you might feel a little better knowing a little something before you take the plunge.

Women’s sexuality, let alone queer sexuality, is usually ignored by sex ed programs. And while many heteros learn about sex together in their early teens, many lesbians don’t start that early and/or aren’t peer socialized into the sexual universe like straights are, not to mention that our entire media culture is structured around and obsessed with heterosexual sex.

So we’re gonna go back to basics. However, as we write this post, we are slightly concerned that we have no fucking idea what we’re talking about. We hope to open a dialogue for commenters to share their own stories and experiences and for everyone to ask questions!

Disclaimer: This post (originally written in 2010 and largely unaltered from that time) focuses on lesbian sex between cisgender women, although is also largely applicable to sex between any two people with vulvas, and full of great advice for anybody having sex with someone who has a vulva. The language in this post, unlike the majority of our sex content, reflects that largely for SEO purposes. However, trans women are women and most certainly have lesbian sex, and you can read some of our many tips on that in these posts: How To Have Lesbian Sex With A Trans Woman, F*cking Trans Women and Harnesses for Trans Women.

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Pre-Game Your Lesbian Sex

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Masturbate

If you have a vulva and you wanna know how to make a person with a vulva feel good, you have the advantage of using yourself for a test subject — not that what pleases you will please your partner, but it’s a start. Probably you and your showerhead have been aware of this since childhood, but if you’re new to masturbation or new to orgasming, here’s how to masturbate like a champ. While you’re at it, here’s how to buy a vibrator.

Being an experienced masturbator will help you be a successful lover more than anything else you could ever do, ever. Not only will you know how your partner can please you, but you’ll have some idea of how to please them.

Bonus: Touching yourself with your jeans and underwear on (you can unzip your jeans, but don’t pull them down) might be very good practice for your date to Twilight Total Eclipse Of the Sun.

Note: When you’re aroused, you might feel warm or flushed. Your nipples will get erect, your clit and vulva will swell due to increased blood supply. Inside your body, the top of the vagina will expand.

Also: Check out your insides. The outside of everybody’s vulva is a brand new continent, but the insides are reasonably similar to one another, so it’s a solid sneak preview if you have one.

Self-Reflection

If you’ve got one, look at your vadge in the mirror. I know you’re going to read this and think “OH MY GOD I WOULD NEVER” and not do it. Get over yourself. Stick a fucking mirror between your legs and check out your shit!

Understand Your Vaginal Situation, If You Have One

First things first: people often use the term “vagina” when talking about the female genital region, which actually isn’t correct. The right term for your external genital region is “vulva.” The vagina is inside of you, connecting the vulva to the cervix. Here’s a great article from Teen Vogue that gets into all the details about anatomy.

Now that you’re sitting here with your mirror, let’s go over the anatomy of a cisgender woman’s vulva.

Clitoris: Your clit is made up of the glans/head (the most sensitive part with 6,000-8,000 nerve endings), the hood (which drapes over the glans) and the shaft (which is on average 1.9 cm in length). Some clits are larger than others, and almost all women can orgasm from clitoral stimulation.

Labia Majora: Them be your “pussy lips.” Then, the labia minora are the asymmetrical delicate folds of softy spongy erecticle tissue within the labia majora. Some labia minoras extend past the majoras and some are tucked away inside. The length/shape of labia minora/majoras is the first place where you’ll notice that every woman’s vagina looks different than another’s.

Vagina: Your vaginal entrance is below your clit and urethral opening (aka where the pee comes out). Vaginal tissue is elastic, you may have heard that babies come out of it and fists can go into it. Most of the nerve endings are in the outer third of the vagina (in other words: don’t worry about having small hands, it’s nbd).

G-Spot: Put a finger in your vagina. Now make a “come hither” motion towards the front wall of your vagina. Do you feel that spot with a texture unlike everything else’s texture? It’s a sponge about the size of a bean that fills with blood during arousal, directly in front of your uterus. Some women find g-spot stimulation too intense, some hate it, some like it, some can orgasm from it, and some can female ejaculate from it.

Perineum: The flat area between the pudendal cleft and the anus. Some women find this area sexually sensitive. Slangily referred to as “the taint” ’cause it ain’t the genitals and it ain’t the asshole.

Grooming for Lesbian Sex

Hair: You can do literally anything you want with your hair, although removing it entirely makes you vulnerable to infections and it can be very itchy! Here’s some statistics on your hair removal habits.

Pointers if you are gonna remove some hair:

• If you have the money and the time, laser hair removal is the best way to get rid of your hair in that area for the long-term. It’s generally said that laser hair removal works better on lighter skin tones, but luckily that is changing.
• For most of us, waxing is the best/cheapest way to “clean up” without ingrowns. Depending on your skin tone and sensitivity, waxing may turn your skin a lovely shade of crimson for a day, so schedule appropriately. We highly recommend getting it done by a professional, but if you wanna DIY, Sally Hansen’s are cheap and easy for beginners and so is this kit from Flamingo.
• If you’re shaving, you could get mad serious razor burn which sometimes looks like a lot of red bumps all around your area. Bikini Zone will help you with this.
• If you shave a day or two before hooking up, anyone who goes down on you will feel like they are sticking their face into a sheet of sandpaper.

Hands: Make sure your nails are as short as possible and smoothly filed. If you do have long nails or acrylics, here’s how to have sex safely without sacrificing them. Keeping your hands mega-extra-super-duper-clean is key. Play it extra-safe by employing some handy latex or nitrile gloves.

Vadge: You guys, your vagina smells perfect just the way it is! Do not douche or otherwise attempt to infuse your vagina with fields of marigolds. It will have a stronger smell if you haven’t showered or have gotten really sweaty, and that’s fine. (Sidenote: the lingering smell of her on your fingertips = magic). However, if your vagina smells so pungently fishy that your partner can smell it in your pants from across the room, you might have BV and should go see a gynecologist.

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Doing The Lesbian Sex

To be honest, we kinda don’t want you to read this. We want you to have to figure it out for yourself, like we did! You guys, it’s so fun and you get to be naked or half-naked with another lady! Right?! Sex will be the best when you stop thinking and let your body think for you!

There are also at least 1,000 sex tips we could give you for the rest of your sex life, but today we’re gonna stay very simple and vanilla.

Communicate

Just ’cause you’re both ladies doesn’t mean what feels good to you will feel good to her. Both of you can indicate what’s working and what isn’t through words, noises, or physical response. Don’t be embarrassed to ask questions or volunteer what you like. It’s like the Hot/Cold game, but naked and more slippery! Saying “what do you like” is totally a thing we do. So is laughing. We recommend lots of laughing.

Lesbian Sex Foreplay

There are a lot of things happening in the torso region for both of you to explore, like BREASTS and ears, and playing with those body parts is fun AND a good way to get lubed up before any kind of direct vaginal contact occurs (if that’s what you want). Some people can orgasm from stimulation of other body parts besides the vadge, too. (If it’s your or your partner’s first time being penetrated, don’t go for the Frankie-style jackhammer fuck within five minutes of your first tongue kiss, ease into that shit!)

Manual Clitoral Stimulation

This is a good place to begin. Fairly self-explanatory. Again, some people will want your hand to become a vibrator and some will only want to be touched with extreme delicacy. Find out by asking!

Oral Sex

Oral sex is so awesome that it almost feels like cheating. Like were mouths made to go there, or is that something humanity figured out on its own? Per always, err on the side of sensitive. This will either be “teasing” or “how she likes it,” depending on the lady. This can also be paired with fucking/g-spot stimulation, but we’re starting simple today, so, again, enjoy yourself. Sometimes if you have body image issues, being eaten out can make you feel really exposed. So close your eyes, everything is okay. And don’t forget to practice safer sex with dental dams.

Fucking 

When in doubt, start slow/soft/delicate and build up to as fast/hard as she wants it. Make sure she’s wet before attempting penetration — lube is a great way to do this. Then:

+ Start with your index finger in just a little bit, and then all the way in and then bring in a second finger if she wants. (Then a third if she wants, etc etc) Don’t go too fast, give her time to respond.

+ Pay attention to where your other fingers are! If you’ve got your index/middle fingers inside her, is your thumbnail digging into her inner thigh? Check your shit.

+ Some women don’t want to be penetrated for various reasons, including discomfort, gender identity or gender expression, and/or a preference for a particular sexual role (as in “I fuck you, you don’t fuck me.”) If that’s you and your partner gets in that area, politely move her hand and tell her where you do want to be touched (or that you’d rather touch her).

Frottage

Now, sticking your hand down her pants and up her canal might be your first instinct, or maybe it’s what you’ve seen on The L Word, but that is only one of many magical ways girls fuck other girls. You will discover 365 ways to basically dry hump (you can keep your underwear on for this, it can be easier, but please do take off your shirt, because that’s more fun). You can basically rub up on any part of her body or rub vadge-to-vadge pretty much for the rest of your life.

More Resources For Great Lesbian Sex:

• This is Literally How We Do It: Lesbian Sex Positions 101
• Lesbian Sex 101
• All About Tops, Bottoms and Switches

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The More You Know

•  DO NOT DO NOT compare body parts. Compliments are great! But resist the urge to add an assessment of your own parts onto your compliment regarding her parts. ‘Your [part] is so much more [way of being] than mine! Waaah.’ = NO.
• If you’re dealing with non-gender-conforming folks then it’s best to ask before hooking up what’s okay and what isn’t. Same for dealing with gender conforming folks!
• You have a right to feel safe and comfortable, which means that consent is key and so is safer sex — please get a check-up and talk to your partner about any STIs you or she may have before jumping into bed.
• Whether you’re 16 or 36, you’re NOT “BEHIND.” Because of the patriarchy, it’ll take you about 15 seconds to find information regarding the average age at which heterosexual women and men lose their V-Cards (16-17), but no such research exists for lesbians as far as we can tell. So we’ve done a casual survey of Team Autostraddle, which is a poor sample population because we’re all under 35 and obviously “out” enough to be on Team Autostraddle so, we imagine, probably more sexually experienced than the average lesbian bear. Regardless, by age and year of “virginity loss”:

Among our totally non-representative sample size of queer women, the average age for “our first time” is 19.4.

Relevant Lists

Body Parts that could be erogenous OR no-fly zones:

+ ears
+ neck
+ nipples
+ inner thighs
+ feet
+ hands
+ ass
+ small of the back

Some People Do and Some People Don’t:

+ want to be penetrated
+ orgasm from penetration
+ ejaculate
+ incorporate sex toys into sex
+ enjoy g-spot stimulation
+ require manual clitorial stimulation to orgasm
+ prefer clitorial stimulation AND vaginal penetration to orgasm
+ enjoy anal penetration or butt plugs or eating ass
+ use strap-ons
+ orgasm at all
+ identify as “stone”
+ fantasize during sex
+ identify as either a “bottom” or a “top”
+ identify as either “butch” or “femme”
+ want to be naked during sex
+ want the lights on during sex
+ like it rough
+ have an STI
+ wanna scissor

Things That Could Happen Your First Time And Are Totally Fine:

+ Ejaculating and literally soaking your entire bed (it’s not urine, we promise) (also, it’s awesome)
+ Farting or queefing
+ Accidentally cutting/lacerating the vagina (this happens to old pros, too) (ahem)
+ Not orgasming
+ Not being wet
+ Getting injured
+ Tensing up while pentrated
+ Bleeding
+ Bleeding from hymen-breakage
+ Post-sex UTIs or yeast infections
+ Taking 30+ minutes to orgasm
+ Your arm getting tired
+ Crying
+ Laughing
+ Feelings
+ No feelings
+ Not feeling like the whole world changed
+ Feeling like the whole world changed
+ Feeling like you’re on a whole new level of intimacy with your partner
+ Not enjoying it

Try not to be too goal-oriented. Lots of people don’t come the first time — many people don’t come regularly during sex at all! If neither of you do, there’s gonna be a moment when you feel like you’re done anyhow, like the encounter is over, and that might feel weird, but it’s not weird, it happens. Stop when you’d stop any physically tiring activity — when you don’t feel like it anymore. Just laugh and maybe stay naked and kiss and talk. Cuddle! Lesbians love to cuddle. Or ask her to show you how she gets herself off and vice versa — mutual masturbation is a good backup plan for when you both want to come but can’t seem to get it this time. Plus it’s hot to watch and see what she does to herself!

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Resources

Books:

+ The Lesbian Sex Bible: More techniques and advice for lesbian, bisexual and queer women that approaches the topic with humor and irreverence.

+ Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World: The cover of this book is so weird and 90s, but you can download it for $2.99 from Amazon and it’s — it’s just FUN. It’s super sex-positive and deserves to become a cult classic of the lesbian book world starting now.

+ The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us, by Felice Newman: The classic. Buy it, learn it, live it, love it.

+ Lesbian Sex: 101 Lovemaking Positions: I bet you don’t know anything about the Joyride, Tongue and Groove, Toast Her, Gilding the Lily, Peach Gobbler, Hanky Spanky, Girl Wrap or Velvet Rope, do ya? Well you could change that.

+ Getting Off: A Woman’s Guide to Masturbation: From sex blogger and masturbation expert Jayme Waxman.

+ Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era: Get in touch with your womynhood.

+ The New Lesbian Sex Book, 3rd Edition: Interviews with REAL LIVE LESBIANS about their sex lives, has the impact of reminding you that there’s a lot of lesbians out there having sex and it’s not just you and your partner(s) in your teeny tiny village by the sea.

+ Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma: “The first encouraging, sex-positive guide for all women survivors of sexual assault — heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, coupled, and single — who want to reclaim their sex lives.”

Websites:

+  Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross: “Betty Dodson and Carlin Ross are two intergenerational sex positive feminists whose dialogue on sexuality and feminism entertains and educates while delving into the Politics of Women’s Sexuality.” Includes a library of “how-to” videos for various sexual acts, including “first-time lesbian sex.”

+ The-Clitoris Dot Com: “Everything you ever wanted to know about the clitoris and female sexuality.”

+ Sexuality.org: Comprehensive online library of sexuality resources from the Society for Human Sexuality.

Oh and:

+ Dental Dams and Latex or Nitrile Gloves and Lubricant

Okay, time to yell/ask/share in the comments! Go have fun, you crazy beavers!

How To Name a Lesbian or Bisexual TV Character

The nice thing about having an internal database of LGBTQ+ women and non-binary television characters is that you can get really, truly obsessive about various patterns in the data. Like, for example, what queer characters are often named. Unfortunately, there’s no database tracking the popularity of all TV character names for me to compare our numbers to, although there is an analysis of movie character names, which determined the most popular names for female movie characters were Sarah, Mary, Lucy, Claire, Alice, Maggie, Rachel, Lisa, Kate and Anna.

There’s lists of the most popular baby names bequeathed within the last three decades in the U.S., upon which we find Jessica, Ashley, Emily, Sarah, Samantha, Amanda, Brittany, Elizabeth, Taylor, Megan, Madison, Emma, Olivia, Hannah, Abigail, Isabella, Ava, Mia, Charlotte and Sophia.

We’ve got the most popular names of the last one hundred years: Mary, Patricia, Jennifer, Elizabeth, Linda, Barbara, Susan, Jessica, Margaret, Sarah.

So when you look at our database, you’d anticipate a selection of those same names showing up in abundance but my friends… you will not. Our characters — particularly those that are written as queer from the jump or guest characters who exist solely to be The Lesbian, rather than characters who become gay eventually but weren’t initially intended that way, often are the most deliberately named of all. Let’s get into it.

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1. Call Her Franky / Frankie

Start here: Franky. Frankie. Sounds good, right? Butch but playful, like a grown-up tomboy. Like how lesbians are allowed to wear sneakers wherever they want no matter how old they are; even to host daytime talk shows or give poetry readings. That’s a classic Frankie move. Is Frankie a nickname for Francesca? Frances? Has there even been a straight Frankie/Franky on television? (Frankie in Grace & Frankie doesn’t count.) Frankies have hobbies. They are a little rebellious.

Franky/Frankie is tied as the third most popular name for TV characters in our database, but Frankie comes in at #132 on the list of most popular names for girls in the U.K and “Franky” doesn’t rank at all. If it’s short for Francesca, that’s #89. In the U.S., Frankie ranks much lower, in the 700s, but most of our Frankies on TV are from the Commonwealth: Franky Fitzgerald in Skins (UK), Franky Doyle in Wentworth (Australia) and the show Wentworth was based on, Cell Block H (Australia). Frankie Alan, aka Shane UK, from Lip Service (UK), Frankie Hollingsworth from Canada’s Degrassi, Frankie Coyne from Canadas’s Workin’ Moms. We’ve got a Frankie on UK soap Emmerdale. Just two Frankies are American — Frankie Anderson, from Rookie Blue and Frankie Stone from All My Children.

