+ The Circle is back for its sixth season and if you’re tempted to watch after last season’s bisexual chaos, let me offer you a word of warning: don’t. It feels like casting missed the mark this season (read: there are a dearth of lady gays) and it just hasn’t been as fun. Michelle Buteau’s cheeky commentary can only placate me for so long. — Natalie
+ Things finally got a little gay this week on Elsbeth: the incomparable Gina Gershon guest stars as Dr. Vanessa Holmes, a boutique plastic surgeon who draws the suspicion of the titular lawyer/detective after Holmes’ protégé is found murdered. But while Holmes captivates Elsbeth’s attention, it’s her wife, Carolyn (Holly James), who’s actually at the center of it all. — Natalie
+ I appreciate that NCIS: Hawai’i grants Yasmine Al-Bustami time away to do other things but, honestly, would it kill them to include a throwaway line about Lucy’s absence in episodes she’s not in? It’s been great seeing Kate interact more with the team, of course, but the steadfast refusal to even acknowledge Lucy’s absence…it’s a little absurd at this point. — Natalie
Before I jump into this week’s recap, can we just pause for a moment of thirst? On behalf of queer people everywhere, I’d like to personally thank the sleeves industry for whatever they’ve done to offend Kristen Kish. The new Top Chef host is using her platform to wage a war against sleeves and I, for one, am very grateful. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate seeing Kish, once again, with her arms out and her tatted swagger at an all-time high.
But even Kristen Kish’s arms are cold comfort for the travesty that occurs at the end of this episode. On Lesbian Visibility Week of all weeks? How dare you, Top Chef, how dare you?
Since she won the Frank Lloyd Wright challenge, there’d been a subtle shift in Rasika. It feels a bit like cockiness… like she feels that somehow mastered this game already and can afford to take more risks. And, listen, I get it: Rasika’s been hugely successful thus far and Kristen has to push the other chefs to give her some competition, I’d be a little cocky too. Hell, I’d be strutting around the kitchen like George Jefferson. But after last week’s finishes — Rasika didn’t place among the top three in either the quickfire or elimination challenges — our favorite chefbian should’ve re-evaluated her strategy and refocused on elevating and cooking her grandmother’s food. But alas…
This week, Kaleena rejoins the competition after successfully competing on Last Chance Kitchen and she’s joined by Soo Ahn, the mystery 16th chef. It’s hard for me not to resent Soo’s presence in the competition as it feels like Top Chef producers tweaked the game expressly for him. Yes, he successfully ran through the LCK gauntlet but I can’t help but feel like he cheated to get here. At any rate, Kaleena comes back swinging, finishing in the top three of the quickfire challenge that has the chefs prepare a milk-based dessert. Rasika’s shrikhand — a yogurt dish, perfumed with cardamom and saffron — earns her a finish in the middle of the pack.
Then comes the elimination challenge, courtesy of Matty Matheson, a celebrated chef in his own right but who’s probably best known for his role on The Bear. He invites the chefs to embrace chaos cuisine. Kristen describes the challenge an opportunity to “break the mold of culinary convention.” It’s not clear that even she knows what that means. Perhaps that should’ve been a sign to Top Chef producers to skip over this challenge… but nope…
Do I understand this challenge at all? Not really — the best I can do is recall Melissa King’s final winning meal which fused Italian and Asian cuisines in Season 17 — but even though I don’t really get it, I’ve watched enough Top Chef to know what not to do. Despite Matheson’s push to try new things, chefs should stay in their lanes: create something new out of familiar flavors and dishes. This show wants you to take measured, calculated risks. Rasika does the exact opposite.
This is when I start to dread the rest of the episode. In fact, I turn it off and have to come back to it later because I know what’s about to happen. Experimenting with African seasoning is a mistake. Pairing eggplant and crab is a mistake. In the kitchen, Rasika struggles with how to prepare her dish and that feels like a mistake. By the time her plate hits the judges’ table, I think I’m prepared for the harsh critique… but when guest judge, Sophia Roe (Counter Space) calls the dish “slug-like,” I gasp. The writing’s on the wall for this one: it’s time for Rasika to pack her knives and go.
As she’s leaving, Rasika assures us (and the other chefs) that they haven’t seen the last of her… and, as she heads off to compete in Last Chance Kitchen, I believe her.
You’re forgiven if you forgot that the crew was still so young; after all, All American insists on treating these kids like they’re fully formed adults. Coop’s traded dropping bars for taking the bar. Asher has a full-time job and a baby. Despite having already failed at one marriage, Jordan’s obsessed marrying again. Owning a record company wasn’t enough for Layla, now she’s got to gentrify Crenshaw with a lounge that never seems to be open. Olivia spends a year abroad and then returns to focus exclusively on writing her father’s biography… and there’s nary a mention of actually going to college. Why aren’t these kids allowed to be kids? It’s like the show just stopped trying to make their characters relatable.
But at least we were granted a reprieve this week, as Spencer tried to recall exactly how he spent his 21st birthday and, more importantly, what he did with the gift his girlfriend got him. It’s basically a Hangover knock-off, but it feels as close to relatable as anything Spencer’s done all season so I’ll allow it. With no memory of the night’s events, Spencer recruits Coop to help him retrace his steps. Revisiting last night’s bar crawl sparks Spencer’s memory, but nothing that resembles his gift from Olivia. Finally, they end up at Layla’s, the last stop on Spencer’s birthday bar tour. But when Coop spots Patience sitting with Layla, she immediately concocts an excuse and rushes out of the lounge.
Talking to Layla and Patience — who arrived at the lounge initially to apologize for her actions from the previous night — jostles Spencer’s memory. He recalls the poorly designed Heisman cake and joking around with Patience and Coop. He calls them his favorite couple, but Coop corrects him: they’re not a couple. But when Spencer leaves in search of another birthday shot, Coop and Patience look very couple-y. Coop notes how long it’s been since she’s seen Patience be so carefree. Patience’s bright smile returns and she admits, between hanging out with Coop, celebrating with Spencer and chilling at Layla’s bar, “what’s not to be happy about?”
The moment the words cross her lips, I think, “wow, she jinxed herself” and sure enough, she did. A fight breaks out at the party and, despite her attempts to avoid it, Patience gets drawn into the fight. But this isn’t the helpless Patience who fell victim to Niko’s attack, this is the nuPatience who’s been doing self-defense training with Layla’s business partner. She’s able to subdue her attacker with some MMA-style moves. Coop pulls her away but not before the crowd captures the entire sequence on their phones.
When they return home, Coop and Patience have settled into an easy (and drunken) rapport. They’re laughing and joking and everything feels familiar again… so much so that Patience leans in for a kiss. Coop leans back, just out of Patience’s reach, and questions what she’s doing. Patience insists that she was just trying to take control and tries to gauge Coop’s interest. But after the night they’ve had — the drinking, the fighting — Coop thinks they should have a real conversation when they’re both thinking more clearly. At this particular moment, though, Patience isn’t really interested in a conversation and she retreats to her room, alone.
The exes will, eventually, have to have a conversation abut what happened between them, but first Patience will have to deal with video from her fight which has, of course, turned up online.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
A black biracial, bisexual girl raised in the South, working hard to restore North Carolina's good name. Lover of sports, politics, good TV and Sonia Sotomayor. You can follow her latest rants on Twitter.
Just a note: Dead Boy Detectives dropped yesterday, and while yes, it is queer, there…may be some problems with the quality of that queerness. More detail in the response.
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This is very spoilery, so read at your own peril.
There is one queer main character, and three queer secondary characters. None of those relationships end well. The queer woman is the secondary character Jenny the Butcher, played by Briana Cuoco (Kaley’s little sister). She’s set up on a date by another secondary character with a woman who has been sending her anonymous secret admirer letters. It initially goes well until the admirer lets slip that she has been spying on Jenny. When Jenny nopes out, the admirer goes full psycho and ends up dead by the end of the date.
From Doctor Who and Star Trek to Buffy and Wynonna Earp, sci-fi has been one of the more consistent places we, as queer people, have been able to find ourselves on TV over the past few decades. People who write sci-fi and fantasy tend to connect with the “outsider” themes and therefore often include more minority groups (also I imagine it’s a little easier to pitch “also there are lesbians” when you’ve already been approved for “a woman sees herself jump in front of a train and then realizes she’s a human clone.”) And as the world outside looks more and more like the post-apocalyptic hellscape often found in shows like the ones on this list, seeing ourselves in the stories we look to for a bit of escapism is more important than ever.
While there have been countless popular sci-fi and fantasy shows over the years, I have found 184 shows that have featured LGBTQ+ characters and put them through a gauntlet of sorts to narrow them down to the Top 100, the best of the best, the shows where the quality of the show and quality of the representation were quantified to see who ended up on top. This is our third time updating this list, as it was created in 2020, and updated again in 2022.
This was no easy feat, and honestly some great shows didn’t make the cut. While most of the shows that landed below the line probably would come as no surprise (like The Exorcist), some hurt my feelings (Timeless would be in my own personal top 50, but it was all the way down in spot 118), and some were more surprising. Probably the biggest surprise is that while Warrior Nun was on the 2022 version of this list, it ended up getting bumped this year, simply not having the numbers to compete with all the new blood in the competition.
One thing I love about lists like this that we do at Autostraddle is that it is very uniquely ours. Any other Top 100 sci-fi list would have The Walking Dead much higher than it landed here, but on this list, you get points docked for buried gays, so #81 it is. The votes of my fellow members of the Autostraddle TV Team weigh heavily on the outcome, so if you couldn’t please enough queer TV critics, it is what it is.
I have an overly complicated ranking system, and a very intense, annotated spreadsheet (I’vebeen told that is the Capricorn in me) that helped me be sure I was putting as many FACTS into this list as I was heart. So while I used my own judgment for tiebreakers, to get a general idea of order, I awarded points as follows:
Every show got 0-3 points based on the quantity of LGBTQ+ characters, 0-3 points based on the quality of those characters’ stories, and 1 point for each of the following achievements:
I could find an out queer and/or trans actor or writer with a reasonable amount of research
The show being critically acclaimed by mainstream critics
And the show being critically acclaimed by queerstream critics.
Also, despite the fact that sci-fi is the first type of show to claim “everyone dies” in equal amounts, I still removed one whole point for every single dead queer female or non-binary character. Because we’re not at a point yet where it doesn’t matter. The only time a dead queer person did not count against a show is if their death didn’t mean they were no longer on the show. Since it’s sci-fi/fantasy we’re talking about here, often a person would die but their ghost would hang around, or they’d die but be resurrected.
And finally, I had our TV Team here at Autostraddle give their faves a rating of 1-5, with the ability to give out fourteen 10s. Because it doesn’t matter how much representation there is on paper if actual queer people didn’t like or connect to it.
(Note: before you Ctrl + F for She-Ra or Carmilla: I didn’t include cartoons or webseries, because those would require a list of their own.)
I would like to thank Riese’s exhaustive TV database for giving me a foundation to start on, Carmen and Natalie for giving me an idea for point structure, Autostraddle TV Team members for helping me out with some of the blurbs, and sites like LezWatchTV, IMDb, and Wikipedia for being invaluable sources of information, plus any help/input from friends (and my dad) I got along the way. Also, shout out to the folks who keep fan wikis up to date, you’re the real MVPs.
One last thing: This is for fun! While based on a fuckton of reading and watching and learning, and a lifetime of experience consuming sci-fi, this is a rating system I made up! I feel like my hours of research and toiling makes for a fairly accurate list of 100, but when it comes down to it, the difference between the #15 show and the #10 show could have just been how many people on the TV Team saw it. I do HIGHLY encourage you to make your case for why your favorite show should be higher on the list in the comments; just remember that this list doesn’t actually have any bearing on anything besides our hearts, so please be kind to each other about it, okay? Sara Lance didn’t come back to life 86 times just so you can set each other on fire.
Okay, without further ado… the top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Shows featuring lesbian, bisexual, queer and/or trans characters OF ALL TIME!
The 100 Best Lesbian+ Sci-Fi and Fantasy TV Shows of All Time
100. Torchwood (2006 – 2011)
Starring: John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Naoko Mori, Indira Varma, Freema Agyeman” Watch on Max
Daniela Denby-Ashe and Naoko Mori as Mary and Toshiko
Torchwood managed to cling to this list by the coattails! This Doctor Who spinoff about Captain Jack Harkness takes the “everyone is queer” vibe and puts it in ink — creators of the show have confirmed that everyone of any gender on Team Torchwood is queer, and we see at least five women bring that to life on screen. And I know 2008-2011 doesn’t sound like that long ago, but in Queer TV years, it’s practically a lifetime, so this was truly a unique situation. Not all of the queer women survive, which is why it isn’t higher on this list, but whew did we enjoy the timey wimey, wibbly wobbly ride.
Starring: Toni Collette, Halle Bush, Auliʻi Cravalho, Daniela Vega, Adina Porter Watch on Prime Video
Caption: Zoe Bullock and Alli Boyer-Ybarra as Gordy and Luanne
The Power, starring bisexual icon Auli’i Cravalho, imagines a world where the scales are balanced and women are granted literal (electric) power in an attempt to put them on an equal playing field with the men in the world with physical and political power. All teen girls came into this power at the same time, and they can unlock the power in older generations. Suddenly women all over the world can stand up to their abusers, their tormentors, their competitors. It’s a powerful metaphor that admittedly gets a bit off the rails, but along the way we meet queer characters, like the lesbian daughter of a mob boss, queer kids in a school for runaways, and a trans nun.
Starring: Sierra McCormick, Aaron Tveit, Billie Lourd, Noah Cyrus, Lisa Rinna Watch on Hulu
Julia Schlaepfer and Addison Timlin as Celeste and Delilah
American Horror Stories, the AHS-themed anthology series, is hit or miss episode to episode, starting off with a bang in the form of a lesbian murderess and her ghost girlfriend. The second season features queer milkmaids in what stands out as one of the better episodes of the series.
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite Watch on Hulu
Caption: Morena Baccarin as Inara
A cult classic, this one-season Joss Whedon space cowboy show made waves long after it was over, leaving us to wonder if Inara, the spaceship’s resident sex worker and confidante, could have explored relationships with women further if the show had continued on. As it stands, she takes on female clients occasionally, seemingly by choice and not out of necessity. She also seems to have a bit of a history with Julie Cooper Nichol, but that might be me projecting.
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, Joe Seanoa, Will Arnett, Thomas Haden Church Watch on Peacock
Jamie Neumann, Diany Rodriguez, and Stephanie Beatriz as Watts, Amber, and Quiet
Loosely based on the 90s video game by the same name, this post-apocalyptic adventure follows Anthony Mackie’s charming-as-hell John Doe and bisexual goddess Stephanie Beatriz’s Quiet as they race across the country, facing many dangerous obstacles as they go. Along the way they meet characters that will be familiar to anyone who played the game but still a delight to anyone who didn’t, including queer-coded wild child Bloody Mary (played by the hilarious Chloe Fineman), and a caravan of what seems like an entire queer community, including lesbian couple Amber and Watts.
95. The Midnight Club (2022)
Starring: Iman Benson, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Annarah Cymone, Adia Watch on Netflix
Adia as Cheri
The Midnight Club is arguably the least gay of the Mike Flanagan Netflix catalog, so it’s no surprise it sits in the lowest position of them all. That said, maybe it’s because his wife is bisexual icon Kate Siegel and he just carries that bi wife energy into everything he makes, maybe he’s just a stand-up guy, but so far we have yet to go unrepresented in a show he’s produced with Netflix. The Midnight Club is an amalgamation and reimagination of some classic Christopher Pike tales, centering around a group of teenagers in a facility for end-of-life care, as they all have terminal illnesses. To entertain themselves, they have a club not unlike Are You Afraid of the Dark‘s Midnight Society, where they take turns telling each other stories. Some of these stories have queer vibes, and one of the patients is the resident rich kid with a good heart that everyone suspects might be a pathological liar, Cheri, confides to the other gay resident, Spencer, that she’s gay, too, in a rare, earnest moment.
94. Dracula (2013 – 2014)
Starring: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jessica De Gouw, Katie McGrath, Victoria Smurfit, Oliver Jackson-Cohen Buy on Prime Video
Katie McGrath and Victoria Smurfit as Lucy Westenra and Lady Jayne
One way you can know I am not just arbitrarily making the order of this list up is because Dracula would be MUCH higher if I were. Katie McGrath is the picture of perfection as Lucy Westenra, harboring a soul-crushing love for her best friend Mina, knowing her feelings will probably never be returned. She learns to identify these feelings by way of Lady Jayne, who showed her what kissing girls is like, Cruel-Intentions-style. Technically Dracula killed Lucy, but SHE was totally down to be a vampire, and I will never, ever, ever forgive the TV gods for denying me at least one season of Vengeful Lesbian Vampire Lucy Westenra for as long as I live.
Starring: Adriyan Rae, Tim Rozon, Alex McGregor, Bonnie Mbuli, Jennifer Steyn Watch on Prime Video
Alex McGregor and Adriyan Rae as Amae and Elida
This SYFY space adventure was short-lived but not lacking in queer content. The sweet and bubbly pansexual alien Amae is a foil for grumpy and serious bisexual Elida as they make their way through space with their unlikely group of friends, and luckily the slow burn paid off before the show got sucked into the black hole of cancellations.
Starring: J. K. Simmons, Olivia Williams, Harry Lloyd, Nazanin Boniadi, Sara Serraiocco Watch on Prime Video
Sara Serraiocco and Nazanin Boniadi as Baldwin and Clare
This timeline-hopping thriller follows Baldwin, a soft butch assassin, who is having a time of it; she feels her life is not her own, she watches her alternative timeline self die, she struggles to connect to the women she encounters, which makes sense because the risk of betrayal is always just around the corner in a world like hers. This show blurs the line of the Bury Your Gays trope, by killing of a queer character in one dimension but not the other, but overall it is unique representation that should not go uncelebrated.
91. The Librarians (2014 – 2018)
Starring: Rebecca Romijn, Christian Kane, Lindy Booth, John Harlan Kim, John Larroquette Buy on Prime Video
Lindy Booth and Clara Lago as Cassandra and Estrella
This campy, ridiculous show is like the bookish cousin of Warehouse 13 and Legends of Tomorrow. A spinoff of the movies starring Noah Wiley, the show follows a bunch of “chosen” nerds with special skills who have to save and protect magical objects. One of said nerds is Cassandra, a sweet, bubbly woman with an amazing brain, who once had a fairytale prince spell put on her, and another time had a tempting encounter with a vampire. It’s cheesy and magical fun all around.
Starring: Sisi Stringer, Daniela Nieves, Mia McKenna-Bruce, André Dae Kim, Anita-Joy Uwajeh Watch on Peacock
Rhian Blundell and Mia McKenna-Bruce as Meredith and Mia
In the latest remake of the popular book series, Vampire Academy follows vampire royalty Lissa Dragomir and her bodyguard-in-training, best friend and (supposedly platonic) soulmate Rose. While, at first glance, it might seem like Lissa and Rose are in love, it turns out they are strictly best friends. This television adaptation does give us some some queer vampires though, including Mia, who also has two vampire dads. Despite her desire for upward mobility in the social ranks, Mia ends up falling for a guard, Meredith, and learning illegal battle magic just to protect her. Very romantic.
Starring: Sophia Lillis, Wyatt Oleff, Sofia Bryant, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong Watch on Netflix
Sophia Lillis and Sofia Bryant as Sydney and Dina
A story about grief at its core, I Am Not Okay with This is about a teenage girl named Sydney who finds herself at the hardest time in her life suddenly with powers that she can’t control. And of course that’s not all, on top of having powers and experiencing grief and just the general trauma of being a teenager, she is also harboring a pretty massive crush on her best friend, Dina. Unfortunately, there is only one season of this show, despite it originally being renewed for two, which was attributed to delays due to the pandemic.
