I need to share this because too many times on here I’ve seen the debate of “does an author have to be gay to write gay characters” or the statement “straight writers cannot gay characters.” If there is any reason an author’s sexuality label should not be up for debate on how well they can write LGBT characters/ books it is this reason:
Becky Albertalli is the author of Simon vs The Homosapiens Agenda and Leah On The Off Beat, which were adapted into the movie Love, Simon, and now the tv show Love, Victor. You probably know Love, Simon as it is one of the most popular queer films/books, particularly of this generation and has helped many people, including myself. But it has received heaps of criticism and backlash as people seem to think it was “obviously” written by a straight person. People have seen Becky is married to a man and assumed she is straight, like straight is the default sexuality if you don’t say otherwise, and use the fact she is not gay to criticise what they don’t like. Well Becky Albertalli just came out as bisexual, not because she wanted to but because, she felt she had to in order to defend her work to LGBTQ people.
Becky wrote a blog post titled “I know I’m late..” which you should read here to fully understand her story. It is really heartbreaking to me.
https://medium.com/@rebecca.albertalli/i-know-im-late-9b31de339c62
Becky explains the process of realising she is bisexual through writing Simon and then Leah (who is bisexual in the books and dates Abby in Leah On The Off Beat). She explains how denial and the lack of LGBT representation she had stopped her from understanding bisexuality and accepting herself. Since Love, Simon came out she was constantly asked why she a “straight woman” wrote queer books, which infuriated her and made her uncomfortable because she was not ready to answer honestly. Despite this people continued to say things like, Simon is written for straight people or Becky was not “gay enough” to write queer characters. And now she has come out not in a way she wanted to, or chose to, but because people from, the LGBTQ community- her OWN community- forced her to come out. By demanding for equal representation Becky was forced out before she was ready. How is this equality?
Does this sound familiar to you? Is this not exactly how Simon had to come out? Is the entire point of Love, Simon not that coming out is personal and only the person who is going through it gets to decide how or if they come out?
Nobody owes you their sexuality. Not even celebrities owe you their coming out.
And even if Becky was straight, she still has dedicated her whole career to helping young queer people. How is that not a good thing? You may not like her books or movies and I even have parts I would criticise in them, but you cannot take away the fact her books and movie have actually helped a lot LGBTQ people.
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