i have just scrolled by yet another one of those “how to write queer characters if you’re straight” posts and they fucking exhaust me. because they’re almost always just a list of things not to do, and most of it is fucking wrong. and they always put in this caveat ‘you can do these things if you’re not straight :)’ and it makes me want to flip a table, because guess what, i don’t look up an author’s sexuality because i don’t give a fuck, and someone shouldn’t be required to out themselves in order explore certain themes.
so let’s go through some common advice that i fucking hate, and what i, personally, would suggest instead. i am one person, and do not speak for the whole community, just like no one person of any group ever speaks for the whole community. note that i use gay as an umbrella term for not straight
bad rule: don’t have a gay character have close friends who are all straight
in my group of seven very close friends, i am the only one who’s not straight. the idea that is is unrealistic and ridiculous and means the character is a throwaway is stupid. i went to a notoriously gay school and have lived in multiple major cities, so it’s not like i lacked opportunity. it just turned out that all my really close friends are straight. it happened to me, it’s happened to others, sometimes it just happens.
better rule: don’t have your gay character be the only gay character in the story.
what is unrealistic is when the gay character is the only gay character. just because they don’t hang out with other gay people, and so other gay people aren’t in most of the story, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. the pretty lady at the bus stop is waiting for her girlfriend, someone’s dad is gay, two girls on a date past them in the street, the history teacher talks about his husband, they’re playing a game of spin the bottle and a girl plays on both sides because she’s attracted to multiple genders. unless part of the queer character’s story is that they feel like the only gay person on the planet, they shouldn’t be portrayed the only gay person on the planet.
bad rule: never kill gay characters
sometimes, people die. we are all so, so sick and tired of watching ourselves die on screen and in books, but the idea that we don’t die is silly.
better rule: try and only kill gay characters in the same percentages as straight characters
i think it’s important to think in percentages rather than just numbers. the thing is if you have eleven major characters in a story, and only one of them is gay, and then you kill them and one straight character? you have killed 100% of the gay characters, and only 10% of the straight ones.
so say you have two gay characters, and eight straight characters. if you kill one gay character, and four straight characters, you have killed 50% of the gay characters, and 50% of the straight characters.
think about the movie mad max. there was a lot of women in that movie, and so when some women died, it didn’t feel like the end of of the world. because there were more women. in your writing, don’t let death come off as a “punishment” for being gay. if death happens, it should happen indiscriminately. so if you’re doing a dystopian novel, and lots of people are dying, but you’re killing off a much, much higher percentage of gay characters then straight, it doesn’t look great.
this is not a perfect system, but hopefully by keeping it in mind you avoid falling into the trope where the gay characters always die.
bad rule: don’t show problematic gay relationships, fighting within a relationship, or characters who have “too much” sex
we are not all pure uwu babies, and every time i see someone telling people to portray us this way i want to scream. we have shitty relationships, we’re shitty people, we like having sex, and some of us like having it a lot. who we’re attracted to doesn’t change the fact that we’re people, and even people with the best of intentions are far from perfect.
better rule: do not reduce characters to their faults, or to their sex lives
if all we’re told about a character is that they’re gay and in a shitty relationship, or that they’re gay and have a lot of sex, then those two things become muddled together. write well rounded characters!
first of all, sometimes people in perfectly healthy relationships fight, or have disagreements, and accidentally hurt each other. there is nothing wrong with portraying this, because most relationships are’t one hundred percent happy and peaceful all the time.
moving on. yes, the roommate brings home someone new every night and has loud sex with guys and gals and whoever, but they also bake pies and hate the taste of cilantro and have a boss they like and coworkers they want to fling into the sun.
he’s too controlling, and he looks through his partner’s phone, and he gets mad when he doesn’t know where his bf is. his bf isn’t financially stable enough to leave him, but hates feeling constrained. it’s just not going to work. he’s an exec at a hedge fund, bf is a barista, he hates his job, bf loves his, they have mutual and different friends, they watch movies, and he went straight to college, and bf spent a year roadtripping instead.
bad people are still people. don’t reduce people to bad and gay. bad and gay and a shitty boss and rich and a sore loser gives your audience more to work with, and then you haven’t drawn a clear line between gay and abusive. as long as you’re writing well rounded and complex characters to begin with, this shouldn’t be a problem.
you should take care when portraying sensitive subjects, and do your best to portray it well. but that’s true regardless of the gender or sexuality of your characters.
i would note that having only abusive/abused gay characters is probably not great. remember, gay people are everywhere! try and include them in small, casual ways in other parts of your story if possible. this is easier with longer fiction, but if you’re doing a shorter piece where the only characters are the couple in question, then it’s not option, and that’s okay too. just try and be careful that you’re giving people more to work with than gay and abuse.
if you want to portray happy and pure love, that’s totally fine!! sometimes all we want is to sink into a story of happiness and comfort. but if you don’t want to write that, and want to explore darker themes, that’s okay too.
bottom line:
giving people a list of things not to write isn’t helping them to write better. it’s just telling them not to write.
also, don’t demand that authors out themselves to you so you can “decide” if they’re allowed to write about certain things. either something is poorly written and offensive, or it isn’t, and i don’t get to know personal and private details of people in order to decide if they’re allowed to do something. it’s none of my fucking business, or yours.
as writers, we write about things that we’ve never experienced and will never experience. the only way to get better at things is to keep doing them. will you mess up and write something insensitive or upsetting?
probably.
i sure have. but the answer here is to learn how to do it better, to be more authentic in our stories, and be willing to listen and learn from people who know more than we do.
the answer is to write more and write better, not to not write at all.
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