Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

In that case Zeta, I expect you'd find it quite cozy in there.

I have aplenty of problems with Traviss on her own but that's not even a blip on my radar personally

I just don't see the need for such characters, but I have so many other problems with LotF that such things probably shouldn't even matter.

Eh SW has interspecies romances all the time. (Points at Hobbie and Jenson macking on Bothan dames in Requiem for a Rogue)

So homosexual relationships are hardly out of the realm of normalcy

I use fiction to get away from that stuff, so I am simply annoyed with it showing up in my escape,

SW has black people. Do black people do that too? This is a slippery slope of reasoning

I mean does it really break your suspension of disbelief when this is a universe where dudes can have Rodian Mistresses?

Let's just drop this, because I have more important things to worry about, like the direction the universe is being taken.

Zeta, how many gay people do you encounter in your everyday life that you need fiction to escape from them? Do they just kind of walk by, or are they, like, hurling themselves at you?

Its escaping the issues not the people.

Their existence is not an "issue". They are demonstrably there, whether one agrees with their sexuality or not.

Let's just drop this, because I am probably being an idiot.

You and I don't have to have this conversation, but this is the diversity thread - it's kind of why we're here.

just returned from cinema... Cloud Atlas is really stunning awesome and when I found words to describe what I think right now.. this discussion is spammed by me.

besides: now I wish for the Wachowskis doing the Sequels!

Yes. Besides, that is essentially saying only straight people are allowed to have escapism. (And only straight people who don't like gay people, at that.)
What if I want my escapist literature to be a place I can escape to where homosexuality is so normal and accepted nobody blinks twice at it? What if a gay person wants escapist literature they could imagine themself in, literature that doesn't tell them 'sorry, your existence is too inconvenient for our other readers to accept'?

But we can also point at many white authors who have given us numerous black characters, many of them prominate in the books they appeared in. Say characters like Nick Rostu, Hallena Devis or Belindi Kalenda. Ostrander & JJM are also really good at showing diversity in their works.

Not that having a more diverse stable of authors wouldn't help, chances are it probably would on some level.

Kinda secondary to this conversation but I'm wondering if anyone(well I guess besides me) here went back and read A Practical Man after we learned of Goran and Medrit's relationship in Revelation?

I bring this up because of how Beviin is portrayed in A Practical Man. It could be pretty easily argued that in the short story Goran is the main character, even more prominate than Fett or Nom Anor. When people first read this story they would have had no idea that Medrit, who gets mentioned, wasn't a woman.

It might only be a 60 page short story, but I think its also the first example we have of a Star Wars story with a lead character that is gay.

okay after a good nights sleep I am still speechless due to Cloud Atlas...someone kickstart my brain please cause I can't decide what to comment on first

For every SW novel & comic out there, there are a thousand romance novels & smut magazines. So if sexual jollies is your priority, why not buy one of those? I'd rather keep SW above the waistline.

Having a character who is gay =/= Gay sex

If sex is not being mentioned in a novel, then why would sexuality need to be mentioned unless it is political-correctness point scoring?

new official out of universe book just released: Star Wars and History, just got it from amazon and it has a lot to say about real world history and SW, not just american but world history of many countries.

I bet some diversity stuff in there too written by multiple History professors and other academics.

lots of great new insights in the book, among them too the paralells of Slave Leia to sex slavery, as well as paralells about uprisings, rebels, dictators, Trade Federation and East India Trading Company and lots of other things. also useful to chart historic paralells for the Sequels.. great book so far. and not shy of drawing paralells that others would shrug back from in a book.

Newsflash: You can show a homosexual romance or relationship without sex fool

Esg, calling people fools, no matter how unfortunate their views are, isn't helping anything.

Larry - what Esg said.

Calling my view unfortunate isn't helping anything either.

If anyone actually read my post, I was referring to all mentions of all sexuallity.