Young children, come close. Back in the day, before the CW, we had the WB and UPN, two networks on the fringes of network TV. The WB had Buffy while UPN had Xena (for syndication – it was made by USA). We barely had lesbians on TV back then. We migrated, from show to show and crumb to crumb, following the winks and nudges of possible lesbians.
The WB aimed at teens, UPN aimed at young adults. They merged in 2006, and aimed at both. Mostly teens, as things panned out.
CW has basically been the home to attractive, young, racially diverse, casted shows. And they’d sort of started to throw bones to the LGBT crowd.
In 2015, they were lauded by GLAAD for having seven whole lesbians or bisexuals: Sara, Nyssa, Clarke, Lexa, Lusia, Rose, and Charlie.
Since then, Sara, Lexa, Rose, and Charlie died. Sara was resurrected, but the point remains.
This season (2015-16), there are eleven scripted shows on CW and five had at least one queer female: Arrow, The 100, Jane the Virgin, The Vampire Diaries, and Supernatural. Technically Reign has lesbians, but they’re background characters, ordered to have sex by the king, and I refuse to count that.
Five shows.
All five shows have killed female queers. And we do mean killed. They either were murdered by another character or killed themselves. The remaining characters have all lost their love interests. Sara and Nyssa aren’t a couple anymore, Lexa died in Clarke’s arm, and Luisa’s lover died. Hell, The Vampire Diaries killed off their two recurring lesbians together on March 31st.
Five shows with couples became none.
None.
At all.
We started this site because we were tired of lesbians dying on TV. 2016 has killed off ten queer female characters in 91 days. It’s already tied with the previous worst year (2004). It’s only going to get worse.
The dead so far:
- Zora
- Ash Larsson
- Julie Mao
- Carla Niven
- Nora Hildegard
- Mary Louise
- Rose Solano
- Denise Cloyd
- Kira (The Magicians)
- Lexa
There are expected to be two more in April. All I can say is that they better not be Root or Shaw.
