To feel like the character of Jill in It's A Sin was really underdeveloped? ***Spoiler alert - added by MNHQ***

[Draineddraineddrained]

Just binged this show with DP over last couple of evenings and LOVED it (heartbreaking though it was) - but this just got to me...

I mean I don't find it unrealistic that a (presumably?) straight girl would be best friends with a group of gay men and become a huge advocate for them and an AIDS activist - my mum did similar back in the 80s, and I wish like anything she was still alive because she would have thought this show was amazing.

But she was also a full human being with her own life, relationships (mostly dire), failings and priorities - whereas Jill just seems like a sort of motherly cipher, there to hold everyone else together without any normal human feelings beyond extreme empathy and compassion. She feels like a fantasy of what a woman should be to men - completely supportive, undemanding, cares more for them than they do for themselves.

The horrible scene in the last episode where Ritchie's mum rips into her for having no life of her own - it was horrible but I couldn't help but think she had s point and was hoping that some "real" Jill might emerge as a result of this challenge - but no, she just continued to live her life for Ritchie and the other men in the show, even finding strangers to devote her compassion to.

Anyone else just find it really disappointing? I mean the story (clearly) is about gay men and what they went through during the height of the aids crisis. And that is an important story told with beauty and sensitivity. But why include a female character in that, ostensibly as a lead character, just to utterly marginalise and charicature her?

YABU: Jill's a great character/she's not what matters in this show

YANBU: She should have been done right or not at all.

And as @SarahAndQuack has said there. Should also be some drama series ( particularly UK)about Gay women but has anyone thought of making them? If not why not?

Probably because gay women are still viewed differently to gay men and most portrayals of lesbians on TV aren't realistic, they're totally performative in order to pander to the male gaze.

I mean there have been adaptations of Tipping The Velvet and Fingersmith. And of course more recently Gentleman. But they are all dim and distant past period dramas, where the main point of the story is the absolute need for secrecy and fear of discovery. There's got to be so much more than that in the modern lesbian experience that could be fascinatingly unpacked in a drama similar to It's a Sin.

There was a series called (I think) Lip Service which was like the UK version of The L Word. I think it was on BBC3 and was cancelled after a couple of series.

The vibe was very much that of Snow White (Jill) and the seven dwarves. Her different to them yet endlessly patient loving and supportive surrogate mum. Can you imagine the sexes reversed because I can’t.

*Gentleman Jack that should have said.

But would a drama around lesbians need to be graphically sexy?

RTD does a lot of graphic sex because, as you say, it breaks down barriers. I really loved how he was making the point with Ritchie that it was fun, and really enjoyable and not just 'ugh bumsex, how horrible, and now they have aids'.

But I don't think the same stigma exists in the same way around lesbian sex.

You could have a good drama exploring other issues. Like, there's quite a bit of a taboo around lesbian conception (which you see on mumsnet); there's still a kneejerk assumption that parenting is a hetero thing (although RTD had a lesbian mum couple on Queer as Folk). You wouldn't have to have a drama that was all about sex.

@Draineddraineddrained

I mean there have been adaptations of Tipping The Velvet and Fingersmith. And of course more recently Gentleman. But they are all dim and distant past period dramas, where the main point of the story is the absolute need for secrecy and fear of discovery. There's got to be so much more than that in the modern lesbian experience that could be fascinatingly unpacked in a drama similar to It's a Sin.

Oh, yes! I love me some good period lesbianism, but you're right, it's distant and also very Literary and Highbrow. I mean Gentleman Jack was also great fun, but you could talk about it in front of the vicar (well, I could probably talk about Queer as Folk in front of my vicar too, but you know what I mean).

Yup, totally agree. Jill was like Holy Mary of all gay men. Also, this show felt like watching plain porn, I'd feel the same if there was that much straight sex in a short TV series. I thought Fleabag was explicit but tv shows keep raising the bar.

I mentioned all of these things on the other thread but...

The first thing DH and I said after Episode 1 was: well, Jill was underwritten, wasn't she? Her role was entirely as a support human for men throughout the series.

And Valerie was blamed for Richie's fate, and for not knowing he was gay. Women should have an all-seeing eye,and provide the appropriate level of support, at all times, in all situations, apparently.

A friend of mine said, 'well, RTD can't write women', which is totally untrue (Rose Tyler).

Well that's true. Although I do think it would be interesting/worthwhile for lesbian sex as practiced and written by actual lesbians to be represented, purely because I imagine (not being a lesbian myself I don't know) that the glossy, pornified, penetration-and-noisy-culmination-focussed version which is provided by the mainstream is very far from the reality for a lot of lesbian couples. It would be nice to see a version of lesbian sex that broke down boundaries in the same way as RTD's sex scenes by NOT being what the male gaze expects/enjoys.

