Some Thoughts On The Bathtub Sex Scene From ‘Transparent’ That Everyone’s Talking About

In the second episode of Transparent‘s superb second season, ex-spouses and current co-habitants Maura and Shelly Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor and Judith Light) have a sex scene together in the bathtub. It’s an attention-grabber for many reasons, not the least of which being that it’s a sex scene between a trangender woman and her ex-wife, both of whom are hovering around their late 60s. Maura is fully clothed, Shelly is underneath the bath bubbles, and their intercourse is of a, let’s say, manual nature. (Good lord, we’re all adults here: Maura’s fingering Shelly.)

What’s notable about the scene isn’t that it’s visually graphic (there’s no actual nudity on display) but that it lingers. It doesn’t turn away. It can’t, there’s too much going on between the characters. Shelly is surrendering to the comfort of an old lover; she’s recently been widowed by her second husband, and while Maura isn’t Mort anymore, Maura still remembers some tricks of the trade. Maura has sought comfort too, having taken up resident in Shelly’s condo after being evicted and then subsequently shunned by her sister at Sarah’s (Amy Landecker) wedding. We see the entirety of the sex act because of how it advances Maura and Shelly’s storyline, with Shelly falling fully back into the ease of her old marriage, and Maura realizing the limits of that comfortable space. At the end, Maura declines Shelly’s offer of reciprocation, because Maura realizes this isn’t what she wants. It’s a pivotal scene.

It’s also a scene that’s proved to be too much for some in the media. “There are boundaries and there are boundaries,” wrote the Post‘s Michael Starr, and Transparent “crossed over into creepy, gratuitous territory all in one scene.” And, hey, sex scenes aren’t for everyone. Television has undeniably gotten more explicit, both in the realm of sex and the realm of violence, since the streaming revolution began. But it’s the specific tenor of the objection to this particular scene that raises an eyebrow. “Call me old-fashioned,” Starr continued, “but I’m fairly certain that few people want to see a transgender woman, wearing a dress, pleasuring her white-haired, 70-something ex-wife — the mother of their three children — while Mother writhes around in a bathtub.”

And it’s not just Starr. Check across social media and you’ll see a lot of similar thoughts, ranging from grossed out (“I might need therapy after that Transparent bathtub scene. 😳”) to wilfully ignorant (“I saw where the bathtub scene was headed and hit the mute button.”). There are also some people who are genuinely engaged but still confused about how they should feel.

Prevalent across all of these reactions is a common sentiment. Namely, the old “nobody wants to see that!” argument. Stories of transgender characters — or gay characters, or old characters, or any characters who fall short of the attractive/heteronormative standard — are well and good when they stay chaste and bloodless, when their struggles stay on the level of the theoretical and not the visceral. “Nobody needs to see that” is an argument that’s been used to justify homophobia for decades, centuries even. It’s the entire reason the closet exists. And it’s an argument that is completely blind to the things we DO see on TV and in movies, time and again.

A quick, by no means comprehensive list of the things I didn’t particularly want to see:

• Bryan Cranston standing in the middle of the desert in his tighty-whities after a meth-cooking mishap
• Tony Soprano banging any number of debased strippers in his office at the Bada-Bing
• Don Draper asserting his dominance over a business rival by, oh, that’s right, fingering her in public

The common thread in the above examples isn’t just that all three scenarios involve straight white men. It isn’t just that all three scenarios are from arguably the three most celebrated television series of the last 15 years. It’s that all three scenarios were readily accepted by critics and audiences alike as the actions of complicated, fascinating characters. I found Don’s power play creepy and I found the Bada Bing gratuitous, and I was certainly grossed out by Walter White’s choice of underpants, but all three of those scenes passed without much incident. Hell, Breaking Bad put Walt’s underpants scene on the poster. Strippers at the Bada Bing didn’t just get anonymously banged by the boss; sometimes they were bludgeoned to death out back.

Compare that with the consensual, emotionally complicated scene between two women over the age of 65 that Transparent featured and tell me which one nobody needs to see. Maura and Shelly’s bathtub tryst stands out because it’s a sex scene between two character types whose sexual lives have been invisible in our popular entertainment. It’s great because up until now we, as a culture, have not wanted to see that.