One thing I’ve noticed in watching this show is that all the gays seem to be women, who are often shown passionately making out with each other. Gay men though have been conspicuous by their absence, at least among the doctors. Oh sure, they’ll often have a gay male patient, whose partner will be allowed to give him an affectionate peck now and again. But gay male doctors ripping their clothes off and jumping on each other in the medical supply room? Nary a sign. (Not that they’d have room, the place is always occupied by the hetero and lesbian couples groping each other!).
In fact I can’t remember a single male doctor/doctor relationship in the show, while the lesbian couple has always been front and center. So is this a general thing in TV and if so why is that? Shouldn’t we have a level playing-field, or perhaps a level mattress?
Shonda Rhimes has another show on ABC called Scandal which immediately follows Greys Anatomy on Thursday nights. The president’s on-again-off-again chief of staff is gay and has been married at least twice. They show gay male making out on that show. But, I can’t recall any lesbian action there.
Oh, and in the Shonda Rhimes show that follows that, the lead character is a female bi-sexual and one of the regulars is a gay male who uses his powers of seduction to get information out of other male characters, although he seems to have settled down with a regular partner this year. Equal opportunity kissy-face on this show.
How to Get Away with Murder, which is also on ABC, and follows Grey’s and Scandal, features a gay male couple that makes out on screen. The main character was previously married to a man, but she’s also had intimate scenes with her ex girlfriend.
Why? Because two guys making out on tv would bring on the wrath of the bible humpers, the One Million Morons, and a vast wave of homophobia and gay panic among the men of the land. They would all shit their pants with horror and outrage. Women? They’re hawt. They’re playthings for the male gaze. They’re like hot little monkeys in a zoo, fun to watch (on a higher level than monkeys, but since they’re ‘lesser’ than people with penises, and their main role in life is to be eye candy and fap material - there you go.) I say this as a straight woman who is indifferent to tongue wrestling women, but who LOVES gay male porn and would love to see an actual gay man story line with some real passion and bite. It ain’t ever gonna happen unless it’s during the last few episodes of a show that is finishing up its run. And THAT will forever be talked about as OMG did-you-see-that-OMG. Now, I know there have been little hints, and a few little storylines - Brothers and Sisters, and Glee, and some cable shows. But the vast majority of ‘gay’ storylines? Women, with bouncing boobs, and giggles, and cleavage, and pillow fights for all I know. Meh. Boring.
I think I first noticed this on Melrose Place – there was an openly gay character, Matt, and he was always and in all ways a sympathetic character – but, he was the only resident of the complex whom we never saw in a hot embrace bent over a table or bed or desk with hot guitar licks playing. The only thing we ever saw him do with a love interest was hug, and rather perfunctorily.
Possibly it is because you don’t watch enough Canadian television, show’s like Orphan Black, Lost Girl, even Schitt’s Creek have all featured men kissing. The first two show’s aren’t very mainstream but the latter is on Tuesday nights during prime time even if the network is CBC.
If you want to see gay guys getting it on you’ll need to get access to various BBC shows. Torchwood had one of the hottest scenes ever.* Captain Jack was trysexual (he had sex with men, women and aliens and was hot). A nice montage of the show: Torchwood - Gay Bar - YouTube <–loud music, gay guys kissing, woman on woman kissing
British tv doesn’t seem to shy away from anything but guns (illegal to own, for the most part). American tv is scared of gay guys (insert sound of a Bible crashing down).
*“Dead of Night” 3rd ep of Miracle Day
In another thread I recently posted about how I could not rationally justify watching Glee as long as I did, but I’ll come to the show’s defense here – it didn’t treat a romance between two men (or rather teen boys) as a “little storyline”. The Kurt/Blaine romance was a major storyline for most of the run of the show, it was very popular with Glee fans, and if anything I’d say the writers went too far in trying to milk this relationship for all the drama they could. But they did make out on camera several times, after they’d been dating a while it was made clear that they were sexually active, and by the end of the series they were (legally) married.
