A bit of an aside, since I’m not sure exactly where this fits in: I was at a conference talking to a trans person who did research on trans people’s experiences online. I mentioned how I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that research since I wasn’t a trans person myself and would probably fuck something up, and they responded by saying that if trans research was limited only to trans people, then barely any trans research would be done at all. I think in some ways, this extends to media as well. While a straight author probably shouldn’t write a book focused on the gay experience, if the only media that had gay characters at all were media authored by gay people, then there wouldn’t be much gay representation.