Frank, by the way, is #5 on the list of most popular names for a male movie character.

2. Give a Butch a Nickname

If you find yourself face-to-face with the subversive teen-idol potential of a grown-up masculine-of-center woman, consider a nickname. Eva “Papi” Torres. Carrie “Big Boo” Black. Felicia “Snoop” Pearson. (The Wire character shared her name with the actress who played her.)  Elizabeth “Mac” MacMillan. Christina “Chris” Alonso. LaVerne “Jukebox” Thomas. Tiana “Coop” Cooper. Caroline “Caz” Hammond. Dominga “Daddy” Duerte. Emily “A&W” Blake. Henrietta “Hen” Wilson. Zara “Drago” Dragovich. Vivienne “Scotty” Scott. Raquel “Rocky” Perez.

Maybe we don’t even need to know the full name. Maybe even their friends don’t know until the credit cards come back from splitting the bill and somebody’s like, “wait, who’s Veronica?” Instead we just have what we have: Harry, Kase, Rocky, Finn, Brit, Denny, Eddy, Kat, Shaz.

3. They Shoot Horses Don’t They

Deciding between whether or not you want your character to be a domesticated animal (e.g., horse, dog) or a human lesbian? Pick a horse name, just in case: Dusty, Bullet, Pony, Yorkie, Clementine, Crutch, Texas, Sugar, Juicy, Pippy, Poppy, Roxy, Ruby. Fleabag? Name your horse/lesbian Fleabag.

4. Try Alex

Alex Vause and Piper Chapman’s Shipper name turned out to be Vauseman, which was a relief, because we already had a Palex (Paige and Alex, Degrassi). We could’ve had two Malexes, too, if we’d wanted them (we didn’t): Maggie Sawyer and Alex Danvers or Marissa Cooper and Alex Kelly. There’s just a lot of Alexes, is what I’m telling you. So many Alexes that we are often at risk of repeating a shipper name!

You can catch eleven queer Alexes (and just two Alexandras) on your television box but the most Alex-overpopulated segment of the media landscape is absolutely The Lesbian Webseries. It’s a law, I think: all lesbian webseries must contain Alexes. The LezWatchTV database has at least 12 webseries with characters named Alex. The most popular “Alex” has ever been as a baby girls name in the U.S. is 539th. That was in 1995, the same year Alexandra peaked at #26. Amongst queer female TV characters, however, it rolls in at number five. And it’s #12 on the list of most popular male movie character names.

5. …or any Girl/Boy name

I’m talking about your Sams, I’m talking about your Charlies. Your Bills and your Billies. Bring me your Devons! Your Shanes and your Shays! Your Chrisses and Bos, your Chases and CJs and Robins and Jordans, your Jos and your Joeys. Your Reagans. Lord BRING ME YOUR REAGANS.

6. Susan

In the beginning, Marta Kauffman and Kevin S. Bright created Carol and Susan. And they were without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of G-d moved upon the face of the waters. And G-d said, Let there be more Susans; and there were more Susans.

There was Susan, a human-turned-vampire-turned-human who was (as so often is the case with these characters) strangled to death. Onto us came Pilar’s butch wife Susan, with the gold chain and the bowl cut. Then we beget Bizzy’s secret girlfriend Susan, who died of cancer. After forty days and forty nights there was Susan, who told someone at the Minbari Rebirth Ceremony that she loved Talia. In exile we found Susan, George’s bisexual wife who died from licking a poisonous envelope label. In the promised land we came upon Suzanne, the earthquake specialist who had one entire date and one entire kiss with Rhonda Roth before her show got entirely cancelled. From the shadows and into the light came Suzanne who got sent to Litchfield but shouldn’t have. Susie the booking agent who is gay but they haven’t made her gay yet.

Susan may not be as popular as it once was —its average ranking over the last 200 years is #361 — but it does come in at #7 on the list of the most popular names of the last 100 years. On our list, it’s 4th.

7. Nicole / Nikki / Nico

Nicole and variations therein is the #2 most represented name family in our database with 19 occurrences. It’s a popular name in general — coming in at #42 on the 50 most popular names of the last 100 years — but its over-prevalence in our database is impossible to ignore. How do we explain all the Nikkis and Nickys and Nicoles amongst us? Nicky Nichols, Nicole Haught, Nikki Stevens, Nikki Wade, Nikki Boston? Nico from Vida and Nico from Marvel’s Runaways and Nico from Charmed and so many others where those came from? I have a theory: Nick is a boy’s name, coming in at #13 on the list of most popular male movie characters, and these names remind people of that name!

8. Bury Your Nadias

In addition to the established high death rate for Susans (38%), Nadias have a very slim chance of survival. Of five queer Nadias to appear on television, four are dead. (The fifth made out with Bette Porter in her car) Of six queer Taras, three are dead and you probably remember them all.

9. The Same Names as Everyone Else….

We’ve got your Kates and Sophies and Alices and Sarahs and Emilys and Lucys and Annes and Laurens and Jessicas and Rachels and Eves. A lot of Emilys, really. So many Emilys!

10. …More or Less

We are, however, suspiciously low on Marys. (Perhaps it’s just too holy, too Virgin Mary-ish, for someone to see a lesbian and think “MARY!”)  We have more Beths than Elizabeths. More Juleses than Julias. Some minor abundances: Debs, Deborahs and Debbies. Quite a few more-than-expected Ginas, Naomis and, most oddly, Ruby. Did I mention Franky? At the end of the day, you cannot go wrong naming your character “Franky.”

Every L Word Sex Scene, Ranked

Which are the best L Word sex scenes? It was only a matter of time before Autostraddle’s fate line would lead us to this moment when we were compelled by a force greater than ourselves to construct a list of every single one of The L Word sex scenes, and rank them. The list ensues below, and I’ve also made you a companion infographic!

How We Ranked Them: I assembled a database of every L Word sex scene that involved queer characters in the main cast, and then invited the Autostraddle TV Team (Heather, Kayla, Drew, Natalie and Carmen) to assign each scene a score of 1-5, as well as offer any commentary they felt compelled to offer. Every team member was also permitted to give six (6) L Word sex scenes a ranking of “10.” The below rankings reflect the scored average of each scene.

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111. Tonya Can’t Believe She’s Going Down on Dana Fairbanks and Wow, Neither Can We (111: Looking Back)

The scene is played for comedy, but Dana’s lack of consent isn’t actually funny! At all!!!!! Tonya is the worst!!!

110. Jenny Sees The Marina In Tim (104: Lies, Lies, Lies)

Natalie: “The pivot from “Where’d you go?” to resuming sex is so bizarre.”

109. Alice Absolutely MUST Give Lisa a Blow Job (107: L’Ennui)

This is Alice’s first and only sex scene in Season One. Sucks that it involved her pressuring Lisa into getting a blow job!

108. Jenny Soothes Her Marina Pains With Tim Pains (109: Luck, Next Time)

After learning Marina’s had a mean girlfriend named Francesca and is maybe a sex robot with no discernible personality besides low-key chaos energy delivered in a variety of European accents, Jenny returns to solid Tim to watch a Kung Fu movie and then jump his lil bones. Okay, ew!

107. Tim Welcomes His Girlfriend Jenny to Los Angeles (101: Pilot)

Pour one out for all the lesbians who gathered together to watch the first-ever lesbian-focused program on American television and got to see Jenny and Tim have sex not once but twice in the two-hour pilot episode!!

Natalie: Gay panic; Also? Tim seems to have zero rhythm.

106. Kit Guesses She’s Not a Lesbian (411: Literary License to Kill)

Apparently, Kit is SO heterosexual that her clit can tell the difference between a man’s tongue and a woman’s tongue and therefore Papi, the legendary lover of The Chart™, is unable to bring Kit to orgasm. Maybe it was the lighting. Or the fact that Papi, unaware that Kit is an alcoholic, has been unknowingly enabling Kit’s post-Angus-cheating bender.

105. Tina Gets The Man Meat She’s Been Dreaming Of With Henry (309: Lead, Follow, Or Get Out the Way)

Who needs DaddyOf2 when Tina’s got her very own Daddy of Two, Henry, and we get to watch him fuck her up against a wall!

104. Jenny Talks About Lesbian Sex While Having Heterosexual Sex (101: Pilot)

Valerie: One single point because I understand the feeling of being confused by the feelings I was feeling about a woman and mistaking it for general horniness.

103. Mark Watches Real Live Lesbian Porn Starring His Roommate Shane (205: Labyrinth)

Mark derives immediate gratification from his heinous decision to hang secret cameras all over the apartment he shares with two lesbians, one of whom he is obsessed with.

102. Bette Begrudgingly Buffs Tina’s Beaver To Prep For a Hot Sperm Injection (101: Pilot)

Carmen: It really should only be one point, but I gave it an extra bonus point for how SHOCKED I felt when I first watched this scene as a baby gay.

101. Helena’s Children Interrupt Morning Sex (207: Luminous)

“It’s perfectly natural!” declares Helena when Tina’s shocked to have their morning foreplay interrupted by two tiny human beings whose interests including fort-building and playing doctor on Tina’s belly. Our feeling about this L Word Sex Scene is…. YIKES!

100. Catherine Rothberg Sticks Actual Cash Money Into Helena’s Vagina (408: Lexington and Concord)

There is probably… a lot of germs… on that money?

99. Jenny and Claude and Caviar and Creme Freche and a Whip (401: Legend in the Making)

There are probably better ways to handle a breakup with a person who still lives with you than to invite your new lover over and then proceed to have food-related sex on the kitchen floor followed by kinky sex in your bedroom with the door open!

98. Jenny and Dana Give Up (110: Liberally)

As L Word scenes go, this one is basically perfect. The sex — not so much!

96. Shane Gives the Real Estate Agent a Showing (501: LGB Tease)

After Cherie Jaffe, every girlfriend Shane ever had was released from the show with a brutal blow — leaving Carmen at the altar, coldly pushing Molly away on Phyllis’ orders… and, as pictured above, somehow feeling the irrepressible urge to fuck a real estate agent while looking at houses with Paige.

95. Lara Finds a Lump (301: Labia Majora)

Natalie: “It’s six months later and I’m still waiting for it to close.”

94. Shane and Carmen Give Up (307: Lone Star)

Valerie: “Plus points for raw/realness, minus points for sadness.”

93. Mark Sets Shane Up With a Fake Delivery Girl (206: Lagrimas de Oro)

A classic reality TV show move: introducing a sexy stranger to get it on with a lead cast member. Only problem here is that nobody told Shane she was on a reality TV show.

92. Shane Slips Out of the Dance-a-thon to Slip Inside Nikki (607: Last Couple Standing)

Intercutting this L Word sex scene with Bette and Tina’s dance performance was unforgivable.

91. Shane Fucks Bridesmaid #1 (502: Look Out, Here They Come)

Oh Shane.

90. Shane Goes Ahead and Fucks the Mom (502: Look Out, Here They Come)

Okay!

89. Bette and Tina Honor the Sperm With Pre-Insemination Sex Ritual (102: Let’s Do It)

After bowing down to the sperm and honoring its precious monumental importance in the human lifecycle, they get down and dirty to prep Tina’s reproductive system for a little reproductive action!

88. Nikki and Jenny’s Last Showmance (601: Long Night’s Journey Into Day)

Hot sex scene, but Jenny’s also deliberately playing with Nikki’s feelings, which is… less hot.

87. Jenny and Robin Touch Each Other’s Nipples a Lot (113: Limb From Limb)

Jenny unlocks Lesbian Level Two: having successful sex with a woman besides Marina.

86. Shennystraddle (603: LMFAO)

Wow, so weird how everybody on the team is wrong about this scene except me and therefore it ranked really low???

85. Just a Little Lovin Early In the Morning Before Francesca Gets Home (107: L’Ennui)

Perhaps it was the part just afterwards where Jenny wants to set up her writing station in the light and Marina informs her that sorry, her previously unmentioned long-term girlfriend is coming home today!

84. Grace Gives Max Head (411: Literary License to Kill)

Drew: This is a really shitty moment that starts off promising! Grace’s refusal to listen to Max is so disheartening.

83. Tom and Max In the Dark On The Sofa (509: Liquid Heat)

Good for them.

82. Shane Fucks Bridesmaid #2 (502: Look Out, Here They Come)

After they’re done the bridesmaid starts crying and also wants to be seen with Shane to make her ex jealous, which is a real moment for Shane!

81. Helena and Catherine Play Strip Poker (407: Lesson Number One)

Two thin naked women in fancy chairs in a large hotel suite. There you go.

80. Shane Fucks Nikki on the Balustrade of Yamashiro (512: Loyal and True)

And this, ladies and gentlepeople, is how Shane broke Jenny’s heart.

79. Tina Has Soft Core Lesbian Porn Sex (503: Lady of the Lake)

Tina takes a big step by going on one date with somebody who isn’t Bette! But the sex scene is… awkward. For them and for us!

78. Road Head (302: Lost Weekend)

Don’t munch and drive, kids!! You might run out of gas just as you’re about to come!

77. Dusty is the New Helena’s Lover (502: Look Out Here They Come)

Cheers to Helena for finding something fun to do in prison!

76. Max and Jenny Fuck In the Heartland (301: Labia Majora)

Jenny finds lust in the heartland with Max (then-presenting as Moira, a butch lesbian) and takes her new pal home with her only to be interrupted by her homophobic parents. YIKES.

75. Carmen and Jenny Fuck In The Bathroom On The Toilet (209: Late, Later, Latent)

Gets points from me for being one of the few distinctly kinky sex scenes on this very long show.

Valerie: I can’t get behind Jenny/Carmen so I can’t get behind this scene. I CAN get behind the way Sarah Shahi talks about it in interviews, though.
Natalie: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

74. Alice and Lara Come Together in Sadness (312: Left Hand of the Goddess)

Drew: It’s really too bad this is the context Alice and Lara have sex.
Kayla: Sorry to say once again that I like sad sex.

73. Marina and Jenny Fuck In the Bathroom Standing Up (104: Lies, Lies, Lies)

Drew: Gender neutral bathrooms: Better for trans people AND for baby gay drama.
Valerie: Love good sneaky bathroom sex but also maybe just break up with your boyfriend at this point.
Kayla: Sorry I also like bathroom fucks.

72. Shane Kicks Off the Series With a Full Frontal + PoolSex (101: Pilot)

Natalie: Who has sex in someone else’s pool?
Valerie: Again, points for the pilot, and also just because I remember this scene so vividly from the first time I watched it from deep in the closet and under my college bedspread.
Kayla: Controversial, but I like pool sex.

71. Billie Gives Max a BJ in The Office (306: Lifesize)

Drew: Billie is so casually affirming and I find this scene really touching. Every trans person deserves to have sex with Alan Cumming when they’re first figuring things out.
Natalie: You missed Sleater Kinney for this?

70. Post-T-Injection V-Injection (307: Lone Star)

Drew: Jenny is revealing so many red flags, but any trans person will tell you being fetishized doesn’t necessarily make a moment not hot! I hate myself.

69. Dylan Gets Helena On Tape (309: Lead, Follow Or Get Out of the Way)

The potential hotness of this scene is underscored by the creeping awareness that there’s a reason Dylan’s asking Helena to say what she’s asking Helena to say and the choice to record it.

68. Helena Fucks Tina on Furniture in a House She Has Yet To Purchase (208: Loyal)

Carmen: Helena is almost hilariously focused when it comes to her “public sex” kink.
Natalie: Can they ever have sex without being interrupted?

67. Dawn Denbo and Her Lover Cindi Seduce Shane (504: Let’s Get This Party Started)

Shane’s sex strike lasted for almost two entire episodes, but she couldn’t resist the siren song of a threesome with Dawn Denbo and Her Lover Cindy.

66. Nikki Recovers from JimSex with JennySex (509: Liquid Heat)

Listen guys it’s fine, Jenny un-fired the male actor Nikki slept with and it’s okay they love each other and will have sex right on that bed right there on set!

65. Max Gives Billie Counter Service (307: Lone Star)

Drew: Another really tender and affirming sex scene between Max and Billie. Because it gets so bad I sometimes forget how shockingly good some of this early Max stuff is.

64: Claude Has Jenny Lick It Up Like a Cat (312: Left Hand of the Goddess)

Drew: There are so many reasons this scene shouldn’t do it for me, and yet!

63. Captain Stubing Is Happy To See Julie But Also Needs To Throw Up (210: Land Ahoy)

Valerie: Lost points for how it ended but the scene up til then was a delight.

62. Jenny and Carmen Slap Each Other Around (207: Luminous)

Jenny and Carmen discover their first shared interest (besides Shane): rough sex.

61. Nikki and Jenny Broadcast Desire (506: Lights! Camera! Action!)

Not only was this event fun for Nikki and Jenny, it was also fun for the horny PA who heard it all go down on his headset.

