GLAAD Report: 2016 Was A Year Of Representation But Also, Mostly, Murder For Lesbians On TV

GLAAD’s announcement that 2015’s Network Responsibility Index would be its last was surprising and surprisingly encouraging. As Riese notedĀ when she reported it on it last September, LGBTQ representation on TV had evolved to the point that quality was becoming more important than quantity. “We are there,” Riese said. “We are in the picture.” And of course she was right. Riese and I both keep spreadsheets in our head (and a literal one on Google Drive) detailing every single lesbian, bisexual, and trans woman in TVs history; we could see that what GLAAD president Sarah Ellis was telling us was true: “LGBT representation has increased to the point that we can be found in the programming of nearly every major network.” Behind the scenes, we even decided that it was okay to stop trying to coverĀ everythingĀ and to focus only on what wasĀ good.

Then Lexa happened. But not just Lexa.Ā Zora from The Shannara Chronicles. Carla from Code Black.Ā Julie Mao from The Expanse. Ash from Janet King. Kira from The Magicians. Denise from The Walking Dead.Ā Nora and Mary Louise from The Vampire Diaries. Mimi and Camilla from Empire. Cara Thomas from Marcella.Ā Pamela Clayborne from Saints & Sinners. Felicity, Bridey, Mayfair, Root, Poussey, Bea, Sara Harvey, Julia, Helen. 25 lesbian and bisexual characters have died on TV since GLAAD retired its Network Responsibility Index a year ago, bringing the grand total of queer women’s deaths on TV to 166. (For now. Our list gets an update almost every other week.)

Today, GLAAD released its other annual TV report, the Where We Are on TV report, and while there are some encouraging things to talk about, statistically, GLAAD is also feeling the frustration.

While much improvement has been made and TV remains incredibly far ahead of film in terms of LGBTQ representation, it must be made clear that television ā€“ and broadcast series more specifically ā€“Ā failed queer women this year as character after character was killed. This is especially disappointing as this very report just last year called on broadcast content creators to do better by lesbian and bisexual women after superfluous deaths on Chicago Fire and Supernatural. This continues a decades-long trend of killing LGBTQ characters ā€“ often solely to further a straight, cisgender characterā€™s plotline ā€“ which sends a dangerous message to audiences. It is important that creators do not reinvigorate harmful tropes, which exploit an already marginalized community.

The year between this year’s Where We Are On TV report and last year’s has been, without question, the most frustrating year ever for queer women who love television. Yes, there have been years where we had hardly any TV representation at all, but the trend since 2006 had been consistently encouraging. Every year for the last ten years, weĀ have seen more queer women on TV and we have seen better portrayals of queer women on TV. I think one of the reasons Lexa’s death caused so much outrage is that she seemed like the ultimate symbol of queerĀ women having arrived. She hadn’t come onto The 100 as a Queer Character; her relationship with Clarke evolved naturally, the way it would between any straight characters. She was complicated and layered and beloved. Her death, and the landslide of lesbian/bi deaths that came after it, were crushing because they shook the hope out of us.

And it was more than just a feeling. One of the bleakest things about this year’s Where We Are On TV report is the acknowledgement that lesbian representation on broadcast TV dropped 16% since last year andĀ lesbians on cable are down 2%. On cable! This is the first year since The L Word beganĀ that lesbian representation has gone down on cable TV. While bisexual women are getting a small boost in visibility, it’s often coming at the cost of damaging cliches. (Looking straight at you,Gotham!) And women, in general, are still trailing behind men on TV. We only make up 44% of regular characters, but we make up 51% of the population.

But GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV report is a shot of optimism in two ways.

1) The statistics as a whole are promising.

+ 43 of 853 series regulars on broadcast TV are LGBTQ, the highest percentage (4.8%) ever. Plus 28 recurring characters. When you juxtapose this stat with the one about lesbian representation, you can see that thisĀ increase of LGBTQ charactersĀ is because of gayĀ men.

+ There are 142 LGBTQ characters on primetime cable TV.

+ Streaming platforms boast 65 LGBTQ characters (the highest percentage compared to straight characters of any way to watch TV).

+ There are 12 trans women on TV, and 16 trans people total, which is double the number of trans characters from last year. (Though, of course,Ā the most prominent and critically acclaimed trans woman ā€” Maura from Transparent ā€” is played by a cis man.

+ The number of bisexual women on TV is up on broadcast and streaming TV.

+ Black series regulars are at an all-time high (but Black women only make up 38% of those characters).

+ Racial diversity, in general, is on the rise. 36% of broadcast TV characters are people of color.

