GLAAD Report Confirms Cancellations Are Killing The Vibe For LGBTQ+ TV Characters

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but a lot of LGBTQ+ inclusive programming has been cancelled lately, much of it after only a single season in the sun. Cancel-happy streaming networks have gotten into the habit of axing the majority of their series after one or two seasons, leaving many of our most beloved LGBTQ+ stories adrift on a vast ocean of despair, sinking ever-closer to the earth’s core while fan-funded billboards and airplane banners fly desperately overhead. GLAAD’s 2022-2023 “Where We Are On TV” Report, released today and covering series that premiered or will premier a season between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023, dedicates a solid chunk of its PDF to highlighting this alarming trend.

GLAAD found that within this period, there have already been 54 LGBTQ-inclusive series cancellations, which alone will eliminate 140 LGBTQ+ characters from their tally, or 24% of all characters GLAAD counted. They also noted the elimination of 35 LGBTQ characters who we’ll never see again ’cause their show was an anthology or miniseries.

Also, it appears final edits of this report went through before Disney+ cancelled Willow and before it was leaked that Prime Video is possibly planning to provide us with a meager four-episode final season for A League of Their Own (a decision we’re still praying isn’t final). If we add ALOTO to their tally, that’s 11 more regular/recurring characters on the chopping block. If The L Word Generation Q doesn’t get a fourth season pick-up, we’ll lose an additional 15. Although Freevee’s offerings weren’t counted in GLAAD’s tallys, I just want to add that if we loose High School, we’ll be losing another big queer TV show. All of those losses will be of LGBTQ+ women and trans characters specifically. “Streaming services debuting shows with large ensemble LGBTQ casts and then quickly canceling those shows is a consistent issue across all platforms,” GLAAD points out, noting that there were 11 LGBTQ+ characters on Peacock’s cancelled Queer As Folk reboot alone.

The gender breakdown of characters on canceled series is similar to the gender breakdown of characters overall, but those numbers would obviously shift significantly if any of the aforementioned cancellations occur. Still, it was interesting for me, a person who does not pay tons of attention to gay men on TV, that so many of their shows have also been hit with cancellations.

While several broadcast shows are also counted amongst the cancellations, these are mostly shows that had reached their natural death after relatively long lives amid this wretched earth, for example Riverdale, A Million Little Things and New Amsterdam. Monarch is one of the few single-season network cancellations named in the report, but the thing about Monarch is that it was very bad.

GLAAD highlights streaming and premium cable’s cancellations as being related to those formats’ shifts towards shorter seasons and binge-viewing, leading to more and more series getting canceled after one or two seasons. “Many of the series getting cut are LGBTQ inclusive programs,” GLAAD writes in their report, “leaving a large demographic of viewers constantly searching for new programs only for them to ultimately be canceled before a satisfying conclusion.” In August 2020 — even before the past two years of rampant cancellation sprees — The Ringer wrote that the average length of streaming TV series was shrinking to lasting between three or four seasons, “a development that’s changing television as a whole.”

As any passionate binge-viewer of concluded programs can attest, a series that only managed one or two seasons often holds little appeal in the archives as well, especially when those seasons only consisted of 6-8 episodes to begin with. You could binge the entirety of Hulu’s Reboot in less time than it takes to watch Avatar: Way of Water. Last week, Variety reported that “frequent TV show cancellations are starting to change how U.S. viewers decide what to watch,” according to an internal survey that found a quarter of U.S adults wait for the streaming originals’ finale before starting, “citing fears over the show’s potential cancellation with an unresolved ending (27%) or because they do not want to wait for the next season after a cliffhanger (24%).” 46% of Americans sometimes or always wait for a series finale before they even begin to binge it.

HBO Max has also debuted an alarming practice of eliminating many cancelled shows from its platform altogether, making LGBTQ+-inclusive programming like Genera+tion, Love Life, Westworld and 12 Dates of Christmas actually impossible to find. (Westworld, at least, is being offloaded to a third-party free ad-supported streaming service, TBD.)

GLAAD recommends to networks that the best way to offset the loss of these stories is to “prioritize green-lighting new series with LGBTQ characters, as well as providing existing series a full marketing budget and plan comparable to other titles of their same genres.” I would add to that that they also market to LGBTQ+ audiences — especially directly to their niche! I’m so tired of seeing shows aimed at LGBTQ+ women or trans people run ads with gay male websites or mainstream publications while eschewing this specific website altogether, and then throwing up their hands when the show doesn’t do the numbers they’d hoped for. Even with so many cancellations, the field is crowded, and one review often gets missed by the average Autostraddle reader — whereas a thorough ad campaign would not.

Overall, GLAAD found some promising trends: like that over half of all characters counted are people of color and that there are more asexual characters than ever. But LGBTQ+ characters were also down overall by 6% from last year’s report.

You can read GLAAD’s entire Where We Are On TV Report here.

Lesbian and Non-Binary TV Characters Are All The Rage, Relatively

After years of roaming the earth listlessly in search of a televised field in which to triumph, lesbians have achieved a remarkable pinnacle in the field of media representation: for the first time in GLAAD’s storied history of reporting on this topic in their annual Where We Are on TV Report, lesbians represent the majority of LGBTQ characters on broadcast television, outnumbering the previous consistent winner of “Gay Men.” For the first time since the 06-07 season, lesbians also represent the majority of characters on cable. However, as in ’06-07, GLAAD attributes this to the prevalence of lesbian characters on a show from ye olde The L Word franchise.

Just a Few Shows Are Doing All The Work: The L Word‘s impact isn’t unusual. handful of shows comprising the majority of any given year’s gains or losses is a pretty typical feature of a Where We Are on TV Report, and there’d be value in looking at the overall percentage of shows with LGBTQ characters, period. The 2010 report noted massive losses for queer female representation, but anybody who hadn’t been watching The L Word wouldn’t have noticed a seismic shift. In the cable analysis section, GLAAD notes that the majority of Freeform’s LGBTQ characters appear on Good Trouble and Single Drunk Female and that FX’s are concentrated on Better Things and What We Do in the Shadows. Furthermore….

Trans Representation Getting Better: There is an increase in the number of trans characters, as well as a “welcome increase in trans characters who appear in a comedy series.” After decades of being used as the butt of the joke, it’s encouraging to see more trans characters making jokes, and sometimes even being lead characters, as in Euphoria, Saved by the Bell and Sort Of.

In recent years, growth in trans representation was carried by Transparent and/or Pose, usually alone, and it’s actually incredibly promising that despite Pose‘s cancellation, the number of transgender characters on cable has only decreased slightly. And that’s actually only if you look at the numbers in a very specific way, which brings us to….

More Non-Binary Characters Than Ever: GLAAD reports 42 transgender characters, including eight non-binary characters, on television overall, but they then note the existence of 17 “additional characters who are non-binary and not transgender.” Detailed later in the report, they explain “If the character is non-binary, but the word transgender is never mentioned, the character explicitly says they are not transgender, or creators confirm the character is not transgender – the character will be counted as non-binary but not counted as transgender.” According to GLAAD, characters falling under this category of “non-binary but not transgender” include characters on Grey’s Anatomy, Feel Good, And Just Like That and The Sex Lives of College Girls. 

Hands-down the most difficult part of analyzing LGBTQ+ data of any kind is deciding how to define any of the terms in that acronym — terms that are always evolving and mean different things to different people. Based on GLAAD’s own definition of transgender as “a person’s gender not matching what they were assigned at birth,” it does seem that if we are counting “women who date women” as lesbians regardless of them explicitly saying they are lesbians, we should count “people who don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth” as transgender regardless of if they say the word? Relying on characters with notoriously limited screen time and cis writers/creators to label their characters feels… tricky.

But again, this isn’t easy stuff to sort through!! In the Autostraddle community lexicon, we do include non-binary people in the definition of “trans,” so I will be conflating GLAAD’s numbers when I say things like this: there were 25 non-binary characters this year and that’s an impressive leap! As someone who has been maintaining an orderly and updated database of TV characters who are LGTBQ women and/or trans since 2017, this tracks — it’s been a very noticeable rise. Streaming networks seem to be performing best in this regard with14 trans women, 17 non-binary characters and six trans men.

Trans Characters Played by Trans Actors: Of the 42 characters it counted, GLAAD noted 41 were played by trans actors. (This is another tricky thing to count, especially when it comes to young actors!)

Other notable tidbits:

• GLAAD “challenged” platforms to have at least 50% of its LGBTQ+ characters be characters of color, and network television and cable continue to meet that goal, but overall racial diversity of LGBTQ characters on broadcast and streaming increased, while cable saw a decrease.
• Only TWO (2) ASEXUAL CHARACTERS emerged from the ether this year, and one was on the now-cancelled program genera+ion.  GLAAD has promised a second asexual character on a streaming series whose details “are under embargo at time of publication.” That’s exciting!
• Bisexual+ characters comprise 29% of all LGBTQ characters on broadcast, cable and streaming, an increase of one percent from last year. Bisexual men remain elusive, with 50 bi+ men out there. There are also nine bi+ non-binary characters, although I’m not sure what that means.

