ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the television characters' romantic relationships in service of discussing their sexual identities. It explores how the characters participating in same-sex relationships define themselves, as well as how other characters define them. The chapter investigates how the shows use characters' identities – gay, lesbian, bicurious, no label – as a mode of discursive formation, producing truth claims that privilege some and ridicule others. It discusses white gay men do emerge ahead of their women counterparts. Among the women, though, the white lesbian shows the most privilege. In this analysis, there is only one – Arizona on Grey's Anatomy. And she is also the only woman whose identity is not challenged. The chapter also discusses the possibility that bisexual, bicurious and queer women experience negative policing due to an encroachment on heterosexuality. Meanwhile, the men's sexual identities are almost exclusively policed to where they reap praise.
