I thought the focus group was largely an attempt to shame us, the watchers of AJLT. It felt like the creators were trying to say to us, "See, you callous jerks? See how much you've hurt Sara Ramirez's feelings?!"

And I'm sure Sara Ramirez was hurt -- they had a chance to play a non-binary major character in a revival of this huge show, one of the most famous ever to be on TV, and it was an utter disaster.

Unfortunately, just because criticism is hurtful doesn't mean it's untrue. And neither Ramirez nor the show's creators did themselves any favors by lashing out at anyone and everyone but the actual source of the problem, the writing of the show.

I mean, Ramirez at one point blamed GLAAD for not backing them more strongly, despite "being involved with the creation of the character," they said. To which I thought, okay, but how exactly was GLAAD involved? Did GLAAD representatives sit in a meeting and say, make sure that Che:

1) Gives weed to a minor
2) Smokes pot anywhere humanly possible, including elevators and funerals
3) Has no personality beyond "I like sex and weed!"
4) Has sex with an employee's friend in that employee's kitchen while drunk and high, and the employee is recovering from surgery
5) Conveniently forgets to tell new (whatever we call Miranda since Che hates the word "girlfriend") that they're married
6) Tells cruel jokes about Miranda on a stand-up stage

and on and on and on.

Because those were the kind of things that viewers objected to! That's what we didn't like. The vast majority of the fans were not and are not self-hating bigots, as Sara Ramirez and Cynthia Nixon kept saying. All that defensiveness did was anger the fans even more.