Autostraddle March Madness: Canon vs. Fanon – Sweet 16
Tonight, the NCAA women’s tournament kicks off their Final Four on ESPN. Stanford and South Carolina will tip off first. It’s tough to know who will come out on top, these teams are so well-matched.
South Carolina’s playing their best basketball of the year at exactly the right moment, with Aliyah Boston anchoring their offense in the post. Their defense has been stellar all tournament long — they held Texas scoreless in the fourth quarter in the Elite 8 — and can bring their brand of physicality to tonight’s game, I give the Gamecocks the edge.
But don’t count out the Cardinal: they play true team basketball and, on any given night, anyone can step up and lead them to victory. They’re no slouches on defense either, ranking second in the country in FG percentage defense, so we could be in for a defensive slugfest tonight. The thing I like about Stanford is their ability to shoot the ball from three, averaging 38.3% from long range this season. If they can get going from behind the arc, Stanford could win this thing handily.
I’m truly torn: my head’s with Stanford, my heart’s with South Carolina. We’ll see what happens.
The nightcap’s going to be a fun match-up as well: UCONN vs. Arizona. It’s hard not to think the Huskies have the advantage going in: they are, after all, perennial national championship contenders and that have been on this stage 21 times before (compared to just once for Arizona). But I like an underdog…and this Arizona team’s coming into this game with a chip on their shoulder and absolutely nothing to lose. I like what the Wildcats can do from three and, if they can draw the UCONN posts into some foul trouble, we might have and upset on our hands.
But while we get excited for the women’s games tonight, we’ve got our own bit of March Madness business to handle. Over the last 48 hours, you’ve cast your ballots and winnowed the 32 remaining couples down to 16. Here’s how things look for the CANON VS. FANON Sweet 16:
For a better view, you can use the full-size version of the bracket or check out our updated Challonge bracket.
In the Classic sub-region, the canon battle between Tara and Willow and Cosima and Delphine was one of the closest contests of the tournament thus far. The lead volleyed back and forth multiple times over the past 48 hours but ultimately the couple from Orphan Black pulled it own.
Meanwhile, Brittany and Santana coasted to a relatively easy win against the L Word powerhouse, Shane and Carmen. The win isn’t entirely unexpected — we do love Brittana around these parts after all — but the announcement of GLAAD’s upcoming tribute to Naya Rivera and news of her final role in the upcoming animated Batman movie….well, that’s enough to provoke a lot of nostalgia for even the non-GLEEks among us.
Canon: #3. Brittany and Santana – GLEE vs. #5. Cosima and Delphine – Orphan Black
Over on the fanon side of the bracket, things shook out a little differently: both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess easily fended off challenges in the Round of 32. Apparently, GLEE nostalgia doesn’t extend to everyone.
Fanon: #4. Buffy and Faith – Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs. #6. Xena and Gabrielle – Xena: Warrior Princess
The canon side of the GROWN sub-region offered some of the toughest choices in this tournament: Emma and Nico or Kat and Adena and Petra and JR or Callie and Arizona? I thought it interesting that voters went with the “older” couples in both cases: Emma and Nico got together on Vida during its second season in 2019, while Kat and Adena connected during The Bold Type‘s first season in 2017. Callie Torres first met Arizona Robbins in the bathroom at Joe’s during Grey’s fifth season (2009), while Petra didn’t hire JR to defend her until until 2018. We’ll see if that trend holds in this final match of the sub-region.
Canon: #3. Callie and Arizona – Grey’s Anatomy vs. #4. Kat and Adena – The Bold Type
Our other most competitive match-up of the second round came in the Grown fanon sub-region. After battling back and forth, Alex and Olivia edged out Callie and Addison. Admittedly, I’m surprised that the Callie Torres love didn’t carry over from canon to fanon, but I’m chalking it up to the inescapable advertising for the Benson and Stabler Law and Order reunion. Personally, if Alex Cabot isn’t involved, I am not interested.
The Special Victims Unit team will meet Eve and Villanelle in their Sweet 16 match-up. The Killing Eve pair easily dispatched a challenge from the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling to make it to the third round.
Fanon: #1. Alex and Olivia – Law and Order: Special Victims Unit vs. #2. Eve and Villanelle – Killing Eve
In the battle of the former March Madness champions in the Baby Gay region, Juliana and Valentina of Amar a Muerte came out on top. The fandom is definitely proving themselves stronger than their #8 seeding. They’ll face Emily and Sue from Dickinson in the Sweet 16, who pulled off what I’d consider to be a bit of an upset by dispatching Casey and Izzie. I guess that long wait between Atypical seasons — the show just started shooting its fourth and final season — took some wind out of the sails of the fandom.
Canon: #6. Emily and Sue – Dickinson vs. #8. Juliana and Valentina – Amar a Muerte
Over on the fanon side of the bracket, Betty and Veronica of Riverdale continued their dominance, despite an incredibly strong showing by Maya and Riley of Girl Meets World. The battle between the top two Pretty Little Liars fanon ships was closer than I’d anticipate with Spencer and Aria eeking out a victory. That makes for an interesting match-up in the sub-region’s finals: which fanon couple from a murderous town will reign supreme? Who’s your money on: Riverdale or Rosewood?
Fanon: #1. Betty and Veronica – Riverdale vs. #2. Spencer and Aria – Pretty Little Liars
It’s been all chalk — that is, all the higher seeds have won — and the trend continued during the Round of 32 in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category.Wynonna Earp‘s Waverly and Nicole easily defeated AvaLance from Legends of Tomorrow. With each round, WayHaught seems to be picking up strength so I like the couple’s chances as we head into the final rounds of this tournament. Standing in their way, though, will be the equally strong pairing of Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer, who advanced to the Sweet 16 despite a formidable challenge from Nomi and Amanita from Sense8.
Canon: #1. Waverly and Nicole – Wynonna Earp vs. #2. Maggie and Alex – Supergirl
Let’s be honest: we all knew it was going to end here. No matter how many great couples there were in the fanon portion of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy sub-region, this final match-up felt inevitable: Emma and Regina vs. Lena and Kara. Swan Queen vs. SuperCorp. Both easily dispatched their opponents in the last round, ultimately earning almost the exact same vote totals. This will be the match to watch in the Sweet 16.
Fanon: #1. Emma and Regina – Once Upon a Time vs. #2. Lena and Kara – Supergirl
Autostraddle March Madness: Canon vs. Fanon – Grown
We’re through the first full weekend of March Madness and, boy, did my brackets take a beating. I’ve never seen Game of Thrones but, based on what I’ve heard, my men’s bracket probably looks a lot like the Red Wedding. Two of my Final Four picks? Already gone. Only three of my Elite 8 picks have survived. I only guess six of the 16 teams remaining in the field correct?
On the women’s side, things are a little better but just slightly. I was sitting pretty through the first day of the tournament — since all the favorites won — but on the second day, there were some unexpected upsets. Out goes Gonzaga, out goes Rutgers. I don’t even know where Wright State is but they pulled off a miraculous upset of Arkansas. And I’m still fuming about the one upset that wasn’t: Troy should’ve beaten Texas A&M. Fingers crossed that today’s tournament action doesn’t eliminate too many of my picks.
But what about Autostraddle’s March Madness? Well, we’ve still got a few hours left for readers to cast their ballots in the Classic region. Once that voting is complete, I’ll update the bracket and see how everyone did in our bracket challenge. But if you’ve already voted for your favorite classic shows, now you can turn your attention to the GROWN sub-region.
In the spirit of continuing to make Autostraddle March Madness more interactive, I’ve reached out to some fanfic writers to offer their thoughts on what makes their favorite subjects worth shipping. If their ships advance, you’ll hear more from those writers as the tournament progresses. (If you’re a fanfic writer who’d like to advocate for your favorite ‘ship, let me know.)
Canon #1. Emma and Nico – Vida
The first time Emma spots Nico, she’s so wrapped up in herself that she doesn’t recognize that Nico’s not the bartender at the wedding she’s attending. She asks for a drink, turns her attention back to her phone and then slaps down a tip after Nico slides the pre-made drink towards her. But by Vida‘s end, Emma sees Nico as clearly as she ever has…and, honestly, she doesn’t want to see anyone else. She does the unthinkable (for Emma): gives up her penchant for meticulously planning everything and just exist, with Nico and no plans.
Canon #8. Alice and Nat – The L Word: Generation Q
Alice has always thought of herself as an “outside the box” queer lady — eschewing all the heteronormative standards that other queers took comfort in — but then she met Nat. Somewhere between the burnt eggs and puke-filled crockpot, the dream of a wife, 2.5 kids and a house with a yard became the thing she longed for…a fact she didn’t realize fully until the dream nearly got snatched away. She bent over backwards trying to cement her love affair with Nat — including a throupling that went all the way wrong — but, in the end, all Nat wanted was Alice.
“I love you. I am in love with you,” Nat confesses. “And I feel like my complete and total self when I’m with you. And you make me laugh. Even when I’m mad, which is so f*cking annoying, but it makes me love you even more.”
Canon #2. Petra and Jane Ramos – Jane the Virgin
The first time JR kisses Petra — in “real life” not just in Petra’s dreams — Petra’s there to confront JR about her shifting allegiances. Convinced she’s being followed, JR pulls Petra into a kiss before she can get any words out…and it’s enough for Petra to forget why she was there in the first place. Once they’re in JR’s car, Petra collects herself just long enough to interrogate JR’s loyalties but when JR takes her hand and gently caresses her knuckles, Petra forgets that it’s all a rouse. But, later that night, the rouse becomes real…realer than anything that Petra Solano had ever known.
“I love you,” Petra confesses. “And I used to think my worst nightmare was turning into my mother; now I know it’s living without you.”
Canon #7. Rosa and Jocelyn – Brooklyn 99
When it comes time to introduce Captain Holt and her new girlfriend, Jocelyn, Rosa’s a bit reluctant. Holt has a penchant for being a little judgmental, after all, but he’s so hurt by her declined invitation, she hires an actress to play her girlfriend instead. Naturally, the whole thing blows up in her face. But Rosa was never worried that Holt would be too judgmental — he’s hilarious when he’s judgy — she was just worried that Holt wasn’t going to like her…and, she really wants Holt to like Jocelyn because she really likes her.
As if being the test dummy for all Jocelyn’s cosmetology school projects wasn’t proof enough of that.
Canon #3. Callie and Arizona – Grey’s Anatomy
Callie’s in the bathroom at Joe’s, crying, when Seattle Grace’s new paeds doctor finds her. People have been talking, Arizona tells her, and the talk is good…when Callie’s ready, she’ll have a long line of people, just waiting for her. Like who, Callie asks dismissively, and Arizona moves in close.
As Carmen would describe it later,“She let their breath mingle together. She swept in for the kiss that launched one of the greatest queer love stories on network television. Seven seasons of laughter and dance parties and break ups and divorces and pain, but more than all of that, love. Undying love. It all started right there, underneath the busted out lights of a dirty bar bathroom.”
Canon #6. Rose and Luisa – Jane the Virgin
Nearly everything about Rose is a lie. She’s a lawyer and a socialite, married to hotel magnate Emilio Solano…and, of course, in her spare time she moonlights as the notorious drug lord, Sin Rostro. But every now and then, she allows herself a bit of truth…and the truest thing about Rose Solano is that she loves Luisa more than anything. After all, theirs was “the greatest love story ever told.”
Through out Jane the Virgin‘s run, there was a sense that Luisa would give up everything — including her health, sobriety and family — for Rose…and that’s true…but it’s also worth noting that every time that Rose could’ve escaped…every time she could’ve used someone else’s face to start a new life for herself, she resisted. Freedom without the woman she loved wasn’t freedom at all.
Canon #4. Kat and Adena – The Bold Type
Am I going to pretend, for the sake of this contest (and my personal sanity), that Season 4’s harsh re-write of Kat and Adena’s relationship doesn’t exist? Yes, I absolutely am. Let it exist in the same mythic space that keeps Season 6 of The L Word and all of Skins Fire far, far away from the minds of queer women everywhere. Instead, I want to encourage you to recall Kat’s bravery the night she shows up at Adena’s door and tells her that she really, really likes her.
Or better yet, remember that night in the airport…that night, where for 14 hours, this airport become a world of their own making…a world where no draconian immigration policies will separate them. Remember how they breathed each other in and created a sense of permanence for each other that could survive anything.
Canon #5. Sophie and Finley – The L Word: Generation Q
Riese’s words about the couple, post-season one, capture their allure the best:
I think one of the most thrilling parts of watching television is when you THINK you’re picking up on some chemistry but you’re not sure if it’s intentional and then… suddenly, it is! Sophie and Finley were the only match-up we didn’t see coming…and also turned out to be the one with the most genuine chemistry and intimacy behind it. I never would’ve imagined these two together from the first few episodes but retroactively it makes perfect sense, much like Alice and Dana did in the first season of the original series. These two are happiest and most themselves when they’re together and are incredibly adept at providing emotional support to each other in ways other partners have been unable to.
Fanon #1. Alex and Olivia – Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
From the TV Team’s 2018 opus which may have inspired this bracket competition in the first place, MAKE IT GAY, YOU COWARDS:
Sometimes when you unwittingly end up shipping non-canon couples and you talk about it publicly, people (read: the straights) start to look at you strangely. It’s not their fault really, they haven’t spent a lifetime mining subtext for some inkling of representation so, of course, they don’t get it. But, if you bring up the fact that Olivia Margaret Benson of SVU should be gay and that she and the love of her life Alexandra Cabot should be building a family together, even the straights are like, “you right.”
EVEN THE STRAIGHTS CAN SEE IT!
Also, if NBC thought that they could steer me away from this very firm belief by adding an canon queer female character to the show?! Think again.
Fanon #8. Dani and Bette – The L Word: Generation Q
There’s an energy that radiates off Dani when she’s around Bette Porter. Part of it’s admiration…when she tells Pierce how inspiring Bette is, she actually does mean it. She’s worked for so long in a world that valued money above all other things that seeing someone who isn’t motivated by that — who genuinely wants to work for the least of these — is intoxicating.
But when she says, “I’ve never felt like that about anyone before,” she’s not just talking about her admiration for Bette…she’s talking about something more. She wants Bette and, after the campaign, that energy radiating off Dani is 100% thirst.
Fanon #2. Eve and Villanelle – Killing Eve
In Killing Eve‘s first season finale, Eve breaks into Villanelle’s Parisian apartment. When she’s caught, Eve pulls out a gun and points it in Villanelle’s direction.
