Thanks to Emilie for pointing this out….
From: Lambda Literary ~ The Fetishizing of Queer Sexuality. A Response.
That said, fetishizing the sexuality of others is still a blatant form of sexism, homophobia, racism. When you fetishize another’s sexuality, you make them less than. You make them Other.
From: Amazon ~ The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica
Victoria A. Brownworth is the author of nine books, including the award-winning *Too Queer: Essays from a Radical Life* and editor of 14, including the award-winning *Night Bites: VampireTales of Blood and Lust. * A syndicated columnist, her work has appeared in numerous mainstream, queer and feminist publications, including the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Village Voice, the Advocate, OUT and Curve. Her erotic writing has appeared regularly in anthologies and magazines, and she is a former contributing writer to the lesbian sex magazines, *On Our Backs* and *Bad Attitude.* She has published several erotica collections, including most recently, *Bed: New Lesbian Erotica.* She also publishes gay male porn under a psuedonym. She teaches writing and film at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia where she added two new courses to the literary curriculum: Writing Below the Belt and Smut. She has also taught safe-sex education classes as well as classes on S/M and B/D for various lesbian and bisexual venues. She lives in Philadelphia.
I smell a big fat hypocritical rat.
Tags: eBook Commentary
Elisa wrote,
Thank you to Emilie and you for pointing that out. I was wondering if it was fair play to do that, but I have not you courage. More other than that comment on the male pen name, I have also noticed this one:
> We have lives beyond what we do in bed. And what we do in bed never involves a man.
so let me get this “straight” (pun intended): a lesbian writer can be involved between two gay men in their bed, but a straight woman can’t? Is being lesbian give them some patent to better understand gay sex?
and just to point out another think:
> In M/M fiction, there is an inherent disrespect of the gay male relationship. Even descriptions of gay male sex and the language used to describe it is wrong. The term “fisting” is used repeatedly as a synonym for masturbation. (Try and envision that physical anomaly!) The term “honeyed cleft”–long a term used for the female sexual entrance–is used to describe the male anus.
So at today I have read and review 1553 gay romance (all right among them some are not romance ;-) but very few) and I have never once found the term fisting as synonym for masturbation and never once the term “honeyed cleft”; true once, and only once, I read a yaoi novel where a college boy had natural lube, and I think that novel was more than once chastisize for that huge slip in knowing the male (and not only male) anatomy.
As for the rape, if I think really, really well, I can find less than 10 books with a direct rape (usually it’s a painful memory of the character) and only 1 the rape was between the same men that then became lovers.
But maybe I don’t read enough…
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 1:54 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I don’t get where she is coming from at all Elisa.
Her own background shows she is more than willing to write about sex all she wants to make a quick buck but then she also seems more than willing to accuse everyone else of exploitation with no facts to prove such a thing.
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Chris wrote,
Elisa, I just read your post and it was very well done. Like TP said, she isn’t making sense – but maybe she doesn’t care and is just trying to generate controversy??
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Elisa wrote,
As I said to a friend in a recent email, I usually don’t partake in this things, but I really felt as she was hurting also me with that assumptions, assumptions that were mostly wrong. I think it’s the first time I link back a blog I didn’t like, and maybe you are right, I’m helping her in generate controversy, but tonight I was not able to sleep thinking to all the things I’d have liked to say her, and in the end, I wrote them.
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Chris wrote,
I’m glad you wrote your post, Elisa! You articulated some things I’d been thinking and helped me sort through them.
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Angelia Sparrow wrote,
The only thing I can think of is the phrase “he fisted his cock,” which some people use when writing a masturbation scene. It always draws me up short because OUCH. Then i remember they mean gripping it in his fist.
(And it’s Pseudonym!)
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Emilie wrote,
Elisa,
I wasn’t thinking of it as courage. I just thought I’d better look and see what books she’d written, and saw that in the “About the Author” section. I thought it was so strange that a lesbian who writes “gay male porn” — and uses a pseudonym to do it — would be making blanket statements that all m/m romance writers were straight and fetishizing men.
I saw “fisting” used as what was meant to be the idea of “fisting his cock” but that was unfortunately shortened to just that word. This was in a book I just edited. I put in a comment that the word had a different meaning, and the author needed to use another word for her description. Hopefully that won’t be in the published version.
As for “honeyed cleft,” Erastes uses that in Transgressions. She had a “what not to do” list for m/m romance writers that included a condemnation of flowery language, and I quoted that phrase then. She said she’d committed the errors she was talking about.
In my opinion, it stops being a romance if one protagonist is out-of-control violent to the other. I’m not talking about consensual acts, but I’ve seen a few books with one protagonist punching the other, and up to them brawling, and it totally takes me out of the book. I wouldn’t think most readers would feel that was romantic. That’s domestic abuse, and nothing to be portrayed positively. That’s only been in a small percentage of the books I’ve read, though.
