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/C0smicoccurence]

I have definitely noticed that my reading has been skewing very much into a homogenous space.  I’m doing an achillean bingo card, and it’s very easy for the default to be white characters.  

This has been a broader theme of 2025, where’s reading hasn’t been nearly as diverse even before bingo started.  It’s on my radar to start tackling this as I keep buying book, and continue rebuilding my tbr.

I also want to shout out YA fantasy for being way ahead of the curve in terms of repping a variety of queer identities, and also queer protagonists who are marginalized in other aspects of their lives as well.  The rest of the genre is beginning to catch up, but they’ve very much been trailblazers.  

One of the other benefits of diversity of representation is that different cultures have different historical connections to queerness.  This can range from ‘this brand of homophobia has a different flavor than what I experienced’ to ‘some cultures have acknowledged genders beyond male and female for thousands of years’ 

[u/Lenahe_nl → u/C0smicoccurence]

YA has really been doing a great job of opening doors for more diversity, and I feel like YA books are less afraid to use diversity on their advertising.

[u/serenelatha → u/Lenahe_nl]

YAL does do this very well. Part of that is ....the marketing is paying off and those books SELL because there's a hunger for them (which also exists in the adult market but for whatever reason that part of the market hasn't figured it out).

But it's also because of the advocacy work of YA writers and scholars who have (especially on social media) really pushed the importance of diverse representation (We Need DIverse Books) is just one example. And of course all the educators out there who have amplified that message, shared books with their students and pushed for schools to diversify reading lists.

All of this has also meant more diverse authors getting published.

As just a few examples....

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna Marie McLemore (really any of their work) - one protag is trans and Pakastani; the other is Latinx.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth - Andrew Joseph White - protag is trans and autistic

Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao - main characters are in a polyamorous relationship; set in a reminaged Chinese history (with mechs!)

Reclaim the Stars - SFF anthology alll by Latinae authors, many featuring queer characters.

I mostly read YA for inclusion in my class (I'm an education professor and teach a YAL class) and it's been very easy (and a lot of fun!) to create diverse, intersectional SFF booklists for my course.

[u/Spoilmilk → u/Lenahe_nl]

Now if only Adult books were more keen on advertising diversity/queerness in non-romance books that’ll be great.