People die. Characters die. This is perhaps life’s most unfortunate fact: that people will die and leave the rest of us behind. It’s incredibly rare that any dramatic television series lasting over three seasons will never kill a main or recurring character, and all those deaths have driven a stake through the heart of fandom: Joyce on Buffy, Lady Sybil on Downton Abby, Charlie on Lost, Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, Jen on Dawson’s Creek, Nate on Six Feet Under — but when the person who dies is a lesbian or bisexual character, queer fandom takes it pretty hard.
The history of lesbian representation on television is rocky — in the beginning, we seemed exclusively relegated to roles that saw us getting killed/attacked or doing the killing/attacking. And until the last five or so years, lesbian and bisexual characters seemed entirely unable to date an actual woman or stay alive for more than three episodes, let alone an entire run, of a show. Gay and lesbian characters are so often murdered on television that we have our very own trope: Bury Your Gays. We comprise such a teeny-tiny fraction of characters on television to begin with that killing us off so haphazardly feels especially cruel.
Not every death listed below was wholly uncalled for. In many genres, like soap operas and shows about vampires, zombies, criminals, or games of thrones, characters are killed on the reg. That’s a different trope — Anyone Can Die. Furthermore, shows composed entirely of queer characters will inevitably kill one. But regardless, they still add to the body count weighing down our history of misrepresentation.
And, due to the recent untimely death of Lexa on The 100, this week seemed like a good one to count down everybody we have lost over the years.
This list contains every television death of an OPENLY lesbian or bisexual or queer female character on a television show. With a handful of exceptions, these are all characters who appeared for more than one episode. The exceptions were deemed exceptional because something about the characterization still fits in with the Bury Your Gays trope. Victims-of-the-week from crime procedurals (Law & Order, Cold Case, CSI, Criminal Minds or older shows) or patients-of-the-week from hospital dramas (Chicago Hope, E.R.), aren’t on this list, as that is an entirely different kind of list, but recurring characters from those shows are on this list. Nor is subtext on this list, because we’re not gonna give Xena showrunners Queer Character Credit for a character they refused to make openly queer when she was really so obviously queer. You know? [ETA: Okay, I’ve added Xena after doing further research and because if one more commenter takes up space on this thread — a thread I’m using to find more characters to add, and also to engage with thoughtful/funny readers who have opinions and feelings — to tell me that I “forgot” Xena without reading this introduction, I will become the 200th dead lesbian and the cause of death will be “Walked off a cliff with a commenter in her arms. Murder-suicide.” But Xena will be the one and only inclusion based on subtext.] Also, although I’ve done tons of research, I haven’t personally seen all of these shows, so mistakes may very well exist, and feel free to politely inform me of them in the comments, or tell me about characters I may have missed — it’s especially helpful if you can tell me the cause of death and the year.
Unsure if this needs to be said but… SPOILER ALERT.
Special thanks to the LezWatchTV Database for providing info on shows I haven’t seen or heard about directly!
Every Regular or Recurring Lesbian or Bisexual Female Character Killed On Television
Julie, Executive Suite (1976)
Cause of death: Hit by a car. Her love interest had just walked into traffic after realizing her lesbianism and Julie was chasing her.
Franky Doyle, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1980)
Cause of death: Shot by a police officer after escaping from prison
Sharon Gilmour, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1980)
Cause of death: Pushed down the stairs by a corrections officer
Karen O’Malley, Casualty (1987)
Cause of death: Head Injury
Cecília, Vale Tudo (1988)
Cause of death: Car Accident
Cicely, Northern Exposure (1992)
Cause of death: Shot by a gunman employed by the town’s evil overlord who doesn’t want to let the lesbians change his town. The shot was intended for her girlfriend Roslyn, but Cicely, who was already sick, blocked the bullet and died in Roslyn’s arms, thus magically healing the town’s long-simmering feuds and leading them to re-name the town “Cicely.”
Talia Winters, Babylon 5 (1995)
Cause of death: Activated a sleeper personality that wiped out her actual personality, effectively killing her
Beth Jordache, Brookside (1995)
Cause of death: Genetic heart condition, died in prison
Susan Ross, Seinfeld (1996)
Cause of death: Toxic envelope glue
Naomi “Tracy” Richards, Band of Gold (1996)
Cause of death: Stabbed herself
Lucy, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996)
Cause of death: Caught thieving and hanged
Kathy, NYPD Blue (1997)
Cause of death: Shot by a hit man hired by her girlfriend Abby’s ex, who wanted to get rid of Kathy so she could get back together with Abby. Abby was pregnant at the time.
Sondra Westwood, Pacific Drive (1997)
Cause of death: Murdered by a serial killer
Jadzia Dax, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998)
Cause of death: Blasted by an alien-possessed alien
Sonia Besirky, Lindenstraße (1998)
Cause of death: Drug overdose from medication given to her by her ex-lover’s husband
Leila and Rafaela, Torre de Babel (1998)
Cause of death: Explosion in a shopping mall
Susanne Teubner, Hinter Gittern (1999)
Cause of death: Shot during a bank robbery (she was a customer)
Shaz Wiley, Bad Girls (2000)
Cause of death: Bomb, died in resulting fire
Laura Hall, Shortland Street (2000)
Cause of death: Heart attack
Diamond, Dark Angel (2001)
Cause of death: Used as a lab rat for research that killed her
Xena, Xena the Warrior Princess (2001)
Cause of death: Beheaded
Beate “Bea” Hansen, Hinter Gittern (2001)
Cause of death: Injuries from an explosion
Jule Neumann, Hinter Gittern (2001)
Cause of death: Suicide
Frankie Stone, All My Children (2001)
Cause of death: Murder Mystery!