“What are you going to do with that?” Villanelle asks.
“I’m going to kill you,” Eve answers tentatively.
“No, you’re not,” Villanelle answers dismissively. “You like me too much.”
She’s right, of course, Eve does like her too much — she’s obsessed with her, in fact — and Villanelle admits that Eve’s the center of her masturbatory fantasies. Why then, do I consider Eve and Villanelle fanon? Because, given the chance to consummate their mutual fantasies, Eve instead plunges a knife into her gut.
Fanon #7. Jacqueline and Jane – The Bold Type
For a definitive answer about the Janequeline ship, I reached out to Tati (AKA superkitten), the writer behind one of the most celebrated Jacqueline/Jane fics in the fandom. She started shipping the pair just “2 minutes and 13 seconds into the pilot.”
“That’s when we got the slo-mo scene of Jane staring into Jacqueline’s office, her mouth falling open at the sight of Jacqueline’s red shoe-clad feet resting atop her desk, to the sound of Leon Else’s “Black Car.’ A few moments later, we saw their eyes meet across the room when Jacqueline arrived for a meeting. The charge between them was electric, it hit me like a freight train,” Tati wrote.
She rightly points out — and this is something the TV Team talks about all the time — if Jacqueline Carlyle were Jack Carlyle, the couple would have “an official ship name and think pieces would spring up everywhere discussing the possible implications of a relationship between a young writer and her superior in the workplace.”
Fanon #3. Emily and JJ – Criminal Minds
In their 200th episode, Criminal Minds puts Jennifer “JJ” Jareau through it: she’s kidnapped, beaten and tortured. At one part, she starts to hallucinate…and she doesn’t hallucinate about her husband or the men on the team coming to save her…she dreams of Emily Prentiss. Emily hadn’t been a part of the show for 38 episodes — she’d moved to London to work for Interpol — but still, Emily was person JJ’s subsconscious imagined.
Outside, JJ’s team is searching for her and call Emily in for her assistance…of course, Emily races back to the States on an Interpol jet. When they finally get to JJ, still handcuffed to the ceiling, JJ just says, “Emily, I knew they’d call you. I knew it.”
Fanon #6. Debbie and Ruth – G.L.O.W.
Yotoob is the writer behind two of the most trafficked Debbie/Ruth fanfic in the G.L.O.W. fandom so they seemed like the best source to understand why fans are drawn to the pairing.
Yotoob admits:
“I have a weakness for unresolvable conflict…the fact that Ruth cannot talk to Debbie without nearly passing out? The fact that Debbie continues to insert herself into Ruth’s life for no logical reason? The fact that Betty Gilpin makes her face throw full cartwheels every time she so much as LOOKS at Ruth? The fact that they HATE EACH OTHER BUT ALSO HAVE TO TRUST EACH OTHER TO CATCH EACH OTHER WHEN THEY THROW THEMSELVES FROM THE TOP ROPE?…I never stood a chance.”
Fanon #4. Jane V. and Petra – Jane the Virgin
When you ask anyone about the moment that Jane the Virgin fans really knew that Petra and JR would become something, most people point to that scene in the stairwell, when JR comforts an upset Petra after she hears new revelations about her mother. But too many forget that that scene had already happened once before: in the show’s 12th episode when OG Jane finds Petra in the stairwell, upset over the arrival of her abusive ex, Milos. That moment drew fanfic writer, celaenos, to the pairing.
“I’ve always been drawn to sort of relationships in canon where opposites attract and they start kind of in a strange and — sometimes, depending on how it’s presented — antagonistic/bickering place,” celaenos explained.
Fanon #5. Callie and Addison – Grey’s Anatomy
In hindsight, it’s amazing that Callie and Addison weren’t fast friends on Grey’s Anatomy. They were both outsiders — unwelcome interlopers who had unwittingly injected themselves into this tight group of residents — and they’d both shared the bed of Mark Sloan more times than they’d care to admit. But Callie and Addison only start to draw close after they work together on the Jamie Carr case. It’s then that the fandom started to take notice of Callie’s bisexual energy.
Long before she’d trade shots at Joe’s with Erica Hahn or makeout with Arizona Robbins in the bar’s bathroom, there was Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepard…and it should’ve been canon.
As always, the clock’s set: you’ve got 48 hours to cast your ballot in this round of March Madness. We’ll be back later this week to share information about the other sub-regions.
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Yes All Cops, Even Olivia Benson
When I was twelve years old I wrote a letter to Mariska Hargitay that I left unsent, hidden away in a box in my childhood bedroom until I packed up my life for college. In it, I told her that she saved my life. As a child survivor of sexual assault, I clung to Olivia Benson like a lifeline. I believed that if anyone cared about survivors it was Olivia Benson.
Olivia Benson, The Savior
Law and Order: SVU was a comfort of mine growing up, not only because of Benson, but because I find the monotonous nature of procedurals soothing. I cannot pinpoint a time in my youth where I believed a real life officer would protect me, but with the predictability of crime procedurals I absorbed the idea that police could be out there protecting somebody.
The plots usually go as follows: a person, usually a woman, is raped; the wrong bad guy is caught; red herring bad guy is let go without apology; new bad guy is caught, convicted, and incarcerated; the victim — never known as a survivor — is able to then presumably start a new path forward. I never had to think too hard while I was watching, which allowed me to consume the series in large sums over and over as I attempted to do my school work.
SVU frames justice as the conviction and incarceration of rapists. We presume that the person who receives justice is the survivor, yet SVU doesn’t address that the survivor has no autonomy in a trial of the person who harmed them. The show struggles fundamentally with its own fallacy that there is such a thing as a good cop. It consistently brushes against the reality of police brutality in America. Further, SVU struggles with its own primary message that incarcerating the person who has done harm is conducive to healing.
It is a TV show, yes, but SVU attaches to itself the responsibility of the shift in national conversation regarding sexual assault. Hargitay said in promotion for the record-breaking 21st season that the show is a “path to healing” for the viewers. SVU is syndicated on multiple channels, most notably USA Network’s themed all-day marathons, and is streaming on multiple platforms including Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Peacock. It is constantly available and easily accessible. Its cultural impact as a result is profound.
Perpetuating The Cycle of Violence
I stopped watching SVU in college because I felt nuSVU — as my friend Gabrielle calls the post-Elliot Stabler seasons — gratuitously displayed acts of sexual assault egregiously, even for a show about rape. During this time I had just moved states, and quickly learned that my trauma didn’t vanish because I left the state where my assault haunted me.
I suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and didn’t have coping mechanisms to decipher vivid recalls from reality. The images on the show for the first few episodes I watched of nuSVU followed me through my days and consumed my dissociative thoughts. Benson, as a savior figure, had less impact when her actions are paired with imagery of violence that was once simply described. The visceral violence added as shock value made evident that the violence was always more relevant than the healing.
I began my journey as a student of prison abolition soon after writing off SVU, through my support for my undergrad’s satellite institution at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. A significant number of women I interacted with were incarcerated, criminalized survivors. The realization struck me that my reality was one of chance, since survivorship is neither cherished nor protected in this country.
While I understood the fragility of my own position in the world as a survivor, I did not fully grasp how the legal system punishes survivors for doing what they need to to stay grounded and alive. Per Survived and Punished, criminalized survivors are incarcerated for many survival actions including, “self-defense, “failure to protect,” migration, removing children from abusive people, being coerced into acting as an “accomplice,” and securing resources needed to live.”
I tried to reimagine a system that had the empathy for survivors SVU sold to me as a child, but I could not reconcile some “new” policy reform within the carceral state, and the violent disregard of human life that I know to exist inside prisons. So I challenged, and continue to challenge, my own beliefs that police and prisons protect the harmed and vulnerable.
I recently rewatched the series to revisit and re-evaluate why I attached so much to it as a child. I have now, once again, seen every episode of SVU. I could lay out multiple issues with portrayals in the show: the way the Administration of Children’s Services, a punitive system for parents — particularly black mothers — is used to threaten families; propaganda narratives that prison is meant to be rehabilitative; the conflation of harmful ripped from the headline narratives; or the choice of using known abusers as guest stars.
For me, however, what is most striking is the show’s premise that violence can only be counteracted with further violence. During the Stabler years, it was easy to critique his chaotic, aggressive, hot-headed personality. Instead of grappling with what I knew all along, I spent my time re-learning Benson, specifically separating the character I time-capsuled as my childhood hero and the actual reality of the character. Benson “listening,” “hearing” and “protecting” survivors is in reality her pushing for incarceration, insisting that it is the only way the survivors are able to heal.
Incarceration Isn’t Justice
At times I have to believe that SVU doesn’t even believe what it’s selling. In an episode where Benson goes undercover in Rikers to catch a corrections officer, who is sexually assaulting women incarcerated in the facility, she herself is sexually assaulted. The episode shows, as Benson “gets to know” the people she’s incarcerated with, the harm that the women who are incarcerated face every day from COs. The series can’t grapple with the violence consistently perpetuated by COs toward people who the show has previously deemed as “criminals” and the way the main series cops have perpetuated or threatened that same violence.
Of course, the CO is arrested, charged, and incarcerated, though that does not feel like a victory. As K. Agbebiyi has said, “Getting police in jails wastes momentum towards closing jails. It perpetuates the narrative that jail is where bad people belong.”
It doesn’t feel like a victory for Benson, either, as the arc continues to show her struggling with the reality she has always approached from a spectator’s perspective. Again, SVU doesn’t know how to address the fact that there is no justice in incarceration without writing itself out of existence — so the series lets it hang.
In the nuSVU era, Benson has her own wrongful conviction episode. She gives an impassioned speech about how she prides herself on not being “one of the good ole boys.” Presumably this episode is meant to show she is a good and considerate cop, and even those police officers “make mistakes.” What it shows instead is that police have too much power — not only over those wrongfully convicted, but also over the people who did what they are accused of.
I want to emphasize the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore here: “When people are looking for the relative innocence line in order to show how sad it is that the relatively innocent are being subjected to the forces of state-organized violence as though they were criminals, they are missing something that they could see. It isn’t that hard. They could be asking whether people who have been criminalized should be subjected to the forces of organized violence. They could ask if we need organized violence.”
For SVU to show the amount of abuse faced by criminalized survivors in Rikers, yet not reflect on the impact the police have in making that happen, creates the unspoken that said treatment is deserved. In framing wrongful convictions as the only harm done by police, the show validates the consistent violence and abuse that happens behind precinct doors.
I considered writing Hargitary another letter, making clear my process of undoing the carceral propaganda I absorbed in watching SVU as a child. About being a survivor who can finally watch it from a critical lens without fear of unleashing some harm of my own trauma onto myself. I wanted to tell her that the show is not for survivors. I wanted to explain how carceral feminism only harms survivors, leads to their own incarceration and de-centers their stories. But what would that change? Am I to believe that Hargitay has never heard of abolition? That she does not see the benefit to portraying Benson and syndicating SVU on her own multi-million dollar empire?
Centering Survivors, Working Toward Abolition
I once again re-routed my focus.
What SVU promotes is a cycle of violence toward the survivor, toward their families and toward the abusers. SVU follows a philosophy that abuse is innate in our society. It tells us that harm is inevitable, unless abusers are placed in prison. As a show about cops, it cannot imagine a world without them. It promotes an idea that we know is false: that cops care about survivors, that they are listening and are here to protect.
Cops cannot, will not, and do not want to save us. And we must move beyond this belief that they are saviors and toward acknowledging that they are actually harmful and unnecessary.
I have witnessed people invoke survivors’ names to ground their belief that cops are not only necessary, but help people who have been sexually assaulted. The connection to SVU is profound, not because people want to see the individuals that harmed them behind bars, but because they feel heard by Olivia Benson. Anyone who has experienced attempting to report their own sexual assault will let you know that Olivia Benson does not exist. Police are violent and consistently commit acts of domestic violence and sexual violence. There is no truth in the idea that there are police protecting survivors; often they are invalidating survivor’s stories or assaulting survivors themselves.
To echo Derecka Purnell, “When people dismiss abolitionists for not caring about victims or safety, they tend to forget that we are those victims, those survivors of violence.” It is not possible for me to speak on behalf of all survivors of sexual violence or assault, nor do I want to. But I know that I was drawn to SVU because I wanted to be heard when I was terrified to speak into existence what happened to me. I spent years repressing my trauma and pain until I became completely consumed by it when I had no one but myself. And I clawed out of that consumption by grappling with my grief for my childhood and grounding myself in a community of people who listen to me through my continuous process.
Through my own healing, I’ve come to understand that the stories I want to center are those of survivors. I cannot focus my energy on catching a “bad guy” when harm is still pertinent. The centering of abusers and incarceration resolves nothing. To focus on carceral punishment creates more harm and validates a system where survivors are also incarcerated, struggling for freedom.
SVU isn’t a show about survivors because it doesn’t show survivorship. It centers the story on catching the “perp” and uses violence to resolve violence as if seeing harm perpetuated is healing. If SVU is a path to healing for survivors, it is because the series shows what healing is not rooted in. At the time I stopped watching, it struck me that a show that presented such visceral displays of sexual assault wasn’t a show for survivors. I am here to tell you now that it was never a show that valued survival.
I went from using SVU as my lifeline as a child to speaking out on its gratuitous violence in the name of feminism during the rape culture activist era of my late teens. As an adult, I’ve come to think of the series as a form of cringe absurdist art. But to pretend that SVU doesn’t have a lasting stain on how this nation views police, justice, survivorship and incarceration feels dangerous and irresponsible in this moment in time.
The series does not live in a vacuum. We have not only grown in our understanding that police aren’t necessary, we have grown in our communities to see that stories placing police on pedestals are obsolete. Instead of focusing stories of sexual violence as crimes and puzzles to be solved, we should invest in work made to center survivors and reflect community building where the world exists without police.
MAKE IT GAY, YOU COWARDS: 20 TV Shows That Just Need to Lean Into the Truth
This year’s inaugural Gay Emmys were fun, huh? There were so many gay shows we had OUR OWN EMMYS to honor them! In fact, there were so many shows that we couldn’t even fit them all into our Emmys! We left like three-quarters of the gay TV shows behind! It felt so good to see that reality before our eyes. Did it satiate us? Friends, no! It only made us hungrier! These last few weeks, we’ve been prowling around our TV Team Slack channel feeding each other’s incandescent bewilderment that all shows aren’t gay. And so of course we made a list. Here are 20 TV shows that always make us yell MAKE IT GAY, YOU COWARDS at our televisions and at each other.