Starring: Jeanine Mason, Nathan Dean, Michael Vlamis, Lily Cowles, Heather Hemmens Watch on Netflix
Lily Cowles and Sibongile Mlambo as Isobel and Anatsa
There was a long time where I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on re: the queerness of this aliens-among-us reboot of the 90s show, but eventually they made it crystal clear that alien hottie Isobel is bisexual as heck, and the show proves that we don’t have to give some shows to the boys and some to the girls, but you can in fact have multiple main queer couples at the same time. A win for human AND alien-kind!
87. Silo (2023 – Present)
Starring: Rebecca Ferguson, Rashida Jones, Common, Harriet Walter, Clare Perkins Watch on Apple TV+
Harriet Walter as Martha Walker
Another post-apocalyptic entry to the canon, Silo takes place in an imagined future where everyone lives underground, the outside world deemed unsafe. The titular Silo is huge, many floors deep, everyone assigned to their roles, which keeps the community functioning like the well-oiled machine that is the silo itself. But as Rebecca Furgason’s Juliette starts to learn, there may be secrets yet to unfold. She starts to uncover some of them with the help of a lesbian electrical engineer who stopped leaving her workshop altogether when her wife left her 25 years ago.
Starring: Vivienne Acheampong, Jenna Coleman, Gwendoline Christie, Briby Howell-Baptiste, Mason Alexander Park Watch on Netflix
Jenna Coleman and Eleanor Fanyinka as Constantine and Rachel
The Sandman lives up to its name, having a dream-like and nightmarish quality depending on the episode. With a combination of throughlines and vignettes, it tells the story of Morpheus, one of seven entities called the Endless. The Endless all seem to live outside humans’ limited concept of gender and sexuality, plus there is a healthy sprinkling of queer human characters throughout, including but not limited to Doctor Who‘s Jenna Coleman. Not all of the sapphics survive, but they’re all incredibly interesting, in my humble opinion.
Starring: Julie Benz, Jaime Murray, Mia Kirshner, Jesse Rath, Anna Hopkins Watch on Roku
Jaime Murray and Mia Kirshner as Stahma Tarr and Kenya Rosewater
Jaime Murray is someone who shows up in multiple shows on this list, but this is only one of two where she plays canon queer. (Though let’s be honest, Jaime Murray has chemistry with practically everyone like some kind of Katie McGrath.) In Defiance, she plays a quiet, obedient alien wife who has her eyes opened up to the world beyond her husband and starts to rebel in her own ways. One of which is by sleeping with Jenny Schecter the madame at the local brothel, Kenya Rosewater. This show also boasts queer alien Doc Yewll, and while Kenya goes the way of Jenny in this show, overall it’s still a fun supernatural romp.
Starring: Roselyn Sánchez, Kiara Barnes, John Gabriel Rodriquez, Alexa Mansour, María Gabriela González Watch on Tubi
María Gabriela González and Kiara Barnes as Isla and Ruby
Not only does Fantasy Island have a Very Special Queer Episode that is better than most lesbian romance movies I’ve ever seen, one of the main characters, Ruby, is a woman who was married to a man who was her best friend, but now that she got her fantasy of starting life over as a young woman, she is realizing she was hiding the truest part of herself; the part that loves women. So we get to see Rose explore this side of herself for the first time, occasionally with a mysterious stranger named Isla, and it truly is a magical thing to witness.
Starring: Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, Alessandra Torresani, Polly Walker Watch on Prime Video
Polly Walker as Clarice Willow
This Battlestar Galactica prequel did not last very long, despite having Buffy alum Jane Espenson at the helm for the first few episodes. And yet, in its one short season, it tackles topics like technology, religion, loss, and more. Clarice Willow — who Heather Hogan once described as “a psychotic bisexual Mommi” — has many husbands and wives, but despite living in a polytheistic community, is secretly a monotheistic terrorist. She even murders one of her own wives on suspicions that proved unfounded. It’s…a lot. But! Those who loved the show LOVED it, and those who love the Battlestar Galactica franchise but didn’t love it still accept it as the weird cousin they don’t really talk about at Thanksgiving.
Starring: Chris O’Dowd, Gabrielle Dennis, Djouliet Amara. Ally Maki, Crystal Fox Watch on Apple TV+
Crystal Fox as Izzy
One day, in a small town, a machine showed up that promised to tell people their true potential. On a little blue card, in plain ink, just a handful of words told them of their fate. Chaos ensues. The potentials are worn like titles, weaponized, lied about, you name it, and Dusty and his family are in the center of it all. In this funny, heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking show, Dusty’s mother-in-law, Izzy, is the mayor and has an ex-girlfriend in town.
Nadia Hilker, Alanna Masterson, and Eleanor Matsuura as Magna, Tara, and Yumiko
This zombie apocalypse drama is a critical darling that is lower on our list than it would be a mainstream site’s because they have killed three of its five lesbians. I won’t tell you which ones, but the lesbians in question are Tara, her consecutive girlfriends Alsiha and Denise, and girlfriends Magna and Yumiko, a leader/lawyer and a badass archer respectively.
Starring: Austin Butler, Poppy Drayton, Ivana Baquero, Manu Bennett, Vanessa Morgan Watch on Prime Video
Vanessa Morgan and Ivana Baquero as Lyria and Eretria
Shannara is a rare mix of post-apocalyptic and high fantasy, not too dissimilar from Into the Badlands in that regard, but with more elves and magic. The opening scene in this show features an elven girl named Amberle running a blindfolded race intended only for men and winning it, so I was in from the start. Then they added bisexual rover Eretria, and though they killed her ex-girlfriend, she eventually meets a literal princess played by Toni Topaz herself, Vanessa Morgan.
Starring: Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Annabeth Gish Watch on Netflix
Kate Siegel, Annabeth Gish, and Alexandra Essoe as Erin Greene, Sarah Gunning, and Mildred Gunning
Mike Flannagan is back! The time with his wife, bisexual actress Kate Siegel, as the leading lady, Erin. This dark and twisty tale is a stunning take-down of Christianity, and a thoughtful inspection of life and death, all with a supernatural twist. It could be equal parts triggering and cathartic for someone raised Christian, and overall it’s a very compelling story. The canon queer in question here is Sarah Gunning, played by Annabeth Gish, who is the local doctor and Erin’s best friend.
Starring: Kaci Walfall, Cranston Johnson, Alexander Wraith, Mary-Charles Jones, Camila Moreno Watch on Max
Kaci Walfall and Camila Moreno as Naomi and Lourdes
Everything’s seemingly idyllic for Naomi McDuffie in Port Oswego until it isn’t. She’s got two loving and supportive, adoptive parents, a true “ride or die” best friend, and friends that are down for whatever. But then Superman appears and does battle with an enemy above the town square and it’s clear: everything Naomi thought she knew was in doubt. Naomi discovers that superheroes and aliens exist, beyond the pages of the comic books she covets, and — to her great dismay — she could be one of them. An adaptation of the comic book series of the same name, Naomi is brought to the small screen by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship. The adaptation expands Naomi’s world to include Lourdes, the queer owner of the local comic book shop, who wants to be more than just friends with Naomi. But even the show’s A-list creator and lush visuals couldn’t save Naomi from the CW’s Red Wedding and it was canceled after just one season. —Natalie
Starring: Hayden Panettiere, Tawny Cypress, Ali Larter, Milo Ventimiglia, Masi Oka Watch on The CW
Hayden Panettiere and Madeline Zima as Claire and Gretchen
Save the cheerleader. Save the world. Even if you never watched Heroes, you’ve probably heard this phrase, because this ominous tagline was so pervasive while this show about ordinary people with extraordinary abilities became popular. We find out in later seasons that the cheerleader in question, Claire, is bisexual, which we learn via a kiss from her roommate (during sweeps week, of course) and a hand-holding that implied things could have gone places if the show hadn’t ended.
Starring: Robyn Alomar, Akiel Julien, Humberly González, Devyn Nekoda, Kate Drummond Watch on Hulu
Humberly González and Devyn Nekoda as Brooklyn and Sage
Utopia Falls is like if Hunger Games and High School Musical had a strange, futuristic baby. Set in a world where different sectors send teenagers to compete in a high-stakes talent show, the show also uncovers long-kept secrets, including but not limited to a bunker full of archives of long-forgotten music. Hilariously, the AI voice of this archive is Snoop Dogg. Two of the contestants are Brooklyn 2 and Sage 5, despite being each other’s competition, the two girls also start to develop feelings for each other. Which is how I imagine all real competition shows go.
Starring: Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts, Cara Delevinge, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Patti Lupone Watch on Hulu
Billie Lourd, Sarah Paulson, Alison Pill, and Adina Porter as Winter Anderson, Ally and Ivy Mayfair Richards, and Beverly Hope
I know that technically each season of American Horror Story is kind of like its own show, but they’re always at least a little bit queer, and I didn’t want 1/10 of this entire list to be filled up by Ryan Murphy, so I smooshed them together. The show ranges in quality season to season, both on a large scale and on a queer scale, but every time Lana Winters survives another decade of chaos, a lesbian reporter angel gets her wings. Because despite having upwards of 25 LGBTQ+ characters to date, they also come in at the highest kill rate with a whopping 15 buried gays at last count. And honestly I could have missed some, I just grew weary from counting. Everyone has their favorite season of AHS, but as far as queer people go, Murder House (a classic fave, the first), Hotel (hello, Gaga), and Coven (a Stevie Nicks music video, a lesbian witch’s fever dream, and a haunted walking tour had an orgy in New Orleans, what’s not to love?) tend to trend as favorites. Also a shout-out to Asylum, because even though it was far from kind to our gal Lana, she was the Final Girl in the end.
Starring: Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, Willa Holland, Emily Bett Rickards, Caity Lotz Watch on Netflix
Katrina Law as Nyssa al Ghul
If we were judging shows only on their most recent seasons, Arrow would be much lower on this list, but we’re looking at the whole sum of these shows, and when it comes down to it, this DC-comics-based vigilante show gave us Sara Lance, so we are forever in its debt. Sara and her assassin girlfriend Nyssa al Ghul came to us by way of Arrow Season 2, and they were dark and tense and a bit star-crossed, and it was beautiful. Sara dies a few times but it never sticks, and she ends up being so compelling she got her own spinoff, while Nyssa stays back and hangs out with Sara’s sister Laurel for a while, eventually training the future Green Arrow. (And, most importantly, staying alive.)
For a show that could have very easily crossed the line from “a bisexual demon” to “demonizing bisexuality,” Lucifer earned its spot in the Top 100 by never treading those dangerous waters, and in fact compensating for any qualms about that by pairing up the demon Mazikeen (aka Maze) with Eve. Yes, THAT Eve. Their story was heartfelt and touching and not just a lusty corruption tale; there was real, deep love and a few tender moments that really sunk their cloven hooves into my heart.
Starring: Diane Guerrero, April Bowlby, Alan Tudyk, Matt Bomer, Madeline Zima Watch on Max
Diane Guerrero and Madeline Zima as Jane and Casey
A mummy, a human blob, a talking robot, a cyborg, and a woman with multiple personalities all with unique superpowers all live in a mansion haunted by sex ghosts and sometimes they visit a hundred-year-old little girl who lives on a sentient genderqueer street inhabited by drag queens. Oh also there are zombie butts. That sing and dance. Listen, this show is absolutely bonkers in the best, comic-booky way imaginable, and there are also lovely little queer love stories sprinkled throughout.
Starring: John Cena, Danielle Brooks, Elizabeth Ludlow, Chukwudi Iwuji, Jennifer Holland Watch on Max
Elizabeth Ludlow and Danielle Brookes as Keeya and Leota
On paper, Peacemaker is not the kind of show that one might expect would appear on this list. John Cena as a beefy, dim-witted man who loves to smash in every sense of the word. A Suicide Squad-themed show with no Harley Quinn in sight. But as it turns out, there’s a character in the main cast of this show that makes it extremely up our alley. Danielle Brooks’ Leota Adebayo is a lesbian, and easily the best part of the show. Out of her element, and constantly either making hilarious missteps or saying out loud what the audience is thinking, she’s an amazing addition to this cast, and with important (spoilery) ties to the main plot. She has a wife, Keeya, played by Elizabeth Faith Ludlow and they are downright adorable.
Starring: Danielle Rose Russell, Kaylee Kaneshiro, Jenny Boyd, Piper Curda, Lulu Antariksa Watch on Netflix
Kaylee Kaneshiro and Courtney Bandeko as Josie Saltzman and Finch Tarrayo
The Originals was a gayer spinoff of The Vampire Diaries, and Legacies is an even gayer spinoff of that spinoff. (It’s also, generally, lighter and funnier despite occasionally harking back to its emotional ancestors.) Set in a boarding school for supernatural teens, everyone is queer and everything hurts. Witches Josie and Penelope were the couple to watch out for in Season 1, then witch-werewolf-vampire tribrid Hope and Josie keep mentioning their past crushes on each other despite them both having current feelings for the same boy, and eventually Josie finds other girls to kiss, including the new werewolf in town. Not to mention Hope proves what we’ve always known: all vampires are queer, end of story.
69. American Gods (2017 – 2021)
Starring: Ricky Whittle, Emily Browning, Crispin Glover, Bruce Langley, Yetide Badaki Watch on Prime Video
Yetide Badaki as Bilquis
You know you want to watch a show where a goddess occasionally devours her lovers via her vagina, right? No? Well, that’s what this show has. American Gods’ Bilquis is a goddess who will seduce any gender she pleases to turn them into her worshipers, on this show where New Gods and Old Gods live in America to wreak their havoc (or the opposite of that.) This show also features a guest appearance by queer, Indigenous actress Devery Jacobs plays two-spirit, Indigenous Sam Black Crow.
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, Liv Hewson, Skyler Gisondo, Natalie Morales Watch on Netflix
Natalie Morales and Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Anne Garcia and Lisa Palmer
In the second season of Santa Clarita Diet, out queer actress Natalie Morales plays Deputy Anne, who starts dating her dead police partner’s widow, Lisa. They are funny and important to the plot and, despite how many brains got nibbled on over the course of the series, still alive. Bonus: the main family’s teenager is played by Yellowjackets‘ own Liv Hewson!
67. Mr. Robot (2015 – 2019)
Starring: Rami Malek, Carly Chaikin, Christian Slater, Stephanie Corneliussen, Grace Gummer Watch on Prime Video
Grace Gummer and Carly Chaikin as Dominique DiPierro and Darlene Alderson
If you have a thing for quintessential disaster lesbians, this show is for you. Amidst the hacktivism and corruption and conspiracies of the show at large, there is an FBI Agent named Dominique DiPierro who seems so smooth when she’s on the job but is immediately disarmed by Darlene when she asks her what her type is, and later, when she’s in her apartment and starting to make moves. It’s all very relatable. The show is dark and gritty and there is deception and trust issues but maybe these two crazy kids could make it work. Side note, trans actress Eve Lindley appears in four episodes in season four, and her character’s name is Hot Carla, which honestly is #goals.
Starring: Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Lucy Lawless Watch on Disney+
Briana Venskus as Piper
I’ll be perfectly honest with you, most of the points that got AoS to this position came from TV Team points. Because it’s a compelling, action-packed show with found family feels, but they don’t have much to report on re: queer women. Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley are queer in the comics, but that is never mentioned in the show. And Sk’Daisy and Simmons should have kissed decades ago, it seems. We do have Briana Venskus’s Piper and Jolene Anderson’s Olga Pachinko however, so it’s not nothing. Plus, bisexual actress/singer Dove Cameron plays a big part of the shows’ fifth season.
Starring: Emma Ishta, Kyle Harris, Ritesh Rajan, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Allison Scagliotti Watch on Hulu
Anna Akana and Allison Scagliotti as Amanda and Camille
Stitchers imagines a world where a woman with a unique brain chemistry could be “stitched” into newly dead bodies and relive their last memories to help solve their murders. A fascinating concept, brought to life by the main character’s coworker and roommate Camille, a sarcastic, hilarious computer scientist who later reveals herself to be bisexual. She talks about her queerness in that frank, explicit way we don’t see on TV nearly often enough, and her eventual romance with Amanda, played by real life queer actress Anna Akana, was breathtaking (but not literally, which is something I feel has to be said on a list like this.)
Starring: Alex Roe, Eline Powell, Ian Verdun, Rena Owen, Fola Evans-Akingbola Watch on Hulu
Eline Powell and Fola Evans-Akingbola as Ryn and Maddie
If you, like me, are horny for mermaids, or thirsty for poly triad representation, this is the show for you. In a world where a town’s mermaid folklore proves to be based in reality, and the mermaids in question tend to be murdery, Siren somehow balances a mythical mystery, a PSA on the dangers of overfishing, and an endearing throuple between a man, a woman, and a mermaid who is learning how to live on land.
Starring: Sarah Bolger, Emily Beecham, Madeleine Mantock, Ally Ioannides, Maddison Jaizani Buy on Prime Video
Maddison Jaizani and Ally Ioannides as Odessa and Tilda
In this post-apocalyptic world, society is split into factions, and only the strongest survive. With magical abilities as an undercurrent, this show is a combination of stunning visuals and battle scenes that could be mistaken for a ballet. One of the main characters, Tilda, a baby assassin who is ready to grow into her own person, falls for a sex-worker-turned-assassin named Odessa. Just two little Butterflies in love. (The assassins were called Butterflies.)
Starring: Diego Luna, Fiona Shaw, Genevieve O’Reilly, Varda Sethu, Faye Marsay Watch on Disney+
Varada Sethu and Faye Marsay as Cinta and Vel
I could hardly blame you for steering clear of yet another Star Wars spin-off series. The latest iterations have felt more like money grabs than true contributions to the lore. They satiate fanboys with weapons and wizardry and enticing the rest of us with nostalgia and cute merchandise (Baby Yoda!). They’ve been escapism — vacuous, spectacle-filled escapism — and hardly feel worth the investment. But Andor is different; it is so unlike every other Star Wars spin-off that it may be the only one worth seeing. Andor strips away all the hallmarks of those other shows and invests in character building and storytelling. The show goes back to the roots of Star Wars — as political allegory — and showcases the early days of resistance against a fascist Empire. And among those freedom fighters, our gay heroines, Cinta and Vel. Cinta is the fiercest of warriors, driven by the murder of her parents by Stormtroopers. For her, “the struggle always comes first” and what’s left belongs to them. Meanwhile, Vel struggles to balance the life of a revolutionary with the life of a regressive…trapped in a conservative cloister that will, one day, arrange her marriage to a man. It isn’t the most ostentatious display of queerness — and it’s understandable to want and demand more — but the story of rebellion can’t be told without queer people, both in real life and on the small screen. — <strong>Natalie</strong>
Starring: Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder, Kat Graham, Candice King Watch on Peacock
Teressa Liane and Scarlett Byrne as Mary Louise and Nora
I will admit that the TV Team’s score on this really bumped it up higher than it would have been on its own, because despite having two of the most fun queer characters, and despite a threesome that made one of the series’ best characters officially bisexual, they did end up killing three of their four queer ladies by the end. The Vampire Diaries had strong women at its center, queer among them including Original Vampire Rebekah, Vampire/Traveler Nadia, and Heretics (Vampire/Witch hybrids) Nora and Mary Louise. Their stories were complex and delightful and oh how I wish I could stop here because I love this franchise so much. But Nadia met an unfortunate end, and while if it happened in 2024 I would have argued Nora and Mary Louise, and their love that lasted literal centuries, went out in a blaze of glory, they died during the Lesbian Massacre of 2016, and it was the last wlw relationship we ever saw on the show, so they’ll get no defense from me on that front.
Chyler Leigh is all grown up and playing a mom to a teenager in this Hallmark show about family, love, and time travel. The Landry family has a secret: there is a pond on their property that can send them back in time. Shenanigans (and epic 90s needle drops) ensue. A character in season one has two moms, and the second season features a non-binary character named Casey played by non-binary actor Vaughan Murrae.