Bridgit, 24 (2001)
Cause of death: Shot by a man in front of her girlfriend
Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002)
Cause of death: Shot in the heart by a stray bullet
Kelly Hurst, Family Affairs (2002)
Cause of death: Pushed down the stairs by her lover’s husband
Megan Hartnoll, At Home With The Braithwaites (2003)
Cause of death: Electrocuted in the bathtub
Juliet Becker, The Bill (2003)
Cause of death: Stabbed
Tina Greer, Smallville (2003)
Cause of death: Impaled through the chest on a large piece of wood during a fight with a male character
Sandy Lopez, E.R. (2004)
Cause of death: Injuries sustained from fighting a fire in an abandoned warehouse
Al Mackenzie, Bad Girls (2004)
Cause of death: Poisoned
Hanna Novak, Verbotene Liebe (2004)
Cause of death: Stroke, died in her girlfriend’s arms
Ines Führbringer, Hinter Gittern (2004)
Cause of death: Throat slit, died in girlfriend’s arms
Thelma Bates, Hex (2004)
Cause of death: Murdered by a demon
Flora, Deadwood (2004)
Cause of death: Beaten by a man who then forced a woman to shoot her with his gun
Brenda Castillo, Charmed (2004)
Cause of death: Stabbed with a cursed blade by a man, causing her to rapidly age and then die
Tosha, The Wire (2004)
Cause of death: Shot during a heist gone wrong
Marissa Cooper, The O.C. (2005)
Cause of death: Car crash after being driven off the road by her drunk ex-boyfriend
Servilla, Rome (2005)
Cause of death: Stabs herself in front of her rival house, inhabited by the mother of her lover
Dusty, Queer As Folk (2005)
Cause of death: At a benefit at a gay club when a bomb went off
Dana Fairbanks, The L Word (2006)
Cause of death: Breast cancer
Helena Cain, Battlestar Galactica (2006)
Cause of death: Shot by her ex-lady-lover
Manuela Wellmann, Hinter Gittern (2006)
Cause of death: Stabbed, died in girlfriend’s arms
Maya Robertson, Hex (2006)
Cause of death: Hit by a car
Natalie, Bad Girls (2006)
Cause of death: Bludgeoned to death with a brick
Gina Inviere/#6, Battlestar Galactica (2006)
Cause of death: Set off a nuclear weapon
Eve Jacobson/Zoe McAllister, Home & Away (2006)
Cause of death: Inside a building when it was blown up
Van, Dante’s Cove (2006)
Cause of Death: Killed by the Shadows
Angie Morton, Stritctly Confidential (2006)
Cause of death: Suicide. Jumped off a building.
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This is a very interesting (if depressing) list, and I thank you for compiling it.
It’s striking to me how terrible many of these deaths are–so many are brutal and violent, and quite a few sound just plain idiotic even for television. (It especially seems as like as representation has increased in recent years, so have the number and awfulness of the deaths.) And that’s without even looking at whether the deaths could be considered “punishment” for their sexuality, which many of them could be.
I also note that when I scroll through the characters I actually know, a lot of them were in very problematic story lines even apart from being brutally killed off. There are bunch here who were terrible lesbian predator stereotypes, or whose bisexuality only ever appeared in one-to-three episodes during sweeps season and then was never mentioned again, or whose story arcs revolved around men in stupid and problematic ways, or who were shown as behaviorally bisexual but were never allowed to use the term on screen, or were women of color killed off on mostly white shows, or were subject to obvious double standards about sexuality, etc etc etc.
I think it’s important to call attention to all the deaths, especially right now, but also hope that we can talk more about some of the other problematic tropes, and even discuss how often they go together. Because I think those connections can help us call out the problems earlier, before the fictional blood is spilled.
(Also, I think that Delphine on Orphan Black is less likely to actually be alive than Rose on Jane the Virgin. The writers might well be faking us out with Delphine, but I wouldn’t put an asterisk next to her name; she effectively died on screen.)
(Not to nit-pick! You are doing an amazing job compiling this list with audience feedback and I have immense appreciation for the amount of work and frustration that must entail!)
I have a few. They killed Meh Yewll’s wife on Defiance.
They killed Cicily in Northern Exposure.
They killed Zoe Monroe on The 100.
This list is also killing my soul….does that count?
Aw, Cicely. She was just in the one-episode flashback, though, right?
indeed. However, she is the town…it’s her name…so while her face only shows up for a single episode–she herself and her name lived on for seasons. that should count, right?
she’s already on the list! there were a few one-episode people i added b/c they still fit into the bury your gays trope and she is one of them
My only caveat is that Cicely wasn’t a recurring character on ‘Northern Exposure’; she only appeared on one episode.
Still, she was definitely a fridging. :-(
Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks (1990). Molested, raped, and killed by her own possessed father.
Revealed in the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer that she was in a relationship with Josie Packard. Laura was the catalyst and center mystery of the show, although she never appeared alive except for the movie prequel.
THATS RIGHT!! Laura Palmer….my god.
i never heard of this? are you sure? i’ve watched the serie and the movie as well and i’m a little puzzled. is the book canon?