In conclusion, it’s a great thing that our exact demographic continues to see increases in representation! We do hope that as viewing options multiply, that more networks see the value in investing their marketing dollars in various ecosystems long taken for granted, such as websites that enable them to reach the exact audience they require to support the LGBTQ-inclusive content they’re creating. It’s one thing to create the shows, but one must also invest in their success, and it’s sad to see so many of the best shows for queer representation, like genera+ion and Gentefied, get cancelled before their advertising departments have exhausted even their most obvious option. Just saying!

GLAAD: You Watched TV Like a Full-Time Job in 2020, Even With Fewer LGBTQ+ Characters

GLAAD released my all-time favorite annual collection of stats today: the Where We Are on TV report for 2020. GLAAD has been putting this thing together since 2005. It started with counting the number of LGBT characters on TV and has evolved into a deeply researched and detailed analysis of LGBTQ+ characters and the quality of their screen time, breaking the numbers down by things like gender, race, disability, age, and all-ages and Spanish-language programming. GLAAD then uses the report — and its past reports to highlight trends — as part of their advocacy and education initiatives throughout the year. Numbers matter. For example, activism around the Bury Your Gays became a lot more effective when fans were able to point the massive list Riese assembled of all the dead queer women on TV over the years. I used to be an accountant! I love numbers!

ANYWAY.

This year’s Where We Are on TV report is really interesting because, first of all, GLAAD quotes Nielsen and notes that, with the pandemic raging, Americans were at home watching TV enough for it to basically be a full-time job in 2020 (37 hours per week, on average). And second of all, there was a downtrend in several areas that had seen pretty consistent progress over the last many years because so much TV and film production was on hold in 2020. This is especially true because there are still so few LGBTQ+ characters overall that missing even a few shows makes a significant impact, as is the case in 2020 where we lost shows with multiple characters like The L Word: Generation Q (which didn’t film due to the pandemic), How to Get Away With Murder (which ended its run in 2020), and cancelled faves like GLOW. You’ll also note that’s a lot of POC characters.

One of the most interesting things about this year’s report was the fact that “one in every five LGBTQ characters appears on a series that is tied to one of just four creatives” — Greg Berlanti, Lena Waithe, Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes. Meaning that 5% of shows account for 17% of total LGBTQ+ characters.

The total series regulars on broadcast TV were down down to 9.1% from last year’s 10.2%. Cable dropped to 118 characters total, down from last year’s 215. And streaming services — Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, etc. — dropped to 141 characters, down from last year’s 153. On a more positive note, there was a slight increase in characters with disabilities; there are 38 regular and recurring trans characters, up from 26 last year; racial diversity increased on broadcast and cable shows; and we’re getting a new asexual character in 2021 (whose identity is under embargo).

I was also really pleased to see GLAAD talk about the uprising for Black lives that has been shaping our cultural conversation since last summer, and name the concrete steps some networks have taken to ensure they are addressing systemic racism in their programming. “New calls were made for change in the entertainment industry which would prioritize hiring, promoting, and investing in Black creators and stories on all levels,” GLAAD writes. “Since June, several networks and studios have either launched or expanded their staff and efforts in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity space. Several companies made donations to the Black Lives Matter movement, and CBS signed a multiyear agreement with the NAACP which will include a dedicated team of executives working with the group to acquire, develop, and produce new programming across ViacomCBS properties.”

It is so necessary for us to begin seeing those changes immediately — in the next season — on TV. (Check out Color of Change’s recent Normalizing Injustice report for more data on the impact of negative representation for POC characters.)

Netflix leads the way with LGBTQ+ characters on streaming platforms, and the CW on cable. (Let’s go, Batwoman!)

You can check out GLAAD’s full 2020 Where We Are on TV Report right here!

LGBTQ TV Characters Are at an All Time High, According to GLAAD’s “Where We Are on TV” Report

The energy in the room was cautious excitement.

GLAAD was about to announce the 2019-2020 “Where We Are on TV” numbers and they were better than ever. For the first time, over 10% of series regulars on broadcast shows are LGBTQ. Over half of the LGBTQ characters on broadcast shows are people of color. There are twelve more transgender characters across platforms than last year.

But this was a room filled with people who understand the stakes. “Our community finds itself in 2019 facing unprecedented attacks on our progress,” GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis began. “The role of television in changing hearts and minds has never been more important.”

Ellis was quick to remind us that while the 10% landmark is worthy of celebration, 20% of Americans ages 18-34 are LGBTQ. She announced that GLAAD is now calling for the industry to reach this 20% goal by 2025. “That’s six years so we have time,” she added, underlining how practical and reasonable they’re truly being.

As a trans lesbian who was sitting next to an asexual person, both of us lamenting how rarely we see ourselves on screen, I appreciated the complex framing. It’s not that there isn’t cause for celebration, but when the stakes not only include gaining political acceptance, but personal acceptance, better only means so much. As Ellis said, “Television must evolve.”

This mix of optimism and awareness continued on the panel moderated by Dino-Ray Ramos featuring Ellis, Gloria Calderón Kellett (showrunner One Day at a Time), Jacob Fenton (UTA), Nicole Maines (Supergirl), Brian Michael Smith (The L Word: Generation Q), and Sabrina Jalees (Carol’s Second Act).

Ramos began by bringing up the 20% goal and asking if the panelists currently saw themselves on TV. Jalees quipped, “I’m not going to be happy until 100% are specifically Pakistani-Swiss lesbians. What’s it gonna take?”

Calderón Kellett spoke about the importance of behind the scenes representation, specifically as a straight showrunner: “I think it’s really about empowering queer voices. I know that the storylines on our show are made excellent because we have a largely queer staff. And I think that is lifting up those voices and making sure they’re learning the process of showrunning… And the hope is they’ll become showrunners themselves. Because to answer your question I had to create a show to see myself on screen.”

“It’s also that shift of understanding the real value of queer voices versus checking off a box,” Jalees added. “I’ve been in rooms where I felt like I’m here because I’m the diversity hire and I’ve also been in rooms where I feel like I’m here because I’ve got a story.”

And on the subject of token queers, Maines discussed a frustration many of us share, when shows only have one LGBTQ character. “We tend to flock!” she exclaimed. “I know when I was in college I had a whole suite full of gay people. I wouldn’t see a straight person for days.”

This is the first year where LGBTQ women characters outnumber LGBTQ men, a welcome change of pace. As Jalees noted: “We all know within the queer community that lesbians get the one night at the gay bar. We get to rent it out for the night and then we’re out of there!”

“Stack the chairs before you leave!” Maines added.

But Maines also pointed out that this gender breakdown isn’t so simplistic when discussing trans stories. “There’s an overwhelming majority of trans women to the point where there aren’t nearly as many stories of trans men being told,” she said. “I don’t think men should outnumber women. I don’t think women should outnumber men. I think it’s important that all queer people’s stories are being equally represented.”

There is one queer woman show that is going to have not one, but two trans male characters.

“I mean, it’s The L Word so it’s gonna be a lot of joy, a lot of sex, a lot of bodies, a lot of discussion of issues. There’s gonna be lesbians! It’s gonna be great,” Smith said, the crowd growing rowdy, and Maines piping in: “Stop there. I want that.” (Sorry Supergirl fans, Maines did also say at one point she is not gay.)

Smith went on to say that he was a fan of the original series until Max’s storyline. But he was much more positive about Generation Q‘s trans representation.

“Instead of trying to shoehorn everything in the transmasculine experience that there could possibly be into one character it was very clear they recognized there’s diversity in the transmasculine experience,” he explained.

Smith also discussed being the first black trans man to be a series regular with his upcoming role on 9-1-1: Lone Star. And Maines discussed being the first trans person to play a superhero on TV. Turns out transphobic Twitter comments aren’t Maines’ only challenge.

“It’s an uncomfortable suit. I’m not used to having good posture. The vest pulls everything back. I’m like, this is awful!” she confessed. “Can I be the first slouching superhero? That I think is the representation we need to see.”

A reoccurring theme among all the panelists was how important representation was to them growing up and how much they wished there was more. “To picture myself seeing that kind of representation it would’ve changed my narrative of my identity for the better,” Jalees shared. “It feels really good that there are young people watching us, watching our stories, and feeling better about who they are. This myth that we’re supposed to be some version of normal can go away and we can all just be ourselves.”

I am very excited to say that in the upcoming season there are going to be three trans lesbians on TV. But the number of asexual characters has gone from two to one and that one show is ending. As Smith said, “It’s not inevitable. You have to really work to keep the truth and authenticity out there.”

We’re getting to a place where we can expect and demand nuance, and we need to keep pushing to ensure all our stories are told. Every identity. Every intersection of identities.

There is plenty to celebrate. And there is plenty of work to be done.

LGBTQ Characters Are Thriving on TV While the World Burns, GLAAD Report Finds

Last year, I built an internal database of every lesbian, bisexual and queer female character to appear on English-language television, which I’ll continue maintaining indefinitely. However, “maintaining the database” and, respectively, keeping our Fall TV Preview current, has turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated. Sometimes it feels like the opposite of 2016, when updating the list of Dead Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters eventually became part of my daily routine. We’ve amassed some bodies this year, sure, but we’ve gained a lot of new characters too. After an unprecedented summer for queer characters of color, the fall season has bestowed upon us surprise new lesbian and bi characters on Manifest, The Man in the High Castle, God Friended Me, Law and Order SVU, American Vandal, The First, The Deuce, Shameless, Atypical, The Purge, The Haunting of Hill House and Wanderlust. Those are just the shows that we weren’t aware would feature queer women — there are over a dozen more we knew about ahead of time.

