zlacker

> it strikes me as totally realistic to have a book with primarily or only queer characters

It doesn’t strike me as realistic at all. Queer people need to be able to deal with heteronormative people as much as the reverse.

Otherwise you’re just self selecting into ghettos. I don’t think it can really be avoided, but to present it as desirable strikes me as wrong.

>>Aeolun+(OP)
There is a massive difference between a ghetto that a group is forced to be in, excluded from the outside world, and a community built where one feels accepted and safe which one can enter and leave at will (free association). As long as outside this community is not properly welcoming and accepting its need to exist will be there. It’s the outside world that needs to change first. Discouraging such communities is basically asking those in need of that community to do most of the hard work.

>>jahnu+c7
> It’s the outside world that needs to change first.

That is never going to happen if you’re not part of that outside world. Queer people should be normalized, not hidden. Though it’s absolutely true it’ll suck for the ones alive now, it might make it better for the ones born three generations from now.

>>Aeolun+(OP)
Surely that depends on the setting? In any case, nobody complains that fiction contains too many policemen, detectives or cowboys compared to the average distribution in society.

>>Aeolun+R42
I disagree because history has shown this is the way it goes. For example, it did happen for gay men to a large extent in the western world. This is a gross generalisation for the sake of discussion on here, but until recent decades almost all gay men had to hide and needed spaces where they could just be themselves with like minded and mostly gay people. The outside world eventually changed and then these spaces became more open to non gay people. Not everyone in those communities was happy with that but many felt it was the price to pay for general acceptance and improved equality. See what happened to the Castro area gay bars in S.F. and the debates about the fact that they became popular with straight people once being gay became accepted in general society.

The idea isn’t that marginalised groups should hide and not mingle at all but that they should have a refuge they can retreat to because the outside world is too harsh right now.