Starring: Italia Ricci, Morgan Taylor Campbell, Rhianna Jagpal, Celina Martin, Kyra Zagorsky Watch on Netflix
Rhianna Jagpal and Celina Martin as Abbi and Hannah
Another show that I’ll be forever salty that it only got one season. It has everything I love in a sci-fi romp: people discovering their powers and testing their limits, found family, a reluctant adultier adult who pretends to be annoyed by the youths but ends up feeling connected to them anyway. Plus, it gave us two queer characters of color: Abbi, who is asexual, and Hannah, who is cool with it. It would have been cool to get an entire season with those two as a couple, but what we do get is delightful and feels fresh and new. The cast also included non-binary Australian Rhys Nicholson, and Rekha Sharma who I don’t think is gay herself but she has played gay before, as recently as Roswell, New Mexico.
Starring: Lena Headey, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, Emilia Clarke, Natalie Dormer Watch on Max
Gemma Whelan and Indira Varma as Yara Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand
Game of Thrones isn’t known for its respect for women, and the show does a better job of it than the books, if you can believe it. For this reason, maybe it’s better that the show only gave us three canon queer women over the course of its eight seasons. Yara Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand unapologetically enjoyed the company of women (and each other), as well as a sex worker Ellaria entertained once called Marei. A lot of us were rooting for Yara to take her seat next to an Iron Throne with Daenerys upon it, but sadly that was not our fate.
Starring: Shantel VanSanten, Jodi Balfour, Krys Marshall, Sonya Walger, Meghan Leathers Watch on Apple TV+
Jodi Balfour and Meghan Leathers as Ellen Waverly and Pam Horton
For All Mankind is a what-if imagining of a future where the space race was more diverse and neverending. Set in the late 60s/early 70s, Ellen the astronaut (played by Jodi Balfour from Bomb Girls) can’t exactly reveal to NASA that she is a lesbian who used to date Pam the bartender. Instead she finds herself a beard (a gay man himself, because the best beards are mutual beards) and shoots for the stars. And the presidency.
Starring: Eliza Taylor, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Paige Turco, Marie Avgeropoulos, Lindsey Morgan Watch on Netflix
Eliza Taylor and Alycia Debnam-Carey as Clarke Griffin and Lexa kom Trikru.
I don’t think I really have to explain this one to you. I think if you’ve followed queer TV at all since 2014 (or hell, 2016), you’ve heard about The 100. About Clarke and Lexa, the bisexual leader of her peers who all grew up on a space station then were unceremoniously dropped on a potentially uninhabitable earth, and the woman who leads the people who were already there that fell in love with her. About Lexa and Clarke, the Commander of Trikru and the Commander of Death. Or, at the very least, about Lexa kom Trikru, whose death in 2016, amongst too many others, after a long line of dead queer characters before her, launched an industry-wide pledge to treat LGBTQ+ characters better. It makes sense to me that this show lands in the middle of a list of 100 shows. Because when it was good, it was very, very good. Clarke and Lexa were loved by many, and still are. But then it betrayed the fans’ trust by not only killing Lexa when they teased her survival, but having a lifelong trained warrior struck down by a bullet not even meant for her, in an all-too-familiar situation that Buffy fans were still healing from. I think The 100 is a good milestone in our history, a point we can look to as a beacon, to see how far we’ve come, to remember how far we have left to go.
Starring: Claire Holt, Phoebe Tonkin, Leah Pipes, Riley Voelkel, Danielle Rose Russell Watch on Prime Video
Riley Voelkel and Christina Moses as Freya and Keelin
The Originals looked at The Vampire Diaries‘ Thelma and Louise vampire couple, and said, “Oh yeah, watch this.” And thus was born Keelin and Freya, a werewolf/witch duo for the ages. Their relationship starts…strangely, to say the least, but it develops slowly and deeply until the two ultimately not only get the first wedding to go off without a hitch (read: murder) in the TVD universe.
Starring: Raymond Lee, Caitlin Bassett, Mason Alexander Park, Nanrisa Lee, Eliza Taylor Watch on Peacock
Wilder Yari as Dean
A remake of the late 80s/early 90s show of the same name, Quantum Leap follows Dr. Ben Song as he leaps from person to person through the past in an attempt to return to his correct timeline. Along the way, he meets queer and trans people and their very special episodes tell stories of trans inclusion in sports, coming out as non-binary to your siblings, and more. The show was unfortunately canceled after two seasons.
Starring: Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Lizze Broadway, Maddie Phillips, London Thor Watch on Prime Video
Jaz Sinclair and London Thor as Marie and Jordan
The Boys‘ younger sibling, Gen V takes place in a school for powered people. It keeps with the general conceit of it’s big brother – “what if assholes had powers” – but instead of full grown assholes, it’s young adult assholes. Though of course, like in The Boys, power doesn’t go to EVERYONE’S head. But also like in The Boys, even the best intentions can end in bloodshed. The show’s core crew includes Marie, a blood-bender, and Jordan, a dual-gender shape shifter, who try to navigate starting a relationship amidst the chaos.
Starring: Jodie Whittaker, Jenna Coleman, Pearl Mackie, Yasmin Finney, Alex Kingston Watch on Max
Neve McIntosh and Catrin Stewart as Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint
Before the Thirteenth Doctor graced us with her presence, along with her enamored companion Yaz, queering the scene indefinitely, Doctor Who has been making us feel seen across space and time for a long while. There was Twelve’s companion Bill and her girlfriend Heather, Clara Oswold who made out with Jane Austen (albeit off-screen), the legendary River song, and a Silurian and her wife: Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint. Here’s to decades more of saving the universe, the timeline, and the queers.
Starring: Stella Maeve, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Hale Appleman, Summer Bishil, Jade Tailor, Brittany Curran Watch on Netflix
Kacey Rohl as Marina
Imagine a world where a bunch of messed up, self-absorbed college students had the capacity for magic and were deemed rulers of a fantastical world. That’s The Magicians. They bounce back and forth between the real world and Fillory, a land long thought to be fictional, while trying to save their friends, their worlds, their sanity, and sometimes even all of magic. This is another show where I ship every combination of the main ladies, and Margo is confirmed sexually fluid. Outside of the core cast, we also had a little visit from a (female) Pirate King (appropriately attracted to our own High King Margo), an unfortunate aside from a lesbian named Kira who asked to be killed, and, the lovely revelation that Marina has a girlfriend that she keeps jumping timelines for so she can get the relationship right. (Also I know this is not necessarily why we’re here but almost all the boys are bisexual too, which is awesome.)
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Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.
What a list! Now I have lots of new shows to check out! Happy to see Wynonna Earp in the top ten. Hopefully that will bring new fans who love it as much as I do. Thanks for putting this together!
Does wanting strap-on sex all the time mean my girlfriend might leave me for a man?
Q:
So, I, a cis, masc of center lesbian in my early 30s, and I am dating a bisexual cis woman in her early 30s. We’ve been together about 9 months. I’ve had a number of relationships with women. I’m her first serious relationship with a woman tho she’s hooked up with women before. At first, we were all over each other, fucking wherever we could find the space, we both have super high sex drives, nobody has ever matched me like her for sex drives. It’s still hot, but we started incorporating toys, and it’s become obvious that no matter what else we do or how much fun those other things are, what she wants most is for me to fuck her with a strap-o...
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Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
I’m in her closet trying on bras like I’m her little sister or her lover or, I suppose, a friend.
We met for the first time two hours ago and this immediate intimacy feels exciting. It was a coffee date of like minds — a cis queer woman filmmaker and the younger trans critic who gave her maximalist first feature an enthusiastic review. (A review she posted to Instagram along with a video of her dancing in her underwear that led to our Instagram mutuality and then this coffee and then me trying on her bras.)
It’s Lesbian Visibility Day, and I’m dressed the part. I’m wearing a scissoring t-shirt, merch from my new freelance employer, pink denim shorts that let my little ass hang out, and Docs. My face glows with the combination of laser hair removal soreness from that morning, makeup, and sweat that’s accumulated after the trio of buses required to get from Sherman Oaks to West Hollywood.
Two months since I said no to continuing a life of domesticity, I hadn’t said no to much else. Tinder dates with people confused by my body? Yes. Tagging along with my actress roommate to hang out with her casually transmisogynist lesbian friends? Yes. Going out for drinks with my bisexual coworker who liked to complain about her boyfriend while touching my shoulders? Yes. Being staffed at the lesbian website alongside cis queer women I’d idolized for years? Obviously yes.
That last yes led to this yes and yes yes yes as the filmmaker daydreamed about the work we’d both make and could possibly make together. Then another yes when I mentioned needing a black bralette for my evening’s outfit and she said to skip the trip to the mall and take one of hers.
I remove the scissoring shirt and put on the first bralette. I look in the mirror, delighted by my finally growing breasts and the combination of cool and danger I feel getting naked in the home of this hot person I just met.
I want this encounter to go from erotically charged to overtly sexual, but I have no intention of ruining this new professional connection — or this personal high. I change back into my shirt, thank the filmmaker, exchange a hug, and then I’m back on the bus.
I’m relieved to not be rushed. The last item of my outfit secured, I can write or continue my L Word rewatch before heading out to the evening’s festivities.
I pass my time on the bus making a Twitter thread of fictional queer women characters ranked by my intensity of crush. I present my lesbianism to the cis world like a child showing her parents a new drawing. Look what I’ve created from myself, for you. Do you like it? Do you like me? One of my new freelance coworkers comments on it, and I tuck the validation in my gut for the evening.
When I get home, my roommate talks to me about her breakup until I have to excuse myself to get ready. I’m wearing tight black velvet pants, a black purse, a checkered black and white cropped blazer, the bralette. Everything thrifted — except the bralette, of course, and my Docs.
The bus rides are too long to feel nervous the whole time. But as I approach Downtown LA, I feel my bra strap like a meditation. This token from the hot filmmaker is a reminder I belong in the space I’m headed.
It’s Lesbian Visibility Day, and I’m a lesbian.
Not just a lesbian.
A cool LA lesbian who hangs out with filmmakers and was now staffed at the website hosting this event.
(I feel myself slipping from the stylistic choice of present tense into the more accurate past. It’s hard to honor the girl who walked into a room of celebrities that would now be a room of friends. I want to tell her that after more than half a decade of writing for the internet you learn that liking someone’s writing does not mean they’re your soulmate. I want to tell her that some of these famous celesbians are actually bisexual trans guys. I want to tell her that she is drawn to this room for a reason, that it’s different — and can be treated differently — than the other lesbian spaces she’s tried.)
I linger in the lobby waiting for the doors to open as internet celesbians skip the line. When we’re finally let in, my eyes immediately go to the owner of the website standing by the open bar. I wonder if I should go over and say hi. After all, we’ve been Twitter mutuals for a couple months and recently exchanged some emails. She had asked people on Twitter for their favorite lesbian literary sex scenes for a piece and I responded with Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. She then emailed me asking if I could send her my favorite excerpts. Sending sex scenes to my biggest writer crush had the same charge as trying on the filmmaker’s bras — the 25-year-old part of my brain understanding the context, my baby dyke brain overwhelmed with confused desire.
Despite — not because of — my crush, I walk over to her. Even though she is the person I’m most intimidated by, she is also the person I know best. (Parasocially and actually based on that email exchange and half a dozen tweet back-and-forths.) She gives me a nice greeting — thank God she recognizes me — and we have a friendly chat before she’s pulled away for host duties.
Luckily, someone else swoops in. If the owner’s greeting was a 7, this person gives me a 9. She also works for the site and knows who I am. Her name is familiar, but since she’s not a writer I mostly fake my recognition. I can’t believe this hot person seems so excited to meet me. If I began the night with one inappropriate work crush, it quickly becomes clear I will end the night with another.
Other people who I know arrive, people part of or adjacent to queer spaces I had entered as a hopeful kernel and exited as an indefinable burnt mass. They seem excited to see me. Maybe writing for this site has raised my caché, especially in this space. I feel torn by my desire to embrace this rise in status and the inner voice telling me to instead return to my hot freelance employers and to try and meet the various celesbians getting ready on-stage.
The event is an HBO-sponsored live reading of Anne Lister love letters. There’s some obvious drama happening between two of the readers, and my empathy feels for their discomfort while my desire to live in an episode of The L Word is delighted. I yearn for chaos, because chaos has been modeled to me as queerness — by TV and, to be honest, much of the writing on this website. But this time the drama remains understated. Everyone is a professional and everyone makes it through the event with plenty of fun and jokes.
Afterward, the people I knew before this event invite me out. I say no. I say now that I’m officially part of the website I need to help clean-up. No one has told me this, but I say it anyway and then go find my new crush to turn my lie into truth. We fold some chairs up, and she invites me out with “everyone.” The people I knew before are not a part of everyone. I’ve made the cut — they haven’t.
We’re not going to a hip gay dance party and certainly not a lesbian bar. (It’s 2019 and none exist in LA.) We’re going to Canter’s Jewish Deli, a place I went to daily many summers before when I was straight, when I was a boy, when I was working as an assistant for an up-and-coming actor. It feels like a sort of serendipity. This was a place I went in my old life, adjacent to fame. Now I’m going again, as myself, adjacent to a different kind of fame.
Somehow, I end up in a car with my new crush and my old crush. It’s just the three of us. They’re talking about the event without censorship. If this deli excursion is for the inner circle, this car ride is the inner inner circle. And I’m a part of it.
(I feel myself slipping again. Because I know there was no inner circle. Those other people weren’t invited simply because they were not as close with the group. This wasn’t high school. There was no clique. There were just people who were friends or wanted to become friends or were happy certain people were now writing for their website. I wish I could tell my younger self that. I also wish I could tell her the two people in the car with her — the two people who were giving her more and more crush feelings with every joke and song choice — were dating. Yes, dating each other.)
By the time we arrive at Canter’s, I feel energized by possibility. The owner of the website was always a long-shot crush. But this new person! This new person is so magnetic and seems so enthusiastic about me and is so hot. I could let go of my misguided fantasy and shift my crush feelings toward this person.
The fate of the booth has other ideas. I end up next to my initial crush and feel self-conscious about the rush of feelings when our thighs touch. There’s nothing flirtatious about this. We’re just a group of nine squeezed into a table for six. My enjoyment of this physical touch makes me feel like a creep, but if I move, I’d touch the stranger on the other side of me even more and that feels weird in a different way.
I order a patty melt, because I’m famished. The realization that I’ve barely eaten today out of nerves overpowers any fears of onion breath. I also realize those nerves have started to dissipate. I’m still neurotic, I still have OCD, I’m still filled with shame. But everyone at this table is so kind and welcoming and makes me feel like I belong. I’ve spent the months since moving to LA performing for queer spaces and, finally, I feel permission to let the performance stop. It feels like this group of people might actually like me, all of me.
After we eat, I spot someone familiar out of the corner of my eye. It’s the actor I used to assist — now more arrived than up-and-coming. This is still his spot. I excuse myself from the table and rush up to him before I can remember that since transitioning we’ve only talked via email and text. I’ve never felt more like a hot dyke, but I suppose I’m still recognizable as the boy he once knew. He gives me an excited greeting and we briefly catch up before I return to the table.
My new friends are looking at me in shock. The most famous person at the table, someone who I’ve not had the chance to talk to much yet, laughs and says, “Drew. Do you know famous people??” I laugh and respond that he’s not that famous, secretly relishing the affirmation that I’m not some superfan trying to hang out with these celesbians, but a person who has always belonged with famous people.
As people are ordering cars and saying goodbyes, that most famous person invites me to see the latest Marvel movie with all of them that weekend. And so, I did it. I’ve officially made lesbian friends. I’ve officially become a lesbian. I officially belong.
(My narrative was always that the encounter with the actor led to the invite to the movie. As if I wouldn’t have been deemed worthy otherwise. Years later, I sent a mushy birthday text to my friend thanking her for being so cool and always inviting me along when I first moved to LA. She responded with a loving dismissiveness — no favor had been done, why wouldn’t I have been invited?)
(I think sometimes the best way to let go of the need for external validation is to receive it. It’s a nice thought that we can do work on ourselves removed from the world around us, but I learned how to trust friendships by finding trustworthy friends. I learned how to be vulnerable in romantic relationships by finding someone who invited my vulnerability. I learned to let go of the need to be included in lesbian spaces by being invited into the best lesbian space.)
(I don’t like going back into my mental gymnastics of half a decade ago. But I feel proud of that girl all the same. To quote a pair of famous cis lesbians, she burned her life down. She sought out the life she wanted and she found it. Better than she could have imagined.)
(For years, I said Lesbian Visibility Day 2019 was the best day of my life. But, upon reflection, that’s no longer true. Because when you live the life you want to live, every day can become Lesbian Visibility Day. And the excitement of novelty and the relief of risk cannot match the new normal of the life I shaped.)
(I’m no longer friends with the filmmaker — I’m not really sure why — and her bra no longer sits at the bottom of my underwear drawer. I kept it long after it became too worn, a memento of my new life. But I’ve once again moved, now in an even newer life, with no need for this reminder.)
(I’ve become my own reminder.)
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
This is heartwarming. And heart-wrenching and nerve-wracking, and finally heartwarming again. We’re glad you’re here, that you made it, that now people can have parasocial relationships with *you* 😅. My life is not so glamorous but I am familiar with that aching desire to fit in, to be part of the somebodies, and the continual wonder if I’ve made it.
Thanks for writing this, even though, and because, it gave me complicated feelings.
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Drew, the way I was so excited when I saw this had published.
I’ll be thinking about so many things you’ve said here for a long time. Thank you for a piece where I can feel the ways you are revisiting your past with serious clarity and honesty. Really such a gift.
Also, inspired use of parenthesis.
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Wow this was so great! The emotions come through so clearly. I felt like I was reading my memories – I have felt really similar nerves and excitement and pride being newly out and bisexual in queer spaces and this was such a (painful) throwback to that jumbled mass of emotions lol. I have kept a pin a cool older lesbian gave me for years, long after we lost contact. Thanks Drew!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Contrary to popular belief, contemporary poetry is alive and well in the world — every year there are new and beautiful books of poetry to consume, both from established and emerging poets.
With the release of Taylor Swift’s eleventh album The Tortured Poets Department, poetry has been on the mainstream mind more than usual (which is pretty unusual). For most folks, Swift’s music is much more readily available than access to good poetry — with this post, I seek to remedy that! For those interested in Swift’s lyricism and arguable “queerbaiting,” I raise you out-and-proud queer poets with books that are revelatory, revolutionary, and/or just plain good. While I’m happy Swift has increased the use of the word “poet” in my life tenfold, which is hard to do, I don’t want the people in my life to only associate poetry with her album. There is such a ripe orchard of poetry by queer poets of all styles and backgrounds, and whose books are a much more worthy investment than four different vinyls with slight variations on a sad sepia portrait of a rich blonde white woman (I said what I said).
So, which queer poet should you read based on your favorite song from TTPD? Also known as, which queer poet should you read instead of listening to TTPD — whichever feels more accurate. Hey, I’m just the messenger.
Track 1: “Fortnight”
If you can ignore the cringey forced use of the word “fortnight” when she could’ve just said “two weeks,” and even more so if you enjoy this track’s humor laced with a sense of desperate reality, you may enjoy Chen Chen.
Chen, author of When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency, as well as several fabulous chapbooks, is full of poetry that is as funny and light as it is cutting and grief-laden. Think of a sharp kitchen knife slicing into a decadent chocolate cake, and you have a sense of how it feels to read Chen: at once humorous, at once dangerous, altogether a naughty, joyful experience with no lack of honesty in the deepest sadnesses of a queer life.
Track 2: “The Tortured Poets Department”
Swift is right to say she is “not Patti Smith,” and while I’m unsure who is “not Dylan Thomas,” none of her past boyfriends fit such a bill. Whether or not you’d like Swift to go gently into that good night, one poet you may want to spend a long evening with is Tommy Pico.