But yes possibly even nicer would be to see a drama about lesbian lives and issues that is NOT entirely focussed around their sex lives!

I think if you'd paid for porn you'd have felt awfully cheated by a few bobbing bottoms and carefully placed sheets.

To me it just read a bit as boys will be boys and they need a woman to mother them and sort them out.

This resonates with me.

The boys were allowed to be full, flawed human beings. They acted recklessly, as young people do, they made mistakes.

Jill was too perfect, she was shown as a motherly cipher not a flawed human in her own right.

Aaargh though now that bloody Gentleman Jack folksong from the end credits will be going round in my head for a bloody week all over again 🤣

@Draineddraineddrained, what I always find weird and hilarious about lesbian sex on TV/film is that 90% of it involves two women's heads on a pillow and some vague down-below fumbling. I think because when you have straight sex your faces are generally near each other, people imagine it is the sine qua non of intimacy.

But it's not as if bad sex on TV isn't equal opportunities, because nothing is as ridiculous as the straight sex trope of the woman who keeps her bra on throughout and then tucks the sheet over her torso for the post-sex chat.

But it's not as if bad sex on TV isn't equal opportunities, because nothing is as ridiculous as the straight sex trope of the woman who keeps her bra on throughout and then tucks the sheet over her torso for the post-sex chat

🤣🤣🤣

And the bra that stays on never bounces askew, leaving one with a weird half in half out burger bun boob issue. And no-one ever accidentally puts their elbow on the fat bit of their partner's arm prompting agonised yowls 😁

[quote SarahAndQuack]@StillCoughingandLaughing, is it, though?

I think some lesbians also find it quite hard to think about straight men as very interesting, too.[/quote]
This why Stranger Things' Robin and Steve partnership in Season Three is so refreshing.

I loved it's a sin, it was fantastic and utterly heartbreaking

However, even before Richie's mum gave her speech, I did wonder about Jill. Where was her life? She was the mother hen to all these gay men. Aside from that, there was no other story to her.

I know Jill was based on a real person, so I would have liked to have seen more about Jill and her life outside of the Pink palace. Because there must have been one!

@StillCoughingandLaughing, I just don't see the point of this.

Well you wouldn’t, would you? You’re the kind of person who thought it was okay to suggest that gay men didn’t even see women as human. That tells me all I need to know about your level of comprehension.

I knew a "Jill" quite well in the 90s as we had friends in common. She did feel a little bitter and trapped by her friend group (who all called her 'F@@Hag' as an affectionate nickname and she confessed that she felt that she'd wasted her youth by supporting men who offered her nothing in return.

Hmm. I dont think ANY explicit sex acts are necessary. Maybe that's my own issue. But it doesn't advance the plot in anyway way that cant be done by suggestion. Sex is not a cup of tea - otherwise TV dramas would be full of ground breaking, barrier smashing, titillating examples of tea drinking.
I've never heard a defence of it that rings true - but, like I say, it may be my own issue

at burger bun boobs. Never a good look!

@SleepOhHowIMissYou, ooh, I ought to watch that then. I watched the first season and then somehow didn't get around to the rest.

@x2boys

And as *@SarahAndQuack* has said there. Should also be some drama series ( particularly UK)about Gay women but has anyone thought of making them? If not why not ?

Have you seen Sugar Rush?

I suppose the issue with explicit sex is that if it's already in straight dramas, you might want to even things up by having it in a drama with gay men too? Because otherwise the absence of sex makes a point about what's ok to have on screen and what isn't.

I've just watched it again, and it was easier to follow this time as I knew who everyone was, and also I found a transcript online of each episode, so things that I hadn't been able to quite hear the first time made much more sense.

And I've kind of come around to thinking that Jill was actually more developed as a character than I thought - in that it was a big part of her character to be this caretaker, mother figure, looking after everyone. She chose to do that, for whatever reasons of her own - and yes, more background on that might be interesting - but she seemed more real to me this time through. Saintly, yes, but I could see that happening with some women, that they felt that this is what they wanted to do, or needed to do, or whatever - but it felt like it was more her choice, rather than that she was just written like that as a gay man's fantasy of what a woman should be. maybe if I watched it a third time, I'd have yet another opinion!!

I also thought she was appalled by Ritchie saying he'd slept with other men after his diagnosis. She still loved him, but the look on her face showed how shocked she was, but the conversation didn't happen then as his parents arrived. And I don't know if she stayed angry with him at some level but we only saw her later when she'd transferred that anger to his mother for making them all feel so ashamed that they felt they deserved it and had unprotected sex anyway, almost as a self punishment.