Which is just to say that I wasn’t surprised that for the first time in all the years we’ve been reporting on the GLAAD Where We Are On TV Report, the news is mostly positive. “Where We Are on TV” accounts for and forecasts the presence of LGBTQ characters for the 2018-2019 TV Season (June 1, 2018 – May 31, 2019). This is the 23rd year GLAAD has done this quantifiable tracking.

Here are the major things GLAAD found about representation on broadcast television:

• Record high percentage of LGBTQ series regulars (8.8%, up from last year’s 6.4%)
• We have finally reached gender parity amongst LGBTQ characters: men and women are coming in at 49.6% each (last year: 55% men, 44% women)
• For the first time ever, LGBTQ characters of color (50%) outpace white (49%) characters! Just barely but still!
• Record-high numbers of Black (22%, vs. 18% last year), Latinx (8%, tied with last year) and API series regulars (8% vs. 7% last year)
• Lesbians are up slightly from last year (28% vs 25%), but we have yet to re-ascend to the 33% we had in 2015-2016, many of whom proceeded to die in 2016.
• Bisexual+ characters are up (29%), with 25 bi+ women and eight bi+ men.

The CW takes broadcast honors for the most inclusive network, and came up top in analyses of gender diversity, too, which backs up something we’ve noticed in Autostraddle Teevee HQ: The CW, often guided by Greg Berlanti, is really angling for the queer female audience. As Kayla noted in her piece about Cheryl Blossom’s confirmed bisexuality, “[The CW] should probably at least change their slogan from “dare to defy” to “dare to BE BI.” By our own count, 13 of The CW’s 17 current scripted offerings include LGBTQ women characters. Supergirl now has the first trans superhero on TV and we’re getting closer and closer to the debut of lesbian Batwoman.

GLAAD notes that many of these shows have only one LGBTQ character amongst a group of straight cisgender characters, which should change. As I’m sure many of you know and have experienced firsthand, being the only queer person in an entire town of straight cisgender people can often be a living breathing nightmare that nobody should have to endure in real life and perhaps not so frequently on our television screens either.

Findings from Cable:

• Lesbians (53 characters, 26% of the total) are up in number but down in percentage and bisexual women are down three percentage points (19% characters, representing 40 characters). The number of bi+ men on cable has increased for the first time in three years.
• The number of LGBTQ regulars on scripted primetime cable is up to 120, from 103 in the previous year. Recurring characters are up to 88 from 70, for a total of 208 characters.
• Gay men are still the majority of LGBTQ regular and recurring characters, at 43%.
• 3.9% of these characters are transgender: seven trans women, one non-binary person.

GLAAD notes that FX, with its hearty roster of Ryan Murphy programming, has overtaken Freeform as the most inclusive cable network. However, it’s worth noting that FX’s inclusive programming, while often featuring queer women, seems to always feature queer men; and Freeform was essentially the reverse — often featuring queer men, always featuring queer women.

Pose alone is responsible for more than half the trans representation on all of cable. GLAAD writes, “There has never been a scripted show with several ongoing trans characters who interact as chosen family in the same ways that lesbians and gay men were able to see and relate to on The L Word and Queer as Folk respectively.”

The fine print: 31 characters included in this year’s cable report won’t be returning for next year, and 27% of all LGBTQ representation on cable is on eight series that have six or more queer characters each. If any of those series were cancelled, there’d be a notable decrease in inclusion across cable generally — but this has also always been the case with these reports. See, for example, the few years lesbian numbers spiked but almost all of those characters were on The L Word.

Findings from Streaming:

• Streaming networks boast 112 regular & recurring LGBTQ characters, 42 more than last year
• 48% are people of color, up from last year’s 23%.
• Streaming is the only place where Latinx characters are significantly represented, at 24% (Cable has 9%, Broadcast has 12%, and Latinx people are 17% of the U.S. population.) Fifteen of those 27 characters are from foreign Netflix series. (I’m assuming this is Elite, House of Flowers & Cable Girls.)
• Gay men are at 35%, Lesbians at  33%, Bisexual women at 17%, and Bisexual men at 8%
• Streaming has the highest number and percentage of trans characters.

Netflix was awarded ‘most inclusive network’ honors, but they also have the largest number of shows, period, so it’s not really a fair fight. They also found 14 of Hulu’s 16 LGBT characters are women — Harlots and The Handmaid’s Tale both got even queerer this year, Desiree Akhavan’s The Bisexual premieres next month, and Marvel’s Runaways is returning in December. Hulu’s queer women abundance might be related to the fact that 62% of Hulu’s subscribers are women.

The “highest number and percentage of trans characters” is a little tricky too, as they include next year’s 2-hour musical finale of Transparent (I’m serious, that’s the plan) and Orange is the New Black, which’s also airing its final season next year. I’m not sure if Sense8‘s finale movie was part of that count, either, but that’s over too.

Cross-platform findings:

• Significant increases in LGBTQ characters of color
• Trans characters are up with 26 across all platforms — 17 trans women, five trans men and four non-binary characters.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement, which is a topic we touch on just about every day. We need more trans characters across all shows, and a lot more trans men, and more QPOC characters and more characters with disabilities and women and men should be even and wow there’s just a lot still to be done!

Last year, armed with our new database, I did an enormous piece on the year in queer TV, and I’ll be doing that again this year, too, so I don’t want to get too much into what we’ve observed on the topics GLAAD’s report covers or our theories about why it’s happening aside from the obvious — showrunners are listening to GLAAD, they’re listening to fans, and they’re increasingly aware of how specifically passionate queer women are about our stories. But I do wonder if maybe just maybe in general, the people of this devolving country are more open than ever to stories about women generally, and stories about women who date women instead of men specifically. Just saying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) The statistics as a whole are promising.

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

+ There are 142 LGBTQ characters on primetime cable TV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where The (Queer) Girls Are Gonna Be On Your TV This Year

GLAAD’s annual “Where We Are on TV” and “Network Responsibility Index” reports intend to serve as a barometer for progress in LGBTQ representation on American television, and this year’s reports, as usual, reflect incremental progress in some areas, regression in other areas, and an overall lack of queer women on our teevee screen. The Network Responsibility Index gives ratings to 15 major networks based on the 2013-2014 season, and Where We Are On TV analyzes diversity — gender, sexual orientation, race and ability status — across all scripted television shows, and looks at LGBTQ characters planned for the 2014-2015 season.

I’ve been reading and analyzing these reports for five years now — there’s usually quite a bit to talk about because the reports are so very quantitative and representation is so very qualitative. When last year’s report came out, we talked about how a lack of representation onscreen was likely related to a lack of representation behind the scenes, compared the U.S population of various races, sexual orientations and gender identity to their representation on screen and looked at the quality of that year’s LGBT female characters because quantity didn’t tell the whole (sad) story.

In 2012, Kate wrote about the lack of masculine LGBT women on TV in Why Do Queer Women On Television All Look The Same?. In 2011, the first year any network received an “Excellent Rating” — MTV and ABC Family both snagged one — we talked about the lack of queer people of color. In 2009, we did some supplemental math ourselves to note that only 28 LGBT female characters — some only one-episode guest stars — were cited by GLAAD, as opposed to 86 men.

This year, June Thomas at Slate.com argued that these particular GLAAD Reports are “pointless and outdated” and that “GLAAD’s conclusions are essentially meaningless in the current TV landscape,” citing online streaming and YouTube as major change agents, making it so “it’s just as easy, if not easier, for many viewers to watch shows that are no longer on the air.” She also requests her fellow LGBTs “commit to valuing quality over quantity—“counting the queers” is no way to achieve social justice.”

These are fair points — the numbers never tell a complete story. The system is inherently flawed, too. For example, The L Word was singlehandedly responsible for a surge in lesbian representation for five years, making overall numbers seem progressively high when the majority of Americans weren’t actually being exposed to any more queer women on TV than usual. Last year there was more parity with respect to the gender of queer characters than there is this year, but this year feels a whole lot better than last year for queer women and queer women of color.

Mainstays like Santana on Glee and Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy existed last year (and still do), but new shows weren’t exactly chomping at the bit to write lesbian storylines. This year we’re seeing a lot more LGBT women front and center. Broadcast networks will feature 32 regular LGBT characters this season, up from last year’s 26, and 33 recurring LGBT characters. Of those 65 characters, 18 are lesbians and 10 are bisexual females. On cable, 105 regular and recurring scripted characters are LGBT, which includes 26 lesbians and 21 bisexual females.

Do the math: that’s 44 lesbian characters and 31 bisexual females compared to 82 gay men and 12 bisexual men. Wild, right? The striking discrepancy between men and women for the ratio of lesbian/gay characters to bisexual characters could be its own GLAAD report, honestly, and it’s something I’ll talk about a little bit in my recap for tomorrow’s episode of Faking It.

