Watching Showtime

There have been a lot of controversial characters on The L Word, from Kit’s Drag King boyfriend to Marina in general to Angus to Tina’s boyfriend in season three (why must they all be men?), but more and more I’m discovering the character with the most controversy is Max.

While there have been transgender people peppered in the five seasons of The L Word, before Moira began to transition to Max the longest story arch was Kit’s Drag King boyfriend. And we all know he turned out to be a total ass. Other than that, Max is the only transgender person on the show, and the first transgender person many people will encounter. Because of that, members of the transgender community at large in the United States are concerned that Max’s portrayal is less than ieal. Some will go so far as to say Max is doing a disservice to the community.

Rather than pretend I know all there is to know about the transgender community, I’ll direct you to an article written by Dominick over at Literary Illusions. His post outlines with great detail (and not as much bias as I’d have expected) the reasons some subtle shifting in Max’s character could have made him a much better representation of the transgender community, but without them, he may do more harm than good.

Some of the differences between Max and most transgender individuals are:

• Max had a very short period of “coming out” as a man. He claims from the first moments we meet him (as Moira) that he’s always known he was different, but from the time he explains that to Jenny (in seemingly his first coming out moment) to meeting other transgender individuals, to starting a hormone treatment, Max has barely been in LA a few weeks. In contrast, most transgender individuals take the majority of their lives to come out in this manner.
• Max spends almost a year on illegal hormones before finally heading to a doctor and getting prescribed a more “regular” dose. Even if he’d been taking the illegal meds, before a doctor would have prescribed him a more tolerable dose, he’d have been told he needed several months of therapy. This is to determine if the person is indeed transgender, is mentally stable enough to transition, and a whole host of other things. This is not to keep people from transitioning, but rather to help the process along once meds enter the picture. A clean bill of mental health will help get you transitioning a bit faster, and never underestimate the stress transitioning will put on you. The transgender people I know say they relied on their therapists quite a bit more than they ever thought they would.
• Max seemed to get an appointment for his top surgery in a matter of weeks. In reality, this would have taken years to acquire.
• All of the physical changes Max should have gone through (lowered voice, facial hair, and a few other things). These didn’t happen with Max, mostly I’d assume because Max is played by a woman.

These are just a few of the points Dominick covers in his post, so you should definitely check it out. And while I don’t think as strongly as he does, reading his post has definitely made me think!