Queer representation is fundamental need. As a bisexual woman, I had no representation of individuals with the same sexuality as me growing up. Only after I was out of the closest for two years was I able to find myself in a character. At that point I was fifteen, so far too long without representation. Books are for everybody so every reader should be able to see themselves in stories and should not need to grow up without it.
In modern times, authors are now demonstrating more often characters that are queer in their story’s. The representation is not truthful and can be full of flaws or stereotyping. Today, I will answer the question as the title mention’s: What is good queer representation?
The Coming Out Narrative
Coming out for most queer individual’s is when they reveal their sexual orientation to someone or the public. It is a situation that every queer individual goes through at least once. Now as much has that moment or those moments of coming out important, they are not the sole struggle queer individual faces. I have read too many stories where the sole plot for the character was them struggling with coming out. But queer individual’s face far more issues about their sexuality then coming out.
Why are there a minimal number of stories about internal homophobia? Internal homophobia is when queer individual is feeling feelings of self-doubt and self-disgust about their sexuality. It is a frequent problem in our heterosexual and homophobic society. Internalize homophobia can lead to depression, alcoholism, drugs and even suicide. It is a problem that is not discussed that often in stories.
Another problem that could be discussed and represented more is gender dysphoria. Which is the feeling of destress gender fluid, nonbinary, and transgender individual face when they feel uncomfortable with their designated gender. Where are those stories?
Or we can just not make being queer the whole plot line. Queer individual’s face’s the same problem heterosexual and cisgender individual’s face on the daily. We have bad days at work, we can struggle with school, we can be pull fantastical heist or be superheroes. We can be funny, intelligent, confident, sad, and more. We are not just queer; we are people so those daily struggles or fictional battles can be the plot. A good characterization needs multiple personalities aspects to be a developed character. If the only thing you have for your character is that their queer, you need to reevaluate your choices.
Stereotyping
As much as a plot can be problematic and saying your character is queer cannot be the sole personality trait. In many stories, we can find stereotyping like gay men are flamboyant and can be looked has more “feminine.” Or a lesbian is always more “masculine.”
These stereotypes are harmful since they depict that there are standards to attaint to be queer or that there is one way to do it. But queer individual just like homosexual and cisgender people are unique to their own physical and personality traits.
There is a need for queer characters that do not fit a stereotype. Queer's characters are one of the kind and come in all shape and size so let us avoid stereotyping.
Large Age Gap
In most books that I have read, there tends to be a large age gap between both characters in a queer relationship. Sometime the age gap is even illegal with one being a minor and the other one a major. A popular example of this is the popular book and movie Call Me by Your Name which is depicted as a classic queer movie where one of the characters is seventeen while the other is twenty-four.
For some reason, heterosexual do not seem to understand that dating a minor has a queer individual does not make it legal. If anything, the age gap can portray a conception that queer relationship are perverted or pedophiles since they are attracted to minors. (Which there is an actual group of individuals that believe this to be true.) In addition, this concept when read by minor queer individual can make them more vulnerable to predators.
A legal age gap is fine for a story, but we must make sure that we are not solely portraying queer relationship with them and that if we are that their legal.
Conclusion
So, what is good queer representation? Great queer representation is when queer characters are not harmed by stereotype’s and have respective storylines about them coming out. Is when queer characters have diverse personalities, day-to-day problems and can have good relationships or have relationship that demonstrate common couple issues.
Let us create stories with true representation so that no more children need to grow up without true queer representation.