The latest season in Tyler Perry’s 8-season series Sistas has a lot wrong with it, including a terrible case of transphobia, homophobia, anti-blackness, and nauseatingly repetitive dialogue. The show stars four beautiful Black women—Andi (KJ Smith), Karen (Ebony Obsidian), Sabrina (Novi Brown), and Danny (Mignon Von)—as friends who met in college and have gone on to have successful, ordinary adult lives. Andi is a lawyer, Karen is a hairstylist, Sabrina is a bank teller, and Danny is an airport receptionist.
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Perry has the flourishing ingredients to showcase the girls in a favorable light as the independent, confident, outspoken, and career-driven characters they are. However, we only manage to catch glimpses of these aspects of their personalities, since the girls insist on centering men more and more with each passing episode.
We could comment on everything that’s wrong with the show, but what mainly sticks out is Sabrina’s deeply problematic storyline.
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At a certain point, Sabrina meets a man named Calvin, who frequents the bank where she works, and he finally asks her out. Calvin is an assertive, at times outright obnoxious character who exists as a sight gag for not being hyper-masculine. Sabrina learns throughout their relationship that Calvin has two gay dads, wears women’s underwear, has queer friends, and occasionally goes dancing in drag bars.
Sabrina is not okay with this, and instead of the show using this as an opportunity to address the homophobia Black women can and do exhibit, it reinforces a divide between Black women and queer men.
For example, when Sabrina attempts to have sex with Calvin, she breaks down after seeing the lingerie and tells him she prefers her men to have “dirty fingers,” wear boxers, and not have prettier eyebrows or feet than hers. He gives her a concerned look before deciding they should take things slow and figure out what works for their relationship. Trust us, we’re confused too, Calvin!
Unfortunately, Calvin spends each episode reiterating to Sabrina that he’s not gay, but she never believes him due to her friends’ prejudice. Sabrina is constantly outing Calvin’s business despite Calvin explaining that his openness comes from having two supportive dads.
Sabrina isn’t the only problem here. Danny has called Calvin “sassy” and “girl,” among other things, to his face and behind his back, even though it makes him uncomfortable. These homophobic bits are never adequately addressed. and feel belittling to the queer community. On top of that, Sistas deals in some harmful transphobic stereotypes. At one point, Danny gets jealous that the guy she’s dating was seeing someone else and decided to “ruin” it by telling him his date was a “man” because of her “thick” neck. The girl reassures him that she is a cis woman, but this is quickly ignored, and he returns to Danny. It’s moments like this that make the show feel unwatchable. It’s not just a distasteful movie, but it lacks awareness since Black women are deeply impacted by transphobia, too.
It’s great to have queer representation, but Tyler Perry’s work lacks authenticity and emotion when writing stories about marginalized people. He has the tools and ambition to inspire, but it somehow always ends up with Black women and queer people as the butt of every joke.
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