60. Dana and Alice Clean Up for Howie (210: Loud and Proud)

Ah, Harry Potter and his dashing maid are at it again! But who’s a-knocking at the castle door? Could it be Howie, the not gay (GAY) brother in town just in time for Pride? Only one way to find out… but don’t forget to bring your feather duster!

59. Fucking Horse-Racing Fucking Horse-Racing Fucking (410: Little Boy Blue)

Public sex intercut with horse-racing footage, concluded with an orgasm and a significant monetary loss. Who could ask for anything more?

58. Helena’s Mouth-Wipe Heard Round the Chateau Marmont (207: Luminous)

Natalie: I’d be ranking these Helena scenes higher if they were with anyone but Tina.
Carmen: Gave it a bonus point because damn I love a good post-sex mouth wipe.
Kayla: MOUTH! WIPE!

57. Tina’s So Excited To Have Sex With Bette (602: Least Likely)

After Bette’s college pal Kelly turns up for one of many weak Season Six storylines, Tina feels suddenly inspired to fuck Bette. No complaints here.

56. Dana and Lara Doing It at the Sleepover (106: Losing It)

Natalie: Extra points for the public nature of it; THAT is how you endear yourself to the friend group.
Valerie: I want to hate this because my college roommate used to have sex with her boyfriend when she thought I was asleep all the time, but also the puppy love aspect of it is too cute to be mad about it.
Kayla: I will just say that something very similar has happened to me

55. Bette Masturbates On Top of Jodi (507: Lesbians Gone Wild)

Nobody does an emotionally complex sex scene like Jennifer Beals.

Carmen: I would’ve given it a three, because it’s sad? But I have Jennifer Beals’ and Marlee Matlin’s face burned into my memory, so.

54. Dana and Lara Fucking and Crying (305: Lifeline)

Kayla: Sorry I like sad sex.

53. Dylan Returns For Extra Helena (306: Lifesize)

Mere hours after informing Helena that she is 100% straight and what happened between them will definitely never happen again, Dylan returns because she obviously wants… everything that happened between them to happen again.

52. Shane and Carmen Have Successful Sex While Dana Dies (310: Losing the Light)

Shane cheated on Carmen, so Carmen went ahead and cheated on Shane, and Carmen would like to start again with a clean slate. The first thing she would like to do on that clean slate is have sex with Shane. A clock in the corner reminds us that SOMEONE else is running out of time.

51. Marina Dismantles Jenny (103: Longing)

Carmen: The “every time I look at you, I feel so dismantled” is a gut punch to anyone who’s ever fallen in love with a woman for the first time.

50. Paige and Shane Fuck Like It’s 1955 (412: Long Time Coming)

Two queer actresses down to get completely naked and fuck in multiple positions: We love to see it. The bizarre intercut fantasy sequence in which Shane looks like a little boy playing dress-up in his Dad’s closet and Paige looks like a unforgivably hot housewife: We feel… fine to see it.

49. Shane and Cherie Christen the Salon Chair (110: Liberally)

Natalie: Short but adventurous.
Kayla: Hair salons are erotic, so.

48. Dylan Pulls a Knife on Helena (608: Last Word)

Valerie: When I first saw Dylan’s name, the first thing I thought of was a knife, so obviously this scene stuck with me.
Kayla: Pretty sure knife-play is my brand.

47. Tim Catches Marina and Jenny In The Throes of Passion (105: Lawfully)

Carmen: Marina’s only shinning 30 seconds of glory is when she shoulder checks Tim on her way out the shed (I lied, she has one other fleeting moment of glory — later in the same season when she tells Tim, “You were there. You know how much it counted.” Boss bitch moves.)
Kayla: In general I don’t think Marina and Jenny have that much chemistry when they’re actually fucking, only like the 10 seconds before?
Valerie: Two points for the sex, two points for Marina no breaking eye contact with Tim as she leaves.

46. Cindi Tells Shane It’s Totally Legal To Fuck (505: Lookin’ At You Kid)

Having full sex on a white leather couch with somebody you’ve just had a threesome with, underneath a gigantic photograph of you and your girlfriend is A MOVE.

45. Nikki and Jenny Do It In the Actual Closet (505: Lookin’ at You Kid)

After five episodes of erratic Boss Bitch Jenny, she softens right up and puts right out after slipping into the closet with Nikki, a giddy ingenue, and together they’re all giggling and moaning and soft hair and naked backs against racks of shirts. Everything feels light and possible.

44. Phyllis Has First Time Lesbian Sex With Alice (404: Layup)

Kayla: Phyllis u go girl.

43. Shane and Molly Are High Art (512: Loyal and True)

Kayla: Always love morning sex scenes.

42. Shane and Molly Have Candlelit Sweaty Sex (509: Liquid Heat)

Molly’s breaking all the rules ’cause she doesn’t know any — pointing out that Shane’s wet and has boobs just like her, yammering about Richard’s incorrect opinions on the proportionality of her body, asking if she’s doing it right, getting nervous to try, letting Shane teach her again. In return, Shane is softhearted and amused and along for the ride — until Phyllis shows up, of course.

41. Bette and Candace Grab a Fast Fuck (113: Limb From Limb)

Carmen: Wow it turns out I really am a Bette/Candace fan.
Kayla: Love to fuck on the clock.
Natalie: Bette getting topped is my favorite thing.
Valerie: This got less exciting as time went on.

40. Cherie Wants More Than a Blowout From Shane (109: Luck Next Time)

Cherie Jaffe says she’s looking for something a little more this time and wow, in that moment my entire life changed?

Natalie: The just fucked look definitely works for her.

39. Alice and Tasha Are Compatible Look at this Car Sex (602: Least Likely)

Dan Foxworthy declared them incompatible and so they went straight into the parking garage and fucked. COMPATIBLY, DAN.

38. Molly and Shane Get Hot Tips in the Boat House (510: Lifecycle)

Molly’s ready for her AP test, but Shane’s tent is deemed an inadequate testing environment. Luckily, Molly negotiates their way into a shack of some sort and the scene is quiet — just breathing, no music, and Shane surrendering while not seeming entirely sure why.

37. Alice Feeds Tasha Bananas (408: Lexington and Concord)

Carmen: It’s just really sweet and domestic, ok? IDK, I love it and I love them.

36. Jenny and Nikki Get Some Extended QT In the Trailer (507: Lesbians Gone Wild)

Nikki doesn’t wanna work, she just wants to fuck over lunch all day!

35. Alice Loves Papi’s Circles Circles Papi (402: Livin’ La Vida Loca)

Alice looks for Papi, legendary Chart hub, all over Los Angeles — and is VERY pleased to find her.

Drew: When Alice grabs the seatbelt!

34. Tina and Bette’s Last Romp in the Hay (608: Last Word)

Sadé is on, there is cuddling and candles and the most intense orgasm Tina’s ever had and at some point Bette says she’d like to get married when they get to New York. It is a brief respite from an episode I frequently describe as the worst episode of television I’ve ever seen.

33. Tasha and Alice Have Couch Sex While Jamie Showers (606: Lactose Intolerant)

Carmen: (Full Confession: I actually really like this scene and find it very hot, but I had to subtract a point because they were both thinking about someone else the entire time.)

32. Bette and Jodi Have Some Early Morning Sex (407: Lesson Number One)

The best part of waking up is Jodi telling Bette “I want to be inside you”

31. Dylan and Helena Reunite, Make Love Through the Curtains (605: Litmus Test)

Helena is crying and fucking and everything is too much. She is so lovely and so sad. She says she’s scared. Dylan says she’s scared too. Oddly-chosen furniture obscures our view, similarly oddly-chosen background noise obscures our ears. But they sex on.

30. Bette and Tina Have Sex For the Second Time In One Day (506: Lights! Camera! Action!)

Bette does that thing to Tina, you know? Where you push someone’s hair back and look at them in the eyes and you’re like: “Hey, you. you. oh, you.” Not out loud, but you say it with your eyes. One thing they do say out loud, though? “It doesn’t really compare.”

29. Jenny Takes Her First Dip in Marina’s Lady Pond (101: Pilot)

If you’ve only seen this scene on Netflix and not on the DVDs with the actual original music, you have done your baby gay self a disservice!

Kayla: Sex at book club should happen in like 65% of fanfics.
Valerie: I was into Jenny/Marina in these early episodes an embarrassing amount.

28. Helena Seduces Her Psychiatrist, Which is Inappropriate/Hot (204: Lynch Pin)

Carmen: This is such a boss move and I love Helena for it.
Valerie: I know that technically this is a terrible idea but also I fell pretty hard for (some versions of) Helena.
Kayla: I’m not saying this is technically a porn category I watch, but actually yes that is what I am saying.

27. Bette’s TA Nadia Seduces Bette, Which is Inappropriate/Hot (403: Lassoed)

Drew: WOULD IT BE WRONG!
Carmen: It’s pretty hot for car sex, and I have to hold it down for my Grey’s Anatomy Stans and give a bonus point to the Shane McCutcheon of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital herself, Dr. Arizona Robbins.
Kayla: I’m maybe too into this one.

26. Candace and Bette Have a Rendez-Vous at a B&B (113: Limb From Limb)

Carmen: BETTE GETTING TOPPED WILL ALWAYS GET A FIVE FROM ME! Those are the rules!
Natalie: Bette getting topped is everything I never knew I always wanted.
Kayla: Cheating is bad… Bette getting topped is good.

25. Shane with Carmen in the DJ Booth WHERE’S HAIR (201: Life, Loss, Leaving)

Natalie: You know what never leads to sex? Conversations about how your dad died.
Valerie: I don’t care what anyone says, I love this scene so much, even though the dialogue barely makes sense and the music is just saying their names and the word “fucking” over and over. This scene might have been the very moment I realized that there was no escaping how gay I was.

24. Shane and Paige Did The Time So They’re Gonna Do the Crime (407: Lesson Number One)

The moment — that moment where the buildup reaches capacity and those proverbial sparks explode into something you can feel in your fingertips — that first moment we’re all banking on when we chase something we’re not certain we can have — that is a moment in which you are perhaps at your most alive, your most alert, when the air between you becomes smaller and smaller, the future inevitable but still undetermined. That’s the moment in which Shane leans (Jordan Catalano leans on things, Shane leans into girls), and then they start to kiss, and then they’re FUCKING ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE HELL YEAH.

23. Bette Picks Up a Girl at a Bar (204: Lynch Pin)

Drew: Imagine Bette Porter picking you up in a bar. Imagine Bette Porter bringing you back to her hotel room. Imagine Bette Porter kissing you, flashing a smile, turning you around, and — okay I’m gonna stop.
Natalie: “It’ll do.”

22. Helena and Tina Pregnant Poolsex (206: Lagrimas De Oro)

Kayla: I like pool sex and I like pregnancy!!!!!!

21. Bette and Tina Beat Lesbian Bed Death With Post-Thwarted-Threesome Hot Sex (101: Pilot)

Kayla: The emotions at play here feel very real.

20. Bette and Tina OMFG Sex (209: Late, Later, Latent)

After everything — after the carpenter, despite Helena — their hands find each other’s mouths and Bette’s mouth finds Tina’s stomach and they find the familiar ways they used to fuck but now it’s different, now Tina is in her body. “She didn’t feel like mine anymore,” Bette tells her therapist later, and that’s maybe her first step towards making sex like that possible forever.

19. Bette Fingers Alice At The Opera in a  Flashback (307: Lone Star)

Drew: Bette and Alice is my dream ship and while my dreams never fully came true in the original series, we did get this one beautiful moment.
Kayla: SEX AT THE OPERA SHOULD BE A PORN CATEGORY.
Valerie: One point for the location/boldness of it, one point for Jennifer Beals in general, zero points for the pairing.

18. Tina + Bette #AngrySex (113: Limb from Limb)

Some viewers (like me) consider this one of the rawest, most authentic sex scenes ever on television — what Tina conceives as possible has just been blown open by betrayal and uncertainty, and what Bette conceives as possible has just been blown open by the possibility of Tina leaving. We know that feeling, that violence and despair, as Tina’s hysteria becomes a kind of spastic beauty and they fuck like they’re killing each other. Bette tears Tina’s dress open, Tina shoves Bette’s hand inside her. But it’s a controversial scene, too — some viewers see it as absolutely non-consensual and violent in the worst way possible. Maybe what it banks on is what it reminds us of, of the assumptions we’ve made about their sexual relationship up until this moment. Both viewings are valid as fuck, in one of a few L Word episodes one could adequately describe as “art.”

17. Carmen and Shane Play “Too Hot” (203: Loneliest Number)

Carmen: I almost gave it a ten but upon rewatching this scene recently it wasn’t quite as hot as I remembered (blasphemy, I know).
Natalie: I’m a sucker for Sarah Shahi in her “Supa-Lova Costume.”

16. Jodi Takes Bette’s Eyes Off Of her (501: LGB Tease)

Drew: Bette should’ve stayed with Jodi.

Carmen: X2.

15. Alice Has Sex With a Vampire (305: Lifeline)

Drew: This scene is so good because of Leisha Hailey. Yes, the circumstances of the scene are equal parts hot and ridiculous, but it’s really Leisha who sells the sexiness and the humor.

14. Helena and Dylan Have Sunset Sex (308: Late Comer)

“I’ve never done this before,” Dylan says, self-consciously, as Helena fingers the waist of her low-rise flare pants and the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean behind them. Later, in the dark, Helena comes while panting, “Are you sure you’ve never done this?” She still has her watch on, so maybe she’s aware that this scene clocks in at around four minutes, which’s QUITE long for an L Word sex scene!

13. Carmen Gives Shane a Dance (302: Lost Weekend)

Drew: The specific way Shane’s tank top is see-through is a nice touch.
Kayla: Everyone is being extra hot in this scene.
Valerie: Carmen and Shane! Are you sensing a theme from me?

12. Shane and Paige Read Stories In The Car (408: Lexington and Concord)

The brand-new couple arrives a little early to the show and instead of picking up a six-pack and some Charleston Chews at the 7-11 to pass the time, they fuck. And fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck. This girl and I must have watched this scene ten thousand times. How you get to see Paige’s whole body in a way we rarely saw not-stick-thin bodies back then. How hungry they are, how well-fed they become.

11. Bette and Candace Have… Verbal Sex? In Jail (112: Locked Up)

Drew: I’ve never cheated on a partner and I hope to never cheat on a partner, but God does The L Word make cheating on a partner seem like the best thing ever. While, sure, Bette and Candace don’t touch, it doesn’t really matter. The line has been crossed. And it’s so devastatingly hot. Watching Jennifer Beals consumed with desire? Yes, please.
Carmen: For my money the hottest sex scene in all of Season One, even though they don’t touch each other at all. I WISH I COULD’VE GIVEN IT A TEN! Gahh! Why are rules so hard!
Kayla: Thanks, I hate it.

10. Shane and Carmen Have a Nice Date (213: Lacuna)

Natalie: This grade is for the sex, not the music, right?
Valerie: I love the magnet pull between Shane and Carmen, and I love the moment between two people when they stop resisting the pull and smash together.

9. Tasha and Alice Survive The Blackout With Ice Sex (509: Liquid Heat)

It is very hot in here but Alice has ice, and Tasha has the world’s best laugh, and nobody has to go to work today so there’s never been a better time for Alice to get between those thighs.

8. Bette and Tina Survive The Blackout With Elevator Sex (509: Liquid Heat)

Carmen: To be honest, my top Bette/Tina vote getter is a toss up between Bettina Elevator sex and Bettina stir fry sex and there are no real losers in that situation.

7. Tasha Comes Home To Her War Bride Alice (501: LGB Tease)

Between finding out WHY Tasha’s been sent home from active duty and Tasha returning home unexpectedly, we get this ode to fucking on the floor in the hallway, because they cannot possibly progress more than three steps down it without jumping each other’s bones. A perfect L Word sex scene.

6. Bette and Tina #StirFry Sex (506: Lights! Camera! Action!)

Drew: An objectively good sex scene, but as a Jodi stan it makes me sad.
Carmen: Would’ve given it ten if I could have!

5. Shane and Her Strap-On At Cherie’s Pool (305: Lifeline)

Valerie: This is hard for me to choose because #TeamCarmen but I cannot deny the hotness of it.
Kayla: I like pool sex and I like strap-ons, what can I say.

4. Jenny and Nikki Have Strap-On Sex in a Luxury Tent (510: Lifecycle)

Nikki is the director now but that doesn’t stop Jenny from advising, “take off your pants, that’s the only way you’re gonna get your actors to listen to you!” Just Like Heaven plays, Nikki wears cute glasses and a button-up shirt, Jenny brought a strap-on, they’re alternately talking dirty and saying “you’re beautiful” and “I love you.” It’s everything a mainstream lesbian sex scene should be. Except for Adele creeping outside???!!

