Most commonly, this is exemplified with the Sassy Gay Best Friend. The Sassy Gay Best Friend has no queer friends, inexplicably content to surround himself exclusively with heterosexual, cisgender women and listen to them vent about what pugnacious assholes their boyfriends are.
The Sassy Gay Best Friend exhausts me just by thinking about him. The closest friends of every other queer person I know are composed predominantly of other queer people, myself included, and it’s with other queer people that we tend to best connect. Dealing with large groups of straight people tends to exhaust and upset me, and I cannot imagine willingly deal with half the amount of heterosexual melodrama as the Sassy Gay Best Friend.
Especially to forward the development of straight people, which it usually is.
The Bury Your Gays trope is thought to have originated with the strict censorship laws, which dictated that queer characters and relationships could only be portrayed if they atoned for their sins and “turned straight” by the end of the story, or – drumroll please – died. It is not, as many authors believe, a realistic portrayal of what life has always been like for queer people, because there have been innumerable examples of us living and loving happily throughout history.
In other words, the only thing burying your gays accomplishes is contributing to an ugly cycle. So if you have the option not to kill off queer characters, don’t.
This phenomenon, commonly known as queerbaiting, originated with clever creators finding loopholes in the aforementioned censorship laws of the nineteenth and twentieth century, by weaving romantic and/or erotic relationships between same gender-characters in between the lines.
One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is 1950s film Some Like It Hot, a surprisingly tender and thoughtful examination of gender identity, femininity, and sexual orientation. Concisely put, the two male leads are circumstantially compelled to disguise themselves as women and travel with an all-female band, during which one of the men captures the affection of a (male) millionaire, who asks for his hand in marriage. He says yes, and the film ends with this exchange:
Okay, this isn’t exactly subtext, which is why the film was produced without the approval of the Motion Picture Production Code. But you get the idea: this is as blatant as queer identities could be in 1950s America.
The key difference? It is no longer the 1950s, and what was revolutionary for the time period is not revolutionary now. Don’t repeat JK Rowling’s fallacy and expect to squeak by with subtextual or offscreen representation.
Far too often, queer rep in the media showcases dysfunctional relationships, usually short-term, sex-based, and/or with a reasonably severe power imbalance (looking at you, Call Me By Your Name.) This is worrisome, because it conveys an unhealthy message to queer youth about what normality looks like, and perpetrates a pervasive stereotype that queer people are more likely to be deviant and unhealthy than their straight peers.
So allow your work to reflect this! Portray loving, supportive, and affectionate queer couples who encourage one another’s success and quality of life. Think Jamie and Amanita from Sense8, or Holt and Kevin from Brooklyn 99.
To countermand this, try to portray queer love as sweet, pure, and wholesome whenever possible. Depict puppy love and crushes and adorable dates between same gender couples. Expunge the idea that queer sexuality is inherently profane.
This doesn’t mean the couples can’t be interesting or complex, mind you – books such as Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe are excellent examples of tenderly portrayed first love, while painting intriguing portraits of complex feelings and characters.
If you’re a straight person who hasn’t interacted much with the queer community, I’m going to personally recommend that you stay away from stereotypes. Promiscuous bisexuals, flamboyant gay men, butch lesbians, et cetera.
These people exist and deserve to be depicted – I’ve even depicted two out of the aforementioned three examples in me my most recent novel – but I’m inclined that it takes a member of the queer community to portray them with authenticity and respect.
So where do you start? Casual representation, that’s where.
Give me trans men relaxing in their binders at the end of the day, casual mention of same-gender crushes or past partners, a same-gender partner that the hero is fighting to get home to. Sometimes the best form of representation is to depict queer people as simply existing and living their lives.
Disclaimer:
These are all based off of my personal pet-peeves and opinions as a queer woman, and you don’t have to follow any of them. Though I firmly believe we need better representation from up-and-coming authors, I’m profusely anti-censorship, and I believe everyone deserves to write their story the way they want to.
I hope this helps, and happy writing! ❤
This is an excellent post. I agree wholeheartedly! As this is a personal pet-peeves list, I’m not trying to criticise or alter the original message at all, but I’d also like to just elaborate on one of the points regarding one of my own big pet-peeves.
While it’s important to display wholesome romance, that doesn’t necessarily mean celibate. If you want to write about ace, non-sex-having gay/lesbian/bi folks, that’s totally cool – but for me, especially on tumblr, it feels like there’s a slight move towards completely sanitising mlm and wlw relationships. You can write a wholesome, happy, loving and romantic relationship that includes sex and not have it be fetishistic. And I would encourage you to do so, even if just subtly, because it’s so important, especiallyconsidering Christianity’s long history of ‘hate the sin, not the sinner’ rhetoric (and other religions; I know it’s not Christianity alone) for wlw/mlm folks to see that their sex is not a dirty thing.
Thank you for this post!
You’re welcome!
And to address this statement, I agree, and I by no means sanitize queer characters in my own work – in my last novel, almost all of the major characters were queer, and a large portion of the plot centralized around their relationship with their sexuality. One character was a polyamorous stripper who openly loved sex, and wound up in a loving and committed relationship with a man who understood and supported his lifestyle. Another character was a bisexual woman who only felt comfortable being monogamous, and who ended up in an emotionally and sexually fulfilling relationship with a transgender lesbian. In a nutshell, a huge part of the book is about sex and sexuality.
However, this guide is intended for straight people, and it’s my personal philosophy that the only people equipped to explore queer sexuality through their writing are queer people (or straight people who are extremely immersed in the queer community.) It’s similar to the fact that I, for example, include a lot of Black characters in my writing, but as a non-Black person, would never write a novel about the experience of BEING Black; that’s not my story to tell.
I hope this helps elucidate things somewhat!
I would like to add, re: this segment:
Promiscuous bisexuals, flamboyant gay men, butch lesbians, et cetera.
speaking as a butch … butch lesbians aren’t the stereotype. Please, please, PLEASE write butch lesbians. Lesbians who are masculine, have short hair, have working jobs, are strong. PLEASE do that. Butch lesbians are so underrepresented even in media where lesbians exist, and there seems to be a perception among creators that crafting a butch woman and then making her straight is “subverting stereotypes!” and “progressive!” (looking at you, BioWare!)
Butch lesbians who are described as ugly, gross, predatory, angry, and violent are the stereotype. That’s a bad stereotype. Don’t do that.
But give me butches who are noble, compassionate, caring, genteel, handsome, strong, pragmatic and practical. Give me that. Please, please, please for the love of GOD give me that.
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