Just because a story is trans/queer doesn’t mean it’s good
If creators think a trans or queer character alone is enough to get money from our people, will they spend time crafting a meaningful story with transness and queerness, or will they just use it as set dressing and a marketing checkbox?
We deserve better than checkbox marketing and tokenism in media
By Jane Migliara Brigham
The past few years has seen an explosion of queer and trans stories made by and for their intended audience. This boom has been excellent for our ability to tell our own stories, especially when we don’t have to deal with editors and publishers who will smooth over the parts that cishet audience members might not understand. I for one love this development.
Despite the constant threats to our way of life, we are in a golden age of trans and queer art.
The very digital infrastructure that allows us to communicate with one another has allowed us to tell our stories at a scale that was never before possible.
That being said, a lot of stories which are otherwise not very good or which are unpolished are able to promote themselves on nothing more than the status of the characters involved. For example, I have seen a ton of books advertised primarily on the basis that they are filled with lesbians, trans people, etc..
To see what I mean, look at many of the advertisements for queer and trans books. Very often, the fact that the main character is queer is the first and most prominent part of the advertisement.
Sometimes, it’s not even the main character that is used to justify a story’s queer rep status. There’s an unfortunate trend of “sapphic” being used as a marketing term when the stories involved don’t contain lesbians or others in sapphic relationships, rather having a lesbian or bisexual side character that ends the story with a man.
I am not talking about genres such as yuri, yaoi, etc., where the gay romance is the entire appeal. I am talking about stories of every genre being marketed on the basis of their identity, even when it is wholly irrelevant to the plot of the story or the reason that the story is worth reading to begin with.
What this implies is that the reason you should be interested is not that the story is good, but that the story fills a checklist of things you already feel comfortable with. This is part of a broader trend in books where the tropes of a story are what get people to read it.
In other words, the gay/trans status of a character becomes nothing more than a marketing trope.
If you support our coverage, consider subscribing to The Needle as a Gold tier supporter, at $20 a month- you'll get access to all content! For a limited time, you can get half off your first three months!
This post is for subscribers (free or paid) only
Subscribe now and have access to all our stories, enjoy exclusive content and stay up to date with constant updates.