Stop Making People Out Themselves for Art

Last updated on February 19th, 2021

Over the past few years, there’s been a push for more stories about marginalized characters (e.g. queer characters, characters of color, and disabled characters) created by artists who share their identity. In many ways, that’s a very good thing—most professional creative fields are infamously hostile to anybody who’s not a cis, straight, neurotypical, abled, (culturally if not religiously) Christian white guy, meaning that marginalized people often struggle to find success regardless of the quality of their work. Encouraging more stories by those creators is a good thing. However, there’s a dangerous way it can manifest: when “we should uplift stories by marginalized creators” turns into “stories about marginalized characters can only be told by marginalized creators.” 

When it comes to queer representation in media, it’s perfectly fair to want to make sure that queer creators have plenty of room and resources to tell their own stories. But insisting that only queer people can create queer stories does not accomplish that goal.

The thing is, when “only queer people can create queer stories” becomes the established norm, you are not actually empowering queer creators, nor are you limiting queer stories to queer voices. Rather, you’re limiting queer stories only to queer people who have the privilege (and the desire) to be out of the closet.

If everybody agrees that only queer creators can tell queer stories, then it seems fair to interrogate anybody who creates a queer story while not being openly queer. It seems reasonable to go up to them and demand to know if they’re queer or not. But if they are queer—which they very well might be—they’re being put in an absolutely horrible position.

When we try to limit marginalized stories to only authors who have lived their experiences, we are inherently shutting out people who have lived those experiences but can’t talk about them publicly. I’m not okay with that.

If they insist that they’re not queer, then people will continue attacking them. People will accuse them of appropriating queer stories, of trying to profit off of queer people. 

But if they admit that they are queer, they’ve just come out of the closet in an incredibly public way. And for many people, coming out publicly isn’t an option at all. Many queer people can’t be publicly out of the closet because doing so would put them in emotional, mental, or even physical danger. If someone lives in a bigoted area and/or if their family isn’t supportive of queer people, being out in a public place could mean facing abuse from their family, losing their job (yes, that’s illegal; yes, that still happens), ending up homeless, or even risking death—either through outright murder (a particularly high risk for trans women of color) or through slower methods, like losing the health insurance they received through their job and not being able to pay for healthcare. That is the position that people are putting artists into when they insist that only queer people are allowed to create and be involved in queer stories. 

This doesn’t just hurt people who are only closeted in public, either: it also hurts people who don’t even know that they’re queer yet. For many queer people, our very first interaction with queerness was not entering the community as a queer person—it was being an (overly) enthusiastic ally to the queer community. And then, after being surrounded by queer people, having access to queer resources, and receiving education about queer identities, we eventually realized that we were queer, too. 

And through of all of this, the most infuriatingly frustrating part is that this horrible, dangerous pressure is almost always coming from other queer people. Facing bigotry, exclusionism, and violence from cis straight people is always awful, of course, but at least it’s expected. But facing it from other queer people? From people who are allegedly part of our community, people who should be able to understand why forcing people to out themselves is dangerous? It’s depressing, but it’s also baffling. Why on earth are queer people so intent on hurting other queer people?

Read more: “Asking for It” Wants Honesty about Queer Domestic Violence

To give one theory for why this is so common, I’d like to reference Kai Cheng Thom’s fantastic article “Why are queer people so mean to each other?”. In the article, Thom—a former therapist for queer and trans people—puts forth a theory for why there’s so much in-fighting, drama, and conflict within the queer community: that it’s a trauma response. 

Sociological research tells us that queer and trans people are disproportionately likely to experience abuse, sexual violence, homelessness and bullying in childhood and adolescence (and it continues into adulthood for many, Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project notwithstanding). Even those of us who somehow manage to escape outright abuse and neglect still grew up in a world where we needed to keep secrets — where, at any moment, we might come across someone who hated us or wished us harm because of who we are. Where our basic rights and dignity might be taken away at the whim of the next politician to take office. The result of all this exposure to trauma — to the very real threat of violence and ostracization from our family, friends and entire society — is that queers as a collective sustain serious trauma to our internal sense of ourselves and others.

