I'm gonna get all University-course philosophy on this because it's ridiculous.

To the people saying "queer people should be allowed to decide who tells our stories"?

Actually no, we kind of shouldn't. Not with our current situation and set of options. HEAR ME OUT.

As a million people have mentioned, this is a different conversation to race and ethnicity. So a) stop comparing like the concepts are interchangeable.

But to examine whether it's "fair and valid" for queer people to police identities in YA, let's do a simple utilitarian approach.

Utilitarianism explores harm vs gain. An action is moral if it contributes the greatest net good. Ok.

So, if we say "only queer people can write queer YA", what are the benefits to the queer community?

Well, it stops outsiders from profiting off our stories.

It reserves limited publishing spots for queer authors, who are marginalized in comparison to cishet authors.

All sounds good, right?

But then what are the losses to the queer community? As we've seen, many closeted cis women, trans men and nb people have been outed in the last few years alone. And it also creates an unsafe environment for closeted authors in general.

Especially if it becomes commonly accepted knowledge that if you write queer ya you MUST be queer (imagine being a closeted author and knowing that if you explore your identity, simply writing the book announces to the world that you're queer. How unsafe. How limiting for them.)

"But," I hear some of you say. "This is a necessary sacrifice in order to prevent the cishets with power from stealing our stories and pushing us out."

Ok, sure. That rhetorical scenario sure does sound urgent. Perhaps the greater good here IS to sacrifice closeted authors for the benefit of the whole community?

So, let's examine queer YA and look at all the many many cishet authors profiting off our stories... Wait. There really ... Aren't... Many? I can think of one, *maybe* two authors in the queer YA space who aren't out as queer.

So we're doing all this because of one or two possibly-straight authors?

This epidemic that people keep referring to, the one in which hoardes of cishet people are bursting in to steal our stories, is starting to look a little like a fear tactic to me.

Or is it simply telephone, where if we say it enough people believe it's true?

But back to utilitarianism.

When the losses to the queer YA community are that multiple people are outed and dozens and dozens of closeted people become unsafe, and the payoff is that the small HANDFUL of cishet authors writing queer ya are no longer able to publish, do the ends justify the means here?

For me the answer is a resounding "JESUS, no!". Not if you consider closeted or questioning people to be part of the community. Which I hope we all do. You don't suddenly become more important after you come out (or are outed ).

Now let me be clear. I am talking about ACTIONS, not preferences. Is it immoral to want queer fiction to be written by queer authors? Absolutely. Not. That is a very fair thing to want.

(the good news here is that it almost entirely is, in the YA space already. That's great!)

Is it immoral to wish that the few people who truly are cishet weren't given opportunities to profit off queer stories? Also no. Again, it's a fair and valid wish.

What IS immoral is to take actions that DEMONSTRABLY throw your fellow community members under the bus to "fix" this (comparatively small) problem.

It's a little like suggesting we explode a bank with a robber and hostages inside.

Sure, we killed all the hostages, but we saved them, and the rest of us, from the robber!!

"But you didn't save them, you sacrificed them"

"But bank robbers are bad and they do harm and I stopped them, so what's the problem?"

"ALL THESE BODIES ARE THE PROBLEM!"

"So, what?" You ask. "We should just let cishet people be allowed to publish queer fiction?"

Honestly? Until we have a better option, my answer is "kind of, yeah."

Because the very nature of queer identities means that there IS no way to enforce a strict "insiders only" rule without harming insiders. It's a catch 22.

But don't panic! There are reasons why this is actually ok.

1) As I mentioned, in YA at the moment, the VAST majority of queer fiction authors are actually queer. (The number of observable ones has gone up recently, but that's only because they've been forced out. They were queer and questioning to begin with lol).

2) you don't have to spend time and resources promoting authors you are not comfortable promoting. It's immoral to police identities for the reasons mentioned above, but it's NOT immoral to put your time and excitement behind the authors you want to see published! You have agency

3) It's also not immoral to critique bad rep. You don't have to accept harmful or problematic stories from ANY author. You can continue to critique stories as you see fit and appropriate, as long as it's about the story, not the author's sexuality.

4) When you put your support behind the authors you want to see published, and the stories you think are well done, this signals to publishing that there is a demand for these authors and stories. Publishing loves demand. It wants to go where the money is.

That means more well-done queer stories and more opportunities for out-queer authors. Double yay!

Is it fair that I'm here telling you there's really no way to safely enforce who can tell our stories? Not really.

So, truly, if you have a brainwave that allows you to express your distaste for cishet people profiting off queer fiction that doesn't place a single member of the queer community at risk, share it!!! I would LOVE to see it.

But until then, all we have to go on is the cost and benefits ratio.

And right now, that ratio says the cost to the queer community is greater than the benefit.