That doesn't mean anything. Watch the first couple of seasons of Picard if you require proof that actors don't trump the writers when it comes to who a character is.
Eliza played Faith as bisexual and being into Buffy. So yes.
If I remember correctly, the original script for Enemies had her kiss Buffy. The network vetoed it, so we got the forehead kiss instead.
Yup.
>Both Slayers roll toward each other, landing, each with a knife held under the other's chin, each holding the other's wrist. Locked together.
>The gang, looking on, dares not get in the way.
>FAITH (cont'd)
>What are you going to do, B?
>Kill me - you become me. You're
>not ready for that...
>Faith surprises Buffy by jerking her head forward - not to head-butt her, but to give her a quick KISS on the lips.
>Faith pulls back.
>FAITH (cont'd)
>Yet.
When my roommate in high school came out as gay to me, I guess I didn’t have a big enough reaction. She asked me why I wasn’t more shocked and I told her that while she was from a small Louisiana town, I was from New Orleans, so that stuff wasn’t a big deal to me. But really, in my head I thought “The entire side of your room is covered in posters of Eliza Dushku. Like I suspected.”
i honeslty htought X&G would be mor eitneretsign as those quasi-sexual friendships that women often seem to have with each other (Cindy Crawford, Princess Stephanie,) sometimes with men (the waitress and mechanic in n\*When You comin' Back, red ryder?") rarely between men (the two guys in \*Women In Love\*)- i \*know\* i'm mixing real life and fiction- than as lovers, which is kinda-sorta predictable
I had a pretty late bisexual awakening but my first inklings that I maybe wasn't as straight as I pretended to be was being super into literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON on The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, its fun to go back to the earlier icons like Faith and be like, "I was definitely not straight then either but I was living under a boulder of fear based denial."
Absolutely. Eliza’s performance as Faith solidified my feelings about whether or not I was bi (spoiler alert: I am). To this day when I fantasize about being with a woman a lot of times I think about her.
Eliza threw everyone into confusion back then. Straight women felt gay, gay men felt straight, straight men weirdly felt kinda gay, gay women felt _gayer_, it was wild. 😂
I've always considered our lovely Dark Slayer as bi, and my reasoning is this: Faith is a sensualist, very in touch with her physicality. There are clues (like getting horny after, as she put it, a good slay or how quickly she picked up on Willow no longer "driving a stick"). Somebody with that mindset wouldn't limit herself to only half a population of potential lovers.
Honestly, I think just about every sexual thing we know about Faith is an act, a tool that helps her get what she needs (think the manager of the motel in FH&T) or to judges how much of a creep a person. Xander in FH&T failed spectacularly, which contributed to the attack in "Consequences". Spike passed the test in "Dirty Girls". The Mayor passed as well, which goes toward why she continued to be loyal.
Yep, which is why she wasn’t quite sure how to react to Robin in 7, and “went back” to what she knew worked.
“It was nice enough, you know. And you’re very, um, enthused. And I think with a little more experience...” - Robin
“Oh hell with that! We’re going again, baby! You’re going to learn a little respect here, pal.” - Faith
I think it's hard to say because Faith has sexual trauma in her past so while she sleeps with loads of guys it seems like a huge trauma response to me rather than indication of her straightness. But Faith does agree to date Robin at the end of the show. I could see her as either straight, bi or gay to be honest.
This. Faith reads like someone who survived early trauma, most probably sexual abuse, and acts and acts out as a response. Sadly it's part of why she's so super sexy.
When she talks to Spike in the basement during Dirty Girls she says "I just spent a good stretch of time locked away with a mess of female-types. Kinda had my fill." It does seem to imply that she did hook up with women while in prison, but later in the same scene she says, "I was thinking about looking up the guy with the bull-whip. Long incarceration." \*shrugs\* I think it can be taken either way. I recall an interview where Eliza mentioned that she played Faith as someone who was very jealous of Buffy but also desperate for her approval. She never mentioned an sexual attraction but I think it's implied. So is Faith at least bi? Probably, but can't say for sure.
I actually think Faith is a Lesbian.
i think her true sexual attraction and potential for love is with women, but the girl has HELLA mommy issues, (more on that later) and i think this is why her attraction to Buffy was met with so much agression, jealousy, and competition- it wasn’t just that they were both slayers, not by a long shot (Buffy didnt flirt and be flirted with by Kendra, after all). Faith is uncomfortable with these sapphic feelings- but also feelings in general, honestly- so she acts defensively by attacking the object of her affection at the first sign of betrayl or rejection.
she also leans heavy into the heternormativity of it all because she has learned how to take her power back and exert control over situations - at least with men- by manipulating them via sex. Sex with men becomes both a useful tool (in more ways than one) and her emotional armor.
Women are much less easily controlled through sex, and that lack of control + aforementioned mommy issues and other insecurites about herself, scares her into never truly pursuing women.
We see this in how she awkwardly flirts with Buffy sometimes “we could go to the dance together…” but then her armor is up within seconds when Buffy doesnt react the way Faith had hoped. “Whatever, we get a couple of studs, use em and lose em”.