Among 813 series regulars on 115 primetime scripted television series on five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC), 32 are LGBT, or 3.9% of the whole. Of these, only 43% were female and 57% were male, and 74% are white. Latino/a characters and black characters each represent 11% of the remainder and 5% are Asian/Pacific Islander. The forecast is slightly brighter on cable, where 64 regular LGBT characters will appear this season, up from 42 last year. Of these, 56% are cis females, 44% are cis males, and 1% is a transgender male. 66% are white, 11% are Latino/a, 10% are black, 8% are multi-racial and 5% are Asian/Pacific Islander.  Streaming networks, where we’re seeing some of the best representation of all time, were mentioned but not analyzed.

The hidden delight of the Where We Are On TV report is, however, that the networks have given GLAAD a shit-ton of information about upcoming characters and storylines! So for this year’s Report on the Report, we’re gonna give you a qualitative look at where you’ll find lady-loving-ladies on television this year.

Disclaimer — No human can possibly be intimately knowledgable about all these shows, but I’ve spent several days researching them the best I could and getting info from other team members about the shows they watch. It’s likely you know more than we do about some of these shows, so feel free to alert me in the comments about anything inaccurate and we’ll make the change!

READY? I DON’T THINK YOU’RE READY.

Returning Regular Lesbian, Queer & Bisexual Female Characters

We didn’t lose too many LGBTQ female characters between last year and this year to shows ending or getting cancelled. True Blood was even included in the 2014-2015 analysis although it ended this past summer, so no points got docked for losing Pam and (the ghost of) Tara!

The major queer characters from last year are pretty much still around:

• Santana and Brittany on Glee (who might have a wedding proposal next season!)
• Emily and Paige on Pretty Little Liars
• Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy
• Delphine and Cosima on Orphan Black
• Bo and Lauren on Lost Girl
• Stef and Lela on The Fosters
• Gail and Holly on Rookie Blue
• Jack and Imogen on Degrassi: The Next Generation
• Caroline and Kate on Last Tango in Halifax 

The somewhat second-tier w/r/t the size of the role and/or pertinence of their queer identity remain as well: Doc Yewll and Lev on Defiance, Kalinda on The Good Wife, Diana on White Collar, Betty on Masters of Sex, Lena on Ray Donovan, Elaria Sand on Game of Thrones, Jenny on Two and a Half Men (groan), Ariana on The Bridge, Carolyn on Under the Dome and Tara on The Walking Dead. Reportedly, Nyssa on Arrow will have a big storyline this season.

Some newly-out queers and smaller roles round out the bunch: Haddie on Parenthood, Nenna and Rose on Crossbones, Margot on Hannibal, Patsy on Getting On, Lydia on Switched at Birth, Crickett on Heart of Dixie, Joanna and Alex on Witches of East End, and Dominion‘s Arika and Uriel. Lesbian recurring character Gina Mendez on The Following survived a stabbing at the end of Season Two, and there are rumors she’ll be a major character in Season Three… but there are also rumors that she may not return at all.

Then there are the ones whose interest in women hasn’t been mentioned in years but still technically count, like Josslyn on Mistresses, Angela on Bones, Pam on Archer and Patty on The Simpsons.  Oh right, and Connie on the animated series Brickleberry, voiced by Roger Black and described as “a lesbian female ranger who has a large body, immense strength, and a deep voice that is often mistaken for male.”  Her vagina makes growling noises when she’s excited and she’s obsessed with a straight female park ranger. Yay for representation!

Unfortunately, forget lesbian bed death, the real plague haunting queer women on television is plain ‘ol LESBIAN DEATH. Lots of queer female characters died this year. Shana, a queer women of color, was killed off on Pretty Little Liars. Leslie Shay was killed in the season premiere of Chicago Fire. Recurring character Reyna Flores was killed off on Matador last week. And although she appeared throughout the season in hallucinations, Tara died the true death in the True Blood premiere.

The Almighty Johnsons, which apparently featured a bisexual character named Michele, was canceled.

Very Recently Debuted Shows With LGBTQ Female Characters

Faking It has a teenage high school girl who likes girls at the heart of its story. It’s been under fire for falling into the lesbian-sleeps-with-a-man trope after the Season One finale, and it seems like the writers want to keep her options open, but presently it seems that regardless of her identity, her dating-related storylines will be exclusively girl-on-girl. Faking It is the first show since South of Nowhere to have a teenage lesbian as one of two main characters.

Chasing Life, a charming and cheesy little drama that premiered this summer on ABC Family, introduced a subdued but resonant queer storyline for teenagers Brenna and Greer, which included a “label-free” teenage girl choosing a girlfriend (the openly lesbian Greer) over a boyfriend.

Also on ABC Family, Switched at Birth has really been stepping it up with its queer representation. In addition to casting lesbian and bisexual actresses like Sandra Bernhard and Meredith Baxter, the show currently features a deaf Latina teenage lesbian, Natalie, who has a girlfriend, Hillary. There’s also a lesbian book editor named Lydia Kaiser who played a small role in Season Three.

The Strain, on FX, just brought back FRANKIE aka Ruta Gedmintas as computer hacker Dutch Velders. GLAAD says that “FX will have ten lesbian, gay or bisexual characters, including Michael on Partners, Dutch on The Strain, and Abdul and Sammy on Tyrant.” So I guess that means that Dutch is a HOMO.

TNT’s The Last Sail has a lesbian lieutenant of color who told AfterEllen she appreciates that for her character, “being a lesbian and having a female partner at home was dealt with in such an un-sensationalized way.” Season Two starts in 2015.

New or Returning Shows With New LGBTQ Female Characters

Backstrom (FOX) – Nicole Gravely (gay) – 2015
GLAAD says that “The Portland Police Bureau’s Special Crimes Unit on Backstrom will feature both a gay and a bisexual character, Nicole and Gregory,” and that’s good news because Nicole (Genevieve Angelson) is one of two lead characters. She plays second-in-command to the titular self-destructive and “irascible” Everett Backstrom (Rainn Wilson), a detective “tasked with not only keeping the unit together in the face of Backstrom’s behavior but ensuring that his unorthodox investigatory methods hold up in court.”

Last year, when the role was still being played by Mamie Gummer, Vulture described Nicole’s role as “…an openly gay police detective who is saddened over her breakup with her longtime partner.” But in January, AfterEllen reported that the show was being “re-tooled” from the Swedish novel series it was adapted from and that Nicole would no longer be a lesbian, but that she also wouldn’t be heterosexual, because who isn’t dying for ANOTHER “label-free” lady on television AM I RIGHT LADIES? However, GLAAD’s inclusion of Backstrom and description of Nicole as gay could suggest yet another re-tooling has taken place.

Survivor’s Remorse (Starz) – M-Chuck (lesbian) – October 2014
GLAAD lists Survivor’s Remorse’s M-Chuck as one of the “new out women… to be introduced in the upcoming season.” M-Chuck, who is African-American (like most of the show’s cast), is third from the top on the show’s webpage, and she is described as Cam’s “older sister, staunch defender and biggest fan.” The show “follows Cam Calloway, a basketball phenom in his early 20’s who is suddenly thrust into the limelight after signing a multi-million dollar contract with a professional basketball team in America.” M-Chuck is played by Erica Ash, who you might remember as the only straight female actress on Logo’s Big Gay Sketch Show! The sitcom, executive-produced by Lebron James, is only slated for six episodes thus far but is getting positive reviews. The San Francisco Gate remarks that Mary Charles / M-Chuck is “a woman on constant prowl for the ladies and isn’t afraid to show a little PDA with a girlfriend during church.” YESSSSSS.

Gotham (FOX) – Renee Montoya (lesbian) & Barbara Kean (bisexual) – Now Airing
As discussed, Renee Montoya is a Latina Lesbian detective on Gotham, and her bisexual ex Barbara Kean will appear later in the season. So far Renee’s screen time has been minimal.

Faking It (MTV) – Reagan (lesbian) – Now Airing
Faking It will be adding a love interest for Amy this season, and GLAAD reports she is a lesbian of color.

Jane the Virgin (The CW) – Luisa (lesbian) and Rose (bisexual) – October 2014
Jane the Virgin, a show that actually looks really good and funny despite everything the premise would lead you to believe, has two queer female characters: Rose, who is bisexual and in every episode this season, and Luisa, who is a lesbian and the doctor who accidentally gets Jane pregnant.

Scream (MTV) – Audra Jensen (bisexual) – 2015
The Scream films are being adapted for the small screen, and Jamie Travis of Faking It will be directing the pilot. Bex Taylor-Klaus will be playing a lead role as Audra Jensen, the “daughter of a Lutheran pastor” who is “described as an artsy loner who aspires to be a filmmaker.” You may remember Bex Taylor-Klaus from her role as a homeless masculine-of-center kid Bullet on The Killing. 

One Big Happy (NBC) – Lizzy (lesbian) – 2015
We’ve got a lesbian in the lead of this new NBC Comedy. “Gay and a bit type-A” Lizzy (Elisha Cuthbert) and her best friend “straight and more laid back” Luke decide to have a baby together — platonically — and then Luke meets a girl named Prudence and they get married and ta-da a non-traditional family is born! Our dearest Liz Feldman is writing the show, and Ellen DeGeneres is the Executive Producer. Fingers crossed this will be better than The New Normal, although seriously must we always stick babies in our lesbians?