The author of four books, each an epic poem, Pico’s work is deliciously referential, and engaged with romantic and sexual frustration. IRL, which hinges on the experience of sending a risky sext and then distracting oneself from potential rejection, and Junk, a breakup poem turned epic narrative, are two specific recommendations I would give to people also sick of faux art bros as Swift criticizes in this song. But Pico is more than levity and pop cultural references — his books are also meditations on the reality of living a queer Indigenous person in the contemporary United States. The wit of Pico’s references are by no means a cheapening of his words — if anything, it brings his compelling, rich world into robust color.
Track 3: “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
In his poem, “Meditations in an Emergency,” Frank O’Hara says: “Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names / keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which / to venture forth.” An idea Swift plays with in this track (and many others), O’Hara feels a natural suggestion. While O’Hara’s seminal Lunch Poems was published a mere two years before his death, it has left an undisputed mark on contemporary poetry. I have seen “Having a Coke with You” reposted on Twitter/Tumblr so often it is easy to forget how it made me feel the first time I read it. But I assert it is one love poem not even Swift could write a comparable emulation of.
Track 4: “Down Bad”
If you’re interested in (and potentially confused by) the tragic-love-affair-as-alien-abduction analogy used in “Down Bad”, you may want to read Franny Choi. Both Choi’s chapbook Death by Sex Machine and later full-length Soft Science play with the “alienness” of gender and race, often through a cyborg speaker. The works ask of us what does it mean to be a machine, and how is the body — as it struggles to navigate man-made societal conventions — both like and unlike the literal machines it seeks to dominate? With tender ruminations of intimacy and consciousness, specifically as they appeal to queer Asian-American femininity, Choi’s works are unlike anything I’ve read.
Track 5: “So Long, London”
Who among us has been unable to walk down a street, into a restaurant, or even fly into a city because of its associations with a past lover? Hell, after my last breakup I couldn’t look at a pair of clogs without crying.
While time heals all wounds, when you’re in that waiting period before the healing when it just hurts, a song like “So Long, London” might do the trick. And if that’s the case, I think you should read Alicia Mountain. While Mountain’s work is not all about breakups and cities, there is a reverence for landscapes and what they can hold of us. Her debut High Ground Coward, followed by her revelatory book of four sonnets Four in Hand, both concern themselves with queer ecology: how is the beloved like a rock, a stream, a “tectonic shift?” How is the queer body the space it occupies and the space it leaves behind?
Track 6: “But Daddy I Love Him”
A song less about a doomed love affair, and more about Swift’s complicated experience with fame (she really hates being famous, but she really loves being famous). Or rather, “But Daddy I Love Him” is about being perceived, being assigned a certain way of being by others without consideration for how Swift thinks of herself. What queer person is not familiar with being scrutinized and judged, and thrown into perceptions by others that do not feel that they fit?
I could put a lot of queer poets here, but the one I’ll choose is Eileen Myles — why? Myles is prolific in the literary scene, not only a poet but a fiction and nonfiction writer with numerous publications. All of Myles’ work, including their fiction, deal with a particular persona of theirs. Every piece of writing is told to us through a strong I, a speaker by the same name of Eileen, and so the blending of reality and fiction in their work is hardly ever distinguishable. Any point in their vast catalog is worthwhile, but when it comes to poetry, I recommend starting with their latest Evolution, or I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems for a more thorough exploration.
Track 7: “Fresh Out the Slammer”
I would be remiss not to mention Richard Siken and his pivotal Crush somewhere in this article. If you’ve been in any poetry Internet circles, the three poets you’ve likely been most subjected to are Mary Oliver (also a great one), Rupi Kaur (no comment), and Siken. Crush in many ways is a queer keystone to contemporary gay poetry — while oft-quoted and at times mischaracterized out of context, the work stands as a gateway drug of sorts for many into contemporary poetry. You yourself, dear reader, have probably heard lines from such poems as “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” and “Scheherazade” without even knowing. A collection deeply entrenched in gay longing and loss, I couldn’t recommend it more. Though I must say, Siken’s second lesser-known collection War of the Foxes, is just as compelling a work. And I anticipate his forthcoming I Do Know Some Things will solidify itself similarly as a Siken classic.
Track 8: “Florida!!!!”
I’m not sure how Taylor Swift managed to get Florence & the Machine on this track, but she elevates “Florida!!!!” from a simpler breakup song to an orchestral swamp ghost anthem. That being said, I’d use this song as an excuse to recommend K Iver.
While not a Florida native, Iver’s work is exquisitely and importantly Southern. Their debut book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco catalogs a history, both literal and metaphysical, of the speaker’s old lover, a trans man who dies by suicide at 27. The poems follow the speaker’s own later-in-life trans journey, adjacent to this relationship and its influence years and years later. Situated in Mississippi, the influence of the South strengthens the vivid, gorgeous, sorrowful world of this book, where grief and gratitude dance a complicated dance.
Track 9: “Guilty as Sin?”
While Swift’s version of a sexy song is still very much aligned with heterosexual modesty (to each their own), the eagerness to engage with the illicit leads me to sam sax.
sax, admittedly one of my personal core poetic influences, is a strikingly prolific contemporary poet. In their three books and assorted chapbooks, they are consistently interested in the excavation of queer desire and intimacy, and the shame that often follows. From their book madness, which examines the history of homosexuality-as-mental-disorder, to PIG, which conceptualizes the pig as many things but specifically a stand-in for queer sexuality, they are no stranger to the shame and disgust that can come from existing as a queer person. Where Taylor Swift struggles to place herself in an unflattering light, sax has no qualms about dancing with the grotesque, the ugly, the grieving — that is, with all aspects of the queer experience, whether palatable or not.
Track 10: “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
Admittedly, I feel a strange resistance to assigning this poet to this song, because it almost feels insulting to stoop their work down to a Taylor Swift song comparison (no offense, Swifties). But I would be remiss to not include them in a list of essential queer poets. So forgive me, spirit of Audre Lorde — but I must recommend her work here.
If you’ve never familiarized yourself with Lorde’s work, first off, that proves you never took a Gender Studies class in college, and secondly, in a way I’m jealous you get to experience her brilliance for the first time. A pioneer in lesbian (especially Black lesbian) theory and writing, Lorde is an essential pillar to any engagement with queer poetry or activism. The book I most want to recommend is The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, but given that that book is a veritable tome of 500 pages, and even I find that intimidating, instead I recommend The Black Unicorn, a beautiful, essential book of the Black lesbian experience.
Track 11: “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”
With a robust bibliography of poems that tangle themselves with longing, lust, spirituality, and mortality, Carl Phillips is, in my opinion, one of the contemporary greats. The first time I read his book Riding Westward in a graduate school course, I was blown away.
Described on Goodreads as: “What happens when the world as we’ve known it becomes divided, when the mind becomes less able–or less willing–to distinguish reality from what is desired?” Riding Westward — and much of Phillips’ work — engage with an abstract, questioning syntax, a speaker who is at once unsure and so certain. It’s hard to recommend just one book (similar to Myles), but if I had to pick, I’d also behoove you to read Reconnaissance, and/or Pale Colors in a Tall Field.
Track 12: “loml”
Forgive me, but at this point in the article, I must engage in what I can only call good faith friend nepotism — good faith in that trust me, just because this poet is my friend, doesn’t mean they’re not also a brilliant light in poetry. Matt Mitchell, an intersex bisexual culture critic and poet, may be a dear friend, but they are also one of the smartest people I know.
Mitchell writes beautiful poems with juicy cultural references, as well as meditations on masculinity, gender, sexuality, and home. However, they are also the head music editor for Paste Magazine (which may be a faux pas to include mention of, considering the current Swiftie political climate), where they have interviewed and reviewed artists as varied as Mitch Rowland, Girl Scout, Faye Webster, Bob Dylan, and more. Mitchell’s poetry, in particular, has been a personal and professional grace for me to engage with. While (for now) they have retired from poetry (we’ll see about that), their books Vampire Burrito and The Neon Hollywood Cowboy are still available for purchase.
Track 13: “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”
Again, another friend of mine, but again, yet another voice you should be reading if you want the next breakout thing in contemporary queer poetry. In this track, Swift laughs that she’s “miserable, but nobody even knows!” And that through her devastating misery, she can still accomplish what many of us can only dream of. When I asked my friend, the poet Rob Macaisa Colgate, what song he’d claim, he picked this one, saying “It’s literally me having a psychotic episode, taking a deep breath, and opening the Zoom link.”
Colgate has dedicated his writing not only to the queer experience, but to the Filipino and disabled experiences — what does it mean to move through a world that is not built for you thrice over? His brilliant work can be read all over the internet, and his debut play My Love Is Water and debut poetry collection Hardly Creatures are both set for publication in 2025.
Track 14: “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
Swift’s martyr complex jumps out in dazzling colors in this track (“I would’ve died for your sins / Instead, I just died inside”… is certainly something a person can say). Whereas for Taylor Swift the most essential danger is a “small man,” for Jericho Brown in The Tradition, danger is a mutable force within everyday life as a Black queer American. According to its publisher Copper Canyon, “beauty abounds… despite and inside of the evil that pollutes the everyday.” The Tradition is one of those rare books that demands to be read slowly, so one can take in the entire wealth of emotional complexity of a human spirit in its minute stanzas. Brown’s formal, technical skill is outstanding, and his control of the body and its images even more so.
Track 15: “The Alchemy”
“The Alchemy” was a hard song to find a good poet to recommend for, because, well, the song is bad. However, there is a silver lining: while Swift seems unironically to elevate the all-American good boy and girl-football-Super Bowl narrative to a nauseating degree, another poet dismantles such ideas expertly and deftly.
In an interview published in Guernica, Morgan Parker says, “My work is focused on Americana. But I also hate it, and it hates me back.” The Black American experience is taken apart and put back together by Parker in her work, and her books There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce and Magical Negro are particularly some of the most captivating poetry collections you could get your hands on.
Track 16: “Clara Bow”
And finally, we’ve reached the last track on the album (because I refuse to acknowledge the second half of the release in this article, I might go bonkers if I do), a track in which Taylor Swift laments the inevitability of her star waning, as happened with Clara Bow and Stevie Nicks. She fears which young starlet will enter into the space Swift leaves, however involuntarily. Who to put here? Well, as a song deeply concerned with one’s self and being seen as a star, I would like to plug: me.
Okay, okay, a little silly, but in the spirit of Swift’s entrepreneurial #girlboss spirit, how could I not plug my own work? If you’re interested in reading my lesbian poetry, I have two chapbooks: Soft Obliteration and Love Me With the Fierce Horse Of Your Heart, and have several poems published in various literary magazines. You can find them on my website gabriellegracehogan.com.
If you’ve made it to the end of this article, congratulations! You are now privy to 15 amazing, essential, and/or just plain good names in poetry (and my one shameless self-promotion). Whether you think The Tortured Poets Department is pop music’s saving grace, or a fall from grace, you’re sure to find at least one poet on this list that will remind you that poetry is alive and well, and very, very gay.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Gabrielle Grace Hogan (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry has been published by TriQuarterly, CutBank, Salt Hill, and others, and has been supported by the James A. Michener Fellowship and the Ragdale Foundation. In the past, she has served as Poetry Editor of Bat City Review, and as Co-Founder/Co-Editor of You Flower / You Feast, an anthology of work inspired by Harry Styles. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can find her on Instagram @gabriellegracehogan, her website www.gabriellegracehogan.com, or wandering a gay bar looking lost.
I opened this article thinking “Ugh I don’t really care for Taylor Swift but I *do* like queer poets, guess I should—”
> There is such a ripe orchard of poetry by queer poets of all styles and backgrounds, and whose books are a much more worthy investment than four different vinyls with slight variations on a sad sepia portrait of a rich blonde white woman (I said what I said).
I FEEL SO SEEN. <3
Also because more queer poets = better, Natalie Diaz and Eduardo Corral are both fantastic!
The third episode of Under the Bridge, ““Blood Oath,” moves the story out of unknowing — a space where the worst thing could be true but isn’t true just yet, a space where hope and fear can exist in equal measure — and into a tragic certainty that opens up a whole new set of questions. Reena’s body has been found, and her heartbroken mother confirms that the body in the morgue is her daughter. The autopsy reveals that the confirmed attack on Reena under the bridge was only the first of two, that she was later beaten again and drowned, although the injuries suffered during her second beating could have killed her if the drowning hadn’t happened at all. Josephine’s claim that she killed Reena is proven false, and by the episode’s end, we find out who did kill Reena, and get a pretty solid idea of who specifically saw it happen.
Then, amid all of this, there is Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone hooking up in the bathroom of Connie’s Bar, a bar that only serves one kind of gin and apparently doesn’t play music unless you put a quarter in the jukebox, at which point the dance floor gets immediately lit. It can feel a bit weird to care so deeply for obviously very intellectual reasons about this relationship but it’s not incongruous to the entire narrative, and gives the story a light charge without taking away from the overall vibe. This relationship between Cam (Gladstone) and Rebecca (Keough) is unfolding itself from the complicated past they share, seemingly as lovers and as friends. Their relationship is already full of mess and grief and broken trust, just like everything else in the story. But this bathroom is where despair and grief and physical urgency and confusion and ghosts can all exist together at the same time and where for a minute, desire can drown everything else out. For a minute, what we have is a scene that is simply quite hot, and my lord Lily Gladstone!!!!!!!
To rewind a bit — “Blood Oath,” like other episodes, contains two timelines, one in the present and one several months before the murder. In the before-times, we watch Reena embedding herself with Josephine, Kelly, and Dusty. While her relationship with Dusty is sweet and innocent (we learn so much about who they are from that brief scene of them together without Kelly or Josephine), Josephine and Kelly are cut from a different cloth and it’s a very bad cloth. I wrote last week that Josephine reminds me of Scar in The Lion King, and this episode, Kelly reminds me of Shenzi, Banzai and Ed. The closer Reena gets to being accepted by Josephine, the more frustrated she is with her parents, who open the episode by removing the door from her room, and end it with #1 Dad Manjit insisting she bring her new friends over for dinner so they can meet her new friends.
We also get more background on the “CMC” “tattoo” Reena has on her hand — it’s Josephine’s gang, which is formed in the flashback episodes, wherein Josephine aims to make a gang unlike all other gangs, one that’ll “keep shit tight” like the mafia, and, according to Kelly, will murder people and chop their heads off like the Mexican drug cartels. So they call it the “Crip Mafia Cartel.” Reena and Dusty aren’t allowed in yet, but Kelly’s Josephine’s first member. “Live by the gun, die by the gun,” they say and then Kelly and Josephine cut their hands and then shake their hands so they literally have blood on their hands.
In the present, Josephine’s frantically attempting to keep control over her story and maintain her badass reputation while also plainly confused about how Reena ended up dead. Samara’s growing suspicious of her baby-faced boyfriend Warren’s involvement in the beating and Reena’s death, while Warren is preoccupied by all that and also by the fact that, clearly left adrift by his parents, he’s got nowhere to live, eat or do laundry. By the episode’s end, Josephine spots Reena’s boots, caked in mud, in Kelly’s closet, and Kelly tells Josephine she did it all for her.
Then we have Cam and Rebecca. Rebecca is eager to tell Cam about Josephine’s confession, but Cam’s already ruled Josephine out based on the timing of the security camera footage and the distance from the bridge to Seven Oaks. Inside, out of uniform, with a glass of whiskey, in a white t-shirt, with her hair pulled back, Cam is very hot, by he way.
“You know this is an active homicide, right?” Cam asks.
“Yes, I know, and I’m trying to help you,” Rebecca insists.
“Help me do what exactly? My job? You hate cops.”
“Yeah well, I like one cop.”
Cam’s building walls quickly. She’s finally working a case that makes her job feel worthwhile for reasons unrelated to impressing her father or wanting a ticket off the island, and she fears Becca fucking it up for her. We learn that Rebecca left the island suddenly and Cam’s still hurt over it. But Cam pushes too hard when Rebecca brings up how tough it was for her to see a girl’s body pulled out of the water and Cam is too caught up in pushing her away to remember why that is, that once Becca saw the same thing happen to her brother. The regret is immediate and eventually brings us to Connie’s Bar, where Cam apologizes and then so does Rebecca — for leaving so abruptly and for losing touch.
“We didn’t lose touch, Rebecca, you fell off the face of the earth,” Cam corrects her.
“Yeah well I was a kid, and i was going through a lot when Gabe died, and you shouldn’t have had to take care of me or… give anything up for me.”
“I didn’t give anything up,” Cam counters.
They poke at each other a bit, about Rebecca getting Raj’s number at the memorial (for journalism!), about Cam seeming a little jealous to hear it. Cam says Raj won’t talk to them because he doesn’t trust cops. (It’s a benign detail here — of course a person of color living on a very white island in Canada doesn’t trust cops — but we find out later that Raj has a personal reason to distrust cops. Manjit’s got a (now-expunged) criminal record for something he didn’t do. Raj is also frustrated, knowing the cops are more interested in finding a family member to blame than in grilling the multiple teenagers talking freely about their own involvement in the murder.)
Photo by: Darko Sikman/Hulu)
But then Rebecca’s pushing back her own ghosts — she wants to dance. She puts “The Passenger” by Siouxsie & The Banshees into the jukebox and starts hopping around with her arms in the air, feeling so free for a moment, yanking Cam in to her orbit but playfulness quickly turns into sexual tension. Cam breaks away, leaves the dance floor, heads for the bathroom. It’s the ’90s and they’re queer so Rebecca knows exactly why she left, and where she’s going, and what will happen there.
Cam’s eyes are low and dim in the mirror when Rebecca comes in, and then their foreheads meet and finally their mouths and then my girlfriend, sitting on the couch next to me, went “oh my god,” and clutched my arm and I said “yes,” because I had already seen this scene and was inspired to see it again.
There’s a fiddling with the belt and there’s a pause where Rebecca says, “it’s okay to feel that” and I’m not sure what she means, if it’s literally something Cam can feel or if Rebecca is telling her it’s okay to feel things, in general. Then Cam’s eyes get low again, foggy, like okay, I’m going to top you so hard you’ll forget everything.
Cam nurses a hangover the next day at work. Her brother got Manjit’s criminal record, which you can see for him is all the evidence he needs to close this case. Cam’s skeptical. Now it’s her going to Rebecca’s, asking if maybe she can try to get a bigger picture from Raj.
“Do you wanna get dinner later?” Rebecca asks.
“I don’t know if I wanna sit through a whole meal with you,” Cam says, looking fine as hell. She gets up and puts her hands on Rebecca’s waist. “But um… eh, if you wanted to come over after.”
They both smile. “Deal.”
Like I wrote last week, Cam is a new character who isn’t present in Godfrey’s book, but this relationship is integral to how the show is telling its story. They were both once girls “in trouble” themselves in this place, and now they’ve grown up and out of it but have been pulled back into that headspace by a death so close to home. Everybody in this story is full of regret and confusion about the past and will be mired in it as they piece through what remains. Without ignoring or neglecting that reality, Cam and Rebecca’s storyline offers something else: a place where past pain can be reconciled and transformed. (Also they are very hot together)
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
As someone who grew up in Victoria when this happened, it is very difficult to want to watch this series but then they made it gay with Lily. I don’t know if I will ever bring myself to watch this but I’m glad to read the updates on their storyline.
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It’s a pity that this beautiful love story is not real.
I had a question, please answer if anyone knows.
Was Godfrey queer and single or married in the real world?
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Rebecca was married to a man when she passed away but the show built her fictional characterization off her personal journals from the 90s, so I’m assuming she was queer.
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Interesting!
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The bathroom scene! Every fiber of Gladstone in civilian clothes! Keogh’s baby doll tee in this episode!