As for how the public would react, I don’t have time to dig up the thread now, but after the episode where Kurt and Blaine first kissed I remember American Dopers talking about how surprising and refreshing it was that this was treated basically like the first kiss between any other “will they or won’t they?” couple. There was no “for mature viewers” warning at the beginning of the episode or anything, and to the extent that there was a media reaction it was basically just “those two gay boys on Glee finally got together.” The only exception I recall was former SNL cast member, total has-been, and right-wing nutjob Victoria Jackson who went on some entertainment program I’d never heard of before called Showbiz Tonight to ramble about how homosexuality is a sin, and even she seemed more interested in using this as an opportunity to talk about how Muslims are evil. (Showbiz Tonight was apparently totally cool with the actual kiss scene, as they played it in full and then repeated it while Jackson was talking.)
That was five years ago, on a network television show, and one about high school students no less. I can easily believe that the television industry is cowardly about this sort of thing, but I doubt that an adult drama today that showed two men making out would really generate much controversy.
Equally importantly, most straight women are not disturbed by watching lesbians make out, but many straight men react very negatively to watching gay men.
So since lesbian scenes have strong positives and weak negatives, while gay-male scenes have strong negatives and weak positives, lesbian scenes are far more commonly portrayed.
As a straight man, watching a woman make out might be fun if I’m enticed by her. If there are two women making out, I’m more likely to find at least one of them enticing. Watching men make out is pretty uninteresting to me.
Network TV shouldn’t have to conform to the interests of straight men but it seems to do so anyway.
Heck, beyond that, there was in the past, and presumably still exists, a segment of straight-ish guys who seem to have an aversion to thinking of any male sexuality other than their own. I remember when Penthouse started showing erect penises, and the letters to the editor were indignant that they’d show that. Never mind the fact that they’d been presenting close-ups just short of a well-lit gynecological manual* for ages. Knowledge that one or two penises might be erect from seeing the same thing in real life that they were seeing in simulacrum was enough to remind them that the might be <clutches pearls> a little bit gay.
Meh, you might be interested in making out with a guy a couple of times, maybe feeling around to see if it feels right. Get over it, enjoy it, you don’t have to do anything about it.
*I’m not actually complaining about this aspect, I was a teen boy reading my father’s library, but it is accurate.
I can think of a couple of shows which were pretty graphic in depicting male/male relationships and sex.
Tales of the City was broadcast on PBS (1993) was widely objected to for the drugs and sex. The book took place in San Francisco in the 1960s (?) and was written by Armistead Maupin. There was talk in congress of cutting the PBS funding because of the show and some stations in the country refused to show it (Oklahoma?). The other two books were also filmed and broadcast, but by some cable channel.
Queer as Folk was adapted from a British series of the same name and broadcast from 2000 to 2005 (the British series was, I believe, only a single year long). This show showed most possible gay male (and, although I fast-forwarded through them, lesbian sex acts). They never showed penetration but plenty of nudity. The Showtime channel was responsible for producing this series.
It sure doesn’t happen much here in the USA, but when I does, it makes me think that maybe, sometime in the near future, that we will grow out of out Puritan past.
Just want to add that at least two daytime soap operas on network TV have featured extensive scenes of gay men making out: *Days of Our Lives *on NBC featured gay romantic storylines from 2012-2015, including both makeout scenes and bedroom scenes, and General Hospital currently has a gay storyline which has included multiple makeout scenes and love scenes. GH has also recently launched a lesbian storyline, although there has been only one kiss so far.
Despite being generally more conservative, daytime may be more willing to show intimacy among gay men because the audience is primarily female and men not wanting to see those scenes is not as big an issue. Interestingly, some of the Sony emails that were released after the data breach included a discussion of the gay storylines on Days of Our Lives, and indicated that the network wanted to continue them because they were a big draw among the younger female audience.
(hot because he was making love or having SEX with you (whomever) and it was about you and him and had nothing to do with if you were male, female or a robot/tree/a spore in human form).