Annie Proulx is the one with the O. Henry award for Brokeback Mountain so what has Paul G. Bens won again?

I would say that this “separating gay and straight writers” goes deeper than this. I have read back over the big controversy that was started over the accusation that Josh Lanyon could not be a “gay man” because of something unspecified and not cited in his writing, and that there is some definable (though not yet defined) difference between gay authors writing gay romance stories and straight women authors writing gay romance stories, and how different they are. I found the entire accusation to be appalling, particularly because the ones putting forward this theory provided no examples or evidence.

If we extend this “theory” about how straight women (making the huge assumption that the women who write M/M stories are straight, that is) cannot write gay romances in the same way gay men do, due to lack of equipment or lack of experience or… something, to other such applications of authorial fallacy – then surely men can’t write first person novels from a female point of view, women can’t write first person novels from a male point of view, men can’t write about lesbians, etc. without it all being somehow false and some sort of pretense – how do authors ever write science fiction and fantasy, then? None of the authors who have written about space travel have ever set foot in a rocket. I think there is a larger theme here, and that is the misapplication of a big authorial fallacy. My opinion is: a good writer can do just about anything, and it is a question of skill.

I have written a whole lot of gay love stories with a whole of sex in them, and I have never ever gotten the feedback from my gay male readers that there was something female about them that caused them to be wrong, inaccurate, or “feminine.” I also once created a character on a roleplaying forum that was a gay male, as a tool to work on my writing of that specific character, and the character I got involved with, who was played by a self-admitted gay male, and he was convinced I was a gay male and started getting personal with me in out of character chat. I had to stop roleplaying with him due to this, and he was not the only one. So apparently, I had managed to convince one gay guy that I was a gay guy through nothing more than my writing. So I have to conclude that the entire argument by authorial sexual preference is also a bogus one.

That is exactly right.

Paul has a right to not like the word or use the word or not buy the book because of the word. The problem is he made this into a debate insisting his knee jerk reaction represented all gay people’s point of view and then got upset when it was obviously pointed out that other members of our community who have done far more to fight for gay rights than he ever has have already addressed this and not in the way he likes.

So now he is separating gay and straight writers as the line for who can use these words and who can’t which is even more silly.

I was done with this topic yesterday. It’s like Dan Savage said about this debate in 1999. It is over and done and notice that Queer Nation is still Queer Nation and Dykes still ride bikes in the Gay Pride March and Dan Savage is still doing his thing even after using Hey Faggot! as a joke to start his column for like 8 years so the whole idea that purposeful use of “Bad Words” by either straight or gay people with good intention will still hurt us Poor Gay Folks is silly.

This morning though I got up and read the further adventures of Paul G. Bens insulting straight people writing Gay Romance and digging himself that much deeper in the hole and I said to myself you know this is just crying for a response.

I promise to try not to laugh any louder if I can help it. Honest!