#representaiton

[aroaceconfessions]

i read loveless by alice oseman recently and just sobbed the entire time, it made me feel so seen but also made me truly think about my future as a someone who doesn't see themselves in a romantic relationship in the future at all, the future seems so scary when you have given up on the path society has set out for you when you are only 17

[scriptlgbt]

hi! I'm cis, working on a story where the MC is a trans girl. I have a couple questions and looked through your trans tags to see if I could find answers but wasn't sure still so I decided to send it in. the premise of the story is that the MC befriends a convicted felon, but in the end the felon ends up either wrongfully accused/did the crime for right reasons (idk which yet) and is overall a good person. my question is whether this is bad for portraying my trans MC as connected w/crime (1/2)

 (anon w/the felon question lol) i do have other trans characters in the story, but they are minor characters. also, my MC is hesitant to interact with/help the felon character at first when she finds out she (the felon) is a criminal. is this problematic? i don’t want to imply that trans people are linked to crime or violence, and i’m happy to clarify/add/subtract from the story if anything seems iffy! thanks so much for all your hard work! (2/2)

EDIT: Oh my god I answered this based on my misreading your trans character as the felon. You’re totally fine regardless.

First thing, if your character is an adult trans woman, I would highly rec avoiding using the term ‘girl’ because a lot of trans women do find it diminutive. (This is advice from my transmisogyny-affected partner.) Your mileage may vary but if you wouldn’t call a cis person of the same identity and age a girl then maybe avoid it for a trans person. (Unless with real people and they specify.)

Trans folks, especially transmisogyny affected and racialized trans folks (triply so for BIPOC trans women who are sex workers), are often criminalized and experience the repercussions of governments assuming criminality in extreme ways. Even when trans women do commit crimes* the punishments are rarely balanced and there’s a higher risk of police brutality and jury hostility, and other awful stuff.

I think it’s okay to depict how the criminal justice system is often flawed. I think the most important thing here is that the takeaway impression your reader gets needs to be that of understanding these things, even just on a preliminary basis.

If you’re down to read through some sociology textbook level stuff, I highly recommend looking into Thomas Theorem. It’s basically the idea that assumptions have consequences associated with those assumptions. If a beggar is going to be labelled as an addict no matter what they do, barred from places and resources, that will affect them no matter if they do use any drugs or not. (Which is awful on so many levels because addicts deserve respect too.) Same goes for trans women affected by being labelled criminals.

Another big example would be the myth of the trans life expectancy. There has never before been a study on the life expectancy of trans individuals. And yet, there are numerous resources around that have claimed it is anywhere from 23-30 over the past ten years. All they are doing is citing each other. Trans people hear this and have planned our lives around this, with so much of our trauma being surrounding it. So much anguish is caused by telling someone they won’t live past a certain age when there is absolutely nothing indicating this to be factual. Being trans is not a terminal illness.

Anyway I’ve gotten kind of lost in the weeds, but I just want to give you some ideas which would probably help to ponder or incorporate as themes in your story. 

What you’ve got as a concept is totally okay, in making the criminal character being a good person regardless of this brush with the law. Being a criminal doesn’t make a person a bad person in general. (Or even most of the time, especially with nonviolent crimes, but I degress.)

(Also I’ve maybe mentioned this before, but I have been arrested once before. I do not regret what I did because I helped to divert police away from innocent people being persecuted for what should be their rights. In my opinion, what is legal is independent from what is moral, and the legal systems that be aren’t exactly the most equal and up-to-date thing we should always use to guide what we do. There’s a sense of compassion in our hearts that law cannot account for.)

- mod nat

* Regardless of reason. Like Chelsea Manning being currently re-imprisoned as a whistleblower, Cece McDonald in self-defence, an old friend of mine shoplifting allergy meds because she couldn’t afford them.

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

It might be worth checking out some other articles. There is a lot... a lot that is just... not right about the one you linked. Or... at least very one sided and representing on a small, (probably young), vocal minority. It's frustrating to see this misinformation out there. Yeah, sure, Adam and Shiro didn't kiss, but it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that they were more than friends. It didn't need to be confirmed by showrunners etc, it is THERE

Clearly it’s not obvious to everyone though–since some of the asks I’ve already posted are by fans of the show who stated that it wasn’t at all clear. 

“Obvious to anyone with half a brain”? Or is it “obvious to anyone who was seeking confirmation of what the interviews had already said”? 

You say it didn’t need to be confirmed by the showrunners. Not for you, but obviously for some people it did, and it should have been. 

Which makes me ask: Why not? Why wasn’t it stated explicitly? Why was it left to the interpretation of viewers when it only takes a tiny bit of dialogue to make it explicit? Why not say the word “boyfriend”? 

Representation is important. We can probably agree on that. So why leave it up to interpretation? 

[carnationsandviolets]

something i think is really important with writing marginalized characters is that writing a character as (x) isn’t actually hard.

Here’s the thing - to write a character as trans, here’s all you have to do: mention that they’re trans. or mention, for example, their binder. you don’t even have to mention it ever again!! they’re trans, it’s done!!!

[aroaceconfessions]

I really REALLY hate it when aro ace representation gets erased in favor of the stupid ships. Like l was reading this buzzfeed article yesterday where one person stated that Jughead (from the Archie comics and Riverdale TV show) was Asexual (and aro too in my opinion) in the comics and when they made her have a relationship with Betty in the TV show, they were really angry and stopped watching the show altogether. I completely agreed with them BUT the comments were all like NOOOO BUGHEAD IS THE BEST EVER or "I agree with everything except Jughead and Betty" and such f/cking aphobic comments.

Like literally no one cares that you disagree? Plus this is not a matter of disagreement- a literal lgbtia+ rep got erased so ur opinion doesn't even matter you idiots. In their defense, tv shows are normally different from books or comics so it doesn't matter if Jughead was allo instead of ace. I was ready to break the phone at this point.

ARO ACE REP MATTERS MORE THAN A STUPID SHIP YOU ASSHOLES.

[aroaceconfessions]

It really makes me annoyed when people will watch a tv/movie with an lgbtq+ couple in it and say "oh it's being forced upon us". Well heteronormality is being pushed on us as well..??? Also asexuality/aromanticism in production is nonexistent?????

On another note, whenever there's a show I'm watching with an ace/aro/aroace character I get happy

[kamreadsandrecs]

Photographing the Lives of Black American Cowboys

The Long Ride Home brings together selections from Ron Tarver’s 15,000 images chronicling Black cowboy culture across the US.

[womeninarchaeology]

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