This essay examines the ways in which L Word audiences engaged with each other, and used the text as a way to build community and find acceptance in hetero-normative privileged society. This is particularly apparent among marginalized sexual minorities: bisexual, transgender, older lesbians, and lesbians of color. Viewers found connection through representations, shared narratives, and discourse. The resulting imagined communities provided cultural visibility and worked to make all sexual and gender identifications accepted, visible, and safe.
AaronM (2006) New queer cable? The L Word, the small screen and the bigger picture. In: McCabeJAkassK (eds) Reading ‘The L-Word’: Outing Contemporary Television, London: IB Tauris, pp. 33–42.
Avila-SaavedraG (2009) Nothing queer about queer television: Televised construction of gay masculinities. Media, Culture and Society31(1): 5–21.
4.
BeirneR (2008) Lesbians in Television and Text After the Millennium, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
5.
BrownME (2004) Women and soap opera: Resistive readings. In: CarterCSteinerL (eds) Critical Readings: Media and Gender, Maidenhead: Open University Press, pp. 287–306.
6.
ChambersS (2006) Heteronormativity and The L Word: From a politics of representation to a politics of norms. In: AkassKMcCabeJ (eds) Reading ‘The L-Word’: Outing Contemporary Television, London: IB Tauris, pp. 81–98.
7.
CohenJ (1991) Intersecting and competing discourses in Harvey Fierstein’s Tidy Endings. Quarterly Journal of Speech77(2): 196–207.
8.
CooperE (2003) Decoding Will and Grace: Mass audience reception of a popular network situation comedy. Sociological Perspectives46(4): 513–533.
9.
DhoestA (2009) Establishing a multi-ethnic imagined community?Ethnic minority audiences watching Flemish soaps, European Journal of Communication24(3): 305–323.
10.
DyerR (1977) Stereotyping. In: GrossLWoodsJ (eds) The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, pp, pp. 297301.
11.
DyerR (1993) The Matter of Images, London: Routledge.
12.
GrayA (1995) I want to tell you a story: The narratives of video playtime. In: SkeggsB (eds) Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 153–168.
13.
GrossL (1994) What is wrong with this picture? Lesbian women and gay men on television. In: RingerJ (eds) Queer Words, Queer Images, New York: New York University Press, pp. 143–156.
14.
GrossL (2001) Up From Invisibility. Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America, New York: Columbia University Press.
15.
HallS (1992) The question of cultural identity. In: HallSHeldDMcGrewT (eds) Modernity and its Futures, Cambridge: Polity Press/Open University, pp. 273–325.
16.
HallS (1994) Cultural identity and diaspora. In: WilliamsPChrismanL (eds) Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 392–403.
17.
HartK-P (2000) Representing gay men on American television. In: DinesGHumezJ (eds) Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 597–607.
18.
HoffnerCBuchananM (2005) Young adults wishful identification with television characters: The role of perceived similarity and character attributes. Media Psychology7: 325–351.
JonetCWilliamsLA (2008) “Everything else is the same”: Configurations of the L Word. In: BeirneR (eds) Televising Queer Women: A Reader, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 149–162.
21.
KannerM (2004) Questions for Queer Eye. The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide11(2): 35–37.
22.
KernR (2012) Androphobia? When gender queer is too queer for L Word audiences. In: RossK (eds) The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 241–258.
23.
LinnemanTJ (2008) How do you solve a problem like Will Truman? The feminization of gay masculinities on Will and Grace. Men and Masculinities10(5): 583–603.
MalagrecaM (2007) Writing queer across the borders of geography and desire. In: McCarthyCDurhamAEngelL (eds) Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method, and Policy, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 79–100.
26.
MiJ (2005) Visual imagined communities: Media state, virtual citizenship and television in Heshang (River Elegy). Quarterly Review of Film and Video22(4): 327–350.
27.
MooreC (2007) Having it all ways: The tourist, the traveler, and the local in The L Word. Cinema Journal46(4): 3–22.
28.
MooreC (2009) Liminal places and spaces: Public/private considerations. In: MayerVBanksMCaldwellJ (eds) Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, New York: Routledge, pp. 125–139.
29.
MooreCSchiltK (2006) Is she man enough? Female masculinities on The L Word. In: AkassKMcCabeJ (eds) Reading ‘The L-Word’: Outing Contemporary Television, London: IB Tauris, pp. 159–172.
30.
MoormanJ (2008) Gray matters: Bisexual (in)visibility on The L Word. In: BeirneR (eds) Televising Queer Women: A Reader, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 119–134.
31.
ParameswaranR (1999) Western romance fiction as language media in postcolonial India. Journal of Communication49(3): 84–105.
32.
PrattM (2008) Somewhere between love and hate: Disidentification and The L Word. In: BeirneR (eds) Televising Queer Women: A Reader, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 135–150.
33.
ProbynE (1996) Disciplinary desires: The outside of queer feminist cultural studies. In: ShiachM (eds) Feminism and Cultural Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 431–458.
34.
RadwayJ (1987) Reading Reading the romance. In: StoreyJ (eds) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, New York: Prentice Hall, pp. 292–309.
35.
ReaderB (2007) Air mail: NPR sees ‘community’ in letters from listeners. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media51(4): 651–669.
36.
SchiappaEGreggPBHewesDE (2006) Can one show make a difference? Will and Grace and the parasocial contact hypothesis. Journal of Homosexuality51(4): 15–37.
37.
SeiterE (1995) Mothers watching children watching. In: SkeggsB (eds) Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 137–152.
38.
TaylorC (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
WolfeSRoripaughLA (2006) The (in)visible lesbian: Anxieties of representation in The L Word. In: AkassKMcCabeJ (eds) Reading ‘The L-Word’: Outing Contemporary Television, London: IB Tauris, pp. 43–54.