Review of Episode 1, "LGBTease"

Defining "Transgender" and a Convenient Cell Phone Interruption

The scene: Max is filming Alice as she interviews Phyllis for their website, Our Chart. Phyllis expresses her embarrassment at not knowing what the "T" in LGBT stands for, as she suggests, "tentative?" In this case, I think Phyllis is representative members of the queer community who are either ignorant of or make no attempt to understand transgender issues, often to the point of exclusion. This issue is raised more directly later in the dialogue. Alice responds to Phyllis' question by telling her that it stands for "trannies" and then quickly points to Max as an example. Max clarifies, "transgendered, you know, people who have changed their sexes from male to female or from female to male." Woah, hold on a minute. Not only is Max reinforcing binary gender (and sex), but most of us probably recognize the major slip here: Max has leaped from "gender" to "sex," and has defined "transgender" as strictly "transsexual." The reality is that "transgender" is often understood as a blanket term to cover cross-gender expression, regardless of the sex of the body. A transgender person does not alway have to change their sex. And it is here where the writers sort of redeem themselves, when Max explains that he did not go through with the top surgery because, aside from the fear of losing nipple sensation, he "felt enough of a guy as is, without the surgery." However, just prior to this statement he talks about how some guys don't feel fully "male" unless they have a "male contoured chest and can take their shirt off." Just to nitpick, does he mean that they don't fully feel like a man or that they don't feel fully male or some combination of the two? The point is that there is a see-sawing here between "gender" and "sex" in the dialogue around transgender identity on the show, and I would really like to see the writers be a more attentive to this.

Following Max's open discussion of a very personal decision, Alice cuts in, saying that they are getting off topic for Our Chart. Max asks why it is off topic, and Alice responds, "Our Chart is for lesbians." To which Max says, "I thought Our Chart was for everybody. It's Our Chart, I mean, doesn't that suggest it's inclusive?" Alice seems to be unsure of this, calls it a technicality in her concession that it's for everybody, and then conveniently receives a phone call from Tasha, leaving Max one last shot on screen of looking a little pissed off. Here, again, the question is raised: How inclusive is the queer community when it comes to transgender individuals? Alice's response to Max is a great representation of how transgender people are often cast out of the queer community. Lesbians, for example, might be less accepting of transgender men because of their masculine identity, claiming that if they pass as men then they gain male privilege, they're not really lesbians, but heterosexual men, etc. This is a debate that can go on for pages, but I just want to point it out and give kudos for the issue being made visible on the L Word. However, the cell phone call was a nice cop out for Alice, but I hope it's a temporary dismissal of the issue, as the writers really have to return to transgender inclusivity if they truly want to represent Max's character and his struggles in the fabulous L.A. lesbian community. I'll be watching to see how this plays out throughout the season, so definitely expect a lot more transgender commentary.

Tasha and Alice: The Racialization of Sexual Desire

Interestingly enough, not much issue is made of Tasha's race, aside from those few times where she's jokingly called Alice a white girl. Otherwise, more focus is on Tasha's role in the military and how she feels about the war. While I had written that I was going to get into the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in this post, I think I'd rather wait until we get more presentation of Tasha's investigation in future episodes. For now, I'd just like to think about the representation of race via Tasha's character. Watching the closing scene of the show, I couldn't help but think of Biddy Martin's article, "Sexualities Without Gender and Other Queer Utopias," (diacritics 24.2-3 p. 104-21). There is a lot going on in this article, but one issues Martin discusses is the persistent representation of the butch lesbian as a woman of color. Martin writes, "Disidentification from assigned gender is accomplished through darkness, as if whiteness and femmeness could not be differentiated and as if blackness were pure difference" (115). This is a description of the perpetuation of race, sex, and gender norms on film, even by queer filmmakers within queer films, and the L Word falls right into this trap. This also plays into all sorts of questions of passing and even fading, as in the example in which the lesbian femme is not visible. One can see how Alice, as a white femme bisexual, can get by in the world with no visibility as being other than heteronormative. Tasha, however, is slightly more butch, but probably feminine enough to pass if need be, but as a woman of color, she is always cast as non-normative in our white normative Western society. So, to portray her in a relationship with Alice in which she fills the role of Alice's soldier, the more butch or masculine partner, on top of being black, her otherness is compounded, resulting in the hypervisibility of Tasha as a lesbian, indeed, a black lesbian. Tasha's military investigation then becomes inevitable; she couldn't help but be seen. To extend this, look at some of the other characters in the L Word who were ever purported to be "butch." They are mostly women of color: Papi (for an hilarious take on Papi's butchness, watch this stand-up sketch by Marga Gomez), and Helena's cellmate. (Speaking of Helena's cellmate, I cannot wait to think more about the portrayal of women in prisons!) Max once referred to himself and Shane as "us butches," but Shane quickly denied the butch label, and Max came out as transgender, and let go of the butch label. Maybe we have yet to see a real "butch" representation on the show, whatever that means, but who wants to put their bets on a woman of color?

Stupid Girls: Jenny and Hollywood Success

I'll probably always dislike Jenny's character, but I definitely find her annoying qualities to be more comical rather than just unbearably annoying in this new season. I used to cringe and suffer through Jenny's fantasy writing scenes and flashbacks full of over-the-top, badly written prose, and now I can at least laugh at Jenny's exaggeration of "Hollywood." When Jenny goes off on her personal assistant about the mauve bows on her little doggy's ears, my mind conjured up an image from Pink's video "Stupid Girls." While I could offer up some criticism of this video, especially concerning the bulimia scene, overall I love the song and the video. Pink is generally criticizing women for playing into dumb, materialistic roles, and not pursuing careers, or using their strength and intelligence. Take for example, the lyrics, "What happened to the dream of the girl president? She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent." Brilliant! But what does this mean for Jenny's character? Well, she has the success, and she knows she's smart (she gets offended when Tina tries to pull one over on her last season, saying something like, "you thought I was completely clueless..."), but she also represents herself as the giggly girl with the tiny dog who must have orange bows, not mauve! It's an interesting contradiction. It's soooo L.A. I don't know what else to make of it yet theoretically, but it's something to watch and think about.

That's Enough for this Episode

There is so much going on in every episode, that I could probably write a whole book about the series, or actually, I could probably write one book for every season. In the interest of the spatial limitations of blogging, I'll try to pick out the key issue(s) from each episode, but if you see something that I don't talk about, please post a comment and put it out there! Episode 2, "Look Out, Here They Come," airs tomorrow!