3. Bette and Jodi Have Sex On Art (406: Luck be a Lady)

Drew: What do you want me to say? I like people opening themselves up to vulnerability and I like art.
Valerie: Welcome to one of my other top ships of this show.
Carmen: X2.
Kayla: I have rewatched this scene……often.

2. Alice and Dana Have Sex For Hours and Hours (205: Labyrinth)

Finally! The L Word Sex scene we were all waiting for!

Kayla: Food! Is! Involved! We love a sex marathon.

1. Alice and Tasha Just Wanna Fuck Each Other! (408: Lexington & Concord)

Carmen: I C O N I C

Every Bob’s Burgers Character Who’s Definitely Bi, With Receipts

I can say two things with total certainty: I’m queer, and I am a “Bob’s Burgers” expert. Truly, I watch “Bob’s” on a loop; it’s unfailingly consistent, down to callbacks to prior episodes in its background illustrations, which makes it the perfect panacea for the craziness of the world. My zeal for “Bob’s Burgers” was part of the fabric of my life well before my bisexuality was — but here they are, converging. I’ve studied the show, collected the evidence, and now I’m ready to tell you which “Bob’s Burgers” characters are bisexual as fuck.

Bob

It’s easy to make the case that the show’s titular, unlucky burger chef is bi, since Bob’s sexuality is basically canon. It starts in season four’s “Turkey in a Can” when Bob’s Thanksgiving turkeys keep getting ruined; after repeat trips to the grocery store for a new turkey, Bob attracts the attention of a guy behind the deli counter who’s convinced Bob has actually returned so many days in a row because he’s working up the nerve to flirt.

“I’m straight,” Bob insists. “I mean, I’m mostly straight.” In season nine’s Halloween episode, Bob asserts that the town’s new, hot handyman is objectively attractive but isn’t his “type.” Sounds a lot like when I watched the first season of Orange is the New Black. Just saying.

I’d normally call it a cop-out for a show to allude again and again to a character being queer without ever making it part of the plot. I’d normally be pretty annoyed about the representation being off-screen only. (There are three things you should never ask my opinion on at a party, and one of them is the exists-only-in-my-mind — and probably on fanfiction.net — “Full House” sequel/“Fuller House” prequel that explores the must’ve-happened doomed love between confirmed bisexual Stephanie Tanner and her Faith-Lehane knock-off friend, Gia. But anyway…)

I’ll make an exception for Bob. From the show’s early days, we know Bob has two great loves: his wife Linda, and burgers. Still, I’m holding out hope that the writers will use their talent for flashbacks to show us Bob’s ex-boyfriend. In a show with nearly perfect continuity and a history of turning one-off bits into full-on storylines in subsequent episodes, I don’t think it’s far-fetched to hope a couple of jokes establishing Bob’s bisexuality pan out into something meatier (pun intended).

Zeke

Zeke is going to be one of those bi adults who looks back on their childhood and realizes that when they weren’t clumsily pursuing someone of a different gender, so much of what they did was very, very gay.

So, all of us.

Tina Belcher’s super-southern classmate is allegedly obsessed with wrestling, but to me, it looks like grappling is a guise that gets him up-close and personal with his best friend Jimmy Jr. Like when you really want to french braid your best friend’s hair.

Not wrestling-related, but please observe how unfailingly, affectionately supportive Zeke is of Jimmy Jr.’s terrible dancing. Then try to tell me that’s not dancing only a wannabe-boyfriend could love.

Aunt Gayle

Linda’s sister Gayle owns a crap-ton of cats, writes poetry, and wears ugly-cute slip-on shoes.

Enough said, right? Wrong.

There’s this amazing line, which embodies dating as a bi woman who doesn’t yet realize she connects best with women:

Finally, in the same episode where Bob professes to be “mostly straight,” Linda tells Bob that her sister will be spending Thanksgiving at their apartment because there’d been a fire at Gayle’s place. How’d Gayle start a blaze? Well, it involves a prophalyctic I’ve only ever heard discussed among queer women (and one trying-to-be-edgy son of a dental professional).

Nat

Nat, the be-suited, masc-of-center limo driver from season eight’s “V for Valentine-detta” is clearly a queer woman. If you need proof beyond her visor and matching suit, she also keeps stink bombs in her limo’s glove compartment so she can work out some really specific (but not gender-specific) aggression.

She says “people,” people!

Nat can sit next to me forever, too.

Mandy

Aside from Bob, Mandy is the show’s most obvious-but-unconfirmed queer character. We meet Mandy in season nine’s “Better Off Sled,” when the high school softball star is called in to save the Belcher kids and their friends from the teens who’ve been pelting the group with snowballs.

Mandy strides toward the group with the confidence of Xena, Warrior Princess; Louise immediately compares her to Brienne of Tarth, a character who I’m convinced is gay even though I’ve been told otherwise, repeatedly.

Mandy pummels the bullies with snowballs and then sits on their fort like the avenging (gay)ngel she is:

When Mandy’s original onslaught of snowballs isn’t enough to keep the boys from terrifying the younger kids, Mandy returns with reinforcements — her softball teammates.

And the girls’ basketball team.

AND the girls’ lacrosse team.

No one can tell me Mandy won’t grow up to play professional softball and win the hearts of adoring queer women the world over; it won’t matter whether there’s a dude cheering for her from the sidelines, or if she finds the Sue Bird to her Megan Rapinoe.

As “Bob’s Burgers” heads into its tenth season, I can only hope that it’ll come back … well … Linda said it best.

All 91 Actors Who Were In Both “The L Word” and “Battlestar Galactica”

Last week on the hit podcast “To L and Back,” I noted the presence of what seemed to be the fourth Battlestar Galactica actor to appear on Season One of The L Word. “I’ll make a little list on Autostraddle of all the actors who were on both shows,” I promised podcast listeners, naively imagining a list comprising between 7 and 20 actors. How young I was then. How limber.

It turns out that whopping 91 actors appeared in both programs. It also seems like all the L Word actors that weren’t on Battlestar were on Stargate, Supernatural or Smallville. This seems crazier than it is — both shows filmed in Vancouver between the years of 2003 and 2009, and both shared Heike Brandstatter and Corren Mayrs as their Canadian casting directors (they also served as Canadian casting directors for Supernatural and Smallville). They share some shooting locations too — the Waterfall Building used to represent the California Arts Center is also Roslin’s Doctor’s Office in the 2003 mini-series and serves six other purposes throughout Battlestar’s run. The Orpheum Theater, where Shane fights with Veronica Bloom, is the Opera House in Battlestar.

But still, how did nearly the entire Quorum of the Zarek/Roslin Administration end up on The L Word?

If you’re watching The L Word along with the podcast for the first time, skip the explainers underneath each photo of who the character is on The L Word, although I have made them as vague as possible to avoid spoilers.

These are not in any particular order except that the more prominent roles (on either show) are near the front with pictures and the more obscure roles are near the end (mostly in alphabetical order because of how I copied them over from Airtable).

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1. Michael Hogan

Irwin Fairbanks // Colonel Tigh

Irwin is Dana’s Dad.

2. Lucy Lawless

Sgt Marybeth Duffy // D’Anna Biers

Sgt Maybeth Duffy investigates an alleged murder in Season Six and the Confession Tapes.

3. Susan Hogan

Sharon Fairbanks // Captain Doyle Franks

That’s right, Dana’s parents were played by two actors who are married in real life!

4. Rekha Sharma

Lori // Tory Foster

Lori is a girl Shane almost hooks up with in a bar in Season One.

5. Simone Bailly

Grace // Shona

Grace dates Max and works with him on OurChart in Season Four of The L Word.

6. Colin Lawrence

David Waters // Lt. Hamish “Skulls” McCall

David is Kit Porter’s son.

7. Nicki Clyne

Delilah // Crewman Specialist Cally Tyrol

Delilah picks up Jenny hitchhiking after her quickie marriage to Tim.

8. Aaron Douglass

Citizen // Chief Galen Tyrol

“Citizen” appears for about 45 seconds outside the CAC in Season One.

9. Ryan Robbins

Bus Stop Man // Charlie Connor

Bette meets Bus Stop Man at the Bus Stop after her silent retreat in Season Four.

10. Judith Maxie

Dr. Wilson // Picon Delegate

Dr. Wilson is the doctor supervising Tina’s pregnancy.

11. Lorena Gale

Delores // Elosha

Delores is one of Dana’s doctors in Season Three.

12. Tahmoh Penikett

Sherriff // Helo

The Sherriff rejects Tim’s request to go look for Jenny in Season One.

13. Luciana Carro

Lisa // Louanne “Kat” Katraine

Lisa hooks up with Shane in Season One and again in Season Two.

14. Heather Doerksen

Karen + Waitress + Woman with Clipboard // Sgt. Brandy Harder

Karen is a friend of Jodi’s in Season Four and Clipboard Girl tells Alice she can’t be on Dana’s float at Pride in Season Two.

15. Donnelley Rhodes

Colonel Jon Smythe // Dr. Sherman Cottle

Jon Smythe works at Tasha’s base in Season Five.

16. Dominic Zamprogna

Greg/Jim // Jammer

Greg plays “Tim” in Jenny’s film, Lez Girls, in Season Five.

17. Tygh Runyan

Gene Feinberg // Private Sykes

Gene dates Jenny in Season One.

18. Veena Sood

Reporter // Quorum Delegate

Reporter interrogates Bette outside the CAC in Season One.

19. Erica Cerra

Prima Ballerina + Uta Refson // Maya

Prima Ballerina has a fling with Francesca in Season One, Uta has a fling with Alice in Season Three.

20. Christina Schild

Allison // Playa Palacios

Allison is a friend of Henry’s who comes over for a party in Season Four.

21. Alana Husband

Marcy // Nurse Sashon

Marcy is one of Shane’s three roommates in Season One.

22. Dana Delaney

Senator Barbara Grisham // Sesha Abinell

Senator Barbara Grisham meets Bette at a hearing in Season Three.

23. Chris Shields

Cop // Cpl. Venner

The Cop breaks up Lesbian Oil Wrestling in Season Five.

24. Brad Dryborough

Man on All Fours + Stephen Green // Lt. Louis Hoshi

Stephen Green is arrested in a flashback scene that opens an episode in Season One. The “Man on All Fours” is likely from the Dungeon scene at Pride in Season Two.

25. Don Thompson

Victor // Specialist 3rd Class Anthony Figurski

Victor works at the strip club where Jenny gets a job in Season Two.

26. Alisen Down

Priscilla // Jean Barolay

Priscilla is a woman with a life Veronica Bloom wants to buy the movie rights to in Season Two.

27. Brian Markinson

Aaron // Silas Nash (Battlestar: Blood & Chrome)

Aaron is one of the producers of Lez Girls in Season Five.

28. Jill Teed

Teri // Sgt. Hadrian

Teri appears in a historical flashback at the start of an episode in Season Three.

29. Andrew McIlroy

John James // Jacob Cantrell

John James is Shane’s boss at the hair salon in Season One.

30. Kwesi Ameyaw

Randy // Liner Captain (2003 TV Mini-Series)

Randy coaches the swim team with Tim in Season One.

31. Bruce Davison

Leonard Kroll // Dr. Michael Robert

Leonard is Phyllis’s husband in Seasons Four and Five.

32. Callum Keith Rennie

Danny Wilson // Leoben Conoy

Danny Wilson makes documentaries / a relationship with Dylan in Season Three.

33. Georgia Craig

Becky Haspel + Resident Nurse // Oracle Yolanda Brenn

We meet Becky in Season Three when she and her husband Tim meet up with Jenny and Max for lunch.

34. John Pyper-Ferguson

Michael Angelo // Captain Cole ‘Stinger’ Taylor

Michael Angelo is a friend of Jodi’s we meet at her lakehouse weekend in Season Four.

35. Marilyn Norry

Eve // Reza Chronides

Eve attends a consciousness-raising group at the start of an episode in Season Three.

36. Warren Christie

Leo Herrera // Tarn

Leo works at the CAC in Season Two.

37. Zak Santiago

Oscar // Captain Diaz (Blood & Chrome)

Tina volunteers for Oscar’s social justice organization in Season One.

38. Ty Olson

Jim // Captain Aaron Kelly

Jim is a friend of Henry’s in Season Four.

39. Mike Dopud

First AD // Crewman Specialist Gage

The First AD works for Veronica Bloom in Season Two.

40. Claudette Mink

Marlene // Shevon

Marlene is a friend of Henry’s in Season Three.

41. Biski Gugushe

Protestor // Reporter Sekou Hamilton

Biski was a protestor outside the CAC in Season One.

42. Alonso Oyarzun

Eduardo // Crewman Specialist Socinus

Eduardo works at the Grocery Store with Jenny in the Pilot.

43. Aaron Pearl

Lieutenant Finnerty // Ensign Abel Thornton

Lieutenant Finnerty worked at Tasha’s base in Season Five.

44. Aaron Brooks

Redneck Boy #1 // Mr. Buckminster

Aaron Brooks was in a pre-episode flashback montage in Season Two.

45. Adrian Holmes

Duane // Specialist Parr

Duane works for Slim Daddy in Season One.

46. Alain Chanoine

Hunky Guy // Marine Reb

“Hunky Guy” is at the club in Season Six.

47. Alison Matthews

Betty + Associate Producer // Karen Fallbrook

48. Barclay Hope

Bert Guber // Transport Pilot

49. Benjamin Ayres

Lorenzo // Lt. George ‘Catman’ Birch

Lorenzo is a “Senior VP” who Jenny and Tina meet with about “Lez Girls” in Season Four.

50. Brent Stait

Bob // Mason

Bob is the stepfather of the girl Tina and Bette want to adopt a baby from in Season Six.

51. Camille Atebe

T + Cute Girl // Sarah Ryan

52. Camille Sullivan

Valerie Goins + Helen // Pilot/Stepchild

Valerie is the girlfriend of Leigh, an artist friend of Bette’s.

53. Chelah Horsdal

Sally + Psychic // Didi Cassidy

Sally is at the consciousness-raising group flashback that opens Season Three .

54. Dan Payne

Policeman // Sean Ellison

Dan pulls Kit over in the Pilot.

55. David Richardson-Peck

Eric Sonnenberg // Naylin Stans

Eric runs the studio where Mark is pitching his documentary in Season Two.

56. Eliza Norbury

Technician // Civvie #2

57. Eric Breker

Doctor // Chu / Gemenon Captain

This character is one of Bette’s Dad’s doctors in Season Two.

58. Erin Karpluk

Susan/Alysse // Woman #1

Susan plays “Alysse” in Lez Girls in Season Five.

59. France Perras

Mrs. Greif // Sandra Roslin

Mrs. Greif is the homophobic parent of a child who Shane’s brother and Pagie’s son go to school with.

60. G. Patrick Currie

Miles // Enzo

61. Gabrielle Rose

Carol // Mrs. King

Carol is on the board of the art department at California University.

62. Georgia Mae Hacche

Luchi Santis // Petty Officer Sian

Luchi auditions for “Lez Girls” in Season Five but loses the part to Nikki.

63. Graeme Duffy

Counter Clerk // Adrien Bauer

64. Gustavo Febres

Drag Queen // Herbalist

Alice is looking for Papi at a club when she runs into the Drag Queen.

65. Holly Elissa

Chandra // Asha Janik

Chandra asks Alice out in Season Three, and Tina and Helena see her at Max’s prom fundraiser.

66. Iris Paluly

Orthodox Woman // Speaking Delegate Dahlia

67. Ivan Cermák

Heterosexual Man // Corporal D. Wallace

68. Jennifer Kitchen

Goombah Girl + Party Animal Lesbian #2 // Marine

69. Jim Shield

Simon Frunn – Bonham // Karma

Simon is approached by Bette and Tina in Season One as a potential sperm donor.

70. Kurt Max Runte

Mysterious Man // Ensign Charles Bellamy

71. Linnea Sharples

Gretchen/Nina // Lt. Emmitt ‘Sweetness’ Jones

Gretchen plays “Nina” in Lez Girls in Season Five.

72. Lori Triolo

Curator + Gallery Worker // Phoebe

73. Malcolm Stewart

Dr. Geld //Marshall Bagot

Dr. Geld is a doctor Max visits to talk about gender reassignment surgery in Season Three.

74. Marci T. House

Grand Marshall // Midwife/Herbalist

75. Mark Houghton

Robin Bookman // Vinson

Robin Bookman tells Bette and Tina he can’t give them sperm because his family has buck teeth in the pilot.

76. Michael Ryan

Senator Horsey //Ray Abinell

Senator Horsey is at a hearing Bette testifies at in Season Three.