The other aspect of this episode that really felt like the period was the way their playful dancing shifted to chemistry and then Gladstone is almost immediately aware of the watchful gazes of the old white men around them. It made me think about the kind of cultural permissiveness around teen girls dancing in this kind of intimate way (as presumably Cam and Rebecca once did as teens), and it’s like they get swept up in that rush of the past meeting the present in their bodies, but then there’s also this chilling awareness of the way the community will perceive them (especially Cam).
I have a bad feeling that this episode might be the sweet spot in the Cam/Rebecca dynamic and it’s going to get more fraught from here, but nonetheless I love what you wrote in the last paragraph, Riese.
It’s this dual timeline and storyline dynamic –– and the way their relationships might offer a place where past pain can be reconciled and transformed –– that feels like it transforms the show into something interesting, beyond the genre of true crime dramatization.
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Is Kristen Stewart the Kevin Bacon six degrees for queer actors? When I realized I knew Keough from The Runaways (2010), and Gladstone’s segment of Certain Women with Stewart (2016) remains a gem of cinema in my mind, it made me want to start mapping out a Stewart/queer Hollywood chart (which someone must have already done? queer cinema isn’t that large of a pool?)
Feature image of Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Elton John AIDS Foundation
Following the intense speculation about their relationship last fall, neither actress/activist Sophia Bush or soccer player Ashlyn Harris spoke publicly about to confirm or deny their relationship or its timeline, but they were appearing in public together, here and there, and Ashlyn made it clear on her on social media that she’d not cheated on her wife, Ali Krieger. Today, in a classy as fuck move from Sophia Bush, Bush appeared on the cover of Glamour Magazine to discuss her divorce, her rebirth, finding love again and being a part of the queer community.
In an intro from the magazine, they write that following the unconfirmed news that Ashlyn and Sophia were dating, “the internet seemed to be foaming at the digital mouth for a scandal, but to those who knew her, it was clear she’d never been more herself.” (I hope someone wins a Pulitzer for “foaming at the digital mouth.”) The essay, written by Sophia Bush, does a masterful job of gently moving her relationship with Ashlyn out of the realm of scandal and into a much different story about two women connecting over their respective breakups during an extremely painful time for Bush.
Bush writes eloquently about her own marriage to Grant Hughes, which she describes as mostly unhappy and cloaked in unease so thick she nearly called the whole thing off before it happened. But she didn’t. She got married, and then began what was ultimately a physically and emotionally painful fertility journey that didn’t end in having a child but did end in her realizing she’d made a mistake to marry the man she’d married. She took a theater job in London to get away from it all, but found herself deteriorating physically once there, spending multiple nights in the hospital until she simply couldn’t take it anymore.
In the summer of 2023 she returned to L.A.. She and her husband separated and she was preparing to file for divorce. She began connecting with a group of women also going through breakups, a kind of support group. Amongst them was Ashlyn Harris, who she’d known since 2019. And then it started happening:
I didn’t expect to find love in this support system. I don’t know how else to say it other than: I didn’t see it until I saw it. And I think it’s very easy not to see something that’s been in front of your face for a long time when you’d never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option. What I saw was a friend with her big, happy life. And now I know she thought the same thing about me.
Mutual friends noticed the connection between Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush before Bush did, and the two went on their first date, a four hour dinner that became “one of the most surreal experiences of [her] life thus far.” She cites their connection and their love as something that set her free and made her happy in a way she hasn’t ever been before, and that it was painful to whether accusations like “the idea that [she] left [her] marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous” or that she was a “home-wrecker” or that she left her ex due to a sudden realization that she liked girls, insisting “my partners have known what I’m into for as long as I have.” She recalls the transition into this relationship as one that was making a concerted effort “to be graceful with other people’s processing, their time and obligations, and their feelings.”
She didn’t want to respond to the haters but she’s happy, now, to tell her own story, to be open about her relationship and her sexual orientation: “I think I’ve always known that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines it is queer. I can’t say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great.”
Stephanie Nguyen, Sophia Bush, Bobby Berk and Ashlyn Harris attend Elton John AIDS foundation annual viewing party with Tequila Don Julio at West Hollywood Park on March 10, 2024 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Tequila Don Julio)
In the “love is love” era, it is refreshing to have Bush, a person who has long been an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, to also understand the value and impact of coming out. In a Glamour podcast released today tied to the cover story, Bush reflects “I would’ve liked for a lot of things to happen a little differently, but at the end of the day I have nothing to apologize for. The bonus of this whole journey is that I spend every day around a person that being close to is like, getting shone on by the sun. I want that for all of us. I want people to find the right room.” Reflecting on where she’s at now, Bush says, “I feel like I’ve been wearing an 80 pound weighted vest, for probably a decade? And I finally just fucking put it down.” So many queer people who have gone through their own coming out journeys will know exactly what that profound relief feels like.
The reaction on social media has been largely positive, including props and love from former Queer Eye cast member Bobby Berk and actress Brittany Snow, while other fans cite enormous and longstanding girl crushes on Sophia.
“I really love who I am, at this age and in this moment,” Bush writes in her essay. “I’m so lucky that my parents, having spent time with Ash over the holidays, said, ‘Well, this finally looks right.'”
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Okay but doesn’t it confirm Ashlyn cheated on Ali…?
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I just find it interesting that they started connecting while Ashlyn was “Separated from her wife” but her wife was simultaneously posting to instagram about how much she couldnt wait for Ash to come home from Cannes to their two kids. Seems like Ash could have told her wife they were separated before telling Sophia…. But who knows, Ash may have misled Sophia as well.
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After what happened with Ali, I can’t stand either Sophia or Ashlyn. Bad look.
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They hella cheated lmao.
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Awesome, I wish them and Ali good luck!
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I found this essay absolutely beautiful! I don’t think we have solid evidence they cheated and even if they did, we’re all just complex human beings. I’ve never cheated on anyone myself but I can see how that might happen even with the best intentions in a relationship. I don’t think it’s our place to judge others because you don’t really know their specific situation. Their love makes me happy and hopeful. =)
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I wish Sophia didn’t feel she had to craft such a vulnerable, careful, and still heartfelt essay, in response to the social media/online speculation (which is basically just being repeated here in many of the comments––seriously, people, we don’t know what happened, nor do we need? it is possible to be at once struggling/stifled in a relationship and genuinely trying to see if you can make it work and also find yourself drawn to someone else at some point in that process). But I’m glad she did write it (much as I wish public figures like her and Billie Eilish and so many others didn’t get hounded to “claim” their identity), especially in this particular social moment and climate. Wising her and Ashlyn and Ali all the best. Now to go rewatch that episode of Easy with her and Jacqueline Toboni!
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I love and admire Sophia’s vulnerability and openness in this essay. She is so well-spoken and I am so incredibly happy for her. The way she described her queerness/coming out resonated so much and as a fan knowing she’s queer is so meaningful to me.
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Ok so I’ve never watched a One tree hill… does this mean I have to?
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I wouldn’t, but you do you.
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typical piece of crap bush, just looking for attention as if we all didn’t already know she was a degen.
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Moderator please delete this comment
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I wasn’t expecting it but reading this made me feel really emotional. I’m happy for her.
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A washed-up actress and a glorified bench warmer (with no minutes played in a World Cup) who had an emotional affair before both filing for divorce. Why should we care?
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I wish Sophia and Ashlyn the very best in their ongoing relationship.
P.S. I think Ashlyn is “hot”.
When I first became an editor at Autostraddle back in September, I announced my presence with a piece titled “We Need More Sex Scenes.” I wrote about the history of sex on-screen and why the trend away from sex and sexuality in film and television was troubling.
Well, seven months later, I’ve returned with good news. We won. Sex is back on-screen.
There were hints of it last summer with Passages, Ira Sachs’ fabulous tale of toxic bisexuality, but one independent film shot in Europe felt like a mere exception. The real excitement came from a group of films during awards season that centered sex for a variety of purposes: Saltburn, Poor Things, All of Us Strangers, and May December.
These four films alone show different possible uses of sex on-screen. Saltburn is a work of pulpy delight where fluids represent power. Poor Things frames sex as discovery, a way to lose one’s innocence and learn about the world. All of Us Strangers has sex as romance, a sultry reprieve from the melancholy of life and death. And May December centers around sexual abuse, its moments of sexuality a twisted response — and attempt to make sense of — that violence.
While it may have been snubbed at awards season, May December was still noteworthy for being a Hollywood film that approached sex and sexual violence with compassion and complexity — something usually reserved for films abroad such as the British film How to Have Sex released this year and the French film Last Summer coming out in June.
And we haven’t just seen an increase of sex on-screen as a way of grappling with serious subject matter. This year, we’ve also seen sex scenes used for fun. And the best part? Most of it is queer.
Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls was a full-blown sex comedy with sex scenes ranging from comic to romantic. It’s a film all about sex and sexuality and dildos. Then, of course, there’s Love Lies Bleeding, Ross Glass’ delicious Kristen Stewart-starring neo-noir that pulses with eroticism. It has toe biting, protein shake licking, and so much desire.
A lot can be done with explicit sex scenes, but, ultimately, the sexlessness of 2010s cinema wasn’t just a matter of nudity and penetration. It was a lack of sexuality, sensuality, and chemistry. Tomorrow Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers comes out in theatres and it’s noteworthy for being one of the sexiest films I’ve ever seen while not having any explicit sex scenes. It’s a film conscious of its withholding, the most delicious foreplay with tennis as its payoff. It, too, is part of this trend — even if most of its nudity is just in the locker room.
Most of the sex on-screen has moved back to the cinema, but there are also exciting developments on TV. Mary and George felt like a throwback, a costume drama filled with all kinds of sex and sexuality. And the recent series Baby Reindeer — largely directed by Weronika Tofilska, the co-writer of Love Lies Bleeding — examines how sexual abuse impacts its protagonist’s sex life. It includes the important representation of encounters that are not abusive — and are even tender — but are heavy with the echoes of abuse.
Some of this sex is hot, some of it is painful, some of it is both. I’m just happy to see all these different expressions of sexuality on-screen. But I’m not writing this piece to gloat — I’m writing it to get greedy. Because the other notable aspect of Baby Reindeer is that one of the characters in some of its sex scenes is a trans woman played by trans actress Nava Mau. These moments are focused on her partner’s attempts to work through his PTSD and shame, but they’re still a welcome exception. The fact is, even as varied queer sex increases on our screens, there’s still a void of sex involving trans people.
Since trans people make up a small percentage of the population, this might feel inconsequential. But it’s worth noting that trans porn is among the most popular porn categories — and its popularity is ever-growing. I love porn and I’m hesitant to place it in contrast with “real” movies. It’s just that most trans porn is being produced for cis people and has a very skewed idea of our sexuality. Of course, different trans people fuck in all sorts of ways — including the ways most frequently represented in porn — but there’s something insidious about trans sexuality only being framed one way and only being viewed by many in the shadows of their homes.
I want more work like Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca and Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions, movies where trans women filmmakers show our sexuality to be sensual and comical, romantic and complex. I want to see that even more in an independent space and I want to see it on an even larger scale.
There is always more work to be done. But for now let’s celebrate these victories. Go see Challengers in theatres and remember: As fun as it is to get turned on alone, it’s even more fun to get turned on together.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Lesbian bed death! A hot topic in our community! Perhaps you don’t really think it’s a thing or believe it isn’t a problem localized to lesbians. Perhaps you fear it or find it funny. We’re not here to necessarily debate its meaning or legitimacy. We’re here because you are perhaps no longer having sex with your partner or your partner is no longer having sex with you. You’re stressed, sad, confused, horny, not at all horny, or any combination of these things. I know you are not alone, because the whole reason I’m writing this post is because there has been an uptick recently in people writing into Autostraddle’s You Need Help column regarding lowered libidos or sexless relationships. So I decided to put together a lesbian bed death survival kit of sorts. This can be a starting place to work through periods when sex drives have dipped in your relationship (by the way, this advice isn’t just for lesbians! Lesbian Bed Death is just an easy shorthand here). Read about other couples experiencing similar issues and the advice we’ve given them over several years of fielding these questions. Reading this article isn’t going to change things overnight, and I’m not a couples counselor or sex therapist — two types of professionals who your situation might benefit from! But hopefully by reading this, you’ll feel a little less alone and like you have some resources to guide you toward solutions that might work for you.
While the details of the situation vary, there are thematic throughlines in the questions we get from folks who aren’t having sex anymore with their partners. Partners who want to be having sex but aren’t often feel undesired by their partners as well as guilty for feeling like they’re “pressuring” their partner to have sex. Partners who aren’t as interested in sex often feel guilty for not fulfulling their partners’ needs and frustrated with themselves. Both can feel a sense that they’re stuck and that the relationship is doomed. We typically receive more advice questions from the former partner rather than the latter, but I think no matter what, if you’re the person with the higher sex drive or the lower sex drive in the relationship — or if you and your partner both have low or no sex drive at the moment — going through this toolkit can be useful for everyone involved.
Let’s dig into some of these feelings and the questions lesbian bed death can sometimes bring up while also looking at the options for working through it.
How to identify what’s causing the lesbian bed death
You obviously will struggle to work through a problem if you’re not able to identify what’s causing it. Lowered libidos can happen for a whole slew of reasons: depression, going on anti-depressants, the fade of new relationship energy, codependency, shifting desires, dysphoria — just to name a few! The reason you’re not having sex can provide a lot of information as to how to proceed with fostering intimacy again. It can also be key to figuring out if mismatched sex drives is a true dealbreaker.
In My Partner and I Aren’t Having Sex — How Can I Still Foster Intimacy?, the advice seeker identified a clear reason for why their partner wasn’t having sex with them: Their mental health was impacting their libido. They knew this was a reason outside either of their control, but it made them sad. A crucial thing I wanted to make sure this person knew was that their relationship wasn’t inherently broken and neither party was wrong for their feelings:
Both of these things are true, too: Your partner is not a bad person for having a lower libido (something that’s obvious and I know you already know). But you are also not a bad person for feeling sad about this change. Both of these feelings and experiences are valid, but that’s what makes it all so hard.
You often have to kill lesbian bed death at the root. If your libido has lowered recently, why? Are there things your partner could be doing to make you feel safer? Sexier? More motivated to initiate sex? Does the same person initiate sex every time? Should that change? Maybe the sex you were having is no longer right for you, and so what changes would you like to explore? It’s easy to stop having sex when sex starts to feel boring or obligatory. I know I’m out here constantly advising people to keep a journal, but I really feel like journaling helps us access feelings and questions in ways we otherwise can’t. So do it: Make a lesbian bed death journal.
How exactly do you identify the problem if it isn’t already obvious? Well…
You have to talk about it
I’m sure you saw this coming. Communication, communication, communication is basically our anthem over here in the advice world of Autostraddle. But it’s true! Lesbian bed death and not having sex in relationships in particular are relationship problems that tend to go un-talked about. It’s almost like people are afraid that acknowledging it makes it more real. Well, it’s already real! You’re already here reading a post on how to combat bed death, and it doesn’t get more real than that! By talking about it with your partner, you aren’t worsening the problem. You’re getting closer to fixing it, to making a change.
In My Girlfriend Doesn’t Want To Have Sex, the person seeking advice had an initial conversation with her girlfriend about a change in how much sex they were having, but when the problem persisted for longer than anticipated, she wondered if she should bring it up again. The short version of my answer was yes!
The hardest part of this is having to accept that the conversation could lead to really tough choices and considerations. It’s possible you might have to redefine/restructure your relationship in some way that works for both of you. It’s also possible she really does just need some time. But you’re never going to know without asking open, honest questions or without talking about your own feelings about sex and intimacy in a relationship. Addressing all these things as early in a relationship as possible is really important and will make it easier to have tough conversations down the road.
It also isn’t enough to just say you have to talk about it. That communication has to be healthy, productive, honest, and safe. Sometimes lesbian bed death can lead to arguing about sex, which can then make it so that we associate sex with conflict, deepening the issue. In Am I Being Unreasonable for Feeling Undesired by My Girlfriend?, there’s an emphasis on non-toxic and open communication about desire, sexual needs, and consent as a means for working through a dwindling sex life.
How to foster intimacy in ways other than sex
Sometimes, depending on the reason for your bed death, sex just truly is off the table for now. This is especially true in instances where there’s a medical or mental health reason for the dip in sex. But it’s possible to foster physical and emotional intimacy in ways other than sex, and sometimes this can also be like baby-stepping your way back into hot sex with your partner. Give each other massages. Make a point to kiss each other more often. Try sexting or sending each other nudes. That last one can be especially fun, because it often evokes the early stages of a relationship when people tend to sext more.
When does mismatched sex drives mean incompatibility?
This is a tough question to answer! It really comes down to how much sex means to you and what your priorities in a relationship are. While I want to be clear that not having sex in a relationship doesn’t mean you’re barreling toward a breakup, it is also important to accept that it can signal a deeper incompatibility. Often, we can ignore red flags or interpersonal conflicts at the beginning of a relationship when the sex is good and frequent. But what does that mean when the sex part stops?
In So Your Girlfriend Never Ever Ever Wants To Have Sex, really great and empathetic advice is given to someone who might not be in a relationship that’s working for them. Of course it is always okay for someone to turn down sex for whatever reason. But if you want to have sex within your relationship and you’re being refused that every time, it would not make you a bad person if you want to leave. I find that sometimes the insistence that relationships are about more than sex can have the unintended effect of making people feel bad or guilty for prioritizing sex in relationships. It is not bad to want sex, and if anyone makes you feel bad for it, then it’s worth having further conversations to see if this really is the right fit for you. Truthfully, no one should be making anyone feel bad in these situations; that’ll only make it worse!
Part of being able to name and also sit with your own wants is recognizing when you need to take action and take responsibility for fulling those wants yourself. If you’re not getting what you want out of a relationship, and that’s becoming a deal breaker for you, then you can also say the relationship is no longer working for you, end it as kindly as you can, and instead look for one where you feel more desired and have your sexual needs met. That’s also completely valid.
What if you’re okay with lesbian bed death?
You’re not alone! In Is ‘Lesbian Bed Death’ Really So Bad?, a reader wrote in with an alternative view of lesbian bed death, namely that it actually kind of works for them! They don’t identify on the ace spectrum, but chronic pain and mental illness has sometimes made sex not a priority for them, and they’re on anti-depressants and so is their partner, which as aforementioned can impact libido. Does lesbian bed death mean your relationship is inherently doomed? No!
Again, this is just a starting place, a lesbian bed death greatest hits archive of advice we’ve given through the years. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution here, but perhaps even just knowing you aren’t alone in these struggles can help assuage feelings of shame, guilt, confusion, sadness, and loneliness that bed death can garner. Your welcome to share advice of your own in the comments or just share your story. Periods of no sex happen in most relationships! And not just for lesbians, obviously! The worst thing you can do is pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Face it head on the same way you would with other issues in a relationship that leave you feeling out of tune with each other.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
I’m here with a very important book list that could have easily been co-authored by everyone in my main group chat: queer books featuring mommy issues! Gays really are out here having complicated relationships with our mothers and then writing whole books about it. For the purposes of this list, I’m working off of an expansive definition of “mommy issues,” not limiting us to only the Oedipal understanding of the term or only featuring books with age gap relationships (that could be its whole own list!). There are many ways to have mommy issues, and what the books on this list ultimately have in common is a complicated, often conflict-laden mother-child dynamic. The titles include nonfiction as well as fiction, and the mommy issues range in scope and intensity.
Fellow fan of mommy issues art Drew Burnett Gregory has been tapped for some of the brief blurbs below. Many of the books on this list also have full Autostraddle reviews, because apparently our team loves books with mommy issues which surely says nothing at all about our own relationships with our mothers.
Don’t worry — I’ll do a queer books featuring daddy issues list, too. And hell, some of the books below might appear on both.
Between Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, Bechdel’s oeuvre is the pinnacle of filial investigation. In this graphic memoir, she zeroes in on her mother and her mother’s artistic ambitions, yielding a poignant and humorous work of mother-daughter storytelling.