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Elisa wrote,
@Emilie
I read Transgressions, but I don’t remember the “honeyed cleft”, sorry. It’s probably since 1 book in more than 1500 doesn’t count for me as “often”. Also “fisting his cock”… I don’t remember it either, but if it means taking your cock in a fist, than it’s not the same thing. Words have very different meanings in relation to the use, I suppose.
Sex after a fight between lovers is not rape. Rape is when I say no, and my lover doesn’t listen to me. Even if he is my lover it’s rape, rape unfortunately it’s not only with stranger. As I said, I remember 1 book with a rape between lovers, and that book is soon to be re-released by a gay press owned by a gay man. I don’t know if they will delete that scene thought.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 12:27 am
Monday Morning Stepback: Featuring free romance novel premises « Read React Review wrote,
[...] writing and reading m/m romance. The Gawker follow up. Visit Teddypig for his response, and for links to the Lamda Literary response (with 50+ comments). A response from Gehayi (also from Teddypig). [...]
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 4:12 am
erastes wrote,
I know. The trouble with books is that they don’t go away, and that honeyed cleft thing was a mistake. I had no CLUE at all it had been used in het romance, but I’ll always be the first one to stand up and say “Ok – I did XXX thing wrong here” (like the male bio) And lets be honest, I wrote it in 2003. Hopefully I’m a bit better at it now.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 4:16 am
Tracey wrote,
Does anyone know what name she writes under?
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 4:46 am
Katrina Strauss wrote,
One of my characters once fisted his cock as in “to grab within a fist”. Then again, he also fisted the sheets once at the height of passion. Don’t worry, he used plenty of lube and was very gentle with the sheets. ;) I’ve since stopped using “to fist” in *any* of my erotic, m/m or m/f, for the sole reason that I am *very* aware it means something different in certain circles, and not just within the gay community — you can fist a girl, too.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 6:20 am
Lee Rowan wrote,
Excellent sense of smell, sir!
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 7:35 am
Emilie wrote,
Hi, Elisa –
I was saying that I don’t think a book with one protagonist hitting the other (outside a BDSM scene) is a romance, but here’s what I had to say more specifically about rape: “I don’t think that I’ve read one m/m romance in which one protagonist rapes the other. If I had, I would have done the electronic version of throwing the book against the wall. Just like I said if one of the “heroes” even punches the other one, it’s not a romance any more to me, I don’t see who would call a scenario like that a romance. I’ve read a number of books where one of the heroes has been raped in the past, or is threatened with it by the villains in the story, but if it has happened to him, it is presented as a shattering event that he needs to recover from. Sadly, I think a lot of women and men can identify with surviving rape. Even though it’s mostly just joked about regarding men, it’s just as awful an event, with pain and shame and often the inability to talk about it for quite some time. That’s what I’ve heard from male rape survivors. I haven’t noticed writers of published m/m fiction treating as a joke, or presenting it as romantic.”
So that’s how I look at it. That’s out of my LJ: Neyronrose
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 1:41 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Actually guys there is one author.
ONE & ONLY ONE author that I have ever read that wrote rape scenes in eBooks I bought as Romances and in fact you can find a review by me and Lisabea about one of the books….
http://www.teddypig.com/2009/03/evangeline-anderson-broken-boundaries/
That still is no where near an example of ALL GAY ROMANCE having rape scenes.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Elisa wrote,
Then there are two, since I haven’t read that one, and I was referring to That’s what brothers do by Derekicka Snake. Aside from the fact that it was inside the story, this book will be re-printed by Lethe Press, that is a LGBT press owned by a gay man.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I would be amazed if Victoria Brownworth has actually read any Elisa it took you and me that long to remember two of them.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Amber Green wrote,
I’m straight. I’m female. I write m/m. Sadly, I do not get grand amounts of titillation from writing these stories. Nor do I get grand amounts of cash from them. Mixed-gender menage brings me rather more money than m/m does. I still write m/m. I will continue to write m/m. I enjoy the dynamics of interaction between the characters. I like doing things I couldn’t as readily do with a m/f pairing. I relish the feeling that I’m doing something I’m good at.
To say I can adequately write of men loving women, yet am incapable of grasping the soul and spirit of men loving men, is to argue that a man who loves men is more alien to me than a man who loves women. I cannot follow the logic of this.
By the way, ever since Saturday, a woman has been hanging out in my dreams.
She’s not looking for a man.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Emilie wrote,
I remembered that you and Lisabea had reviewed a book that turned out to be like that. You were both upset that it was sold as a romance.
I’ve decided to continue watching and exploring various aspects of this trainwreck for as long as I feel like. I’m sitting at home with a broken right ankle — I have all day for the next few weeks.
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 5:21 pm