Letter to the Badgers: Buzzfeed overreacts to lesbian characters dying in a TV show

https://youtu.be/nmSVj4q3QaE

(0:24) they show a picture of the 100 star who was killed in that TV show.

Here’s the thing. She left the show because of her role as a leading character in Fear The Walking Dead, a role that is probably higher paid, as the CW surely doesn’t have the same budget as AMC. Plus more people watch that show.

That is a more challenging role for any actor than the 100, as a romantic relationship between two people is pretty easy to do. Considering women and men do act as if they love each other (but don’t) in a relationship for whatever reason, it is not hard to pretend you love someone romantically.

They use Salon.com statistics for fictional characters. I will outline some of what I can back up with Wikipedia (I will also link to any interview I find in the sources section that is relevant.)

Let’s start with Tara Mclay. From Wikipedia: ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Maclay)

“While still working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Benson co-wrote the movie The Theory of the Leisure Class with director Gabriel Bologna, released in 2001, and directed, produced, edited, and acted in a digital video feature called Chance (2002) which also featured her Buffy co-star James Marsters. She also collaborated with director James Kerwin in 2003 to produce her play, Albert Hall, in Hollywood.”

As we can see the actress that played this character (Amber Benson) also had other obligations at this time. It was also used to propel a story arc. She left the show and with the final season at the time looming. It wasn’t something she was mad about.

Dana Fairbanks (From the L word. Played by Erin Daniels) Source:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_L_Word_characters#F

Dana died to further a conversation about breast cancer.

Died of heart failure in episode 3.10: “Losing the Light”, after having discovered she had invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common form of breast cancer in episode 3.05: “Lifeline”.

It is interesting to note that this event led to a rather large anonymous donation to Breast Cancer funding.

I can’t think of any male character that ever sparked that kind of reaction to a fictional prostate cancer death. Come to think of it, not sure if any media has ever had a male character with prostate or testicular cancer. Then again I don’t watch TV. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Daniels)

Charlie Bradbury. (Supernatural played by Felicia Day.)

This character was an expert hacker (and somewhat of a Mary Sue.) She sacrificed herself to ensure the bad guys didn’t get a book the two straight white male brothers Dean and Sam Winchester needed. Her last act was to ensure they could read said book. It was a pretty heroic death. Also, supporting characters die off in that show quite regularly in about equal number. Hunting supernatural creatures which are trying to literally eat humanity is a dangerous job.

http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Charlie_Bradbury

Arizona Robbins. (Grey’s Anatomy.) Notice how the picture says leg. She didn’t die. Her leg was amputated. A LEG CONSTITUTED THE DEATH OF A CHARACTER, even though her character still did doctor work and didn’t feel sorry for herself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Robbins

I forgot Tara Thornton from True Blood. In the last season pretty much everyone died. Most vampires were bisexual. She was killed, then brought back as a Vampire, then killed by a Vampire. She came back in that season (the final season) to help her mother and give some backstory AS a ghost, something that is suggested in this video, but ignored in this case.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Thornton

Jenny Schecter Was murdered in the final season of the L word. She was a very narcissistic character that wasn’t liked in the LGBT community, and also was bisexual in the show. She was murdered. No one knows who did it. Considering most of the cast are women I don’t think it is too much of a stretch that the writers knew there would be outrage if it came out a beloved character did it instead of a man.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Schecter

1:33 one of those characters was a gay ghost and you still used her as an example.

1:51 the stop killing Queer female characters..everyone dies in some way. It’s fiction, and having a character disappear instead of dying because of sexual orientation is pretty prejudiced. It’s almost directly saying it’s only okay when heterosexual men and women die.

Okay..you can give more examples of Homosexual Men dying in TV shows, I am sure, and what about the straight white male or female characters also beloved that are killed off? In Supernatural, Bobby Singer and Kevin Tran are two of many examples. In the 100 any crime’s punishment was shoving the person out an airlock. A few fathers were killed in this fashion, and some of the characters actually held resentments over this. Then there is that crime of having more than a certain amount of children. I am not sure about the L word.

So Queer female characters should never experience hardship or die outside of old age. Only straight and gay men, and straight women should die, right Buzzfeed? Right?

Queer means odd, not homosexual or lesbian. I am Queer and straight. Ha! Favorite saying of my grandmother when her nephew said he was Queer. We are all a little odd. He had to say no I am gay. Which (she was very religious) she replied with, “All that matters is you being happy.”

It seems like these people want all lesbians in entertainment to be Immortal Mary Sues. Maybe even lock women in roles, which would hurt career advancement in television media. Then they will complain about Hollywood not killing off characters, and actresses careers being hurt because of it.

There have been deaths of male characters often in gruesome ways. Like an unsolved murder. Or wrong place at the wrong time, in many other forms of entertainment.

I can probably Google search and find actual character deaths of gay men and straight men in higher numbers than lesbians.

Women make up the majority in the US.

Let’s apply the Not all Men are bad? Analogy

There is a bowl of m&m’s 10% of the m&m’s are poisoned take a handful.

Well here are some maths.

For this analogy we will go with there are 133,178,113 m&m’s in the bowl called the US. 18% are poison. Making 23,972,060.34 poisonous women.

Let’s apply the maths to men. In your bowl of m&m’s there are 127,173,415 of them that you could pick from. (Total men 148,345,038) 18% are poison. (Because equality) There are 22,891,214 and .7 of a person.

So the chances of getting poisoned is about equal. The disparity is a small number. To an individual yes 1 million is a large number, but 1 million of 148 million really is not.

This is starting at age group 15-24 and including 0 to 14 that number is 29 million less than all the women. Half the population would be 160,684,432. The total amount of women is 163,238,826. Women are 3 million above that half mark, making women the majority in the US. With 20 million less of us than you. Maths are fun!

(This doubles to debunk the feminist myth that women are half the population. Because pretty sure the population disparity shows men are the minority in this situation.)

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

There really is no Lesbian Death Syndrome or whatever nonsense they called it. There is no conspiracy to kill off Queer characters because they are Queer. Those are objectively not true, nor healthy thoughts. If Queer characters did not die at a similar rate to heterosexual characters, how is that in any definition of the term Equal, unless this video was complete projection? This makes me think, is the message really it’s okay if all the heterosexual characters die, as long as Queer characters don’t? Or is that summation, just as paranoid and unhealthy? Do you think they don’t even realize what some could perceive as the message in between the lines?

Feel free to discuss and share your thoughts.

(Anonymous reader)

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