I once saw a pin on Pinterest saying that James Potter is 'masculine in a peacock way', and I don't think I've ever heard anything more true in my life.
i’ve mentioned this before, but it makes me a little sad to see how much kerry weaver has been lost in discussions of lesbian rep on television. i’m taking a class on feminist television theory, and she wasn’t even included on the big slide of lesbian characters and relationships on tv. we also spent a lot of time discussing intersectionality, yet somehow there was still no mention of a disabled, middle-aged lesbian who held a position of real authority on one of the biggest network dramas of its era.
it’s especially wild to me because kerry wasn’t a minor character or a short-lived storyline like a lot of early depictions of lgbt characters. she was one of ER’s central characters, a show that was the biggest network drama of its time, and the show gave years of attention to her struggle to understand her sexuality, come out later in life, navigate relationships, and eventually create a family. her story was allowed to be painful and complicated and joyful, and many aspects of it were depicted with so much care. she even got one of the earliest bury your gays moments that involved a central character </3
and yet, despite watching and following a lot of lgbt media, i had never even heard of her before i watched ER. maybe part of the reason she gets overlooked is that ER was never categorized as a “queer show,” so her story falls outside the usual canon of landmark lesbian television. but imo that makes her presence more significant. she was a lesbian main character existing at the center of mainstream network television, week after week, for years. dhe spent more time out of the closet on the show that in it. she deserves so much more recognition and respect </3
I know that it is imperfect, a product of it’s era in many ways, that there were several other episodes which were rather blatantly transmisogynistic with no point, and that it’s not exactly pleasant that both these story-lines end as tragedies, but—
It is meaningful, to me, that ER had two episodes focused on trans women, one in 1995, one in 2002; and both these episodes were like having someone screaming at the audience to please, please care about these people.
The discomfort of the first comes heavily from Carter being uncomfortable around a trans woman, and then his devastation when she kills herself. The narrative says this is wrong, this is not how this had to happen. Don’t you want to weep over this woman? This woman who has been mistreated, regarded as disgusting, who could not even get medical care without being reminded that society reviles her? The episode screams at you: didn’t she deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion like anyone else?
The second has a scene which haunts me, in the framing of this little girl who has just lost her father, the parent who accepted and supported her as a girl, and in knowing her fear of her mother, who believes she should be only be a boy, and of a Black man, no stranger to the symbolism of hair as a sign of bodily autonomy and freedom— he walks in on her mother cutting her hair, and it is framed like he’s walked in on her beating the little girl. It is framed as something horrific, and tragic. Her long hair, cut off, like having her wings clipped to be forced back into a cage.
Again, the episode begs you, the viewer, to feel for this girl, to have your heart wrench in pain because why can’t she be allowed to live and exist as herself? How can this be fair or okay or allowed to happen to that child? It begs you to understand that she doesn’t deserve this, that what’s happening is wrong.
The portrayal of both is also worth noting, as both of them are played as simply being… women. The first, she’s played as rather elegant, subdued, framed simply as a morose woman who has been beaten down by the world around her. The second, she’s just a little kid, like any other little girl. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just a normal girl, and that’s what she should be allowed to be.
… ER is not perfect, no, but for the era, it feels very clear that someone in the writer’s room felt very, very strongly about needing to frame trans women as women who are mistreated, abused, and oppressed, and to beg the audience to care about that, and to care about those women as women.
What makes me miserable is that both those episodes are exactly as plausible today as they were then…
I do love that when the Heated Rivalry’s show runner was asked about casting queer actors to play queer characters he ignored the bait and was just straight up like “You can’t ask that. That’s illegal.” lmao because yeah. It is. Weird how a lot of discourse on this subject acts like this is not a factor.
an anxious writer @themostanxiouswriter - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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