The Good Place
Heather: Listen, Eleanor Shellstrop is bisexual and that’s canon and I’m not going to argue about it. HOWEVER, enough tip-toeing around her feelings for Tahani. Let’s see that attraction and affection play out ON OUR TEEVEES. The Good Place is one of my can’t-miss shows and I’m going to watch it forever. I love Eleanor and I love Chidi but I just do not buy them together. (And I am not immune to the charms of straight couple will-they/won’t-they storylines, okay? Pam and Jim are one of my all-time favorite TV couples.) Anything can happen on this show. Anything. Maya Rudolph is God. Stop forcing what’s not there, Michael Schur. You’ve done it before, do it again: Make it gay!
Valerie Anne: COSIGNED IN PERMANENT INK.
Carmen: X3.
Doctor Who
Heather: Obviously the Doctor is canonically queer. Her wife is/was River Song. Now I want to see them interact with each other while the Doctor is a woman. I’m not just saying this because Alex Kingston is one of the great loves of my life (along with Viola Davis and Stacy); I’m saying it because it adds a very fascinating dynamic to an already established story and all these dillhole straight white men have already said they won’t watch Jodie Whittaker in the TARDIS so why not just go all in, you know? “You and me. Time and space. Watch us run.” GIVE IT TO ME.
Insecure
Carmen: This is my hill, and I am willing to die on it. IT MAKES NO SENSE THAT NONE OF THE BLACK GIRLS ON INSECURE ARE GAY. I’m only a year younger than Issa Rae. I’ve known many crews of young, black “woke millennial” homegirls who saw each other through turbulent times. Do you what was true about every one of those crews? Especially in cities like LA? At least one of them was queer. It doesn’t have to be Issa (though that is a mighty lesbian wardrobe that she’s always wearing, full of graphic tees and sweatshirts and cute natural hairstyles), it doesn’t even have to be Molly, the up-and-coming lawyer. But I am putting my foot down, there’s no way that Kelli – the body positive, sex positive, hilarious, accountant – isn’t sexually fluid.
I should point out that after two years of pretending that black queer women didn’t exist at all, the currently airing season of Insecure finally paid passing homage to the women of #BlackGaySlay. Issa had a black lesbian couple in the back of her Lyft once, and she commented how cute they were. While the crew partied at Beychella, Kelli made a quip that she’d hook up with a woman because “Janelle Monae made it OK.” Which only furthers my point! She’s the one! It’s time to stop being a coward Issa, and go there already.
The Flash
Valerie Anne: The Flash is the only show in the CWDCTV universe who hasn’t given us a recurring queer lady at all over the entire course of the series so far. Arrow had Sara and Nyssa (though now has none), Supergirl has Alex, Black Lightning has Anissa, Legends is the gayest show on the CW. But the closest thing The Flash has is the relationship between Caitlin Snow and Killer Frost which is just confusing. Actually that’s not true, the closest they came was when the villain of last season took a new body that happened to be a woman and still slow-danced with his wife who he was drugging, which is worse than confusing, it’s downright awful. Give me a lesbian speedster, a bisexual meta, anything. Here, look, after a quick Google search I’ve decided that they should add Andrea Martinez aka The Comet, a canonically queer DC Comics character. And she can date Caitlin and/or Killer Frost. Boom. Solved it.
Superstore
Natalie: Superstore is the best show on television you’re probably not watching. I love it so much. It shines a light on blue collar Americans — you know, like Roseanne, but without the tokenism or the repugnant racism — and tackles the issues in a beautifully subversive and hilarious way. How could this already great show get even better? Give the people what they want, Justin Spitzer: make Dina gay!
I get why they didn’t make the character gay to start with: having this blunt, aggressive, power-hungry, arrogant, mean female character be a lesbian would’ve been a bit too stereotypical for this socially conscious show (a la Kerry Weaver on ER). But, with the fourth season of Superstore just around the corner (you’ve still got time to catch up on Netflix!), I think both the show and the character are in a place where they can take that stereotype and turn it on its head. What if lesbianing was the one thing that Dina Fox couldn’t conquer effortlessly? What if developing feelings for a woman turned Dina into the emotional mess that she’s always criticizing Amy for being? There’s so much comedy gold that could be mined, Superstore… all you gotta do is make her gay.
The Gifted
Valerie Anne: It should be illegal to have Amy Acker, who played lesbian icon Root on Person of Interest, on a TV show and not have a single lady for her to flirt with. Or even baby gays for her to support knowingly. Also it’s been said many, many times, but learning you have powers/the entire X-Men deal is such a strong allegory for queerness that it’s a damn shame they don’t have a single lesbian lurking around the mutant safehouse.
Murphy Brown Reboot
Carmen: I was approximately between two and ten years old when the original Murphy Brown aired, so my memories of it are fuzzy. Here’s the biggest highlight: Murphy Brown was at its core about feminism and the realities women face in the workplace. If the promos for the reboot are to be believed, that much hasn’t changed.
When people say a television show is about feminism, in my brain I hear l-e-s-b-i-a-n.
So.
Heather: Mmm hmm.
Westworld
Riese: At the beginning of this season Erin mentioned the “three timelines” from last season and I was like WOW this show never makes any sense to me, yet I keep watching it! Even more confusing than the three timelines? The lack of lesbian action. There’s some, sure. Like, THE TINIEST AMOUNT POSSIBLE. But not nearly enough!
Blindspot
Valerie Anne: HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME PATTERSON IS STRAIGHT, FAM?! I don’t believe it. I won’t! Maybe I’ve been watching too much Critical Role, but in my humble and gay opinion, Ashley Johnson has queer vibes pouring off her and it feels rude for the show to not be leaning into that (the way it seems the video game The Last of Us is doing with the character she voices). There was definitely also a point I thought Zapata was going to fall for a lady but alas. Ever since Blindspot buried their gays so hard in early seasons, they’ve done nothing to make up for it. I don’t want to quit the show (have you SEEN JAIMIE ALEXANDER), but I need a lesbian to hook me, if you know what I mean.
Natalie: I agree with you wholeheartedly on this very important subject, Valerie — I mean, Patterson thought about getting a cat, despite the fact that she’s allergic, and if that doesn’t scream gay, I don’t know what does. You’re right, after the killing off two lesbians and shipping the other one off to Paraguay or something, Blindspot owes us this. That said, let’s be clear about something: Natasha “Tasha” Zapata is a bisexual goddess who is so clearly in love with her best friend who she (mistakenly) believes is straight. The writers need to just go ahead and make that canon.
(Also Tasha totally had a crush on Kalinda Sharma Nas Kamala but, c’mon, it’s Archie Panjabi… who wouldn’t?)
Last season, Patterson’s dad stopped by the FBI labs and everyone’s shocked to learn that Patterson’s dad is Bill Nye the Science Guy. Know who’s not shocked, though? Tasha Zapata, because she’s already done her due diligence and met her future girlfriend’s parents. And when Bill Nye discovers that Patterson and Tasha are fighting, her urges his daughter to make amends and in doing so, parallels their relationship and his marriage. Even Bill Nye knows!
It’s ironic that a show called Blindspot wouldn’t be able to recognize that the true love story isn’t between Tasha and Reade (stop trying to make me like them together, I will not!), but between Tasha and Patterson. It’s only because Patterson rejected her last season — she was mad that Tasha kept secrets about her torturous ex which, I mean: VALID — that Tasha even went to Reade. He’s the rebound. Blindspot writers, why can’t you see that?!
Single Parents
Riese: This show hasn’t started yet, so I haven’t seen it yet, but it is absolute blasphemy that a show about single parents does not feature ANY lesbian Moms.
Carmen: ESPECIALLY one that stars Leighton Meester in that blue blazer and those chucks on her feet.
Heather: Serena’s out now. You’re turn, Waldorf.
Big Little Lies
Riese: The only logical endgame here is: two beautiful women drink white wine. Cut to a shot of the beach. Cut back to a shot of the two women, except now they’re having sex.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Natalie: Sometimes when you unwittingly end up shipping non-canon couples and you talk about it publicly, people (read: the straights) start to look at you strangely. It’s not their fault really, they haven’t spent a lifetime mining subtext for some inkling of representation so, of course, they don’t get it. But, if you bring up the fact that Olivia Margaret Benson of SVU should be gay and that she and the love of her life Alexandra Cabot should be building a family together, even the straights are like, “you right.”
EVEN THE STRAIGHTS CAN SEE IT!
Last year they brought Stephanie March back to SVU for a very special episode and Alex and Olivia didn’t even end up making out! I mean, what was even the point?! You’re 20 seasons into SVU‘s run, NBC, there’s no reason that in 20GAYTEEN, Olivia Benson should still be denying what even the straights can see: SHE’S GAY.
So, so very gay.
Agents of SHIELD
Valerie Anne: Similar to why at least one of the mutants in The Gifted should be gay, same goes for inhumans on SHIELD. I know my dream ship of Skimmons will never sail, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope that Daisy is bisexual. I mean the name she originally chose for herself was Skye. So gay. She hasn’t had a love interest in a minute, maybe some superpowered babe can drop by next season and quake things up for her. (Get it? Quake? I’ll be here all week.)
The Rookie
Natalie: I’m not holding out much hope for the new fall season — I haven’t seen a single trailer that surprised me with any lady loving characters that I didn’t already know about — but if I have to pick the new show most likely to have a lesbian or bisexual character, I’m going to go with ABC’s The Rookie.
Now, to be sure, there’s not much in the trailer that suggests that lesbianism might be happening on the show, but “lesbian cop” is a well worn television trope for a reason. The cast boasts four main women. We know one gets involved with Nathan Fillion’s character, so she’s out, leaving: Afton Williamson, Alyssa Diaz and Mercedes Mason. The short pixie cut has me leaning in Williamson’s direction, but something about Alyssa Diaz’s swagger in her uniform has me thinking that she might be ABC’s newest queer character.
Midnight, Texas
Valerie Anne: Everyone knows all witches are queer and I’m not sure why Midnight, Texas refuses to admit it. I guess what I’m realizing is, when there is a supernatural element to a show, I cannot accept that there are no lesbians as far as the eye can see. How are you going to have angels and demons and witches and psychics and vampires and not ONE SINGLE QUEER PERSON. This town is full of outcasts and misfits, and I feel like we fit the bill, especially in a place like Texas. I really enjoyed the first season of this show but I want to REALLY LOVE it this season. So you know what to do, show.
This Is Us
Carmen: The Pearsons are an idyllic, if weepy, modern American family. They love each other across race and class differences. They share meals, and fight, and harbor old secrets for decades that they always eventually forgive each other for. They’re custom designed in the liberal Hollywood TV making factory to have you cry into a box of kleenex every week. Granted, Randall’s birth father (masterfully portrayed by Ron Cephas Jones in a historic Emmy winning performance) was bisexual, but he left us nearly two years ago!
As the Pearson family keeps expanding, it’s time for one of the women to come out of the closet. Are you trying to tell me that this is somehow the only big messy family in America without a gay cousin or aunt? I mean, doesn’t Beth Pearson come from a tribe of sisters? And a cousin who’s also like her sister? You want me to believe that zero of them are gay? C’mon!
One of the major mysteries of the new season involves a fast forward, which means we will get to know currently angsty pre-teen Tess as adult social worker Tess. An empathetic social worker with a cute wardrobe who specializes in foster care and child adoption? Sounds like she is the one we’ve been waiting for.
Supergirl
Heather: Look, I know Supergirl‘s already gay. Alex Danvers is one of my all-time favorite lesbians. I know what she had with Maggie was so special, and it was a goddamn delight and gloriously heartbreaking watching their story. I know Alex is getting a new girlfriend this season, and I am excited. BUT I have been watching Katie McGrath have queer chemistry with every woman (and inanimate object she brushed up against) since Merlin. When she came to Supergirl, I incorrectly told Valerie not to lean in too hard to the subtext in her recaps. I just thought, you know, I didn’t want another Faberry/Brittana war on our hands. Now I just have this build up of ANGSTY GAYNESS trapped inside me and have had to ask Valerie to murder me because of it in Slack more than once.
Valerie Anne: “KARA DANVERS, YOU ARE MY HERO,” SHE SAID, TO THE WOMAN WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE IS JUST HER GAL PAL.
Outlander
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: Especially because it is on Starz, which has been really great on the Make It Gay front lately (see: Vida and Black Sails), it is incredibly frustrating that in three whole seasons of historical/sci-fi/fantasy/romance series Outlander there has been nary a lesbian. EVEN THOUGH CLAIRE AND GEILLIS HAVE JUST AS MUCH CHEMISTRY AS CLAIRE AND JAMIE, A HILL (IN THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND) THAT I AM WILLING TO DIE ON. Sure, it’s based on an incredibly hetero book series, but the show has already taken some liberties by deviating from it’s source material, so is it really so much to ask for a lesbian or two or a hint of bisexuality for Claire who lbr already exudes Big Bi Energy?
Sesame Street
Riese: Sorry, I had to.
Okay now you tell us your MAKE IT GAY, YOU COWARDS television shows.
“Law & Order: LGBT” Trivia Quiz
Why do we watch so many episodes of Law & Order even though their record with LGBTQ people has been pretty middling? I don’t know, friends, besides that Law & Order SVU is an incredible fantasy series about Olivia Benson, a magical police detective who cares deeply about the victims of sexual assault and wants to find and punish their attackers at all costs. Or maybe it’s because Olivia Benson is your root. Maybe it’s all the hot women in business attire. Or maybe it’s because it’s a reliable formula of a show that we simply cannot resist, like a banana split, but much more disturbing. Everybody is especially heinous in their own way, you know?
Law & Order: LGBT Trivia
TELL ME YOUR SCORES IN THE COMMENTS!!
Every Major “Law & Order” Character Ranked In Order Of Lesbianism
27. Senior Detective Alexandra Eames
Is seemingly able to withstand extended periods of time (all of it, all the time, every minute of time) with #1 Mansplainer Robert Goren, so. Generally doesn’t ping.
26. Junior Detective Megan Wheeler
Literally everybody on Criminal Intent bugged for me.
25. Junior Detective Amanda Rollins
Can’t be a lesbian because her and Carisi are MTB. But she could be bisexual and have an affair with her babysitter. Olivia Benson wouldn’t like that but Olivia Benson isn’t the boss of Rollins’ personal life.
