I’ve been meaning to post about Max, the ftm character on the new season of the L Word, and the burdens of trans representation. The L Word already has a considerable burden of representation — it’s about dykes, and their friends and their ‘communities’, and while the first season channelled viewers into the characters’ dramas through an outsider’s (straight, male) gaze, threatened but also titillated, subsequent seasons have abandoned that tack and inserted more and more queer in-jokes. The hair has gotten shorter, the clothes have gotten less girly and more dykey… The only thing that hasn’t changed is, everyone is still rich. Pretty much. But the producers are now obviously communicating with and fed by the desires of their queer viewers.

Enter Max, once Moira, a working-class trannyboy from the mid-West who doesn’t know how to eat lobster and never gets introduced to anyone by his stupid girlfriend, Jenny. He begins to take T (which he gets without a doctor’s prescription, mysteriously) and talks to surgeons about having chest surgery (the surgeon actually suggests he hold a benefit to pay for surgery. Has anyone ever experienced that?) He also develops a raging temper and becomes more possessive of his girl — no-one else can even dance with Jenny, let alone make a pass at her. Meanwhile, he cheats on her with gay men, because somehow, fucking a guy makes him feel more like a guy. (It’s obviously a guy thing.) (more…)