Hey! It’s June! Now we’ve got to talk about the gays. Though I’m always talking about them here, of course.

First up, please know that I personally do use the term “queer.” I know many do not like this term for their own reasons, especially older LGBTQ people. If you don’t like it, mentally swap it out for your preferred acronym. I simply find it an easier shorthand than typing out the alphabet every time.

In one of my older posts, “Quality Assurance Tests for Character Development,” I discussed how frustrated I become with certain types of queer representation, specifically that which feels as if it was included only for Woke Points. Now, I feel it’s a good time to revisit this and get more specific.

As might be evident from the title, these are my personal frustrations, not universal decrees about how to represent queer characters. I’m not the ultimate authority on writing; no one is.

You’re free to decide that I am dumb and wrong, but I’d encourage you to consider this as a counterpoint to whatever you’re doing.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

The In-Your-Face “This Is Queer!” Advertising

When the author has to remind me every five seconds that the characters are gay, lesbian, whatever, I tune out. You’ve told me that you have created cariacatures of what you think LGBTQ people are and that you’re very focused on “doing” queerness in your story so everyone knows you write queer books.

I had to actually ramp up my mentions of the Eirenic Verses being LGBTQ. Earlier iterations of my website and advertising copy barely mentioned it at all because to me, that is not the most important part of my book series – even though I’m a lesbian. What matters is that the characters are well-rounded, the writing is good, and the plots are intriguing.

Yes, advertising should mention that you have gay characters because that will interest people who want gay books. But when you can’t tell me more about the characters than that they are lesbian, bisexual, trans, and so on, I don’t care. Mention it once or twice, then tell me about the story.

The Token Queer Person

We shouldn’t have to mention this, but it happens more often than it should. You’ll have a mostly straight cast, then one single lesbian or gay person who is just kinda there so the author can rabidly advertise their book as queer, despite the fact that the MC and/or main romance is straight.

This is annoying and unrealistic because queer people hunt in packs. In fact, I’m more likely to have “token straight friends” (who I love and value just as much, of course).

Queer people stick together not just because we have similar experiences, but because we have been persecuted for decades – and are likely going to face many decades more. We know that while we may be able to rely on some very brave allies, our main source of protection is our own community.

Think of us like guinea pigs. It’s illegal in some countries to keep one singular guinea pig because they are a social species; they need buddies for their mental health. Having just one queer person in your book is bad husbandry, and frankly less fun.

The Queer Person Who Never Actually Does Anything Queer

If you just mention that someone is gay and then never do anything with it, then you have signaled to us that you are doing this for Woke Points and have no intention of sincerely engaging with their identity.

Someone doesn’t have to be in a relationship to prove that they are queer. Plenty of LGBTQ people are single for extended periods of time; we have a smaller dating pool and might be very careful with our hearts to avoid wrecking our social networks. Still, we do tend to engage with the community in some form anyway because, as mentioned above, we’re guinea pigs.

Also, there is no one way to “do” queerness; the LGBTQ community is extremely diverse because we’re all human beings just like anyone else. People have different levels of engagement with the community based on how safe they are at home/in society, how comfortable they are with their identity, and how extraverted/introverted they might be. Not all of us are closing down the fetish club every night.

More than that, an overarching culture informs how queer people behave and has shaped how different communities have developed. What would be considered a blatant gay signal in Cleveland, Ohio, is not going to be seen the same way in Sochi, Russia.

If you have a story set in our world, you’ll need to thoroughly research the local LGBTQ culture and perhaps have a cultural ambassador walk you through what would signify queerness in that context.

The Walking Stereotypes

Humans stereotype and categorize people for a reason: it reduces cognitive load. We have to actually make an effort not to do this because it’s so easy. As such, writers need to be quite cautious of how they are stereotyping communities and identities.

While stereotypes might have some basis in truth, many of them are hurtful propaganda designed by people who hate us in order to restrict our rights. It could be possible to subvert or explore these stereotypes in a productive way, but it takes way more work and you’d need tons of sensitivity readers to ensure that you’re not leading to further marginalization.