If it seems like we include Zami on a lot of lists here at Autostraddle, it’s because it really is such an important fixture of lesbian literary canon. In it, Lorde traces the lineage of women who have shaped her life, including her mother, who appears throughout the genre-defying work of personal writing. The end in particular provides a striking portrait of her mother’s strength.
Díaz’s memoir is a gorgeously lyrical exploration of Puerto Rican history, the author’s personal struggles with mental health and depression, and a complicated and often violent relationship between Díaz and her mother, who has schizophrenia. In an interview with LA Times, Díaz said the following about these parts of the book: “My story wasn’t unique — somewhere there is a teenage girl with a mother who suffers from mental illness and addiction, just trying to get through the day. Maybe seeing herself in this book will make life a little bit easier.”
Casey Parks simultaneously digs into her own family history as well as the lost history of a trans stranger named Roy in Diary of a Misfit, a stunning work of nonfiction on queer life. She digs into her fraught relationship with her mother, who initially shuns her for being gay.
Ocean Vuong’s lyrical debut novel is structured as a letter from a first generation Vietnamese American son to his single mother who cannot read. The letter digs into his mother’s history and his memories, painting an intimate and breathtaking portrait of mother and son against the backdrops of the Vietnam War and its lasting impact, the American opioid crisis, and more.
City of Laughter concerns four generations of women, so there are multiple combinations of fraught mother-daughter relationships in this book about the silences and secrets kept within families.
I am biased here as I’m married to the author, but my wife Kristen Arnett’s debut novel brims with both daddy issues and mommy issues. It’s about Jessa Lynn, a lesbian who takes over her father’s taxidermy shop after he commits suicide. Shortly after his death, her mother Libby starts making pornographic taxidermy art. Her second novel, With Teeth, also is arguably a mommy issues book in that it’s about bad gay moms. Also, here’s a little plug and teaser: Kristen’s upcoming third novel (out spring 2025!) might be her most mommy issues book to date.
In her searing memoir Ma and Me, Reang wrestles with her desires to be a good Cambodian daughter and her queerness, constantly at odds with her mother’s expectations.
While I’ve focused mainly on mother-daughter dynamics on this list, gay men of course have their fair share of mommy issues, too, and one of the protagonists of Memorial, Benson, finds himself in a strange living situation when his boyfriend Mike leaves the country and his boyfriend’s mother Mitsuko moves in.
Like all of Broder’s work, this is a freaky little book with sentences that’ll make you laugh til you choke. Milk Fedis about Rachel, who inherits a calorie counting obsession from her mother, from whom her therapist encourages a detox from. Rachel becomes obsessed with Miriam, who works the counter at the froyo shop Rachel frequents. For Autostraddle, Kate Gorton writes: “This book has everything: lesbian sex, mommy issues, eating disorders, frozen yogurt, plus-size golems, Jewish mysticism, weirdly specific fantasies about coworkers, a fat chick as the love interest, and a whole lot more.”
Not every age gap lesbian relationship is a product of mommy issues, but in Michelle Hart’s beautifully layered We Do What We Do in the Dark, that’s at least part of the genesis. Ostensibly a book about an affair, the novel finds its greatest moments in flashbacks between the protagonist and both her own mom and the mom of her best friend. – Drew Burnett Gregory
This memoir touches on so many threads of Moraga’s life and Mexican American diaspora and is ultimately at its heart a mother-daughter story. By telling her mother Elvira’s story, Moraga excavates so many layered histories.
Middle-aged lesbian and bad mom Dawn, one of the two chaotic and unreliable protagonists of Exalted, likes sleeping with younger women and self-sabotaging in spectacular ways. Here is a mommy issues novel from the perspective of the mother.
I am truly obsessed with this novel about a Palestinian American queer woman navigating love addiction and her queerness. The title actually comes from something the mother in the novel says to the daughter. The protagonist often engages in affairs that scream mommy issues.
A Good Happy Girl is more overtly a daddy issues novel, the protagonist’s distant relationship with her mother rumbles underneath the surface of every moment. After all, some gays simply have parent issues, and this gay deals with that by entering a complicated throuple with an older woman and her wife. – Drew Burnett Gregory
Here’s another classic in the literary canon of fraught mother-daughter dynamics, Allison’s beloved novel and portrait of the American South centers young girl Bone, who has an abusive stepfather and complicated relationship with her mother Anney, who had her out of wedlock as a young teen.
Dennis-Benn’s debut novel tells the stories of two sisters and their mothers, three Jamaican women. Delores is a complicated mother to both sisters but especially to queer protagonist Margot. A case could also be made for Dennis-Benn’s Patsymaking this list, too.
Winterson is the only author with the distinguished honor of being on this list twice, and that feels right. Her memoir details her journey to find her biological mother.
The title says it all. Many queer books may dabble in mommy issues, but Carla Tomaso’s underread Matricide makes them its primary subject. Read it to laugh, read it to cry, read it to get turned on, and read it to think hmm I guess my mom isn’t that bad. – Drew Burnett Gregory
And what a note to end on! Literal matricide!
This is far from an exhaustive list, so feel free to shout out your favorite queer mommy issues books in the comments!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
When you’re dating over the age of 30, the odds of dating someone who is divorced are pretty high. I didn’t mind the idea of dating someone who was divorced. I had been in a long-term relationship that felt almost like a marriage, so I would look like a hypocrite if I wasn’t open to the idea of dating someone in a similar position. Ironically enough, I only dated one divorced person, and I ended up marrying her. My wife’s divorce was never a problem in our relationship (except how long it took), but I was caught off guard about the insecurities it awoke in me.
I’m not a jealous person, but insecurity is definitely something that takes up a supreme amount of my brain space. Admittedly, I don’t think I’m all that great or special as a person, so it’s hard to see or understand why people care about me or want to be close to me, whether it’s friendship or romance. Surely there has to be someone funnier, smarter, prettier than me out there. Usually, I don’t make my insecurity the problem of other people. I keep it all swirling around in my own mind where it can’t bother anyone else.
When my wife and I met, she and her ex had been separated for almost a year. They started dating in college and had been together for almost 20 years. I found comfort in the fact that we had each only ever been in one serious relationship. Even though hers had been significantly longer than mine, it felt like we were on a more level playing field. Actually, I had been single longer, which kind of gave me an advantage over her in some ways. Our relationship that was only supposed to be casual escalated quickly, but it felt good.
It took a few months before the insecurities started slowly creeping in. My wife was so open about the insecurities she had about my past that I tried to do the same, but I hated the way I sounded, so I kept them from her and mainly unleashed them on my besties instead.
One of the things that was the hardest for me was how present her ex was. Even though they were no longer in contact, she still felt like she was looming over me. Whether it was the fact that we look similar or constant presence in my wife’s memories and photos, I started to feel like there was no way I was ever going to live up to this stranger. My ex and I may have shared a child together, but she and her ex shared a life.
Because they started dating when they were so young, her ex was quickly embraced and folded into the family. Over the years, she formed her own relationships with my wife’s family, and even after their separation, those bonds remained. I wasn’t jealous that she had relationships and I didn’t — our lives are at different places, and I have complicated feelings around family anyway. But every time I’d see on social media that her ex had spent time with her family, it hurt me pretty deeply. It’s still a sticky subject for us, and it’s hard for me to articulate what exactly about it hurts, but it does.
I know her ex and I are so vastly different that it feels weird to be insecure about our differences, but I am. I have a big personality, and I’m constantly worried that it’s off-putting. I’m loud, flashy, brash, combative, and can have a bit of a mean streak. My wife has never been anything other than wholly accepting of my personality — in fact, she says it’s one of the things she loves about me, which I find mindboggling. Every time I lose my temper, I immediately think to myself I bet she regrets being with such a loudmouth. If we argue, I fear she misses her less confrontational and combative ex.
After some soul searching, I’ve finally figured out what my biggest insecurity is: What if I’m bad at being a wife? I had been a girlfriend before, and it was something that I felt comfortable with and knew I was good at. But it’s different when you’re a wife. You have more responsibilities when you’re someone’s wife. Some things feel easy — I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll be together forever. But how do I show up for her the way she needs even when I’m feeling like I can’t? Can I learn how to be a little less big? Do I even want to? I’m a caretaker, and I take on a lot of our family’s emotional load, even when I can’t. What if it’s not enough? I’ve wanted to be a wife, her wife for so long, what if I totally suck at it? When I’m feeling particularly low or vulnerable because of other things in my life, these feelings come back, flying around my brain like a bunch of gnats that I just can’t seem to kill. Yes, I’ve talked to a therapist about this, before anyone makes that suggestion. I can’t help these thoughts.
There is one thing I know for sure though. The relationship I have with my wife is the best relationship I’ve ever had. We have so much love and respect for each other. When other insecurities flare up, I never feel insecure about the way she feels about me. As for the rest, I’m working on it.
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Sa'iyda is a writer and mom who lives in LA with her partner, son and 3 adorable, albeit very extra animals. She has yet to meet a chocolate chip cookie she doesn't like, spends her free time (lol) reading as many queer romances as she can, and has spent the better part of her life obsessed with late 90s pop culture.
I am set to marry my once-divorced fiance in August! Reading your story sounded SO familiar – she had been separated from her ex for roughly a year when we started dating, and I went with her to the courthouse when the thing was finalized. Her ex was (in her words) “the smartest person she knew” and was/is also a successful lawyer making six figures while I am a bleeding heart bohemian artist working a low-wage non-profit job. And that (similar again to your story) is what makes me the “heart” of this relationship, doing the emotional lifting and navigating complicated feelings. But OF COURSE insecurities remain about whether I can “take care” of my wife, if I’m interesting enough, if she thinks my interests are juvenile or “low brow.”
What I take comfort in (besides regular therapy and THC/CBD) is the idea that we complement each other. We’re very different people, and I am very different from her ex, but she’s not looking for that person anymore – that’s why they divorced. She was looking for me. And your wife was looking for you!
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you are so right! thank you for your kind words
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Thanks for this, this line leapt out at me: “my biggest insecurity is: What if I’m bad at being a wife?”
I’m divorced and if I were ever to remarry I think I would first have to overcome the feeling that my divorce, and the marriage that preceded it, kind of proved that I am bad at being a wife! I’m part way there, knowing that it was this circumstances, with that person, which didn’t work, but there’s a lot of unpacking for everyone involved in a divorce I guess. Thanks for this perspective, really interesting and helpful.
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Wife of nearly 7 years (together 11 next month) here….
Wanting to be a good wife is probably half of the battle. Her ex clearly wasn’t the right wife – that’s why they’re not together. She picked you. So, as hard as it seems – stop focusing on why you might not be good enough and start focusing on being good enough and figuring out what that means to her. I feel like my capacity to be good at it as grown over the years as we have successfully navigated the crises of life. We did do couples therapy to gain more tools (with an awesome queer therapist) and that helped, but often times being a good wife to my wife looks like:
– making her tea every day
– buying her the odd little treat (like coming home with her favourite type of ham)
– celebrating her wins, and making her feel seen and worthy
– listening to her when she’s having a tough time and asking what my role is – am I fixing, or just listening?
– telling her why she is awesome
– And, I suppose – being ok with talking about my emotions and needs (I do not like doing this but turns out, I always feel better) so she doesn’t have to guess what’s going on, because of course she can tell something is going on. Then we can approach it together
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I’m 31 and newly single after moving to the middle of the country, and I’m terrified of having to date divorced people. Not because there’s anything wrong with them but because the biggest issue in my life has been being persistently alone (longest relationship being the year long one I just lost), and I think I would feel incredibly insecure about how different our life experiences and perspectives are. Not to even start with these sorts of insecurities :(
In a feature story for Rolling Stone Magazine that debuted today, deeply beloved musician and child prodigy Billie Eilish, an icon of gay pop who empowered me to return to my essence by wearing clothes that are four sizes too big for me, spoke in more detail about her upcoming album “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” her evolution as an artist, her mental health struggles, her concerns for the environment, swimming, and her sexuality.
Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Last week we lost our minds over Eilish’s new track “Lunch,” which she sang at Coachella to much acclaim, and in the interview, Eilish plays the song for journalist Angie Martoccio, who describes it as “a sexy, bass-heavy banger where Eilish is crushing on a girl so hard she likens sex with her to devouring a meal.” She explains to Martoccio that she wrote some of “Lunch” before even hooking up with a girl, and some after.
“I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life,” she says. “But I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina. I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up.”
She spends time in the piece reflecting on the hullabaloo around all that — the speculation, the Variety interview in which she said she was attracted to girls “for real,” and the subsequent red carpet follow-up question about if she’d intentionally come out in that interview. Following the red carpet interview, Eilish chastised the reporter-in-question for asking her if she’d come out intentionally, likening the question to “outing [her] on a red carpet at 11 a.m..” She tells Martoccio that she now classifies that instagram post as an overreaction, explaining, “Who fucking cares? The whole world suddenly decided who I was, and I didn’t get to say anything or control any of it.” But Eilish eventually concludes, “I know everybody’s been thinking this about me for years and years, but I’m only figuring out myself now. And honestly, what I said was funny, because I really was just saying what they’ve all been saying.”
There’s many relatable sentiments in the Rolling Stone interview about her sexuality, but also about Billie’s mental health struggles and agoraphobia. She gets deep into remembering how she dealt with sudden fame at such a young age by retreating internally, hiding from the world in hopes of emanating the aura of “this mysterious, cool person.” But eventually she realized that doing this was preventing her from enjoying life and making friends, and so she decided to turn it all around and start accepting social invitations and going to Chipotle.
Eilish also talked about how she decompresses through exercise, but also through sex. “I basically talk about sex any time I possibly can,” she told Rolling Stone. “That’s literally my favorite topic.” For example, she really loves masturbating, which she says is an enormous part of her life and a “huge help” for her “as somebody with extreme body issues and dysmorphia that I’ve had my entire life.”
Finally, Eilish does in fact speak on a contentious topic many fans were hoping she’d address — the ocean. She explained that she has traumatic memories of learning to swim as a child, which led to a tenuous relationship with water. Simply thinking about swimming made her heart race, but she has since grown and changed and is now okay with being underwater. However, she takes a hard line against whales, pointing out: “How can anybody just accept that a whale exists, y’all? Those things are enormous. The noises they make. That shit is terrifying to me. Terrifying.”
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Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Billie Eilish penning a song about eating box was always an inevitability. It couldn’t get any gayer unless she puts Kehlani on the remix.
Also, that last paragraph is amazing. 10/10 no notes.
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So the accusations where she was “queerbaiting” were sort of accurate after all – not at all intentional (she identified as straight at the time, and her *conscious* intention was to celebrate female friendship, even if it accidentally had lesbian vibes) but somewhat ironic in hindsight.
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For the term “queerbatiting” to constitute an accusation, it needs to imply intentional deception.
Seeing as Billie is sharing with us that she’s been discovering all of this herself in the past year, any perceived signaling wasn’t intentional.
I personally wouldn’t call the process of self-discovery “queerbaiting”, even in retrospective.
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Queerbaiting is a way to talk about media, not real people.
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Perhaps, but I usually see the term being used to talk about specific people who created specific pieces of media which are seen by some as queerbaiting, which she did. That seems like unnecessary language policing to demand it only be used for the media works and not for the people who created them. At the very least, even if it’s “improper”, that’s not how I see it being used.
Of course there are the trans masc stereotypes everyone knows about — the names we pick, the button downs we wear, the platform shoes that most of us under 5’6 own. Then, there are the unexpected ones I discover myself.
When a couple trans masc friends turn out to be into pup play, it’s a coincidence. When half of the trans men I know are into it, it’s a pattern. And when it shows up on other trans dudes’ Feeld profiles three times within one night of swiping, it’s officially worth an investigation.
I began to mentally set up a Pepe Silvia-style bulletin board with red string to solve one question: why are so many trans mascs pups?
Let’s Start at the Beginning: What Is Pup Play?
In academic terms, “pup play (also known as puppy play) refers to a form of role-play in which adult humans adopt characteristics that mimic the behavior of young dogs. Normally framed as a kinky sexual activity, individuals tend to adopt a submissive role, imitate the posture of a dog, and wear a collar and other ‘gear’ associated with owning a dog.”
Basically, it’s a kink thing, and it’s exactly what it says on the label. No, the people who are into it obviously don’t think they’re actual dogs, but more on that later.
Why Am I Writing About This?
Am I into pup play? That’s a reasonable question to ask a man who spent weeks of his life researching and conducting interviews about the subject. While I like behind-the-ear scratches as much as the next guy, I am not part of the pup community. But as one study on the psychology of pup play put it, “the attitude of a society which is hegemonically heteronormative toward sexual subcultures which are perceived as ‘deviant’ or queer has a well-examined tendency to push members of those subcultures together.” To translate: as a trans person, almost any community that gets called freaks just for existing is my ally.
What Research Has Come Before Me?
The first place I turned to was academic research. As expected, there’s not much research into the pup community. But to my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t nothing. I primarily worked off of three studies that interviewed pups: one from 2017, one from 2019, and one from 2022.
Arranging my bulletin board to solve why so many trans men are pups started here.
In the 2019 study from the Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers Darren Langdridge and Jamie Lawson set out to answer a similar question to mine: What attracts anyone to pup play? They identified five “themes” behind people’s desire to participate: “(1) sexual pleasure; (2) relaxation, therapy, and escape from self; (3) adult play and vibrant physicality; (4) extending and expressing selfhood; and (5) relationships and community.”
This was where I saw my first clues. Those last two themes of expressing selfhood and community so inherently overlap with transness.
But Studies Weren’t Enough…
These studies mostly centered cis gay men, so if I wanted to find answers on transness and pups, I’d have to expand my search for experts. I looked to my own community. I interviewed four pups, three of whom identified as trans or nonbinary, to get more perspective on their pup experience. And because my rabbit hole hadn’t gone deep enough yet, I also interviewed Caryn Sherbet, LMSW (they/them), a queer nonbinary sex therapist who specializes in working with queer and trans clients.
With all my sources and the five themes in place, it was time to start attaching red strings to the bulletin board.
Extending and Expressing Selfhood
The connections between transness and expressing selfhood are obvious. Being trans is the ultimate expression of the self — we’ve come to understand this part of ourselves so thoroughly that many of us change our lives to become who we know we are.
One of the pups I interviewed, Mick (they/he), also saw this connection between the trans and pup communities. As they said, “it’s all about shaping your world and how you’re perceived, as you desire. Both communities throw the rule book out to a certain extent and focus on playfully exploring all the weird, unconventional parts of you and celebrating it.”
Being a pup lets everyone experiment with gender expression, not just trans pups. With the freedom to be whoever you want (even a dog) comes the freedom to question everything. In the words of the Archives of Sexual Behavior’s 2019 study, “the key is how the puppy role enables the participant to explore… a new aspect of selfhood, try it on for size, or express some personal perception of the ‘real me.’”
Even the one pup I interviewed who identified as cis, Lavender (he/him), said being a pup helped him explore gender. “It has also allowed me to play with my gender identity, like is my pup-sona a boy or a girl? I tried both, but what seems to feel best is it allows me to be more of a femboy pup.”
Just like being trans, the ways to express one’s pup identity are endless. As a pup I interviewed named Maverick (he/they) said, “we’re all just looking for ways to express our authentic selves. Just like there are as many genders as there are humans on the planet, there are as many ways to be a pup as there are pups on the planet. It’s simultaneously so simple and so complicated.”
By the Way, No, This Form of Expression Doesn’t Mean Pups Think They’re Actual Dogs
The difference here between pup-ness and transness is that trans men are men, but pups are not dogs. They know they’re not. This isn’t your grandpa’s worst nightmare of “kids identifying as animals” coming true. It’s a kink thing.
The 2019 study stated, “participants were clear to explain this was not a delusional practice: they do not believe they actually are puppies, but instead a serious creation of a play space in which they may lose themselves in a moment of role-play through physical exertion, joy, and a vibrant physicality that is apparently unavailable to them in other ways in their lives.”
