This story contains spoilers about the show “Empathie.”

Empathy is under attack. In a familiar move, conservatives have recast it as “woke,” and therefore, as something suspect. Excessive. Dangerous, even.

But empathy isn’t dead. And, inconveniently, it is still needed — not only to understand one another, but to reach across differences, to feel our way toward people we are not supposed to recognize as ourselves.

Read more: MAGA’s ‘war on empathy’ might not be original, but it is dangerous

The television series Empathie, created by Québec actor, writer and producer Florence Longpré — who also stars in the series — has met with an enthusiastic global reception.

Canadian streamer Crave reports Empathie is the platform’s most-watched original French-language drama. Not insignificantly, 23 per cent of its viewings were with English subtitles, and the show has attracted rave reviews in both English- and French-language media.

There are many reasons for this success and why viewers have responded so strongly to the show.

It centres around Suzanne, a psychiatrist, and her work with mentally ill patients in a high-security psychiatric hospital. Not only does it portray day-to-day life in such a facility, it also provides insights into how someone might end up there. By giving context to often desperate actions, it triggers empathy towards people who first and foremost need help.

But I would wager that its force lies, above all, in the feeling of empathy around which it is organized. I’m interested in how that intersects with queerness in the show.

Queer sensibilities and empathy

In my essay Télévision Queer, introducing a........

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