How do I create a gay character without being disrespectful?

He can , he can even be gay and feminine ... however if hes the only gay character in your book it looks like you are saying all gays are effeminate. When you combine that with your lack of knowledge about what being gay is like you have a recipe for disaster


@big soft moose and if I don't write him as gay and feminine and he's the only gay in the book, then I get the opposite argument.

I have to pick one way or the other.

 

From who? What argument?

 

We're not saying they can't be attracted for a feminine man, we're saying that traditionally stereotyping gay men as effeminate was a way of ridiculing them, persecuting them, dehumanizing them, and basically just making them a joke. Needless to say, this shit hurts, so people have gotten rather sensitive about it and it by no means actually describes the majority of the demographic you're trying to represent. If you write him the way you've been describing, there is a distinct chance that you will very much hurt the feelings of a large portion of your readers and possibly incur a lot of anger and hate. If he's not a major player in your book, you could honestly forgo a good deal of description as to his foofiness without changing his personality, then later if his character develops, you could probably throw in a couple of loafer lighteners to kind of push his personality home. But you should at least try to keep his character development ahead of the amount of stereotypes you're throwing in there. Like a lot ahead.

 

Though making them a couple could again be dangerous waters to navigate.

 

Yes.

Let me think now.
The guy I worked with - as described earlier.

Oh, the first house I bought when I was 18, the neighbours were gay. One was blond, muscley, into body building, his partner was dark haired and quite slim, always smiling and giggling.

My husband recently found an estranged part of his family he'd not seen for more than thirty years, his cousin's son is gay. I've met him once, lovely lad, good looking, friendly but a tad shy. His partner is a scream, dark haired, slim, has piercing eyes and is always pouting on selfies. They are the Spice Girls' biggest fans.

Annie, the girl I worked with. (gay woman, married another woman, I hand made the invitations for their civil ceremony - which she never paid me for as arranged)

A school friend of mine had a daughter. Four-ish years ago, she started testosterone therapy with a view to becoming a man. He now lives as a man, has changed his name legally, and recently underwent a double mastectomy. I've spoke to him online and have met him in person once. He's very polite, soft spoken, about five foot two, and slim.

A fellow author and his husband, one is tall and of a big build (as in muscley, not chubby) and the other is slim, dark haired and calls me "my dear" when we chat on line.

Apart from casual acquaintances - and friends of friends, that's all I can think of.

 

Hmmmmm.

 

I know - I was trying to include every possible person different to me - as in not hetero - as in, I've not been living under a rock for 44 years.

 

I thought you were. Miscommunications abound!
Everything this thread has turned into is downright silly. Bayview answered the question on page 1 yet y'all are here arguing over pedantic bullshit like this. I've known queens, closeted gays, "idgaf" gays, and the kind that will make you you know they're gay. There's always an exception to any rule of accuracy you come up with. At the end of the day, I'll defend cutecat's right to write whatever he wants. I think the flak he's getting is unfair. Again, this was answered on page one. Gays with weak handshakes exist. If you're arguing over causation or correlation, have statistics ready, or admit that all of our individual experiences aren't good enough to make the broad, sweeping claims being made here. I came here expecting more than a 2-sided debate where gay characters are either entirely nonchalant about their gayness, or walking stereotypes. I was hoping for nuanced greys and examples of working in sexual orientation with characterization in meaningful ways. At least making it interesting. Was I wrong to expect such things? Between the agendas, misunderstandings, and blatant lack of desire to further understanding on the theoretical mechanics of actually writing gay characters, all the fun's been sucked out. Haters gonna hate.

 

"Haters gonna hate" in reference to people objecting to stereotypes is sort of funny, you know.

 

It's not just gay people who are stereotyped, so maybe get off that argument.

 

...eh?

There are, indeed, a wide variety of stereotypes--about gays, women, blacks, all sorts of people.

The fact that there's more than one category really doesn't strike me as a reason to embrace all the stereotypes.

 

RIGHT!

THAT'S IT!

Sick of this now.

Whichever way I decide to write Chase, there will be a person out there just like him. There will also be a person offended by him. But you know what? that's art! that's writing! That's the risk we take every time we put our work out there. We cannot please all the people all the time, and I will not stop writing on the off chance that I will upset someone but please someone else.

I'm never going to be asked to speak at the next pride parade (btw, London pride was AWESOME) and I'm never going to be the subject of hate mail and letterbombs because of what I write.

THANK YOU to everyone who gave me constructive advice, and understood that writing a gay character is very new to me, and that I'm trying to get it as right as I can.

Thanks to @Laurus for your support (just so you know, I'm a woman, 44, married, adopted kids, and a cat. My avatar is not me)

xx

 

My apologies, cutecat.

 

This actually confused me for a bit because I wasn't sure if how you referred to their preference depended on how it related to either their sex or their gender. Then I decided to stop worrying about it and if it became an issue to just ask them politely what they preferred.

Fair enough, but please consider very seriously that you are not the only person that can be negatively affected by what you write.

 

I think so too, but for different reasons.

 

I'm saying get off the stereotype argument. Rather than saying what I can't (or shouldn't) write, how about what I can (or should) write with regard to what's offensive and what's not, because it's pretty clear to me that EVERYTHING suggested can be taken as offensive/wrong/politically incorrect.

Other peoples suggestions have been jumped on too, so we are now down to having a guy who acts like a guy, who I know is gay but no one else will because he's currently only a secondary character and we really don't need to know he's gay because we won't see his personal life, and him being gay has no real affect on his day to day life or his work life ...

 

If all authors seriously considered every person who MAY be negatively affected by what they wrote, there would be no books. Either that, or EVERY book would come with a trigger warning giving a list of people who should not read that particular book.

 

And what's wrong with that?

Can you really not contemplate writing him as a person and not as a gay?

By the way, plenty of people, including Chicken, gave you sensible and non-offensive ideas for telling the reader he's gay. So I'm not sure where all this angst is coming from.

 

...um. Yes. You will have a character that doesn't fulfill offensive stereotypes. How is this a problem?

People can know he's gay. There have been countless non-stereotypical suggestions of ways to do that.

But otherwise, yes. His gayness will not be a giggle-inducing stereotype-filled source of entertainment.

There are many ways to make characters interesting. You don't have to use stereotypes.

 

...Okay, I get it. You don't want to write an accurately and sensitively portrayed gay character. You want us to tell you it's fine to write an offensive stereotype.

Could have saved us all a lot of time if you'd been honest in your opening post.