Empathy and Appropriation

As a queer and gender-fluid person born female, I never stopped to think until recently whether writing male central characters and male/male relationships was appropriation. I’m not a man. How could I appropriately write about the experience of a gay or bisexual man? Am I misappropriating?

Possibly, yes. I am open to being called out for that.

I’ve also written many characters who are not white females—as I am classified by external perceptions. The characters are who they are when they come to my imagination. I try not to write cultural or ethnic experiences to which I do not belong unless they are purely imaginary. But if I were to expressly write everyone in my stories to only be white female of my age up to the time of writing, my work would be quite limited and would contribute to an excess in the world of that perspective.

I will continue to write what the muses send me. I might have to keep some of it permanently in a drawer in order to stand out of others’ way during these much-needed times of social status readjustment.

I believe that those of us with privileged lives, and those of us with mixed privileged and non-privileged aspects of our social status, must step aside when opportunities arise for people who have had longstanding non-privileged status. I also think that a multiplicity of diverse characters written by as many respectful writers as possible could contribute to the reduction of implicit bias—the more readers encounter people of every race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and age, the less they see the world primarily from their own “categories.”

There was a time when women were not allowed on stage and were played (and parodied) only by men. That was appropriation. Then, men played men and women played women, even if only men’s work on the page was performed in public, and that was progress. Women began sometimes being cast as men, and men sometimes portrayed women—that seemed less appropriation and more empathy and skill. It seemed that society had cracked the gender trap a bit and actors could be actors and bring anyone to life. But then, gay actors were afraid to come out for fear of being excluded from "straight" roles.

We are now adapting acting to more openness and we are stumbling along the way. If there are very few screen roles a year for trans women, then by all means, trans-women should be cast. Trans-women should also be cast as any women. I also hope for a time when a myriad of roles abound across categories and actors can embody any character for whom they can put in the work and make the case. Active empathy is one of the practices that makes art transcendent for artist and audience.

Self-adopted categories and labels free us from the oppressors’ old boxes, and then those new names will also work to confine us, so we will change them again as the need arises. The contraction and expansion, exhalation and inhalation, continues.