May kicked off with more dead lesbians. Because why not. We did the math of how many primetime, US network lady lovin’ ladies were offed this year, and 11 out of 36 died in 2016 alone. That’s 30.5%, in case you wondered. And while we did get the magical soapy rebirth of Sin Rostro and the return of Sameen Shaw, we lost Bethany Mayfair and Root.
That last one hurts, but I still expect everyone on PoI to die. It’s that kind of show. None of that exempts PoI of the Bury Your Queers cliche, of course.
It also looks like Delphine may not be dead. We have a witness who saw her alive, but that doesn’t mean she’s still alive. She is tentatively marked as dead still.
- Characters Added – 103
- Shows Added – 42
Trans Women
Autostraddle, seeming to think we don’t have enough to do, published another list. This one is of the 105 Trans Women on TV.
We actually will not add everyone on their list. A large number of the Trans Women were defined as drag queens or transvestites, whom we are not currently including on this site. Those are men who dress as women, and do not “identify” as women. Basically if the character self-identifies as a transsexual, MTF, or FTM, they’re added. It’s the self-identification that’s important. This does get messy when you consider cases like Chandler’s father, from Friends. Many sitcoms are similarly problematic because they omit self-identification.
Statistics
With the upgrade to charts, we now (finally) have horizontal bar charts, which makes things easier to read. The colors are also brighter, which makes the death stats a little cheerier.
Search
In order to allow searches to pick up everything, like actors and years and all that data, we’re using Google’s search. It works the same way as it used to, it just lets the results include everything.
We Deserve Better
I’m aware of the turmoil surrounding the LGBT Fans Deserve Better movement, and in particular the website lgbtfansdeservebetter.com which has begun trademark proceedings on the term “LGBT Fans Deserve Better” among other things. There’s also the splinter group, lgbtviewersdeservebetter.com, who made the billboards you’ve possibly seen in LA. It’s perfectly possible to support both groups. We just would hope you can look past the divergence and cease infighting.