Some of these include:

• Man-hating lesbian
• Promiscuous bisexual
• Flamboyant gay man
• Predatory trans woman
• BDSM-obsessed queer couple
• Manic pixie toxic drama bisexual
• Chaste “Boston Marriage” lesbians
• Overly, aggressively sexual gay man
• Queerbaiting character who is actually just straight
• Bisexual who only gets into straight relationships
• Super Social Justice Warrior non-binary person
• Every queer person is poly or a swinger
• Lesbians who are only lesbians due to childhood trauma and magically are “cured” by a loving straight man
• Rebellious supposed bisexuals who are just doing it to piss off their parents (aka the “I Kissed a Girl” phenomenon)
• The trans guy who only hangs out with women and acts exactly like a woman
• In a same-sex relationship, one’s the “man” and one’s the “woman” (spoiler, they’re both men or women)

All of these are used to enforce the status quo, implying that:

• Queerness is reactionary and not innate
• Same-sex relationships are a response to trauma
• It’s possible to “fix” an LGBTQ person
• All queer people live devious lifestyles
• Trans people aren’t “really” their lived identity
• LGBTQ identities are only about sexual satisfaction
• Or, on the flip side, LGBTQ sex is too icky and gross to discuss
• Same-sex relationships can be understood from a heterosexual lens
• Queer women are just confused and secretly only like men

They’re hurtful, and they set dangerous precedents for LGBTQ discourse. Please avoid them, or at least approach them with severe caution.

Now, let’s look at some of these in further depth based on my own experiences with the queer community.

Bisexuality as a Phase

This subsection could apply to men, too, but I don’t have experience with that so I’m not going to step on any toes. I’ll stick to what I know.

I used to identify as bisexual before coming out as lesbian, and I did date a few men. This was because of compulsory heterosexuality, particularly being raised by a homophobic father.

My story isn’t uncommon. Lesbians often come out later in life because of heterosexism, which takes a lot of time to unpack and untangle. But bisexuality itself wasn’t a phase because – stay with me here – these women were not actually bisexual in the first place. They were identifying that way because they felt that bisexuality was a safe compromise between being out and closeted.

Does a story like mine deserve to be heard? Sure, I suppose. But you should tread lightly and with an abundance of caution. After all, the representations you create are going to inform real peoples’ worldview, and they may not able to understand the nuances of what you’re trying to say. All they might get from it is that bisexuals are fickle, closeted gay/straight people, which leads to more stigma.

Of course, it is important to note that someone is still bisexual regardless of what gender they are currently with. For example, a bisexual woman wasn’t “going through a phase” if she dated a few women before settling down with a man; she just found the right person for her. Likewise, she didn’t become a lesbian if she fell in love with a woman.

The Lesbian Who Just Needs To Find Herself a Good Man

Again, lesbians often come out later in life because we did spend so much time trying to fit in with greater society. We tried dating men, felt awful about it, fought against our own identity until finally giving up and accepting who we really are.

Of course, it is possible that a woman could identify as lesbian and then find an amazing man. Her life story is her own; I wish her the best and am happy she found love.

But, unfortunately, the average person really struggles not to universalize fiction, especially for something that they have little experience with. If a reader finds one singular book about the lesbian experience, and it ends up with the woman falling in love with a man, they are going to assume that all lesbians are hankering for a dude.

If you want to write a someone who identified as a lesbian falling in love with a man, it is essential that you show other lesbians in actual lesbian relationships.

The Trans Man Who Is Basically a Woman but Not Really

There is nothing more annoying to me than people who go, “we’re an organization for women! We accept straight women, bi women, lesbian women, trans women, non-binary women … and trans men.”

No! Trans men aren’t women! They may be AFAB but they are not women!

Yes, trans men were usually socialized as women and may have deep roots in the lady part of the LGTBQ community. I have multiple friends who used to identify as lesbians before coming out as trans men. I myself thought I might be a trans man for a while; I even took hormones before going “nah, I’m actually a woman, good to know” and detransitioning.

There is nothing wrong with trans men having a history with feminity; denying them that would disrespect and erase their personal story. Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with them chiming in about their past experiences. You don’t have to nuke their backstories.