Just thought of one! Doreah, Game of Thrones. Handmaiden and sometime loved of Daenayrys Targaryen. Shut in a vault after betraying her mistress.
Does she count, though? Yes, she slept with Daenerys, but (iirc) only because she was a slave. I’m pretty sure her actual sexuality was never established.
I think I got her confused with her counterpart in the book, whose sexuality is more clearly defined. Surprised there are no GOT characters on this list, but that might be more to do with a lot of performative bisexuality of female characters rather than they are escaping the blows. I am sure by the end of the show Cersei and/or Ellaria Sand will end up on this list.
The TV series Survivors (2008) had Jenny Walsh (played by Freema Agyeman), and she died after contracting the virus that wipes out most of humanity.
Here’s some more evidence to back this up: http://www.afterellen.com/tv/41952-uks-survivors-remake-features-bisexual-character
http://survivors.wikia.com/wiki/Anya_Raczynski
In 1997 poor Sondra Westwood was killed by a serial killer in the Australian soap “Pacific Drive.”
http://missjaneinthesun.tumblr.com/post/141015061611/sondra
I’m kind of pleased that I can’t think of any other Australians who haven’t already been mentioned. I don’t think many of our tv queer women have found happiness, but hey, at least they’re not dead!
do you know how she was killed? like besides that it was a serial killer, like what was the method
From the episode guide for the last episode she was in;
“Joel challengers Trey at the XTC to raise money for Drug awareness. Zoe and Tim asks Sondra to choose. Sondra however gets hacked to death! Cameron calls Trey to the drug clinic where Sondra was working. He finds Sondra. DEAD.”
Ash from Janet King also appears to be dead (killed off between seasons it would appear).
Read below from overview of series 2;
Award winning actress Marta Dusseldorp returns as the brilliant Prosecutor Janet King. In series 2, Janet is seconded from a case of psychological abuse in the armed services to head up a Royal Commission into gun crime.
Conscripting solicitors Richard and Lina, and the ambitious Owen Ramsey as Counsel Assisting, Janet trades the rarefied atmosphere of mahogany courtrooms, wigs and gowns for plain clothes and a community hall. There she and her team focus on the inciting murder of twenty-five year-old Hani Akvan. Hani is married to Elaheh, one of the Ghasemi – Parker clan, who are mid-range operators in the tow truck and car rebirthing trade.
As Janet and her team unravel the complex personal and business relationships of the Ghasemi and Parker families, a ballistics report on a weapon recently used in a local hold up confirms it to be the same gun that killed Ash, Janet’s partner. The killer has never been caught, adding to the pressure. Ash’s sister, Deborah, commences legal proceedings against Janet laying claim to Ash’s only remaining frozen embryo – with the outcome hinging on whether a judge decides eight cells should be identified as property or life?
Janet navigates the final twists and turns of Hani’s murder and end up where the series began, the Army, and a crime of passion and mistaken identities. With her life under threat and in a nail-biting conclusion, she will come face to face with the person who shot and killed Ash.
added!
Thanks Riese for adding these! How long do you think we’ll take until no one can think of any more?? I hope that you haven’t been driven to despair by then ;)
And thanks Lilian for finding the info about Pacific Drive – the episode summaries really show what a crazy show it was, but because of Zoe I was SUCH a fan! I know that Zoe tended to get left by her gfs or they got killed and/or they slept with Tim, but I loved her attitude: I felt like it was always clear to the viewer that when crap things happened to her it was because society was homophobic, not because she deserved it or anything. Oddly, because of an effort amongst those involved in the production to make Zoe a well rounded queer character (or so I’ve heard) she ended up as the most well-rounded, sane person in an otherwise wacky inconsistent show. After spending last night on youtube I’ve been having Zoe feels all day.
I’m sad for Ash. I keep seeing ads for Janet King and having such a moment of joy at seeing Janet’s face and then I have to remember that Ash is dead.
Huh, Lucy Lawless is on this list 4 times!
Also it’s good Xena was on this list. They totally confirmed her queerness/her and Gabrielle being soul mates in the final Ep of season 4.. The future Ep where Xenas souls in the Joxers body aka Harry, and Gabrielle is in Gabrielle/Matties body. Xena says hello old friend, then they proceed to kiss..
The 1990s were so shit you had to borrow a dude’s body to kiss your girlfriend.
Sigh.
COMMENT AWARD
There was another one. Castle TV Series, Season 9 Ep 10 “Witness for the Prosecution.” The murder victim is bisexual and it’s a big deal to the plot.
I swear the 5th paragraph must be in a vortex or something because so many people missed it:
” Victims from crime procedurals (Law & Order, Cold Case, CSI, Criminal Minds or older shows) are not on this list, as that is an entirely different kind of list.”
thank you chloe
I’m a straight white guy (aka part of the problem) although i’m not part of the industry, yet even I can recognize the fact that regardless of if it’s 2 or 142, the fact that LGBT female characters have had that many deaths is BEYOND f’d up in 2016.
As someone who’s more of a movie guy than a TV guy, I had once assumed we were beyond this tendency in 2002!
I was already somewhat familiar with The Celluloid Closet by they, but at the time I saw it as really more a reflection of how much worse things were in the final years of the Hollywood Production Code. Which is why at the time I became aware of the uproar over Tara dying on Buffy (have to be honest though I know some may want to kill me) I was initial more offend that other people were offended. At least to the extent that some called it homophobic. I still that claim in the context of the storyline was a stretch at based, though they certainly could have handled it better and following the debate was a real eye-opener.
