We NEED to Respect Differences in LGBTQIA+ Expression

 This is a bit of a brain dump. I hope most of you know & believe I try to validate everyone's way of being themselves. 

 The world is a HUGE place. There's 7.9 Billion people in the world.

Each country has it's own culture, foods, music, and issues. People in those countries also vary greatly, and we all have are own filters giving us a unique picture of the world & events.

((Okay why am I telling you what you already know?))

Too often folks from one place don't allow people in another place to evolve in the way that makes sense to them. Now of course there's basics that are wrong in any language and I'm not arrogant enough to believe I can make that list > but I think if you're reading this you would agree killing someone for being on the rainbow is simply wrong. There's nothing cultural that someone is going to point to make that okay for me > ever. 

LGBTQIA+ rights and acceptance vary from place to place. This will impact how a person is able to express who they are and who they love. That will affect how much visibility can safely displayed. 

Just because where you live is more accepting and open don't judge those from other places who aren't in the same situation.

LGBTQIA+ expression varies in orientation and gender country to country. 

Both of these will affect the movies/TV/books/web series that come out of the country.

And please be careful assuming it's only in the BL/MM romance genre. I encourage you to watch/read some M/F as well so you'll able to see which issues are linked only to BL/MM romance and which are where the mainstream population is.

I'm struggling currently to write a manuscript set in Thailand. Thailand's view of the rainbow is different than in the West. There are even different orientations (such as Adams > cisgender men who are attracted to people assigned female at birth but are more masculine). In some cases they've jumped the bisexual orientation and landed right into the pansexual realms where it's not the gender but the person. (I've talked people who used a Western filter and say it as bierasural, but that's was not what was happening. They simply see the possibility of being attracted to anyone.) 

This is true for everyone but since I'm writing another book based in Thailand I wanted to point out how transgender people see themselves is different and how society sees them also varies. By only using Western standards and ideas you don't see the true picture. 

In Thailand some transgender women and some effeminate gay men identify as kathoey (or ladyboy which isn't a slur there but a title some aspire to) and some see it as an orientation. Some people use the term "second kind of lady." 

Just like in the USA some transgender people don't want to fully vanish into the binary of male or female. Some want to honor their journey from being assigned one sex at birth to identity as another. It depends.

I'd ask that folks accept that there are differences and because I'm trying to honor the people of Thailand I will be donning their filter in which I'm developing these stories.

Allow for variations in the orientation and gender spectrum.

Big hugs, Z. 

(BTW: Nonbinary is only beginning to see the light of day in Thailand before recently I didn't exist.)