Sexuality, and race, in "Cyborg Sleeps"

Trigger warning for discussion of coerced sexual activity.

With my break from any kind of activist posting, I realised one thing I could do was get on with posting more of my story Cyborg Sleeps. But that story has some questions of a social justice/activist bent that I want to address.

Firstly, there's the race issue. The story is set in a parallel universe in which a scientific approach to magic has placed it on the same level as technology based on the physical sciences. In this universe, the British Empire used magical technology to end WW2 a year or two earlier than before, and with a much stronger economic and military position. As a result, it has been able to hold onto a lot of its possessions overseas and remains a superpower on a par with the USA and the Soviet Union (both of which have different names in the story, but I haven't posted the bits where I start to mention them yet). That, inevitably, means that colonial attitudes on race are part of the background of the society in which I've based my story.

So, into that I have dropped two characters of colour: the central character, cyborg "Asira Y"; and Director Samuel Gattell (who is Black). I feel nervous writing about the experiences of marginalised people, when I do not share that marginalisation, and worry about my representation of POC in this particular story.

Both of these characters live lives that are far removed from those of many of their peers. Asira, by being removed and literally made "other-human" through the processes by which she has been made into a cyborg. Director Gattell, by being one of the few Black folks in this parallel world to have risen high enough in the chain of command in the military/intelligence community to be put in charge of a project like this. As noted in Episode 8, Gattell was being set up to fail when he was given the project, but proved his racist peers wrong in their assessment of his ability to run the project successfully; later episodes revealed how Gattell's knowledge of the Establishment's desire to see the black guy take a tumble has worked to place him at times in opposition to the needs of his team, particularly Asira after she was attacked for being non-White.

So that's how I excuse to myself writing these characters as they are.

The other area I wanted to discuss is sexuality.

So far, most of my characters have not had their sexual history discussed very much. Asira and Priestess Bena Wainwright are both revealed to have had PIV sex in their past, but in both cases on not-entirely-consensual terms (that is, coercion and lying were involved).

Here, I'm not so interested in explaining what my reasoning is or my portrayal. What I really want to know is what readers of the stories think are the sexualities of the main characters, whom I currently regard as being:

Agent Asira Y
Director Samuel Gattell
Dr Orla McDonald
Priestess Bena Wainwright
PC Rachael O'Hara

I don't think there's enough prose yet concerning Priest Quinlan Jacobs or Agent Charles V (both of whom are important parts of the cyborg base's set-up), but readers may speculate if they wish.

The reason I ask is simply that for most of the story, the storyline I have mapped out doesn't require sexuality to be a part of the way the characters interact with others. Although the "Temple" as I conceive its organisation and structure involves sexual rituals in some of their worship or magic, obviously because that is ritual rather than relational (or even pleasure-driven) sex, it doesn't tell us anything about the characters' sexualities - and those rituals don't have a big part in the story as I currently imagine it. It does impact on the way that Priests and Priestesses are seen by others, and in an episode following Bena through a typical day (written but not yet posted), some if this gets discussed (there's also a hint about what she finds sexually attractive, but I'm keeping that to myself for now).

So, have at it, dear readers: of the 5 main characters so far, what do you think their sexualities are, and why?