Before I saw a single episode of Friends, I knew that I would hate it. Iconic though it may be, the show’s core concept — a group of inexplicably well-off pals mocking and horndogging at each other ad infinitum — always bored me to tears. Offhandedly seeing a few episodes with friends over the years did nothing to improve its reputation. From what I could tell, Friends was a show about Straight People Antics mainly consisting of bad romantic communication, slavish devotion to gender roles, and a shiny veneer of mid-twenties promiscuity.

But last week, as I sat down to intentionally watch the show for the first time, I realized I’d been wrong about the show. Friends is more than just a goofy series of contrivances based on hyperbolically strict standards of heteronormativity; it’s a show about being regularly harassed and humiliated for performing a queer sexual or gender identity, mainly by one’s closest confidants. And though it’s tempting to give the show some slack because of its cultural context, that doesn’t actually excuse any of its toxicity. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see how the show bolstered homophobia and transmisogyny in our culture for years to come.

Often, when Friends comes under fire for its messy history with queerness, fans and advocates point to the way the show was received upon its arrival in the mid-90s. Commenting on the show’s one-night revival in 2016 for the Chicago Tribune, Bethonie Butler opined that “[w]riting Friends off as homophobic ignores the inclusion of Ross' ex-wife, Carol, and her partner, Susan,” two supporting characters who helped propel the show to two GLAAD Media Award nominations and one win for Outstanding Comedy Series.

It’s certainly true that any semi-respectful portrayal of lesbian love in 1990s television was rare at best, but that doesn’t mean Susan and Carol’s plotline was good. As supporting characters, their relationship is constructed primarily to make Ross uncomfortable and emasculated by appearing to trump his fragile masculinity. Ross unsuccessfully bids to attach his last name to theirs when naming their child in “The One With the Sonogram At the End,” and reflects glumly that he should have known Carol was gay because she drank beer “straight from the can” in the series pilot (“The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate”); even when Ross and Susan bond in “The One With the Lesbian Wedding,” it’s with a dig at Ross’s masculinity, as Susan asks him to dance with the tongue-in-cheek offer “I’ll let you lead.” Outside of their relationship with Ross, neither character is especially well-defined.

Of course, Susan and Carol (or more accurately, Ross and his own hangups) are far from the worst source of queerphobia in Friends; that dubious honor belongs to the soulless sarcasm-peddler Chandler, and how he treats his father. Throughout the series, Chandler expresses mortification at having a “gay dad,” as Charles’ coming-out not only ended Chandler’s parents marriage, but led to embarrassment from his schoolyard peers — embarrassment that continues into adulthood, as the Friends cast routinely roasts Chandler on this topic. Three seasons before Chandler’s father plays a speaking role, “he” is already a punchline; in “The One With the Embryos” (which The A.V. Club called “one of the best half-hours the sitcom format ever produced”), the fact that Chandler’s father performs in a Las Vegas burlesque revue called “Viva Las Gaygas” is played for laughs when the gang constructs a “quiz show” about how well they know one another.