something queer going on

I've decided that the world needs a lesbian, gay, and bisexual¹ representation bingo card for all those oh-so-reasonable answers some people like to give when one asks why a particular text contains no characters who are identified as LGB. I'm probably not the first person to think of this, but a quick google didn't reveal an existing card except for a comics-specific one.

So, wanna help me brainstorm squares?

Ideas so far (mine and others'):

It's a children's/YA story.

It's not important to mention the characters' sexualities.

Lesbian/gay/bisexual people only make up X percent of the population, so statistically it makes sense that all the characters are straight.

The creator is at the start of their career and obviously can't risk including queer characters.

Wasn't that one character who had two lines in episode eight gay?

The author said Chracter Y is LGB but it just wasn't specifically mentioned.

It's set in [historical period or historical event] and there's no evidence of any queer people then (and if there was, they were all in the closet).

The creator is gay, why are you singling out their sexuality?

It contains [other minority group], why does it have to have queer people too?

The character is bisexual, they just happen to be attracted to the opposite sex for the whole of this canon.

Why do you have to make everything about sex?

The creator is straight, how can you expect them to write about something they haven't experienced?

It's fantasy! And this universe just doesn't have any queer people in.

There are queer people in my universe.. I just didn't think any of them were worth writing about.

In my universe, nobody cares about sexuality.

They'd just mess it up anyway.

It's about [common setting for situational homosexuality] so that would be stereotyping.

They're as good as dating already!

It just never came up!

The creator is gay, so I'm sure they know what they're doing.

We all know [Character X] and [Character Y] are doing it, anyway

Your contributions are encouraged!



¹I'm aware that the list does not cover the entirety of the queer spectrum. That is because I think the issues of visibility and inclusion around, for example, trans* or asexual characters are sufficiently different from those around LGB characters that one bingo card will not fit all. For that matter, there could probably be separate bingo cards for gay men, bisexual men, bisexual women, and lesbians, if someone wanted to make them.

Because of reasons, I thought it might be interesting to create a list of relatively recent (published 2000 or later) science fiction and/or fantasy novels with no canonical lesbian, gay, or bisexual characters. Not even, say, Bruce the sassy hairdresser who appears in one paragraph. They don't exactly have to take place in the universe without LGB people--if there are no named LGB characters, they qualify, even if the existence of homosexuality is mentioned.

I'll start us off. I'm working from memory here, so corrections are welcome. I'll be adding others' contributions to the list as we go along.

Jonathan Barnes, Domino Men
Suzanne Collins, the Hunger Games series
Ally Condie, Matched
Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Shannon Hale, Goose Girl
Scott Lynch, The Lies of Lock Lamora
China Mieville, The City and the City
China Mieville, Kraken
Naomi Novik, the whole Temeraire series (Apparently a character was finally acknowledged to be gay in the latest one.)
Tim Powers, Declare (I think Guy Burgess may get a mention but he's not really in it)
Terry Pratchett, most of them except Unseen Academicals
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter books 4-7 ("Word of God" doesn't count if it's not in the books themselves, and the first three are exluded because they're before the cutoff date)
Thomas E. Sniegoski, the Remy Chandler series
Jeff VanderMeer, Finch
Ysabeau Wilce, Flora Segunda and Flora's Dare (a tricky case, because there's a character in the books, which are YA, who in a related non-YA story is presented as being gay, but that's unmentioned in the Flora novels)


While we're at it, let's have a special Dishonorable Mention category for books where the only LGB characters are villains.

Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels (as I recall, the rest of the Matthew Swift series has no LGB characters at all).


What are your additions to the list?

I have not actually watched Downton Abbey and have no intention to, but yesterday I learned, through other sources, that (sort of spoilery I guess):(skip) the only queer character is a selfish, amoral villain.

