Rating Countries According To Lesbian Representation Whatever we may think of lesbian represenation in far east Japan is still country where lesbians are fairly represented on television. Their lesbian characters kiss and have sex on screen. I remember TV series Giri-Haiji (2020) having a lesbian character (I made its review in april 2020) and recently in Invasion (2021) where we have a lesbian couple, Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) and Hinata (Rinko Kikuchi) working at the Japan space station by having the main female lead crew flaying off to a space mission. Hinata is an astronaut who has just traveled to the international space station; her partner Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna), their relationship a secret to many, sits in mission control and is a wizard with communications. The Invasion series keep us happy with Mitsuki being one of the main characters, in fact it seems that she is the one who can save humanity. It is certainly better from some European countries as Slovenia where lesbian characters are non-exsistent on television. You can't get lesbian characters in any TV genre be it comedy, crime or thriller. This Slovenia, this European country is even far more conservative then as South Korea is who at least represent lesbians although they almost never kiss and even less have sex on screen but at least they are represented (Hello Dracula 2020, Mine and Nevertheless 2021) whereas in Slovenia lesbian characters are absent like we literally don't exist. To add to this more personal touch I can confirm this by personal experiences where I was sincerly frequently told by the main television editors and producers that nobody would invest money in shows and films with lesbian characters! Thus I have been trying to get my lesbian film done for ten years. This is the other side of European representation. It took me almost ten years to make a documentary on different sexual orientations for national broadcasting television and my tender for a comedy series with a lesbian couple was turned down. I can also tell that I was searching for a gay couple for several months which is indicator that Slovenia is still homophobic and people think whether being shown in public as a gay or lesbian would damage my professional and private life or not. I have been trying to make another documentary on history of lesbianism for several years without success and just a few days ago (26. October 2021) I got the same negative reply by the main editor in the educational programme section. I was told also by other LGBT-people working for national broadcasting television that their wishes to work on LGBT topics were met with conservativism and distrust. How can young or old lesbian women in Slovenia have their authentic roles models if there are noone on Slovenian television? And then people try to convince me that they are not homophobic and that we don't live in a homophobic country despite having laws protecting us and same sex marriage is legalized? Also there has been no lesbian filmaker, a lesbian actress, a lesbian television anchor or an eminent lesbian journalist in Slovenia. Regarding public and media representation we are non-exsistent and that is a fact! Also country such as France have often only a minor lesbian representation and even their representation of a female is often grim. I've noticed that French screenwriters like the idea of a strong women but only as a fiction and for a certain period of time because after a while all their strong female characters die, it happened in Baron Noir (2016-2020), Mafiosa (2006-2014), Le Bureau des Légendes (2015-2020) and even in Engrenages (2005-2020) they softened and changed one of the strongest female characters Joséphine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot). In Baron Noir there has been a minor representation of a lesbian in the character of Salomé Rickwaert (Lubna Gourion) whom we see kisses another woman only once in all three seasons and the main female character Amélie Dorendeu (Anna Mouglais) dies. In Engrenages one of the most intriguing and strong female character Joséphine once kisses a woman and in Mafiosa we get that main character Sandra Paoli (Hélène Fillières) becomes attracted to another woman at the end of the series while daying on top of that in the end. And in Call My Agent (2016-) Andrea and Colette call it quits in the end. I was also shocked to learn that Dutch lesbian web series Anne+ (2018-) was the first lesbian series in Netherlands. Namely, Netherlands seems to be one of the main lesbian friendly countries in the world. The second season of Anne+ was then picked as a television series. I made an interview with the actress Eline Van Gils (4.9.2019) playing character Lily, Anne's first girlfriend who appears also in season 2. and we were talking about all sorts of things related to being lesbian in Netherlands today. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark there haven't been any TV series exclusively for and about lesbians and as far as I know there has been only one lesbian couple as one of the main characters shown in Norwegian TV series Aldri Voksen (2020-) (in the Occupied we learned that Russian ambasador was a lesbian only in the last season) and there was only one lesbian couple as contenstans in The Farm reality show. I made an interview with The Farm winner Tonje Frøystad Garvik (28.8.2019) who talked about being a lesbian in Norway. Although Sweden has frequently shown us lesbian couples they are usually in crime series and part of the investigation, such as Broen (2011-2018) (once a girlfriend of the lesbian couple was murdered and another time a wife of a lesbian married couple was murdered), Modus (2015-2017) (a lesbian couple is targeted by religous USA group as a hate crime), The Truth Will Out (2018-) (pathologist as a lesbian). Danish TV series The Sommerdahl Murders (2020-) investigated the murder of the lesbian teacher in one of the Helsingør High Schools. The best lesbian representation is done by UK and USA. USA had The L Word (2004-2009) and The L word Generation Q (2020-), The Fosters (2013-2018) and UK The Lip Service (2010-2012), Last Tango in Halifax (2013-2016), Dates (Kate and Erica 2013) and there are frequent lesbians and lesbian couples in many TV shows (naming the latest The Morning Show, Vigil, Station 19 and many many more ...). Australia has had series Janet King (2017-2019), a spin off of Crownies (2016). Sure there are things that could be better done as I talked on numerous ocassions in my other articles but still lesbian representation is frequent and more and more female celebrities are willing to play lesbians and tell our story of oppression, invisibility, unemployment and poverty.
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Katarina Majerholdphilsopher, lesbian, editor Archives
May 2023
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