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Queer Women of Color and Their Relationships on American Television
The representation of lesbian relationships on current American basic television is paltry at best. According to Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, of the current 647 series regulars on the five broadcast networks, only seven are queer females (GLAAD). This is not necessarily unusual; lesbians are consistently underrepresented on American shows. That being said, out of this small sample size, women of color are not lacking. In fact, all five of the major lesbian relationships on television currently are interracial. Moreover, the primary character in each of these relationships is a woman of color. However, this representation of queer women of color is but superficial. The racial or ethnic identity of these women is rarely, if ever, discussed in any meaningful way. Acting as little more than a visual indicator for Otherness, the racial identity of these characters is made to be subservient to the sexual identity, resulting in a severance of the characters’ ties to their racial communities. The treatment of these fictional characters on television mirrors the ways in which real queer women of color are suppressed by the dominant white male heterosexual culture.
The association of lesbian sexuality with interracial relationships is by no means a new phenomenon. In her essay, “Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body”, Siobhan Somerville discusses how, in the early 1900s, psychologist Margaret Otis wrote about the emergence of “widespread ‘love-making between the white and colored girls’” in all-girls schools (34). At that time, when homosexuality was just beginning to be medicalized, “racial difference visually marked the alliances between the schoolgirls as anomalous” (35). In a heteronormative world, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between relationships with two women that are platonic and those that are romantic; it is not always clear if a couple should be considered ‘Other’ or not. However, when the relationship is interracial, it is always labeled as Other. No matter the relationship, the mixing of the races is invariably viewed as peculiar. As a result, “race became a marker for the sexual nature of that liaison” (p 35). This practice still exists today and is exemplified quite clearly on current American television.
Interracial relationships between two female characters have become a media shorthand for depicting lesbianism. While close friendships between two men of any race are frequently labeled as gay in contemporary life and media, the same is not true for women. Because romantic relationships between women can be misconstrued as platonic, difference in race is used to visually indicate Otherness. This is exemplified by the fact that each of the five lesbian relationships on American basic television is interracial. For instance, Fox’s Glee features two main female relationships whose characters are very close and have many emotionally fraught scenes together. One relationship is white, while the other is interracial. Consistent with Somerville's notion that race is used as a marker for sexuality, the interracial relationship is queered and now romantic and the white relationship remains platonic. Similarly, Pretty Little Liars, which airs on ABC Family, also provides an example of race being attached to lesbianism. The teen drama is led by four best friends in high school. The quartet of girls has many pairings that are affectionate and loving, but only the multi-racial character of the group is gay and in an interracial relationship. This tendency on television is not found elsewhere in media such as movies, however; there is less racial diversity altogether and most prominent lesbian couples in films are decidedly white.
Current television may have a surprisingly large amount of racially diverse queer females, but their story lines do not confront the importance of their race in a meaningful way. As has been true since the initial influx of queer characters on American television in the late 1990s, plot lines featuring queer characters circumvent political issues in favor of personal ones. In "Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility", author Bonnie J. Dow explains how television’s focus on the personal, rather than the political, aspects of these characters’ lives is damaging to the representation of queer people in wider society. According to Dow, “Media avoidance of such political stakes is more than mere omission; it should be recognized as an expression, indeed a production, of power” (137). For the five queer women of color on current American television, the “political stake” in question is their race. Their cultural backgrounds are diminished in order to uphold the comfort and power of the majority, for when the minority has less from which to derive its sense of self, it becomes less of a threat. Glee’s Hispanic character, Santana Lopez, experiences a loss of her connection to her cultural community when she comes out as a lesbian to her grandmother. Santana’s ethnic background is not discussed outside of this coming out scene, where her abuela says that her verguenza, or shame, about her granddaughter’s sexuality stems from not wanting the community to discover the truth. The scene ends with Santana’s grandmother disowning her. The one instance when Santana’s cultural background is brought up, it is only used as a plot device to illustrate what is lost as a result of her lesbianism. This storyline sends out the message that claiming a queer identity can come at the expense of one’s family and community.
This loss of racial background has wider consequences in that it severs the characters from their cultural community. These characters are frequently the only person of color on their shows or, in all of the five examples of focus, the only person from their specific racial or ethnic group. When race and the struggles that go along with it go unaddressed, it can imply inaccurate things about how queers of color are treated in society. In the same way that avoiding the political rights of queers “possibly encourages straight audiences to believe that we have entered a ‘post-gay’ period in which the struggle for gay rights has already been won,” avoiding the race-related problems that people of color face can lead white audiences to think that racism, within the society as a whole and also the queer community, is no longer an issue (Battles and Hilton-Morrow 102). This is true not only for the queer women of color on television, but for all characters of color, male and female, straight and queer. This is one example of how media reinforces the supremacy of whiteness. It is easier to assert that white culture and people are in power when non-white strife and and community collectiveness is rendered invisible on such an influential medium as television.