24. Judge Lena Petrovsky
Has a deeply adversarial history with Alex Cabot, so probably she is homophobic.
23. Assistant District Attorney Kim Greylek
Vaguely emenates a cylon vibe.
22. Police Psychiatrist Paula Gyson
I have no memory of this character but if I did, it would be a memory of her driving away from her ex’s house on a motorcycle.
21. Junior Detective Nina Cassady
Who? Statistically speaking, is probably gay.
20. Junior Detective Monique Jeffries
Never truly fleshed out or given time to shine, leading her to be replaced by Ice-T. Also used to work out at my gym in Union Square. That has nothing to do with anything besides spandex in general.
19. Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Borgia
Has “relatives in Venice.” Is brutally murdered.
18. Assistant District Attorney Sonya Paxton
Elliot Stabler considered her “hungry for power.” Alcoholic. Lives by her own rules. Is brutally murdered by somebody else’s stalker.
17. Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross
Her name is “Jamie.” Lesbian haircut. Intense custody battle with her ex.
16. Medical Examiner Dr. Elizabeth Rogers
Longest-running recurring character in various Law & Order universes due to absolutely zero fear of commitment. Butch business casual. Easily frustrated by men.
15. Judge / Bureau Chief Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Donnelly
“The ballsiest character the franchise has ever invented – male or female” – Susan Green & Randee Dawn, The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit Companion
14. Junior Detective Nola Falacci
Lesbian voice, bad with people, broad shoulders, wears tank tops to work.
13. Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa
“De La Garza is, per the show’s distaff tradition, obliged to have Rubirosa scissor her legs around the DA’s office.” – Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
12. Lieutenant Anita Van Buren
That’s the same face she makes at the hospital when they’re like, “I’m sorry you have to be legally related to the patient in order to be granted visitation rights.” Nope, not today. NOT ON MY WATCH.
11. Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid
Lesbian voice. Pro-choice feminist, Scully haircut. Died in a car crash while helping a drunk detective get home from the bar.
10. Interim District Attorney Nora Lewin
First female DA. Definitely a kinky top who sleeps on a pile of money. Probably does “in contempt of court” role-playing.
9. Junior Detective Carolyn Barek
This is a trick question because in addition to playing Carolyn Barek, this actress also played a lesbian in “ALTO – A Lesbian Romantic Comedy starring Diana Degarmo Of American Idol & Annabella Sciorra,” AND she played a lesbian in The L Word, and everybody who was in The L Word is gay now.
8. Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael
Was on the track team at the University of Texas. Overall moral situation leans Log Cabin Republican.
7. Psychologist Elizabeth Olivet
Blazer.
6. Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak
Lesbian voice. In her first appearance on the show as ADA, lesbian doyenne Olivia Benson comes to Casey’s office to yell at her and finds Casey IS ALREADY CRYING. This is a unique lesbian trait, crying in anticipation of being yelled at by Olivia Benson. Also: plays softball, troubled ex, tense relationship with her former lover/mentor Elizabeth Donnelley.
In her former life as a straight woman, appeared as a witness in a case involving everybody’s favorite procedural topic, autoerotic asphyxiation.
5. Medical Examiner Melinda Warner
Knows her way around a body, strategically buries the lede. Is the Heather Hogan of Law & Order in that every time she walks into a room I think, “Oh good, somebody has arrived to make sense of things.” Looks good in a lab coat.
4. FBI Special Agent George Huang
SORRY IT’S TRUE.
3. Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot
Lesbian voice. Has an off-screen fan-created deeply implied romantic relationship with Olivia Benson. The Ciara song “Like a Boy” was inspired by Alexandra Cabot, I think. In a press call, as reported by AfterEllen, Stephanie March said of Olivia/Cabot being in love, “I’m not saying we’re not… I’m not saying we’re not in love.” CLOSE ENOUGH.
2. Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn
Good news here is that Serena Southerlyn, in addition to having my middle name as her last name but with the Southern term “Southern” in front of it, is actually a lesbian. We know this because HER LITERAL LAST LINE ON THE SHOW FOREVER was after she got fired and asked, “is this because I’m a lesbian?” We all know the answer to that is always yes. (Technically her last line is “good… good” after Branch says she’s not being fired for being a lesbian. But she is being fired for being too emotional about her cases, which is basically the same thing.)
1. Olivia Benson
Straight girls hate her butch haircuts. Is Olivia Benson.
Violence and Visibility: Transgender Women on TV in 2015
Written by Mey Rude and Heather Hogan
2015 was the best of times and the worst of times for transgender women in the United States. While it was a revolutionary year for transgender visibility on television and in movies, it was a devastating year of record-high violence against trans women in real life. As we were tallying 18 fictional trans women on TV, two celebrated fictional trans women (played by trans women) in film, five reality shows featuring real life trans women, and the continued popularity rise of Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, we were also counting the murders of 23 trans women, most of them Black women.
While we cheered never-before-seen trans TV characters, we mourned the nearly biweekly loss of a transgender woman to murder. While Caitlyn Jenner was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair, untold numbers of trans women were raped in prison and immigration centers. While Tangerine made history with its four Independent Spirit Award nominations, Houston overwhelmingly voted to take away civil rights protections because they didn’t want trans women to have access to women’s bathrooms.
We wrote more obituaries for murdered trans women in 2015 than TV recaps for any single show we cover.
Diverse on-screen representation and real world social change have always been locked in a symbiotic relationship, forcing each other forward, hand-in-hand. The percentage of Americans who support marriage equality, for example, has grown in almost direct proportion to the number of lesbian and gay characters on television. When GLAAD began conducting research for its Where We Are On TV report in 2006, they discovered that knowing a gay character was as effective as knowing a gay person in real life when it came to supporting positive legislative and social change for gay people. Why, then, did the reported number of murdered trans women nearly double the same year trans representation in pop culture took a revolutionary step forward?
Not All Visibility Is Created Equal
In May 2014, Time magazine featured Laverne Cox on its cover and declared that we had reached the Transgender Tipping Point, but it wasn’t until this spring when Caitlyn Jenner came out that trans people became truly visible to the majority of Americans. Yet, even without Jenner, 2015 saw a surge of trans visibility. Transparent and Orange is the New Black were critical and ratings successes, pulling down dozens of awards show nominations between the two of them, and receiving renewals almost as soon as their seasons premiered. We saw guest appearances on Faking It, The Mindy Project, and How to Get Away With Murder from trans actresses Laverne Cox and Alexandra Billings. Trans reality shows like I Am Cait, I am Jazz, and Becoming Us were readily available on basic cable. Glee showcased a choir composed entirely of transgender members, led by black trans character Unique. And Janet Mock’s MSNBC show, So Popular!, was so successful she became a coveted guest on nearly every talk show in America.
We wrote more obituaries for murdered trans women in 2015 than TV recaps for any single show we cover.
But not all visibility is good visibility. The three main tropes used when writing about trans women are: 1) That trans women are deceivers, liars, and mentally unstable. 2) That trans women are acceptable targets of violence. And 3) That it’s tolerable to misname and misgender trans women (which, of course, dehumanizes them and provides justification for violence against them). Compounding the problem of those ubiquitous tropes is the fact that trans women are very often played by men, which only furthers the confusion about who trans women are and perpetuates the harmful idea that trans women are men who like to dress as women and trick other men. In fact, of the 11 regular (non-streaming) TV shows that featured trans women this year, only three hired actual trans women to play trans women.
One of the most frustrating things about our rankings of all the queer TV storylines in 2015 was the disparity between trans storylines. Nearly all of them fall on the Really Good or Really Bad end of the spectrum, and when we dug deeper, we found that the most positive portrayals of trans women on TV were viewed by the fewest people. Unsurprisingly, streaming platforms — which have proven themselves monumentally more progressive than their broadcast and cable TV counterparts — produced the best storylines for trans women. Netflix’s Orange is the New Black and Sense8 both featured main characters who were trans women (played by trans women); and Amazon, of course, produced the critically lauded Transparent, which was not without its issues (a cis man playing the main trans woman, for example), but which learned and grew from its first season mistakes.
Neither Amazon nor Netflix release information about viewership, so there’s no real way to know how many people watch OITNB and Sense8, but surveys indicate that it’s only about half of all Netflix subscribers for the former, and about 12 percent of all Netflix subscribers for the latter.
Of the 15 regular TV shows that told stories about trans women this year, only four managed to sidestep damaging tropes completely, and of those four, three of them (Blunt Talk, Penny Dreadful, and Faking It) were viewed by less than a million people. Conversely, the Law & Order: SVU episode “Transgender Bridge,” which actually allowed a respected character to argue that a man shouldn’t be charged with the murder of a trans woman because he was “confused by her,” was the second most viewed trans-themed episode of regular TV, raking in six million viewers. And the Pretty Little Liars summer finale, which revealed that the show’s shadowy villain is a trans woman, was viewed by three million people and was the most popular single episode of TV on social media in 2015. The Bold and the Beautiful became the only daytime TV show to feature a trans character this year, and it clawed its way through every horrible trope, painting its trans woman as a conniving impostor whose main goal was to dupe a rich man into marrying her, and allowing other characters to abuse her because of her duplicitousness.
In addition to the scripted TV shows that featured trans women this year, we also saw an influx of reality TV shows about trans women. The most popular, of course, was Caitlyn Jenner’s I Am Cait, which expanded the Kardashian reality TV model to include a group of trans women who folded Caitlyn into their world and exposed her to the harsh realities many trans women — particularly black and brown trans women — face when it comes to attaining healthcare, housing, and career opportunities. The show went a long way toward introducing the audience (through Caitlyn) to trans topics they would not normally be exposed to, but it was not without its problems. For one thing, some of the trans women who appeared on the show were really unhappy with the editing, which chopped up and spliced together different moments to create drama in a way that wasn’t authentic. And for another, plenty of Caitlyn’s friends and family were shown misnaming her or misgendering her, or making transphobic jokes at her expense. Also, Jenner seems to be trapped in a dance where she takes one progressive step forward when it comes to queer community, followed by an enormous leap backwards. She is certainly not qualified to be the spokeswoman for trans issues in America.
Jazz Jenngings’ show, I Am Jazz, actually pulled in ratings similar to I Am Cait, and handled her story with significantly more aplomb. ABC Family’s Becoming Us had its ups and downs, ultimately choosing to focus more on the trans woman’s son than on the journey of the trans woman herself. And New Girls on the Block also featured trans women in a mostly positive way, though ratings for it were sparse on Discovery Life.
The Danger of Hypervisibility
While pop culture visibility is certainly important in pushing any movement forward, one of the biggest dangers trans women face right now is hypervisibility. There’s a growing pop culture buzz surrounding trans women and trans rights — though, devastatingly, that mainstream new coverage does not often extend to the pandemic of violent crimes committed against trans women — and people are beginning to form opinions and take action against trans women, even though they’ve never engaged with a trans woman in their lives. Many people also believe this hypervisibilty is contributing to increased intimate partner violence against trans women, as the men who date trans women lash out to posture for their friends in a culture of toxic masculinity.
The New York Times recently reported on a similar trend in Nigeria, where the West’s push against anti-gay laws has actually contributed to a significant increase in violence against gay people.
America’s money and public diplomacy have opened conversations and opportunities in societies where the subject was taboo just a few years ago. But they have also made gay men and lesbians more visible — and more vulnerable to harassment and violence … by groups of men, some of whom call themselves “cleansers.” … Before, a lot of people didn’t even have a clue there were something called gay people. But now they know and now they are outraged.
Conservative politicians and evangelical Christian groups have always scapegoated minorities to advance their agenda in the United States, and as it becomes less and less acceptable to target gay and lesbian men and women, you can count on those legislators and religious leaders to turn their attention toward trans people. See Houston’s Prop. 1, for example. It is remarkably easy to prey on the unfounded fears of majority voters who have no experience with the minorities they’re being taught to fear, and it makes matters infinitely worse when the majority’s fears are confirmed by the very few portrayals of that minority group they see on TV.
Visibility is terrifying when the people who see you want to do you harm.
The True Transgender Tipping Point
The fact that Time magazine declared the Transgender Tipping Point over a year ago actually shows how far we have left to go. That the success of a very small handful of trans women and trans TV shows feels like a landslide victory only highlights what a deserted wasteland pop culture is for trans women. It also drives home the point that every single second of transgender representation on television matters. The sample size is still way too small to absorb the impact of irresponsible stories. What happens in our story boxes informs what happens in our hearts and in our homes and in our culture at large.
That the success of a very small handful of trans women and trans TV shows feels like a landslide victory only highlights what a deserted wasteland pop culture is for trans women. It also drives home the point that every single second of transgender representation on television matters.
In 2015, folks who were searching for quality trans representation on TV had a few really remarkable hours to choose from; but folks who will only become acquainted with trans women if they stumble across them on television were mostly exposed to tired tropes, damaging cliches, and men portraying trans women.
Zella Ziona, Keisha Jenkins, Tamara Dominguez, Elisha Walker, Kandis Capri, Amber Monroe, Shade Schuler, K.C. Haggard, India Clarke, Ashton O’Hara, Jasmine Collins, Mercedes Williamson, London Chanel, Keyshia Blige, Kristina Gomez Reinwald, Penny Proud, Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, Yazmin Vash Payne, Ty Underwood, Lamia Beard, Papi Edwards, and the murdered trans women whose names we’ll never know deserved more. We must honor their memory by demanding more, and by refusing to accept stories that contribute to a world where their deaths are more common than the TV characters who represent them. Stories don’t exist in a vacuum; where they lead, our culture follows.
“Law & Order: SVU” Adds Its Voice to the “Trans Debate” with the Confusing, Horribly Depressing “Transgender Bridge”
On Wednesday night, Law & Order: SVU threw its hat into the Transgender TV Revolution game with an episode called “Transgender Bridge.” This is far from Law & Order’s first time dealing with a transgender storyline. The show has featured Kate Moennig as a trans woman, a trans girl who’s dad was shot by her school counselor who turned out to be a surprise trans woman, and what seems like dozens of murdered trans sex workers.
