LGBTQ characters are often written two dimensionally because the writers mistakenly believe that a character's queerness is inherently compelling enough to make up for shortcomings elsewhere in their characterisation. Audiences consequently dislike these characters and push back, not out of bigotry but out of distaste for the poor writing of these characters. Authors of these characters lack empathy because they are unable to empathize with audiences that push back on these characters. These authors fail to understand the failures of their character writing and instead place the blame on social forces like racism, sexism and transphobia.
I mostly disagree with this take, I am simply trying to clarify what I believe OOP was trying to convey. The only part I partially agree with is the first sentence, but that is typically in the case of straight/cis/white/male authors writing queer/trans/POC/female characters and failing due to a lack of understanding in regards to the characters they're writing. It's also something that you see from many amateur writers but that's simply because their writing has not developed yet. Neither case is the type of character the bigots usually point to though.
Honestly, it's not even just straight writers that fail to write compelling diverse characters. HUMANS fail to write diverse characters, in the majority. And often even if a character IS compelling to start...they get flanderized almost immediately.
My best example is Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who/Torchwood. He's initially created as "Omni-sexual". This was pivoted almost immediately into 99.9% gay male relationships exclusively. That entire series was almost exclusively "ok..but the twist is..they're gay in this episode."
Doctor Who in particular has had this issue multiple times even.
"Hi, I'm the Doctor's companion Bill. I'm gay!" Was practically a verbatim quote.
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u/DarthArtero 6d ago
I read that three times and I still have no idea what they're trying to say.
Are they saying that writers who use LGBTQ+ characters lack empathy? That's the part I can't wrap my brain around.
The same writers also actively refuse to understand racist transphobic incel chuds??