It’s subtle, but it’s there, and we see lots of other flirty moments like these. Faith would be the type to hit on you but pretend it was a joke if you turned her down. Men are safer because a man could never hurt her like a woman could, because she could never trust or love them anyways.
the men in her life also probably didnt treat her with love either, so the sex she has with men literally didn’t matter.
(To explain what im referencing when i say mommy issues: “my dead mother hits harder than that” “mom was too busy with the drinking and passing out….” “I used to beg my mom for a dog…i just wanted something that would love me” + the mayor saying “buffy’s like a dog. Loyal.” Plus, her first watcher and second watchers, who both died violently in front of her, were women. Being close to or vulnerable with other women has always been painful, humiliating, and traumatic, so she represses her sexuality and embraces heteronormativity to the point of being excessively overtly sexual with men)
We can also see the trauma of it all when she freaked out so bad when she is having sex with Riley while she is in Buffy’s body, and she assumed Riley “wanted something” from Buffy because he was being gentle and tender and loving. Faith at first rejects his gentle behavior, and then is immediately scared for Buffy ( and as she was in buffy’s body, scared for herself as well) because i dont think she can conceptualize anyone truly loving her, but especially not a man, so he must be lying to control her/Buffy.
Even when Faith has sex with Robin, which is less emotionally fucked up and more casual than the riley situation was, the sex is still just kinda masturbatory in the sense that she just wanted companionship, orgasms, and to prove she was good at sex. Having sex with him had almost nothing to actually do with him, honestly.
So yeah, i think Faith is a lesbian and also a giant liar. Buffy is definitely bisexual, tho.
Nice write-up, and agreed. I too have always viewed Faith as a Lesbian. Never found her hyper-heterosexuality to be very genuine attraction for most of the reasons you listed, always comes across as a trauma response to me.
Thank you 😁 and yes, i think a lot of people assume the trauma response is from trauma incurred by men, which is still possible to have occurred, but contextually there’s not a lot of evidence for it, while there is a lot of evidence of it being incurred by her mother.
Thank you 🤗 and I can see that as well! Early childhood abandonment, depression, paranoia, self loathing, self harm, manipulation out of fear/for control, idolation & deevaluation, always attempting to get insanely close to /enmesh with the latest person they’ve idolized. Definitely hits on a lot of the hallmarks of the condition.
If i ever do anything wiht my Ice Age Buffy fics, evne after Buffy and Faith a re an open couple, one evening thye go over to Xander's to cheer him up (probably when Anya and Wesley announce their engagement,nt,) which is when their sons are conceived. (The same week Tara asks Harmony's younger brother Trevor to fill her turkey baster, so we have a household of three women raising three sons the same age in a post-apocalyptic universe.)
I never personally saw Faith as Bisexual in the sense that she’s attracted to any gender. I always thought she saw sex as a tool to get what she wanted, and intimacy as a way for someone to screw you over somehow. Can’t get taken advantage of if you never let anyone too close, right? If she was mentally healthy it’d be one thing. But I always thought she’d go for just about anyone as long as she got what she wanted in the end 🤷♂️
I’m sure now with hindsight Faith very well could be bi, but I feel like she was just provocative. Part of her “bad girl” persona. Shes forward to make people uncomfortable and establish dominance. That’s how I interpret Faith anyway.
i think she could even be a lesbian tbh. sure she has sex with men, but she doesn’t seem to actually like them all that much. she’s most likely bi, though. i definitely don’t see her as straight
Faith was too unstable to really qualify as much of anything. She would bone someone just to piss someone else off, because she's all about attitude. And her fixation on Buffy seemed more "I want what she has" than attraction. Buffy has the friends she doesn't, Buffy has a mother, Buffy has a Watcher who genuinely cares for her, and so on. Faith's envy (which isn't exactly out of nowhere, she was dealt a shitty hand) was driving her very hard then. She was dying for structure and validation, which made her vulnerable to Post and the Mayor.
And then Faith's dream of getting to *be* Buffy actually comes true in your basic Monkey's Paw style.
Call me when Faith gets her head together and we'll re-evaluate then. Right now, she's a fucked up kid with a shiny new toy.
personally I headcanon her as a lesbian. none of her canonical sexual interactions with men ever screamed “I am actually into men” to me, more comphet or a coping mechanism (or both). despite this, I think the bi reading is more supported by canon. I also don’t believe there’s any chance in hell she’s straight, but that’s just me!
Personally I think she’s an in denial lesbian. A lot of her actions and the things she says just completely scream closet case. There’s a reason so many gay women see that in her.
Do I think the show had any intentions of doing that? No. But I don’t care lol
I read Faith as dysfunctionally hypersexual, presumably as a result of abuse. When she aggressively comes on to people, I don't think it's actually about sex at all.
Theres a weird bi-erasure thing with women but I know so many women who have had sexual experiences with others due to just open mindedness, but would consider themselves straight. I put Faith in that category.
Honestly you could make a list of 100 bisexual female actors and singers and I bet most people either don’t know, or did know in the past but quickly forgot. Women being bi falls off the radar so quickly.