And because they’re not dogs, this is in no way bestiality. One participant in the above study put it best: “It’s ludicrous. It’s people. If a horse puts on a hat and dresses up as a man, they can’t get a job.” Just like putting on a pup hood doesn’t make someone a dog.
Caryn, the sex therapist I spoke with, said “I think people who misunderstand pups [as bestiality] are probably just quite dumb, honestly, and you can quote that. But I think with a lot of kink stuff, what you see on the surface is not necessarily what’s happening emotionally underneath. And taking that into account is really important.”
Relationships and Community
My personal favorite part of being trans is the community it comes with, and the sense of community that being a pup provides its enthusiasts is no different. As the 2019 study noted, “for the vast majority of participants, puppy play involves deep and meaningful relationships with a number of potential others: other pups, packs, handlers (where either of those exist), and crucially the wider puppy community locally and around the world, in person and online.”
In this study, one pup named Bruno is quoted as saying, “it’s the relationality between the way I feel internally and also the way people then treat me, see me, and then that encourages it more and more and more. I find it much more difficult, say, when I’m by myself to feel that same kind of connection.”
This feels true to how being with other trans friends affirms my gender — yes, we exist as ourselves outside of anyone else’s perception of us, but being in a space that perceives us as who we want to be is nourishing.
One of the pups I interviewed was also a handler. The 2022 study described handlers like this: “Much in the same way that a pet dog has an owner, these participants described the role of a handler as acting as a care-giver and protector.”
For the handler I interviewed, Pup SAZ (he/him), the role is even more supportive than that, “I get to be a safe space and a voice for people that don’t feel like they have one, or wish to strengthen their voice… When you’re first starting out, sometimes you need a gentle nudge and someone to help you navigate the space. And I’m very honored and happy to do that.”
I’ve had a similar experience with transness. Friends who have been in the community longer were there to give me a gentle nudge and help me navigate.
What About the Other Three Themes?
Even the points that didn’t immediately jump out at me from Langdridge and Lawson’s five themes ultimately still had connections to trans masc identity. I continued to put red strings on the board, but this is where things get a little more complex.
Escape From Self
I would argue that “escape from self” applies, but not because transness is about escaping the self — rather, being trans requires so much effort to become yourself, that an escape from self can be like a little vacation.
The 2019 study wrote more about the pup headspace that participants aim for, saying that “temporality is key here as the focus is intensely in the present, with worries about past or future stripped away.” The past of gender is scary; you were someone else then, and you didn’t feel quite right yet. The future of gender is scary, too; will you ever become who you want to be? As a pup, this isn’t a factor. You just get to exist, no further complications.
Every single person I interviewed referenced that escape as a core part of being a pup — not just an escape from the self, but an escape from responsibilities and expectations.
Maverick said that “being a pup allows me to take a break from expectations that pull me in every different direction on any given day, whether it’s related to work, school, or my relationships. Not only that, but pups don’t know anything about the horrors of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, puritanism, colonialism… so there’s a bit of escapism that pup play allows for in that way.”
Caryn’s main theory on why so many trans mascs are pups centered on an escape from expectation and needing to be taken seriously. They walked me through their thoughts:
“I think trans mascs specifically have to spend so much of their lives fighting to be taken seriously… If you have any experience in girlhood, you are sort of always fighting to be taken as seriously as cis men are. And I feel like if you then [transition]… there’s a very specific kind of power and privilege that comes with masculinity. But in order to actually have access to that power and privilege, you have to really embody masculinity in very specific set of narrow ways… if you’re someone who has spent their entire life only seeing their value in relation to their seriousness, getting to be a pup means getting to be valuable while being completely unserious.”
Adult Vibrant Physicality
At its core, being a pup is just another form of adults playing. As Pup SAZ put it, “what D&D, cosplay, and RPG is for some adults, pet play is for others. And it’s one of the sweetest most wholesome things I am honored to be a part of.”
Mick, one of the other pups I interviewed, specifically saw parallels between masculinity and the form of play that being a pup involves. “There’s something really boyish about being playful the way you do in pup circles. The tussling around, the innocence, the messiness of it, almost feels like you’re recreating a childhood as a boy that you never got.”
The benefits of embodying a different physicality can be especially important for trans people. In the words of the 2019 study, “not only is there an escape from the self in psychological terms but also a sense of being able to step back from a person’s bodily inhibitions and enjoy and embrace their physicality.” The appeal is understandable for trans people who may feel that the body they currently have is limiting.
One of my favorite tidbits of information from my academic pup research is from the 2022 study: of the pups that identify with an individual breed of dog, “the most favored breeds are for large dogs — perhaps speaking to the intersection of masculinity with kink.” Because big dog = masculine, obviously, just like all dogs are boys and all cats are girls.
Maverick brought up one breed of dog in particular, specifically as a masculine stereotype. “I think a great example of non-toxic masculinity is the ‘golden retriever boyfriend,’ and I don’t think that comparison is coincidental. It’s so hard to navigate masculinity as a transmasc person, and leaning into this innocent, playful, curious energy that dogs — but especially golden retrievers — are known for [feels] not only approachable, but enticing for me as a safe, contained way to explore and externalize an unfiltered masculinity that bypasses intellectualization.”
Maverick continued, “I also get to express myself physically, embody a softer masculinity, and show affection and receive it in a way that feels contained, safe, and intimate.” That softer masculinity brings up a point that I kept coming back to throughout my research: dogs don’t know human masculinity, they just know good boy, and that’s a type of masculinity in itself. Because of its softness, that masculinity may feel more accessible to trans men.
Sexual Pleasure
And now for the last theme. Does sexual pleasure overlap between transness and pup-ness? That’s complicated.
Being trans is not a kink, despite other people’s attempts to fetishize us. When I asked Pup SAZ if his gender identity affected his experience of being a handler/pup, he said, “I have been very fortunate to say that it hasn’t. However, in the kink community, sometimes it has. I have definitely had cis men say to me before ‘I’ve never slept with a trans man before [and] I want you to break my gold star’ or ‘trans is my kink.’ Being a bisexual trans nonbinary man, I’ve heard a lot of things I shouldn’t hear.”
That’s where the complication comes in —as trans people, getting to untangle the kink from our gender identity isn’t always an option, when some cis people MAKE our gender identity a kink. Sure, trans people often report better sex lives once they start transitioning, but that’s not because they’re turned on by the transition, it’s because they’re more comfortable in their bodies.
Caryn acknowledges that there can be overlap between kink and gender affirmation. “Kink can be super, super gender affirming for people because at the end of the day, what you’re playing with is power, presentation, [and] existence in your body or outside it. You are breaking down and getting to handpick which of the human psychosomatic experiences you want to have and which ones you don’t. And so it can be really, really empowering and [give] a ton of room for exploration gender-wise to get to play.”
Also, as it turns out, being a pup isn’t always sexual. How sexual being a pup is varies from person to person. As Mick put it, “It’s a kink that can be more aligned with lifestyle, or can be highly sexual.” Studies agreed with the gray area. The 2022 study reported that “participants were asked the extent to which pup play was sexual and/or social, on a five-point scale from [purely] social to [purely] sexual. The mean response was 3.02, with the majority rating their style of pup play as equally social and sexual” — aka, right down the middle.
So, Why ARE So Many Trans Mascs Pups?
Taking a step back to look at my red string-covered bulletin board, I don’t see one answer to why so many trans mascs are pups — I see many.
Maybe it’s that transness and pup-ness come with community and self-expression, but the list of all things that come with community and self-expression is infinite. Relationships, escapism, unconditional acceptance, and affirmation that you can be whoever you want to be can be found in many ways other than just being a pup.
Maybe it’s not a new thing, but instead has just become more visible. As the 2017 study notes, “diverse forms of sexual desire and identity have become highly visible in the internet age, potentially rendering sex less shocking and resulting in a ‘democratization of desire.’”
Maybe it’s because newer generations are just more down for whatever. The 2022 study found that “there is a positive association between being younger and identifying as a pup.” And according to Pew Research data from 2022, “adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to be trans or nonbinary. Some 5.1% of adults younger than 30 are trans or nonbinary… This compares with 1.6% of 30- to 49-year-olds and 0.3% of those 50 and older who are trans or nonbinary.” If more young people are trans, and more young people are pups, it makes sense that there would be some overlap.
Maybe it’s because if you’re willing to accept transness, you’re more open to other possibilities. Caryn said that “I think with both kink and gender, just conceptually, once you start breaking both of these things down to really granular levels, it’s like, what does anything mean? If you’re someone who is spending their free time being a pup, your gender is kind of whatever in the sense that this is not linear at all.”
Ultimately, I think having more overlap between trans communities and ANY communities is a good thing. As Pup SAZ said, “trans pups are amazing and more and more are coming into the community which is greatly needed. Trans handlers included… We still coexist in spaces with the older generation that wants to learn and better their knowledge to be better allies and defenders. So the more trans advocacy and education we have, the better.”
For My Hours Upon Hours of Research and Interviews, My Answer Seems to Be Another Question: Why Is Anyone Into Anything?
If anyone would know, it’s a therapist, so I asked Caryn if that’s even an answerable question. “My instinct on that is no. Sometimes you have a situation where it’s pretty easy to look at the etymology of a specific person’s specific kink… There’s a reason that a lot of people who tend to flock to kink are people who have had really specific restrictive experiences in their lives, whether that’s sexuality, religion, family, whatever. [Sometimes we can] understand how [the kink] got here, but sometimes people just discover stuff and are like, huh, new thing unlocked. And it’s kind of just that.”
And hey, if you’re trans masc and reading this unlocked a new thing, there’s a whole community of pups out there that’s just like you.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Max Gross (he/him) is a trans writer and comedian based out of Brooklyn. His writing can be seen in The Onion, Reductress, Slate, and now, wherever you're reading this.
Easily my fave Coachella look from Chappell, it’s so stunning!!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kate Hawkins is a city-loving Californian currently residing in New Hampshire with her wife and toddler, where she's currently enjoying sports that require unwieldy pieces of equipment (kayaking! biking! cross country skiing!) and grilling lots of corn. She's stoked to be writing puzzles for Autostraddle and hopes you enjoy solving these gay puzzles!
Lily Gladstone‘s resume keeps getting gayer and gayer and we are so here for it! Today it was announced that Gladstone would star as “Liz” in Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet, a remake of the 1993 romantic comedy from legendary Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee. Kelly Marie Tran, a comic and actress who made a notable impact on gay history by suggesting that Raya, the part she voiced in Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, is gay, stars as Angela, Lily’s partner.
The story centers on Min, whose proposal to his boyfriend Chris (local favorite Bowen Yang) is turned down. Still determined to secure his green card, Min persuades his close friend Angela (Tran) to marry him, while promising to cover the costs of IVF treatment for Angela’s partner, Liz (Gladstone). Their plan for a discreet city hall wedding takes a dramatic turn when Min’s grandmother arrives in Seattle, intent on throwing them a lavish Korean wedding banquet, disrupting their lives in unexpected ways.
Living legend Joan Chen is also slated to star in the remake. Previously, Chen’s contributions to the LGBTQ+ cannon included playing a widowed mother in beloved lesbian rom-com Saving Face, having a lesbian sex scene with Anne Heche in The Wild Side, a movie that was so bad, even an Anne Heche/Joan Chen sex scene couldn’t save it,appearing in the queer-inclusive Thanksgiving comedy What’s Cooking? and popping up in last year’s A Murder at the End of The World, starring Emma Corrin.
Youn Yuh-jung, who won an Academy Award for Minari, will play the grandmother, but details on Chen’s role remains a mystery. Casting for the lead role of Min is still underway.
Andrew Ahn previously worked with Bowen Yang on Fire Island.
The original Wedding Banquet was Ang Lee’s second feature film, and his first to earn a theatrical release when it debuted in 1993. It starred Winston Chao in his debut acting role as a gay man who marries one of his tenants, a mainland Chinese woman (May Chin), in order to placate his parents and get her a green card. But then his parents show up in the U.S. determined to plan his wedding banquet, putting his relationship with his gay partner (Mitchell Lichtenstein) in a very awkward position. Wedding Banquet performed well at the box office for its budget and earned accolades at various film festivals as well as Oscar, Independent Spirit and Golden Globe nominations. It was a risky film to make in 1993, and it’s pretty fucking cool that they’re making it again and even gayer this time.
The Wedding Banquet (1993)
As a community, we are specifically thrilled by the news that Lily Gladstone will be playing gay, and doing so opposite Kelly Marie Tran.
not to alarm the lesbians but Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone are playing girlfriends in the upcoming remake of the Wedding Banquet pic.twitter.com/vTh2G2EqZj
Last week I wrote about Under the Bridge, a fantastic true crime drama now on Hulu in which Lily Gladstone plays a lead queer character opposite Riley Keough. Earlier this month, it was announced that Apple Original Films would be releasingFancy Dance, a 2023 Sundance favorite from Native American filmmaker Erica Tremplay, in which Lily plays a “queer 30-ish scammer” who’s tasked with her 13-year-old niece’s care after her sister Tawi disappears from the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. That film will open June 21 with a limited theatrical release and premiere on Apple TV on June 28th. Gladstone also played a queer role in 2016’s Certain Women,which came in at #29 on our 50 Best Lesbian Films list. We can only continue to hope and pray that this streak of queer roles will continue forever.
Kelly Marie Tran became the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie when she appeared in Star Wars: The Last Jedi in December 2017, which also landed her on the cover of Vanity Fair, the first Asian-American woman to do so. Tran played queer in the Facebook watch series Sorry For Your Loss, which I really thought I’d written about for this website at some point but cannot find evidence of having done so. She’s generally badass and we are very excited to see her and Lily be a couple on the big screen!!!
The Wedding Banquet will begin filming in Vancouver next month.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
I feel like I was among 5 people that watched that show but I loved Kelly Marie Tran’s character in Sorry For Your Loss! Easily the best part of the show for me and I can’t wait to see her in this.
In “Lost Movie Reviews From the Autostraddle Archives” we revisit past lesbian, bisexual, and queer classics that we hadn’t reviewed before, but you shouldn’t miss. This week is Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior.
One of the best indie queer films of the past decade, Appropriate Behavior debuted at Sundance 10 years ago and remains, frankly, unparalleled in its excruciatingly real portrayal of queer post-breakup chaos. Directed by, written by, and starring Desiree Akhavan, she is indeed the film’s north star. Appropriate Behavior was her striking feature length debut as writer-director, and it cemented her particular brand of queer storytelling: one marked by nonlinear narratives, discomfort comedy, and dykes fucking and flailing their ways through life.
Appropriate Behavior begins with a breakup. Shirin (Akhavan) is moving out of girlfriend Maxine’s (Rebecca Henderson) Park Slope apartment. Almost immediately, Shirin tells her deadpan best friend Crystal (Halley Feiffer) she wants her back. She moves in with new weird roommates, takes a job teaching filmmaking to literal kindergarteners in Brooklyn, and tries to stitch back together her life by fucking her way through it. She goes on bad dates, has a bad threesome, Akhavan always letting these moments linger long beyond discomfort. We don’t cut away from Shirin’s awkwardness or blunt outbursts. Akhavan has no problem making us stay close and personal. Shirin holds people at a distance, but Akhavan’s approach to filmmaking is intensely intimate.
Along the way, Appropriate Behavior jumps back to Shirin and Maxine’s relationship leading up to its dissolution. We get the stoop-set meet-cute when they initially bond over, essentially, being haters. But the problem with bonding over cynicism is that cynicism is likely to turn in on each other eventually. Shirin and Maxine fight as compellingly as they fuck, sometimes even fighting about fucking itself. The whole film a masterclass on structure, nonlinearity, and airtight editing. Scenes move fluidly between Shirin’s present and vignettes of her past, often triggered subtly by a person, place, or thing that sends Shirin spiraling backward to Maxine. It doesn’t feel like a spiral though. It feels like we’re moving back and forth on one straight line. There are no sound cues that send us backward; there’s no visual or stylistic differentiating between the past and present. These flashbacks do the thing so many flashbacks strive for and yet fall short of: they feel authentically like memories.
It’s clear right away that Shirin has romanticized the relationship, as we all often do. Indeed, Maxine and Shirin’s shared sardonic sense of humor and tendency to loathe things makes for shaky foundation to build a relationship on. But Maxine becomes Shirin’s entry point to queerness, and Shirin becomes Maxine — who’s estranged from her parents — chosen family, and well, there are all sorts of reasons we suddenly find ourselves in super serious, all-encompassing relationships with people we’re not good fits for. Appropriate Behavior‘s sex scenes embody so many different kinds of sex, bad and good and in between. When the lust of new relationship energy wears off, Shirin and Maxine don’t even seem like a great fit sexually, a hilariously odd roleplay situation where Maxine commits a little too seriously to the bit of being Shirin’s tax preparer underlining some of their differences of desire. Akhavan is so good at capturing discomfort without actually reproducing the cynicism of her characters. Yes, there’s cringe, but there’s charm, too.
Many of the thorny themes that would later be sharpened in Akhavan’s brilliant (and forever underrated) limited series The Bisexual are planted here in Appropriate Behavior: casual and persistent biphobia in the lesbian community, the internalized biphobia that fosters, and tensions in intercultural relationships. With that last one, Appropriate Behavior really excels, Shirin pushed and pulled by three different selves: the self her parents want her to be (a good Persian daughter), the self Maxine wants her to be (based on Maxine‘s idea of queer life and community), and the self Shirin actually wants to embody, the self she’s still trying to figure out.
It has what I’d call an anti-coming out arc. It’s a movie that understands well the reality that coming into one’s own queerness extends far beyond coming out. In one of the film’s best fights (though picking a favorite fight from the movie is like picking a favorite sex scene from it, which is to say difficult), Shirin and Maxine go at it about their different familial behaviors. Maxine is, understandably, frustrated by Shirin’s refusal to acknowledge their relationship to her traditional wealthy Iranian immigrant parents. Shirin is, understandably, frustrated by Maxine’s pressures, which in Shirin’s mind dismiss the cultural differences. Maxine calls Shirin’s relationship with her parents codependent, creepy. To her, it is wrong. Shirin calls Maxine’s estrangement from her family an abandonment on Maxine’s part, a choice. To her, it is wrong. They’re both being unreasonable and yet completely comprehensible. It can be so easy to seek points of connection in an early, formative queer relationship, to feel seen and understood by another when perhaps we haven’t experienced that in our intimate relationships before, but by hinging our understandings of our own queerness on another person, we run the risk of ignoring key differences. We project, and we fall into the false narrative often thrust upon us that there’s a one-size-fits-all way to be queer, to come out.
When Shirin tells her parents it’s actually completely normal and platonic for her to live with Maxine in a one-bedroom apartment with only one bed in it (“Also, in the movie Beaches, these two best friends shared a bed, and it was very inexpensive,” Shirin rationalizes in one of my favorite lines from the film), it’s intentionally absurd. Of course they know. Shirin’s mother is merely content with denial. Her brother thinks if she likes men, too, then she can just choose that. Maxine is appalled by what she sees as Shirin living a double life when she accompanies her to a Nowruz party in Jersey. But just like the film resists linearity in its structure, it resists a monolithic approach to its characters, especially Shirin.
Akhavan creates queer character that aren’t just unlikable; they’re unpleasant. They’re not just messy; they’re nasty, self-destructive. When Shirin and Maxine fight while drunk, they accuse each other of cheating, of hitting, and both are alcohol-induced embellishments, but you believe their perception of things, because above all else Akhavan imbues her writing, filmmaking, and performances with emotional truth, even among the quippy jokes. This is a simple story but a deceptively complex film. It feels very much like just one zoomed-in snapshot of a queer person’s life rather than a sweeping journey, and that intimacy is ultimately more revelatory than a grander arc might be. As far as breakup films go, it’s one of the best, reminding at times of a 21st century Brooklyn version of Sarah Schulman’s novel After Delores. And ten years later, it still stands out as an indie queer gem.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
When you leave an action movie, some topics immediately arise for post-screen conversation. Perhaps there was an especially sick bit of fight choreography nobody can get over. Or maybe a witty one-liner to be repeated ad nauseam between you and your friends. But one thing that’s not likely to emerge in the glow of immediate post-action movie discourse? Praise about the feature’s trans representation. If there was any mention of trans folks in the action movie, it likely results in a hesitant, “Boy, that was uncomfortable, huh?”