Black Sails (Starz) – ??? – 2015
Black Sails will be introducing two new LGBT characters, but there’s no indication from GLAAD on if these characters will be men or women or neither. The show already has two queer characters, Max and Eleanor. Many fans hope Anne Bonny might turn out to be one of those “new” LGBT characters.

Red Band Society – Sarah Souders and Andrea Souders (lesbian)
Sarah and Andrea will play small roles as the moms of “mean girl” cheerleader Kara.

The Mindy Project – Dr. Jean Fishman (lesbian)
Niecy Nash will be playing a recurring role as “a take-no-prisoners type” who “also happens to be a lesbian” and will be Mindy’s “antagonist” at the office. I really love The Mindy Project so I am very excited about this.

Where Are The Transgender Women?

Unique, who was holding it down for trans women of color on Glee, isn’t returning next year — which is actually fine, because the show did a terrible job with her character and storyline and I was sick of hearing them get praised for including her at all. GLAAD found zero transgender women on the shows it analyzed this year (and just one transgender boy — Cole, who plays a minor role on The Fosters).

After several consecutive years of minimal progress in transgender representation on broadcast networks, GLAAD decided that starting next year, “networks must feature significant transgender content in their original programming in order to receive a grade of “Excellent” in the NRI.”

However, Faking It just introduced an intersex character, which is obviously different from having a transgender character, but is within the trans* umbrella. There is a lot more going on for transgender characters on streaming television, however…

Streaming Content With LGBTQ Female Characters

Orange is The New Black (Netflix)
Orange is the New Black remains an embarrassment of riches. We’ve got Piper Chapman, our bisexual lead, a queer transgender woman of color, Sophia Burset, and then a whole truckload of additional lesbian, bisexual or at-least-kinda-queer ladies like Alex Vause, Suzanne, Poussey, Big Boo, Nicky, Soso and Leanne.

Transparent (Amazon Prime)
This show is SO FUCKING GAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY y’all. We’ve got Maura, a lesbian transgender parent, at the epicenter. Then there’s Maura’s bisexual daughter, Sarah, Sarah’s lesbian activity partner, Tammy, and Tammy’s wife, Barb. Maura’s daughter, Ali, is possibly genderqueer (this hasn’t been articulated yet but seems to be the direction we’re going in), and her best friend, Sid, is bisexual. The show also has 25 transgender cast and crew members, including one prominent trans female character, Davina (Alexandra Billings), as well as three recurring characters, Kaya, Eleanor and Shay.

House of Cards (Netflix)
House of Cards is secretly kinda queer — the main dude is bisexual, but there’s also some girl-on-girl culture happening between two recurring characters, Rachel Posner and Lisa Williams, though it’s unclear how that will play out next year.

Alpha House (Amazon Prime)
I have no idea what this show is but apparently it features two female legislative assistants who are dating!

East Los High (Hulu Plus)
I’m actually really not sure how we didn’t know that this show existed until last week?? There’s a teenage Latina couple! YOU GUYS.

GLAAD’s “Where We Are On TV” Shows Best Place To Be On TV Is Behind The Camera

When compiling our Fall 2013 TV Guide, I was disappointed by the lack of LGBT females we can anticipate blowing up our screenspace this season, especially following an unforgettable summer chock-full of scissoring Sapphics, bisexual bombshells and butch bomb girls. GLAAD‘s recently released Where We Are On TV report, which looks at the diversity of shows announced for the 2013-2014 season, did little to abate this concern. It also raised a lot of questions for me about how representation is measured and the reason why progress has come more quickly for some groups than others.

See, “Where We Are On TV” devotes its in-depth research to LGBT representation, but it also briefly tallies racial and gender diversity, offering multiple avenues from which to analyze representation’s quantification. If gay men and gay women are equally represented on network television, why doesn’t it feel that way? Has scripted television done its job if the percentage of women or people of color matches said group’s share of the U.S. population? If many of the LGB characters on television rarely or never address their sexual orientation, are they still worthy of our celebration? Why has LGB representation improved so much while PoC and female representation has stagnated? Let’s discuss.

TV Representation vs. Population Statistics

Measuring inclusivity and evaluating representation isn’t easy or straightforward, and one popular technique is comparing the percentages of certain groups on TV to U.S population statistics. Let’s look at how some of these comparisons stack up:

+ 43% of series regulars on scripted primetime television are female, but 51% of the country is female.

+ 77% of broadcast series regular characters are white, but 72% of the U.S. population is white.

+ 5% of broadcast series regular characters are Hispanic or Latino, but 16.3% of Americans are of Hispanic or Latino origin.

+ 11% of broadcast series regular characters are black, compared to 12.6% of the population.

+ 1.8% of the national population is bisexual, comprising 51% of those who identify as LGB. However, only 10% of LGBT network characters and 21% of LGBT cable characters are bisexual.

+ .001% of the 796 broadcast series regulars are transgender, but .03% of the national population is transgender.

+ The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 Community Survey found 12% of U.S. citizens report living with an apparent disability, but GLAAD found that even when including all characters who would be covered by the American Disabilities Act, which includes people not accounted for in the Census numbers (like HIV-positive people), only 1% of primetime broadcast series regulars have a disability.

So how do we judge how much representation is “enough” representation? Obviously the numbers for Latino/a Americans are beyond unacceptable, but what about the others? It seems ridiculous to argue that there are plenty of Asian-American and Pacific Islander characters on television, but the percentage represented on television (6%) actually exceeds the percentage of the national population identifying in those groups (5%). Asian Pacific American Media Coalition co-chair Daniel Mayeda told GLAAD that despite those numbers, “we continue to advocate for television series in which we are the main star.” Fox got an “F” from the APAMC this year for its API inclusion efforts because it “failed to provide the data the APAMC has consistently requested and which the other networks have delivered for over a decade.” Fox didn’t even care enough to participate in the APAMC’s television report card. It’s about quality, not quantity.

Nor does it feel as if African-American representation is anywhere near an acceptable level, despite being in the general neighborhood of its relative population, likely because as ColorofChange Executive Director Rashad Robinson told GLAAD, despite those numbers, “the quality of those representations remain a serious cause for concern.” They cite Scandal and Suits‘ “complex, multi-dimensional Black characters” as real progress, but lament that “too often viewers are exposed to portrayals of Black people that are dehumanizing and inaccurate.” Quality. Not quantity.

Similarly, in 2012 Gallup found that 3.4% of the U.S. population identified as LGBT, which isn’t that far off from our visibility on television (although the 3.4% number represents only those who are out — I personally suspect that number will creep gradually towards 10% over the next few decades). For the 2013-2014 TV season, GLAAD found 26 LGBT-identified series regulars on broadcast networks out of 796 total series regulars — 3.3%, down from 4.4% in 2012. Cable networks boast a more impressive 42 LGBT characters out of an unidentified total. But none of us queers here would argue that we’re anywhere near annihilating our symbolic annihilation.

Ultimately, it’s unlikely television producers are considering population ratios when planning TV schedules, which makes the usefulness of that evaluation metric shaky. Besides, if they were working from numbers like that, we’d probably see more programming reflecting the fact that women watch more TV than men and black people watch more TV than other racial groups. If TV was aiming to adequately represent the population it depicts in fictional programming, we’d see far more diverse casts, considering most television shows are set in the most diverse areas of the country, especially cities like New York City (56% nonwhite and 4.5% LGBT as of 2006) and Los Angeles (70.6% nonwhite and 5.6% gay as of 2006). Furthermore, despite the fact that women and nonwhite individuals are more likely to identify as LGBT, regular/recurring LGBT characters on broadcast and cable networks are are 72% and 71% white, respectively, and overwhelmingly male. It seems likely that onscreen representation reflects the demographics of television creators, not of the television audience.

“Writers pose with their award for outstanding writing for a drama series for “Homeland,” backstage at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, September 23, 2012. (Photo : Reuters)”

This is unfortunate, because television is our most powerful medium for destructing the ignorance fostered by our segregated country and affirming and empowering the identities of members of minority groups. The latter cause is being tended to reasonably well — thanks to one billion cable channels, it’s possible for women, queer people and people of color to find people like them on TV if they look hard enough. But when we’re talking about changing American hearts and minds, we have to look at how many characters from those groups are showing up on popular network shows with mainstream audiences, and the size and quality of those roles.

Our vice president credited Will & Grace with softening American attitudes towards LGB people and enabling same-sex marriage legislation, and many of us here credit various inclusive television shows with softening our attitudes towards ourselves as LGB people. On the flipside — when Gallup found that people of color, young people, women and people with lower levels of education and income were more likely to ID as LGBT, they noted that these results “run counter to some media stereotypes that portray the LGBT community as predominantly white, highly educated, and very wealthy.” This “positive” stereotype has actually proven legitimately damaging at times — in the Prop 8 trial, it was noted that many Americans don’t think gay people need marriage equality, hate crime protections or non-discrimination laws because according to Mitch and Cam, we’re all doing just fine! Wheee!

this is not actually at all the way that we live

Media stereotypes remain: 56% of the LGBT characters GLAAD found were men. But a full 50% of the broadcast networks’ 46 regular and recurring LGBT characters are female, marking the first time in GLAAD history that females and males have been represented evenly. Quantitatively, this is a huge deal, but looking at the data qualitatively is a bit more complicated.