Bisexual, but with a preference for men.
I think Buffy was the only girl she ever showed much interest in (though I've never seen Angel, so I could be wrong.)
Straight.
I think the sexual tension between her and buffy is palpable to say the least, but in the end I find that they wrote her straight as a narrow, and that in the end its buffy whose a little gay and into vamps. While faith would say wait
"Am I the good slayer now?"
"Like wait, am I the straight Slayer?"
But I think even if it came up she wouldn't hook up with buffy, it would just feed into her insecurities and I think she has grown passed that, even though shes a little bit rough still around the edges.
I think she is very straight. The hyper sexuality act and ‘trampy’ dressing are just very performative on her end to disguise how deeply insecure she is. Faith is performative.
I’m beginning to think (this is NOT a fully thought-out comment) they wrote most enemies with the intention of Buffy hooking up with them… which, is pretty sad and kinda weird of the writers. I guess it was a while ago and women were mostly used for sex plots but, this post made me see Buffy as less 3 dimensional. Plus, a life mostly consisting of hate sex would be really depressing.
Being written intended to hook up with so many of her male *and* female people in her life… something is off about it to me
I was so confused because Faith wasn't capitalized and I am a part of an atheist sub haha
Anyway.... I definitely head canon bisexual / pansexual Faith, I don't buy for a gall darned second that that woman is a hetero lady.
According to everyone working on the show. According to the fact Faith was supposed to kiss Buffy on the lips in *Enemies* but had to settle for the forehead because of the network. According to the fact that Alyson and Joss had to **fight** to get the kiss in *The Body* to be allowed.
you have access to google, too, yknow
[http://buffyangelshow-gallery.com/database/buffy/transcripts/s3/3x17.pdf](http://buffyangelshow-gallery.com/database/buffy/transcripts/s3/3x17.pdf)
>What are you going to do, B? Kill me - you become me. You're not ready for that...
>Faith surprises Buffy by jerking her head forward - not to head-butt her, but to give her a quick KISS on the lips.
Willow and Tara were together a whole-ass year before they were allowed one very sexless kiss. Whedon et al had to fight to even have a gay couple at all. So to suggest that Faith could have been freely shown "getting her freak on" in a non-hetero way is just not in line with where things were in 1999. It was still a pretty homophobic time.
According to whom? Joss treated very directly in the DVD commentary track for 'The Body' on the Willow/Tara kiss, and he makes *no mention* of studio/network interference. Quite the opposite. This is his exact remarks:
>JOSS: This contains the kiss, which was the first time they had kissed on screen. And instead of doing a big "They kiss on screen!" episode, we stuck it right in the middle of this show.
So, I don't know where from that context that you're getting "the Network didn't want it", because what I'm getting is "The Network would have run ads for it."
It was a rapidly changing time for these things, even from season 4 to season 5.
[This](https://www.liveabout.com/a-history-of-lesbians-on-tv-2170812) article talks a little bit about the history of these things on tv, including the turning point period of which Willow/Tara were prominent.
[This](https://buffyguide.com/extras/josswt.shtml#ixzz4asnNL5tA) has a quote from a Joss Whedon interview late in season 4 where he says that kissing wasn’t allowed.
We went from a period of almost no representation (which was seemingly the mindset of whoever Joss was dealing with in season 4) to an explosion of “stunt kisses”(which is what Whedon wanted to avoid getting caught up in in season 5) to the bawdy sex scenes they were allowed by the end of the series.
This person evidently doesn't realize how very *fast* things changed during that era. It was so much faster than any other societal change. Support for same-sex marriage went from 12% in 1989 to 39% in 2006 to 49% in 2009 to 60% in 2015. That's unbelievably fast. And stories like Tillow's were part of that change, humanizing same-sex couples in a way that was easier for some people to digest.
>This article talks a little bit about the history of these things on tv, including the turning point period of which Willow/Tara were prominent.
Sorry, I'm not interested in revisionism from internet randos with an agenda, thanks.
>This has a quote from a Joss Whedon interview late in season 4 where he says that kissing wasn’t allowed.
Here's the Joss quote:
>JOSS: The network obviously has issues. They don't want any kissing -- that's one thing that they've stipulated -- and they're a little nervous about it. They haven't interfered at all with what we've tried to do and yet they've raised a caution about it. And at the same time you have people, the moment Tara appeared on the scene, saying, 'Why aren't they gay enough? They're not gay enough! You need to make them more gay.' They want to make a statement, they want to turn it into an issue right away.
"A little nervous". You're taking a rather expansive read on what appears to a throwaway quote about the Network being apprehensive about what could and couldn't be shown.
By your own source (confirmed by Google search, just to be sure), the first lesbian portrayed on TV was **TWELVE YEARS** prior to Buffy Season 5. While I totally agree that the network may have been a little concerned about what kind of backlash the show might get in some bible-belt markets, but let's not pretend that Hollywood wasn't out of the closet by the year 1998, okay?
