{"id":109663,"date":"2016-03-15T22:39:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T22:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/03\/15\/all-90-and-counting-dead-lesbian-and-bisexual\/"},"modified":"2016-03-15T22:39:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T22:39:58","slug":"all-90-and-counting-dead-lesbian-and-bisexual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/03\/15\/all-90-and-counting-dead-lesbian-and-bisexual\/","title":{"rendered":"All 90 (and counting) Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters On TV, And How They Died | Autostraddle"},"content":{"rendered":"

All 90 (and counting) Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters On TV, And How They Died | Autostraddle<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

writing-writer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

lgbtviewersdeservebetter<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

octopuptickles<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

sorrynotsorrybi<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

roane72<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

lgbtlaughs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The history of lesbian representation on television is rocky \u2014 in the beginning<\/a>, we seemed exclusively relegated to roles that saw us getting killed\/attacked or doing the killing\/attacking. And until the last five or so years, lesbian and bisexual characters seemed entirely unable to date an actual woman or stay alive for more than three episodes, let alone an entire run, of a show. Gay and lesbian characters are so often murdered on television that we have our very own trope: Bury Your Gays<\/a>. We comprise such a teeny-tiny fraction of characters on television to begin with that killing us off so haphazardly feels especially cruel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I first saw this headline it was 65. The number keeps climbing. That\u2019s fucked up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now it\u2019s up to 108 (the headline says 103 but I counted them). Like any good psychologist, I had to graph the data. I coded them (very roughly as I haven\u2019t seen the majority of the shows) based on the method used to kill off the character, and whether the death was murder, suicide, accidental, or illness related. I don\u2019t have non-lesbian\/bi characters to compare these numbers to, but here is what the raw data looks like:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"image\"<\/figure>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Gunshots, whether accidental or on purpose, are the leading cause of death for lesbian and bisexual characters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"image\"<\/figure>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Roughly 64% of the characters were murdered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also noticed a disturbing trend of deaths that were due to their orientation, such as characters dying because they came out to someone who reacted badly and it caused an accident, or due to jealous exes (or exes of their same-gender lovers) murdering them\/causing accidents. Together these made up 16% of all deaths. Two other themes I noticed were pregnancy-related deaths and death just after a major happy moment for the character.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

@lgbtviewersdeservebetter<\/a> for the graphs<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to the media we can only die violent deaths. Let\u2019s tell them we\u2019re not accepting that any longer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s up to 118 now\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All 90 (and counting) Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters On TV, And How They Died | Autostraddle writing-writer: lgbtviewersdeservebetter: octopuptickles: sorrynotsorrybi: roane72: lgbtlaughs: The history of lesbian representation on television is rocky \u2014 in the beginning, we seemed exclusively relegated to roles that saw us getting killed\/attacked or doing the killing\/attacking. And until the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “All 90 (and counting) Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters On TV, And How They Died | Autostraddle”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1640,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}