LGBT Female Characters on TV: The Quality Report 

FYI ten years ago this graphic would’ve been much smaller and twenty years ago it would’ve had one person in it

Queer women have a storied history of settling for less, or settling for subtext, when it comes to seeing ourselves represented on television. We make do with lesbian couples offering tentative pecks while hetero pairs suck face down the hallway and witness even our most celebrated and well-written queer characters see their relationship storylines sidelined while straight romances sit firmly at center stage (I’m lookin’ at you, Pretty Little Liars). Transgender women are rarely, if ever, portrayed on television, and you can count the positive portrayals of trans* women on television on one hand. (Also, they are rarely portrayed by trans* actors.)

Likewise, many of the women counted in this report aren’t necessarily candidates for Grand Marshall of the Northampton Pride Parade. For example, GLAAD promises that “new show Super Fun Night will feature a character named Marika who seems to have a strong attraction for the series lead; her female roommate.” Yup, a show which weekly begs the question “how many fat chick jokes can be squeezed into 22 minutes” will feature a sporty nerdy single lady who “can’t get a man” (that’s the premise of the show, that these three girls can’t get boyfriends) lusting after her straight best friend! How groundbreaking!

Many other characters who count quantitatively fail qualitatively: in Bones, GLAAD notes that “now that [Angela is] happily married to a man, her bisexuality is no longer addressed on the show.” On Mistresses, the relationship between label-free Josslyn and lesbian Alex was obnoxiously sidelined while hetero pairings took center stage — we’ve spent more time watching Josslyn cheat on Alex with a male colleague than seeing the two ladies get together! And while Unique’s inclusion on Glee is commendable as the only transgender woman on primetime television — and a transgender woman of color, at that — the show has dealt her a rotten hand all around (Catfishing, anyone?) and can’t seem to make it through an episode without using at least one unchecked transphobic slur.

Chicago Fire has been acclaimed for its main queer character Leslie Shay, but as a commenter shared in all-caps on our Fall 2013 Television preview, it recently featured a “crazy ex-girlfriend takes revenge through false rape accusation plotline,” which we all know is “the worst plotline in the history of humanity.”  Nor will I be tuning in to misogynistic crap like Two and a Half Men plan to “feature a new regular LGBT character this season when the long-lost bisexual daughter of the former lead will move into her deceased father’s house.” I can sit through a lot of things in order to reach the lesbian parts, but not that. We were promised a new love interest for Kalinda on The Good Wife, but it was announced shortly after the GLAAD report debuted that this new love interest wouldn’t be showing up after all. Excited about that interracial lesbian couple on Under the Dome? Well, one half of that couple, Alice (played by Samantha Mathis), just died of a heart attack.

There’s some good stuff coming up though, too, like Santana’s new love interest on Glee (although her series debut came with an onslaught of biphoba), Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy (Arizona is now also the only series regular with a disability on ABC) and a promising thing brewing between Detective Gail Peck and Holly on Rookie Blue. Furthermore, Mulan was recently revealed to be bisexual on Once Upon a Time.

infographic via GLAAD

And although cable represents a smaller percentage of female characters compared to male, it’s got most of the good ones, like the lesbian Moms Lena and Stef of The Fosters, two bisexual scientists on Orphan Black, Emily and Paige on Pretty Little Liars, deaf lesbian character Natalie on Switched at Birth, Lost Girl‘s Bo and Lauren and Degrassi’s Fiona and Imogen. It’s also worth mentioning, however, that all the shows I just mentioned are either on ABC Family or imports from Canada or The UK. The best option for LGBT representation remains Orange is the New Black, a Netflix original not included in the GLAAD report.

Racial diversity amongst LGBT characters has been improving gradually, and it’s great to see so many interracial lesbian couples on television — but it would also be nice to see more same-sex female couples where both characters are of color, which happens approximately once in a blue moon (Emily & Maya on Pretty Little Liars, Santana & Dani on Glee, Kima & Sharon on The Wire… who am I missing?).

Alas, gay men still have it better. On network television they’ve got a much-lauded teenage romance and upcoming wedding for Kurt and Blaine on Glee and two huge spotlights for gay dads in Sean Saves the World and the Emmy-favorite Modern Family. Although queer women rock cable w/r/t character quality, queer men far outnumber queer women on cable and cable doesn’t provide the visibility network shows do: The Fosters miraculously pulled in a network high of 2.07 million viewers for its finale, but Modern Family regularly attracts over 12 million viewers a week and is the fourth most popular show on television. Yay for two wealthy white gay men constantly bickering, tricking and passive-aggressively undermining each other every week! (I love the show, but I hate their relationship!) It’s been a long time since we’ve had an entire show to ourselves, but HBO’s Looking, about three gay men in San Francisco, is currently filming for its 2014 debut.

Even though LGB representation isn’t at the levels we want it to be, it remains true that visibility for LGBs, and gay men in particular, has far outpaced that of women, trans* people, people of color and people with disabilities. This is especially remarkable when you consider how few LGB people exist compared to people of color. Regular/recurring LGBT characters on broadcast television has skyrocketed from 1.3% in 2006 to 3.3% in 2013, whereas for many people of color and women, progress has stagnated entirely. Check it out:

I didn’t make a graph about female representation because it has been at 43% for all of the above time periods, which would make a really boring graph. The number of transgender characters per year was too low to show up on the chart (there’s one now, there was one in 2009-2010 and zero in 2006-2007).

When will it get better for everyone?

omg netflix is gonna be airing 567 sexy episodes of “orange is the new black” starting tomorrow! and poussey is gonna come out as gay and then everything is gonna become a unicorn and/or a rainbow!

There are many explanations for this discrepancy in progress, like America is Really Fucking Racist and The Patriarchy, but I suspect a great deal of this can be accounted for by the composition of teams behind-the-scenes: only 26 percent of primetime network TV creators, executive producers, producers, writers, directors, editors and cinematographers are women, only 6.5 percent of TV writers are African-American, and people of color account for a mere 15.6 percent of behind-the-scenes TV employment. Nearly one-third of TV shows have no minority writers on staff and ten percent of TV shows have no women writers on staff. In terms of TV executive producers, women are underrepresented by a factor of more than 2 to 1, people of color at a factor of 5 to 1. The Emmys repeatedly fail to nominate or award people of color in any of its categories.

Hollywood has always been a homosexual haven, so it’s not a huge surprise that many gay characters have managed to evolve past Jodie Dallas while misogynist and racist material goes unchecked every day. Forget about it when it comes to transphobia and transmisogyny — transgender folks have been granted excruciatingly awful television representation throughout all of human history and even shows which aspire to political responsibility (like Glee and The L Word) fuck trans* stuff up. Although there are no numbers on it, I suspect this problem is enabled by a lack of trans* representation behind-the scenes (although Lana Wachowski (who recently produced the totally racist film Cloud Atlas) is working on a 2014 Netflix series called Sense8).

While it’s absolutely true that straight men have brought many gay characters to the screen on shows like Skins and Modern Family, most LGB characters on TV are the work of gay men and/or women (straight and gay). Gay men in particular are well-represented behind-the-scenes of shows that prominently feature gay, lesbian and bisexual characters, like Six Feet Under and True Blood‘s Alan Ball, The Fosters’ Peter Paige, Sex and the City‘s Michael Patrick King and Will & Grace‘s Max Mutchnick. Gay television producer Darren Star created Melrose Place, which featured one of the first gay television kisses ever, as well as gay-inclusive shows Sex and the City, 90210 and GCB. Gay Cuban-American writer Silvio Horta was the head writer, developer and producer for Ugly Betty. Gay showrunner Ryan Murphy is responsible for homo-heavy programs like Nip/Tuck, The New Normal, Glee and American Horror Story. Gay television writer and producer Russell T Davies made the first-ever American show entirely focused on gay men, Queer as Folk, as well as gay-friendly fare like Doctor Who and Casanova.

“Onscreen gay ubiquity has been greatly aided by the growing number of ‘out’ gay people in high places in the industry,” write Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons in the epilogue to Gay L.A. They also note that “lesbians have not yet had the same degree of prominence and success as have gay men in behind-the -camera Hollywood.” But they mention pockets of hope, like former HBO president Caroline Strauss. We’ve got lots more behind-the-screen advocates, though: it was Ellen Degeneres who brought us the groundbreaking Ellen and Ilene Chaiken who created The L Word. Comedian Carol Leifer created Rules of Engagement, which included a lesbian character played by Sarah Rue and Marlene King is responsible for the super-gay Pretty Little Liars.

If it’s not an LGB female writer/creator bringing a queer female to the screen, it’s likely to be Ryan Murphy, Alan Ball, Joss Whedon or a straight female writer/creator, such as Grey’s Anatomy‘s Shonda Rhimes and Orange is the New Black‘s Jenji Kohan. Furthermore, despite female underrepresentation behind-the-scenes of other shows, historically most shows with LGB characters of any gender have had a woman heading or co-heading its writing and/or creation, including South of Nowhere, Degrassi, Lost Girl, Bomb Girls, Lip Service, Roseanne, Weeds, The Good Wife, 30 Rock, The Carrie Diaries, Nashville, Girls, Emily Owens M.D., Smash, The Killing, Friends, Nurse Jackie, Mad Men, Awkward, Veronica’s Closet, Ray Donovan and The Masters of Sex.