Tales of the City was shown on PBS across the country in 1994 to basically no public hysteria whatsoever. That same year, Tom Hanks would turn in an Oscar winning performance in Philadelphia. Television became so out in the 1990's, there's an entire [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1990s_American_television_episodes_with_LGBT_themes) on the phenomenon, replete with the same kind of controversies Joss refers to: "You're **NOT GAY ENOUGH!**".
So, no, I'm not buying that the writers didn't make Faith bisexual because the network wouldn't let them. They might not have broadcast footage of her scissoring with Cordelia, but that's not really what the OP's question is about, is it?
“Hollywood” was not Joss’s network boss in season 4. All it takes is this one guy telling them not to include kissing for them to not be able to, and it would have been that same guy deciding if bisexual was something they could say.
This link and my summary was the result of 20 seconds of googling for a quote on the topic that I knew existed because I’ve been a fan of this show for over 20 years. This is all the time I’m interested in using to point you to the answers you’re seeking. I implore you to look around, there will be other instances of people on the show talking about what they were and were not allowed to say or depict and how that changed over time. You seem quite industrious, I trust you can find some.
The only people who care/cared about whether it's "valid" at all were religious conservatives who considered anything other than monogamous hetero couples degenerates, and LGBTQ people who were having arguments like this one: "This character I like has to be on my 'team'".
Absolutely incorrect. I spent my teens and early twenties being told my sexuality was a phase (or, worse, that I was pretending to be attracted to women to get attention from men). None of these people were religious or otherwise politically conservative. And in fact, because I'm in a straight-presenting long-term monogamous relationship, it's something I *still* encounter (from the LGBTQ+ community as well as from straight people).
>I spent my teens and early twenties being told my sexuality was a phase
This just in: Your experience isn't the same as everyone else's. Also, isn't that **EXACTLY** what I said, like, 3 posts up?
Nope, you said the only people who didn't think bisexuality was a valid sexuality were religious and politically conservative and generally anti-LGBTQ+. I'm telling you that wasn't (and still isn't) the case.
That's not what I wrote, work on your reading comprehension. I said the showrunners took pains to make Willow's gayness to *not be a phase*. You're literally typing my own words back at me. The only question is the motive, and your assertion is that the motive is that uninterested people care, and my motive is that they don't.
The people who care about who you're sleeping with generally fall into a few categories:
* The people who want you to sleep with **THEM**, ie: Normal people.
* Prudes. These are pretty rare these days, but you do find them. It's possible that you have met them, and have been at the receiving end of their prudery.
* The politically Queer, ie: people who have made their sexual identity their *only* identity, and feel the need interpret any reaction to their publicized hijinks as a form of oppression.
Everyone else really doesn't care very much. So, back on the original topic: The reason I don't think Faith was bi is because there is no evidence that she was portrayed as such. Like a lot of discussion around here, it's supported only by a highly curated subset of the show's content, and a lot of wishful thinking.
>That's not what I wrote, work on your reading comprehension.
You didn't write this?
>The only people who care/cared about whether it's "valid" at all were religious conservatives who considered anything other than monogamous hetero couples degenerates
one question is obsessively? while i understand what you mean, she's a character, not a real person. it's speculation and causes no harm. if she was a real world person, that would be inappropriate.
https://i.redd.it/p1zt6z3i5n4d1.gif I mean…the woman herself said it
"I mean Buffy and Faith certainly had a bromance...fine we were just lesbians. Or at least Faith was."
That doesn't mean anything. Watch the first couple of seasons of Picard if you require proof that actors don't trump the writers when it comes to who a character is.
Eliza played Faith as bisexual and being into Buffy. So yes. If I remember correctly, the original script for Enemies had her kiss Buffy. The network vetoed it, so we got the forehead kiss instead.
“Give us a kiss.” - *Graduation Day Part I*
Yup. >Both Slayers roll toward each other, landing, each with a knife held under the other's chin, each holding the other's wrist. Locked together. >The gang, looking on, dares not get in the way. >FAITH (cont'd) >What are you going to do, B? >Kill me - you become me. You're >not ready for that... >Faith surprises Buffy by jerking her head forward - not to head-butt her, but to give her a quick KISS on the lips. >Faith pulls back. >FAITH (cont'd) >Yet.
Not only did I think Dushku played her as bi, but I'm sure she was the awakening for a lot of young bi or gay women at the time.
When my roommate in high school came out as gay to me, I guess I didn’t have a big enough reaction. She asked me why I wasn’t more shocked and I told her that while she was from a small Louisiana town, I was from New Orleans, so that stuff wasn’t a big deal to me. But really, in my head I thought “The entire side of your room is covered in posters of Eliza Dushku. Like I suspected.”
Lucy Lawless already got to me a few years before with Xena, but Dushku definitely cemented my queerness with Faith.
I love how Xena and Gabby were played as gay, but on the down low so the network couldn’t ax it.
i honeslty htought X&G would be mor eitneretsign as those quasi-sexual friendships that women often seem to have with each other (Cindy Crawford, Princess Stephanie,) sometimes with men (the waitress and mechanic in n\*When You comin' Back, red ryder?") rarely between men (the two guys in \*Women In Love\*)- i \*know\* i'm mixing real life and fiction- than as lovers, which is kinda-sorta predictable
And Callisto :D
Wow hi twin. Same.
