But this is where you lose me. There have been many piece of fiction that have resonated with me, and there are lots that have miss the mark for me. But never have they missed the mark because I don't share the same skin color, sexual orientation, or genitals of the main character.
Except I just listed that, the two characters I allude to are Kumiko form an Anime called Sound Euphonium and Harrowhark Nonagesimus from series of books called The locked Tomb Trilogy (There's no 3rd book yet), both characters are cis women, one of them heterosexual but kind off ambiguously lesbian (Because Japan) the other a lesbian and a nun (so religious), one Japanese and the other white, I'm none of these things, however the experiences reflected in those stories are ones that resonate with me a lot because of my personal experiences.
The thing is that there's a set of experiences that only ever happens to certain groups of people, so there are certain things, emotions, stories, drama, fulfilment that can really only be communicated by having a character with those, and while I'm not saying it's required for me to relate to a character it should would be cool to see those stories and themes show up in media, it would be great to be able to point out to a film or a game or whatever and say "That's it, that's how I feel" or "That's what it's like", just because it would be cool, I don't think there needs to be another reason.
Another thing that's important is that I feel like the progressives need to open up and be open to humor. Allow your identity to be the subject of self-reflective teasing, because humor is a great way to open up people that might not agree with your world view as a great way of letting them see that you go through the same funny shit that they go through.
Humour is very much allowed, but the thing is that comedy is really fucking hard, so if you are going to make fun of something you better be damned good at making jokes, also you probably have never interacted with a lot of gay or trans people, because like there are jokes mocking each other like all the time.
Anyways, we must also take into account who is making the joke and why, it's not really a secret that trans people in particular have been used as a joke for a really long time, particularly trans women, where the whole joke is that "LOL she has penis that makes you gay" or "Gross she used to be a man" (Normally followed by a spit-take or puking), , which are things that can actually be pretty damaging to people, for example one of my uncles dated a trans-woman when he was younger, but because of how people treated them because of it and all the gay jokes, he distanced himself from her because he didn't want to be seen as a pervert which is both damaging to the woman that probably felt like a freak being told by society that she isn't deserving of love (I'm guessing) and it was damaging to my uncle that denied himself a relationship that could've been good as well as this leading him to make a lot of really stupid acts of macho posturing in order to affirm his masculinity to other people, a story BTW that I only heard because my dad was making fun of him by telling that story and that he still doesn't like to talk about though he has on a few occasions, most notably getting angry when people refer to her as a man.
In any case, my point being that even if something seems like just a silly harmless joke, it's not really always the case and it can genuinely have a negative or positive effect on people's lives, so I think it's reasonable to be weary of these kinds of humour, which is often what edgelords and conservatives refer to when they're complaining that they aren't allowed to make a joke.
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