Action movies haven’t been a domain where trans women have fared especially well. That’s what makes Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man such a welcome outlier. Unfortunately, the general history of representation (both in front of and behind the camera) in the action movie realm can be incredibly frustrating. But does that mean all trans-based hope for the future of the genre is lost?
Cinema has often reflected mainstream capitalist values of a gender binary and reaffirmed the notion that there are specific ways each gender “behaves.” Because of this phenomenon, action movies, like R-rated comedies, have often reinforced conventional portraits of masculinity. That’s not because fight scenes and other staples of the action movie are inherently “for men.” Instead, it reflects this genre’s usage to (either consciously or subconsciously) reinforce standard gender roles. Just look at iconic Hong Kong director Chang Cheh basing his action features around “yanggang” or staunch masculinity. Then, of course, there were Reagan-era American action movies that starred buff dudes reinforcing classical masculine prowess and “the American way.”
Exceptions have existed throughout the years, from the leads of the Alien and Terminator movies to features headlined by Michelle Yeoh and Veronica Ngo. However, such movies are often thought of as anomalous in the genre. The very presence of women in an action movie protagonist role is seen as “subversive” of the genre’s norms. The women leads of this genre tend to remind us how rarely such figures get to step into the spotlight of this domain.
Action films have primarily reinforced the status quo. That’s why there’s an influx of heroic cops, soldiers, and similar figures being protagonists in the domain. This means that trans women have been basically non-existence in the genre for many years. One exception to this erasure? Trans women do make occasional appearances as the punchline to jokes. The 1984 movie Toxic Avenger, for instance, found time for transphobic jokes as part of its “transgressive” style of comedy. 15 years later, Wild Wild West squeezed in transphobic gags as part of recurring gay panic jokes. (Readers will be shocked to be reminded that Wild Wild West was a poorly written movie.)
Such demeaning jokes were part of the action movie as a reminder to moviegoers about what constitutes “normalcy.” Trans people (and, specifically, trans women) are “freaks” and anomalies in society. It’s okay to be grossed out by them! Just look at action/comedy The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. This wacky sequel featured a quasi-homage to The Crying Game. Said tribute hinged on Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) horrifyingly discovering that supporting character Tanya Peters (Anna Nicole Smith) is a trans woman. Idiotic and tired jokes lifted from Ace Ventura movies were even making their way into the realm of action/comedies.
Thankfully, not all trans representation in 1990s action cinema was made equal. One complicated trans element of 1990s action cinema came in the 1996 feature Escape from L.A. This John Carpenter directorial effort featured trans woman Hershe Las Palmas (Pam Grier), a former associate of protagonist Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell). Escape from L.A. has garnered a cult following in recent years, in part due to the complicated, yet fond, relationship many viewers (including trans audiences) have with Las Palmas.
Carpenter’s film trades in unfortunate staples of “trans panic” gags. These include brief fixations on the character’s genitals and Plissken repeatedly dead-naming Palmas. However, Las Palmas does get to participate in action scenes. She’s decidedly not the main villain of the film. And she’s also portrayed by a cis woman (rather than a cis man in a wig). Compared to other 1990s action movies, Escape from L.A. was practically Lingua Franca!
Thankfully, trans women did leave a massive mark on action cinema in the final months of the 20th century. Enter Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s masterpiece The Matrix.
This 1999 Keanu Reeves vehicle didn’t feature any explicit on-screen trans representation. However, the entire premise of the movie has become famous for its allegorically trans material. A feature all about subverting societal norms that hinges on embracing your true self on taking just the “right” pill. If that’s not trans lady cinema, then what is? Heck, key crowdpleaser climactic moments in The Matrix and The Matrix Resurrections orient around protagonist characters reaffirming their names to someone “deadnaming” them! Lilly and Lana Wachowski weren’t out as trans women at the time of The Matrix’s release, so at the time audiences couldn’t quite appreciate this important piece of personal subtext. However, it was always there changing the default thematic norms of this genre.
The Matrix blew open the doors for what action movies could accomplish. One would have hoped that would have resulted in a deluge of trans-focused action cinema. Alas, trans women are still a rarity in the action genre. Hollywood sort of retired transphobic jokes, even if such gags still appeared in motion pictures as late as 2016’s Deadpool. Unfortunately, the approach to trans women in modern action cinema is a microcosm of how Hollywood has handled lots of marginalized populations in recent years. Off-color and cruel jokes are out. However, they haven’t been replaced with physical tangible representations that could potentially “alienate” intolerant viewers and their dollars. The response to the ubiquity of transphobic material was to just erase the idea of trans people altogether.
If modern action films even begin to approach something “kind of” trans-related, it’s usually for vomit-inducing gimmicks. The tedious 2016 Michelle Rodriguez vehicle The Assignment, for instance, focused on male assassin Frank Kitchen. (He was presumably named by the same screenwriter responsible for the 2010s action hero names Cade Yeager and Cypher Raige.) Kitchen wakes up to find himself surgically turned into a woman by his enemy. Needless to say, it’s an abhorrent piece of cinema exceeded only in its inaccuracy of trans experiences (not to mention its emphasis on trans stuff only through “medical” procedures) by its tediousness. To its credit, there is an adorable moment where a dog places its paw on top of two human hands. Save for that cute canine behavior, The Assignment has nothing to offer but retrograde approaches to gender.
Even the fleeting appearances of actual trans actors in action films are lacking. Why is Laverne Cox in the long-forgotten Amazon action movie Jolt if she’s only around to play a forgettable detective character with no memorable fight scenes? It wasn’t until Monkey Man that moviegoers received a welcome departure from these trends with Vipin Sharma’s Alpha, a member of the local hijra community that rescues the film’s protagonist.
Alpha and other trans characters in the movie are not depicted as eerie “others.” Their bodies are not framed as something repulsive, nor are they “freaks” worthy of jeers. The isolated world they inhabit is a kind of oasis in a movie full of corruption and darkness. Meanwhile, their oppression at the hands of the government reflects the rampant inequality Monkey Man‘s lead is fighting against. But even this exciting exception still casts a cis performer in the role.
At least Sharma’s performance is devoid of obnoxious over-the-top ticks other cis actors bring to trans characters. And, best of all, Monkey Man gives Alpha and the film’s other trans characters a big climactic action scene! This gaggle of societal outsiders gets to be Monkey Man’s equivalent to Han Solo/M’Baku/Middle-Earth Eagles by suddenly showing up to save the day just when all hope seems lost. Alpha and company even get nifty-looking scythes to use in viciously enacting violent revenge. Even just this one Monkey Man sequence makes one realize what this genre’s been missing. Trans women have been this domain’s source of go-to mockery, when what they need to become is the new default stars of the genre.
I mean, really, trans women and trans folks of any gender make for perfect action movie protagonists simply by nature of being underdogs. The action movie is often about “one person against an army of baddies.” Typically, American titles like Taken and Silent Night have used this dynamic to instill martyr complexes in privileged viewers. In these films, middle-aged white dads are the ultimate victims in society. Their enemy? Foreign “invaders,” particularly nasty people of color covered in tattoos. Trans-centric action movies could take the bare bones of this underdog story structure and ground it in some reality.
After all, trans people are being attacked in legislation regularly. This is an actually oppressed group of human beings, particularly when those trans folks intersect with other marginalized identities. Monkey Man proved you can pull from real-world woes and still deliver gnarly cheer-worthy action moments. This balance shows narrative hallmarks of action movies can evolve in exciting new directions.
Even more exciting, though, is the idea of actual trans artists molding the form. Save for the Wachowskis, trans artists have had minimal opportunities to contribute to the creative direction of the genre. It’s thrilling to imagine the new visual elements filmmakers like Sydney Freeland and Vera Drew could bring to this domain of guns, bullets, and taken offspring. (Freeland directed episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Echo and Drew literally already made a superhero movie.) Trans filmmakers have employed unique visual flourishes in their indie works; imagine if they received the money to execute visually bold action movies. Just look at what Lilly and Lana Wachowski did with the camerawork and editing in The Matrix films and Speed Racer.
But even the recent The Matrix Resurrections still relied largely on subtext with trans performers only populating minor supporting roles. Alongside the casting of Monkey Man’s lead trans character, it feels like trans performers are even more absent than trans filmmakers. Hari Nef, MJ Rodriguez, Patti Harrison, Trace Lysette, and so many others are prominent in pop culture. Any one of them could become a new action movie star! In the past, the stars of Kinsey, Good Will Hunting, and Moonlighting became cisgendered action legends. Why can’t rising trans stars get their own Die Hard or The Bourne Identity?
The future for trans artists in action movies, even after something reassuring like Monkey Man, is fuzzy. On the one hand, the very existence of the acclaimed intersex-led Sundance 2024 thriller Ponyboi should give hope. But the River Gallo-starring feature is an indie in a genre that often requires a larger budget. (Ponyboi is more action-adjacent than action after all.) There’s also M.J. Bassett’s upcoming Red Sonja film. What a welcome sign seeing a trans woman helming a comic book adaptation full of punching! But the predominantly cis cast and cis screenwriter, implies a trans person would only get this opportunity by folding into the cis establishment, creating a movie whose connection to transness would be unknown by anyone unfamiliar with the director’s identity.
Trans action filmmakers and trans action stars should be included more in the work that’s already getting made. But true change will come when trans filmmakers are allowed to push the genre to exciting new territory like the Wachowskis did a quarter of a century ago — this time out of the closet with trans actors on-screen.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Lisa Laman is a life-long movie fan, writer, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic located both on the autism spectrum and in Texas. Given that her first word was "Disney", Lisa Laman was "doomed" from the start to be a film geek! In addition to writing feature columns and reviews for Collider, her byline has been seen in outlets like Polygon, The Mary Sue, Fangoria, The Spool, and ScarleTeen. She has also presented original essays related to the world of cinema at multiple academic conferences, been a featured guest on a BBC podcast, and interviewed artists ranging from Anna Kerrigan to Mark Wahlberg. When she isn’t writing, Lisa loves karaoke, chips & queso, and rambling about Carly Rae Jepsen with friends.
I don’t think The Assignment is meant to be taken seriously. “Frank Kitchen” (a hilarious name repeated often in the film, funnier every time) was named by Walter Hill, who has referred to the movie as a “king-size Tales From the Crypt” episode; it’s a very silly and pulpy story about a mad scientist and her victim’s quest for revenge. Frank is clearly not trans.
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Obviously Frank isn’t trans, but the film is clearly trafficking in trans imagery and using trans surgeries for shock value, so Lisa was correct to mention it.
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I’m MJ Bassett – director of Red Sonja here. Just want to correct something. Sonja was developed at an early stage by Joey Soloway, the creator of Transparent, before I came on board. Going from nonbinary film maker to transwoman film maker is no small thing. There IS a transwoman in the cast but she’s not played as such and is not relevant to story, and I offered a bigger name trans actress a role but she turned me down. So, to be clear, the studio was very open to this and there is trans representation both on screen and off but that’s not what the movie is about. It’s just going to be a good action film and that’s how I think things should be.
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As the editor of this piece, I’m happy to hear there’s a trans woman in your cast and have changed that sentence accordingly! Looking forward to seeing your film.
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As someone who actually loves Wild Wild West, i want to remind you that the late 80s and earlier 90s where teeming with female led action cinema and genderqueer characters, in Hongkong cinema. See for example Tsui Hark films like Peking Opera Blues or The Butterfly Lovers with trans male main characters, or the East is Red trilogy with a trans female lesbian main character.
Great article btw, welcome here!
Nell Jackson didn’t set out to become a highwaywoman; in fact, all she wanted to do was be a good soldier. Recently widowed, she returned to her hometown, where everyone thought she died with her husband. And when she returns, she returns a little…different. On her way into town, she’s held up by a highwayman, and a little mote of light goes into her mouth and imbues her with supernatural strength and speed and she’s able to get out of the jam all on her own. (Also this is neither here nor there, but there is currently another show about highwaymen called The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin that also features a highwaywoman named Nell, but apparently this is a complete coincidence, because while Dick Turpin was a real person, neither the Nell in that show nor Nell Jackson are.)
Played by Derry Girl Louisa Harland, Nell Jackson is a fierce, funny, sarcastic woman with no interest in behaving the way people of her time think women should behave. Nell prefers wearing pants to skirts, and doesn’t care if you mistake her for a man, as long as you don’t call her Nellie. But while she is clearly gender non-conforming for her time, there’s no evidence of her being queer. She seems to have loved her late husband, and doesn’t show romantic interest in anyone else. Which is only a bummer in that it means we don’t get to know whether or not she’s queer; in the grand scheme of things, I really appreciate a woman’s story not having anything to do with romance at all. Nell has more important things to worry about. Over the course of the season, Nell finds herself in many sticky situations, and is on a mission to clear her name of a crime she didn’t commit, all while protecting her two little sisters, Roxy and George.
Don’t underestimate them. Photo by Robert Viglasky.
There is a queer character we meet, though I’m not sure if she’s even fully aware of her own queerness by the end of the season. While on the road, Nell resorts to a little highway robbery, stopping the carriage of a wealthy family, stealing only what they need and letting the family go. The daughter of this family, Polly Honeycombe, becomes instantly enamored with this “highwayman” and eventually meets back up with Nell and her crew. While she is definitely surprised when it was revealed to her that Nell is a woman, it didn’t stop her from fantasizing about Nell. At one point, she even kisses Nell square on the mouth…to which Nell has no reaction. It’s then never addressed or brought up again. Very confusing. So while Polly does indeed seem to be queer, the mere fact of gender not getting in the way of her crush, it’s unclear if it goes deeper than her fascination with Nell.
I did appreciate Polly’s fantasy giving Nell the 90s slow-mo heartthrob treatment.
And personally, my queer heart was pulled in a slightly different direction. One person dedicated to stopping Nell is Sofia Wilmot, the magistrate’s daughter. Sofia is trying to keep her younger brother out of trouble, because she is unable to inherit the power and estate her father would leave behind. And let me tell you, Sofia Wilmot is the most Katie McGrath-coded character I’ve ever seen not played by Katie McGrath. I swear if this show was made ten years ago, it would have been her playing it. The character has a dash of Morgana’s arc and a touch of Lena Luthor’s serious stillness. Sofia starts out very buttoned up, prim and proper, rarely speaking, just listening, observing. But by the end of the season, she has let her hair down and taken power by the reins.
Tell me the casting call didn’t say “Katie McGrath type.” Photo by Robert Viglasky.
Sofia and Nell are posed as enemies, but they have more in common than either of them realize: They’re both widowed, both protective over their siblings, both feeling limited by what they can do as a woman in 18th century England, both consistently underestimated, and both more powerful than they even realize.
Sofia Wilmot is also played by queer actress Alice Kremelberg, who points out that even though the queer representation on this show is minimal, it is “very exciting, especially for a show that is on Disney and is for everyone.” I just wish they had pushed it a little further, either having Polly have a line about being surprised she still has a crush on Nell even though she knows she’s a woman, or even saying “I don’t care that Nell’s a woman, I still want her to sweep me off my feet” or something. Or maybe even, once the strange kiss moment passed, eventually having Polly eying another woman with similar vibes to Nell’s, indicating her horizons are a bit more open now. It was played off as a joke, which was fine and cute, and I’m glad nobody tried to dissuade her from her crush, and instead just let her know that Nell is a woman, but I still wished they hadn’t played it so…safe. When the backlash came out about the kids’ show Bluey momentarily almost hinting at the theoretical existence of a dog with two moms, I saw someone say something along the lines of: Bigots are going to get mad no matter how big or small your queer representation is, so why not commit to it if you’re going to include it at all? Similarly, PinkNews and Wikipedia both credit trans actress Iz Hesketh, who plays a noble assistant Valerian, as playing a non-binary character, Wikipedia even going so far as to say, “She is the first person to portray a non-binary character to appear in a Disney live action series.” But I would argue this is not an obvious fact. It’s very possible they/them pronouns are used by Valerian in the show, but if they are, I missed it entirely. (Side note: Iz uses she/her pronouns now but identified as non-binary at the time of filming.) Maybe I’m being too cyclical, but it feels like another instance of the representation being almost there. I wanted them to push the envelope juuuust a little further.
I find all of this especially surprising given the creator of this show, Sally Wainwright, was also the creator of Gentleman Jack. So maybe her hands were tied by Disney, maybe there was just too much other story to tell, who’s to say. Hopefully if the show gets a second season, we’ll see more obvious representation.
Nell is a drag king and we stan. Photo by Robert Viglasky.
Overall, this was a fun fantasy romp with a lot of heart. While there were still men pulling some reigns — for example, both Nell and Sofia technically get their power from a man, at least at first; Nell from the sprite Billy Blind that has been assigned to her for reasons neither of them know at first, and Sofia from the Earl of Poynton — at its core, this show is about young women. It’s about Nell and Sofia; it’s also about Roxy who wants to be able to choose who she loves and maybe has a touch of magic in her herself; it’s about George, as fearless as she is small, the first in her family to learn how to read. Also, Joely Richardson’s Lady Eularia Moggerhanger, who runs the local newspaper and is always looking for gossip, is a hilarious and fun character.
So, while I wouldn’t recommend this show based on the queer representation alone, I would recommend Renegade Nell overall to anyone who enjoys women-led YA fantasy. On that, it absolutely (stands and) delivers.
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Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.
Valerie, where you saw Nell as loving Capt. Jackson, a valid interpretation, I saw him more as a means to an end for her. Nell doesn’t like to be forced into societal pigeonholes, and Jackson was a way for her to escape the small town provincial life that was all that was available to her, insomuch as she also tries to enlist before things start happening. To me it seemed more like a comrade-in-arms thing where they both got something out of it.
I also really like how they keep coming back around to the fact that fighting and being tough isn’t all there is to Nell. She seems to have some medical experience, I’m guessing she was a nurse or doctor’s assistant in the army camp of her husband, that keeps popping back up and being useful to her.
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> I just wish they had pushed it a little further, either having Polly have a line about being surprised she still has a crush on Nell even though she knows she’s a woman, or even saying “I don’t care that Nell’s a woman, I still want her to sweep me off my feet” or something.
Polly clearly is still interested in Nell after finding out she’s a woman. She kisses Nell after finding out. The fangirl-esque framing of the moment is played as comedic, but the kiss itself isn’t. Why do you need the show to *tell* when it’s already obviously, loudly *showing*?
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I also read the husband as a beard in some way. And the fact that Billie is a queer fairy gave another twist to the whole set up. Nell might not be lesbian, but she is clearly gender queer. Honeycomb is a comedic character at the start, but by developing her from useless rich girl into actual comrade they also do something interesting with her.
![Cam and Rebecca make out in the bathroom, caption reads [heavy breathing]](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/26.png?w=1200&resize=1200%2C600)
Just a note: Dead Boy Detectives dropped yesterday, and while yes, it is queer, there…may be some problems with the quality of that queerness. More detail in the response.
This is very spoilery, so read at your own peril.
There is one queer main character, and three queer secondary characters. None of those relationships end well. The queer woman is the secondary character Jenny the Butcher, played by Briana Cuoco (Kaley’s little sister). She’s set up on a date by another secondary character with a woman who has been sending her anonymous secret admirer letters. It initially goes well until the admirer lets slip that she has been spying on Jenny. When Jenny nopes out, the admirer goes full psycho and ends up dead by the end of the date.