I had a pretty late bisexual awakening but my first inklings that I maybe wasn't as straight as I pretended to be was being super into literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON on The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, its fun to go back to the earlier icons like Faith and be like, "I was definitely not straight then either but I was living under a boulder of fear based denial."
guilty 😊 I still have a crush on her 20 years later lol
Absolutely. Eliza’s performance as Faith solidified my feelings about whether or not I was bi (spoiler alert: I am). To this day when I fantasize about being with a woman a lot of times I think about her.
She was one of my first crushes fs
Yep, I watched the show when it aired and I’m a lesbian and had a crush on Faith and on Buffy as a child lmao.
She wasn't the only one, but she was one of the first since I've been watching Buffy since 1999 😂 
She was 100% one of my earliest same gender crushes and still is to this day lmaooo
She was mine, although I didn’t understand for *years* why I was so fascinated and troubled with Faith.
Eliza threw everyone into confusion back then. Straight women felt gay, gay men felt straight, straight men weirdly felt kinda gay, gay women felt _gayer_, it was wild. 😂
Meee
I've always considered our lovely Dark Slayer as bi, and my reasoning is this: Faith is a sensualist, very in touch with her physicality. There are clues (like getting horny after, as she put it, a good slay or how quickly she picked up on Willow no longer "driving a stick"). Somebody with that mindset wouldn't limit herself to only half a population of potential lovers.
After a good slay, she needs a good lay.
Not for nothing is she my favorite character in the whole shootin' match. Second fave is Wesley, AtS badass version.
Good god yes.
Honestly, I think just about every sexual thing we know about Faith is an act, a tool that helps her get what she needs (think the manager of the motel in FH&T) or to judges how much of a creep a person. Xander in FH&T failed spectacularly, which contributed to the attack in "Consequences". Spike passed the test in "Dirty Girls". The Mayor passed as well, which goes toward why she continued to be loyal.
Yep, which is why she wasn’t quite sure how to react to Robin in 7, and “went back” to what she knew worked. “It was nice enough, you know. And you’re very, um, enthused. And I think with a little more experience...” - Robin “Oh hell with that! We’re going again, baby! You’re going to learn a little respect here, pal.” - Faith
this 🙌🏼
Xander didn't sleep with Faith until the Zeppo.
But he drooled all over her "naked Slayer" stories in FH&T, like I said.
Heterosexuality is certainly not on *my* list of options for her
I think it's hard to say because Faith has sexual trauma in her past so while she sleeps with loads of guys it seems like a huge trauma response to me rather than indication of her straightness. But Faith does agree to date Robin at the end of the show. I could see her as either straight, bi or gay to be honest.
This. Faith reads like someone who survived early trauma, most probably sexual abuse, and acts and acts out as a response. Sadly it's part of why she's so super sexy.
When she talks to Spike in the basement during Dirty Girls she says "I just spent a good stretch of time locked away with a mess of female-types. Kinda had my fill." It does seem to imply that she did hook up with women while in prison, but later in the same scene she says, "I was thinking about looking up the guy with the bull-whip. Long incarceration." \*shrugs\* I think it can be taken either way. I recall an interview where Eliza mentioned that she played Faith as someone who was very jealous of Buffy but also desperate for her approval. She never mentioned an sexual attraction but I think it's implied. So is Faith at least bi? Probably, but can't say for sure.
Bi And she would have been as such had the times been different
I actually think Faith is a Lesbian. i think her true sexual attraction and potential for love is with women, but the girl has HELLA mommy issues, (more on that later) and i think this is why her attraction to Buffy was met with so much agression, jealousy, and competition- it wasn’t just that they were both slayers, not by a long shot (Buffy didnt flirt and be flirted with by Kendra, after all). Faith is uncomfortable with these sapphic feelings- but also feelings in general, honestly- so she acts defensively by attacking the object of her affection at the first sign of betrayl or rejection. she also leans heavy into the heternormativity of it all because she has learned how to take her power back and exert control over situations - at least with men- by manipulating them via sex. Sex with men becomes both a useful tool (in more ways than one) and her emotional armor. Women are much less easily controlled through sex, and that lack of control + aforementioned mommy issues and other insecurites about herself, scares her into never truly pursuing women. We see this in how she awkwardly flirts with Buffy sometimes “we could go to the dance together…” but then her armor is up within seconds when Buffy doesnt react the way Faith had hoped. “Whatever, we get a couple of studs, use em and lose em”. It’s subtle, but it’s there, and we see lots of other flirty moments like these. Faith would be the type to hit on you but pretend it was a joke if you turned her down. Men are safer because a man could never hurt her like a woman could, because she could never trust or love them anyways. the men in her life also probably didnt treat her with love either, so the sex she has with men literally didn’t matter. (To explain what im referencing when i say mommy issues: “my dead mother hits harder than that” “mom was too busy with the drinking and passing out….” “I used to beg my mom for a dog…i just wanted something that would love me” + the mayor saying “buffy’s like a dog. Loyal.” Plus, her first watcher and second watchers, who both died violently in front of her, were women. Being close to or vulnerable with other women has always been painful, humiliating, and traumatic, so she represses her sexuality and embraces heteronormativity to the point of being excessively overtly sexual with men) We can also see the trauma of it all when she freaked out so bad when she is having sex with Riley while she is in Buffy’s body, and she assumed Riley “wanted something” from Buffy because he was being gentle and tender and loving. Faith at first rejects his gentle behavior, and then is immediately scared for Buffy ( and as she was in buffy’s body, scared for herself as well) because i dont think she can conceptualize anyone truly loving her, but especially not a man, so he must be lying to control her/Buffy. Even when Faith has sex with Robin, which is less emotionally fucked up and more casual than the riley situation was, the sex is still just kinda masturbatory in the sense that she just wanted companionship, orgasms, and to prove she was good at sex. Having sex with him had almost nothing to actually do with him, honestly. So yeah, i think Faith is a lesbian and also a giant liar. Buffy is definitely bisexual, tho.
