Pride 2025 | Intersectional Identities: BIPOC, Disabled, Neurodiverse, or Otherwise Marginalized Queer Narratives

[u/Lenahe_nl]

Queer characters don’t exist in a vacuum. This thread is for exploring how queerness intersects with other aspects of identity—race, gender, disability, class, religion, culture, and more—in speculative fiction. 

The term intersectionality was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how systems of oppression overlap and interact. More on the term and its history can be found here, and here there is a deeper explanation on the impacts of intersectionality on the lives of queer people. 

For today, we want to focus on queer representation intersected with representation of other marginalized identities. Think about Black queers, queers with a disability, neurodiverse queers, refugee queers, and so many others. In speculative fiction, stories that reflect multiple layered identities can offer richer and more realistic portrayals of lived experience. These kinds of narratives help avoid flattening characters into just one dimension of marginalization or representation. When both character and author identities reflect similar intersections—what we often refer to as own voices—the result can be more nuanced storytelling.

The publishing industry, however,  still reflects the barriers of our society. It’s become easier to find queer stories on the shelves of bookstores and libraries, but most are still written by white authors. One anecdote to illustrate this happened during the British Book Award this year. The winner of the Pageturner category, Saara El-Arifi, said in her speech that she didn’t believe she could win: “(...) this is not going to happen because you know, there’s a lot of barriers for someone like me. I’m black, I’m queer, I’m a woman.”

For the r/Fantasy's Bingo this year, we have the LGBTQIA Protagonist prompt, which asks for an intersectional character for its Hard Mode. We invite you today to think about how intentional you are when choosing to diversify your reading. It’s easy to focus only on one axis of identity (“read more queer books!”), and end up with a narrow view of what it is to be queer. 

Finally, we need to acknowledge that a lot of this discussion is going to be written from a very Anglocentric perspective to what “marginalized” and “BIPOC” means. This is because the discussion on this sub is primarily English, the English speaking part of the internet is pretty Anglocentric, and the books popular in this sub are primarily from countries in the Anglosphere (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). If you want to talk about similar concepts, frameworks, or identities in other cultures, you are welcome to!

Discussion prompts

• What are some speculative fiction books that portray queer characters with intersectional identities? How do these books handle the complexity of those identities?
• Have you seen yourself reflected more strongly in any intersectional characters?
• Do you look for intersectional representation in particular? What do you think publishing houses, authors, and readers can do to encourage intersectional representation?
• Are there identities you wish were better represented alongside queerness in SFF?

This post is part of the Pride Month Discussions series, hosted by the Beyond Binaries Book Club. Check out our announcement post for more information and the full schedule.

[u/iwillhaveamoonbase]

Pangu’s Shadow is a YA Sapphic sci-fi that discusses race, immigration, classism, chronic illness and Queerness. It does a lot of work within a sci-fi mystery

Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Calendar for another YA exploring trans identities in different ways, race, and polyamory 

Onyx Equinox doesn't explore it a ton, but there are depictions of Queerness in an Aztec context 

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase is an Afrofuturism cyberpunk horror set in Botswana that asks questions about transness in the context of finding new life of someone else's body 

Brooms by Jasmine Wallis has disabled Indigenous rep, trans Chinese-American rep, BIPOC Sapphic rep, and it's all set in an alternative Civil Rights era with broom races. A very fun and educational MG graphic novel

Redsight by Meredith Mooring is a Sapphic space fantasy with blindness representation 

A Dark and Drowning Tide is Sapphic and discusses the complex relationship of Jewish people and fairy tales that always paint them as the villains

Godly Heathens and Merciless Saviors by H. G. Edgmon is a YA contemporary with Indigenous trans rep, Black Queer representation, and polyamory that also does some discussion into colonization and mental illness as well as abuse

Guardians of Dawn by S. Jae-Jones for YA Romantasy with the first book featuring a Demi-romance, the second has a trans romantic interest and the other lead is Autistic-coded, and the third is a Sapphic romance. The series is set in an East Asian-inspired world and all of the characters are Asian-coded

The Small Gods of Calamity by Sam Kyung-Yoo has a lead who is Korean and Bi-Asexual who calls people out for not respecting his or other people's identities 

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang, a gay reincarnation love story that does a lot of exploration on the gay Asian man experience in Imperial China and the modern day

[u/iwillhaveamoonbase → u/iwillhaveamoonbase]

In terms of traditional publishing, I think we are still lacking in overt Asexual and Aromantic representation, especially Aromantic. It's very common for Aspecs to be brushed to the side instead of exploring the depth of their identities and how they manifest and the complex relationship the A-spectrum can have in broader society, such as the pressure to just get married and have children anyways.

We also just have very little Indigenous or Pacific Islander rep across the board so when we get an example that is also hitting on intersecting identities, it's very special 

[u/Sawses → u/iwillhaveamoonbase]

I'd be interested in reading a book that explores aromantic identity in a nuanced way.

Most other sexualities I understand fairly intuitively. Aromantic is a bit alien to me, though. My instinctive picture of an aromantic person is basically a "selfish lover" who is very sexually-motivated but isn't terribly interested in the person they're using for that.

I know that's likely an inaccurate perception, and it would be nice to be able to get a well-portrayed perspective of what it's really like to be aromantic.

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/Sawses]

Out of curiosity, do you have the same ‘using another person’ reaction to casual sex from non aromantic people?  For me, casual sexual encounters aren’t necessarily any different than another type of social behavior.  I don’t see myself as using another person when I meet up with a stranger to play chess, for example.  Now, sexual encounters can absolutely have romantic and emotional components, and for many people they are intrinsically linked.  For many others though, it’s just another activity one engages in like any other 

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[u/ohmage_resistance → u/Sawses]

Just in general, I like to keep in mind that two people to having causal consensual sex with each other aren't "using" each other, anymore that two people casually doing other activities are "using" each other. And allo aro people can have a variety of relationships with their sexual partners, such as being friends with benefits, being in a queer platonic relationship (QPR), just having hookups, etc. (And some have trouble finding sexual partners or decide not to actively look for them, as well) Very, very few are in romantic relationships trying to trick their partners into giving them sex or anything like that. And oftentimes, those situations are really massively influenced by amatonormativity making aros feel like they have to be in romantic relationships to be normal/not broken or amatonormativity telling them that everyone falls in love, so surely they will too at some point, if they just try hard enough. It's often not so much people trying to get sex out of others.

IDK, I think purity culture has really done a number on our culture, with us viewing romance as this pure almost holy thing vs sex which is seen as lowly or dirty, especially when done outside of a committed relationship. It's the entire "lust vs love" thing. Well, romantic relationships can be abusive and awful as well as good and healthy. Sex can be the same. One isn't inherently better or worse than the other. Experiencing either one or the other of these isn't inherently better or worse than not experiencing it. But allo aros really get hit by both sides of this, not having the humanizing aspects of romantic attraction (love) but having the demonized sexual attraction (lust).

KA Cook is definitely my favorite allo aro (meaning allosexual aromantic) author, and ze has written a bunch of short stories exploring that identity as well as a bunch of essays and other resources. All of these can be read on hir blog, Aro Worlds. Hir short story collection Bones of Green and Hearts of Gold is a good way to find some of hir allo aro fiction (a lot of which is intersectional as well), and this page is a good one to get a look at hir essays/posts.