I feel like I'm gonna dislike this video, but I will watch regardless and try to say something useful about it. The Poster's Curse.
e: It's mostly fine, I had expected it to be some video complaining that a transgender character doesn't have uber-specific personality trait, thus the character is automatically inauthentic. This comment got a little away from me, as it usually does, but I suppose anyone who finds the video interesting might find my comment interesting as well.
In regards to whether art of transgender characters should use deadnames; I really think a writer has to take reality as it is, and write it regardless of whether others will be offended by it. (The story dictates whether you will do so, essentially; whether it adds any depth to a character or sets up later moments.) The issue of typical deployment of dead-names in fiction is 1) there is almost never any reason to do so, and 2) I find it indicative of the larger issue of almost all identity-centered art -- identity is really not that interesting. While I don't wish to denigrate much, there are too many works I have read by other LGBT+ writers that are thinly-veiled memoirs of their own narrow (usually urban) slice of existence, one that as a rural lesbian I have almost always felt alienated by, not comforted with. It, admittedly, sometimes makes me feel I am not authentic nor able to write characters of my own sexuality accurately.
This is only one of the reasons, of course, that the current diversity movement in art has led to diversity in creators yet not actual diversity. Or, as I once commented elsewhere, on the recent resurgence in racially-driven torture porn like Them:
...most people already know historical brutalities through history class and these works do not induce contemplation nor greater empathy in white viewers. They do not teach anyone anything deeper on how racism operates or how contemporary racists act. They are shock porn targeted towards guilty white liberals to consume and crow how important it is, even as they are unaware of their own subtle racism via how they ignore/scorn works from far deeper Black artists simply because these creators do not share their single-minded obsession with racism or contemporary social issues. (...) This is part of a larger system in which minority creators are held up as examples of diversity & 'finally achieving equality', even as they are further pigeon-holed by executives & producers into only creating works that cravenly exploit their own identity and contemporary social issues for profit, & racial trauma that is usually presented on-screen with all the nuance and care of a C-slasher film.
Unfortunately, this is a distinction that too many have missed -- most of all the LGBT+ organizations themselves -- and is so stuck in its own cycle at this point it seems it will take not logic but senescence to remedy.
I feel like I'm gonna dislike this video, but I will watch regardless and try to say something useful about it. The Poster's Curse.
e: It's mostly fine, I had expected it to be some video complaining that a transgender character doesn't have uber-specific personality trait, thus the character is automatically inauthentic. This comment got a little away from me, as it usually does, but I suppose anyone who finds the video interesting might find my comment interesting as well.
In regards to whether art of transgender characters should use deadnames; I really think a writer has to take reality as it is, and write it regardless of whether others will be offended by it. (The story dictates whether you will do so, essentially; whether it adds any depth to a character or sets up later moments.) The issue of typical deployment of dead-names in fiction is 1) there is almost never any reason to do so, and 2) I find it indicative of the larger issue of almost all identity-centered art -- identity is really not that interesting. While I don't wish to denigrate much, there are too many works I have read by other LGBT+ writers that are thinly-veiled memoirs of their own narrow (usually urban) slice of existence, one that as a rural lesbian I have almost always felt alienated by, not comforted with. It, admittedly, sometimes makes me feel I am not authentic nor able to write characters of my own sexuality accurately.
This is only one of the reasons, of course, that the current diversity movement in art has led to diversity in creators yet not actual diversity. Or, as I once commented elsewhere, on the recent resurgence in racially-driven torture porn like Them:
Unfortunately, this is a distinction that too many have missed -- most of all the LGBT+ organizations themselves -- and is so stuck in its own cycle at this point it seems it will take not logic but senescence to remedy.