Here I was staying out of this tired old “privileged” “appropriation” “marginalization” “stereotyping” blah blah blah stupidity and then… *sigh*
So let me say…
First off, not all Gay Romance is written by Straight Women so quit using that tired old wide brush. STOP IT!
Some writers are Lesbian and comments about “privilege” are insulting and dismissive to them. Some are Gay Men so making comments about “appropriation” is god damned even more insulting and again you are making “Gay Men” disappear from the topic of “Gay Romance” which even worse buddy.
Some are Gender Queer… and well you get the idea by now? Do I really need to go on about this sweeping over generalized “Gay Romance is BAD BECAUSE…” crap I keep reading? Do we really need that many childish “women hating” gay guys online?
I love how I hear the whole “Think of the GAY children” justification going on here. I think the religious freaks used that whole “Think of the children” argument on the Gay Community recently during the California Prop 8 debacle. So why the hell would WE use that same lame excuse?
I find it even more hilarious that some out there think impressionable “GAY children” should be reading GAY EROTIC ROMANCE. How does that fucking work?
My thing is this and this is a word for my fellow “gay guys” out there in Gay Romance Land arguing away into the night… Maybe we should be getting “the log of bigotry” out of our own eye and our own arguments before pointing out “the splinter of possible exploitation” in another person’s. Just saying!
PS… Go read some Scott Pomfret and Scott Whittier version of Gay Romance (That they originally tried to sell to gay people as Romentics.) and please do tell me how it is so very different from any other Gay Romance being written by anyone else no matter what their orientation or gender. Hell, look at their original covers for Christ’s sake! They have been writing since 2003. That is more than enough time to be heavily involved in the beginnings of the Gay Romance “craze” and both those guys are Gay Men and the bar they set, was in my opinion, pretty fucking low. Just so you KNOW they are Gay Men their pictures were in the Advocate.
Tags: Gay Romance, Wank
Emmy wrote,
Oh Gawd. Read one Scott & Scott book. It was horrid. I’m still traumatized. Queenies and Meanies? Oh, for the love of…@!#$
Link | January 8th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Chris wrote,
I’m sort of afraid to ask what triggered this…
Link | January 8th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Oh, I am sure you know the crowd I am talking to here. They spend a great deal of “wankery” being GAY”ER” and BETTER”ER” than anyone else. Princesses of the eternal pea-cee. You can tell by all the buzz words and terminology of wank.
Link | January 8th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Chris wrote,
Ah,yes….. *sigh*
Link | January 8th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Louise van Hine wrote,
I’ve been arguing with a homophobe aka “androphile” – the new term for gay-on-effeminate hate culture – about the intimate relationship between misogyny and heteronorming that is passing as pee-cee gay culture. The GLBT(I)(Q) community is being lashed from within by those who would seek to “homonorm” all activities and create an elite hierarchy of “acceptable” behavior, literature, styles, and attitudes. Needless to say, “straight women” or queer women who haven’t adopted the queer label, or those who don’t wave a flag of self-identification, are at the bottom of this hierarchy. I have never identified because I didn’t have proof until recently that I am medically intersex, now I can say that I’m intersex. And I’m right down there in the bottom layer along with the straight women, the non-gendered, the asexuals and the transexuals, but happy to say if that’s where the good writers are, I’m content – :)
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 1:09 am
TeddyPig wrote,
I stay out of these discussions generally because of all the buzz words that tend to mean whatever the person using them seems to want them to mean and then the over generalization of the topic which makes things even worse.
The problem is they want to stereotype “the people” they are complaining about stereotyping them. Notice how whenever you force them to define “the people” they are never talking about that specific person you might bring up. Then from there you are only dealing with the shaky ground of “their” assumptions and generalizations not with any facts. So you can never win such an argument to begin with because they have given nothing of real consequence to look at.
If instead they wanted to review a specific book and discuss actual examples of whatever they are ranting about fine then we could all discuss something in writing that is tangible in such a way as to be constructive. Then I could go and find a Gay Writer most likely doing those exact same things and the argument would really be on.
Instead it’s all pie in the sky I’m a victim nonsense.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 5:57 am
erastes wrote,
Word. I had more to say, but I won’t.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 6:04 am
kirsten saell wrote,
I honestly can’t believe anyone gives the people in question the time of day. Not necessarily because of their views on the topic at hand (or other random topics), but because they are some of the most hypocritical bloggers out there. You know the type–hurl personal insults willy-nilly, then take others to task over “ad hominem attacks” in the most innocuous comments; berate bloggers for closing off comments due to lack of civility while blocking individual commentors and/or f-locking their own posts to eliminate dissenting opinions.
It’s worse than “do as I say, not as I do”. It’s “I’ll do whatever the fuck I like, then tear a strip off you for the merest hint of you doing what I do, because it’s wrong wrong WRONG when you do it, but when I do it it’s for a damn good reason so it’s okay.” It’s like a pot encrusted with an inch of carbon criticizing a kettle over a single spot of tarnish.
There’s no way to take people like that seriously unless you agree with every single thing they say. But better not agree for reasons that are a bit different from theirs, or you’ll soon find yourself persona non grata, and the subject of long, ranty blog posts expressing that peculiar blend of phony disappointment, derision and malicious glee.