The hatred of losing a popular character I completely understood, but it seemed like the kind of show where anyone could die and (at the time) I’d kind of assumed this wasn’t really a problem anyone more. I thought seems like some people were hung up on painful memories of past tendencies. Not realizing of course, how many were still looking far and wide to find people like themselves even in real life. It wasn’t until I started taking a closer look at other gay and lesbian characters at the time (or rather lack there of) and suddenly…OHHHHH know I see what your getting at!
fwiw — these are some of my theories about how this happens. for a great deal of these, sexual orientation has nothing to do with why that character died. but for the ones that really do feel trope-driven:
– historically, it was extremely risky to have a queer character on your show at all. you risked losing fans and advertisers and turning off loyal viewers. but! if you brought her on and then killed her, you got points for being daring, a little ratings boost for the scandal, somebody gay behind-the-scenes probably was happy to at least get one gay story told… and you wouldn’t take too many long-term losses.
– because it’s a trope! all writers fall into tropes sometimes (especially if you are a straight cis white man writing about literally anybody besides a straight cis white man). tropes are defined by the writerly tendency to succumb to them. and in this case, it’s not just the “bury your gays” trope that leads to buried gays — many other sexuality tropes do the same… the lesbian love triangle, the psycho lesbian, etc —lots of these tropes tend to put the characters at risk of death. often people use tropes in the same way that people use stereotypes — unconsciously, but pervasively.
– lack of people behind the scenes who know how to tell our stories or are excited about telling our stories: there actually are a lot more lesbian and bisexual women working behind the camera on a lot of these shows than you’d think, but we’re still a very small fraction of writers teams and even when we are on the team, aren’t necessarily empowered or enabled to make high-level decisions or speak on the behalf of Our Queer Community.
– lower risk of fan revolt and a smaller fandom to contend with — just look at Pretty Little Liars. can you imagine what would’ve happened if one of Spencer, Hanna or Aria’s boyfriends have been killed? but man, they can’t stop doing fucked up shit to Emily’s girlfriends! including killing one of them. Lesbians and bisexual women are a really small percentage of the population. There are so many more straight fans out there, that even though to us, the queer fandom feels huge and passionate, math dictates that we are merely a speck in the universe. luckily we do get heard a lot of the time because we are very good at projecting. loudly.
– we tend to show up on ensemble shows that involve a lot of deadly situations — fantasy/sci-fi, horror, hospitals, police departments, vampires, criminals — and on soap operas. this is mostly just math: the more characters a show has, the more likely a queer person is to show up! people still feel like it’s a big risk to center a show on a queer person, like nobody will be able to “relate” as if us queers haven’t spent our whole lives relating to shows about straight people. one of the most encouraging shifts over the last few years has been a number of shows with mixed-orientation casts that are centered on the queer characters, like Faking It, The Fosters, Transparent and Orange is the New Black.
– queer roles tend to be smaller, and smaller roles are more expendable.
– because we are women living in a culture that hates women, especially women who are not available or not exclusively available to men. and so we die. (but gay men also die at alarming rates on television, so it’s also sometimes the lack of heteronormativity that bugs people out)
Fantastic comment. This is why I come to this site, because it doesn’t just compile lists of data like this (valuable though that service is) but tries to start a discussion.
And I especially like the point about the other terrible tropes than often lead to the bury your gays trope, and about misogyny pervading our culture in all ways.
I’m very glad you’ve gotten to around this this. It’s not enough to complain about the weather. You have to figure out meteorology. Data compilations are useful, but they are a potentially never-ending with no solutions in sight without open conversation the whys and hows.
Of course any conversation about these issue is bought to not only uncover not just deep seated prejudice, but also the way even so many otherwise decent and intelligent people fall into those “unconscious” stereotypes you describe. So even though I think all the reason you sight seem mostly right, I want to condense and expand on a few.
All writers do indeed fall into tropes and it’s easier to fall into those tropes about people from another group (unconsciously as you say) when there’s no interplay with anyone from that group. I agree that when the majority of fans are (presumably) straight there’s less fear of alienating those that aren’t and less incentive for writing characters aren’t. Thus the number of gay/bi character are few, relatively minor, and therefore (like you said) expendable.
It’s not that different from what’s so often said about the lack of POC of color in fiction or various race tropes. That executives only care about one color and that’s green! TV networks will put on a show where ever character’s a potato if they think it will bring in the ratings. Yet they assume most straight audience don’t want to see queer characters on a regular bases for a variety of reasons. They’ve almost been more concerned with not alienation there “core” audience. So most of time they see the alienation gay and bi viewers is as a minor problem if they even see it all.
Any chance this comment could be put into its own article? I think the points are really fantastic, and have wanted to share them, but it involves scrolling way down the list. I know you’re busy doing a million other things, but at some point this would be amazing. Thank you :) x
Sounds like supernatural is a bad universe for girls who like girls… O.o
Supernatural is a bad universe for girls period. The misogyny on this show reaches levels of epic proportion from the very first episode.
Supernatural is bad universe for girls, period. And I say this as a huge, huge, huuuuugggge Supernatural fan, too.
Great, needed list. There’s a lesbian murder in Crossing Jordan maybe worth a mention.