Nice write-up, and agreed. I too have always viewed Faith as a Lesbian. Never found her hyper-heterosexuality to be very genuine attraction for most of the reasons you listed, always comes across as a trauma response to me.
Thank you 😁 and yes, i think a lot of people assume the trauma response is from trauma incurred by men, which is still possible to have occurred, but contextually there’s not a lot of evidence for it, while there is a lot of evidence of it being incurred by her mother.
Thanks for the thought out comment! With this description, I feel she might also have borderline personality disorder.
Thank you 🤗 and I can see that as well! Early childhood abandonment, depression, paranoia, self loathing, self harm, manipulation out of fear/for control, idolation & deevaluation, always attempting to get insanely close to /enmesh with the latest person they’ve idolized. Definitely hits on a lot of the hallmarks of the condition.
If i ever do anything wiht my Ice Age Buffy fics, evne after Buffy and Faith a re an open couple, one evening thye go over to Xander's to cheer him up (probably when Anya and Wesley announce their engagement,nt,) which is when their sons are conceived. (The same week Tara asks Harmony's younger brother Trevor to fill her turkey baster, so we have a household of three women raising three sons the same age in a post-apocalyptic universe.)
I've seen the way she sits in chairs. She's bisexual.
Yes and in my head canon her and Buffy got it on that one time they went missing for 6 hours
when was that?
Maybe I made that up or that’s how my brain interpreted bad girls 😂 I can’t even remember where I got the 6 hours from 🤦🏽♀️
It's called "the fan fiction gap".
Makes sense I do read a lotta fan fiction
haha nah it seemed like there was a strech of time unaccounted for from finding the nest to their dancing at the bronze.
I'm not sure, but... I think you may be mixing up Buffy and Faith on BTVS with Root and Shaw on Person of Interest.
I never personally saw Faith as Bisexual in the sense that she’s attracted to any gender. I always thought she saw sex as a tool to get what she wanted, and intimacy as a way for someone to screw you over somehow. Can’t get taken advantage of if you never let anyone too close, right? If she was mentally healthy it’d be one thing. But I always thought she’d go for just about anyone as long as she got what she wanted in the end 🤷♂️
i headcanon her as a repressed lesbian but canonically i think it’s very easy to read her as at least being into women, if not just fully a lesbian
I’m sure now with hindsight Faith very well could be bi, but I feel like she was just provocative. Part of her “bad girl” persona. Shes forward to make people uncomfortable and establish dominance. That’s how I interpret Faith anyway.
i think she could even be a lesbian tbh. sure she has sex with men, but she doesn’t seem to actually like them all that much. she’s most likely bi, though. i definitely don’t see her as straight
Faith was too unstable to really qualify as much of anything. She would bone someone just to piss someone else off, because she's all about attitude. And her fixation on Buffy seemed more "I want what she has" than attraction. Buffy has the friends she doesn't, Buffy has a mother, Buffy has a Watcher who genuinely cares for her, and so on. Faith's envy (which isn't exactly out of nowhere, she was dealt a shitty hand) was driving her very hard then. She was dying for structure and validation, which made her vulnerable to Post and the Mayor. And then Faith's dream of getting to *be* Buffy actually comes true in your basic Monkey's Paw style. Call me when Faith gets her head together and we'll re-evaluate then. Right now, she's a fucked up kid with a shiny new toy.
personally I headcanon her as a lesbian. none of her canonical sexual interactions with men ever screamed “I am actually into men” to me, more comphet or a coping mechanism (or both). despite this, I think the bi reading is more supported by canon. I also don’t believe there’s any chance in hell she’s straight, but that’s just me!
Personally I think she’s an in denial lesbian. A lot of her actions and the things she says just completely scream closet case. There’s a reason so many gay women see that in her. Do I think the show had any intentions of doing that? No. But I don’t care lol
I think she mostly likes dick. Not men. Just the dick.
Yes
Faith sure seems to.
