: Re: How do I write LGBTQ+ characters for a romance story, as a non-LGBTQ+ person, without using potentially offensive stereotypes So today, some of my friends challenged me to write a short story

@Shakeerah107

I once wrote a short story as a challenge for a contest in high school, for an English Class.

It was about two people - Alex and Taylor.

The story followed the two around a trip to Paris. They visited several places, did romantic couple things, shared a few kisses, spent the night on a hotel, and ended up getting themselves on a rather mundane but fun adventure when they helped a beggar find his way back to his daughter's place, back in Italy.

Despite describing quite a few characteristics about them - hair/skin/eye color, a few mannerisms, a bit of the accent, the shape of the nose, presence of freckles and moles, underwear color, fitness of their body, height, weight, clothing, etc, I purposefully never gave them anything that could indicate gender.

I never mentioned things like breasts or pecs. Never used things like manly/womanly, didn't mentioned usually gendered clothing, like high-heels or bras. Didn't specify any gendered jewelry, didn't talk about their genitals, nothing. I made it on purpose so the reader couldn't, by any means, tell if any of them was male, female, or even trans. It was impossible to even tell if they were hetero, gay, or something else.

I let my reader imagine whatever they wanted for them. If they wanted a lesbian couple, that worked. If they saw Alex and Taylor as a hetero couple, that worked. If they saw the two as two gay males, that worked. If they wanted to see them as something else, that worked, too.

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Some people still complained about stereotyping, and sometimes even for the lack thereoff.

Some complained the couple was too traditional. Others said I was "writing gays wrong". Some complained about how Taylor was too tomboyish for a girl because "she" liked D&D. Some complained about Alex's methodical obsession with flower morphology being "unlikely for a guy", just because they spewed trivia every now and then about flowers around them.

And yet, when I asked "how do you know Alex/Taylor is a boy/girl?", they couldn't answer.

Still they complained.

The lesson I got from it is that whatever you do, someone will not like something. A lot of people use the invitation for criticism as an opportunity to complain about stuff, even if it is so so minor.

Don't sweat it. Write a story about two interesting characters, and their genital bits will be just but a minor detail.

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