But please, as a sign of respect to trans men, don’t just make them bearded ladies. That’s blatantly cruel and unfair to everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve. Show caution and work with sensitivity readers when portraying trans men, especially their pre-transition history and feelings about it, so you don’t feed into harmful stereotypes that trans men are just self-hating women.

The Sexually Repressed Villain

It’s a common and very hurtful trope that anyone who is homophobic must secretly be gay. The idea is they lash out at others in hopes of distracting from their own latent homosexuality.

While this may be true in some circumstances, it’s ridiculous to claim that every homophobe is actually repressing their desires.

When I came out as queer, my father beat me so badly that he dislocated my jaw. I can assure you, 100%, that my father is completely straight and has never suggested even the faintest interest in men.

He’s just a homophobic asshole, not a closeted gay man. His hatred for LGBTQ people has to do with his socialization and his virulent disdain for anyone who is not “normal” according to his narrow definitions of that nebulous term.

Some people are just haters. You can show that. It’s okay.

The Over-the-Top Homophobe

I remember I once read a story where someone started beating up their gay child in full view of shocked onlookers. As someone who was beaten by my homophobic dad, I can assure you that this always happened behind closed doors. It’s rare for this kind of thing to just happen casually in full view.

Even when gays or lesbians are tortured and killed, it typically happens in an isolated place. Matthew Shepard was lured out of town in Laramie, Wyoming, tied to a fence and left to die where no one would find him.

Unless there is huge, overwhelming social support for anti-LGBTQ sentiments, most homophobes know that they will get arrested for publicly battering another human being. They also know that there may be allies or other gay people who will beat the shit out of them. After all, such people are typically cowards who back down when confronted.

And yes, while people might yell slurs at LGBTQ people in public, it’s doubtful that they will be following them and taunting them for minutes or hours. That’s trauma porn meant to make people feel bad for your character.

In most cases, subtlety is better for depicting just about anything, but many writers can’t do subtlety. As such, they revert to all caps screaming about whatever they’re doing, believing that More Is Better and Readers Are Stupid.

Readers aren’t stupid, and more isn’t always better. Tone it down, go for some light comments here and there, and see how more realistic things feel.

LGBTQ Trauma Porn

The LGBTQ experience can be very traumatic. I know this first-hand. Many of us have harrowing stories of being disowned, attacked, sexually assaulted, or falling prey to addiction because of homophobia and transphobia. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s unfair – but it’s not all that there is to us.

Yes, I understand that trauma = drama = conflict = juicy plot. But it’s a disservice to us when you focus only on the horrors of our experience.

There’s a reason that so many people despise A Little Life and think it makes our lives look fucking terrible. Because it does. That book gleefully throws every single possible worst thing ever at its gay characters.

While it may have been critically received by literary magazines, a look at the one-star reviews on Goodreads show how many LGBTQ people were disgusted with this book. I particularly liked this long, in-depth critique of why A Little Life is such a disservice to LGBT people, with added comments for further resources.

So please. You can show bad stuff, but also show good stuff. Balance out the trauma with comfort and community. That’s just good practice for depicting trauma, anyway.

Identity is messy, and many of us take winding paths on our way to self-acceptance. Someone could very well use multiple identities during their lives as they work to better understand themselves. It doesn’t mean that what they were feeling was a phase; it just means they were perfecting their self-concept and sorting through the labels that feel right to them.

But we must be cautious in reflecting this through fiction because of the fact that the LGBTQ experience isn’t widely understood by greater society.

We can crow all we want that fiction isn’t real life and shouldn’t have real-life impacts, but it’s not true when you’re depicting a marginalized community. For good or worse, what people read about things they’re unfamiliar with is going to inform how they engage with it IRL.

Yes, someone’s not going to turn into a cannibal from reading Silence of the Lambs. However, they may assume every crossdresser is a psycho killer if they’ve never met a drag queen. That matters, and it can harm innocent people who have nothing to do with your work.

Again, I can’t tell you how to write your stories. If you want to disregard all my advice, that’s your prerogative. But I’d still urge you to take these caveats into consideration so you ensure that you do not inflict real-life harm on the community.