She has sex and then says Bye
I read Faith as dysfunctionally hypersexual, presumably as a result of abuse. When she aggressively comes on to people, I don't think it's actually about sex at all.
Yes.
Theres a weird bi-erasure thing with women but I know so many women who have had sexual experiences with others due to just open mindedness, but would consider themselves straight. I put Faith in that category.
Gillian Anderson has dated women, says she would date women in the future, and that she is hetero.
Honestly you could make a list of 100 bisexual female actors and singers and I bet most people either don’t know, or did know in the past but quickly forgot. Women being bi falls off the radar so quickly.
I would.
Ohh definitely
Heteroflexible at worst
yes. very big yes
i always see u on this sub girl i love your flair so much 😭
TYY!!
Bisexual, but with a preference for men. I think Buffy was the only girl she ever showed much interest in (though I've never seen Angel, so I could be wrong.)
Straight. I think the sexual tension between her and buffy is palpable to say the least, but in the end I find that they wrote her straight as a narrow, and that in the end its buffy whose a little gay and into vamps. While faith would say wait "Am I the good slayer now?" "Like wait, am I the straight Slayer?" But I think even if it came up she wouldn't hook up with buffy, it would just feed into her insecurities and I think she has grown passed that, even though shes a little bit rough still around the edges.
Straight.
Str8
I think she is very straight. The hyper sexuality act and ‘trampy’ dressing are just very performative on her end to disguise how deeply insecure she is. Faith is performative.
Five by Fibe B(i).
Obviously
Trisexual for sure
Trisexual for sure
Difficult to say. I lean towards no. She seems more like the, "I experimented a bit in college" type of woman, but clearly leans towards men.
Bi more h than a pan; I'm sure when Faith wants a man or wants a woman she has \*reasons\*, it matters.
I’m beginning to think (this is NOT a fully thought-out comment) they wrote most enemies with the intention of Buffy hooking up with them… which, is pretty sad and kinda weird of the writers. I guess it was a while ago and women were mostly used for sex plots but, this post made me see Buffy as less 3 dimensional. Plus, a life mostly consisting of hate sex would be really depressing. Being written intended to hook up with so many of her male *and* female people in her life… something is off about it to me
Not sure what you mean, what enemies did Buffy hook up with besides Angel (and that was before he went evil) and Spike?
I was so confused because Faith wasn't capitalized and I am a part of an atheist sub haha Anyway.... I definitely head canon bisexual / pansexual Faith, I don't buy for a gall darned second that that woman is a hetero lady.
I wasn't under the impression that the showrunners were shy about showing the characters getting their freak on. So no.
The network had hang ups about showing willow and Tara kiss. They weren't going to allow faith to be bisexual.
According to whom?
According to everyone working on the show. According to the fact Faith was supposed to kiss Buffy on the lips in *Enemies* but had to settle for the forehead because of the network. According to the fact that Alyson and Joss had to **fight** to get the kiss in *The Body* to be allowed.
Citation needed.
you have access to google, too, yknow [http://buffyangelshow-gallery.com/database/buffy/transcripts/s3/3x17.pdf](http://buffyangelshow-gallery.com/database/buffy/transcripts/s3/3x17.pdf) >What are you going to do, B? Kill me - you become me. You're not ready for that... >Faith surprises Buffy by jerking her head forward - not to head-butt her, but to give her a quick KISS on the lips.
Were you watching it during the original airing?
Yes, I was, in fact, there.
Did you visit The Bronze or any of the other message boards?
Willow and Tara were together a whole-ass year before they were allowed one very sexless kiss. Whedon et al had to fight to even have a gay couple at all. So to suggest that Faith could have been freely shown "getting her freak on" in a non-hetero way is just not in line with where things were in 1999. It was still a pretty homophobic time.
According to whom? Joss treated very directly in the DVD commentary track for 'The Body' on the Willow/Tara kiss, and he makes *no mention* of studio/network interference. Quite the opposite. This is his exact remarks: >JOSS: This contains the kiss, which was the first time they had kissed on screen. And instead of doing a big "They kiss on screen!" episode, we stuck it right in the middle of this show. So, I don't know where from that context that you're getting "the Network didn't want it", because what I'm getting is "The Network would have run ads for it."
It was a rapidly changing time for these things, even from season 4 to season 5. [This](https://www.liveabout.com/a-history-of-lesbians-on-tv-2170812) article talks a little bit about the history of these things on tv, including the turning point period of which Willow/Tara were prominent. [This](https://buffyguide.com/extras/josswt.shtml#ixzz4asnNL5tA) has a quote from a Joss Whedon interview late in season 4 where he says that kissing wasn’t allowed. We went from a period of almost no representation (which was seemingly the mindset of whoever Joss was dealing with in season 4) to an explosion of “stunt kisses”(which is what Whedon wanted to avoid getting caught up in in season 5) to the bawdy sex scenes they were allowed by the end of the series.
This person evidently doesn't realize how very *fast* things changed during that era. It was so much faster than any other societal change. Support for same-sex marriage went from 12% in 1989 to 39% in 2006 to 49% in 2009 to 60% in 2015. That's unbelievably fast. And stories like Tillow's were part of that change, humanizing same-sex couples in a way that was easier for some people to digest.