LOL RIESE I WONDER IF THIS IS YOUR VERSION OF “TANTALUS TORMENT” … where instead of having to roll a mountain up a hill forever or never being able to drink, you have to answer forever to “what about xena” and “there was a lesbian victim on episode 405 of CSI”.
(but wait, you didn’t deserve it tho :( )
I KNOW
THIS MUST BE MY FATE
FOR SOME SIN I COMMITTED IN A PAST LIFE
MAYBE IN A PAST LIFE I WROTE AN EPISODE OF ST. ELSEWHERE WHERE A LESBIAN WAS MURDERED BY A LESBIAN
Didn’t this list start at like 75
65 if you look at the address bar !
I think the Danish/Swedish show ‘The Bridge’ has at least two Les/bi deaths? Viktoria and Beate both die in s2, I can’t remember if Laura or Bodil survive. All are recurring characters.
Also I don’t know why I missed this from the original comment : thanks so much for putting this list together, Riese, it must have taken so much time and effort, and although it’s a bit of a sad read, it’s damn important for calling out such a toxic trope.
do you have more info on this like a link or a year or a cause of death? (and thank you for thanking me!)
Viktoria Nordgren was a major recurring character in season 2 and had a very brief but matter of fact fling (might have been a one-night stand, can’t remember) with a female writer/journalist who went to her house to interview her (Bodil). Viktoria died a particularly horrible death at the end of the second season (aired 2013) by injection/infection of a virus. However, I think she was terminally ill from the beginning of the season with something else… Bodil survives but as that season’s ‘story’ was concluded doesn’t appear in the next season.
The Wiki page mentions their encounter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_(Danish/Swedish_TV_series)
Plus Helle Anker in season 3, but I don’t think that counts as she is already murdered(!) when she first appears.
I’m a fan of The Bridge in general (mainly because of Sofia Helin) but this doesn’t look like a great track record.
Thank you for the additional backup, Elphaba! I’ve PM’ed a bunch of backup to Riese also detailing what happened between Beate and Laura in s2.
Also, yay for another fan of the Bridge! I’ve not watched any of series 3 yet but I’m really excited for it, largely also because of Sofia Helin – Saga’s such a great character and Sofia Helin does such an amazing job. Sad that s2 in particular has this problem (like, they introduced 4 women involved with other women and only half make it to the end of the season? I genuinely can’t remember what happened to Laura or find any evidence about her fate, either. Admittedly, the show does have quite the body count, but even so).
No problem! Hope my comment on S3 wasn’t too much of a spoiler! I also can’t remember or find any info about Laura, only some episode review where the author thinks she won’t make it (doesn’t look good then!).
A big THANK YOU for this amazing, quite depressing, work.
I don’t care what the industry says, our level of representation sucks big time because if we add the “missing lesbian/bisexual” (Renee Montoya), the “pyscho lesbian/bisexual killer” (big number for this one) and what I called the “lesbian/bisexual by declaration only” (because nothing really happens romantically with the character, it’s just a token) the numbers are awful.
Deputy White House Political Director Sophia Varma from Blindspot (2015). She asked the Assistant Director of the FBI (Bethany Mayfair) to run away with her but ended up killing herself.
Characters in single-episodes don’t count.
actually i think i will include this one since it sounds like a character who could’ve kept living and had a place in the show but they killed off anyhow (as opposed to a victim-of-the-week or a tertiary character with no ties to any other characters)
This episode is the only background we have on Bethany Mayfair’s personal life.
For me it was an important episode because it changed Mayfairs’s view/participation on Operation Daylight and all the power-plays with the CIA.
As I said, that was my personal take and interpretation on the episode, but I didn’t think that was a common point of view.
It would be interesting to see how many openly queer female characters have appeared on TV in general, just to see a percentage.
GLAAD’s yearly “Where We Are on TV” should have data. I think they decided to stop counting but that might’ve been after the 2015 release? But it should have 10 years or so, broken down by regular/recurring and race and orientation.
I’d love to see a similar list where you collect all the gay and bisexual women who finish a series in a happy relationship. It would be great to be able to compare. So far all I can come up with are:
1) Spencer and Ashley from South of Nowhere
2) Santana and Brittney from Glee
3) Bo and Lauren from Lost Girl
4) Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra (And their entire relationship was holding hands and staring into each others’ eyes in the very last scene)
5) Willow and Kennedy…I guess
Additionally, every single one of those relationships features one or more characters who has relationships with men (I’d say bisexual, but I dunno how to classify Willow.) Do bisexuals have a higher rate of happiness than gay women? Are you more likely to survive if you have sex with a man?
Again, I’d be interested in the data.
Heather is working on it
I have a sneaking suspicion that you were swindled in the distribution of tasks.
This list was a pain in the ass with the whole debate about Xena, single episodes, crime procedurals, the number of a virgin sacrifice, etc.
I think you forgot that one movie which shall not be named
This is an interesting idea, but it has the disadvantage of only being able to count shows that have actually concluded, which creates a much smaller sample size. (In other words, Heather really got a better deal than Riese! Unless it means she has to watch the final season of the L World for research, in which case, go Riese.)
As for having relationships with men, I think that’s a complicated question.
One of the most common ways that bi* women are misrepresented on TV is by not allowing them to use the terms that actual bi* people use and having them disavow labels. It’s highly problematic (and connected to the terrible mental and physical health outcomes for bi people) but common because straight viewers will often read such characters as straight people with an exception.
