ABSTRACT
Premiering in post-millennial America, The L Word (2004–2009) was simultaneously celebrated as a milestone in mainstream lesbian visibility and scrutinised for its erasure of butch lesbians. This chapter explores how its butch invisibility is misinterpreted by lesbian viewers in the Sinophone sphere encompassing China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In the Sinophone world, masculine lesbians are known as tomboy and have been central figures in queer cultures since the late twentieth century. Tomboy-identified individuals are generally paired with feminine partners, and this gender polarity – which closely resembles butch and femme – has been called into question by feminist lesbians in recent years. This paper examines how The L Word becomes part of this debate. Drawing on interviews with six women and Thomas Baudinette’s theorisation of ‘creative misreading’, I argue that Sinophone audience mistakenly infer from The L Word that masculine lesbians do not exist in the West. Through this Occidentalist misinterpretation, they come to idealise the West as a lesbian utopia where female masculinity is entirely absent. Going beyond the symbolic level, this chapter explores how Sinophone women attempt to actualise this utopic imagination in the real, material world.
