This document discusses representations of marginalized groups in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. It poses several questions about the show's portrayals of lesbians, queer identities, and women of color. Specific characters like Taystee, Poussey, Big Boo, Crazy Eyes, and Sophia are examined. The document also references criticisms that the show relies on racist tropes and authenticates minority experiences through the lens of the white main character, Piper. It questions whether certain terms like "lesbian" and "dyke" limit gender and identity possibilities.

1. Between Gay and Queer, the
Dyke
Megan Obourn
Associate Professor of English
The College at Brockport, SUNY
mobourn@brockport.edu

2. Qs
• Was the dyke already queer in that she could not be fully
represented as a subject?
• Has queer simply continued to reinforce the invisibility of lesbians?
• Is queer more acceptable as a radical subject position than
lesbianism and if so why?
• In our current moment where is the popular cultural fetish for
lesbianism that attends gay masculinity?
• Is woman already a “queer” position that undoes the possibility for
a more limited but privileged because identifiable subject position
like “gay”?
• What kinds of possibility for gender identity are foreclosed by the
term lesbian and/or the representation of the dyke?
• And is this foreclosure the reason for more female identifiable and
gender normative lesbian characters on television?

3. Orange is the New Black
2013, Jenji Kohan

4. OITNB Representational Possibilities

5. Narrative Frames

6. From Aura Bogado’s “White is the New
White,” The Nation. 16 August 2013
• With very little exception, I saw wildly racist tropes: black women
who, aside from fanaticizing about fried chicken, are called
monkeys and Crazy Eyes; a Boricua mother who connives with her
daughter for the sexual attentions of a white prison guard; an Asian
woman who never speaks; and a crazy Latina woman who tucks
away in a bathroom stall to photograph her vagina.
• I will acknowledge that Orange Is the New Black has created a
credible role for a trans black woman, played by Laverne Cox, an
actual trans black woman. And I can’t deny that the series has
created a payroll for many actors of color. But again, just like the
practice 150 years ago during the height of the slave narrative era,
those experiences are first authenticated by a white person—in this
case, a white woman whose prison stint can never be a substitute
for the violence institutionally carried out against women of color in
the criminal justice system.

7. Baths and Showers Before

8. And after

9. Taystee Poussey

10. Big Boo Black

11. Big(g) Boo’s Sex scene

12. Lea DeLaria Huffington Post Interview

13. Lesbians are very dangerous

14. Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren

15. Piper’s lens focalizing Sue

16. Urination Scenes

17. Sophia, played by Laverne Cox and her
brother M. Lamar

18. “Utopia is the education of
desire”
José Esteban Muñoz

19. Claire Potter on Jodie Foster’s comingout-not-coming-out speech
• How to think about this little exercise
in narcissism, one that so trivializes the
struggles of most GLBTQ people in
comparison to Foster’s depiction of
herself as “a fragile girl”?
• People of color, queer or not, rich or
poor, can’t walk down the street, or
into a store, or into their own
apartment buildings, or drive down the
street in their own cars, without
knowing that they can be stopped,
frisked and arrested at any moment on
suspicion of being a threat to
public safety.

20. Bibliography
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“Orange is the New Black”
Potter, Claire
Munoz, Jose
Witting
De Lauretis