I’m still trying to process what exactly it was that I watched. There was so much that made me feel confused or angry or just completely lost that I’m having a bit of trouble organizing my thoughts.
https://youtu.be/l8wS13m1it4
The episode starts with a scene I thought I’d never see on TV: A 15-year-old girl, who we later learn is named Avery and is a fan of photography and graphic novels, gets up from her bed and we see her completely topless. That makes no sense, right? But it’s okay, because by seeing her topless we learn that she’s trans. I guess what we’re supposed to understand is that male actors — even if they’re playing teenage female characters — can be topless on primetime network TV. Then there’s another scene later where we see her breasts again. Janet Jackson taught us that even an impossible-to-see glance of half a nipple is a fine-worthy scandal, and based on the rules of society that says girls and women can’t go topless, this should have not happened once (let alone twice) in one episode. In a world where things made sense, or at least a world where trans women were seen as women, the FCC would have taken away NBC’s broadcast permit.
That’s the thing though: According to Law & Order, NBC and the FCC, trans women are men, so it’s okay for them to be topless. At least that’s what seems to be happening. Last night a few million people saw a fictional teenage girl’s boobs on NBC. One has to wonder, if a male actor were playing a cis woman character in a TV show, would that character be able to go topless? It doesn’t make sense.
Dante Brown as Darius McCrae, Christopher Dylan White as Avery (Courtesy of NBC)
It also brings up the question of why Law & Order decided to go with a male actor for the role. I feel like if you’re going to do an episode that’s about trans people and how they’re discriminated against, and you filmed the episode after Dallas Buyers Club and after Orange is the New Black and after Transparent, you really should hire a trans actor. Basically, if you’re going to try to make a statement about trans people, you better have a trans person involved. Otherwise you’re just contributing to trans people being silenced.
The actual crime was disturbing, but in a different way from your average SVU crime. It wasn’t especially graphic, but how can you not be deeply disturbed when you’re watching a teenage girl being pushed around and called “he-she,” “tranny” and “freak” while other teenagers pull at her skirt demanding to see what she’s got under there. The attack ends up with Avery falling onto one of the boys, 15 year old Darius, causing the others to tease “she likes you, Darius!” followed by Darius pushing her off of him and off of the park bridge they were standing on.
Logic would tell you that since this episode was Law and Order’s Big Attempt at taking part in the Transgender Tipping Point, that scene would have been the last time Avery was misgendered, at least without people correcting the misgendering. This episode, however, paid no attention at all to the rules of logic. Right away the police officer at the scene tells Detectives Rollins and Carisi “she’s not a she” when referring to Avery. When Rollins replies with the one word question “transgender?” the officer replies with the desperately insensitive “Boy dressed as a girl, that makes her a special victim, right?” At least he got her pronouns right that time.
Throughout the rest of the episode, the boys who were attacking Avery call her “he,” and even “he-she.” This continues into the police station and all the way up to court. Misgendering a trans person is an act of violence, so, again, it’s completely bizarre that the police, the lawyers and judge would all let these boys continue to act out violence against the trans girl they attacked. Surely making sure they used the correct pronouns would be an easy way of helping them “learn their lesson” or rehabilitate or whatever the police and court system’s goal is.
An injured Avery identifies her attackers before she succumbs to her injuries.
When the show does try to tackle the “trans issue” through the two detectives having a conversation about Avery, they continue to trip over their own feet. The conversation goes like this:
Carisi: “What makes a boy decide he wants to be a girl? What is it? Is it that he likes boys and doesn’t want to be gay?”
Rollins: “Um, there’s a difference between gender identity and sexuality, Carisi.”
Carisi: “Yeah, yeah. You know, my parents, they think this is all about getting attention.”
Rollins: “You were a 14 year old boy once, would you or any other boy you knew put on a skirt if it didn’t come from a really real place?”
Which, all of that is sort of right, but also doesn’t do a great job of explaining what being trans is like to the audience, who is obviously being represented by Carisi here. Both Carisi and viewers leave the conversation learning nothing other than being trans comes from a “really real place.” Really though, would it have been that hard for Rollins to say, “You see, that’s the thing, Avery’s not a boy who decided he wants to be a girl, she’s a girl who decided she wanted to stop pretending to be a boy.” Transparent already did this conversation perfectly, just follow their example!
Eventually, Avery dies from her wounds and then the episode is truly without a trans person to speak out for trans rights, or making trans people safe or valuing trans lives. I was going to say how ironic is it, but really, how perfectly fitting with how society really works is it that this episode killed off its lone trans character halfway through and instead made it all about the cis people around her.
The rest of the episode focuses on how they decide to charge the 15-year-old Darius as an adult, resulting in him going to prison for seven years, which is vile and evil and cruel, and how forgiveness is important in cases like this. There’s even an expert witness, a doctor, who testifies that Darius couldn’t have acted out of hate for Avery because he didn’t have enough experience with trans people to hate them, that he was motivated by insecurity and fear and the need to prove he was straight and a real man to his friends. The doctor blames the attack on Avery, precisely because she was trans. He says “Avery was someone very different from the biological boys Darius knows. Someone ‘other’ in ways that were threatening to a boy just beginning to mature sexually and emotionally.” I guess that’s a pretty good excuse for violently attacking a trans girl.
I can say that this was better than it could have been. Avery had a name and lines and she wasn’t the butt of jokes, and the overall message of the episode was that trans people have it hard. And while she was misgendered throughout the entire episode, her parents and lawyer used the correct pronouns, and any time a slur was used, we knew that it was bad that the person was using that slur. It seemed like Law & Order was trying to do the right thing, they just didn’t want to put in the effort that it would’ve taken to do a good job.
Pictured: (l-r) Adrienne C. Moore as Cheryl McCrae, Dante Brown as Darius McCrae (Photo courtesy of NBC)
At one point in my notes I wrote “I’m really happy that they didn’t murder this trans girl,” only to watch her die in the hospital two scenes later. That’s how the whole episode went — any time I would get hopeful, they would let me down again. The only good thing about this episode was when Darius’ mother appears and she’s played by Adrienne C. Moore, better known as Black Cindy from Orange is the New Black. I just don’t understand how when there are so many trans people out there willing and able to work with and for TV shows to make sure they get their trans storylines right, we still get episodes like this. In the end, we have a dead 15-year-old trans girl, a Black 15-year-old being sent into the Prison Industrial Complex, a bunch of devastated parents and absolutely no feeling that justice was served or that anything positive would come out of the situation.
This is not how you advocate for trans people to be treated as human beings in society, this is how you advocate for a misanthropic worldview.
15 Of Those Actresses Who Were In That Show
You know the ones: the actresses you keep seeing in everything and you don’t know their names but you swear you’ve seen her in something else! Firstly, I hope you know Jane Lynch’s name, if not, it’s probably Jane Lynch. Or is it Lili Taylor? Lorraine Toussaint? Double-check, I can wait.
Okay. So: they aren’t ever the lead character, they’re not getting interviewed on talk shows or put on the cover of magazines. They’re not winning huge awards or starting fashion lines or having their relationships invaded on TMZ.
But they keep showing up on our shows!!!
They’re not always playing the queer character — ’cause if they were, we’d know their name — but these actresses all have a knack for showing up on shows that have some kind of queer content or are otherwise on our radar.
1. Aasha Davis
Remember when she was: Chelsea on South of Nowhere
And then you saw her in: Pariah
Wherever you are, she is too: breaking Alike’s heart in Pariah, getting preggers in South of Nowhere, trying to keep Smash in line in Friday Night Lights. You’ve spotted her in Criminal Minds, Chasing Life, House, ER, Gilmore Girls and Grey’s Anatomy. She’s also starred in two queer webseries, Nick & Nora and Cowgirl Up; and one not-queer but super-awesome webseries “The Unwritten Rules” about “the comedic realities of a Black Co-Worker in a predominantly white workplace.”
2. Kim Dickens
You know her from: She was Saracen’s Mom on Friday Night Lights
Wait is that Saracen’s Mom in: Gone Girl
She’s remarkably versatile but still has such a memorable face. You may know her from her recurring roles on House of Cards, Sons of Anarchy and Treme. I first noticed she was one of those women I saw everywhere when the woman who long-conned Sawyer on Lost showed up on Saracen’s doorstep. Then there she was, not having aged a wink, playing a cop on Gone Girl! She’s also dropped in on White Collar, FlashForward, 12 Miles of Bad Road, Numb3rs and Spin City.
ETA: And apparently she played a lesbian in Deadwood!
3. Adina Porter
You know her from: Tara’s Mom on True Blood
You were pretty sure that was Tara’s Mom you saw in: The Newsroom, The 100
She played Tara’s mom, Lettie Mae Thornton, on True Blood, and Grounder warrior Indra on The 100, but she’s also shown up in queer favorites like Grey’s Anatomy, Glee, American Horror Story and lesbian classic Gia, in which she played “the girl at group therapy.”
Aside from her gigs on True Blood, The 100, The Newsroom and the 2002-2003 series American Dreams, she’s rarely a series regular. That’s given her plenty of time to appear in one or two episodes of every other show in the world: NYPD Blue, Crossing Jordan, ER, CSI:NY, Prison Break, Without a Trace, House M.D., Law and Order SVU, Cold Case, CSI, Saving Grace, Hawthorne, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, Private Practice, Ringer, Prime Suspect and The Vampire Diaries.
4. Anne Ramsay
You know her as: The first woman who dared to date a post-Marina Jenny on The L Word
But you might also remember her from: A League of Their Own
I’m so consistently surprised when people don’t know who Anne Ramsay is. She has been in EVERYTHING, y’all! She was Jenny’s girlfriend in The L Word. She was an out lesbian Mom on Secret Life Of the American Teenager. She played ball in your favorite not-gay gay movie, A League of Their Own. She was even in my favorite show of all time, Six Feet Under! But if you’re of a certain generation you might know her best from Mad About You. Regardless, it’s impossible to have missed her boat entirely, as she’s played recurring roles on Hart of Dixie, Hawthorne, Dexter, Related, Dharma & Greg, Star Trek: The Next Generation and, most memorably, on Mad About You.
5. Annabeth Gish
You know her as: The therapist on Pretty Little Liars
Or maybe: The X-Files, The Bridge
This is a generational situation — if you’re young, you probably saw her for the first time in Pretty Little Liars. If you’re my age or older, though, you probably have been aware of her for a long time. I mean, she was nominated for a young actress award for Mystic Pizza! Remember Mystic Pizza? The first time I looked her up was when she showed up on The Bridge, and I was like, WHERE DO I KNOW HER FROM. Mhm. Dr. Sullivan, y’all. Also The West Wing, obvs. But you’ve also seen her in The X-Files, Once Upon a Time, Parenthood, Parks & Rec or Sons of Anarchy and movies like Beautiful Girls and SLC Punk!
6. CCH Pounder
Recently crossed my radar as: Mrs. Frederic on Warehouse 13
If you already knew this woman’s name than you are a wiser and better human than I am, because she’s one of the most accomplished working actresses of all time and yet I didn’t know her name until today. She’s scored regular roles on NCIS: New Orleans, Sons of Anarchy, Law & Order SVU, The Shield, ER, Women in Prison, and Brothers. She was featured in Avatar, Face/Off and Orphan and has lent her talent to shows ranging from Cagney & Lacey, The Cosby Show and Hill Street Blues to The Practice, Girlfriends and Revenge.
7. Senta Moses
She danced the night away with Rickie on My So-Called Life and I forgot about her entirely ’til she reappeared as Principal Penelope on Faking It. But she was also Kevin McAllister’s cousin in Home Alone! Or maybe you saw her in Rizzoli & Isles, Castle, Greek, Girl Meets World, NCIS, Beckman’s World or Sister, Sister? Her hair has been perfectly curly for ages.
8. Rekha Sharma
This woman who is long overdue for a magazine cover: Canadian actress Rekha Sharma has navigated the murky ethical codes of the post-apocalyptic human race in featured roles in The 100 and Battlestar Galactica as well as popping up on Arrow, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time In Wonderland, V, Dark Angel and Smallville. She also allegedly appeared as “Lori” in the first two episodes of The L Word but I can’t find her in it for the life of me.
9. Michelle Hurst
You know her from: Orange is the New Black
You saw her again in: Law and Order
and again in: Law and Order
and also one more time in Law and Order
As Stef noted in her epic And Now Every Character From “Orange is the New Black” As They Appear In “Law and Order”, Michelle Hurst has played nine different characters in various shows in the Law & Order franchise. She’s also shown up on queer-friendly shows like Broad City, Last Tango in Halifax, The Good Wife and Sex & The City.
10. Kathryn Hahn
You know her from: You’ve been thinking that she’s Ana Gasteyer this whole time
She was that rabbi who made the mistake of falling for Josh in Transparent, but she’s also been in Girls, Hung, The Newsroom, Parks & Recreation, Kroll Show and 115 episodes of Crossing Jordan. She looked the most like Ana Gasteyer in We’re the Millers. That picture of her is from Anchorman.
11. Beth Grant
Beth Grant has 182 IMDB credits! She’s been in over 70 feature films, appeared in over thirty plays, guested on every television show to ever exist… AND YET. She’s Beverly on The Mindy Project, but you’ve also seen her in Criminal Minds, Friends, Six Feet Under, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, CSI, Everwood, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, Modern Family, Pushing Daisies and Bones.
ETA: LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
12. Amy Hill
You might recognize this Japanese-Finnish-American performance artist and actress’ voice moreso than her face, but you probably recognize her face, too, ’cause this woman has been working. I think I first saw her when, at the age of 41, she played Margaret Cho’s 65-year-old grandmother in All-American Girl. In addition to doing voices for Lilo & Stich, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, American Dad!, The Legend of Korra, King of The Hill, Kim Possible and The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, she played Judy Harvey in Enlightened, Dr. Laura Brown in General Hospital, Mrs. DePaulo in That’s So Raven and did guest spots on Grey’s Anatomy, Ghost Whisperer, Glee, Law & Order, Arrested Development, The League, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Frasier, Six Feet Under, Without a Trace, Friends, Third Rock From The Sun, The Hughleys, The Closer and Desperate Housewives. Her film work includes 50 First Dates, Cat in the Hat and Next Friday.
13. Justina Machado
She was definitely Rico’s better half on Six Feet Under and also has played recurring roles on ER, Goode Behavior, Private Practice, Three Rivers and Welcome to the Family. She also turned up in Season One of The Fosters and has guested on shows including Ugly Betty, Switched at Birth, Desperate Housewives and Kath & Kim.
