A new Lesbian Cop has dropped.
In the latest episode of the Disney+ series Hawkeye, we got to meet a new member of the Lesbian Cop Club, Wendy Conrad. While she may be the latest queer character to be introduced into the MCU, she shares a long legacy with other lesbian cops in TV and movies.
Throughout TV and movie history, lesbians and cops are like peanut butter and jelly, and it seems like half of the time a TV show or movie (that isn’t about lesbians) has an adult lesbian character, she’s a cop.
Why is this? Well, it certainly makes the lesbian characters more palatable to conservatives and moderates. She may be eating her wife’s [redacted], but at least she’s also harassing the homeless and arresting Black people! *eye roll*
It’s also interesting to note how many of these lesbian cops are women of color. Again, queer women of color are more easily accepted by “average Americans” if they’re helping to uphold the systems that oppress them.
This list is far from exhaustive. Lesbian cops appear in many more shows and movies, so many that we can’t include them all here. It also doesn’t include other queer cops like the bisexual Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine and nonbinary detective Brianna Bishop in the short-lived series Deputy.