Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (March 05, 2010)

FUNNY HOW IT ALWAYS SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO THE LADIES AND ALMOST NEVER THE GUYS
While I've mostly thought ABC has handled the Katharine suddenly finding herself attracted to a lesbian storyline on Desperate Housewives handled pretty well (the "super sexy lesbian stripper who lounges around in sexy silk underwear" aspect aside), I have to say I'm completely sick of this storyline belonging almost exclusively to the ladies (and it usually happens during sweeps).

In fact, the phenomenon of formerly straight women suddenly finding themselves attracted to another woman and/or sharing a surprise kiss with another women is so prevalent that our sister site AfterEllen.com has written about it numerous times including the Top 10 Moments in Sweeps Lesbianism and More Lesbian Kisses on TV — Between Straight Women. And I kid you not, as I was working on this column, I received the below promo from the CW for the return of 90210 next week involving a lesbian and a heretofore straight woman kissing.

Hmm, when was the last time I received a similar email regarding a storyline between two men that wasn't a one-off joke like Gossip Girl's lame Chuck Bass kiss last season, but rather a somewhat serious exploration of the subject that lasted an entire episode? That would be never, of course. On network TV, men's sexuality is almost rarely fluid and certainly not as fluid as that of women.

Much has already been written about how American television treats male and female sexuality so  differently. AfterEllen.com editor Karman Kregloe says TV writers treat women's sexuality as something so changeable because it doesn't take women seriously. Then there is the whole matter of two women together sexually being titillating for straight men, while a straight man suddenly finding himself drawn to another man would supposedly be threatening to male viewers.

How come we never see anything like this?  

Which doesn't really make sense when it comes to shows like Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy or 90210 which skew decidedly female. Given the fact that many straight (and bi and lesbian women) actually find the two men together hot (at least as hot as two women, if not more so), I find that rationale less than believable.

Personally, I think it's because most TV shows are still written by men (and they are the ones who want to see hot women hooking up) and because advertisers are decidedly less skittish about women hooking up than they are men.

In fact, I can only think of a handful of cases where a show has actually explored a man's sexuality using established characters and going beyond the standard coming out as gay storyline usually allotted to secondary characters.

They include the dreadfully handled Probie storyline on FX's Rescue Me (which creator Peter Tolan said was partly done as a prank on actor Michael Lombardi, although at least the network advertised the relationship somewhat), the bisexual Detective Tim Bayliss on Homicide: Life on the Streets (he never kissed another man, much less had it promoted by the network) and the relationship between Keller and Beecher on Oz, a very edgy cable show on a very edgy network.

Probie was briefly bisexual. Or something.

Nonetheless, the world is changing and since I spend so much time thinking about this stuff, I've already got some ideas for how each of the five networks could do something fresh and finally face up to the fact that male sexuality, while probably not as fluid as female sexuality, isn't as set in stone as a lot of straight men would like to believe.

Next page! Listen up ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and CW!