I wrote a romance between two female characters, but I don't want the audience to think they're gay.

I guess that does make sense.

 

I think there’s a bit of confusion here that you need to sort out.

1) You want to write a story that isn’t a lesbian/gay romance. You want to avoid labels. You want to make this about two people in love and not make it something to do with gender.

2) You want to explore the unique dynamics of a same gender relationship.

I don’t think you can have both. There can’t be the unique dynamics of same gender relationships without stating what gender someone is, what you think being that gender is like, and what two people of the same gender would be like in a relationship. You’d have to use all of the same ideas that you’re trying to avoid using.

I think you need to stop worrying about whether the woke public will attack you from one side while the anti-woke lot attack you from the other and write your story.

 

Perhaps.

 

While the labels make sense from a marketing perspective, I can understand @Charles Neal being reluctant to take on the classification. L+ is a culture, a movement, it has a flag for crying out loud, so the term itself will set a lot of precedent. As it is, generalizations are applied to a lot of atypically sexual people by members and non-members alike. The terms have become loaded beyond their base meanings.

Retro-active classification is criticized:

Article on Alexander the Great:

Another article saying sort of the same thing:

There was a hilarious article that ventured he was not bisexual because he was a tyrant, and that it was impossible for someone L+ to be a tyrant. Unfortunately I can't find the link again.


Even within L+ itself, people who identify as both trans AND gay get rejected by the corresponding gays who still have their assigned at birth (chromosomal) sex identity.

L+ semantics are now too flawed (maybe the wrong word, conflated?) to apply them strictly to the atypical sex scenarios that spawned them in the first place.

 

This is such a weird conversation.

"I don't want to call my characters lesbian because this isn't about politics or sexual identity, it's just about two people being in love" is just such a weird take that I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around.

It's like saying... "I want to have my characters be Africans with dark skin and tight, curly hair. But I don't want them to be BLACK, because this isn't about politics and I don't want to seem woke."

But... they are black. That's what black is. And black people have spent years pushing to be represented in books and movies as normal characters whose skin color is not part of the plot, whose existence is not a political statement. They want you to write a book about them and let them be normal characters. That doesn't make them not black.

I support you doing what you're doing. I just want to explain--- whoever called you "woke" for having lesbian characters is a dumbass. Ignore them. They are not going to change their mind if you dance around it and try to insist your characters aren't lesbians, they're just regular ladies without labels who are in love. They have their head up their ass. Some people are like that. Just keep doing what you're doing, friend. It's fine.

I sympathize with you being bi and having this struggle, wanting to avoid labels and wanting to avoid getting dismissed by assholes who will call you woke. I get it. Just don't worry about it. Just let your MCs be who they are and let readers call them what they want.

 

They are not lesbians, they are just lesbians for each other?
Otherwise they have heterosexual sexual appetites?