Kai Cheng Thom, “Why Are Queer People So Mean to Each Other?”

One nearly-universal experience for queer people across the globe is that we’ve grown up in a world where it’s impossible to entirely escape homophobia and transphobia. After years—even decades—of facing abuse, disgust, hatred, and mistreatment (either from specific people in our lives or just society at large), our brains are hardwired to spot danger at the slightest provocation, to categorize anyone who does anything wrong as a dangerous enemy. We’ve had to get very good at spotting danger to keep ourselves safe. Now, after so long having to do that, we don’t know how to stop seeing everyone around us a potential threat.

Thom says (emphasis mine), “This, I believe, is why traumatized communities struggle so profoundly with loving one another. We have been hard-wired for suspicion and terror of betrayal, which in turn feeds into the logics of disposability and incarceration: we come to believe that making a mistake — any mistake, whether big or small — makes someone bad and dangerous. We believe that we need to punish people who are bad and dangerous, that some people are simply too bad and too dangerous to keep among us.”

I think that could provide a very, very good explanation for why this kind of gatekeeping is so common. It is undeniably true that for centuries now, many of the stories written about queer people by cis straight people have been very deeply harmful. When you look at it from that point of view, it becomes very easy to see why queer people are so distrustful of queer stories by cis straight creators: we’ve become so accustomed to those stories being dangerous to us that we assume all of them will be. 

In that light, this is an understandable phenomenon. At its root, it isn’t about hatred—it’s about fear. Cis straight people have told so many awful stories about us that we’re terrified that every new story that they create will be just as bad. And yes, you could give them a chance, but that so often ends poorly. Taking a chance on a queer story by a cis straight author only to encounter bigotry feels like being punched in the face.

Isn’t it easier to just never take that chance? To only read stories that you know will be safe? Isn’t it easier to deem any cis straight person who writes queer stories an enemy, too bad and too dangerous to keep among us, and to try to push them as far away from the community as possible?

We’ve had to get very good at spotting danger to keep ourselves safe. Now, after so long having to do that, we don’t know how to stop seeing everyone around us a potential threat.

It’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. At the end of the day, there is simply no way to forbid cis straight creators from creating queer stories that doesn’t also exclude closeted queer people. And even if there was? I don’t think that would be the answer. I’ve been out for just over a decade. In the time I’ve been out, I and all of the queer people I know have been pushing cis straight authors to learn how to write queer characters and include them in their stories.

Now that more cis straight creators are starting to actually do that, it’s deeply frustrating to me to see other queer people shout, “No! Not allowed! Cis straight creators can’t make stories about queer characters!” I sometimes feel like ripping my hair out and yelling “But that’s what I’ve been trying to get them to do for ten years!”

While I’ve been discussing the queer community here, this is—unfortunately—not entirely unique to queer people. Disabled people, mentally ill people, and trauma survivors face the same thing. Though something I’ve noted there is that, unlike the queer community, this doesn’t always come from people who are actually in those groups themselves. Very often, it comes from people who only have an outside perception of what those experiences are like, but who are convinced that their perception is so correct that any portrayal that defies it is bad, harmful, and inaccurate. 

But outing yourself as any of those things can be just as dangerous (and just as traumatizing) as outing yourself as queer. We live in a deeply ableist society, and many people are convinced that disabled, mentally ill, and traumatized people are lesser: less capable, less intelligent, less human. In the case of a large selection of highly stigmatized mental illnesses (like schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder), many people even view the people who have them as actively dangerous, despite the fact that nothing about those disorders makes somebody inherently violent. 

To learn more about how all of these issues have affected people in the podcasting field, I put out a survey asking for peoples’ experiences.