The prevalence of interracial lesbian couples on American television has multiple consequences for both straight and queer viewers alike in that it works to reinforce the dominance of whiteness. Almost all of the relationships in question are made up of one white character and one non-white character. Even though the person of color is the primary character in all of the examples on current television, this habit of including a white person reinforces white supremacy. It implies that people of color are and can be only attracted to whites. Lesbian couples that do not feature a white character are extremely rare. Those that do exist are subjected to the stereotypical treatment of minorities on television. Pretty Little Liars had one such couple, between a Southeast Asian character and a black character, but that only lasted until the black character was killed off. USA’s White Collar has a lesbian couple made up of a black character and a Middle Eastern character, however the Middle Eastern girlfriend has only appeared once, never to return. When all other examples of lesbian couples have at least one white woman, this tendency makes it seem like white is the default and a white partner the most desirable, while every other race or ethnicity is the Other and inferior.
Additionally, when every lesbian couple on television is interracial, all other interracial relationships are called into question. This practice of using race to denote “the sexual nature of that liaison,” as Somerville describes it, stigmatizes interracial relationships of any kind and implies that women of different races cannot be merely friends. If race is used to mark lesbianism on television, and lesbianism is considered wrong and unnatural, then purely platonic friendships between two women of different races are stigmatized, too. Glee supplies an example of a tainted interracial friendship when a (straight) white female character is deemed lazy by associating with a (straight) black female character who was labeled tired and indolent for not attending dance rehearsals. The implication is that white women should not mix with women of color if they want to hold on to their position of power in society as a member of the majority. This exemplifies how white patriarchy works to keep women in the roles that are most favorable for white heteronormativity.
There are many ways in which white heteronormative society exerts its power over queer women of color on television. The fact that the racial identity of these characters is minimized in favor of their sexual identity is one such example. The women of color who lead the five interracial lesbian couples on television are a racially diverse group. There are two Hispanic women (one white, one multi-racial), one Southeast Asian woman, one black woman, and one Indian woman. However, this diversity is not discussed. The racial identities of these women are but briefly addressed--the oblique and fleeting reference to Santana Lopez’s Hispanic heritage is one of the only examples--if at all. Their race or ethnicity is never the subject of significant conversation and is most often reduced to nothing but a visual marker for their status of Other. The devaluation of their racial identity is especially evident in comparison to the importance placed upon their sexual identity. The burden or Otherness of the sexual orientation of these women is either the main focus of their character arc or a very important part of their characterization. As Audre Lorde points out in “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, this deemphasizing of race is harmful to women of color and their place in society. She writes, “Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women's joint power” (117). All women, no matter their racial background or sexual identity, are affected by this avoidance of difference. When television neglects the racial aspect of its female characters’ identities, queer or otherwise, patriarchy is at work.
White patriarchy also works to force women to identify themselves not on their own terms, but on the terms deemed acceptable by white heterosexual men. Lorde elaborates: “As a tool of social control, women have been encouraged to recognize only one area of human difference as legitimate, those differences which exist between women and men” (121). When sexuality squeezes its way into the conversation, Lorde’s assessment still holds true. Dominant society strives to confine women to the hetero/homo binary system (with a little bisexuality sprinkled in) and keep them there. White men can experience the struggles that often come with having an Othered sexual identity, but they cannot relate to the difficulty of being a racial minority, and therefore the racial identity of queer women of color is ignored. Overall, the stability and status of the white heterosexual male is given preferential treatment, even if they are nowhere to be found in an interracial lesbian relationship.
There is a trend on current American basic television to portray romantic relationships between two women as interracial. All five of the lesbian couples on television today are interracial and that depiction carries certain consequences. The races women of color in these relationships are reduced to little more than a telegenic way of indicating Otherness. Their racial identities are not shown as important aspects of their lives--if they are mentioned at all--effectively cutting these characters off from their cultural communities One’s cultural community can be a valuable source for support and validation, and is therefore a threat to the dominance of white patriarchy. Relative to the numbers of queer female characters overall, queer women of color may be well represented on current American television, but they are not represented well.
Works Cited
Battles, Kathleen, and Wendy Hilton-Morrow. "Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre." Critical Studies in Media Communication 19.1 (2002): 87-105. Print.
Dow, Bonnie J. "Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility." Critical Studies in Media Communication 18.2 (2001): 123-40. Print.
GLAAD. "Where Are We On TV." GLAAD.org. Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Web. 17 May 2012.
Lorde, Audre. "Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference." Sister Outsider. California: Crossing Press, 1984. 114-24. Print.
Somerville, Siobhan B. "Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body." Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000. 15-38. Print.