Discussion post: defining "sexual and gender minority characters."

[fiercelydreamed]

This'll be the first of several discussion posts while I get things organized here at the comm. They're a way for me to let you know how my thoughts are running, to get your input and suggestions, and to give you all some lead-time to start thinking about works you might want to make for the festival.


For the purposes of the community, these are the definitions I'm considering:

Sexual minority: someone whose sexual preferences are considered nontraditional, marginalized, or marked. Examples of sexual minorities include, but are not limited to, people who identify as:

• homosexual, gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, questioning, kinky, poly, fetishists, BDSM practitioners

Gender minority: someone whose gender identity and/or physically embodied sex do not conform to cultural norms of "maleness" or "femaleness," or whose gender identities and bodies do not align in ways that conform to those cultural norms. Examples of gender* minorities include, but are not limited to, people who identify as:

• transgendered, transsexual, genderqueer, intersexed, androgynous

* ETA: fixed a typo.

For works posted to this community, a character's sexual or gender minority status will be determined at the judgment of the work's creator. If a creator portrays a character as a sexual or gender minority for the purposes of a given work (and the works fits the community definition of gen), that work may be posted to this community. 


I'd really like your thoughts on these definitions. Is there a better way to word them? Do the general definitions (not the example lists) currently seem to exclude identities you believe should be included? Are you unsure why I've chosen to define things this way? 

Three things I'd like to remind everyone, before the discussion starts:

1. These definitions are intended to be functional and useful for this community. I'm not proposing them as universals that everyone should accept, just guidelines that will help people develop, post, and enjoy works in this space.
2. Because the definitions are meant to be for the purpose of this community, I'd like to avoid discussions of "correct/universal" definitions or attempts to set exhaustive/exclusive lists of which identities qualify as sexual or gender minorities. While interesting and valuable, those discussions can tend to bleed over into border policing in a way I want to avoid in this space. As stated before, I strongly prefer inclusivity and intend to run the comm with that in mind. 
3. For every identity listed above and all the others that fit under the umbrellas of these definitions, there is likely someone reading the community posts who would claim that identity. To the best of my abilities, I've been choosing my words consciously and with respect, and I hope you'll all do the same. 

Thanks, and I look forward to your thoughts.


ETA #1: Clarifying "sexual minorities." There've been some really great comments to this post so far, and here's the gist of what I'm getting from them: 

1. No one's taken issue with the wording of my definition, beyond ciaan's really great question about whether the "cultural norms" I reference are the norm's of the creator's cultural context or the character's cultural context. (My inclination is to say that both count for the comm).
2. People seems to be generally supportive of the tack I'm taking in trying to make the examples very inclusive -- and there's been encouragement to take this a step further and include sex workers as well, which is a really interesting idea I hadn't thought of (thanks for that, theleaveswant).
3. However, several people have pointed out that the way I initially listed the examples conflates different sexual minority identities who are minorities for different reasons and have different experiences. (Thanks, mresundance, for kicking off the discussion.) There's been some support voiced for regrouping the list based on different axes of experience. 

To address point #3, what would you think if I kept the current wording of the definition, added clarification on which "cultural norms" apply, and presented the examples using categories like the ones amalnahurriyeh suggested? The revised definition would look like this:

Sexual minority: someone whose sexual preferences are considered nontraditional, marginalized, or marked in their own cultural context (or in the cultural context of the work's creator). Some examples of sexual minority identities include, but are not limited to, those organized around:

• orientation to partner's sex or gender (homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, pansexual, asexual)
• sexual practices (kinky, fetishist, BDSM practitioner)
• number of partners (poly)
• commercial sexual practice (sex worker)
• someone who is questioning their identification with any sexual minority identity

Do you think these changes address the concerns and suggestions below? Any new thoughts or ideas?


ETA #2: Asexuality; sex work. There are a couple more issues where the discussion's still ongoing and I'm on the fence myself. One is how to represent "asexuality" in the definition, as it's an orientation in itself but can also coexist with identification as queer, straight, bi, etc. Some people have recommended I rephrase the first bullet as "sexual orientation;" others have recommended I give asexuality its own bullet. 

