Gay television has had win after win in the past several years with shows like “Heated Rivalry” and “Heartstopper” making their rounds on the internet and in the brains of viewers everywhere. “Heated Rivalry,” a queer hockey show, has seen huge popularity lately with over 10.6 million streams on HBO Max as of late February.
It seems that queer TV is all the rage lately, but when you look closer, specifically at the stories written about one sector of the LGBTQ+ community, that viewpoint changes. It is the first letter of our community, the L, lesbians, that keeps getting their lights snuffed out from our screens time and time again.
While shows centered around gay characters and their relationships reach peak popularity, shows written about lesbian stories are put to the wayside, cancellations and discontinuations often being the imminent end for their sapphic characters. “A League of Their Own,” “I Am Not Okay With This,” “First Kill” and “Everything Sucks!” are just a few examples of shows with lesbian-centered stories that were cancelled after only one season despite popularity.
Why is that? The answer is more simple, and more heartbreaking, than one might think.
Lesbian. Just the word is considered taboo to many. Misogyny is rampant in our society, and it is a prevalent issue for gay women in the LGBTQ+ community. Being queer does not make you automatically immune to be misogyny. In fact, many lesbians find themselves on the sharp end of the sword, even when it’s held by their fellow community members.
Lesbian relationships are often seen as “gross” or are entirely sexualized to make cheap jokes about scissors by people both inside and outside of the community. The sad truth, in my opinion, is that many people do not want lesbians on their screen until it is in porn.
These beautiful stories of love, overcoming adversity, and finding community do not appeal to audiences like stories about gay men do. The softness of sapphic relationships cannot be sexualized and fetishized, so it is disregarded—misogyny and prejudice against queer women at its finest.
While it is true that gay women exist in TV shows like “Heartstopper,” that include other queer characters, the fact remains that they are not the protagonists of the story. Lesbians have long not gotten their flowers on our television screens. Not to mention how a good majority of fans of shows centered around gay men are straight women, however, the fetishization of gay love is a separate issue.
To amplify some of these wonderful sapphic stories, here are eight of my recommendations for shows with lesbian characters:
- “Derry Girls” (2018-2022) on Netflix.
- “A League of Their Own” (2022) on Amazon Prime Video
- “Gentleman Jack” (2019-2022) on HBO Max and Hulu
- “I Am Not Okay With This” (2020) on Netflix
- “The Owl House” (2020-2023) on Disney+
- “First Kill” (2022) on Netflix
- “The L Word” (2004-2009) and “The L Word: Generation Q” (2019-2023) on Paramount+ and Hulu/Amazon Prime Video
- “Everything Sucks!” (2018) on Netflix
Just because many sapphic stories in television are either canceled or heavily censored, doesn’t mean these beautiful relationships don’t exist. Lesbians are an essential part of the LGBTQ+ community, and they should not be erased.