One anonymous creator wrote in to talk about her experiences creating a show that features queer characters. She said that while she didn’t face pressure from any particular person to out herself, she felt a general pressure to be public about her identity—her co-creators weren’t out at all at the time; as the only out queer person, she felt like she had to be public about her identity so that people would know that a queer creator worked on the show. After describing this as an awkward position to be in, she says that the experience has made her hesitant about working on another project that would put her in a similar position. She ended her submission by saying that it makes her uncomfortable that media like podcasting forces creators to market themselves as part of marketing the projects they create.

Another anonymous creator wrote in with a different side of it: while they haven’t personally felt the pressure to out themself, the fear of that happening has prevented them from making and participating in stories that they relate to. They’re nonbinary, but can’t identify as such publicly because they’re currently financially dependent on transphobic family members. Being out wouldn’t just be uncomfortable for them—it would put them in serious danger. They were originally planning on playing a nonbinary character who uses he/they pronouns in the podcast they create, but ended up changing the character to a cis woman out of fear of facing backlash from the community. 

“Just because you don’t see us doesn’t mean we aren’t there, and it just makes it harder for us.”

The same anonymous creator also discussed facing similar issues with their neurodivergency. They have a personality disorder—a type of mental illnesses that creates rigid, unhealthy frameworks for viewing the world. There are ten personality disorders in total, including narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. In the podcasting field (and in the world as a whole), these disorders are frequently mocked, attacked, exploited for cheap shock factor, and used as insults. While they try to call out this ableism when they see it, they can’t bring up their personal experience with the disorders, as it’s not safe for them to discuss them publicly. Unfortunately, people use this apparent lack of personal experience to dismiss their criticisms entirely. 

When asked if there was anything else they’d like to say on the topic, they said, “I just wish people would remember that we all can’t be as open as they are, and to be a little more considerate. Just because you don’t see us doesn’t mean we aren’t there, and it just makes it harder for us.”

Ultimately, all of these issues come down to one core belief: that creators are required to disclose personal information to be “allowed” to write stories about sensitive topics. And that seems to tie very strongly into the feeling that’s growing more and more prevalent in online communities that creators owe something to the people who consume their work; that anybody who’s listened to somebody’s podcast or read their book is allowed to ask that creator whatever they want, no matter how personal or invasive, and the creator is obligated to answer.

Read more: The 71 Best Podcasts of 2020

But at its core, this is a form of gatekeeping—and gatekeeping doesn’t help anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact. When this is the norm, it ensures that the only people who can create work about marginalized identities are the people who are able to be open about having them. In sort, it limits stories to creators who have a certain level of privilege above creators who need to remain closeted for their own safety.

I don’t just want those stories. I want the queer love story written by a lesbian trapped in a marriage with a homophobic straight man. I want the trans coming out story written by a closeted nonbinary person in a small town who can’t come out without risking physical violence. I want the story about a sexual assault survivor written by somebody who can’t speak openly about the assault they faced without facing further violence from their abuser. I want the story about characters with Cluster B personality disorders written by someone who can’t speak openly about their disorder without people calling them abusive. I want the story about a character who hallucinates and has delusions and is terrified that people are watching them written by a schizophrenic person who can’t be open about their mental illness because their ex-spouse could use it as leverage to gain sole custody of their children.

When we try to limit marginalized stories to only authors who have lived their experiences, we are inherently shutting out people who have lived those experiences but can’t talk about them publicly. I’m not okay with that.

Art has a wonderful capacity to be a healing force. Creating art about your experiences can be cathartic, it can help you work through complicated feelings you’re struggling to navigate, and it can bring you closer to your community. When we tell closeted people that they can’t tell their stories, we’re shutting them out from how healing art can be. That’s not okay. They deserve the chance to heal through art, too. And they deserve to create stories that will, somewhere in the world, make another closeted person look at them and say “I see you. I see you because we are the same. I see you, and now I know that I am not alone.” That’s a beautiful thing. Let’s stop stifling it.

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Editor’s Note: This piece was updated on 2/19/2021 to change a linked source from a PinkNews article explaining author Becky Albertalli’s coming out to her own Medium post about her coming out.