A Single Unified LGBT Character Thread

I think I came up with something for this. I have another character in this story who curses like a sailor who just discovered black magic. He's also kind of an asshole. Naturally she would be mildly annoyed by him under normal circumstances, but I was thinking, what if she got visibly angry, and sometimes snapped back every time he uses the word "faggot"? (Which he does. Frequently.) This would be in addition to the other clues I'd leave in. That'd be subtle enough and rational for her to do, right? Anyone got any thoughts on this?

In general, "faggot" isn't applied to lesbians.

Does anyone know what the IRA thought/think of trans people. I mean, they're pretty Catholic, aren't they?

I'm planning on writing a conversation about The Troubles, where one participant is trans, so there's every chance it's gonna come up.

I don't know that much about the IRA sorry.

I have only heard of the troubles through second hand accounts, but the one thing all of those accounts share is, never once did gender or orientation issues come up.

As far as I have ever heard, it is very much a 'which side do you belong to' thing, and both sides are equal opportunity recruiters. Once you join, you will be expected to adopt the team religion, and team political belief.

edited 25th Apr '16 10:40:33 PM by war877

"Homophobia isn't about hate, it's about power"

I disagree, is to maniquean, for what I see is more with integration ina comunity,sociaty or to said "Tribe" in many cases these people dosent hate gays but they cant let them join what they consider part of their group, so far all their answer boil down to "It is what it is,maybe is shitty but is my comunity and my values and you cant overide that"

I just read an article that talked about many of the (relatively few) transgender characters represented in television, most of them women who either die in the end or are simply reduced to their AMAB status and characterized as "men in dresses". I was surprised by the handful of positive representations, tho. I didn't know Alexandra Billings was trans in real life and she's had a pretty good career.

Oh that's interesting.

Yea. It even had graphs about how often tranfemale characters are portrayed by ciswomen or cismen. I found it rather interesting but I can't remember where I saw it.

It is to common, but yeah I'm not sure where the statistics are.

A little context, I had a condition I call twining in my novel, it is where a person gains a second body of the opposite 'sex' (Or more accurately a body with all the Ys swapped with Xs or one of the Xs swapped for Ys) I have been calling it an intersex condition. Any issues with this? (I have a character with AIS to show a more real world example of an intersex condition)

How would a 16-year-old girl look in her half-identical twin 'brother's (she twined from the boy) t-shirt? Note she is trans but isn't doing anything special to hide her breasts.

In a related vine, when dressing to relieve gender dysphoria instead of passing (for example at home) what are common spoilers(things that still cause dysphoria)? For female identified? For male identified? For neither (i.e. agender or neutrois) identified? Note the character(s) in question are sixteen years old and have never been on hormones or puberty blockers.

My first mental image was of Conjoined Twins. I think you meant that the person underwent a Gender Bender?

As far as I know, intersex comes in many variations and degrees, but is essentially 'having more than one sex in the body'. Unless someone's body had only e.g. the lower half sex-changed, I don't think intersex is the correct term.

edited 26th May '16 6:22:46 PM by hellomoto

@ IRA: It's 1970s Catholics. They're probably only less homophobic than the Deep South.

One of the more interesting aspect I find when reading LGBT characters are how much of the present ones are caucasian, ignoring the vastly more interesting stories that could have been told with attitude regarding LGBT in other cultures except for show with a Cast Full of Gay. Is it that the writers deliberately want to avoid Twofer Token Minority or is it just the general problem of writers having problem understanding other culture

edited 26th May '16 6:44:56 PM by shatterstar

LGBT in other cultures do manifest in their rather unique ways different from, say, America. If the writers are caucasian, Write What You Know kicks in.

Aren't there non-caucasian LGBT writers who do write what you're looking for? I seem to remember a troper who writes about different types of asian gangsters, a few of which are LGBT.

edited 26th May '16 6:31:01 PM by hellomoto

I agree with you there. But it isn't impossible. One of my favorite LGBT character / couple is Rictor from X-Factor - a Mexican gay man written by Peter "PAD" David, a caucasian straight (as far as I know) writer and explored the "macho man" image of the Mexican culture when he came out to his fellow Italian-American teammate. Even if I find he was wasted because he and his newly-reunited BF barely got a panel together in the last quarter of the series.

