Phoebe Axa: ‘Queer female visibility needs to remain untampered and authentic, away from the male gaze’
Accessing relatable sapphic media growing up queer was a struggle. Once we sift through the male gaze, the remaining options tend to fuel a gruelling internal misunderstanding of ourselves and what we ‘should’ have been.
Historically, lesbians on TV have been drawn up from the same recycled stereotypes; the hypersexualised ‘lipstick lesbian’ or the ‘masc’, purely there for ‘laughs’ and ‘drama’, with no room for anything in between.
This space lacks diversity. On the chance that we connect with one of these heavily stereotyped depictions, we are met with disappointment when female queer characters are almost immediately ‘killed off’ or discarded with a bitter end.
Either that, or they remain disposable side chatter to the straight lead or a tick box in a plot meeting diversity demands. They are merely characters based on tropes rather than anything with depth.