Which brings me back to why progress seems quicker in some areas than others: White gay men occupy more “influencing” behind-the-scenes television positions than gay women, and thus gay men are more positively and frequently represented on TV than gay women.

Whereas highly stereotyped depictions of gay people have waned in recent years and numbers of gay people appearing in popular shows has increased, progress has stagnated and often reversed for people of color, despite the fact that research has shown that shows with diverse writing staffs and casts fare better in the ratings. In a 2013 study of writing staff diversity for the 2011-2012 TV Season, the only analyzed shows with significant PoC representation (over 35% of the writing team and/or  4+ PoC writers) on staff were BET shows (The Game, Let’s Stay Together, Reed Between The Lines), The Cleveland Show, Single Ladies, Key & Peele, Alphas, Criminal Minds, Family Guy, Grey’s Anatomy, Raising Hope, Nikita and Austin & Ally. That’s 13 shows out of 191. This is how shows like Outsourced even make it to air.

The instant the taboo around gay characters began crumbling, there were plenty of white gay men well-positioned in Hollywood to start telling their own stories; men like Ryan Murphy, Alan Ball, Scott Rudin, David Geffen and Darren Star. This was not the case for gay women, women or people of color when their various rights were allegedly won. Many are still fighting our way in, and it’s difficult when you consider that most showrunners, producers and writers do their time lower on the Hollywood totem pole for many years before being handed the reins themselves — which means our next lesbian television vanguard is probably already working in the industry. Maybe it’ll be Angela Robinson, Rose Troche, Katie Ford, Cherien Dabis or Ali Adler. Maybe it will be one of the ladies already making great television online, like Words With Girls‘ Brittani Nichols, Little Horribles‘ Amy York-Rubin, Unicorn Plan-It‘s Ashley Reed or Roomies‘ Julie Goldman and Brandy Howard. It might be you! Just please G-d, let it not be Ilene Chaiken.

GLAAD 2012 Network Responsibility Index: Why Do Queer Women On Television All Look The Same?

GLAAD has released its 2012 Network Responsibility Index, which is a fancier way of saying that GLAAD posted its Gay TV Report Card. Every summer, GLAAD rates cable and broadcast networks based on the amount of hours they feature LGBT-inclusive programming, as well as the network’s gender and racial diversity.

The results are revealing and not particularly positive. Representations of gay men far outnumber those of gay women, and queer people of color are eclipsed by am overwhelming amount of white characters. Not a single network was graded as “Excellent” and too many received “Failing” as their final rating. Networks that carried strong LGBTQ programming were also host to shows that featured homophobia or offensive humor. For every narrative that the queer community embraced, ten storylines ignored, negated or flat out insulted us.

Me too, Whit. Me too.

Showtime took the top slot with a “Good” rating due to 46% of its original programming featuring positive LGBT representations. Credit goes to Ilene Chaiken’s stumbling into her agent’s office on bath salts with “I swear this is a good idea hear me out” venture into reality television, The Real L Word. ABC Family was the only network where lesbian representation was higher than gay males: a whopping 45 to 7 hours. Special thanks to Emily and all the ladies who have locked lips with Emily (but mostly Paige for being the very best of the lady lip lockers). Extra points to Emily for being a queer lady of color.

CBS received a “Failing” despite the fact that Kalinda can get it, and get it hard. So did the History Channel and TBS. TLC, the same network that made the Palin family reality stars and has been accused of leaning in a conservative direction, received an “Adequate.” They can address their thank you cards to Glitzy, Honey Boo Boo’s “pageant gay pig”.

It’s important to note that GLAAD’s ratings reflect representation in the barest terms. Glee is a diversity gold mine as far as the ratings system is concerned, but the fact that it’s also riddled with tokenism and problematic portrayals does not have an effect on the final score. Even on shows where queerness makes an appearance, those portrayals need to be questioned. It’s not enough to have  a gay character, to show a clip of two women kissing, or to have storylines that feature homosexuality. Yes, it’s a big deal that I can watch a teen drama where my favorite couple is the same sexuality as me (teen dramas are typically the most welcome genres to introducing LGBTQ characters and narratives). But it’s not enough, and it’s not something I have to settle for. There are crucial questions to be asked, and asked relentlessly: where are the queer people of color? Where are all the queers who are not gay men?

When we see queer women in media, what are we seeing? The lesbian couples that arguably receive the most attention on current network television are Brittany and Santana, Callie and Arizona, and Paige and Emily. Besides their sweet lady kisses, where are the indicators of queerness? Why is it that they’re all undeniably femme, conventionally attractive and able-bodied? This is the question that I come back to again and again: why do queer women on television all look the same?

Femme representation in the media is incredibly important — and strangely ironic given the issues surrounding femme invisibility within the queer community. By no means am I arguing against the necessity of femmes or femme presentation in the media. But I’m concerned by the fact that a female-bodied person presenting in a masculine or atypical way is absent from the queer media presence. Seriously, where the hell are all the butches?

The media has its own reasons for staying away from butch representation, and maybe they’re legitimate ones. Maybe they’re afraid to tap into representations that could be construed as stereotypes. Maybe they’re afraid that showing a female-bodied person who is not conventionally attractive, whose body and expression is not still desirable to a heterosexual male and thus the mainstream audience, is too risky for ratings. Maybe a legacy of lesbians only appearing in stereotypical roles makes networks want to showcase queer women as being “normal,” and that definition of normal means making them look like traditionally feminine women. Maybe we are in a “post-queer society” where it doesn’t matter what queers look like, and we don’t need to show butch lesbians to represent queerness. Too bad that’s bullshit.

Being a masculine-presenting female body — or any kind of body that isn’t within the norm — that isn’t conventionally attractive or widely represented means you’ve already struggling to love yourself.  I own the fact that I’ve had to fight for my appearance to be accepted by my family and my surroundings. I know a lot of butches who do the same thing, and we’re lucky that there are beautiful people in this world who love our bodies and love the parts of us that society deems undesirable. Excuse me while I shed some precious butch tears.

I wish that I didn’t have to look at society around me to love myself, but damn it all if it doesn’t help. I think about the queers out there in places where there isn’t a strong queer community. I think about the queer kids who skip school so they won’t get their nose broken for wearing boys’ clothes. Society already tells us we are ugly, we are undesirable, we are freaks. Maybe it would help, even a little, if there were butches on those shows. If these butches were normal people, maybe even cool people. If they became more than just stereotypes or things to be feared — real characters with real narratives that viewers empathized with. If Paige’s gradual descent into soft butchdom continues on the righteous path.

A butch can dream.

The Gays Are Taking Over TV, Except Where We’re Not: The 2011 GLAAD Network Responsibility Index

The GLAAD Network Responsibility Index says this about itself:

“The GLAAD Network Responsibility Index (NRI) is an evaluation of the quantity and quality of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. It is intended to serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBT media representation.”

The report looks at broadcast networks and cable networks, and the things that people usually say about it include:

There aren’t enough queer people on TV!
There aren’t enough queer ladies on TV!
There aren’t enough evangelical religious figures on TV! (if you are the SBC)

And so far, all of these statements — except the last one — are still true.

According to GLAAD-commissioned Pulse of Equality Survey, which looks at public perception and gay people, 19% of respondents reported more positive feelings towards gays over the previous five years, and 34% of those said it was partly because of seeing lesbian or gay characters on television. Basically: television, unsurprisingly, has the power to change minds. And things like The Real L Word are on it. Think about that for a minute.

Last year, the majority of LGBT representation happened in network programming aimed towards younger viewers, which is not surprising, considering that support for gay marriage is significantly higher among younger people. But while last year MTV became the first network ever to score an “excellent” rating for having over 42% of its original programming count as LGBT-inclusive, this year it didn’t even make the list: the GLAAD report cites a combination of significantly fewer LGBT-inclusive hours and problematic episodes of Jersey Shore and True Life, though it still applauds MTV for anti-bullying initiatives and queer characters on Skins, If You Really Knew Me, and The Real World. Instead, ABC Family topped the cable networks category, with 55% and the report’s second “excellent” ever. The ABC Family lineup includes Pretty Little Liars, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Greek, and Make It or Break It.

via ABC FAMILY/ANDREW ECCLES

The broadcast networks’ ratings fall in the same order as in 2009-10, with The CW in the lead with 33% of LGBT-inclusive hours of original programming, followed by Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS, with 10%. In the cable networks, ABC Family has a significant lead with 55%, followed by Showtime, TNT, HBO, AMC, Syfy, FX, USA, and A&E and TBS, which both had a shameful 5%.

Except in super problematic situations such as on Jersey Shore, the quality of the representation does not seem to have been a factor. The report looked at whether or not an LGBT depiction happened; whether it was major or minor; whether any significant discussion of LGBT issues happened; “quality” is listed under the grading considerations, but how it was determined isn’t specified. For instance, Showtime was reported as having 37% of LGBT-inclusive hours, which the report attributes to The Real L Word and Shameless. Can we talk for a minute about just what percentage of The Real L Word is aimed towards an accurate portrayal of lesbians instead of towards an accurate portrayal of what an audience of straight men might like to watch? As a lady-loving-lady, I certainly want to see young, presumably intelligent queer women reduced to a pile of power-of-the-clam-loaded drama, on-screen sex, and trying to make silicone copies of some dude’s penis because the producers won’t acknowledge that maybe lesbians can make babies without phallic objects provided by their straight dude friends. I don’t want quality instead of quality. I want both.

