Well, maybe it's less of an issue now. But there's surely a reason for LGBT acceptance rallies and media. People felt alienated by how they were defined against their will by their sexuality... But yes, unless the focal point of the story is the sexuality, it probably doesn't matter.
But doesn't treating LGBT as a seperate group or "identity" with exclusive rights to a certain kind of media further segregate them? It's kinda counterproductive.
Thinking about this I think with peers (i strive to treat all subordinates equally) I'm less influenced by appearances /sexual attractiveness than i am by whether i like them. For example in the group i work in I have three female peer managers (and 1 other man) , of the women my best freind in the group is about 15 years older than me, not remotely my type, and has absolutely zero sexual allure for me (and vice versa) but shes a lovely person and always there for me if things go to shit. Another one is very very pretty, great figure, knock out pale skin, big eyes, long dark hair... on a purely physical level shes a "I neither of us were attached and i met you in a bar' candidate. However shes also a complete nightmare to work with, inconsistent, unreliable, forever running to the boss over trivial stuff. Consequently I am far happier to help/work with etc person (a )than person (b) regardless of physical allure
... and we're not talking about how all this relates to the writing of stories anymore. See the trick to a successful, amicable derail is knowing how far you can swerve the muscle car off the road before you drop your Marmite onto the floorboards.
There is a certain irony to the King Mod derailing a thread (and muscle cars are crap off road - get a ramcharger, I'm telling you )
It's really weird and I've thought about this, but I think of it kinda like the aims of gay movement as a whole is to be accepted & not discriminated against, but since it was met with disapproval while trying to reach those very reasonable needs, it's forced to identify itself more and present itself as a group that needs integrating. Like a catch-22!! I'm not sure if that's the correct use of the phrase...
And then men can't authentically write women and white people can't authentically write black people and extroverts can't authentically write introverts and Christians can't write Jews and tall can't write short and young can't write old and... we're all stuck writing ourselves, and no one else? I think we have to trust our imaginations a bit more than that.
Our imaginations and research Plus I think there's a fair bit of transferable life experience. I bet a gay guy lusting or pining after someone he can't have doesnt feel much different to a straight guy lusting/pining after some unobtainable girl. Likewise for falling in love, breaking up, being bereaved etc Also because people are people the variation from one gay guy to another will be vast anyway - and might actually be larger than the variation from a gay guy to a straight guy who's backgrounds etc are reasonably similar.
I was in kind of a personal conflict about it, that's why I thought autobiographies were the most authentic type of book. But writing from another perspective is typically fiction, and that's alright & necessary... but I wouldn't trust a white person's book on the black perspective is all that I'm saying.
Agreed. I think it just takes paying attention to your fellow human and listening. Genuinely listening. Too many of us are just waiting for our turn to talk. Michael Chabon, who is not gay, and who is a Pulitzer winner, has written many gay characters with such a genuine understanding for the person about whom he was writing that he was been incorrectly praised in a Newsweek article on "up-and-coming gay writers", much to his delight because what could be better praise than to write gay characters so well that you yourself are assumed to be gay by a large, well-read magazine.
A white person would probably be unwise to write a book about black perspective - but that's not the same as writing a black character n a book about something else. ditto a straight guy probably shouldn't write a book about 'the authentic gay experience'or the agony of being closeted/coming out or whatever - but that doesn't mean a straight writer can't have gay characters in a book about say crime
Well it's certainly possible to go far in either direction, I would just say that "researching material to portray accurately" and "recognizing material that you wouldn't be able to" are more effective than just one or the other
Ah, but what exactly makes a "black perspective" different from a "white perspective?" Just because someone's a minority, it doesn't mean they've necessarily experienced the "oppression" that their minority group is supposedly plagued by.
I don't think there's such a thing as "the black perspective," though. I'd think it would be at least as easy for a wealthy, white American woman to write about the experiences of a wealthy, black American woman as for a poor, black African man to write her experiences. Wouldn't you? I'm not saying race doesn't have an impact on how experience the world. But there are SO MANY THINGS that have an impact... how do we decide which ones get in the way of authenticity?
It just means that you look at Justin Bieber weirdly when he says that he has the soul of the black man. It's objectively different. Some experiences are just categorically different than others. A man doesn't have the same perspective as a woman.
I guess that's true... Since experiences are so flavored, it's difficult to say which ones are the most influential... but I do think race, sexuality, and things that we typically use to label people with are up there!
A man doesn't have the same perspective as a woman, but neither do individual women have the same experiences as each other. Every person is different.
I think we all have to be aware of our limitations, sure. But I don't think those limitations will automatically fall along the same lines as other people expect them to. (I think I'd have a hell of a time authentically writing a financially comfortable, well-educated, white Canadian woman who's submissive to her husband and a much easier time writing a similar woman who was in an equal marriage to another woman. I can understand being a lesbian WAY better than I can understand being submissive to men....)
Gosh, well, I am aware everyone is different, but please at least acknowledge that some experiences are different than others, which is why labels like 'gay' and 'straight' even exist. Otherwise there wouldn't be stereotyping. Which would be good for society as a whole, but unfortunately it still exists!
Which brings us back to the idea of a lack of homogeny in the LGBTQ community. Even on an innocent level, there's a problem with assuming we are all "one people". We're not. At all. A while back I was involved in a discussion on feminism here in the forum and I was expressing my frustration at what seemed like so many different opinions and views from respected feminists. I just felt like any time I thought I had my head around the idea, there were three other feminists, arms crossed in front of them, looks of impatient frustration on their faces because to them, I couldn't have gotten it more wrong had I maliciously tried. But, in truth, how is that any different from the LGBTQ community? I don't know @PilotMobius, he/she is new to the forum, but I'm willing to bet, even though we're both gay, we've got at least a few "community concepts" that we'll disagree on strongly, and that's perfectly fine.
I totally agree - all experiences are different. But we write about people who are different from us all the time--it seems weird to think that gay people or people of colour are somehow so completely foreign that we just can't possibly understand them.
And to build on that, there will be things that I totally agree with one or the other of you about, even though I'm not gay.
Since the discussion was primarily about a straight person worried whether their perception of a gay character was correct, I just wanted to point out the ways that it possibly couldn't be. And yeah, I do think that as long as it's fiction, it doesn't matter who or what you write about, so long as it doesn't herald itself as the official anything.
