A telling disparity marks how queer media is consumed and celebrated. As a lesbian who is chronically online, I have watched the recent explosion of queer content with complicated feelings. On one hand, we have “Heated Rivalry”—a gay male hockey romance that has dominated social media, received breathless coverage and more. On the other, Netflix’s announcement that Bridgerton season five would feature its first lesbian romance was met not with celebration, but with division, criticism and outrage.

This stark contrast reveals an uncomfortable truth: lesbian women are not afforded the same acceptance as gay men, especially when their existence does not serve the desires or comfort of straight audiences.

Heated Rivalry has become inescapable. The show follows Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, two closeted hockey players whose tension on the ice evolves into a deeply emotional romance. What has puzzled commentators is the show’s predominantly female audience. Showrunner Jacob Tierney and the cast have been grappling with the same question: Why are women, particularly straight women, so into this? The answers they have been given are telling.

In an interview with Quin Media, Connor Storrie, who plays Shane, noted that male stories remove “the quiet threat of sexual violence of women that always seems to be lurking.” Without a designated female role to occupy, no concrete protagonists serve as the audience’s only entry point. For women who date men, the romance of heterosexual expectations is incredibly freeing.

But there is another layer. As Francois Arnaud (Scott Hunter) pointed out in an interview with E news, people are “sick of seeing emotionally unavailable men.” In the world of gay romance, women can see male characters not only in a positive, vulnerable light, but also in a way that feels safe enough to connect with.

To understand the disparity in reception between the two shows, we have to talk about something uncomfortable: straight women consume queer media based on what they can see themselves in.

For them, a heterosexual romance is the easiest entry point: she can project herself onto the female lead and imagine herself in that courtship. The genre is her lived experience reflected back at her.

A gay romance is more distant, but still accessible in a crucial way: the romance still centers men. She may not be able to project herself onto either character in terms of gender identity, but she can project her desire onto them. She can appreciate the male bodies, the masculine energy—there is still something in it for her.

But lesbian romance? That offers her nothing to project onto. There is no male lead to capture her attraction. There is no female protagonist she can easily imagine herself as because the protagonist is not falling for a man. The entire framework of her romantic experience is absent.

Rather than recognizing this as a limitation of her own perspective, too often the response is rejection. The show is not for her, so she decides it should not exist at all. Or at least, it should not take up space that could have gone to something she could enjoy.

When Bridgerton season five was announced, the backlash was disproportionately loud from straight women fans who had embraced every previous season. They had no trouble projecting themselves onto Daphne, Kate and Penelope because it aligned with their own desires. But Francesca’s story asks them to invest in a romance where the object of desire is another woman. And for many, that request is apparently one step too far.

The selective outrage about book accuracy only reinforces this interpretation. Bridgerton has never been a faithful adaptation. Previous seasons changed character races, invented entirely new subplots, altered pairing and expanded the universe in ways that diverged significantly from the source material. When season two pushed aside the book’s romantic lead to focus on Anthony and Kate, fans largely embraced the change. When Queen Charlotte received an entire spinoff series that had no basis in the books, viewers celebrated.

But the moment a lesbian romance, book accuracy was suddenly a pressing concern. Fans who had quietly accepted previous changes to Juli Quinn’s novels became self-appointed guardians of the source material. The reason for this switch up is simple: It is no longer something straight women could project themselves onto, but the justification for outrage had to be reframed to sound more legitimate than “I do not want to watch two women fall in love.”

Lesbians are expected to consume and celebrate straight romance—we learned to find the universal elements in stories that did not reflect us. We were told to celebrate gay male romance as queer representation, to treat these stories as victory for all of us. But the moment we ask straight women to return the favor—to watch a single season of one show about women falling in love—suddenly it is an imposition. Suddenly we are asking for too much. We are expected to see ourselves in stories that are not ours, but we are not afforded the same courtesy; the burden of empathy always falls on us.

It is deeply ironic and deeply infuriating about watching straight women react to lesbian romance the way men react to women. For generations, men have dismissed stories about women as niche and unrelatable, as something they simply cannot be expected to care about. Women have rightfully called out this as a failure of empathy. Yet here we are, watching straight women do the exact same thing—they demand that the media cater to their desires, dismiss anything that does not, and expects everyone else to accommodate their refusal to engage. The lesbian learns to see herself in stories about straight women and gay men. But the straight woman, confronted with a story about lesbians, simply looks away.

Gay men face homophobia, but they also exist in a culture that has found ways to celebrate and commodify them—they are still men. Their stories can be packaged, marketed and consumed by straight women who want to see vulnerability in the gender they desire.

Lesbians, on the other hand, face the full weight of societal misogyny with none of the mitigating factors that make our stories palatable. We are not men, so our stories are not seen as universal. We do not center men, so straight women cannot project their desire onto us. We are not for the male gaze (at least not when our stories are told authentically), so straight men are not interested. We exist in a cultural blind spot, visible only when we can be made to serve someone else’s fantasy.

So, what do we do with this knowledge? First, we need to stop pretending that all queer representation is created equal. When we celebrate the success of Heated Rivalry as a victory for LGBTQ+ visibility, we must acknowledge that this victory is not evenly distributed. Second, we need to examine our own consumption. If you are a straight woman who happily watches gay romance but has never watched a lesbian series, ask yourself why. If your answer has anything to do with not being able to see yourself in it, think about why that must be a prerequisite.

I am a lesbian, and I am exhausted. I am tired of watching gay men get season after season while lesbian shows are canceled or not ever greenlit at all. I am done with straight women and self-proclaimed allies who devour gay male romance, but draw the line at anything lesbian, all because they cannot relate.

So, to the straight women clutching their pearls over Bridgerton’s season five, it is time for some serious introspection. If you can binge a show about gay guys without a second thought but throw a tantrum over anything remotely lesbian, the problem is not the show—it is you. Your comfort is not the center of the universe, and your ability to relate is not a requirement for a story’s right to exist. Examine why your empathy has a limit and, for once, suck it up and let us have something for ourselves.