TV Tuesday: Television Failed Queer Women In 2016…So How Did 2017 Do?

If you paid any attention to television (or even just your Twitter feed) in 2016, then you're probably aware of the predicament that many queer female characters faced last year: death. We call it the "bury your gays" trope, and it plagued shows from the CW's The 100 to Netflix's Orange Is The New Black, leading fans to take to social media to express their outrage and disappointment.

If you were living under a rock, allow us to recap:

25 LGBTQ+ women were killed off broadcast, cable, and streaming series in 2016.

That's right, 25.

That's 25 lost chances for young girls and women questioning their sexuality to see their feelings represented.

It's 25 missed opportunities for bisexual women to see that they are not "confused" as so many people lead them to believe.

It's 25 characters that could have given queer women a voice when they left like they couldn't speak.

It's 25 characters that should not have been that disposable to those who created them.

And look, we're not trying to say that queer women (or queer characters of any gender) should never be killed off of television shows. All we're asking for is that they don't drop like flies for the sake of cheap drama, and that TV execs acknowledge the impact that these characters have on audiences beyond mere entertainment.

So 2016 wasn't great, but how did 2017 fare?

Thankfully, a lot better.

According to Autostraddle's list of lesbian and bisexual female characters that have died in television shows, only 11 queer female characters died in 2017, a 56% drop from 2016's death toll.

This huge decrease goes to show that our voices matter, so let's keep blogging, vlogging, and tweeting our little hearts out about how important LGBTQ+ representation is.