But there’s an even bigger problem: the huge lack of trans* representations and racial and ethnic diversity. Even in the most inclusive networks, the rates for these types of representation are abysmal. Only 2% of the 310.5 LGBT-inclusive hours across ten cable networks included trans* representation, consisting of Carmen on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and an episode of Terriers that dealt with the murder of a trans sex worker. There wasn’t a single regular or recurring trans* character anywhere on American TV (Degrassi‘s Adam is on a show imported from Canada). To say this isn’t great would be a massive understatement. According to the report,

“Despite the obvious dearth in representations of lesbians and bisexuals, the most glaringly underrepresented LGBT population on network TV (and TV in general) are transgender people, who were included in 1% of the LGBT-inclusive hours tracked this year, which works out to just 0.002% of the total hours of broadcast primetime programming. While there were several primetime broadcast series that featured transgender storylines in single episodes, each one contained at least some degree of problematic content. This is certainly an area where the broadcast networks should strive to improve.”

Race and ethnicity are problematic points as well. In the broadcast networks, NBC led with only 38% of the LGBT impressions from white characters. ABC, however, had the least racial diversity with 85% of impressions from white characters, and with most of the diversity points coming from Callie on Grey’s Anatomy and Alejo Salazar on The Whole Truth. Fox, CBS, and The CW also featured mostly white representations.

Let’s take a look:

ABC

(broadcasting network)

via wholetrughtv.com & greysanatomy.wikia.com

ABC received a “good” on the report and has a significant amount of commitment to lesbian, gay, and bi storylines with Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Modern Family, and Dirty, Sexy Money. Also I think some chick named Ellen once came out on an ABC sitcom or something.

However, while ABC wins at overall LGBT-inclusive programming hours, 85% of its 479 impressions were white characters. Most of the 15% consisted of Dr. Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy (who, excitingly, got married) — while The Whole Truth‘s gay Latino attorney Alejo Salazar added a little diversity, the show was cancelled, and none of the other non-white characters had recurring roles.

NBC

(broadcasting network)

via v2.ten.com.au and queersvu.wordpress.com

NBC scored an overall “adequate” with only 15% of their hours being LGBT-inclusive. However, it features the greatest racial diversity of its LGBT impressions:

“While a total of 65% of the 1584 total LGBT impressions on the broadcast networks were white characters, only 38% of the 227 impressions on NBC were white. Conversely, 36% of NBC’s impressions were from Latino characters thanks largely to Oscar Nunez on The Office, and 23% were Asian-Pacific Islander (API) because of Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: SVU. However, only 3% of impressions on NBC were black/African American.”

Additionally, even though Dr. Huang became a regular character, he still didn’t appear in every episode, and the actor who play him will not be returning to the show in the upcoming season.

ABC Family

(cable network)

ABC Family got the second “excellent” rating in the GLAAD report’s history this year, and is incredibly racially diverse. It really just deserves cupcakes:

“In addition to posting the highest percentage of LGBT-inclusive hours (55%) since the NRI began, ABC Family was also the most racially diverse this year, with 35% white impressions, 25% black, 13% Latino/a, and 28% multiracial. No API LGBT impressions were counted on the network, due to the fact that GLAAD counts Pretty Little Liars’ Emily Fields as multiracial. However, she is also of Asian-Pacific Islander ancestry.”

via abcfamily.go.com

Compare that to AMC, which didn’t have a single racially or ethnically diverse character, and it’s even more of a step in the right direction. Hopefully AMC, not to mention FX (98% white), A&E (93% white) and TBS (83% white), will catch up.

Finally, what would a report on diversity and inclusion be without the Southern Baptist Convention slamming both of those things? Not good enough, that’s what. The SBC is predictably irate over the continued positive growth of LGBT representation, and has suggested that gay lobbyists are bribing the entertainment industry to “use their media to recast the homosexual lifestyle as normative.” The SCB representative also lamented the lack of evangelical Christians on TV, which is the only lack of representation worth celebrating.

Daily Fix: The GLAAD Network Responsibility Index Makes Us Do Math to Uncover its Most Shocking Statistic (Lezwhat?)

Autostraddle wonders why they have the power when they keep fucking/fucking up: “Evangelicals, Rapists, Tramps & Thieves: Why Anti-Gay Leaders Love to Sin, Are the Sinners.” Maybe it’ll make you angry and you’ll wanna do something about it and you can read about The Lesbian Avengers: Dyke Power!

Sometimes instead of doing things we have our interns do things. This month they saw a musical about a bunch of hippies, a lifetime-style movie about a transsexual and a reading of a screenplay about these two girls in the old days who are in love: Intern Camp.

Autostraddle Special Report on

The GLAAD Network Responsibility Index:

GLAAD has released their report card Network Responsibility Index to tell all the networks who’s doing good with the gays and who needs some after-school tutoring from Alan Ball.

Methodology: For GLAAD’s third annual report, we divided our analysis of reports into two sections (network & cable) and found neither section provided statistics by sexuality/gender, therefore requiring us to read the entire report line by line to gather some info about the ladies. We suspect this decision was made because lumping gays, lesbians and transpeople together is less depressing for the lesbians and transpeople and we have enough problems as it is.

Perusing the entire 41-page pdf [excluding the section on Showtime which was confusing as it’s unclear if they’re counting The L Word or not as they exclude specific numbers on that show so we counted nothing from that network (if there was an all-gay-male show that we did include, that’d skew the stats, but there isn’t, so this is scientifically sound) (based on our own definition of “science”) and we only included the networks with full reports, rather than the little ones with blurbs at the end] we found 28 lesbian or bisexual female references (including a murdered lesbian astronaut and her girlfriend from an episode of Law & Order) and 86 mentions of gay or bisexual male characters. Most of those females were from Grey’s Anatomy or The Real World/Road Rules Challenge.

Of these, 9 queer females were cited as recurring characters, opposed to 35 queer males.

Look, we made you a graph!

We believe this gendered discrepancy is owed in part to the tendency of reality shows to select gay male judges because they are funny, have nice hair, and like to judge. Our other theory involves the patriarchy.

Other highlights of the report (we read it so you don’t have to!) include:

+ ALSO THE DEATH OF JENNY: “The cancellation of The L Word also means that the coming 2009-2010 TV season will be the first time since the premiere of Will & Grace in 1998 that there won’t be a mostly gay series on air.”

+ WHITEWASHED: “Television characters in general are predominately white, regardless of sexual orientation.”

+ CALLIE CARRIES THE TEAM: ABC is the top LGBT inclusive broadcast network network with props to Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy and Dancing with the Stars (Lance Bass holler).

+ MR & MRS. JAY: “The CW leads all networks in terms of being inclusive of the African American/black LGBT community. The majority of these impressions are made on America’s Next Top Model because of the prominence of J. Alexander.”

+ HIGH HOPES FOR MELROSE: “The CW’s fall shows are ripe with opportunities … the highly anticipated reboot of Melrose Place takes place in gay Mecca West Hollywood … can make up for the shortcomings of the original.”

+ GLAADBERT TOO LITTLE TOO LATE: “By now everyone is aware that Lambert is gay, but he did not confirm this fact until recently … as such,  American Idol was not counted as having any LGBT impressions.” (13)

+ SOMEONE NEEDS A SENSE OF HUMOR: “Family Guy aired an offensive half hour episode in which Peter was injected with the ‘gay gene” and proceeded to act out countless gay stereotypes.”

+ OBVS: “GLEE has excellent promise for LGBT inclusion.”

COME OUT LIZ LEMON: “Though NBC has stepped up … there is still ample room for growth. The Office could benefit from increaisng Oscar’s screen time … 30 Rock is infused with LGBT-inclusive humor but would be better if one of the show’s characters came out of the closet.”

+ HBO WINS: Out of 14 original shows, 10 feature LGBT-inclusive content, with True Blood leading the way … “Ball has used the persecution of vampires on True Blood as a thinly veiled allegory for obstacles faced by the LGBT community … however, HBO has room to grow in terms of lesbian and transgender representation.”

+ HOPEFULLY THEY’LL BE JUST AS INTERESTING AS KC HERSELF WTF: “The retooling of The Hills to focus on Kristin Cavallari presents an excellent opportunity to prominently feature some of Kristin’s gay friends.”

+ YOU DON’T SAY: “The level of visibility for lesbian and bisexual women on The L Word has yet to be matched by any show on broadcast or cable television since.”

+ OUR LITTLE SECTION: “NBC boasted the highest percentage of lesbian representations of any network, with 26% of NBC’s LGBT hours including a lesbian. CBS & Fox followed closely with 23% and 17%, respectively. ABC (6%) and The CW (3%) featured the fewest lesbian representations.”

+ UM BUT I THOUGHT KEN SEELY WAS GAY WTF: “History shows that A&E is a network not opposed to LGBT inclusion and yet this season it barely produced tow hours of content.”

The rest of the daily fix, after the jump!

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