14. Melora Hardin
You know her from: She played Jan on The Office
And weren’t sure where you recognized her from when she showed up as: a lesbian on Transparent
Melora Hardin has 103 credits on IMDB, and is known primarily for The Office and The Hot Chick — but she’s actually been working consistently since she was nine years old. So in addition to popping up on classics like Lois & Clark, Murder She Wrote, Friends, Matlock, Little House on the Prairie, Diff’rent Strokes, The Love Boat, Quantum Leap and starring in the failed 1988 Dirty Dancing TV series, she’s also been busy these days with stuff like Scandal, Wedding Band, Outlaw, Monk, Gilmore Girls and Cover Me. Also she had lesbian sex in Transparent, so.
15. Tina Majorino
One of the most notable aspects of this actress’ career is that you’ve maybe accidentally seen everything she’s ever been in, and she hasn’t been in a ton of stuff. Just, you know, stuff like Napoleon Dynamite, Big Love, Grey’s Anatomy, Veronica Mars, True Blood and Bones. She was a child star when I was an aspiring child star, too, turning up in all my favorite films like Andre, Waterworld and Corrina, Corrina. Yet so many people still get her mixed up with Jenna Malone! I feel like she’s one TV show away from the cover of BUST Magazine. Am I the only human on earth who didn’t already know her name, though. Be honest with me.
So, how many of these actresses did you already know?
And Now, Every Character From “Orange Is The New Black” As They Appear On “Law And Order”
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away from Litchfield Penitentiary, there was a magical world called New York City in the ’90s. People called actors lived there, and those people had a really hard time landing huge jobs in film, television or theatre that consistently paid them a lot of money. To supplement their income, or just to boost their careers, many actors took bit roles on a fantastic long-running television show called Law and Order, which also branched out into spinoffs like Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and its ill-fated cousins, Law and Order: Los Angeles, Law and Order: UK and Law and Order: Trial By Jury. Each different breed of Law and Order had its own unique cadence, which was comforting if repetitive, and viewers could enjoy solving the mystery along with the charmingly curmudgeonly detectives and a stable of very attractive Assistant District Attorneys. You guys, it was the best show, and still is (because you can watch a marathon of it on USA or TNT at any given moment).
These glorious motherfuckers.
Our own illustrious Kate suggested while putting together one of her brilliant Orange Is The New Black recaps that probably nearly every single actor on the show had at one point been featured in a Law and Order episode, a theory that turned out to be true. Because I am a person of questionable sanity and dubious employment, I decided to prove her hypothesis. I scoured IMDB, locked myself in my apartment for three days, and over time I was able to collect almost every appearance. These are their stories.
DOINK DOINK.
Kate Mulgrew/Red
In “Web” (Season 7, Episode 21 of Law and Order: SVU), Kate Mulgrew plays Assistant US Attorney Donna Geysen, who demands that a 14-year-old boy with a history of sexual abuse be punished to the full extent of the law for molesting his younger brother on a live webcam show. In case you ever wondered how Red’s intimidation factor would stack up against badass ADA Casey Novak, this episode answers that question for you: Red wins. Her investigation drives the boy to run away from home, aided and eventually kidnapped by the pedophiles who supported his online endeavors. Thankfully, this episode takes place during that tragic period of time where Detective Benson had run away to join the computer crimes unit, so Benson is able to use her new l337 hacking skills to help Detective Stabler rescue the boy and serve sweet, sweet justice.
Could really use a jalapeño scrub from Piper right about now.
Selenis Leyva/Gloria
The Law and Orderverse has a very short memory, and it’s not uncommon to see an actor play several assorted roles as different bit characters throughout the years – like this woman, who has basically played a different maid in every single episode of the Law and Order franchise, or Diane Neal, who played a rapist in Law and Order: SVU‘s third season only to join the cast full time as ADA Casey Novak in season five. Selenis Leyva played Lorinda Gutierrez in the first season of SVU, and assorted bit roles in various episodes of Criminal Intent. On Law and Order proper, Leyva spent 17 episodes as Detective Mariluz Rivera, often popping out of the woodwork to offer evidence or explain key plot developments to main detectives Fontana and Green. Three seasons later, she popped up as a bit character in Season 20 Episode 14 (“Boy On Fire”), and nobody on the force seemed to recognize her. Great detective work, you guys.
Also looks cute in a hairnet though.
Vicky Jeudy/Janae Watson
Man, everything happens to poor Watson. In Season 15, Episode 10 of Law and Order: SVU, Detectives Amaro and Rollins are coming home from a party when they happen upon Officer Shannon McKenna (Vicky Jeudy) and her partner, who are in hot pursuit of a teenager they suspect of selling drugs. Both McKenna and the suspect are injured in the subsequent gun battle, and when it comes to light that the suspect was unarmed, Amaro finds both his badge and his conscience on the line. I remember watching this episode earlier this year and I have a lot of episodes to get through so I didn’t re-watch the entire plot, but I assume it ends with Watson being put in the SHU again for little to no reason. Sorry buddy.
“WHY DO TERRIBLE THINGS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME ON TELEVISION SHOWS!??!!”
Michael Harney/Sam Healy
Before he was Defender Of All Men and Protector Of The Talking Stick on Orange Is The New Black, Michael Harney was mostly famous for playing a cop on NYPD Blue. He’s been in four different episodes of Law and Order, two of them as Lieutenant Stu Miller. In Season 7, Episodes 15 & 16, Lieutenant Miller shows up to help Briscoe and Curtis track down the murderer of a wealthy movie studio executive.
“Well, Detective Briscoe, we still haven’t ruled out ‘potential lesbian activity’ as the cause of death.”
Sanja Danilovic/Katja Healy
While we’re at it, Sam Healy’s mail order bride has also been featured on a couple of episodes. In Season 15 Episode 1 of Law and Order: SVU, Sanja has a bit role as the unsuspecting wife of a man who has kept several other women locked in a Brooklyn basement for decades. In spite of all of this, she seems to like this guy a lot more than Katja likes Healy.
“I don’t know, he said something about taking me to the Spaghetti Factory later.”
Lea DeLaria/Big Boo
Season 10 Episode 14 (“Transitions”) of Law and Order: SVU features Lea DeLaria as Frankie, the tough-as-nails bouncer at a strip joint called Sugar Pops. Her job is to keep creepy, potentially dangerous men away from the dancers, and she seems to enjoy the hell out of it.
hahahaha who knows
Barbara Rosenblat/Miss Rosa
The SVU detectives are trying to track down the ID of a man who was brutally assaulted outside the club, and when they discover his place of employment, they run into none other than Barbara Rosenblat, also known as Miss Rosa. Rosenblat also appears as a nurse in an earlier episode (Season 6, Episode 17, “Rage”).
“Always so rude, that one.”
Laverne Cox/Sophia
Autostraddle’s Favourite Person Of All Time Laverne Cox has a tiny role as a friendly truck stop prostitute named Minnie in Law and Order Season 19 Episode 6, “Sweetie,” which was based loosely(?) on the scandal surrounding writer JT LeRoy. You can also spot her in Law and Order: SVU Season 9, Episode 16, “Closet,” as Candace, the manager of a men’s gym called Bulge’s.
Pablo Schreiber/Pornstache
Pornstache is the absolute worst, whether he has a mustache or not. In Law and Order: SVU‘s continued efforts to emotionally destroy Detective Olivia Benson (and/or give Mariska Hargitay all the Emmys, hard to tell), our favourite be-lipglossed superhero cop was presented with an absolute nightmare of a stalker, sadistic criminal mastermind William Lewis. Lewis kidnapped and tortured Benson on more than one occasion, and took advantage of every woman he encountered — including his lawyer, played by Lauren Ambrose, aka Claire from Six Feet Under. Terrible things just keep happening to Benson, and honestly it’s gotten to be a little bit ridiculous — like, how much trauma is it going to take before this lady retires? We will not miss you, Pornstache. Leave Mariska alone.
WE DON’T LEAVE LUNCH TIL LUNCH IS OVERRRRRRR.
Natasha Lyonne/Nichols
Natasha’s stint on SVU is actually pretty significant — she stars in Season 13 Episode 8, “Educated Guess,” as Gia Eskas, a patient at a psychiatric facility who is being abused by someone at the hospital. Although her world-weary character is pretty dramatically different from Nicky Nichols, she still drops a couple of Nichols-esque wisecracks at Benson and Rollins’ expense.
“Cagney and Lacey were just leaving.”
Michael Chernus/Cal Chapman
Oh look, it’s Michael Chernus, AKA Piper’s brother Cal Chapman, playing another patient in the hospital who comes under suspicion and gets interrogated by Ice-T.
“WE’RE GONNA EAT THE WORLD.”
Annie Golden/Norma
Annie Golden’s had a pretty fascinating career; in the late 70s she fronted a New Wave band called the Shirts, and then went on to enjoy brief pop stardom in the mid-80s. In 1999, she appeared in Season 10 Episode 2 as the mother of a little girl who was interviewed as a potential witness to a homicide. You can also spot her in Season 7, Episode 14 of Law and Order: SVU as Varla, a pregnant homeless woman with a substance abuse problem who panhandles outside a coffeeshop. In both roles, she actually talks to the cops.
“…”
Joel Garland/O’Neill
After spending most of Season 1 as merely background noise (something about fad diets), correctional officer and civil war re-enactment enthusiast Scott O’Neill basically kills it this season with his on-again, off-again relationship drama with Bell and his banjolele songs about his Catholic upbringing. In the Season 12 premiere of Law and Order (“Who Let The Dogs Out?”), Garland plays Ralph Carson, a man who is arrested and questioned for his participation in a brutal dogfighting ring. This episode is also noteworthy because it features the first appearance of Elisabeth Röhm as dreamy lesbian ADA Serena Southerlyn. You can also see Joel Garland as Mickey Scertza in Season 17 Episode 16, “Murder Book.”
“Officer, it’s not what it looks like. I’m doing the four-hour body.”
Catherine Curtin/Wanda Bell
In Season 6, Episode 6 of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, a man is arrested for the long-unsolved murder of a young girl, but his story doesn’t add up. As Goren and Eames investigate, the girl’s attention-hungry mother (Liza Minnelli) points them in the direction of her daughter’s acting coach, Jenna Switzer — aka Catherine Curtin, who also plays stone-faced correctional officer Bell on Orange Is The New Black. Switzer isn’t much help with the investigation, but if Bell were there I’m pretty sure her suggestion would be to perform a squat and cough on well, pretty much everyone present. Curtin also plays the bit character Julie Liscomb in Law and Order Season 18, Episode 10 (“Tango”).
“Have you tried squatting? And you also tried coughing? Have you tried them together?”
Taryn Manning/Pennsatucky
Without spoiling too much of Season Two for those of you who somehow haven’t finished the episodes yet (get it together, seriously), I think we can all agree that Pennsatucky takes great strides this season to get her anger under control and change her life for the better. Unfortunately, her character Larissa Welch on Season 12 Episode 12 of Law and Order: SVU (“Possessed”) doesn’t get quite so positive a story arc — she grows up sexually abused and forced to star in child pornography, only to be recognized and later assaulted by one of her “fans.”
Emma Myles/Leanne
Emma Myles has been in two episodes of SVU, Season 11, Episode 9 “Perverted” and Season 6, Episode 10 “Haunted.” In “Perverted,” she plays Starla, the “old lady” of a biker who’s found murdered with Detective Benson’s business card in his wallet. After Stabler comes by Starla’s place to ask her a couple of questions, she bursts into tears over the loss of not her boyfriend, but his motorcycle.
Also concerned about a very serious maple syrup situation.
Constance Shulman/Yoga Jones
Just four episodes after her BFF Watson gets shot in the line of duty, Patty Mayonnaise herself appears as the manager of a daycare who also arranges illegal adoptions for problem children. In Season 15, Episode 13 of Law and Order: SVU, Constance Shulman takes a rowdy little boy from his overwhelmed mother and places him with a couple who give her fake names and list Yankee Stadium as their address. Oops.
“Okay, you want to project your issues onto me… That’s cool.”
Tamara Torres/Weeping Woman
I’m not the hugest fan of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, because I find Vincent D’Onofrio’s character completely obnoxious and infuriating. The formula of Criminal Intent just seems like it’s trying too hard to be cerebral, and it ends up being overly complicated and irritating. Anyway, if you keep your eyes peeled during Season 5 Episode 2, you can spot the woman responsible for my favourite running gag on Orange Is The New Black, the Weeping Woman who constantly hogs the phones. This episode is fortunately Vincent D’Onofrio-free and instead features Chris Noth as Detective Logan, and Weeping Woman finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time at her family’s mom and pop jewelry shop in the Bronx. She’s also credited as “Woman” in an episode of Law and Order Proper (“School Daze,” Season 11, Episode 22).
Never not crying.
Nick Sandow/Caputo
Almost no other character on Orange Is The New Black has had a more prolific Law and Order career than Nick Sandow, who appears in two episodes of Criminal Intent (Season 9, Episode 13 and Season 5, Episode 4), one SVU (Season 7, Episode 17) and three regular Law and Orders. In Season 7 Episode 7, Sandow plays Pete Pogosian, a smarmy car thief who turns up to visit a business associate who (unbeknownst to him) has just been murdered. I only skimmed this episode because I have a lot more Law and Order to watch, but apparently Jerry Stiller ends up involved in this situation somehow. Also, Caputo’s brother is played by Big Pussy from the Sopranos. Good episode, guys. In another episode, Sandow plays a bail agent, and in yet another, he’s a cop. He’s much better looking without that goofy mustache.
Detective Briscoe, huge fan of Side Boob.
Beth Fowler/Sister Ingalls
Oh hey, check out Beth Fowler in Law and Order‘s Season 3, Episode 19 as the horrified mother of a teenage hacker who invented a virus that infected a hospital’s computer and killed several diabetic patients. Like most mothers of teenage murderers on Law and Order, she staunchly insists upon his innocence and then makes a series of horrified faces over the course of her son’s trial. Sister Ingalls would never stand for this. Sister Ingalls would have sprayed pigs’ blood all over Jack McCoy’s office door and probably led a courthouse riot. Easily the best part of this episode is the early 90s-era hacking, which even predates the movie Hackers.
Sister Ingalls is having none of this bullshit.
