Thus far I have watched the first three episodes of Sense8. I thought I should offer a few views on it because I’m seeing people who have given up on episode 1.

I think the criticisms of the lack of story are fair. The series follows 8 major characters, and introducing them all over the space of a one-hour program is hard work. Many TV series take a while to get going, and this one maybe takes longer than most. Even after three episodes, some of the character arcs haven’t really got started. I’m keeping watching for other reasons.

What makes the series interesting, however, is that it is a genuine attempt to introduce a bit of diversity. We have characters from Mexico, India, South Korea and Kenya. The London-based character is Icelandic, and the Berlin-based character is Russian. We have a gay man, and a trans woman. This diversity is both a strength and a weakness.

Much of the weakness derives from the fact that this is not just anyone doing diversity, this is a bunch of rich Californians doing diversity. Much as I love California, certain amount of cluelessness is inevitable. Also there’s that whole thing that I talked about yesterday about having to present diversity to a non-diverse audience in a way that they will find acceptable. That can mean using clichés. Watching the India segments of episode 1 gave me a horrible, sinking feeling. That was confirmed when Samit Basu tweeted this:

The writing on the Indian part of Sense8 is admirable if only for how many lazy stereotypes it crams in per minute.

— Samit Basu (@samitbasu) June 6, 2015

And then they doubled down by putting a Bollywood dance number in another episode.

Head * Desk * Repeat

I haven’t seen any comment from Korean, Mexican or Kenyan viewers, but my gut feeling is that the level of stereotyping is getting close to the India segments for some of them. I’ve also seen African Americans expressing disgust with some of the Chicago material.

I do think that this is mostly a result of cluelessness, and lack of knowledge, on behalf of the writers. I say that because they also have a minority character with whom one of the writers has a fair amount of personal connection. There is Nomi Marks who is a trans woman, and in my humble opinion she’s awesome (at least so far).

Part of this, I will admit, is because of Freema Agyeman who plays Amanita, Nomi’s girlfriend. She’s the sexiest thing in Hollywood by far at the moment. If anyone could persuade me to become it lesbian it would be her. Especially if she brings… (whoops, TMI). She’s also a great actress, and Amanita is gloriously fierce. But most of it is because of the issues that get covered in the script.

A lot of you won’t have noticed much of what has gone on. For example, the scene where a TERF¹ accuses Nomi of being a “colonizing male” and Amanita steps up in support is fairly short. You probably got that the TERF said something bad, but not what she said, or that she was a TERF.

Then there’s the scene where Nomi and Amanita are given pot brownies by a couple of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Those are two actual Sisters playing at being fairies. I’m not sure which ones — Feòrag probably knows.

We also get a scene at an interpretive dance performance being staged as part of San Francisco Pride. This is The Missing Generation, an extremely powerful piece about AIDS staged by Fresh Meat Productions. The Artistic Director of Fresh Meat is Sean Dorsey, who is trans. Sean has a cameo in Sense8 in a scene with Nomi, Shawna Virago, a queer musician, and Jamison Green, a trans activist².

In episode 2 we get introduced to Nomi’s horribly transphobic parents. Without giving away too much, Nomi’s story arc is turning into a tale of forced de-transition. It isn’t something that happens a lot, but it is something that absolutely terrifies trans people. Mostly transphobic families can’t do anything awful to us until we are dead, but if they can get us sectioned there’s no limit to the cruelty that they can inflict. Lana Wachowski has apparently said that parts of Nomi’s story are autobiographical. I do hope for her sake this isn’t one of them.

I’m sure that not all trans people will be happy with Nomi as a character, but as far as I’m concerned between them Lana and actress Jamie Clayton are doing a wonderful job. Nomi is somewhat lacking in agency at the moment, but the script wouldn’t have trailed her hacking skills if she wasn’t going to get to use them at some point. I’m pretty sure that she’s going to be absolutely key to the resolution of the plot.

And that, people, is freaking amazing. We have a science fiction TV series with a trans woman as a major character. The plot does address trans issues, but they are real issues that trans people face, not using transition as a plot device.

There are a couple of things worth highlighting here. The first is that Lana knows trans issues well and is therefore able to represent them well. The show’s creative team clearly doesn’t have the same in-depth knowledge of, and sympathy for, the other diverse characters that they are trying to represent. The other is that having a high profile trans character is truly ground-breaking. Having an Indian character is not. Indian people have Bollywood, so there’s no chance of them being impressed by a bunch of Americans including a bunch of horrible stereotypes as representation.

Diversity is hard. We all screw up at some point. With eight differently diverse characters your chances of screwing up are pretty much 100%. But if we are afraid of screwing up then we’ll never make the attempt, so I try not to be too critical. Then again, if the trans content was as clichéd as the Indian content, and if I had lots of other shows with trans characters in them to watch, I’d doubtless be pretty annoyed. I’ll keep watching, because I want to know what happens to Nomi. I quite understand that other people might not want to.

1. For those of you who are not regular readers, TERF stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist — basically a feminist who believes that trans women are men, and probably dangerous sexual fetishists to boot.

2. My thanks to Charlie Jane Anders for connecting me to Sean & Shawna’s work.