I’m going to put out there - the central character of a play I wrote was a twelve year old girl. I am not a twelve year old girl. I may have been one at one point. I may not have been - I don’t play identity politics. What I can say is this… writers need to do research and quite happily not give a shit about who they offend in equal measure.

If my writing inadvertently offended an asexual person because of a throwaway line, that person has bigger problems than my TV show. If I cannot be bothered to research a show, it’ll show through in the writing. Put the wrong number of stripes on a military person’s uniform and someone will write in and register their disgust - but you can’t spend weeks buried in pointless research trying to please every idiot available for comment - it’ll kill your story and it’ll kill your confidence in writing stories.

Had you checked your title with me beforehand, I would’ve told you that such a Clickbait title would likely engender backlash… because that’s not really what you’re saying. What you’re saying is ‘do due diligence’ - a sensible piece of advice. Any writer can write whatever they want, same as any viewer can walk out or turn it off in disgust.

I’m always wary about people who attempt to police language and tell people what they can and can’t do. It leads to the sort of world I wrote a play about. Still yet to get complaints from any 12 year old girls. :o)