Jessica Pimentel/Maria Ruiz
Jessica Pimentel is another well-seasoned L&O veteran, having appeared in one Criminal Intent, two regular Law and Orders and two SVUs. In an effort to find the most important episode from her career, I skimmed through her first appearance, Law and Order Season 13, Episode 12 (“Under God”), wherein she plays a sex worker whose john finds a dead body in the opening sequence. Her next role on classic Law and Order was Season 20, Episode 7 (“Boy Gone Astray”), as Tina, a party girl who Detectives Lupo and Bernard pick up while investigating the murder of an interior designer with connections to a Mexican drug cartel. Later in the episode, Elizabeth Rodriguez (aka Aleida, Daya Diaz’s mom) pops up as the mother of a child recruited and trained as an assassin by the cartel, and the credits reveal that said episode was directed by Rose Troche, who is responsible for several episodes of The L Word. Bingo.
Somehow, this is probably Alex Vause’s fault.
Elizabeth Rodriguez/Aleida Diaz
Daya’s mom Aleida is certainly not the most sympathetic character on Orange is the New Black, but occasionally she can be surprisingly tender with Daya. Elizabeth Rodriguez has been featured in one episode of SVU (see above) and three episodes of Law and Order proper. Here she is in 1995 as Caridad Montero, the girlfriend of a young man found stabbed to death in a bar fight, rocking some really serious braids.
“And so the penguin says, ‘Dude, he’s not an eggplant…'”
Maria Dizzia/Polly
I hope that you all appreciate that I am so dedicated to this project that I watched a lot of Criminal Intent for you. Season 5, Episode 18 “Cruise to Nowhere” features Maria Dizzia as Daphne, a single mom who is also the harried older girlfriend of a crooked young gambling genius. All things considered, this is no worse than Pete leaving her and their newborn alone for his manly adventure times in Alaska.
You can bet Finn Harper will never eat any breakfast cereal that is not local, organic and “artisanal.”
Alysia Reiner/Natalie Figueroa
I invite you to travel back in time with me to 2002, when Law and Order: SVU premiered Season 4, Episode 9, “Juvenile.” When police uncover the rape and murder of a woman with terminal cancer who was running a large-scale weed-farming operation out of her apartment, they seek out members of her medicinal marijuana club to track down the killer. Enter Alysia Reiner, also known as Assistant Warden Natalie Figueroa, queen of Resting Bitch Face, playing Cindy Kerber. You can also see Ms. Reiner’s condescending sneer in three episodes of Criminal Intent and two episodes of regular Law and Order.
“Just don’t tell the warden about this, okay?”
Michelle Hurst/Miss Claudette
Did I say Caputo was the reigning champion of Law and Order bit roles? Forgive me — this honor goes to Miss Claudette, who has enjoyed cameos in four episodes of Law and Order proper, three SVUs and one Criminal Intent. She’s performed such diverse roles as “ACS Social Worker” and “Pizza Lady.” Here, Michelle Hurst’s take-no-bullshit signature scowl is put to good use as she plays a public defender representing a murder suspect. That withering glare could make Jack McCoy shiver in his penny loafers.
“Baptiste better be taking me to the goddamn Olive Garden after this shit.”
Lorraine Toussaint/Vee
Lorraine Toussaint was a recurring character on Law and Order — she played Shambala Green, a tough-as-nails defense attorney who was a terrifying adversary to ADAs Benjamin Stone and Jack McCoy. She gave just about as much of a fuck about what anyone thought as Vee might, but under it all, her character had a heart of gold. Shambala Green often defended women who had been victimized by society, and she commanded the courtroom without so much as batting an eyelash. In Season 3 Episode 1 (“Skin Deep”), Green defends a woman accused of murdering a fashion photographer who was also pimping out aging models on the side. She tells Benjamin Stone, “You want to do this? Go. I’ll clean your clock. When I’m through, you won’t even care what time it is.” Bonus: this episode also contains some really excellent crumple-face crying from the defendant’s daughter, played by a very young Claire Danes.
“At the end of the day, you are a garden rose and that bitch is a weed.”
Deborah Rush/Carol Chapman
Deborah Rush is my favourite casting decision on this show, due to her brilliant turn as Jerri Blank’s awful, racist, neglectful stepmother on Strangers With Candy. If there’s one thing Deborah Rush excels at, it’s playing an uptight, unsympathetic white lady, often to a delightfully hilarious degree. Less hilarious is her character Frances Houston on Law and Order Season 8, Episode 7 (“Blood”), where she comes under suspicion after her ex-husband’s new wife is murdered as a racially-motivated cover-up. In SVU Season 1 Episode 10 (“Russian Love Poem”), Rush plays the wife of a serial cheater who discovers her husband’s body in their home. The most important bit role on Law and Order is always the one where you find the corpse.
“Your honor, my daughter will never find a husband in those shapeless khakis.”
Lin Tucci/DeMarco
Speaking of finding the corpse, Lin Tucci has the honor of finding her bloody mailman slumped outside her apartment while arguing with her husband in the opening scene of Season 9, Episode 5 (“Agony”) of Law and Order. Later, the detectives find a woman who’s been brutally attacked in the same building, and they begin to build a case against a suspected serial killer. Not much for Lin Tucci to go on here as her only line is an exasperated, “SHE’S YOUR NIECE!” but hey, here she is:
Laura Gómez/Blanca Flores
I have now watched Season 19, Episode 2 (“Challenged”) of Law and Order three times looking for Laura Gómez, who allegedly plays someone named Claudia. I am sorry. I have failed you. Unless she is on the cutting room floor and/or not facing the camera in any scenes, IMDB is a liar.
Kimiko Glenn/Soso
As the most annoying inmate in all of Litchfield history, Soso launches a hunger strike intended to create positive change in the quality of prison life. In Season 15 Episode 23 of Law and Order: SVU, Kimiko Glenn is introduced as an underage webcam girl in Bangkok who coyly solicits requests from her online admirers. In reality, she’s a decoy who helps the special victims unit locate dangerous pedophiles, apparently including Kevin from The Office.
“This beats the hell out of the time I spent WWOOFing on a macadamia farm in Xenia.”
Lori Tan Chinn/Chang
Chang is one of the most under-utilized characters on Orange Is The New Black, and in this deep cut from the short-lived series Law and Order: Trial By Jury, Lori Tan Chinn says literally one word: “manicure?” Nobody is really sure why any of this is happening.
Faye Yvette McQueen/Vee’s Doppelganger
Without spoiling any of the events this season for readers who may not have finished, Faye Yvette McQueen’s character is mistaken for Vee and suffers some of the consequences of Vee’s actions. She’s also been in two episodes of SVU, once in Season 15, Episode 17 (“Criminal Stories”) as a criminal defense attorney (just like Vee!), and once in Season 11, Episode 13 (“PC”) as “Lesbian Rights Activist.” Well, hello Faye Yvette McQueen. She’s got two regular Law and Orders under her belt and is also an extremely gifted professional dancer.
“Shut up, straight white dude.”
Abigail Savage/Gina
This one came from a commenter tip – in Season 11, Episode 2 of Law and Order: SVU (“Sugar”), Abigail Savage plays the orchestrator of a high-level scavenger hunt who plants a prize in a darkened train tunnel… which obviously also houses the dumped body of a recently murdered woman. Savage’s charming handle? The “Master Baiter.” She also appears in Season 5, Episode 9 (“Control”) as Dot, a homeless woman who lives in a subway tunnel.
“Says here the scavenger hunt prize is… a bloody tampon on an English muffin.”
Hobby Lobby Continues To Make Crafting Look Bad With Birth Control Lawsuit
Four years after its initial passage, lawmakers and lawyers are still talking about — and making pretty big decisions regarding — the Affordable Care Act. Today was a big day for a case that could dramatically affect interpretation of the contraception requirements of the health care mandate, as well as the right of private companies and corporations to invoke religious beliefs in response to federal law.
The justices heard 90 minutes of oral arguments regarding the cases Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius. The two challengers claim that because the companies have religious foundations (the owners are Southern Baptist and Mennonite, respectively), they cannot be required to provide insurance that includes birth control they say causes abortions, specifically IUDs and the morning after pill (though most reports refute those claims). The justices will likely rule on the case in June, and it’s hard to predict the outcome after today’s hearings.
As predicted, it appears that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be a swing vote in the case. Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas appeared to stand with the challengers, as is expected of those conservative justices. All three women justices spoke strongly on the side of the government. They, like 84 percent of women voters in a recent poll, believe women should be able decide when and how to use birth control, not those women’s bosses.
Photo by Steve Petteway, Associated Press
The New York Times does a good job of breaking down the current state of the ACA and these cases. Pew also has some helpful, more detailed information on the background and context of the case, but I’m most interested in their explanations of the potential affects depending on how the court rules.
If the government prevails and the Supreme Court holds that RFRA does not cover for-profit entities or their owners or managers, the decision would immediately end all religious-liberty-based challenges to the contraception mandate by for-profit businesses. It also would bar businesses from invoking RFRA in lawsuits challenging other laws. Such a ruling would not, however, have any impact on the pending challenges to the contraception mandate by religious nonprofit organizations.
RFRA is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which in 1993 “directs courts to exempt any party who can show that the challenged law or government action substantially burdens his or her religious practice, unless the government shows that the law advances a compelling interest that cannot be achieved without imposing the burden on the person’s free exercise of religion.” One of the big questions in this case is whether private, non-religious corporations have that same right not to follow laws or government acts that burden their religious practice, since the RFRA was designed to protect individuals. But this is a post-Citizens United world. If the court rules in favor of the companies, it would open the door for companies to object to following any laws they feel are contrary to their religion — Kagan pointed out child labor laws, sex discrimination laws, and minimum wage laws as potential targets. Another obvious potential target is federal laws that require equal benefits and protections for queer individuals and couples. Plenty of businesses already want to invoke religion to discriminate against gay people, as was made clear in Arizona last month.
AP photo by Charles Dharapak
Of course, there are all sorts of in between places where the justices could land, some that dramatically expand the scope of religious liberty and others that maintain the status quo. The court could rule, for example, that RFRA does apply to companies but that the birth control provision does not count as a substantial burden because the employer is so far removed from the provision of birth control from insurance company to individual. That would make it hard for the religious non-profits gunning for exemptions to the birth control part of the mandate in other cases to succeed.
The outcome of the case matters greatly not just for women who want to take birth control while working for companies with religious owners, but anyone with a religious employer who wants equal rights and protections under the law. It’s endlessly frustrating to watch corporations and individuals invoke the Constitution and the Gospel to justify discrimination, when both those documents inherently aim to extend freedom and justice to all people. Of course constitutional interpretation is far more complicated than that, but I’m pretty sure the Founding Fathers would be like, “Go home and make a foam picture frame Hobby Lobby, you’re drunk.”
10 Procedural TV Characters I’d Like To See In A Sitcom Or Drama Or Something Like That
We used to watch a lot of Criminal Minds, because we loved the characters so much, but a person can only handle so many “cannibal serial killers being stopped at the very last minute right before the final victim loses their life” before one must assess the impact said insanity and horrifying violence has on one’s life. And although I actually really usually enjoy the Warehouse 13 hijinks, I find myself wanting more — not more hijinks, but more Claudia Donovan. You feel me? (Is this why fan fiction exists? I’ve honestly never read fan fiction, I think I’m afraid that if I did I might want to start writing some and then really all bets are off w/r/t my future.)
Penelope Garcia & Derek Morgan, Criminal Minds
You’re going to learn very quickly that I have a thing for smart geeky girls with weird hair who can find shit using the internet lickity split and whenever said girl is asked “can you find this thing?” replies with some clever variation on “can a [x] do [y]?” So really, I’d love to watch The Garcia Show — ideally a Veronica Mars-ish situation covering Garcia as a teen genius. Alternately, I think we all know that Garcia and Morgan belong together and I would enjoy a quirky sitcom about the pair and their inevitably perfect offspring.
Kalinda Sharma, The Good Wife
I mostly enjoyed this show but would prefer it if it was called The Good Kalinda and the amount of time spent on Alicia’s personal life was instead spent on Kalinda’s. In my ideal show, however, we’d reach way back and pull out this woman’s entire life story, starting from the first time she hooked up with a girl while doing badass things at boarding school.
Claudia Donovan, Warehouse 13
Have you noticed that Claudia’s hair is a different color every season? Firstly, I love that she is a person who has been institutionalized for a mental illness and is totally on top of her shit now, being helpful and functional and funneling her eccentricities into an area where they are not seen as eccentricities, but assets. But really she should be headlining a nerdy sitcom with her gay bestie, The Lie Detector, that’ll air the same night on the same network as The Mindy Project or else be one-half of Garcia’s a girl-detective duo on their Veroncia Mars-ish CW dreamscape.
Lydia Adams, Southland
I’ve only caught this show in bits and pieces here and there after Season One, but I got into her so hard back then. Obviously I have a thing for the women who hold it down on shows that are mostly about dudes, but I think she’s brilliant and flawed and nuanced and and I fucking love her. I think she should command a Battlestar or just transfer to Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Olivia Benson, Law and Order SVU
At some point the writers began their weak attempts to fill the void in Benson’s life with Harry Connick Jr, but it never clicked. I’m not sure procedural writers are the best scribes for Olivia Benson’s story. I want an Olivia Benson drama on cable, like on a lady-focused channel because I think she needs the extra-soft sentiment only those channels can execute as flawlessly syrupy as necessary. I wanna see Olivia Benson the day after she graduated from whatever higher education institution she attended. I wanna see her have friends, and have a drink with a lady who she does not work with or maybe have a birthday party or even honestly just GO to a birthday party. I want to see Olivia LIVE.
Dr. Spencer Reid, Criminal Minds
This autistic genius from Criminal Minds should be the Landry-from-Friday-Night-Lights of a really well-written hour-long drama series that Emily Nussbaum likes a lot. Spencer and Garcia are the reason I kept tuning in to the show despite the fact that, as Mandy Patinkin has accurately noted, “I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.” I loved seeing the interactions between these awkward outsiders who were somewhat “apart” due to their genius, but Reid was the most apart of all. I kept thinking, sheesh, I wish your talents were being put to use elsewhere.
H.G. Wells, Warehouse 13
I feel like her bisexuality is being wasted when they keep bronzing her or killing her or turning her into a hologram or sending her out on some random journey to find a dagger. She should be arm-wrestling Regina from Once Upon a Time or stealing Lauren away from Bo on Lost Girl. Sorry but seriously just think about it.
George Huang, Law & Order Special Victims Unit
I love B.D. Wong in everything, but what if he was dating the gay guy from Warehouse 13 and they went to the Police Officer’s Ball together or something? RIGHT.
