Not Tropeworthy: Lesbian Cop

The Lesbian Cop page is merely a list of works in which a female police officer is a lesbian, making it People Sit On Chairs. There is nothing in the page description that indicates why it would be tropeworthy, such as if it was disproportionate for female police officers in fiction to be gay or for lesbian characters to disproportionately be police officers.

With a description like that...yeah, I can see why you think this is PSOC.

Throwing in a hat for cut.

I'll throw in a hat for a cut as well.

Here's the TLP for reference. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=wqgoghj2xb97kopwq7gpour5

It appears to have been made as a Sister Trope to Lesbian Jock.

edited 5th Feb '18 5:35:52 AM by GirlofMassDeconstruction

There used to be two paragraphs to the description explaining that there may be some Unfortunate Implications to this trope, but ~Mag Bas deleted the paragraph whole cloth in 2015. While I don't expect them to remember why they did that exactly, they can hopefully participate in this effort, too. The edit reason states "unfortunate implications need citations," but I don't think the entire paragraph needed to be culled. I'm not sure if there was any discussion about that particular change.

Note that the issue the OP has with this is that there's nothing explaining why it's tropeworthy, "such as if it was disproportionate for female police officers in fiction to be gay or for lesbian characters to disproportionately be police officers." And some of the cut information could do just that, explaining why this particular concept is strange or notable in fiction.

Also note that Lesbian Cop was created out of a TRS effort for Lesbian Jock. Here is the TRS thread: link. We should also also note that the description in the draft was relatively unchanged from this write-up made by ~Paul A. It wasn't intended to be the final write-up.

edited 5th Feb '18 5:49:40 AM by WaterBlap

I'm not entirely convinced that that write up would sufficiently justify the trope. With Lesbian Jock, it's about the implication that all women athletes are gay regardless of whether or not the character's sexuality is plot-relevant, which is a long-established cliche. I'm not seeing the same implication for Lesbian Cop. There also seems to be more effort to shoehorn in subjects, like the character Olivia from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, who's apparently on the list because fans like to ship her with other women even though she's straight on the show.

I agree with cutting.

I also second cutting.

Lesbian Jock is a valid trope because you can discuss it's roots in the butch lesbian stereotype often making athletic women lesbians in media, especially if they play a "rough and tumble" sport like Football or Roller Derby.

Lesbian cop really has no such roots so what we have is an index of every work in which a lesbian character is a cop.

I think there is a good founding in media for lesbian characters to be cops/secret service, or the cops to be lesbians. It's a thing that has founding in the traditional masculine role and the "soft butch" potential for appearance. May need work and a clean up, but it is tropeworthy.

A woman in a "masculine" profession with authority over others. I can see why Lesbian Cop would be a trope in media. I think it's a little early to be saying to cut this outright. Maybe sending back to TLP can help it get a fleshed out description...?

This trope is OLD though, and someone removed entire portions of the description which is actually the stereotype even if it is a Dead Horse Trope due to changing views.

Honestly a lot of examples should be chopped, its a stereotype but its gotta be the only female cop in the work to really do the stereotype.

edited 5th Feb '18 7:25:37 PM by Memers

We can take it, with the cut description, to TLP. I think that would be the best move. Examples can be put under review over there, as well as ideas such as the one in the comment above.

Looking at the paragraph in question in the edit history, I probably guessed that the paragraph in question only said that the trope has Unfortunate Implications, not that this was literally part of the description. I am sorry.

edited 6th Feb '18 7:09:05 PM by MagBas

"A woman in a 'masculine' profession with authority over others" seems like a solid trope. Even "A lesbian in a..." would work well.

This, however, is arbitrary and way too specific. Cut.

Thats not a trope IMO, maybe a more general Dominatrix Cop type which is a common theme for strippers too.

How is this arbitrary? The stereotype it's troping is obviously "A woman in a 'masculine' profession with authority over others must be a lesbian."

Dominatrix Cop is (a) totally different and (b) a fetish trope.

That doesn't make sense either because trope isn't "woman in a stereotypical masculine position with authority is a lesbian" it's specifically "woman working in law enforcement of some kind is a lesbian"

If that was the case we'd broaden the trope to include soldiers, mercenaries, crime bosses and any other number of things where a woman with a powerful position over others usually seen as masculine is a lesbian.

edited 7th Feb '18 1:16:17 PM by shoboni

Why would they have to be lesbians? Are there examples of it? I am thinking no on both cases. Looking at the trope on the page none of the even general examples follow that.

Just joining the police cause you want to boss around people and look cool in general though could be a trope though. And a fetish it has to come from somewhere, the stereotype is almost always far more grounded than the fetish.

Like I said, the trope is boned in general because it seems to be troping this imaginary stereotype that only existed to the people who proposed and voted for it.

That's why I support cutting it.

Ah, I see what was meant by "specific" now. This is a specific "masculine" profession. I do think the trope could be broader, but that is not a call to cut. That would normally require a more severe and irreparable issue than this.

... Because people are assholes? It's not an uncommon stereotype in the West. I'm astonished that so many people here have never heard of this stereotype. Even girls with boyish haircuts (that is, short-to-medium length hair) are called lesbians.

Frankly, I'm not sold because I'm from a town of 26,000 people in Southern Iowa with some pretty socially ignorant folks and I've never heard the words "that lady cop must be into other girls" in all my 25 years of life.

Nor have I heard it ANYWHERE before this thread.

edited 7th Feb '18 4:59:28 PM by shoboni

I think you could say tomboy, butch, and other stuff.

That might actually be a trope, being a cop is seen as 'ungirly' and a man's job and such. Especially in Japan where those gender stereotypes are heavily ingrained. Miwako Sato in Detective Conan or Naoto in Persona 4 directly comes to mind. The former is an aggressive tomboy but decidedly not a lesbian being The Archie in a Betty and Veronica with two guys. The latter crossdressed to get any respect from the police department due to the sexism involved and other things, decidedly not a lesbian being a romantic interest to the MC and potentially Kanji as well.

Tomboy Cop would make a good name for it I think.

edited 7th Feb '18 3:12:23 PM by Memers

Well we could move all this discussion to TLP if there’s at least agreement there is some sort of trope in there. I’m also quite surprised some of you haven’t encountered the stereotype before, but I guess it’s possible.

I second that. Tomboy Cop for or Ladette Cop might be a more sound and easier to trope thing than what we have where she has to be a Lesbian.

edited 7th Feb '18 5:01:54 PM by shoboni

If Lesbian Cop is supposed to be a stereotype because it's a masculine profession and therefore any woman who's a police officer must therefore be gay, why is there a link to Fair Cop? Wouldn't the stereotype imply that a female cop must be a Butch Lesbian rather than a Lipstick Lesbian?