So I think you have to be careful about what you mean; there are bisexual characters, and there are characters who behave bisexually, but whom the shows have avoid labels in order to distance them from the LGBT community.
There’s also a marked tendency to have both lesbian and bi women’s story lines revolve around men, and particularly sleeping with men, which is deeply offensive in different ways in both cases. I would hope the offensiveness of showing self-avowed lesbians sleeping with men would be obvious, but it’s not often enough commented on how damaging is for bi women to see themselves accepted only conditionally, in male/female relationships.
But I’m not sure what those results would prove. The crazy death rate for these characters is based on misogyny, homophobia, and biphobia, and it’s misogyny, homophobia, and biphobia that leads to their stories revolving around men too.
I’m more interested in what creates the conditions for fictional character survival: does having a female show runner, or a predominantly female group of writers, or a predominantly female audience help? How important is genre?
Willow and Kennedy don’t count because they were broken up in the canon comics that followed the show.
Susan and Carol from Friends!! I mean, they basically disappeared from the show altogether, but still a couple, right?
Oops too keen to start the happy list
Minor correction – in Jessica Jones, Wendy isn’t possessed, she’s compelled by the villain’s hypnotic powers. He made her attack her ex-wife, Jerry; he’s only there in the first place because Jerry wanted to have him make Wendy sign their divorce papers. She’s killed by Jerry’s girlfriend.
It should possibly be noted that Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley weren’t even confirmed as lesbians onscreen before their deaths, despite having a relationship in the source material.
Sara Lance was later resurrected, and is a main character on another show. I’m not sure if they intended that when she died, though.
This was already addressed and settled on another comments.
– About Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley:
oliviactually: “Seeing Agents Hand and Hartley from SHIELD on this list is bitterly ironic, cause the showrunners specifically said that one of the reasons they erased both character’s queer sexualities from the show is because they didn’t want to become known as the show with two dead lesbians. Yeah, fuck that show.”
Catherine: “That is why I don’t understand how they made the list but some other characters didn’t”
oliviactually: “Well, I’d support them being on this list if only because it’s a big f-you to the showrunners who explicitly wanted to avoid this outcome, which is bullshit homophobic erasure.”
Riese: “precisely”
(Thank you Kayla M)
– About Sara Lance:
Riese: Sara Lance is only included because when she died, she was dead, as far as the fans knew. And she came back — but on a different show, much later.
also… i saw jessica jones, like i watched that show. and i wrote what i recalled happening in this list. since then, i have been corrected four times, each time somebody telling me what the last person told me wasn’t true. it’s kind of funny. I MIGHT LAUGH TO DEATH
Riese I can’t believe you just got a rescue dog AND THEN made this list because I feel like this list is taking the same amount of love and care as a needy pet would and that’s just a lot of TLC you’re giving out this month
I’m hoping the rescue dog will give HER the amount of TLC she needs after the comment section…
AND my fiancé is out of town which means i am the sole caretaker AND I have to make my own meals! Honestly I just wish my rescue dog would stop asking me to include one-episode victims from CSI: Miami and reminding me about Paulie from Lost & Delirious.
I’m a web developer who bought the domain doesthelesbiandie.com as a joke last year. After Lexa’s death I realized that I should actually do something with it and am building a database of queer women’s death. Is it okay if I use the information in this article to add to the database?
If you do get permission to use this data for your website, would you like to collaborate on working on some statistical analysis? I’ve got some ideas about how to analyse this data but trying to find a web-based medium where people can help with data entry AND where I can run a regression analysis is difficult.
PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING
Update:
+ i have done two loads of laundry, so just one more to go
+ Heather is working on a list of happy endings
+ I am working on a psycho/depraved thing maybe
If you are here to make a correction or an addition, please note the following:
+ Please read the thread to make sure your point hasn’t already been made
+ Please give me the show title, the character name, year of death, cause of death, and a link to a photo of that person, if possible. Also please link me to evidence that they are queer.
+ In order to maintain the integrity of the list, it’s really important that we’re only using characters who are actually queer, not characters we WISH were queer or think were queer or were ret-conned to be queer.
+ I am not including victims-of-the-week from hospital or criminal procedurals. I will, on occasion, include a one-episode character if I feel it still fits into the trope — as in, it suggests a value judgment on lesbian/bisexual lives as “less than” hetero lives. Like every week on law & order or grey’s anatomy somebody dies, of course sometimes they’ll be gay. I would say one of the questions I’d ask about a one-episode character in order to include them would be could this character have been a part of future episodes if they hadn’t died? or was their death gratuitous?
Congratulations on all that laundry
I am so happy, not just because you are making such stellar laundry progress Riese, but also because H Hogan is making the happy list, which means all that time I spent remembering more ancient TV lesbians then got sad when it turned out they somehow survived will now not be in vain!
Would Jana Murphy (2014) from the Following count? She committed suicide under police pressure, but still an openly queer (married/separated to Gina Mendez) woman who appeared in a couple episodes who died in a violent fasion.
http://thefollowing.wikia.com/wiki/Jana_Murphy
Would Jana Murphy (2014) from the Following count? She committed suicide under police pressure, but still an openly queer (married/separated to Gina Mendez) woman who appeared in a couple episodes who died in a violent fashion.
http://thefollowing.wikia.com/wiki/Jana_Murphy
Riese, you are a super hero.
