“But why can’t anyone just be friends anymore?”
“Why can’t we have a story about women that isn’t a romance?”
Variations of things said to femslash fans and to queer women who are looking for representation in the media. They are missing a vital point: same-sex romance does not threaten platonic friendship.
You can have a female character who is attracted to other female characters enjoying nonromantic friendships with people at the same time. In real life, lesbians and multi-gender-attracted women have full lives that spread out beyond the romantic and the sexual. We have parents, children, siblings, best friends, surrogate family members, coworkers, etc.
So why not show a lesbian or a bisexual woman with female friends she is not in love with? I swear, we exist.
Illustration is Queen Shulamit using black and green figs to play checkers with her bodyguard, best friend, and surrogate straight big sister Rivka, with the queen’s sweetheart, Chef Aviva, in the background. They are characters from The Second Mango (also on Amazon), and its sequel, Climbing the Date Palm, due out from Prizm Books July 2. Above art by Becca Schauer.
I really like this post 🙂
Thanks! It’s come of years of having this complaint–I’ve always wanted to point out that all these people who are supposedly only sticking up for platonic friendship to be represented are still somehow not making characters queer, but now that I have my own books, I can just point to my own characters as a counter-argument.
yup.