77. Michael Tayles

Ewan // Flyboy

Ewan interviews to be Shane and Jenny’s roommate in Season Two.

78. Morris Chapdelaine

Judge // Reporter #2

The Judge is judging a dance contest fundraiser at the LA LGBT Center in Season Six.

79. Nicholas Treeshin

Tom // Sgt. Watkins

This is not the same Tom who dates Max, it’s Tom from a Season Two pre-episode flashback sequence.

80. P.J. Prinsloo

Cycling Dude #3 // Lt. Mei ‘Freaker’ Firelli

81. Patricia Idlette

Technician // Sarah Porter

82. Rachel Hayward

Ellie // Blonde Woman

Ellie is the society wife who Harry sets up with Shane to do her hair in Season One.

83. Ron Selmour

Security Guard // Seaborne

84. Samantha Ferris

Meryl Rothman // Pollux

Meryl hits on Bette at a show in Season Two.

85. Samantha Kaine

Vanessa // Off-Duty Crew Person

Vanessa is the Absolut Vodka representative working on Dana and Tanya’s wedding in Season Two.

86. Stefanie von Pfetten

Kelly // Cpt. Marcia ‘Showboat’ Case

Kelly brings flowers to Shane as part of a set-up to hook up in Season Two.

87. Steve Lawlor

Richard // Marine at Baltar’s + Guard

88. Tamara Lashley

Bisexual Girl // Sue-Shaun

89. Tammy Gillis

Tammy // Marine #2

Tammy attends bisexual speed dating in Season Three.

90. Tammy Hui

Assistant // ECO Lyla ‘Shark’ Ellway

Veronica Bloom’s assistant in Season Two who tries to rope Shane back into Veronica’s world.

91. Winston Rekert

Bon Sweeney // Priest

Max’s Dad in Season Four.

A Brief Investigation into Dating Someone With the Same Name as You, A Real Thing People Actually Do

As is the case for many of us who had Extremely Common Late 80’s names, a formative experience for me was being one of many Rachels in my school and social circles. It was defined by a constant simmering tension with the other Rachels, silently jockeying to see who could functionally be referred to simply as Rachel in conversation and still be clearly identified and who would have to settle for being a Rachel B. or Rachel K. (Obviously this does not compare to the experience of having a very unique or stigmatized name, which is objectively worse, but bear with me.) Maybe this is part of why I’ve always been so deeply horrified at the prospect of dating someone with the same name as me.

I was shocked in recent years to find out anecdotally that others do not share this aversion! While I’m aware that I think I’m more particular about names than most people (I also can’t date people with the same name as close friends, family members, or people I have strong negative feelings about) I was fascinated to learn that there are those of you out there who are totally fine with the idea of being half of “Leah and Lia” forever.

In an informal survey of Autostraddle staff members with names common enough that this was a shared concern, I was heartened to find I was not alone. Vapid Fluff Editor Stef agreed that “I have a solid no Stephanies policy (this applies to all spellings and nicknames).” Elaborating further, she added “It squicks me out! I think it’s just a symptom of extreme self loathing but also knowing my friends would make fun of me even more than they already do. I hate myself enough, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Staff Writer Carrie agreed but for more logistical reasons, saying “My current girlfriend’s first AND last names are phonetically similar to mine, and we already get way more than enough cutesy “aww”s from strangers when we introduce ourselves.” It’s an understandable position! Many aspects of navigating the public sphere as a same-sex couple are awkward enough; why add another element that straight people will inevitably make awkward!

Others were more open-minded than me; fellow common-name-haver Molly said that “I haven’t ever done it but I don’t know if I’d mind because I rarely use a person’s first name if I’m dating them,” and noted that nicknames were always an option. Also in the non-dealbreaker camp was Valerie, who agreed that the fact that she might not use her girlfriend’s name in person that often made it kind of a non-issue, noting that “it’s not like I ever call myself by my own name, so it’s not like I’D ever get confused.” She also spoke to Carrie’s earlier point by reframing it as a positive: “One of my favorite things to do is make straight people uncomfortable just by existing (not all straight people; just the ones who think they’re woke but still have trace amounts of homophobia left in their system) so I think the look on people’s faces when I was like, “Hi I’m Valerie and this is my girlfriend Valerie,” would be quite entertaining. Plus have you HEARD that Amy Winehouse song?”

Although I reached out to several advocates of or previous participants in a same-name relationship, as of press time my sources had not been able to respond. In lieu of their feedback, I am left to imagine reasons why one would be okay with this:

1. At least one of you primarily uses a nickname or alternate name, meaning that this doubling would only come up in official capacities
2. You did not know this person’s given name for some reason when you first met them — maybe you were in a slow-burn internet relationship over South of Nowhere message boards and knew them primarily by their handle, I don’t know your life — and when you found out, it was too late
3. It’s “true love” or whatever

I am truly just all out of ideas after that, but I am willing to be convinced. People who have or are fine with dating someone with the same name as them, you have the floor. People who are available to tell me how right I am and that, as Heather Hogan compellingly put it, she has “an intense rivalry with everyone else on earth named Heather, consider all of them my enemies, would never date one,” you also have the floor. I await your input breathlessly.

Every Major Female “Star Trek” Character, Ranked By Lesbianism

Here’s the thing about the future: the way things are going currently, I think it’s safe to question why heterosexual women would still be the majority in 2334. And yet! As I learned in a Women in Literature course nearly two decades ago, fan-fic was invented by Trekkies longing to see Kirk and Spock boldly go where they only subtextually went onscreen, and until literally three years ago, the franchise has remained mostly content to keep its characters straight on their streets and queer in our sheets. Star Trek‘s persistent refusal to offer sufficient LGBTQ representation, despite encouragement from cast members, has been a point of contention for decades. Our 2010 piece about it — “Gay Me Up, Scotty: How Star Trek Failed To Boldly Go There” — is one of several Autostraddle pieces that frequently pop up on college syllabi.

Luckily, we all have very active imaginations and also, just for the record, as a child I attended a Star Trek Convention in the aptly named Romulus, Michigan. Thus, it eventually came time for us to turn our keen minds towards an important project: ranking every Star Trek character by lesbianism. (A practice we engage in frequently, for example this ranking of Law and Order characters.)

The lesbian rankings contained herein are based on highly subjective criteria you will undoubtedly disagree with. It includes opinions from esteemed sources like your pal and mine Sally, who has seen all the Star Treks, as well as Autostraddle writers Al(aina), Kayla, and Senior Editor Carmen, the only three Autostraddle team members who wanted to join my Star Trek Slack Channel.

Also by the way the Bajorans are the most lesbianish species overall (the earwear alone, I mean!) and everyone is queerer in the mirrorverse. Don’t @ me. But do comment!

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55. Navigator Ilia (Persis Khambatta), “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”

Due to the Deltan pheromones that trigger “hormonal responses in most humanoid life forms of the opposite sex,” Ilia had to take a vow of celibacy in order to be permitted to work amongst human men. A more logical solution would be to avoid human men altogether, any lesbian could tell you that!!!

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54. Helmsman Valeris (Kim Cattrall), “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”

No thank you.

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53. Seska (Martha Hackett), Voyager

no

thank

you

---

52. Alynna Nechayev (Natalija Nogulich), The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine

Kayla: daddy vibes but not super gay vibes sorry 2 say. she’s so by-the-book.

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51. Anjj (Donna Murphy), “Star Trek: Insurrection”

Overcomes everything she knows to be true about the world in order to fall in love with a man. Heterosexual bangs.

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50. Kes (Jennifer Lien), Voyager

Sally: What little personality she did have was subsumed by her relationship with the incredibly annoying Neelix.

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49. Dr Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur), The Next Generation

Refused to acknowledge Data’s preferred personhood and mispronounced his name intentionally to convey her disrespect. So, definitely straight.

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48. Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), The Original Series, Star Trek I – VI

Sally remembers that she “can’t remember what she did other than crush on Spock.” However, Kayla asks: “Is there something slightly gay about pining after Spock since he is quite literally emotionally unavailable? Like the way I pretended to have crushes on unavailable boys in high school?” Valid inquiry.

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47. Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), The Original Series, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”

Truly committed to the heterosexual bit for decades. Slight Mom energy, Zero Mommi Energy.

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46. Tora Ziyal (Melanie Smith), Deep Space Nine

She’s like the straight sister of one of your lesbian friends who everybody is like, “is she gay yet?” and her lesbian sister is like “not yet!”

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45. Winn Adami (Louise Fletcher), Deep Space Nine

Super evil but not the sexy low-key kind of evil your ex-girlfriend was. More like the kind of evil embodied by a librarian who won’t stock Heather Has Two Mommies.

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44. Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Voyager

It is true that she was, as Sally put it, “relentlessly and regretfully (to me) heterosexual with Lt. Paris, a human charm vacuum.” However, as Sally also put it, she “had a lot of angry feminist vibes going on.”

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43. Nurse Alyssa Ogawa (Patti Yasutake), The Next Generation, “Star Trek Generations,” “Star Trek First Contact”

Is described as “a bit conservative in her personal life.” Haircut got less gay rather than more gay over time. When Crusher saw her boyfriend with another woman, Alyssa was concerned rather than relieved.

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42. First Officer / Science Officer T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), Enterprise

Sally: Repeatedly stripped off in the decontamination chamber, which I sense was only tangentially for my benefit.

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41. Starfleet Vice Admiral Katrina Cornwell (Jayne Brook), Discovery

Is a therapist.

Kayla: is a bisexual psychiatrist called a bichiatrist
she sleeps with her ex and then tries to psychoanalyze their trauma…….
BICHIATRIST

---

40. Kasidy Yates-Sisko (Penny Johnson Jerald), Deep Space Nine

“In my head she merged with her other role as the evil wife of the President in 24,” remarked Sally. “So I was always highly suspicious of her.”

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39. Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), The Original Series, first six Star Trek films

Point / Counterpoint:

Al(aina): very heterosexual. her first lines in the series are like “spock why won’t you tell me i’m pretty!!!!”
Carmen: Ok so while I technically see Al’s point here, I am still going to offer a rebuttal: Lt. Uhura is fundamental to everything about my black nerd femme identity. EVERYTHING.
And I have a Lt. Uhura journal and action figure to highlight this point.
AND without Nichelle Nichols in this role, there wouldn’t have been women in central speaking parts in command. So in many ways she’s the foremother of a lot of the other women on this list, which I feel is important re: legacy of women we’re ranking by gay.

DISCUSS.

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38. Ensign Demora Sulu (Jacqueline Kim), “Star Trek Generations”

Had minimal screen time/development. Daddy’s girl.

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37. Lursa & Be’Etor, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and “Star Trek: Generations”

Tried to seduce Picard by offering him excessive amounts of hot tea. Also therefore:

Al(aina): ok, hear me out: i think these two are def gay sisters who sleep with men in the same way that aileen wuornos slept with men. like, to get money from them and also possibly to kill them.

---

36. Cadet Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), Discovery

Tilly might be the straight girl who seemed gay as a kid just ’cause she had so many ideas for sleepover games but like… she actually meant it when she said she had a crush on that boy you were just pretending to have a crush on. And listen: nobody is more annoyed than she is about being straight. All her friends are gay!

Alternately, Sally has pointed out that she has allergies, which is gay. Furthermore, that infection/haunting via her former “friend” May in Season Two is wildly lesbian. When her ex/”friend,” in the form of a viral blob, is eating her arm, and she’s like, “I’m so tired,” I was like, GIRL, SAME.

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35. Ishka (Cecily Adams), Deep Space Nine

Couldn’t live her truth until her husband died, which means she’s a late-in-life lesbian. Feminist renegade who attempted to circumvent the misogynist Ferengi economy for personal gain.

---

34. Leeta (Chase Masterson), Deep Space Nine

She is a Bajoran, the most lesbianish species of Star Trek, and also was basically a sex worker, one of the the most queerish professions of the modern era (right up there with “social worker” and “starfleet officer”) AND she ORGANIZED A G-DDAMN UNION. Despite all of that… does not attempt to seduce Arandis or any other women while celebrating her conscious uncoupling from Doctor Bashir on a pleasure planet?

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33. Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard), “Star Trek: First Contact”

Began her story building a time machine in a rural Montana silo. Described as “outspoken and a little high-strung” (gay) and credited with being “the first to recognize Captain Picard’s emotional demons.” (Do note that although lesbians are very good at recognizing the emotional demons of others, we are also uniquely adept at disassociating from our own.)

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32. Caithlin Dar (Cynthia Gouw), “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”

Hairstyle doubles as a dildo. Is always dressed for a tightly themed queer dance party. Was manipulated into joining a weird religious cult.

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31. Female Changeling (Salome Jens), Deep Space Nine

Sally: Possibly the most bizarre thing in all Star Trek is that when they had the ultimate chance to have completely agender lifeforms who can shapeshift into anything, they either had them as a writhing pile of goo, or really bad play-dough people. The Female Changeling had it in really bad for the “solids” who she thought were stupid and inferior, which is kind of how I feel about men, so I’m charitably viewing her as a kind of non-binary man-hating lesbian separatist.

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30. Counselor Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer), Deep Space Nine

Joined Starfleet to get away from her family. According to @somekindoferika on twitter, has “big trans energy.”

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29. Special Emissary K’Ehleyr (Susie Plakson), The Next Generation

Was fridged to motivate a male character. She once noted, regarding her half-human half-Klingon genetics, “my Klingon side can be terrifying, even to me,” which is clearly a symbolic nod to her bisexuality and her subsequent terror of either: a) Men, b) Women.

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28. Martia (Ilman), “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”

Envisioned as a “swashbuckling female space pirate.” Was killed by a famous cis white man.

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27. Botanist Keiko O’Brien (Rosalind Chao), The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine

Fanboys hate her. She loves plants.

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26. Officer Joann Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo), Discovery

When locked in a basement in New Eden with Michael and Pike, stripped of all their fancy technology, she employs her Luddite background expertly, managing to free them all by manipulating the door’s sliding bolt. Her haircut is gay enough to stand out on a bridge riddled with gay haircuts.

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25. Biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), “Star Trek IV: The Journey Home”

Obsessed with whales. Says she’s down to time-hop with Kirk and Spock because “I’ve got nobody but those whales.” Has no interest in keeping in touch with Kirk because she would rather do science. In the fictional bibliography of “Star Trek: Federation – The First 150 Years,” she is cited as the author of “Whales Weep Not: My 300-Year Voyage Home with George and Gracie.” Ahem.

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24. The Actual Whales from “Star Trek IV: The Journey Home”

Sally: Two whales involved in saving future earth from some pseudo-ecological disaster using whalesong definitely sounds like the kind of plot dreamt up by a teenage lesbian.

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23. Commander-in-Training Saavik (Kristie Alley), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Kayla: A [half] vulcan who still CRIES? bitch, that’s a lesbian.

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22. Molecular Biologist Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch), “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”

After having Kirk’s child, declared a lack of interest in spending any additional time with Kirk or having him involved in his son’s life, preferring instead to focus on her truest love: her work.

Kayla: WE STAN A GAY SINGLE MOM
Kayla: SCIENCE MOMMI

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21. Season One Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), The Next Generation

For:

• Looks like a lesbian
• Precocious
• Thinks he can do everybody else’s job better than they can
• Wears a cute striped mock turtleneck and leggings all the time
• When he saves the day, fans were annoyed rather than impressed
• Teaches a group of small children how to do passive resistance as an activist technique in order to escape their captors
• As a child when TNG originally aired, I had a crush on him
• My crush blinded me to the fact that he was a nearly universally disliked character
• Dammit was I Wesley
• Ugh I hate myself

Against:

• Stopped looking/acting like a lesbian circa Season Two
• Was a teenage boy

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20. Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Voyager

In 1997, GLAAD reported that ex-borg drone Seven of Nine would “experiment with her sexuality along the way to understanding her humanity, including looking into same-sex relations” but apparently unnamed “opposition” got in the way, as it has literally every single time this franchise ever promised queer representation until 2016. But what we got instead was a troubled hottie constantly haunted by trauma and suffering from near-constant severe PTSD involving raven-prominent flashbacks, which is peak lesbian.

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19. Arandis (Vanessa Williams), one episode of Deep Space Nine

Was nobody else still watching DS9 when Dax went on a romantic vacation with Worf — she wore a RAINBOW BATHING SUIT, he kept his uniform on and was in a very bad mood the whole time — and her old friend Arandis (who’d hooked up with one of Jadzia’s former hosts) followed her around all week hoping Dax would escape the misapplied Worf storyline for some Sweet Sapphic Scissoring? THIS WOMAN IS BISEXUAL, it’s a fact.

