from Social Issues

TV Scriptwriting Trend
Portrays Sexuality as Fluid

July 2, 2004 - Matthew Gilbert, a columnist for the Boston Globe, recently surveyed a new trend in network TV. Writing in "Sexual identity getting difficult to keep straight," Gilbert notes that a number of TV series are promoting the notion that sexual orientation is fluid.

"Writers on 'Queer as Folk,' 'The L Word,' and 'Nip/Tuck' have been boldly creating men and women who fall somewhere between the extremes of the Kinsey scale--exclusively homosexual and exclusively heterosexual. They're pushing their series and their viewers beyond the more familiar black-and-white portrayals, the either/or sexual construct."

Gilbert says this new trend of blurring the lines of sexual orientation goes beyond "Gay TV." According to Gilbert, "The sexually indefinite characters aren't closeted gay men and lesbians, running from their true selves, struggling to accept the inevitable. They're more curious-seeking than that, and less tortured.... Yep, TV is beginning to include the LGBT and Q [questioning] community in its electronic embrace."

"One of the funniest and strangest sexual-orientation riffs occurred this spring on 'The L Word,' with Lisa the 'male lesbian,' a straight man who fully identified as a lesbian," Gilbert reported. "Further twisting expectations, the very sincere Lisa has an affair with Alice, a bisexual character who, in a meta-twist, is played by openly lesbian actress Leisha Hailey. Can you keep all that straight?"