Myka Bering & Pete Latitmer, Warehouse 13
You know how there are shows you watch where you ship two of the main female characters so hard and are so frustrated that they’re not actually making sweet love all the time that you don’t even have the brain capacity to appreciate their tender loving friendship? That’s how it must feel to be a straight person watching Pete & Myka. Luckily, I’m totally gay, and fuck I love the friendship between these two! (While wondering if the Myka-H.G. thing was created just to torture people?) As you may have heard, I hate men, but I have a soft spot the size of a mattress for Pete being a total geek and the playful but protective relationship between him and Myka and how they lean so hard on each other. I love it so much that I’d really like to see a show that is 75% real life relationships and family shit and 25% artifact-hunting.
Shout Out to Everyone on The Wire
I could watch a show about anybody on The Wire except McNulty and the weasely mayor, but also I kind of did ’cause even though Wikipedia claims that The Wire is a police procedural, it’s really not. It’s just about life and death in Baltimore and the human beings and institutions who define the nature of that life and death. I feel like Omar needs a comic book. Also, what if Kima Greggs had a show all to herself. LOL a show centered on a black lesbian cop on television! HAHAHAAHA ANY DAY NOW
Who do you wanna see get their own show? I don’t watch CSI, Castle, Bones or any of those shows, but I bet y’all have a lot of feelings about them don’t you.
Top Ten Fictional Female Crime-Fighters
It recently came to my attention, while trawling youtube for Det. Kate Beckett fan montages during my lunch hour, that I am addicted to any television show, movie franchise or book series that features a gun-toting badge flashing power suit-wearing female crime-fighter who hunts down baddies for a living.
Fictional female crime-fighters have become an obsession of sorts, and here are some of my favorites. I’m gonna go ahead and anticipate your protests by noting that this is a celebration of women who kick human being ass, not supernatural or extra-terrestrial ass. All you Scully and Starbuck fans should check out The 11 Hottest, Most Gun-Totingest Women of Sci-Fi or, you know, 39 pictures of Starbuck.
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Top 10 Fictional Female Crime-Fighters
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10. Detective Jane Rizzoli & Inspector Lindsay Boxer
Played by Angie Harmon in the TV series Rizzoli & Isles and The Women’s Murder Club.
Rizzoli’s talents include looking fine in tailored suits and leaping fearlessly in front of bullets to save her very special friend, Dr. Maura Isles. She enjoys sensible footwear, field hockey and putting her job before relationships with men. I’m pretty sure Rizzoli & Isles’ lesbian fan-base is the only reason this show is still on the air.
Inspector Lindsay Boxer from The Women’s Murder Club, is pretty much the same character but with different baggage and slightly better detective skills. She remained relatively kick-ass despite the fact that her show was THE WORST and didn’t live up to the novel series by James Patterson (and that bar wasn’t set overly high).
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9. DS Sam Murray
Played by Heather Peace in the TV series Lip Service.
DS Murray, one of the butchiest butches in Glasgow, didn’t exactly fight any crime during Season 1 of Lip Service. However, she does look smokin’ hot in a vest and so that’s really the reason she’s made it onto this list – detective vest hotness.
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8. Agent Ziva David
Played by Coté de Pablo in the TV series NCIS.
Ex-Mossad operative Ziva David can kill someone 18 different ways with a paperclip, which is impressive and also possibly the one thing that Olivia Benson cannot do.
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7. Officer Amelia Sachs/Donaghy
From the Jeffery Deaver novel The Bone Collector. Also played by Angelina Jolie in the film.
Patrol officer Amelia Sachs was my first full-blown police woman crush. I fell in love with her first when she was words on a page and then again when Angelina Jolie gave her a face for the screen. This is where I should probably write something about Sachs’ dedication to hunting down the Bone Collector but honestly all I can think about right now is how hot Angelina Jolie looks in uniform.
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6. PI Kinsey Millhone
From Sue Grafton’s Alphabet mystery series.
Of the female gumshoes that became popular in the 80s, Kinsey Millhone is by far one of the toughest. Kinsey went from pot-smoking delinquent to police force drop-out to private investigator who solves crimes and always seems to be on the run from the mob.
Kinsey’s a two time divorcee who wears jeans and turtlenecks exclusively, cuts her own hair with toe-nail scissors and is a little in love with her 81 year-old landlord, Henry. What’s not to like.
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5. Kalinda Sharma
Played by Archie Panjabi in the TV series The Good Wife.
Kalinda doesn’t carry a weapon or a badge, nor does she necessarily always work for ‘the good guys.’ However, every now and then her top notch investigative skills keep innocent people from going to jail which is admirable if you forget about the criminals she helps let off the hook.
Things Kalinda enjoys include wearing leather, kissing girls, kicking ass, taking names. What I’m saying is that she’s my ‘type’.
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4. Lieutenant Eve Dallas
From author J.D. Robb’s In Death series.
Dallas is a supreme badass homicide detective who cleans up the streets of New York City in the future, the year 2060. She’s a fighter who grew up on the mean streets and if you touch her candy stash or fuck with her friends she will cut you.
The great thing about Dallas is that her creator, J.D. Robb, churns out approx. 500 books per year and so you never have to wait too long for her to come back into your life.
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3. Lisbeth Salander
Played by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish Millennium film series.
If I could be a panther I’d want to be Lisbeth Salander, all dark and sleek and deadly. I didn’t know it was possible for me to feel intimidated by a fictional character until I saw Noomi Rapace’s portrayal of Lisbeth in the Swedish Millennium movies. I was in awe.
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2. Detective Kate Beckett
Played by Stana Katic in the TV series Castle.
Det. Kate Beckett solves crimes in New York City with the help of Richard Castle, a famous fictional crime novelist who is inspired by Beckett’s many talents, which include (but are not limited to) the ability to chase down bad guys and evade vicious tigers while wearing highly impractical footwear. Beckett is not only all about The Job, she’s also on a personal quest to solve her mother’s murder and it comes at the price of her personal life.
I’ve got it bad for Beckett. I enthusiastically ship her budding heteromance with Castle nonetheless because if we can’t be together, I want her to find someone who can make her happy. That’s how serious it is.
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1. Detective Olivia Benson
Played by Mariska Hargitay in the TV series Law & Order: SVU.
Every person I consulted with during the compilation of this Top 10 list asked, “Benson is gonna be #1, right?” as if there was ever a question. There is no question, not ever. Benson is #1 in my heart, in your hearts and in fictional law enforcement. Remember that time Benson was nearly raped in prison by a corrections officer and then she fought him off and asked “who’s the bitch now?” Yeah. Everyone else can take a seat.
(Although an honorable mention goes to Lt. Van Buren, who kicked ass in more episodes of Law & Order than a person can watch in one lifetime.)
So readers, who is your favorite fictional lady crime-fighter? Who did I miss? Maybe you should think on it while watching this video.
Kathy Griffin’s Lesbian Law & Order SVU Episode: As Good As it Gets?
LAW & ORDER SVU RECAP:
(by riese)
I’ve watched approximately 5 bajillion/500 episodes of Law & Order. At any given time of day, I’m hoping Law & Order is on. As I age and consume more & more episodes, I worry about the eventual future when it’ll be unlikely an episode of Law & Order I haven’t already seen is on at any given time. 75% of my average weekly television intake is Law & Order. Though I usually catch the show in syndication, I anticipated this brand-new episode — in which Kathy Griffin plays a lesbian activist — with GLEEish fervor, though I’d already decided it’d probably be offensive.
See, tonight, Law & Order SVU dared to cover its designated topic area — “sexually based offenders,” the detectives who investigate these especially heinous crimes, and the district attorneys who prosecute these offenders — using LGBT characters. If you’ve never seen the show ’til tonight, it may have seemed offensive. But let’s remember this is a crime drama about offenders. If you watch enough L&O:SVU, you’ll find the program is a relatively equal opportunity offender. There’s a lot of Offense going on here, is what I’m telling you. Offenses, offenders, offensive… Tonight, in my opinion, was fair. At times, it was even heavy-handed in its fairness. I think they tried?
Twitter, however, sayeth that the episode sucked. Everyone but me hated it! Admittedly, I found Kathy’s character relentlessly annoying and wanted Ice-T to give her ten Xanax, draw her a bath and sign her up for the Bette Porter School of Schooling. However, Kathy’s bizarre performance, IMHO, was further evidence that the character of “Babs” was meant to be a hyperbolic parody rather than a true-to-life representation.
Autostraddle’s Tech Editor Taylor
Lesbian Political Blogger Pam Spaulding
Sarah Warn Dot Com
I understand why it seems that way, but I think that might just be the nature of the beast. See, when we think about our community’s most damaging stereotypes, we think about crime (whether we articulate it that way or not). Our community’s worst representatives are our criminals, and until homophobia ends or equality wins, we’re going to cringe when the media uses LGBT characters in criminal contexts.
See; crime is legally sanctioned Wrong. Unlike plots regarding love, friendship, drinking copious amounts of alcohol in bikinis, religion, or illness, crime plots require a unanimously guilty person. There’s no grey area of moral ambiguity for a crime drama’s Baddest Character — in every episode there’ll be one or more characters (whether they’re the actual criminals or not) who have to be assholes, hyperbolic extremists, or otherwise embroiled in Special Disturbing Situations. You can’t say that for How I Met Your Mother or Queer as Folk. With so much negativity already established, someone’s gonna get scathed a bit, and sometimes it’s gonna be gay people, because we exist.
Anyhow, let’s break it down:
Evidence of Trying: (Gay psychiatrist) Dr. George Huang (B.D. Wong) & Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay)’s chat about “aggressives” and discussions about same-sex domestic violence were pretty carefully done. In fact, this dialogue was so fair and well-crafted it verged on Homo-Friendly Afterschool Special territory, but luckily I love Afterschool Specials & homos! However, they failed to note that the AG/Aggressive subculture is a QPOC community and specifically is used by Black queer people. In the show, having a white person as the “AG” was appropriative.
Benson: Are “Aggressives” known to be violent?
Dr. Huang: Not at all. Like everyone else, it all boils down to the individual. Which is why gays and lesbians aren’t immune to domestic violence, substance abuse, rape — just more proof that we’re all equal.
The Cool: They filmed in West Village lesbian bar Rubyfruit and called it “Kitty Corner,” which is a throwback to former lesbian hotspot Meow Mix, a bar I tried to go to in the summer of 2004 during Pride only to find it’d gone out of business. So then I had to go home and be straight in my room.
The Hot: All the jokes about Olivia’s sexuality were delightful! (The first article I ever published on the internet, at a crap entertainment news website called “ElitesTV,” was a gushy/lame tribute to Mariska Hargitay [I have no idea what happened with the natch/snatch situation there, thanks editors], I am totally biased/in love.)
Also I enjoyed Kathy Griffin giving Cabot the sexy-eyed once-over and Benson pretending to be a lesbian to get the guy to confess. (Sidenote: it’s always creeped me out when Stabler pretends to be a child molester or rapist to get a guy to confess).
The Weird: Was LesBeStrong aiming to parody the Lesbian Avengers? If so, epic fail, Avengers had more fun and were far more complex. However:
The Stupid: Honestly, I’m glad they cut the kiss, though the actual edit was laughably terrible (see video). I don’t think the story warranted a full-on kiss and I don’t need to see a straight girl pushing away a pursed-lipped eyes-closed lesbian, thanks! And Olivia was totally cool afterward and it later turned out to be Babs’s personal problems motivating her, rather than her savagely uncontrollable lesbian lust & hunger.
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However Twitter disagrees, and Lynne makes a good point:
The Bonus: Hay! We weren’t the criminals! It turned out that Kathy Griffin Lesbian Warrior was wrong about Olivia Benson’s sexual orientation, but she was right that the perpetrator was targeting lesbians. You guys, L&O gave us a crazy lesbian activist, but it also validated her seeming “paranoia.”
Final Word: I can’t even talk about the bisexual part at the end aside from saying I think it was admirable that Benson spoke with enlightenment regarding Babs’ potential bisexuality instead of it being a like, “of course you’re going back to men, patriarchy rocks” situation.
You guys, and don’t hate me for saying this, but Law & Order: Special Victims Unit sometimes does some really crazy-ass shit in the last seven minutes. See; that’s the twist.
My token straight male friend @davelozo got the message, obviously.
HOUSEWIVES:
This however IS offensive! The headline is “Dana Delaney may exit Desperate Housewives: So far this season on “Desperate Housewives,” Dana Delany has been a stalker, a psycho and now a lesbian.” Read the article; it’s actually about her getting a job on another show. (@reuters)
TEGAN & SARA:
A Take Away sat down with Tegan & Sara for an acoustic jam session featuring Nineteen, Alligator and Feel It In My Bones. Obvs they were adorable.
LINDSAY LOHAN:
Sit down for this one kids. La Lohan has graduated from Twitter and is now writing a full-fledged memoir. “I write a lot, and it’s very therapeutic for me because then I can see what’s happening on paper. I’ve started writing a book. It’s going to take a while, all my life experiences. I started writing it a year ago. There’s a lot to put down, you know?” Really, Papi. (@eonline)
HAVILAND:
Autostraddle BFF Haviland Stillwell is trying to raise some funds for her debut album. Check out the video:
JOHNNY WEIR:
Johnny Weir appeared on The Joy Behar Show and addressed the comments that he is “too gay” for figure skating and those remarks by Canadian commentators that he “needed a gender test.” If you followed Weir in the Olympics this clip is a must watch, if only for Johnny saying “too gay? It’s figure skating — hello!” (@cnn)
In other Weir news, Johnny Weir is strutting around New York City this week and looking fierce. (@dlisted)
LAMBERT:
Adam Lambert has confirmed that he’ll be playing at Mardi Gras in Sydney this Saturday! (@samesame)
LADY GAGA: Gaga is on the cover of the new issue of Cosmopolitan and fills out the Cosmo Quiz. (@ontd) And! Alejandro is officially the song of the summer and will be the 3rd single!
JESSICA SIMPSON: After initially telling Oprah she wasn’t angry, Jessica Simpson backtracked and admitted she was hella pissed about John Mayer’s douchebaggery and said she “doesn’t accept his apology” for describing her as “sexual napalm” to Rolling Stone. She also touched on the media’s fascination with her weight, saying the fact that she was famous last year for gaining 10 pounds was “ridiculous.” And those infamous “Mom Jeans” that sparked name-calling across the Internet? Simpson said they were a size 4. (@abcnews)