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18. Communications Officer Hoshi Sato (Linda Park), Enterprise

An ACTUAL linguist with poor social skills who spent most of her childhood alone, learning alien languages.

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17 [TIE]. Doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), The Next Generation

Tied with Troi because without Troi, is she truly lesbian? Are they girlfriends… or do they just make extended eye contact in skin-tight boobs-out get-ups while engaging in elaborate ritual stretching contests?

[excerpt from a private chat]

Kayla: “TNG is the gayest of them all. The G stands for gay.”
Me: “yeah TNG is like Mommis in space.”
Kayla: “Dr. Beverly Crusher MD has got to be my #1.
I want her to top me in space.
“DIAGNOSE ME, MOMMI”

[…one month later in our star trek slack channel…]

Kayla: crush ME, doctor beverly crusher md!!!!!!
Kayla: she is so gay and i do not just say that because i want her to spit in my mouth
Kayla: she essentially had sex with anaphasic energy that was contained in a CURSED CANDLE which is um, gay
Carmen: Doctor Beverly Crusher is everything!!! Mommi for dayyyyys. Bless.
Al(aina): i want to lay my life down for her. she could walk on me. i dont feel that way about straight women

17 [TIE]. Lieutenant Commander Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), The Next Generation

A tough call. As aforementioned, highly dependent on the woman tied for this spot, Dr. Beverly Crusher, who either is or is not Troi’s girlfriend. Troi did fall for Riker, the Galaxy’s Most Alpha Male. But; her empathy scores are off the charts and in Yar’s post-death hologram dirge, she said Troi made her realize she could “be feminine without losing anything,” which let’s be honest probably happened in her private quarters. Also, remember when Troi pointed out that “Tasha is very physically attractive”? I’ll never forget.

Kayla: i think she has maybe never been with a woman but is having confusing feelings about her best friend Dr. Beverly Crusher
Kayla: so maybe like a baby bi
Carmen: OH I SEE WE ARE BRINGING OUT ALL MY CHILDHOOD CRUSHES OK THEN
Al(aina): she also seems high as fuck all the time, gives me big bisexual vibes

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16. Vulcan High Priestess T’Lar (Dame Judith Anderson), “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”

A spiritual leader who wears turtleneck hooded robes and can officiate weddings and deliver children? GAY.

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15. Lieutenant Keyla Detmer (Emily Coutts), Discovery

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14. Ishara Yar (Beth Toussaint), The Next Generation

This evaluation is based solely upon her physical appearance, which leaves about as much room to be straight as there is to fit another task onto my to-do list. Also, her sister is gay.

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13. Jayla (Sofia Boutella), “Star Trek: Beyond”

Excuse me but: after traumatically losing her entire family, Jaylah lived alone on a hidden abandoned spaceship, listening to hip-hop, learning martial arts, making her own weapons and doing home repairs.

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12. Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett), The Next Generation & Deep Space Nine

Lwaxana reads to me like an overbearing Jewish mother who, like my own overbearing Jewish mother, is probably gay. Al called her “the Phyllis Kroll of Star Trek” and Sally, also recalling a queer woman over 50 from The L Word, said Lwaxana is “clearly the Peggy Peabody/Guggenheim of the franchise who, despite constantly being on the hunt for a husband, you know had that one lesbian fling in the summer of Stardate 80363.79. Enough Mommi vibes to power a warp drive.”

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11. Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Discovery

On the one hand, Michael pings like the original Enterprise’s duotronic sensor array. On the other hand, Michael pings like a sweeping infa-red laser scanning local space. Bring those two hands together and we have a lesbian. “I remember the first five minutes of Discovery when it was just Michael and Philippa trekking round a desert with a whole female mentor/mentee vibe, and I thought if they just did that for twenty-four episodes it would be the greatest sci-fi ever,” recalled Sally. “Sadly this did not happen, and we didn’t just have to see her un-repress her Vulcan feelings for Ash once, but millions of times in one episode!” Alternately:

Al(aina): Phillipa Georgiou’s bottom. So lost without her top she fell in love with a Kllingon.
Carmen: Yet another star trek gay asymmetrical haircut has made itself known.

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10. Conn Officer Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes), The Next Generation

“I liked Ensign Ro because she was tough and challenged all the pansy moralistic men in TNG, whilst having engagingly pointy eyebrows,” wrote Sally. “I believe she was meant to be a main character on DS9, which fell through and Kira kind of filled that role, so I was really happy when she graduated to be the evil lesbian admiral in Battlestar Galactica.”

Kayla: TORTURED GAY
Kayla: ok she and Guinan definitely fucked in her titular episode from season 5
Kayla: i have visual aids:

Which brings me to….

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9. Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), The Next Generation, “Star Trek: Generations,” “Star Trek: Nemesis”

When Wikipedia describes you as “an alien who is several hundred years old and is noted for her folk wisdom,” YOU GAY.  (Sidenote: during the taping of “The Offspring,” Whoopi refused to have Guinan teach her adopted child about love as a heterosexual concept, rejecting the script about a man and a woman falling in love in favor of “when two people are in love” because “this show is beyond that.”)

Kayla: gay empath alert
Carmen: guinan is that tarot card reading, astrology birth chart, “I can’t date you if you’re a libra” or whatever kind of gay.
we all know her, we’ve all dated her, we all have one of her in our friendship circle (maybe we even are her)
Al(aina): yes to all of this.

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8. Borg Queen (Alice Krige), Voyager and “Star Trek: First Contact”

Sally: The original Cybermommi. Gay obsession with Seven of Nine. As the Borg were all one collective, that must mean that assimilating just one lesbian makes every Borg a lesbian, ergo they were just one giant lesbian commune floating in space.

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7. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Voyager

The first female Starfleet Commanding Officer in the Star Trek universe is a bit of a lesbian gimme. Plus she has lesbian voice and a lesbian gait and a hearty portion of lesbian tension with other women aboard her good ship. However, Sally didn’t get gay vibes until “Macrocosm,” “when she strips off and goes all Ripley against some alien bugs with a giant rifle. Which is pretty gay really.”

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6. First Officer / Commanding Officer Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), Deep Space Nine

“Remember when her boyfriend the Bajoran priest died in some horrific manner, and she was just like Can’t grieve now, got work to do?,” Sally wistfully recalled. “I feel like she lived out the fantasy of all gay women who are afraid of compulsory heterosexuality and dream of getting married to a dude who dies on their wedding night.” Furthermore, “Mirrorverse Kira checking out regular Kira is the gayest moment in all Star Trek.”

Riese: In Kira’s first scene in DS9 she yells at Sisko about (not in these words but) colonization and indigenous people’s right to self determination and hating the government after telling him that he probably won’t like her because she has strong opinions.
Kayla: wowowowowowow me in high school.
[…]
Riese: She just told Sisko that she’s the only one on the ship willing to do manual labor and ‘get her hands dirty.’
Now she’s interrupting a staff meeting to register complaints about their asylum policy
Kayla: 🧐

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5. Chief Science Officer Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), Deep Space Nine

Dax is willing to break the most embedded and valued rules of her people, the Trills, to spend the rest of her life with the woman one of her previous hosts had been married to. Even though her character was basically gender-fluid and the whole situation seemed orchestrated to ensure we knew her attraction to her ex was not a lesbian situation but just a carryover from a heterosexual situation, she’s the closest thing we had to queer-lady cannon before (hopefully?!) Discovery — and when it happened, the kiss she shared with Lenara Kahn was the most intense girl-on-girl kiss ever aired on network television. YOU COULD SEE SALIVA.

Also, got killed, the gayest move of all.

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4. Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), Discovery

“Probably I should be angry that the only bisexuals on Star Trek are always evil people from alternate universes?” Sally mused. “Sadly I don’t care, and Michelle Yeoh is hot.”

Al(aina): the toppiest femme top
Kayla: this
Carmen: She also had sex with a woman on screen (well they’re shown post-sex on screen?) in a threesome, so I think that makes her pretty heckin’ gay.
Kayla: a telescope as a prized possession is gay i don’t make the RULES

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3. Jet Reno (Tig Notaro), Discovery

Al(aina): she gay
Kayla: lol i mean

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2. The lesbian couple in the background of one scene in the Star Trek Discovery episode “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”

Ladies, gentlemen and J’naiis: WE WILL TAKE WHAT WE CAN GET.

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1. Chief of Security Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) , The Next Generation

In addition to sporting THE LATE 80S/EARLY 90S LESBIAN HAIRCUT™, Yar only lasted one season ’cause Denise Crosby chose to leave the show ’cause the structural gender inequality imposed by the writing team meant her character was woefully underdeveloped and therefore insufficiently challenging to her as an actress. Instead, Crosby went on to produce a series of documentaries about Star Trek fandom. But, the most lesbian action of all:

Al(aina): so GAAAAAAAAAAAAY they even killed her

Here’s What the Gillian Anderson Character You’re Most Attracted to Says About You

Obviously we all lost our shit over Gillian Anderson’s turn in Sex Education, but she has so many timelessly hot roles to choose from. Here’s what your deepest Gillian Anderson fantasy says about who you are as a person.

Dana Scully, The X-Files

The most intense turn-on you can imagine is the woman you’re with correcting a man in front of you in great detail and with supporting evidence. You hate being wrong but you love arguing. You like listening to someone else chatter mindlessly about their hyperspecific interest you don’t share while you’re mindlessly playing on your phone or falling asleep in the passenger seat on a road trip. You’re not over the 90s, and refuse to admit that you read your horoscope and your crush’s.

Stella Gibson, The Fall

Other people are using it as a turn of phrase when they say they want the object of their desire to “run me over with a car” or “crush my head in a vise;” you are completely serious. You like your women to be smarter and more competent than you and, again this cannot be overemphasized, potentially open to fully murdering you. You probably still have a crush on a previous boss or other authority figure who you never fully managed to impress but you’re pretty sure you got really close to it once.

Jean Milburn, Sex Education

You have a thing for mommis and also actual mommy issues — either your mom was uninvolved and distant and so Jean’s brand of smothering feels nurturing, OR your mom was also smothering but not as lovingly and so Jean feels intoxicatingly familiar. You insist on full-fat milk and yogurt and probably actually own placemats. Also you appreciate a good robe, duh.

Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire

You have unsettlingly good internet sleuthing skills, probably honed over years of searching for fanfiction featuring extremely specific elements. You were either a theater kid or the kid who got in trouble for reading under their desk during class and was not extroverted enough to hang out with even the theater kids. You really rise to the occasion when your drunk friends need a team captain to get everyone out of the bar and into the Lyft to get home.

Media, American Gods

You listened to the Dresden Dolls in high school and have strongly considered attending a ComicCon. You own several pair of Docs and went through a houndstooth phase but that’s all over now. You are very ready with gifs immediately on hand in the group chat, always.

Dr. Bedelia du Maurier, Hannibal

You’re into kink, or more specifically you’re very into testing people’s limits. You grew up financially comfortable and although you don’t consider yourself a snob, you refuse to drink well liquor. You’re a cat person. You own multiple pairs of glasses, for fashion. You’re passive aggressive in text messages with your parents.

Moro, Princess Mononoke

Your deodorant doesn’t have aluminum in it. You have an ex in a folk-punk band; you guys still talk sometimes. You’re happy to get kicked out of a bar for picking a fight with the guy who made fun of your friend’s karaoke performance. You care about your dog more than any of your friends or partners and feel totally fine about that.

The singular X-Files-themed photoshoot she did with David LaChapelle for Rolling Stone in 1997

You have truly immaculate taste, and have never had a wrong thought or belief ever in your life. You belong in some sort of leadership position, providing guidance and strength to your community. Thank you so much for everything, you’re so wise.

In 2018, Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters Did Even Better

At the conclusion of 2017, which occurred approximately two decades ago, I declared that “although most Quality of Life indicators for LGBTQ people and civilization in general nose-dived this year, one thing got notably better: television for queer women.” We saw remarkable gains between 2016 and 2017: less death, more queer women on prestige television, more compassionate and complicated coming out stories and increased visibility for bisexual women and queer women of color. Many of the year’s most talked-about shows had LGBQ women front-and-center, like One Day at a Time, The Bold Type, The Handmaid’s Tale and Master of None. There were more LGBTQ women leads than ever before, on shows including Wynonna Earp, One Mississippi, Transparent, American Horror Story: Cult, The Good Fight, Gypsy and How to Get Away With Murder. There was so much good stuff closing out 2017 and opening 2018 that we were able to host our first-ever Gay Emmys in 2018.

Still, there was a lot of room for improvement: butch representation remained devastatingly inadequate, QPOC rep was plentiful but uneven in execution — with black women specifically almost always receiving small roles, problematic storylines, cancellations, no girl-on-girl romances or being killed off. And, as usual, trans women characters — queer or straight — were few and far between.

So, what got better and what got worse in 2018? Let’s dig in.

The Numbers on Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters in 2018

In 2018, there were 128 scripted shows with regular and/or recurring lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or otherwise queer women characters. (Henceforth, I will abbreviate “regular/recurring” as “R/R.”) This is up 12% from 114 shows in 2017, which was up 36% from 80 shows in 2016. An FX study suggests that the number of overall scripted original shows in 2018 was up between 7%-9% from last year’s number, 487. So we are outpacing growth overall, due to our immense charm, rabid fandom and generally being on the cutting edge of everything that matters in this strange broken culture.

In addition to those 128 programs, there were two queer-inclusive anthology standalone episode shows, Electric Dreams and High Maintenance. Because each queer woman only appeared in one episode each in 2018, they didn’t qualify as R/R. However, it’s worth noting that well over half of High Maintenance‘s episodes included queer characters. Three additional shows had trans women or non-binary characters but no lesbian, bisexual or queer women characters: Pose (five trans women R/Rs), Heathers (one non-binary regular) (and one advertised “black lesbian” who turned out to be straight and also died) and Billions (one non-binary regular).

Some notes on methodology: we got our numbers from the database I built last year and have continued updating this year, which contains entries for every English-language television program to feature LGBQ female characters in all of recorded history. This year, I personally watched 57 of 2018’s queer-inclusive shows, and other team members bring the “Autostraddle saw this show” count to 113. For the rest of the shows in the database, I relied on recaps, reviews from other sites, GLAAD reports, YouTube clips, Wikipedia, show-specific wikis and the LezWatchTV database. There’s some subjectivity in these numbers — I noticed that some of the characters the LezWatchTV database qualified as “recurring” we had as “guest” and vice versa.

Some big differences between last year and this year on the network level:

• The CW more than doubled its count of queer women characters. Now almost all of their original programming has at least one! Thanks Greg Berlanti.
• Hulu also doubled its count, thanks to new shows Light as a Feather, The First and The Bisexual; as well as adding even more queers to Harlots and Marvel’s Runaways.
• Amazon Prime took a major nosedive due to Transparent‘s hiatus and the cancellation of One Mississippi and I Love Dick. Plus, the shows Amazon still earned points for included three queer-coded but not explicitly-queer characters (on Forever and Mrs. Maisel) and two minor characters from The Man In The High Castle.

Another noted change was in genre, as the world begins to notice that in addition to being very dramatic, as a people, we’re also very funny: we showed up in 42 comedies and dramedies this year, up from 28 last year.

Lesbian and Bisexual TV in 2018: Highlights

Here are some of the many programs this year that centered lesbian, queer or bisexual women:

New Shows and New Gays

A whopping 108 of the characters we counted were new this year, and another 22 were existing characters who came out this year. (I’ve got some theories about the appeal of late-in-life lesbian revelation storylines in a culture growing increasingly skeptical of men!)

Jane the Virgin, Riverdale and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend all made the smart choice of turning their assertive strong-minded badass hellions — Petra, Cheryl and Valencia, respectively — into bonafide lady-lovers. All of these moves, but Petra’s specifically, reflected showrunners’ growing awareness of what fans want. Specifically, we would like everybody to be gay. “The wildest thing keeps happening this year on television,” wrote Valerie in March. “Characters I wish were queer keep… being queer.” Even Once Upon a Time finally did some real gay shit before fading into the dark woods forever. Law & Order SVU has yet to do the right thing and Make Olivia Gay, but they did finally introduce a recurring lesbian psychiatrist character. We also correctly predicted who would turn out queer on This is Us, witnessed The Flash giving in to The CW’s gay agenda and with two new queers, and, as per our request in that same “Make It Gay” Roundtable, Doctor Who has a new sexually fluid female doctor and one of the people fighting alongside her is a bisexual Pakistani Muslim woman.

