According to many** arguments I've seen on the internet in the last day or so, if you're not gay/non-white/non-cis/sad/poor/fat you have no right to try to depict the gay/non-cis/non-white/sad/poor/fat people in the world. You can't actually depict those experiences if you haven't felt it yourself.
Sure you've felt pain/love/hate/boredom/fear/loss, sure you're human, but unless you've felt it in that capacity, wearing those shoes, you cannot possibly describe that particular experience.
On the other hand, if you write books with characters that do not embrace any of these qualities or you only portray them as secondary characters (as in they act as foils for the main straight/cis/white/happy/rich/svelte characters), you are awful. You do not even try to show the world what it is like to be fully human.
TL:DR = There seems to be a lot of anger on the internet.
**three or four
Published on January 28, 2014 19:08
Damned if you do, damned if you don't happens all the damned time.
(I read this similar situation described by Dan Savage http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/arch... and as usual, he calmed me down. I avoided the comments because I wanted to stay calm.)