2) This is the first time GLAAD has ever specifically mentioned the Bury Your Gays trope in their Where We Are On TV report, and they gave it both a prominent place and used strong language to call on TV creators to cut it out. That GLAAD took this step is a direct result of the activism that sprang out of Lexa’s death of The 100. Not only did fans raise a significant amount of money for The Trevor Project and start their own convention, they forced mainstream media to pay attention to Bury Your Gays for the first time in history. Riese and I gave at least a dozen interviews to big, well-respected mainstream magazines and newspapers about Lexa’s death and where it fits into queer TV history. Variety wrote about, Entertainment Weekly wrote about it,Ā The Hollywood Reporter wrote about it. Y’all, The Washington Post and The New York Times wrote about it. ThatĀ matters.

It also matters that GLAAD called it out specifically and prominently in this year’s Where We Are on TV. GLAAD has been releasing this studyĀ for 11 years and by providing cold, hard stats they’ve forced networks and showrunners to pay attention and to change things for the better. It has not been a good year for queer women on TV,Ā and GLAAD knows it, and now so does everyone else.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1719 articles for us.

22 Comments

  1. Reading you list them all off sent a shot of pain through my chest. Guess I should’ve been wearing my bulletproof vest since the names of the characters I love have become the bullets being fired at me.

    I’ll just be over in a corner sobbing

  2. 2016 has been a garbage fire. I’m very happy to see that GLAAD has acknowledged that and is specifically calling out TV creators. Let’s hope it has a positive effect.

    As my friend just said, we are now getting to see TV that was written AFTER Lexa died. It’ll be very interesting to see what comes next.

  3. Don’t forget the importance you played in getting groups like GLAAD to talk about this, Heather and Autostraddle.

    And as the calendar year isn’t over yet, I’m expending energy worrying about Lana Winters and Nomanita.

  4. the article written compiling queer deaths really helps to provide hard facts about what we’ve been screaming about for years, hope you guys know that

  5. I was already feeling fatigued by death on TV before 2016. And then they killed Lexa, and my interest in watching any more of The 100 went straight out the window. Not only was the whole aftermath insulting, the event in the show was done by using one of the worst cliches.

    I was super disappointed by Person of Interest. I wanted to watch it once the show was finished so I could binge it, but after hearing about what happened, I just can’t bring myself to do it. Maybe someday.

    Even Faking It disappointed me. It took advantage of a cliche and never really examined it in a meaningful way. There’s a young adult book, Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley, that looks at the same cliche and set up and actually does it justice. I’m glad that Faking It made a lot of progress in various representations on TV, but at the same time, it was a frustrating way of going about it.

    I prefer more lighthearted shows these days, if only because there’s less risk of being emotionally sucker punched by them for the sake of cheap drama.

    • To me Person of Interest ended on episode 99, episode 9 of season 5, with the team standing together staring at the city. Root and Shaw were finally reunited for real (though their actual reunion was pretty disappointing). So if you want a stopping point there’s that.

  6. And then “Wynonna Earp” gave Nicole Haught a bullet proof vest before the Lexa incident even happened.

  7. I wish to note: CW dramedy JaneTheVirgin “killed” one of its lesbians (villain,sociopath, Rose Solano; aka sin rostro) and then resurrected her in Season 2 finale.

    • And then Blindspot also resurrected a previously-thought-dead lesbian. A recapper at After Ellen opined: let’s make this a new trope…the resurrection of buried gays! ;)

  8. lets make a new trope: gay characters who are actually seemingly impossible to kill to the point that all of their enemies are comically frustrated. functionally immortal gay characters. being gay making you immortal. unkillable gay trope (from @marsixm on tumblr)

    • The universe is about balance. Immortal gays on the tele would definitely restore some of it – as well as stopping global warming and curing ebola, probably.

  9. Also, Lexa’s death was upsetting because showmakers had heavily engaged LGBT+ fans for ratings, invaded our online safe spaces to call us ‘paranoid’ and repeatedly assured us that they weren’t going to kill her, complete with invitations to watch the season finale being filmed implying her survival. Queerbaiting at it’s absolute finest. Best not get started on OITNB.

  10. Yes 2016 started off like a bag of poo on fire on your front porch but it seems to be ending on quite the high note. We got WayHaught that survived for a season 2, Alex and Maggie (I haven’t been this excited about a possible pairing since Bianca and Maggie), Yorkie and Kelly from San Junipero, Arizona’s getting a new love, and Maggie’s got herself Jewish girlfriend on Younger. On a separate note the Cubs just broke a 108 year old curse and come next week we could have our first woman President, so things can change.

  11. I wasn’t that engaged with Lexa and that whole show, but Poussey… that kicked the ground from under me in a similar fashion Lexa’s death did to a lot of fans.

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