Has anyone perchance critiqued this approach? I feel like what I've mostly seen all over the internets is either "OMG Downton Abbey is so great, yay!" or "Downton Abbey is a silly soap opera," but no "Let's talk about problematic and stereotypical representation." Admittedly, though, I haven't been looking for it.

My latest reading is a deeply obscure novel called The Cage, by Dan Billany and David Dowie. It's an autobiographical story about their imprisonment as POWs in Italy during the Second World War, and has been described as "the only book about POW homosexuality from the homosexual point of view." (I'm paraphrasing as I had to return the source, Adrian Gilbert's POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939-45, to the library, but you get the gist).

The fact that the book even exists is a miracle. When Italy surrendered in 1943, the commandant of the camp Billany and Dowie were in defied German instructions and allowed all his Allied prisoners to leave and make their way to Allied lines as best they could. (In camps where this didn't happen, the prisoners were transported to Germany.) During their voyage, Billany and Dowie chose to leave their manuscript in the care of an Italian family who had helped them, with instructions to mail it to England when they could. Along with a third man, Alec Harding, Billany and Dowie made it nearly to the Allied lines but then disappeared in the Apennine mountains in late 1943. Presumably they died there.

In 1946, the people who'd been left the manuscript were finally able to send it to Billany's parents, and it was published in 1949.

Billany and Dowie were probably lovers. ( click to read more )

1) There is, or was, an X-Men cologne.

I am both intrigued and horrified to see my two newest interests collide.

2) In other perfume news, today I spent a happy ten minutes in the "aromatherapy" aisle of the hippie grocery store sniffing testers of a bunch of essential oils. Now I know a lot more about a lot of basic notes, from the difference between lemongrass and lemon to unusual things like frankincense and hyssop. I discovered the geranium smells totally different from how I thought (it's much earthier and deeper, barely recognizable as floral) and that patchouli really does make me feel nauseated.

3) Unrelated, although I could make a metaphor about drowning out the stink of homophobia, gileonnen has responded to Orson Scott Card's "gay men are hellbound pedophiles" rewrite of Hamlet by hosting The Big Gay Hamlet ficathon (actually a prompt-and-fill challenge), for Hamlet fic with queer themes. In the spirit of not doing what Card did, stories about pedophilia, rape, and abusive relationships are off-limits; there's not a requirement that stories be "positive," in the sense of not talking about homophobia or other problems, just that queer characters and queer sexualities (including asexuality) not be demonized. It's a cool thing and I hope lots of folks participate.

ETA: 4) Returning to frivolities, I always thought I was immune to shoe-lust. And then I saw these glorious steampunk-y boots. I'm not buying them, because even discounted they are $100, but I want them more than I can begin to tell you.

I just finished reading China Miéville's Embassytown, which is mostly wonderful. It's the story of a backwater colony where a small population of humans have, with difficulty, come to live in a fairly equitable arrangement with the sentient native species they call the Hosts. The difficulty is mostly linguistic: each Host has two communicating mouths, so their speech (called Language) involves two voices expressing a single mind, and they're unable to recognize anything else as language. The human population communicates with the Hosts through the medium of specially-reared human clone pairs called Ambassadors. But then the colonial government sends a new kind of Ambassador to Embassytown, and trouble (of the potentially species-exterminating, civilization-ending kind) ensues.

The worldbuilding is, as you'd expect from Miéville, rich and fascinating, the main character, Avice Benner Cho, is engaging if not as fully developed as I'd have liked, and there's a more straightforward plot structure than in many of Miéville's other books, which may appeal to those who've previously found his work too odd. Personally I think the book could have done with being about a hundred pages longer; it would have allowed for the plot to unfold at a less hurried pace and for both Avice and the subsidiary characters to be more fleshed-out. Nevertheless, this is my favorite Miéville since The Scar.

However, I do have one complaint: ( Cut for minor non-plot-related spoilers )

Apparently the BBC has begun airing a Merlin clone new show called Leonardo, about the adventures of the teenage Leonardo da Vinci.

