User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20190324211646/@comment-5918438-20190328052643
On the subject of LGBTQ categories: I agree this needs to be revisited. The reasoning for originally denying these categories -- first, that it would be potentially libellous to mistakenly call a real world person LGBTQ+, and second, that freely expressed sexuality and blurred lines on gender and sexuality across the DWU somehow erase queerness -- are.. questionable, at best. Other members of the admin team have also expressed that we need to look at this again, with a new lens.
I can expand on my own thoughts on how best to do this later, if anyone's interested. Basically, the problem to navigate, for in-universe cats, is:
- Does the character actually use a specific identifier/label? We know Bill Potts is only attracted to women "that way", but she never calls herself a lesbian. Can we apply that to her? In my own life, I know more queer women who don't use that term than those who do.
- Are we making assumptions about a character's sexual orientation? For instance, X male character is attracted to other male characters, but he might be gay, he might be bi, he might be pan, he might be omnisexual (which is more a thing in the DWU than in our world). Basically, it's easy to tell that a character is non-heterosexual, but sometimes, beyond that, it's not made clear.[note 1]
- If we want to go for a broader, catch-all category: As of yet, we have no DWU source for the term LGBTQ. We do have a source for queer as a shared identity, and that's an incredibly important word to me personally, but not everyone wants that applied to them, in the real world anyway.
- ↑ Side note: Even if we know a character's attracted to more than one gender, how do we know they're bi and not pan? If we're going for categories recording specific identities, we really need characters to express that these labels apply to them.
What do others think is the best way about this for DWU characters? There's really no such barriers for real world people, in my mind, because we ought to be able to find sources for their specific identities. I also agree with OS12, above: just like any other categories, these should only be added when there's accompanying text, and a valid source to back it up.
