Trigger warning: sexist and dehumanizing language to follow.
I really hate the writing advice "write what you know". I sincerely do. It stops so many people form exploring their thoughts about stuff they aren't experts in. Now I'm not saying that writing about stuff you don't know and haven't researched is going to be publishable, but it will teach you some pretty important stuff.
It will reveal all of the assumptions and bits of knowledge you already do have (but might not know that you know). Chances are that thing you're interested in learning/writing about is something
you probably have at least a few facts and assumptions about. And it's probably a good thing for any writer is to get to take stock of the knowledge base they already have (regardless of how skewed).
For instance last week I was prompted to "write a celebration of the opposite sex". I have no idea when "opposite sex" even is to me as a person who identifies as both bisexual and genderqueer. I experience a bristle of discomfort whenever I'm asked to distinguish between (two) sexes/genders.
My gender and sexual identities are in many ways inherently against that sort of defining. But some parts of are still attached to those separations. Even though they aren't the parts of me I choose to express most of the time they still exist inside of me.
So I chose to explore what I knew the least about, how my masculinity relates to the supposedly opposite feminine folks. This is what came out when I gave that space to speak:
(continue reading the entire piece visit Wryly's blog)
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