Now, unlike Merlin and Arthur, Leonardo was a real historical person. And there's plenty in the record to suggest that the real historical Leonardo had sexual and romantic relationships with men, and did not have them with women. He was, to put it briefly and anachronistically, gay.

I would bet actual money, if I had any, that the BBC will not be including this pesky detail on their new teen-oriented cash cow travesty of a historical program. In fact, I suspect they'll be giving Leonardo a girlfriend: it seems the ensemble of Leonardo's pals includes a boy called Tomaso, quickly revealed to be a young women in disguise whose real name is (can you guess?) Lisa.

If someone has actually watched the show and knows, do tell.

1) It was National Coming Out Day today (technically yesterday now), which means it's the one year anniversary of my coming out as a trans man. And hey, one year later, I'm still trans! Hooray! (One of my issues has been the fear that I was somehow deceiving myself and would change my mind. I haven't, and I feel a lot more certain and comfortable in my identity than I did a year ago.)

2) I'm taking the GRE tomorrow (er, today, actually, starting in about 10 hours). Wish me luck. I'm less nervous than I was a couple of days ago, because in the meantime I've done respectably enough on the math section of a practice test. Looking forward to getting the damn thing over with and forgetting the Pythagorean Theorem all over again.

3) As the new television seasons begin in the US and the UK, I'm watching . . . old Australian comedy. The Doug Anthony All Stars, of course (here they are in The Big Gig [start at the top of the playlist on the right and scroll down], and here's a fantastic live performance [use the playlist again, but start with part 2, as Flacco is an acquired taste], and here are links to their surreal and amazing comedy/science fiction/fantasy show DAAS Kapital), and DAAS-related stuff like Good News Week (which is all over YouTube) and The Sideshow (ditto). Even the beautiful Tim Ferguson may not be enough to make me watch more than one episode of Funky Squad, alas, but I was oddly charmed by the episode of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush that I watched on YouTube. Tim in a pink suit thwacking cakes with a golf club and spraying the audience with the bits, what's not to love?

I've also been branching out beyond DAAS, mostly based on which Good News Week guests I like most (in no particular order: Fiona O'Loughlin, Josh Thomas, Jimeoin, Frank Woodley, Stephen K. Amos, Julia Morris). I started watching The Adventures of Lano and Woodley because I saw Colin Lane talking about his split from comedy partner Frank Woodley after 20 years of working together as though he'd just gone through a heartwrenching divorce; yes, I do pick shows based on the likely level of male/male homoeroticism, and yes, Lano and Woodley has so far quite fulfillled my expectations. It's not my usual style of comedy--I like verbal humor best--but the guys' love/hate/tolerance is adorable, and Frank Woodley in particular does physical comedy so well that I can see the art in it.

Oh, how I hope one or two of you lot will start watching this stuff too, so that we can talk about it! And also so that there can be DAAS fanfic for Yuletide! *makes puppy eyes*

Spoilers through 4x06 under the cuts. Please don't spoil me for any episodes past that.

( 4x01-02, The Way of the Warrior )

( 4x03, The Visitor )

( 4x04, Hippocratic Oath )

( 4x05, Indiscretion )

( 4x06, Rejoined )

If any of you who have me friended agree with this secret from today's fandomsecrets, would you please defriend/unsubscribe me now?

Especially if I have you friended/subscribed/granted access back.

I don't want to associate with people who think I'm a liar who's just pretending to be trans in order to get male privilege.



(No, I haven't resumed reading fandomsecrets. But I saw this linked to, and foolishly followed the link, and now I am simultaneously enraged and horrified at the possibility that the OP, or one of the agreeing commenters, could be someone I know.)


ETA: My head aches and I'm tired, so I'm going to crawl into bed with a book. I mention this so you know why I won't be answering comments for the next 12 hours--it's not that I don't appreciate your support and general coolness.