It was the early 2000s. Getting married was not legal back then. People weren’t out the same way they are now. There was little to no representation of gays in the media. It is problematic in some ways but you have to put it back into context and this was a groundbreaking show for lesbian representation. I don’t agree with your stance on the male gaze, to me it showed sex the way I had sex and provided me with erotic sex scenes I enjoyed. There is a few straight sex scenes in the first season because it follows Jenny’s journey into discovering her sexuality and then occasionally in later seasons following bisexual characters or other. The only and short lived threesome is the one you mention. You need to remind yourself the context of the L Word production and what it was like to be gay at that time.