@Waller said in MU*, Youth, and LGBT+ Identity:
I played a character one time with the shtick of "law professor woman who wears men's suits 24/7." The Played By was an actress who is known for her forays into men's clothing. In retrospect, this is pretty cringy, so yeah. I'm very sorry about possibly harming LGBTQIA people thinking I was being oh so clever...when I wasn't being clever at all.
There is nothing wrong with this concept. It's not even that cringey. This is very much something that one would have seen in the LGBT community in, say, the 90's or before, and only really started to go out of vogue with the more mainstream acceptance of the lifestyle. You even saw this on pretty much any show on LOGO (remember LOGO, ya'll?).
I know. I was there. I lived it.
People might say "that's not me and my friends," but it sure as hell is somebody, and so long as you're not trying to make a mockery of the character for wearing those suits, it's perfectly respectable.
All characters (every single one of them) are in some fashion a trope. No character perfectly matches the everyday real life experience because a) that would be fucking boring, and b) it's hard to tell stories in that vein.
There is a certain degree of "unrealisticness" that you have to accept in any sort of fiction endeavor. The intention is the more important part, and whether the character is being played as some sort of cringey gag or is legitimately being played to hilite a certain topic. The line there is sometimes blurry, but I assure you, there is a line.