2018 opened with a slate of new queer-inclusive shows that took fresh approaches to familiar genres. The team of first responders in Murphy/Falchuk’s enjoyable (if often ridiculous) procedural 9-1-1 includes Hen, a black lesbian played by Aisha Hinds (married to one of three black lesbian characters played by Tracie Thoms this year!). Black-ish‘s socially conscious college dramedy spin-off, Grown-ish, dropped on Freeform with a bisexual Jewish Nomi Segal in the lead ensemble and Starz debuted Counterpart, a spy thriller with a dreamy masculine-of-center lesbian assassin hiding in dark alleys while wearing a leather jacket. The unfortunately ultimately cancelled Everything Sucks! was a charming, hopeful teen drama set in the ’90s with a lesbian coming-of-age front-and-center. Black Lightning brought us network television’s first lesbian superhero in a grounded CW series with a supernaturally-gifted black family at its center. Then, of course, we have the year’s most-talked-about most-beloved televised experience: Killing Eve, which “subverted every male-centered trope of espionage thrillers.”

Over the summer, G.L.O.W. finally put some homosexuals where its homoeroticism was and Dear White People compensated for a problematic 2017 with Lena Waithe and a cute coming out storyline in 2018. Bisexual badass Sara Lance became the soul of Legends of Tomorrow and got her first post-Arrow woman-on-woman relationship with Ava Lance.

Then autumn came and with it, so many more LGBTQ women than we even expected. And we had some expectations, like the Charmed reboot with a Latinx lesbian lead and Bre-z playing a masc black lesbian in All-American. But there were surprises, too: lesbian Theo was central to Netflix’s buzzy remake of spooky drama The Haunting of Hill House, somehow half the cast of Camping ended up queer by the end and raunchy, delightful and hilarious Derry Girls crossed the ocean and landed upon Netflix just in time for Christmas!

Supernatural and sci-fi has always been a hotbed of queers, existing as it does outside of actual society and its unfortunate ideas about homosexuals and our recreational activities and how the Bible feels about us. That remained true with this year’s new sci-fi shows. Pretty much all of them debuted with gay spirit, including but definitely not limited to Legacies, Siren, The First, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Star Trek Discovery, Krypton, The Innocents, Light as a Feather and Nightflyers.

Getting Real

The most resonant queer stories, the ones that reflect the specific quirks and references and behavior of Our People are often written or, even!!, acted by actual queer people. We lost a lot of those this year (One Mississippi, Sense8, I Love Dick, Take My Wife), but we got some new ones too: Pose didn’t factor in to most of our charts ’cause all the women on it are ostensibly straight (which we really hope changes in Season Two) but it’s clearly the pinnacle of this trend — trans women of color playing trans women of color written by trans women. Pose has changed the landscape entirely and it’s brilliant.

On Hulu, Desiree Akhvan’s The Bisexual gave us a full, thriving ensemble of queer characters, and Akhvan herself noted her program is “the only show on TV where you can watch two Middle Eastern women in a car, talking, taking up the screen with their different bodies and different ethnicities.” Vida was an actual revelation, boasting a diverse writer’s room telling heartfelt, sexy stories set within East Los Angeles’ queer Latinx subculture. Co-creator Katja Blichfeld came out between Seasons One and Two of High Maintenance, and 2018’s stories were thus imbued with even more rapturous affection for contemporary queer culture, with Season Three looking to be more of the same.

Bisexual non-binary writer Rebecca Sugar is behind Steven Universe‘s groundbreaking youth-oriented queer content which continued testing the ground’s ability to be broken with a lesbian wedding episode. Lesbian showrunner Noelle Stevenson delivered a She-Ra reboot that pissed off all the right people. While haters were lamenting the de-sexualized protagonist, Heather applauded the show for its “gender equity, legitimate racial diversity, body diversity, a variety of gender presentations, and so much casual queerness I could hardly believe it.”

Fresh off the Boat, with queer showrunner Nahnatchka Khan, continued delivering resonant storylines for Nicole, and the queer women on One Day at a Time‘s writing team bestowed Elena with non-binary girlfriend Syd. Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Madam Secretary have also earned praise for involving their queer actresses in shaping their queer characters’ storylines and coming out arcs.

What Got a Little Bit Better for Lesbian & Bisexual TV Characters in 2018

More Women of Color — Not Enough, But More

All of the above factors united this year to provide us with more queer characters of color than ever before. “2018!! I don’t know if you’ve felt it yet, but we certainly have,” wrote Carmen this summer. “This is the year where lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans women of color are taking over your television screens. Not just in terms of volume (though it does feel like more of us are getting our time on screen), but in terms of quality and depth and agency.”

GLAAD found that for the 2018-2019 TV Season, LGBTQ characters of color (50%) actually outpaced white (49%) characters. Our numbers, which looked exclusively at women in the year 2018, weren’t quite that high, but were encouraging nonetheless. The number of Latinx characters more than doubled. As Carmen wrote, “Across almost every platform, some of the best and most beloved performances of the year came from queer Latinx characters.” Black characters were up 36% and Asian/Pacific Islanders by 50%. Indigenous representation went from zero to two, and Middle Eastern characters from four to seven.

Historically, television has preferred its POC characters to date white people. According to our database, only 27% of all romantic situations ever involving QWOC on television included two POC characters, but this year 45% of them did. Notable relationships include Anissa and Grace on Black Lightning, Yolanda and Arthie on G.L.O.W., Kat and Adena on The Bold Type, Emma and Cruz on Vida and Patience and Coop on All-American.

But one trend with respect to POC characters remains troublingly stalwart…

R.I.P.

The campaign that began when Lexa died has been, by all accounts, a resounding success. Showrunners have been made aware: it’s impossible to plead ignorance of the cultural context or potential unconscious bias around killing lesbian characters.

This year’s deaths mainly took place on violent, death-ridden shows, like The Purge, Killing Eve, The Handmaid’s Tale and Condor. It’s hard to take issue with that. But, as the above graphic suggests, it remains profoundly messed up that the few queers television still does feel killing off are almost always black. The Last Ship, The Arrangement, Star and Snowfall win the award for Most Frustrating Lesbian Character Deaths of 2018. You is only exempt from this trophy ’cause the queer woman died in the book it was based on, too. The Purge gets an honorable mention, as discussed here.

What Didn’t Get Better for Lesbian & Bisexual TV Characters in 2018

Masculine-of-Way-Out-In-Centerfield

We got more gender non-confirming lesbian and bisexual characters than we have in years past — and more Latinx butches specifically — but that’s not saying much. Here they are, the very soft and semi-soft and imprisoned butches of television:

Being a masculine-of-center or otherwise gender-non-conforming actor in Hollywood results in a lot of typecasting but, more often, it results in never getting cast at all. So we applaud the few cases in which we’ve got mascs playing mascs: Bre-Z in All-American, Ser Anzoategui in Vida, Vicci Martinez in Orange is the New Black, Samira Wiley in The Handmaid’s Tale (on the very very soft end of this spectrum), Roberta Colindrez in The Deuce, Fortune Feimster in the (swiftly cancelled) Champions, Kate Moennig in Ray Donovan, Sara Ramirez in Madam Secretary, Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher in Take My Wife and Lena Waithe’s guest spot on Dear White People. Lea DeLaria only appeared briefly on our screens this year, grabbing a few seconds of screen time in Orange is the New Black and a few minutes as Lip’s sponsor in Shameless. 

What’s particularly interesting is that it seems masculine-of-center women rarely appear as normal civilians. We’ve got five prisoners; one lesbian who just murdered somebody and will therefore be a prisoner if she returns next season; three cops and five characters who are involved, to some degree, with a criminal or otherwise-suspect-underground enterprise. In fact, all but two of the masc characters who are not criminally-adjacent, cops or prisoners, are the ones played by queer actors. In some cases, this might mean the characters only seem masc because of the actors who play them — not because anybody intentionally wrote them that way.

Still, just 25 slightly masculine queer women — including one who’s yet to actually come out — is a paltry percentage, and likely due to Hollywood’s persistent reluctance to cast female actors who are not sexually appealing to cis men.

Following Best Actress Emmy Awards for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Godless, Mariella Mosthof wrote in Into, “Awarding straight, feminine actresses Emmys for playing butch characters in the same year that we’ve seen the devastating cancellations of TV shows that feature butch actors contributes to a problem long suffered by queer performers.” The problem is, of course, “queer actors losing work while straight women ascend to queer roles.” I’d argue another problem is that there’s nobody on set who understands the importance of making these characters openly queer. Alex Borstein is incredible as Susie Myerson, but my heart yearns to see what Julie Goldman could’ve done with the role.

I don’t think gay roles need to be played by gay actors, but much like the situation with trans actors, it’s frustrating to see masculine-of-center and non-binary actors struggle to find work while straight women get haircuts.

Transgender Women: More Please

Pose made 2018 a very big year for trans women of color and is simply revolutionary. It’s incredible. Supergirl broke ground too, with TV’s first trans superhero, Nia Nal, played by trans actress Nicole Maines. Those are only small gains because so much more is deserved.

Without a new season of Transparent, Sophia Bursett and Nomi Marks were the only explicitly queer trans women on television this year, and with Sense8‘s cancellation and Sophia’s early release, it’s unclear if we’ll see either again. The vast majority of trans women on television, whether guest spots or regulars, are straight, despite the fact that 77% of trans people are not straight. Furthermore, as GLAAD wrote in their 2018 report, “in some instances it appears that the series creators and producers haven’t given much thought to the fact that trans people also have sexual orientations.”

Although R/R trans characters remain rare, there is a rising consciousness around the importance of casting trans folks in trans roles and we are seeing slightly more trans women working, in general, even in non-trans-specific roles. Alexandra Billings had a major role in Season Two of Goliath, Hari Nef was in Camping and You and Jen Richards showed up in Take My Wife and Blindspot and will be in Tales of the City next year. There were also some memorable guest spots with trans actresses playing trans roles on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Doctor.

Still, in the U.S., Jamie Clayton’s Nomi in Sense8 remains the only trans woman regular character played by a trans actress in a relationship with a cis woman regular character. That’s… really bad.

Looking Forward at Lesbian and Bisexual TV

Late last year it felt like every three days there was a new queer woman or revelation on television — Manifest! God Friended Me! The Sinner! Detroiters! American Vandal! Wanderlust! Sally4Ever! Fuller House?!?! — somebody new to plug into the database or with which to update the Fall/Winter TV Preview, and surprisingly few new gay men. Most of the new shows slated for 2019 have new gay or bi male characters, but not so much for the ladies.

In addition to 26 cancellations, there are quite a few shows that were ambiguous structurally regarding a seasonal schedule and have yet to announce additional episodes being shot: Forever, The Bisexual, Camping and Sally4Ever. Of course, YMMV on which of those shows you’d like to see more of.

Next year will unleash a dashing lesbian Batwoman upon us, played by lesbian heartthrob Ruby Rose. She will be the icing atop a multi-layer cake of lesbian and bisexual women showing up on programs focused on highly talented human-shaped creatures who can fly or turn into luminous iridescent visually fluid aliens with waves of rainbow-like light flowing out of their bodies or whatever.

We’re also eager for the Tales of the City reboot from lesbian showrunner Lauren Morelli, starring Ellen Page and Jen Richards. Barbara Garrick is returning to play lesbian character DeDe in a show that dared to portray LGBT relationships before most of you were born. Other great expectations for 2019 include Fosters‘ spinoff Good Trouble, Monica Raymund’s turn as a queer detective in Starz’ Hightown, Lena Waithe and Halle Berry’s Boomerang on BET, and a queer Two-Spirit character on the much-anticipated and tumultuous Season Two of American Gods.

It does seem networks have come to depend on websites like ours to track their inclusivity and promote their efforts, but it bears mentioning that none of these programs ever purchase advertising on our website, Netflix still won’t give us access to screeners or their online press room, and we still often struggle to get interviews. (However — Vida, which not coincidentally has a queer showrunner, gave us tons of access.) Often our heads-ups about upcoming queer-inclusive programs come from friends who work in mainstream media. Online media is a tough business, especially now, and it would be a mistake for networks to continue take our existence for granted or to overlook our ability to reach LGBTQ audiences. If you value us, invest in us.

In conclusion — I said it last year and I’ll say it again this year — with so many white cis men recently fired for misconduct and abuse, the television industry has a major opportunity right now to elevate the voices of women, LGBQ people, trans people and people of color. We’re damn good at telling our own stories, and we’ve got so many left to tell.

Lesbian Visibility Day Roundtable: Carrying History, Worshipping Women, F*cking Up the Patriarchy

Today is Lesbian Visibility Day, the one day of the year when lesbians everywhere take a corporeal form and walk among mortals. Language and labels are often imprecise and they’re constantly evolving so this year we’ve decided to celebrate with a roundtable to give all of our lesbian writers the chance to talk about why they’ve chosen “lesbian” for themselves and what it means to them to move through the world with that label. We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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Heather Hogan, Senior Editor

The first time I heard the word “lesbian” the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was a child. I didn’t even know what it meant. But, buddy, I knew it was trouble. I came of age at that time in the ’90s when Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and James Dobson (and therefore all white evangelical pastors and Republican politicians) (and therefore literally everyone I knew and their parents) believed lesbians were feminists and feminists were lesbians and lesbians and feminists were witches and bitches who would steal your children in the night and leave behind a pile of burning Bibles. Lesbian terrified me.

When I came out, I referred to myself only as “gay” for the longest time. I was still tip-toeing and “I’m still the same person!” and “I’m just like you!” and lesbian was so loaded. The first time I said it out loud about myself I was driving in my car and I mouthed it and I whispered it and I voiced it and I YELLED YELLED YELLED IT. I didn’t realize that’d become the metaphor for my own personal evolution with the label.

Lesbian is confrontational. The moment I say it, it forces straight people to grapple with things they’d rather not think about or acknowledge. I’m not just like them. I exist — I thrive! — outside of the cultural expectations that trap and define them. I’m Ellen’s friendly dancing, sure, but I’m those Dykes on Bikes too. I’m those topless women marching unabashedly down Manhattan beating my literal drum. I’m the monster under the bed your Sunday School teacher warned you about, the bitchy witch who gives zero thoughts or fucks about male comfort or pleasure. I have sex with another woman and my very existence undermines the systems of oppression that keep women everywhere beaten down.

When I call myself a lesbian, which is every chance I get these days, I feel rooted in a deep, vibrant, pulsing history of women who had no place for men in their lives or their beds or their politics. I feel connected to their rage and their love and their victories and their hope for the life I’m living that they never experienced. I feel tethered to lesbians in the future who will feel the thrum of my power and affection and belligerent expectations that their lives will be even better than mine.

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Riese Bernard, Editor-in-Chief

I posted a picture of my middle school diary on Instagram a few years back, just one page, one entry, one sentence: “Like my greatest fear is that one day I will be a lesbian — YUCKO.”

“Lesbian” was such a loaded term, then. Somehow I grew up in a weird liberal bubble where it was cool to be a bisexual girl or a gay guy but not a lesbian, which I think was a result of the very confusing ‘90s girl power and faux-sexual-empowerment culture that claimed to uplift women and increase their choices but only insofar as men were still involved or in charge. I bought it and hung it on my wall and wrapped my whole self-worth up in it. The first time I thought it might be okay to kiss a girl was a scene in the movie “Kids” when a bunch of guys get these girls to kiss in a pool.

In many ways, my choice to call myself a lesbian (as I’ve said here before, I describe myself as ‘bisexual by birth, lesbian by choice’) is my final “fuck you” to the idea that the world only matters if men are in it, and that two women together don’t count.

I don’t really care what anybody calls me, but as for how I feel inside — at first “queer” felt like the thing to do, the thing everybody was doing. I was fine with “bisexual” too, but it stopped feeling like ME because I had no interest in men, even if I once had.

I’ve honestly always loved the word “lesbian.” How it looks and sounds. Even before I identified strongly with it personally, I’d use it sometimes just for that reason, but usually in a group like, “the waiter is ignoring us because we’re lesbians” or “I’m going to start a lesbian camp!” “Lesbian” didn’t feel like me specifically yet, and it’s hard to pinpoint when that changed.

I remember telling a massage therapist that I ran a website for “queer women” and she thought I said “career women” and we had the strangest conversation until I realized what she’d misheard. Somehow, while debating whether or not to correct her and explain, and even though it was in the context of my website and not me personally — I felt a sudden personal detachment from the term altogether. I’m still totally fine with queer or gay, but lesbian is the one that feels like home to me.

This shift happened around when I became obsessed with lesbian history — with the women who fought tirelessly to live in a world without men during a time when that felt nearly impossible. They built their own intentional communities on small plots of land in Central Oregon and the Florida coast, created their own music festivals, led their own parades, wrote their own magazines, started their own herstory archives and political action groups. To me, “lesbian” is an ode to our foremothers, is wanting to be part of that legacy. Also, gay guys don’t have their own noun but we got our own noun, which is rad.

