it always matters.
saying “race doesn’t matter in my universe” is no excuse if death, suffering and discrimination falls predominantly on characters of color in your story, if they’re almost exclusively villains, if the heroic ones are forever condemned to be sidekicks and languish in undeveloped storylines.
saying “sexuality isn’t an issue in my universe” is no excuse if there are no explicitly non-straight characters in your cast or the ones that are out end up tortured and murdered, if they’re doomed to be the solitary token who never connects with their own community or finds a loving partner.
saying “gender doesn’t affect things in my universe” is no excuse if women are never in positions of power in your story or if the women who start out in charge always end up stripped of their authority, if they are raped as punishment in your narrative, if every character is cis or the trans and nonbinary folks who appear are framed as abnormal and soon to die.
all you’re doing is putting on a blindfold to social context that affects real people living right now, and guess what? it makes you a bad writer. professional or amateur, you can do better.
that social context and the prejudices associated with it have to be actively worked against. you can’t just pull the wool over your eyes and insist your story is the exception, because media does not and has never existed in a vacuum.
