Are Lesbians on TV Still Disappearing?

Dr. Lesbian considers the GLAAD report

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Lucy and Kate from NCIS: Hawai’i. Photo: CBS.

GLAAD’s 2023-2024 Where We Are On TV Report confirms what we all suspected: gay and trans characters are disappearing off our screens left and right. The number of LGBTQ characters on TV decreased in almost every category this year, continuing a troubling trend that began in 2022. 

As TV fans already noticed, cancellations have hit shows with LGBTQ characters particularly hard. 36 series featuring LGBTQ characters were canceled this year, and many LGBTQ characters on-screen this season will not return next year because of series endings or cancellations. These cancellations affect trans and non-binary characters the most, as nearly half of such characters exist on shows that are now canceled or ending soon.

GLAAD’s report highlights the importance of representation, pointing to the harmful rhetoric espoused by politicians and journalists. They note that “only 28 percent of non-LGBTQ Americans personally know a transgender person,” making trans representation all the more essential. 

The reasons for this decrease in representation are largely financial, though these economic considerations have not thus far proven fruitful. GLAAD suggests the vertical integration of studios and streamers is one of the biggest culprits behind these concerning statistics, as the number of companies in charge of producing television has gotten smaller. CW, a network that used to do well in terms of LGBTQ representation, was purchased by Nexstar in 2022, who axed all original programming and “intended to cut costs and appeal to an older demographic, thus shuttering many shows featuring young LGBTQ people.”

The GLAAD report argues that these economic decisions are unwise. They provide evidence that LGBTQ viewers are better-than-average TV fans, as they “over-index” in several popular genres. Moreover, while a huge majority of LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ young people seek out LGBTQ content, “only 38% are satisfied with how LGBTQ people are represented,” meaning studios have an opportunity to fill this gap with series these fans will love. “LGBTQ inclusion is key for these networks and streamers to stay relevant and grow their audience,” GLAAD posits. 

Sifting through data is one thing, and experiencing it in real time is another. So how do these numbers play out for fans? First of all, it’s validating to know that fans’ suspicions about the state of LGBTQ representation can be backed up by data. 

These statistics also influence how we watch television. In 2022, I wondered if lesbian TV was dying because of the spate of cancellations that year. It was during that period that A League of Their Own premiered, emerging like a beacon of hope in the TV wasteland. Of course, we all know how that turned out. The cycle of excitement and disappointment created a sense of fatigue among fans and a feeling of mistrust towards TV producers. The data supports this feeling – GLAAD reports that a quarter of viewers wait at least until the season finale to watch a show in part because they’re worried about future cancellation.

Chanté Adams and Abbi Jacobson in A League of Their Own. Photo: Prime Video.

In a cruel coincidence, lesbian and queer fans were hit with another cancellation the same week GLAAD released their report. In late April, CBS announced the cancellation of NCIS: Hawai’i, the third spin-off in the NCIS-verse. Beloved by sapphic fans because of its lesbian couple, Kate (Tori Anderson) and Lucy (Yasmine Al-Bustami), the cancellation came as a blow to both the fandom, known as the Ohana, and the cast and crew, who heard the news the same time as everyone else. 

In response, fans expressed their outrage and sadness online. Many reiterated how much the show and its characters mean to them, noting how great it felt to be given representation and a voice on a CBS procedural. Fans called the show “a comfort” and “inspiring” in their reminiscences. The fandom created a petition to save the show and even put up a billboard in Times Square, using the hashtag #SaveNCISHawaii to spread the message online. 

According to the GLAAD report, Lucy is (or was) the only Middle Eastern or North African LGBTQ character on broadcast TV, which means her disappearance will have an outsized impact on the overall diversity of network television. Indeed, CBS often touted NCIS: Hawai’i’i as one of their most “diverse” offerings, a point series star Vanessa Lachey frequently highlighted in interviews. It seems that the network was not all that interested in preserving this diversity, something many fans pointed out in angry posts on social media. 

Though the cancellation of NCIS: Hawai’i is too recent to be included in the Where We Are On TV Report, it does exemplify some of the document’s main takeaways. It’s clear that queer viewers make dedicated and passionate fans, which anyone who has ever engaged in online fandom can attest to. At the same time, queer fans often feel betrayed by showrunners and executives who court them at first but lack any real follow-through. The most famous example of this comes from The 100, where producers specifically cultivated a queer fandom only to forsake them so heartlessly it changed TV discourse forever. 

Then there was Netflix’s First Kill, which immediately garnered a sapphic fandom despite limited marketing and overall budget, but was canceled shortly after it premiered. GLAAD notes the importance of marketing in their report, arguing that when a company puts its full weight into advertising an LGBTQ show, like HBO’s The Last of Us, the results speak for themselves. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it points to the fact that shows with queer and trans characters don’t often receive the support they deserve, which makes their eventual cancellation appear inevitable. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. 

It feels slightly icky to discuss queerness in monetary terms, but of course, metrics and optics are GLAAD’s bread and butter. Whatever your investments in the concept are, it can be difficult to discuss representation without getting hyperbolic one way or the other. Certainly, representation is not the solution to all of today’s social ills, nor should we put our trust in corporations to grant us equality. Late-stage capitalism persists no matter how many beautiful new faces we see on our screens. 

But that’s not to say we can’t use information like this to better understand the world and how we would like to live in it. When we combine GLAAD’s data with the experiences of fans and our emotional responses to this media, we get a sense of how the rather vague idea of visibility affects individuals on both a macro and a micro scale. Taken together, such evidence illustrates the tension between art and capitalism, and between the self and the collective.

Have any lesbian TV cancellations really pissed you off recently? Tell me about it in the comments.