For the Second Year in a Row, Queer Women Dominated at the Emmys

Following a 2016 ceremony that was surprisingly great for queer women, the 2017 Emmy Awards kept up the trend, recognizing queer women and the women who played queer characters on TV this year. In just the first two hours of the show, two high-profile wins went to queer actress/writers.

Kate McKinnon picked up her second consecutive Emmy for Saturday Night Live, this time for the episode where she so memorably played piano and sang Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” post-election in character as Hillary Clinton.

“On a very personal note, I wanna say thank you to Hillary Clinton for your grace,” McKinnon said in her acceptance speech.

In the writing for a comedy series category, Lena Waithe, alongside Master of None creator and star Aziz Ansari, took the honors home for her intimately personal “Thanksgiving” episode. The writer and star shouted out her girlfriend “I love you more than life itself” and took a special moment to shout out the LGBTQ community.

“I see each and every one of you,” she said directly to the community. ““The world would not be as beautiful as it is if we were not in it.”

Their wins keep up a streak that started with Alexis Bledel’s Emmy for guest actress in a drama series last weekend at the Creative Arts Emmys. Though Bledel herself is married to her former Mad Men costar Vincent Kartheiser, in The Handmaid’s Tale, she played a lesbian named Emily. Subjugated by the theocratic Republic of Gilead, Emily is discovered to be in a relationship with a woman and is mutilated for it.

In a year where RuPaul’s Drag Race lost the best reality competition Emmy to The Voice and Tituss Burgess lost his category to Alec Baldwin, at least we can take comfort in some major wins for representation of queer women both in front of and behind the camera.