When 'Queer' is not: Subverting the Subversive through Binary Identity Construction

This analysis questions the degree to which Showtimes’s The L Word, a breakthrough television series that takes the lives of lesbian women as its premise, fulfills its potential to engender not only progress, but progress that is progressive and liberating for the community it intends to reflect. From within a queer paradigm, this analysis demonstrates that the reliance upon binary constructions of identity in the assumption of homosexual primacy, creation of The L Word’s narratives, and visual presentation of the series serve to undermine the power of the program to offer radical social commentary.