Official Tumblr of We Need Diverse Books

“This being the case, it often ends up feeling like television shows only feature characters with either nuanced racial storylines or queer storylines — never both at the same time. As a queer person who is also a person of color, watching television is a fraught experience for me. Constantly, I find myself searching for characters whose stories mirror my own and, repeatedly, I come up empty-handed. I am forced to accept the few, tiny fragments reflecting my own lived experiences that I can find scattered across today’s TV offerings, but I am tired. I long desperately for television writers, producers, and networks to prioritize the centering of human experiences beyond the conventional, and I know I am not alone.”

We also need to be considerate of the depiction disabled people—especially those of us with intersecting identities, like race and sexuality—in our society. They should have a place in writers’ rooms and on mastheads to showcase what disability in every form—both physical and invisible—is like, and prevent the portrayal of negative reactions to disabilities in movies and on TV.

As a gay kid I always knew I was different, but having dead parents made me really different. I was often mocked for being too girly, for my lack of coordination in sports, or for defending bugs from the boys who wanted to crush them. Essentially, I was bullied for being too sweet. And the minute kids got wind that my mother was killed, they liked to use that against me too.

For me, Lilo & Stitch was a sanctuary. A portrayal of an authentic family like my own. Lilo was weird and unafraid to be exactly who she was, despite the upturned noses of her peers. But there was still a sense of loneliness radiating from her that echoed feelings of my own. This relation is what lead me to get a tattoo of Lilo holding her fish, Pudge, on my leg when I worked at Disney World. Sometimes people question why I got “a cartoon” permanently etched on my body and I wonder if they ever knew what it felt like to be the loneliest kid in the world.

“In addition to being autistic, I’m also queer and physically disabled, and it would be nice to see that diversity reflected back at me. Autism isn’t the entirety of a character’s identity, but just a facet of it. Yet, I’m still waiting to see autistic women on television who love glitter and are as quick with sarcasm and pop culture references as Lorelai Gilmore, as emotionally affectionate and empathetic as Riley Matthews, and as sharp and passionate as Hermione Granger. I’d also love to see more diversity in the portrayals — autistic women aren’t just white, straight, cisgender, and able-bodied. After all, women already have a harder time being diagnosed and so do people of color, and it would really benefit us to show the general public that autistic women are as diverse as non-autistic women.”

“As the LGBTQIA+ community becomes more intertwined into the larger mainstream media, there are more and more spaces for queer women to create, to publish, to read, and to be heard.

But there are also fewer spaces that are just by and for us – spaces that offer a unique perspective that always uses the lens of the queer woman’s experience to look at pop culture, social justice issues, politics, sports, fashion, and everything else.

The fact is that media by and for queer women (like any other marginalized identity) is crucial. Not only does it ensure a safe space and a sense of community around our shared experiences, but it also allows space for more diversity and exploration of intersectional identities.

If a larger, mainstream publication chooses to feature queer women’s voices, they may need only a handful of stories, or a few regular contributors. But sites like Autostraddle @autostraddle, because of its sole dedication to queer women, are able to offer more intersectional voices – like from the experiences of QTWOC and disabled queer women.

It’s an issue of representation: The more there is, the more well-rounded and inclusive that representation can be.

Queer women’s media, like AfterEllen, can’t exist without us. Whether you’re a supportive ally to the LGBTQIA+ community, or a queer woman yourself, it’s important that as much as we can, we support queer women’s media and those that create it.”