Hi Shannii, nice to meet you, thank you for the reply and sharing your thoughts and experiences. I’ve seen some of your discussions and I was going to reply to one of them but it was closed lol. And I understand having a lot to say.
I agree writing experiences that arent your own should be celebrated, sometimes authors have to be like actors and consider stepping in different shoes. And you have a good point about being scared to portray certain experiences and then they never get portrayed. To be honest im a bit nervous to write a muslim character and expand on their experience a little because im afraid im gonna get it wrong or be disrespectful lol, but i could always do more research and double check witha muslim person. we should strive to try.
About the LGBTQ+ thing, I ultimately agree with what youre saying, and I dont think there needs to be a few letters in the story for it to be considered lgbt+. I also get lgbt is like a phrase people can type and thats how they can find stories with queer experiences. I guess I just meant that almost every story I see labeled LGBT+ it only has a gay person or a gay relationship, its like the default for the acronym, and I guess I get disappointed that I almost never see other sexualities and virtually no gender outside of cis. And then some authors equate the whole acronym with JUST sexuality or with JUST gay people and only mention sexuality as if the acronym is just for sexualities. and some people say theyre lgbt+ allies but end up being very transphobic or biphobic and its like just say youre a gay and lesbian ally, but thats a whole other can of worms. But youre right, education is so important and if more people were educated then i probably wouldnt have a pet peeve about it lol. we shouldnt restrict the useage but rather have more understanding and empathy.
Also, Id love to help with your trans Q&A if you want! Lmk what I can do. Thank you for sharing our voices to educate people. I will def check out your blog after writing this lol.
About the misgendering thing, I get what you’re saying about the cisgender experience. Cisgender people definitely can get misgendered and it can definitely impact them. And dysphoria can be experienced by anyone, not just trans people. Anyone can experience discomfort or disconnect with their body. However gender dysphoria in particular is a trans experience (not all trans ppl have gender dysphoria but all ppl who experience GD are some form of trans) because if you feel uncomfortable with the gender assigned at birth and feel happier living as a gender other than the one assigned at birth then that would mean youre trans.
There’s a difference between dysphoria and dysmorphia. dysphoria is discomfort/disconnect and dysmorphia is seeing and/or thinking of your body in a distorted or exaggerated way. things like anorexia are usually dysmorphia, but an anorexic person could have one or the other or both. and with trans people, its usually gender dysphoria but some of us can also have dysmorphia, for example i have gender dysphoria, i feel disconnect and discomfort with my sex assigned at birth and severe discomfort and stress with people refering to me as female, but i also have dysmorphia because i have a distorted view of my hips, i think theyre huge but in reality they arent as huge as i think they are lol.
Im glad you understand theres a difference between being misgendered when youre cis vs being misgendered when youre trans. for many trans people, our entire lives revolve around fighting for people to view us as who we are, but for cis people they already get viewed for who they are without question. your example of a cis man being called a woman, that is misgendering as you said, but the difference is that those people still ultimately see him as a man, theyre just labeling his behavior as womanly. they arent going to doubt his identity as a man and start calling him she/her and telling him to use the female bathroom. his getting misgendered isnt a permanant experience and his life doesnt revolve around trying to prove to the world over and over again that hes actually a man. he might experience toxic masculinity and pressure to comform to an extreme standard of manliness, but thats a different experience as a cis person. cis people can understand what its like to be misgendered and they can get misgendered, but they wont understand what its like to get misgendered as a trans person specifically, because theres so many other factors and layers involved and specific discriminations they will never experience. like, people outside the minority can understand it and write about it with enough education, but they dont know what its like to go through it or to have those thoughts.
for example, a cis man can portray and write about womens experience with harassment and discrimination and sexism etc, and listen to women and learn all there is, but he will never understand exactly what its like to be a woman and experience and survive those things. he will be outside looking in. some things you just cant truly comprehend without the experience although you can understand them well enough to write about them respectfully. and white people can learn all they want about black peoples experiences, but they will never understand exactly what its like to live as a black person. anyways, i didnt mean to say cis people cant understand at all! sorry for my lack of clarity with my sentence in the original post.
finally, i agree ive only ever seen negative depictions of christianity, especially when it comes to gay characters, the villian is always the uptight traditional strict christian parents. unfortunately this is the experience of some lgbt+ kids, but it isnt the only one. theres open minded and closed minded people of every religion. also ive never heard of dyspraxia! i will look it up. and id also like to see more portrayals of mental conditions (excuse me for lack of a better term). these experiences exist and they should in our stories as well. my partner is dyslexic and i show signs of dyslexia (currently hard for me to get access to diagnosis so idk if i have it) and my sister has autism. and about mixed people, youre right theres so many possibilities but we only see a few and many of them mainly identify with whiteness and many of them are mixed with whiteness. mixed people have a variety of ways of identifying and theres endless combinations.
Sorry for my long reply in return but anyways thank you again for speaking on this and im glad we can have a respectful and informative discussion.
, and so to other Jews. So, if you need any help with creating Jewish characters, you can ask me or 
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