I also noticed that there's also manga. But I don't usually read those because I find their interaction unrealistic and overly romantic, especially for male characters. Sure, there's some gay / bi men like that in real life but most men refer to not express their feeling and lesbians / bi women doesn't "get over" their attraction to women when they hit college. The fact that most of these are written by women & these characters supposed to be adults just reinforce my suspicion that they never met someone from the LGBT community in RL. Atleast Western media avoid putting Unfortunate Implication after the civil rights era if they can.

I try to avoid them when I can so I don't bother to remember their exact name. Sorry about that.

Edit: That's... horrible. I heard that it's getting better with actual LGBT artists trying to come out and create works. But... eh? First impression is everything and Sturgeon's Law already affected my view.

edited 26th May '16 7:25:07 PM by shatterstar

It's not impossible, but the Write What You Know factor combined with the fear of pissing off the audience over inaccurate representations does explain why LGBT non-caucasians are rarer.

I think most of the manga you speak of are from the Yaoi and Yuri genre? From what I know, Japan doesn't actually think homosexuality is real, but just find it cute and romantic and stuff. So yea, they're not even trying to touch on LGBT issues, it's like lesbian porn made for straight men who are against homosexuality and just don't like men in their porn.

edited 26th May '16 6:46:48 PM by hellomoto

From a conversation in another thread, I was under the impression that most yaoi suffers from a very different problem than entirely too much romance. Namely that they are mostly structured around a specific stereotypical masculine man and a specific stereotypical feminine man in a very formulaic relationship.

If you are reading about a relationship, aren't you specifically looking for romance?

And there are some Japanese people who know that non-standard sexuality is a real thing.

I mean the write what you know thing for LGBT characters there are non-white LGBT people in the States and here so different presentations in different countries doesn't really explain it. I don't know why it is, maybe it is the whole avoiding the Twofer/well we made one diversity point isn't that enough? thing

I think that is simply the writers just aren't familiar to how different culture react to LGBT and fear of stereotyping both the character and the people surround them. For example, a white middle class family would react differently if their kid came out as gay as oppose to, say, a lower class black deeply Catholic family. Add that to the fact that many cultures doesn't even recognize LGBT people (Chinese for example) and you got the current situation.

edited 26th May '16 10:41:19 PM by shatterstar

Now I'm thinking of this really interesting BBC repost I heard on non-binary gender and specifically this section on the "toms and dees" subculture in Thailand.

What about YA lit? I recently read a book called The Night Itself by Zoe Marriott with a black, British lesbian as the protagonist's best friend. I don't read much YA anymore, I guess characters like that are still unusual?

There's a website that covers (but doesn't exactly focus on) books like this called Diversity in YA.

@ Neko: I feel ever since Laverne Cox, there's a really ugly and shameless trend IMHO of cis actors trying to play transgender character with specific transgender issues as Oscar Bait. It started with Boys Don't Cry and at its peak with The Danish Girl and showed its ugly side with About Ray (which was panned heavily and the writer got blasted for her comments). This trend reminds me of the "gay character who got AIDS" trend that started with Philadelphia in the 90s. The only good thing that came out of this is Transamerica because it subverted those kind of movies and is a movie about father/motherhood (even though its portrayal is... less than accurate to say the least).

edited 26th May '16 10:37:05 PM by shatterstar

@hellomoto more like a GenderBender crossed with a HiveMind. I looked at Intersex Society of North America and looks like you are right. But it is mistake the ignorant news could make. So the conversation will go more like "that they are calling Intersex." or explain Intersex separately without connecting to twinning at all, I will have to see how my intersex character handles it.

edited 26th May '16 10:48:53 PM by miiohau

I think that's a result of applying the formula of heterosexual romance novels to Yaoi?

So it's a single person/mind/consciousness controlling two bodies? One being their original body, and the other being a body of the opposite sex that just appeared (does it "split off" from the original, or how does it work?) one day?

That's a cool concept. Not really sure how it would work with gender identity though. It seems like suddenly having a second brain might complicate things.