Also missing Renee Montoya from Gotham.
Renee Montoya was not killed
OMFG, key word: DEAD
love u
Love you too.
You know, I knew this was gonna be a painful post just because of the subject, getting the info, etc., but never crossed my mind that you would find all of these additional pains and all of those to be just pains in the ass.
Don’t forget Doctor Who–Sky Silvestry from “Midnight” comes to mind, but there must be others as well, since the show features so many queer characters.
Sky was just in the one episode
CeCe from Pretty Little Liars was murdered and set up to look like a suicide. She was trans.
Riese explained above in response to another comment how she is doing a separate article on trans representation on TV because the tropes/issues aren’t the same.
Holly Hart, Family Affairs, 1999, killded in an explosion
Sharon Gilmour, Prisoner, 1980, pushed down a staircase
I really appreciate this article but it’s SO SCARY to see the number significantly jump up over the course of ONE DAY…and again and again at that
Sorry womyn, Tosh is not bi! Just because she had a fling with a woman does not make her so any more than, well, you know, the reverse. She had a totally unrequited crush on Owen, who did not deserve her – which made her death all the more heartbreaking in that she was trying to stay strong for him while he was slowly suffocating while she herself was mortally wounded (see Torchwood for the rest of the story).
So… where is the part that makes her not bi? had a fling with a woman, crush on a man… what part of that description was supposed to make her sound straight?
“She had a fling with a woman”
“She had a totally unrequited crush on Owen”
I’m not sure how that’s supposed to mean that she’s not bi? That is pretty much the exact definition of being bisexual, being attracted to people of multiple genders. Just because she only had one relationship with a woman on the show doesn’t make it any less valid.
Also didn’t one of the writers state that all the main characters are meant to be bi at some point? Not really sure about that, but it’s not an unfounded claim. Fairly sure they all have crushes/relationships/sexual encounters with people of more than one gender – and that includes Tosh.
Didn’t the showrunner say that all five of the main characters are bi? (We at least saw Tosh have a relationship with a woman, whereas the only evidence of Gwen being bi was her kissing a woman briefly … and iirc she was under alien influence at the time)
Sooooo…. she’s in love with a guy and also with an alien she considers a girl. Have you looked up the definition of ‘bi’ recently?
The next logical step in the evolution of this magnus opus is to mix up aaalllll the lesbians then have the world’s biggest game of Dead Lesbian Cluedo! (aka Clue, to you crazed North Americans)
“I accuse Lucy Lawless of contracting a vampire virus in a 2015 episode of PLL!”
this is brilliant, sally
What about Charlie on Supernatural? I’ve still not recovered
She’s on the list.
She’s been on the list pretty much from the beginning. Ctrl+F will help you find her.
Trish Bendix posted this on AfterEllen an hour ago, “My challenge to the lesbian community who is upset about the death of Lexa on “The 100”, with things like this:
“Visibility matters. That is true. Lives of fictional queer characters matter in that they are representations of a community. But what is happening in the world right now to people of color, specifically black people; black trans women, black men, black women—I wish the lesbian community a tenth about that like they do the death of a white television character.”
Probably this doesn’t belong here, but I find this totally offensive. Not because of the subject, but because of timing. I’m sorry, but you just discovered this? AE is a place with less political/social conscience than TMZ and you want to give us lessons?
“For me it’s distasteful and offensive that you bring this to light and try to create a “new debate” (like years too late) just because so many people was criticizing (a more correct term is ripping a new one) the way you and your site dealt with this matter.”
That was my comment on AE because honestly I can’t deal with people trying to spin things around just to save face.
http://www.afterellen.com/tv/478829-challenge-lesbian-community-upset-death-lexa-100
My patience for Trish Bendix wore thin a long ass time ago. I can’t believe she’s acting like she gives a damn about black representation NOW when she hasn’t given a damn about QPOC’s the entire time she’s been at that website.
Is the CW one of their new(ish) corporate overlords or something? I genuinely can’t figure out why they’ve tried to downplay this three times now. Unless they’re using reverse psychology because the main effect seems to be fanning the flames.
AE’s parent company Evolve Media has The CW listed as one of their major clients. I wouldn’t be surprised if word has come down from on high that The CW and The 100 are sacred cows and AE isn’t allowed to say anything against them.
Actually I’d be surprised if that had anything to do with it, those kinds of arrangements are pretty rare and generally exclusive to sponsored content (like their One Big Happy campaign).
So, this means that they consciously decided to act like fan-girls? Whoa, that’s even worst.
What the frilly heck is going on in that article
Like I knew AE jumped the shark years ago but what even
“Black lives matter, you guys”
Gee, ya think? Where are AE’s writers of color? Where are their articles about race and privilege and intersectionality? And what in the world does it have to do with people being upset about Lexa’s death?
Using issues facing black people and QPOCS to deflect from having to be held accountable for their shitty response to the 100 killing Lexa is honestly so fucking shameful. I’m trying to remember when Trish Bendix started caring about my black ass and I think the first time was today when she wanted to lecture her fellow white lesbians about intersectionality as if that is something her website covers a lot.
also she listed CeCe McDonald in her list of dead black women and CeCe McDonald isn’t dead.
