Is killing off one of my queer characters homophobic?
(For reference, I am queer.)
In my post-apocalyptic novel and in the short story from the novel's antagonist's perspective, my MC, Eris' love interest, Caspian, has/had two mothers, Saskia and Ezrith (Ezrith is the antagonist). Saskia was his biological mom, and Ezrith is his adoptive mom. Saskia was accidentally killed by Eris when Eris was a child, and neither Caspian nor Ezrith know about it.
I know the "lesbian/gay character dies" trope is extremely popular in the media, especially with shows/books/movies that want to avoid having LGBT representation, so they kill off the only queer character. The "lesbian/gay character has a dead lover" trope is also used a lot, and is pretty tired.
But I'm not using Saskia's death as a way to avoid LGBT representation--five out of six of the living named characters that I've written are queer.
With this context in mind, is it still bad that I have a female character who was in love with a woman die? And if so, how can I change my story or development to avoid any underlying homophobic tones?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/46576. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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IMHO no it wouldn't be homophobic.
Here is a sort of reductio ad absurdum example.
Imagine a story set in a Middle Eastern city in the 13th century (1201-1300) with a population manly Sunni Muslim, with minorities of other Muslim sects, eastern Christians, Jews, etc. The language would be either Persian with Arabic minority or Arabic with Persian minority, etc. And there might be merchants from distant lands.
So a rich merchant or noble has a large mansion with a large harem containing his mother, his unmarried sisters, his wives, his concubines, his unmarried daughters, those of his sons not yet old enough to move to men's quarters, female servants, mostly slaves, eunuch servants and bodyguards, mostly slaves. There could be dozens of people living in the harem, all female except for the eunuchs who used to be men and little boys who aren't men yet.
None of those people would be legally entitled to have sex with anyone except for the master of the house, but each of them would have various personal relationships with everyone of the others. And possibly several of them would have romantic desires for other members of the harem, possibly including sexual desires.
There could easily be an eternal triangle involving three female members of the harem, or even a more complicated geometric figure, while still involving only a minority of the females. And possibly one among the eunuchs as well.
And out in the city among people who live in small, ordinary households there can be many characters who have all sorts of relations with the people they know, possibly including various eternal triangles among members of the same and/or different genders.
And then the Mongol army arrives and besieges the city and breaks down gaps in the walls and the city surrenders. The Mongols herd all the people out of the city and at a signal the Mongols massacre everyone, including all the "straight" and "queer" characters in the story.
Readers won't get the impression that the writer is homophobic, more like the writer is Mongolphobic and want the readers to be Mongolphobic.
You may have heard of the Emperor "Elagabalus", who, according to the ancient historians, was really, really "queer" and was allegedly killed for it. "Elagabalus" is the main character in the novels Family Favorites (1960) by Alfred Duggan and Child of the Sun (1966) by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner. And as far as i remember "Elagabalus" is depicted in those novels as both "queer" and a sympathetic character or even the protagonist, murdered by homophobic and/or power hungry characters. So the example of those novels show that it is possible to write stories where the "Queer" characters are killed off without being homophobic.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46620. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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My answer is relatively direct in this matter.
To my mind, true equality occurs, when a person recognizes another person is homosexual, yet this information is not interesting enough to cause any kind of reaction, i.e. it is so normal that one may say, "whatever".
Equality is not, "Oh, Greg, Mira told me you're homosexal, that's co cool!". Equality is, "Hey there, Greg."
With respect to your storyline, I assume you need to kill off a character, because this is the path you envisioned for that specific character / trope. It is more homophobic not to kill off this character, due to their homosexuality, because this is what you originally intended for the character, but then altered due to that character's sexuality.
Behaving differently and treating someone differently is what constitutes homophobia in my opinion. People need to become such a common occurrence in your world, that interactng with them no longer constitutes a special event for you. This is when you truly start treating them like everyone else. This is when you treat people of some sort XY just like people.
TL;DR:
Not only are you fine killing off that charcter, but you even should do that, if this is what you intended before you started considering implications of political incorrectness.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46630. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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If Saskia is his biological mother, presumably she was bisexual, not exactly gay. So although in the LGBTQ community, she was not lesbian or gay, you aren't following that trope.
But that is nitpicking: The real morally corrupt element of that Trope is making LGBTQ an evil punishable by death, and since you have other LGBTQ characters in the novel (most of them), you won't be following that trope unless you find a way to kill all of them (or make them miserable) for their sin.
If there are any happy endings for LGBTQ characters, you have proven that just being LGBTQ is not a barrier to a fulfilling and happy life.
If there are NO happy endings, I'd think you were perpetuating the LGBTQ is a punishable sin trope.
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