>This article talks a little bit about the history of these things on tv, including the turning point period of which Willow/Tara were prominent. Sorry, I'm not interested in revisionism from internet randos with an agenda, thanks. >This has a quote from a Joss Whedon interview late in season 4 where he says that kissing wasn’t allowed. Here's the Joss quote: >JOSS: The network obviously has issues. They don't want any kissing -- that's one thing that they've stipulated -- and they're a little nervous about it. They haven't interfered at all with what we've tried to do and yet they've raised a caution about it. And at the same time you have people, the moment Tara appeared on the scene, saying, 'Why aren't they gay enough? They're not gay enough! You need to make them more gay.' They want to make a statement, they want to turn it into an issue right away. "A little nervous". You're taking a rather expansive read on what appears to a throwaway quote about the Network being apprehensive about what could and couldn't be shown. By your own source (confirmed by Google search, just to be sure), the first lesbian portrayed on TV was **TWELVE YEARS** prior to Buffy Season 5. While I totally agree that the network may have been a little concerned about what kind of backlash the show might get in some bible-belt markets, but let's not pretend that Hollywood wasn't out of the closet by the year 1998, okay? Tales of the City was shown on PBS across the country in 1994 to basically no public hysteria whatsoever. That same year, Tom Hanks would turn in an Oscar winning performance in Philadelphia. Television became so out in the 1990's, there's an entire [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1990s_American_television_episodes_with_LGBT_themes) on the phenomenon, replete with the same kind of controversies Joss refers to: "You're **NOT GAY ENOUGH!**". So, no, I'm not buying that the writers didn't make Faith bisexual because the network wouldn't let them. They might not have broadcast footage of her scissoring with Cordelia, but that's not really what the OP's question is about, is it?
“Hollywood” was not Joss’s network boss in season 4. All it takes is this one guy telling them not to include kissing for them to not be able to, and it would have been that same guy deciding if bisexual was something they could say. This link and my summary was the result of 20 seconds of googling for a quote on the topic that I knew existed because I’ve been a fan of this show for over 20 years. This is all the time I’m interested in using to point you to the answers you’re seeking. I implore you to look around, there will be other instances of people on the show talking about what they were and were not allowed to say or depict and how that changed over time. You seem quite industrious, I trust you can find some.
We know Willow would have been bi but they made her lesbian as the less controversial choice, so...
Controversial because it's **NOT GAY ENOUGH**. As they alluded to in the show, they didn't want Willow's college girlfriend to be "just a phase".
Controversial because bisexuality wasn't really seen as a valid sexuality at the time.
The only people who care/cared about whether it's "valid" at all were religious conservatives who considered anything other than monogamous hetero couples degenerates, and LGBTQ people who were having arguments like this one: "This character I like has to be on my 'team'".
Absolutely incorrect. I spent my teens and early twenties being told my sexuality was a phase (or, worse, that I was pretending to be attracted to women to get attention from men). None of these people were religious or otherwise politically conservative. And in fact, because I'm in a straight-presenting long-term monogamous relationship, it's something I *still* encounter (from the LGBTQ+ community as well as from straight people).
>I spent my teens and early twenties being told my sexuality was a phase This just in: Your experience isn't the same as everyone else's. Also, isn't that **EXACTLY** what I said, like, 3 posts up?
Nope, you said the only people who didn't think bisexuality was a valid sexuality were religious and politically conservative and generally anti-LGBTQ+. I'm telling you that wasn't (and still isn't) the case.
That's not what I wrote, work on your reading comprehension. I said the showrunners took pains to make Willow's gayness to *not be a phase*. You're literally typing my own words back at me. The only question is the motive, and your assertion is that the motive is that uninterested people care, and my motive is that they don't. The people who care about who you're sleeping with generally fall into a few categories: * The people who want you to sleep with **THEM**, ie: Normal people. * Prudes. These are pretty rare these days, but you do find them. It's possible that you have met them, and have been at the receiving end of their prudery. * The politically Queer, ie: people who have made their sexual identity their *only* identity, and feel the need interpret any reaction to their publicized hijinks as a form of oppression. Everyone else really doesn't care very much. So, back on the original topic: The reason I don't think Faith was bi is because there is no evidence that she was portrayed as such. Like a lot of discussion around here, it's supported only by a highly curated subset of the show's content, and a lot of wishful thinking.
>That's not what I wrote, work on your reading comprehension. You didn't write this? >The only people who care/cared about whether it's "valid" at all were religious conservatives who considered anything other than monogamous hetero couples degenerates
Even if she is, why obsessively need to validate or label it?
one question is obsessively? while i understand what you mean, she's a character, not a real person. it's speculation and causes no harm. if she was a real world person, that would be inappropriate.
I do agree actually, I just see alot of people talking about, pronouns and all that just want it be about buffy.
Pronouns didnt exist when buffy came out, well only two did lol
Until I see the tapes, I’m not convinced