Malinda Lo

This week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly includes a column from Mark Harris on gay characters on television. I’m always interested when a mainstream publication examines LGBT representation on TV, but I have to admit, I’m mostly interested in seeing whether they have any idea of what they’re talking about. Mark Harris’s column didn’t exactly give me hope.

Harris is openly gay and he has his heart in the right place (he’s saying that there has been some progress but there still needs to be a lot more), but he is totally blind to the status of lesbians and bisexual women on TV. This isn’t surprising, and that is disappointing. Frankly, I’m tired of gay men speaking up to demand more gay representation but ignoring the fact that a lot of gay people are women.

A couple of gay people: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi

In his column (which otherwise does a good job of commenting on the representation of gay men on TV), Harris mentions women twice. Two times. Here they are:

(1) “The rest of the roster contains a disproportionately high number of really hot women who call themselves bisexual, which is pretty much what all gay people would look like if straight men were in charge of inventing us.”

How nice of Harris to dismiss the record number (at least four) of bisexual female regulars on network TV this fall by equating them with straight male fantasies. It’s true that “bisexual” female characters are often there solely to elicit drool from straight male viewers, but this year, things are a little bit different. (Plus, sometimes women drool over the bisexual chicks, too.)

Yes, it looks like the bisexual women on House (Olivia Wilde’s Thirteen) and Bones (Michaela Conlin’s Angela) might be about to embark on stereotypical experimental lesbian flings before settling down with men (although I’m holding out hope for Angela, just because Bones is so quirky). (And who knows if Carrie Rivai on Knight Rider is still queer.) But Harris has completely overlooked the burgeoning romance between Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Erica (Brooke Smith) on Grey’s Anatomy. Yeah, their romance has been developing veeery slowly, but so far, it looks like Shonda Rhimes — who is not, by the way, a straight man — is taking it seriously.

Plus, who said “really hot women” can’t be gay? Hasn’t Harris seen The L Word? Or Portia de Rossi, for that matter?

(2) “And there’s one statistic GLAAD didn’t list: the number of network shows, 10 years after Ellen and Will & Grace, that are built around a main character who’s gay. That’d be zero. Is it just me, or does that seem a little low?”

This is the second reference (albeit in passing) Harris makes to a lesbian on television. I’m not denying that it’s pathetic that there is no network show centering on a gay lead character. It is, in fact, beyond pathetic — it’s going backwards in time. But let me add a bit of context: This year on scripted network television, there are zero lesbians, period. Despite the sudden influx of bisexual women, network TV offers us not even one lesbian regular character. (Yes, there are some randomly recurring lesbian characters who never have more than a couple of lines. They don’t count.)

Yes, there are a lot more lesbian characters on cable (primarily on The L Word). But network and cable TV are not the same thing — a distinction that Harris has conveniently blurred. In his effort to dramatize the plight of LGBT folks on television, Harris has purposely misread GLAAD’s study on the subject. Harris writes, “GLAAD says there are 16 gay, lesbian, or bisexual characters regularly appearing on prime-time network TV this fall,” and then quips, “Does the phrase ’16 gay people on TV’ signify a giant leap forward, or just a new season of Project Runway?”

Um, no. This may seem like splitting hairs, but Project Runway — and the LGBT characters in the cable shows Harris also cites — are not part of those 16 characters. Those 16 are only on prime-time scripted network television, not on cable, and not on reality shows. Cable television is certainly an increasingly important chunk of television these days (and reality is a whole ‘nother discussion), but network TV is still watched by more Americans simply because it is more widely available. In addition, the most buzzed-about shows are still on broadcast TV (unless you’re AMC’s Mad Men this year) and get the lion’s share of media coverage.

Call me old-fashioned, but if you can’t keep your definitions straight (no pun intended), I can’t take your argument seriously.