The second issue is inclusion of sex workers on the list of sexual minority identities. Some people are really excited about the overt inclusion of sex workers in this comm, but there's also been a question raised about the fit of including a practice-based identity in a list of identities that people often experience as inherent to themselves. I remain on the fence about this, though I'd like to stress that either way, you're welcome to include sex workers in the works you post here -- what's undecided is whether the presence of a sex worker, in a work otherwise lacking sexual or gender minorities (and where the character engaged in sex work otherwise does not identify as a sexual or gender minority), will qualify a work for inclusion on this comm.

Anyone have more to add here? So far, this has been an amazingly respectful discussion, and I look forward to seeing it continue in that vein.

Comments

[naraht]

Here is what is probably a ridiculously basic question: does there have to be some element in the story making it clear that the character concerned is in fact a member of a gender or sexual minority? Along the lines of thinking, "here I am, a queer person shopping for fruit," or what have you? Or can their identification remain implicit rather than explicit?

[torachan]

I would assume that if you were writing about canonically queer characters, then you wouldn't need to reference it, but if they are not canonically queer, then you'd have to make that clear in the story.

[naraht]

Well, that makes sense. I'm thinking of writing RPF so I suppose Wikipedia is always available if readers want the details.

[mresundance]

I think if it's plot/theme relevant, I think it's worth giving details about gender and/or sexuality. If not, I tend to slide in only hints and more subtle clues which won't detract from the story thematically or plotwise.

[were_lemur]

I'm assuming that just because it's gen there won't be a prohibition from characters noticing random people of their preferred gender, stuff like that?

[mresundance]

I personally never write anyone outside of their preferred gender, just because gender variant folks get that enough as it is (wrong pronouns, "she's really a he" bs).

I don't see why it would be a problem to write people as uh, their own gender (or preferred gender, as you put it), at all, regardless of what expectations exist in the world about such things.

[amalnahurriyeh]

"here I am, as a queer person, shopping for fruit."

See, I'm so queer when I shop for fruit, because my household is home to epic fruit wars. By which I mean: my roommate wants bananas, but my wife won't eat them, so I need to get grapes for her, but the grapes aren't local, I wonder if she'll eat blueberries...etc. It's worse, I'm even queerer when buying milk.

By which I mean: it strikes me that there are hundreds of ways that the specific queerness of a character gets marked in their daily interactions. A particularly attractive stranger on the street, the mental calculation of what's happening with partner(s), the making of plans for later, or, even, in the period you mostly write in, a series of cultural tics that queer folks use to mark themselves as visible to each other. And that maybe (part of) the point of this festival is to work those into genfic.

Which is something you do in your writing, btw--I think of all your Brian stories--they certainly strike me as the sort of thing that I'd expect to see posted here. So I'm not saying this in a lectury way, except insofar as I am a lecturer by habit.

[fiercelydreamed]

*nods vigorously* I think we're thinking about this in the same way. First and foremost, I think I'd love for those of us who are sexual and gender minorities to be able to encounter gen works where we can recognizes ourselves, or our cultural siblings, you know?

[naraht]

These are all good points, thank you. You're right in saying that I do write that sort of fic--several of my Brian stories have had only tenuous claims to being slash, although I claimed they were simply so that I could post them in the right comms.

It's mostly my anxiety about writing to order, I think: "what if I write actual slash by accident? What if no one can work out why my story belongs here?" Etcetera. Hopefully I'll get over it once I've, yknow, written something...

[fiercelydreamed]

This is a great question, and I'm glad you brought it up. My thoughts are in line with torachan's. If someone familiar with the source text (or in the case of RPF, the publicly-known biography of the person in question) would know that a given character is a sexual or gender minority -- or you could find that out with some quick Googling -- then letting that be implicit seems fine. But if there's interpretation involved, I'd like some cue in the work to indicate that. Again, authorial discretion applies; I'm not saying there needs to be sign-waving ("Okay, so go straight at the light--" "Honey, I can't go straight, I think you mean gaily forward"). I think a good test would be: if you encountered that work in a neutral context, and you were someone with the same minority identity as the character in question, would you put it down afterward with a quiet feeling of recognition?

Is that helpful at all?

[naraht]

Yes, it is helpful, thanks. I have this terrible tendency to overthink anything that comes with rules and categories attached. Really I need to just sit down and write the story. :)