Well, it wasn’t enough to just shoot yourself in the foot with that article, Trish needed to make it bigger… she can’t even googled
That clearly vas a very bad choice, everybody is, once again, ripping a new one at AE.
It is SUCH a mess over there. And that’s the site I grew up on! Such a waste.
Trish’s twitter is incredible right now. She is saying she was trying to “elevate the conversation,” that she put the two topics together because an article about BLM wouldn’t get any clicks, and that “if at least one person considers using their privileged voice w/i queer community for the disenfranchised…Then it’s worth the hate from the ones who think I’m “racebaiting” or “pitting people against one another.””
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills
oh my gosh
she JUST got here
and thinks everybody else did too
Don’t be cruel, Riese, she’s educating us…
I can’t stand when white women like Trish talk over POCs and act like they just discovered America. Be quiet, Tiffany! Learn from this !
It’s incredible to observe. She is doing the whole White Savior shtick and is so wrapped up in her role of martyr that she is willing to DISMISS THE VOICES OF POC criticizing her! It’s like a train wreck. And it all seems to stem from a fundamental inability to be self-critical. She would rather throw her POC readership under the bus than recognize that she is on an ego trip. Incredible.
And to label all the articulate, thoughtful, intelligent comments she is receiving as “hate” is just plain manipulative. But then again she showed us just how unscrupulous she was when she decided to hide behind black bodies. It’s revolting, really.
Trish Bendix no more. Trish BendOver maybe?
Sorry, my bad, can’t help myself.
jesus fucking christ on a cracker
i mean i try not to speak ill of other sites
mostly because i am insecure and
fear that criticizing others invites them
to criticize me
and my site
which i find terrifying
but that
THAT!
that is.
really.
something.
else.
we
cannot
what a terrible
terrible
terrible way
(the worst way?)
to start an incredibly important
conversation with your readers
about the importance of black lives
and racism
what a shortsighted way to do that
This is a lovely poem, Riese
i think I’ll read it again, instead of spending one more moment letting that article fill my head with absurd noise.
I’m starting to get really angry. Now she’s on Twitter repeatedly hashtagging BlackLivesMatter and claiming it’s only white women who are getting upset about being called out. This woman is JUST NOW acting like she has always been in support of that movement. Bitch, stop using us to cover up your failures! I CANNOT BELIEVE……
I JUST
CANNOT
I never got into that site. It always felt too mainstream or corporate or just off. Like a lesbian version of the suburbs. Bland and boring. I do like a couple of the personal blogs of a couple of the writers but I just never got into AE. I heard it used to be pretty good so maybe I just waited too long to check it out.
All I can say now is that this is the very first time in my life that I’ve witnessed the self destruction of a person.
Things Trish has said today that I can’t even:
“People that find a piece on #blacklivesmatter “divisive”: I hope you will question why you see these things as separate issues.”
“I am constantly trying to make sure articles are inclusive. If writers send a list in without a WOC, I send it back”
“I cover a lot of things on the site that have WOC angles, from recaps of Black Love to continuing recaps of shows that get nominal views”
[[EVEN SHOWS THAT GET NOMINAL VIEWS]]
“Thank you to everyone sending me DMs and emails. I understand why you want to stay out of the messiness but you are appreciated. <3"
Somebody please help her!!!!!!!!!!
Take away her phone, her computer, the light in the city she lives in, something.
Yes! My jaw dropped when I read that article. It’s so awful to watch, but I can’t teary eyes away.
Riese has just knocked it out of the park with this list, the mammoth amount of work to keep updating and fielding all kinds of other noise at the same time. I can’t even dare to imagine.
Also, thanks Freakazoid for all your contributions to this thread. I found myself agreeing with and liking so many of your comments.
May she look up and shout “Save me!” so that we make look down and whisper, “No.” before busting into cackles because schadenfreude and some of us are terrible.
Lol @ ““I am constantly trying to make sure articles are inclusive. If writers send a list in without a WOC, I send it back”
This feels like the equivalent of “I have a black friend”. Girl if your solution to inclusivity is a token black person on your lists, that’s not very progressive…
Yup, the tokenism is astounding
I don’t know Trish, but she’s coming off like a crazy person. For real. She’s essentially a white queer journalist scolding all of us “privileged” queers to think long and hard about more important things. The fuck? Like I can’t fight for more than one thing at once? Like representation in the media isn’t important? Like only privileged white queers care about media representation. Like she knows anything about what her readers do for a living, where they come from, or what they fight for day after day. Unreal.
Oh man oh man why would she post this??? Who signed off on this???
This is like watching a really drawn out car crash that you can see a mile away but the driver thinks they’re perfectly fine, and is also arrogant enough to think they don’t need a seatbelt.
So, she woke up today, took a little coffee, looked around and thought…
And then went for it…
That girl is on
but it’s okay because
Maybe this is a sign they are ushering in a new era at AE.
I fully expect a nuanced, in-depth analysis of US police brutality in their next Rizzoli & Isles Subtext Recap.
Still managed to get in a Chaiken slam. *up top*
YOU BET I DID
Adding my name to the add “Helena HG Wells” to the list. First death by explosion, then resurrected, then “death” by heteronormativity the next season. ;)
DEATH BY HETERONORMATIVITY
I hope that every writer who is thinking about writing a bi/gay girl characers reads this and thinks twice before killing off their bi/gay girl character and then tries to claim that “our version is different”, because like it has been said, movies and TV-shows don’t exist in a vacuum.