PSA on Handling LGBTQ Sims and Simblrs
This is a post both for myself and for others. It comes about as the result of dealings with a specific person, who will not be named, but I think the lessons to be learned from it may be able to apply to enough Simblrs outside of that that it will do good to make the post public. Iām not even speaking exclusively to cis straight Simblrs - thereās people on the LGBTQ side who pull this kind of shit too.
LGBTQ representation does not begin and end with you having a gay couple as a spare pair, or letting a trans sim into your story once. We are far more ubiquitous than people may assume, and far more casual and capable of happy endings than most of our narratives may indicate. Isolated incidents donāt add to your credibility, they just continue to āotherā us, which isnāt the goal.
On that same token, learning about us and supporting us doesnāt have an end point. There is no point where you can stop, breathe, and say āokay, I have done all I can to be an ally to this community or that communityā. Be constant in your vigilance, be consistent in your support. Flipping flopping just tells us we canāt trust you. (Of course, this is also dependent on disability or neurodivergence. Do all you can within the bounds of what you are physically or mentally capable of.)
Donāt pick and choose who you will support and accept and who you wonāt. If you constantly make lesbians, donāt vilify gay men. If you allow trans people across the binary, donāt exclude non-binary people or people with unconventional pronouns. Donāt throw ace or aro people under the bus. Either be with us all the way, or donāt be with us at all.Ā
LGBTQ representation means far less if the representation is flawed, one-note, or stereotyped. Sure, you might be able to get away with it your first try, but if you have several gay characters and they are all possessive, promiscuous, or whatever, youāre just feeding into something dangerous and misleading. (To prove that Iām not self-unaware, this is something I need to be careful of as well. Right now, my aro characters with āexceptionsā far outweigh my aro characters who stay aro, and I want the reverse to be true, lest this push a harmful precedent.) But just because there are nuances in us doesnāt mean that there arenāt basic rules of etiquette to apply to all of them when talking to them in real life.Ā
Never ask anyone, especially trans or NB people, their birth gender or ābiological sexā. Nine times out of ten, it is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.Ā
No, itās not relevant to the conversation youāre thinking of now.Ā
If you ask someone their biological sex anyway, and they decline to tell you, accept that. Donāt press the point. Donāt ask why they wonāt tell you. If they wanted to tell you, they would have. LGBTQ people, any person for that matter, reserves the right to hold back any personal information that they donāt wish to disclose.Ā
You are not entitled to, or owed, someoneās biological sex. Privacy, in this regard and others, is a fucking basic inalienable right. No means no.Ā
You are not owed thanks or gratitude for invasions of privacy either.
If someone tells you you are being shitty, the generally accepted thing to do is to apologize and be wary of making the mistake again, not to try ruthlessly to justify your actions and pretend like the other partyĀ has wronged you in some way.
There is a difference between education and coddling. If you want to learn about some of the basics of LGBTQ stuff from people under that umbrella, fine, but they only have limited resources, time, and patience. There are some steps youāre going to have to take yourself when you donāt have your Token Gay Friend to learn from. Google is a very valuable resource, for instance. As is Wikipedia. And if youāve tried Google or Wikipedia and youāre not getting the answers, maybe be more specific as to the question. It works wonders.
We are not props for your ego. We do not exist to make you feel better if you really fucked up. We do not exist to give you comfort about having privilege over us, nor to applaud you for the tiniest little step. We are not infinite pools of reassurance, we are not notches in your good-person-bedpost. We are not mysteries for you to solve or experiments for you to dissect. We are humans. Treat us that way.Ā
If you stop considering an LGBTQ person āamazingā when we lay down some basic boundaries that are essential to any communication, you probably didnāt think we were all that amazing in the first place, and you are acting exactly like any old dudebro fedora-wearing Nice Guy would do on Tinder and OKCupid.
Cis people do not get to dictate how trans people should feel about their bodies.
Cis people do not get to dictate how trans people should feel about their bodies.
Cis people do not get to fucking dictate how trans people should feel about their fucking bodies.
Avocadoes bear absolutely no resemblance to vulvas orĀ vaginas.Ā