If nothing else, it’s entertaining to watch. I mean, now that I’ve split up with my ex, I’ve found I miss being able to watch someone behave like an ass on a regular basis, and they certainly fill that void. And then some.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 10:44 am
K. Z. Snow wrote,
The logic I’ve found here isn’t just like a breath of fresh air; it’s like a whole atmosphere full. ;-)
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
My mother was a very strong woman and when I say that I mean a full out 5’1 tank of a lady that lived on her wits and demanded her three boys had better be able to keep up. As any good paralegal would who never was given a chance to make it to law school. I loved her but also respected her intelligence and her determination and what she said went no questions asked.
One time long ago this is when I was a teenager I came up to her at the house to give her a hug and she shied away shivering. It was obviously an unthinking response due to me being a unknown man approaching her from behind.
I think that’s when it hit me… The whole “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions” which I posted about here on the blog. I don’t discount what women go through their whole life than I would what I as a gay man has gone through my whole life. But… I will never understand exactly what my mother went through to get to that place I saw in that moment. I am sure whatever it was it was not a nice experience.
I think I understood her as a person then. Anyway, that is how I treat everyone even other gay men who may have had to deal with much worse homophobia than I have. I also try not to speak for “all gay men” for the same reason because I personally do not know how much you might just understand what I have been through.
I would much rather believe in sharing and empathy and inclusion not segregation and name calling.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Angelia Sparrow wrote,
I am thinking of the gay children.
Specifically my own. Who is of an age where explicit romances can be had off the shelf and wants to see her experience reflected in some small way. Also, I never knew a kid over the age of 12 who had no idea where to find smut/erotica/porn, even in preinternet days. The trick is making sure it’s accurate and making sure it reflects them.
As for the rest, what you said.
And this cranky old byke will happily point out any number of lesbians writing m/m romance. (At one point I asked a slash list I was on, “Are we ALL vegetarian lesbians here?” I got a “no, we’re not all vegetarian.”)
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Oh, I read lots of steamy stuff when I was young.
The point is the whole “if it reflected my experience” was a mute point since I had none. Reading about other experiences is one of the big reasons to be reading in the first place and designating what will reflect your eventual experience is a little too specific for me.
I had to try out a lot of things growing up to find out what that was. Harlequin was just one of many types of books I read. It did not mean I turned out straight or a Sheik and no secret babies either.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
AnneD wrote,
Since I’m not up for hours of WTF blog searching, someone give me a clue…
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I decided not to link sorry but KZ Snow might know.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
AnneD wrote,
I think I might have found it by googling a usual suspects blog.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I only found it all when links started showing up. I generally tend not to bother even reading those blogs anymore. Same crazy different day.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Angelia Sparrow wrote,
I’m pretty sure my daughter isn’t raising 5 children on an Oklahoma ranch and fighting
zombies with Archimedes’s flame-thrower either.
“Reflect the reader and experiences’ means, to me, having the characters find the same sort of love-interest attractive as the reader does. I only read pirates and harems and highwaymen in my teens, since I found contemporary heroes unrealistic. All the guys I knew were too shy and scared to even say hello, or too mean for me to want to. None of them were bold and hot, so when I went for a fantasy, I went all the way for one.
QLTBG kids and teens need to see characters like them, facing the same sorts of issues (“if I kiss my SO in town, will I ever be able to shop at the store again?”) and finding the same sorts of people attractive. Even something with no sex in it but showing normalized same-sex marriages will cause kids to think. I need to write YA at some point…
Anyway, the “WHat about the Gay children?’ argument is a stupid one. They don’t care who is writing it. They just want a good story.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I agree it’s nice to see more gay characters being written. Obviously I like the Gay Romance choices we have now. I am just as happy for all my escapist fantasy and scifi without any realistic portrayals of anything that I read growing up.
Link | January 9th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Lee Rowan wrote,
Actually, I do think about young gay readers looking for what somebody called ‘happy sex’ — two people who care about each other, physically and emotionally. I don’t care if it’s corny–when I was in my ‘hunt-the-naughty-bits’ stage of adolescence, all I ever found were stories about unpleasant men seducing unwilling (female) victims, or equally unpleasant men being porny with slutty women, neither of whom cared about the other. It wasn’t ’til I read Heinlein that I got a picture of sex being something pleasant two people could do to their mutual delight.
We’re all human beings. The equipment is different, but we’re all alike in some important ways and different in others. And the similarities are a lot more significant.
As for jargon wank…. it’s still just wank, only pompous, which makes it even sillier.
Thanks, Teddy.
Link | January 11th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Yeah, but using the excuse kids “might” read your Erotic Romance so you better make it such and such a character or story is not a direction I would want to go in.
Hell, Evangeline Anderson sells a fucking boat load of books and she writes in rape and 2 dimensional stereotyped characters and you name it. You have to admit there’s money in the guilty pleasure read.
So I honestly might say “in my opinion” I don’t like “rape” in my romance or I really hate the whole “straight to gay” thing when simply smacked in the story as added spice with no explanation but I have to hand it to those writers out there who get a good formula going and work it.
It’s the Lora Leigh who rocks the web and are the ones you have to respect no matter how much you might cringe at what gets thrown into their pot. They write it and they sell it like crack to street whores. They are successful in writing what gets talked about and what people want to read and that is all a writer should be caring about not worrying about the wankers of the world. Wankers do not make bestsellers they make Live Journal blogs that mean absolutely nothing to no one.
Link | January 11th, 2010 at 1:46 pm