I do think that the association of “lesbian” with trans-exclusionary radical feminists is fake news and I hate it when I hear younger people make that connection. I know lesbian TERFs exist, I see them all over the internet, but I see all kinds of assholes of various identity groups all over the internet! I guess the lesbian TERF thing is that “lesbianism” is an attraction to specific genitals, which doesn’t hold up. You can be attracted to certain physical aspects of any specific woman or not, that’s your business and nobody has to have sex with anybody they’re not attracted to for any reason, but you don’t get to kick people out of your gender based on what physical characteristics you’re personally sexually attracted to? You’re literally just finding a different way to say that you don’t think trans women are women. I hope this association of lesbians with TERFs dies out ‘cause like I said — those foremothers! We’re their legacy.

For me, identifying as a lesbian is the final casting off of the internalized misogyny and homophobia that defined so much of my worldview for so long. Women are the best. I love us.

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Vanessa Friedman, Community Editor

I’ve tried to answer this ten million times and I’m having such a fucking hard time and maybe that’s the thing, isn’t it? Like, I’m a lesbian, but explaining why is still so scary and kind of confusing and honestly I feel safe and comfortable in this identity but I feel fearful that other people will judge and police how I use this word to describe myself! Ahhhhhhhhhh!

I’m a lesbian. Duh. I’m also a dyke. I’m also gay and I’m also queer and if we’re rattling off all our identifiers I guess I’ll tell you I’m also Jewish, and short, and bossy, and a Capricorn sun / Gemini moon / Virgo rising.

I just…I really hate the way the word lesbian has been co-opted by TERFs, and I hate that younger queer folks who might be drawn to the word and the identity are scared away from it because of the bigots who have decided they own the word. The rise of TERFs wielding the word as a weapon made me feel even more dedicated to calling myself a lesbian, even if I am editing the word slightly to suit my own needs. That feels okay to me.

I am a lesbian. I date women and I also date all over the gender spectrum and… all of my partners and dates have been totally cool and chill in understanding why the words lesbian and dyke are very important to me and also have understood that doesn’t mean I’m foisting the identity “woman” on everyone I date. Am I making sense? I’m so nervous explaining this to all of you!

Lesbian is my identity, lesbian is my herstory, lesbian is not a dirty word, lesbian is who and what I am. Lesbian elders got me (us) here. (Thank you.)

I know not everyone agrees with this definition. My identity crisis spiral sent me into several extremely helpful and enlightening conversations with various Autostraddle staff members and some people agreed with me and some people did not. I am down to talk about the complexities of identity, even possibly in the comments/on the internet (YIKES) but only if we can all assume good faith before beginning because HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH ANXIETY I HAVE TALKING ABOUT THIS? Cool good talk.

xoxo, a Lesbian

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Valerie Anne, Staff Writer

When I was in middle school, the word “gay” was in its peak insult stage. Everything was gay, and not in the fun way we mean it now. Recess is cancelled, that’s gay. I hate that store, it’s gay. You won’t do what I told you to, you’re gay. “Gay” meant bad or dumb and it was used constantly. I hated it. Maybe because I was already starting to have an internal gay panic, Maybe I just hated people being mean. Or the laziness of their lexicon. I don’t know. Either way, one day at lunch, for whatever reason, one of the boys called my friends and I gay. Probably something dumb like we didn’t want to play tag at recess, I honestly don’t remember. In an attempt to handle the situation gracefully, I said, “Well, gay means you like men and lesbian means you like women so yeah, we’re gay!” which resulted in the girls in our class saying they were gay and the boys in our class saying they were lesbians for the rest of the week. It worked, for a while anyway. But I think it cemented “lesbian” as a word that meant “likes women” for me, and oh do I like women. Also when I was growing up “lesbian” and “feminist” were used interchangeably in my community, and while they didn’t mean it to be a compliment back then, and I know the venn diagram of “feminist” and “lesbian” isn’t a circle, I personally identify as both, so it works for me. Plus it’s such a pretty word! It’s long, but not too long. No two letters are alike. And it has that sexy soft z sound in it! I like and use the identity queer, too, but I loooove the word “lesbian.”

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Molly Priddy, Staff Writer

When I was in sixth grade, my friend Jose, who also grew up to be gay, had Ellen DeGeneres on his paper-bag-covered textbook and one day he walked up to me and told me in a conspiratorial whisper that Ellen was, in fact, gay.

This was a blow to 11-year-old me who was raised to believe gay people were this abstract idea and wouldn’t ever really be an issue in my world. But now, the funniest lady on television was a LESBIAN? I said, “Oh no, but she’s so funny!”

I finished out middle school trying to have crushes on boys, and assumed it was just not fulfilling and that was OK because I had girls who were friends to make up for it. High school, I dated some boys, but didn’t really entertain the idea that I wanted to be hooking up with girls until college, when I assumed I was bisexual. But making out with a woman for the first time showed me that no, I wasn’t bisexual in the least, that I’m a full-fledged lesbian. That word can be confrontational to people, which shows you how far we have to go, that an identity in and of itself can offend someone.

I date and have sex with women, and femme-presenting non-binary folks. I identify as a lesbian and gay and call myself queer, because those words to me are more permeable and breathable than some people treat them. And that’s OK, because it’s my sexuality, and my terms. Now, if someone wants to discuss the nuances of those terms with me, fine. But I’m gay. I’m a lesbian. Sexuality and gender are fluid and that’s beautiful, and this just happens to be where I fall on those spectrums. A lady who likes ladies. My picture is of the second most-lesbian thing I do, which is show women my tattoos.

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Carrie, Staff Writer

Like other folks in this roundtable, I had an early, visceral, strong aversion to the word “lesbian” even after I knew (and had told people!) I was exclusively interested in other women. It felt dirty and I had a hard time saying it without cringing for years. This is after being raised in the most accepting household imaginable, by the way — the only one who had a problem with it was me. But I was in high school and hadn’t shaken the assumption that it was only okay to be not-straight if I didn’t make straight people uncomfortable. So I dismissed “lesbian” as a term for older, more aggressive women who really needed to tone it down a notch.

Surprise! Turns out we call that “internalized homophobia” in the real world. I came out when I was ready to, but still had a lot of catching up to do in terms of what that actually meant and how it would play out in my life. I think it’s because I was so young and (regardless of how it looked from the outside) so scared. I barely knew any other not-straight people — let alone any any self-identified lesbians — so I evaluated my coming out process by the reaction of my straight friends and whether or not they stuck around. “Lesbian” felt like too big of an ask, both for me and for them. But as I settled into my identity and actually got to experience and create it on my own terms, I warmed up to the word. That didn’t happen overnight by any stretch; it took about ten years of being out for me to shed the last bits of self-loathing around it. But now I use “lesbian” as gladly as any other word. I enjoy its specificity, its connection to a movement and a shared history, its ability to stand the test of time and also grow with it (TERFs can step right off thank you very much), and its forwardness. And it’s especially handy when I’m referring to my disability and my sexuality side by side; “disabled lesbian” has a nice ring to it.

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Abeni Jones, Staff Writer

I only really identify as a lesbian because it’s easier. There isn’t really a label for what I am, which is fine. Sexual identity labels, in my opinion, are only useful to the degree they build community among folks who experience similar forms of oppression, or express one’s politics. So lesbian works as far as heteronormativity and womanhood being tied to reproduction and such goes, and to express that I value women and femininity and, even though I’m a trans woman who dates people of all gender, I don’t prioritize men or masculinity in any way in my life, especially when it comes to love and romance.

I feel like, since I have the choice, why would I choose to date a dude? I don’t date white people for the same reason, for what it’s worth — like there are some cute white people but like, why bother when there are plenty of wonderful POC to date? Why put myself through the ordeal? I don’t discount white people or masculine people completely (there are some good ones out there) but I don’t go out of my way to seek them out, either.

Like, I would bust it open for The Rock or Terry Crews in like two seconds. But then again they both seem pretty feminine despite their looks, so… I don’t know! There was one man that I was basically in love with but he was in an LTR with a beautiful lady and wanted to do non-monogamous stuff which isn’t my wave. I’ve never met even one other man that I’ve ever wanted to date. So, I guess I’m a lesbian, sort of?

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Yvonne, Senior Editor

In high school, my then-girlfriend and I would use the word “lez” a lot in a derogatory way, like when we used “gay,” even though we were gay. I think it was our way of coping with our newfound sexuality and navigating being in the closet and also not knowing how to talk about what we were feeling and doing with each other. We would use “lez” to poke fun of one another; like if one of us picked up a bunch of heavy books, we would be like “what a lez!” We couldn’t even bring ourselves to say the whole word “lesbian” because it was vulgar and it was one step closer to admitting we were actually gay. “Lez” was comfortable for us, so much so that my high school girlfriend’s AOL screen name was “llaalleezz” — like that was such a terrific coverup?? We would write it in notes to each other and in emails; it was the closest we ever got to the truth.

It took a really long time until I could actually call myself a lesbian. When I was first coming out to people in college, I would talk about being gay in a roundabout way and usually when talking about my girlfriend. It wasn’t until my last semester in college when I began feeling more comfortable with myself; not only was I learning about LGBT history and queer theory in a class called Queer Visual Culture but I had come out to my family. Instead of hiding and feeling anxious, I was able to explore and claim my identity.

It wasn’t until joining the Autostraddle team I felt confident in saying I’m a lesbian. It was this community of writers that empowered me to be proud of being a lesbian. For me, “lesbian” fits me best because I love women and want to always center women. “Lesbian” is bold and in your face, the opposite of what I’m capable of as an introvert, and it says I won’t give men the time of day. As a Mexican-American woman, I like demystifying what it means to be a lesbiana, a jota, and what a lesbiana looks like to my community. I like claiming it because I want people to know that lesbians are inclusive and radical in their politics and worldview and want progress for the entire queer community.

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Alexis, Staff Writer

I’m a fan of almost any word that lets people know that I’m not straight, but gay is maybe second on the list for me. It’s good for me when I want to mumble what I am, but lesbian? Lesbian requires me to be present and intentional. Lesbian was the word I put into Tumblr when I was still trying to figure myself out in high school. Gay didn’t bring me to the sites I needed (mostly chat rooms that did not help and lots of Brokeback Mountain quotes). Lesbian brought me to Autostraddle and basketball and probably a Urban Dictionary definition of the word that I read too many times. This is gonna sound really corny but it’s true: “Lesbian” brought me home.

It’s especially important for me now as I try to figure out my gender stuff. I was (and am) really scared to even go into that can of worms cause it took so long to get to lesbian and I didn’t want to let go of that yet. I’m nonbinary but it took a long time to get here. Lesbian was an anchor that made looking at gender possible and less scary. Being able to say nonbinary lesbian feels true. I can’t answTer all the questions surrounding that, but it settles most of the doubt in me.

Also this is how my sister and mom say lesbian whenever I bring up lesbian things and it makes me laugh every time.

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Staff Writer

I think the first time I heard the word “lesbian” was on the show Friends. The first gay people I really knew in life were all fictional television characters, so that tracks. For a long time, the word “lesbian” definitely scared me and excited me at the same time. I typed it a lot on tumblr but rarely said it out loud. When I did say it out loud, it was usually to say that I wasn’t one.

So yeah, I was scared of the word “lesbian,” but I also loved it at the same time. I was obsessed with famous lesbians and had writing mentors who were lesbians. I wrestled with internalized homophobia, paradoxically attracted to the word and also repulsed by it.

When starting to come out, I went with “I’m dating a girl.” When that was no longer true, I went with “I dated a girl.” I came out that way to my best college friend Paul, and he gently asked me about labels, and I just sort of threw my hands in the air and said I wasn’t sure yet, which was both true and untrue all at once. I remember thinking “just say it. Just say lesbian!” But that seemed like the hardest thing in the world at the time.

I can’t recall the first time I used “lesbian” to describe myself, but I remember what it felt like. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t necessarily liberating either. It was that feeling I get when writing and finally figure out exactly how to word the sentence I’ve been trying to crack, the sentence that I can see perfectly in my head but struggle to translate to page. It just felt instantly right, like a code I’d been trying to crack for so long. Then I couldn’t stop saying it. “Lesbian” brought something that had been so unclear and confusing to me for so long into sharp focus, defined something I previously couldn’t. I use “gay” and “queer” to identify myself a lot, but neither fit as well as “lesbian.” I don’t know quite how to explain this, but I literally like how the word feels in my mouth.

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Laneia Jones, Executive Editor

When I first realized I wasn’t straight in my mid-twenties, I went with “gay” to describe myself because it was just the fastest way to say I wasn’t straight. I mean literally it’s one syllable. You say it, it’s quick, it’s done. Gay is like the verbal equivalent of shooing a fly away from the book you’re reading, and it’s also vaguely sanitized. Like gay had saturated the market in the 90s to the point that it was almost boring. (Almost.) It was just cleaner.

Then I grew into queer because it implied not just gayness but also this unidentifiable otherness. It intentionally situated me further away from whatever the hell everyone else had always been doing, which had been annoying me since the first time someone said “well boys will be boys!”

I grew up with conflicting ideas of my own existence, stop me if you’ve heard/lived through this: I was being encouraged to be my own person — be weird! do what I want and follow those dreams! — all alongside learning how to be wholly consumed with tailoring and presenting myself to be whatever version of a girl the boys would be most interested in. And listen, I’m not blaming this on where I grew up or my mother or even Seventeen magazine, but I am saying that a lifetime of being worried about how boys and men felt about women, about me, made me very fucking angry, because I didn’t want to have to care about it! But I didn’t have the tools to interrogate why I felt this way. I was doing this song and dance for men, simultaneously hating them for requiring it and hating myself for giving it to them.

ANYWAY I swore I had nothing to say about this topic and YET.

Lesbian eventually hit me, like when the woman in the movie picks the broken glass out of her palms and her hair and looks around to realize just exactly what the fuck is going on. I’d skipped over that particular descriptor all this time because wasn’t it antiquated? Didn’t it say the same thing as queer but with less of a nod toward what it had been like for me before I knew I wasn’t straight? Lol babe nope.

For me, lesbian completely casts aside the idea of men. It puts me and the people I love ahead of the patriarchy. It relieves me of even pretending that I give a shit what any of them have ever thought. It thankfully gives me space to center women (and other people who aren’t men), which is all I’ve ever wanted to do.

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Sarah Sarwar, Design Director + Business Lesbian

There’s nothing prolific I can say that hasn’t already been waxed poetic by my preceding lesbians, so all I really want to say is thank you for being so lesbian. Here’s a picture of me in a thrift store in Portland, wearing a pocketed dress. If that doesn’t say everything about why I ID as a lesbian, I don’t know what to tell you.

30 Days of Carol: Day 13 – Looks Directed at the Men of Carol, Ranked By Contempt

Heather Hogan hit the nail on the head so hard when said that the reason Carol was rejected by some critics wasn’t because of homophobia, but because of misandry, that a table broke beneath her. Carol exists in a world wherein men are burdens, annoying, and avoided, and because men like to imagine themselves as the default in any scenario, they lose their goddamn minds when their worthlessness is brought to their attention. This movie did that for two beautiful hours straight, which explains some people’s reaction toward the film, but also means we got some amazing moments of women looking at men like they wished they were dead.

Usually it can be a little bit of chore going through scenes for screenshots, but I was having the time of my life with this one. Click, click y’all. Let’s bathe in them together, quantifiably.

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17. This “Okay, close the door please,” look is cushioned with the kind of smile that you give to a distant relative who’s just said something really weird and you’re trying to figure out how to leave the room.

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16. Therese looking into the room where Richard is sleeping like she’s at a restaurant and another party who put their name down after her just gotten called.

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15. I’d come up with a comparison but this is straight up like a man shouting your name from across the room in the middle of someone telling you they love you for the first time.

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14. Very cool, Harge’s dad.

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13. This man is delivering Therese a letter and she says nothing while looking at him like this. Bless her.

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12. Carol’s smiling but it’s the smile you give when you’re bargaining with a god you don’t believe in for either a fire alarm or a temporary blackout or both.

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11. Post kiss attempt reaction looking like when you’re trying to stop someone across the room who doesn’t know they’re not supposed to say anything with your eyes.

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10. Lose my number.

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9. If Therese, who is elbowing Richard in the chest to keep him from touching her, were turned around, her eyes still wouldn’t be fully visible as they have rolled under the projector.

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8. This looks like Carol is mentally trying to lift Harge by the throat.

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7. Richard: I love you. Therese:

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6. I’m sorry who are you again.

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5. The visual equivalent of pulling a long hair out of the food that is currently in your mouth.

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4. Take cover, boys!

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3. This is the “GOD, MOM” of glances, and Richard hasn’t even said “YOU MADE ME BUY BOAT TICKETS” yet.

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2. Lmao.

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1. Okay, this is Carol actually wishing death upon a man. Hard to argue with the facts.