From: Out Magazine ~ W4M4M?
From: LA Weekly ~ Man on Man: The New Gay Romance
Do you ever get accused of being a misogynist?” I ask Beecroft.
“All the time,” she replies.
“In your sexual imagination, why are there no women at all?”
She levels her gaze and answers in a steady, grounded voice. “The plain and simple answer for me is that in my sexual imagination, I’m a gay man. I write to
satisfy a sexual desire that I can’t physically satisfy in this body.”“I’m a penetrative gay man as well,” says Erastes.
I ask a hair-raisingly personal question. “If that’s your sexual identity, why wouldn’t you just buy a really good strap-on and be gay?”
This is why I like the Leather Community or at least the “Gay Men’s” Leather Community I am involved with. They respect and celebrate their kinks and sexual turn-ons with a wholehearted gusto that basically comes across as “fuck you, we like this!”.
Questions like the ones I see being asked about the author’s sexuality always seem to me to lead around an agenda or some type of “pop psychology” explanation that I find overly simplistic and mostly lacking any real form of acknowledgment that people are complex and sexual turn-ons in my opinion have absolutely nothing to do with your politics or your writing or what you consider to be a hot Romance story.
I hear this constantly in other types of discussions like for example transgender POVs. Gay men do not understand “us” because they are only into doing guys. Well yeah, that’s how I know I am Gay.
Suddenly a Gay guy’s sexual turn-ons become politically incorrect because they are not inclusive or representative of the current PC ideals. I am sure that my love of tall guys would also lead someone to calling me “size-ist” or my thing for red heads would get labeled “hair color-ist” too.
The thing is my sexual turn-ons and likes and dislikes are not formed or controlled by my conscious politics or real life choices. Wish they were, so I could adjust them to fit my current place and situation but that is so not going to happen.
So the questions like these reporters asked the writers just come across to me as…
What does that have to do with their talent? What does that have to do with the quality of books they have written? What does that have to do with what their fans enjoy about their writing?
It says more about what the reporter wants to pontificate or some ridiculous theory they want to use to frame our community instead of simply presenting the wonderful supportive writers I have met and talked to online who are involved in this Gay Romance thingy.
So great that we get the publicity and too bad we get stuck being treated like freaks.
UPDATE! Someone commented in email this reporter is THE Cintra Wilson… Who is ummm known for her rather “blunt” approach to subjects although I happen to agree with her disgust of JC Penwah.
Tags: eBook Commentary, Gay Romance
Jason wrote,
I say, let your freak flag fly! :D Whatever turns you on is okay with me.
~smooches~
Jase
Link | August 18th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Erastes » Blog Archive » well, at least eye rolling is good exercise for my eyes! wrote,
[...] Teddypig weighs in better. I’ve decided needs to have a shrine in my house, so I’m surfing to find a hairy pig for the centre of my Lares Shrine. Hell, Lafayette’s got one, why shouldn’t I? (I don’t think TP is on Lafayette’s shrine.) [...]
Link | August 19th, 2010 at 5:28 am
Lee Rowan wrote,
“The” Cintra? Oh, la. I suppose we can be grateful there’s only one of her. Another writer who has “the narrative” before the interview and plays Procrustes to make the facts fit what the publisher wants people to hear.
Has she ever written any fiction? Was it any good? Is she a psychologist specializing in sexual identity issues? No? Sounds like the Prop 8 supporters “expert” witnesses.
As for Lambda, somebody really has his knickers in a twist that Running Press didn’t ask them to tell them who to talk to. I can’t help that, either.
OTOH… my books are higher up at Amazon than they were before this round of literary wank began, so I guess there are a fair number of readers who would rather decide the story’s worth for themselves instead of letting someone else tell them what they ought to appreciate.
I just wish all these folks burning so much erudition and enthusiasm for writer-bashing would turn their zeal to the Prop 8 fight in California. But that’s probably too much to ask; attacking allies is so much more fun.
Thanks, Teddy!
Link | August 19th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Stumbling Over Chaos :: Leapin’ linkity lizards! wrote,
[...] interesting articles and discussions about m/m romance, gay literature, queer identity, and more: TeddyPig, TeddyPig again, James Buchanan, K.Z. Snow, Gehayi, and [...]
Link | August 19th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Alex Beecroft wrote,
Thanks for this article, Teddy! I’m sorry I’m only just starting to catch up with all of this – having gone to France the day after the article came out, but for me this nails it:
The thing is my sexual turn-ons and likes and dislikes are not formed or controlled by my conscious politics or real life choices. Wish they were, so I could adjust them to fit my current place and situation but that is so not going to happen.
Me neither. And as a writer I can’t write about things just because I think that I ‘ought’ to. You can’t rule creativity like that – it doesn’t come from the conscious but from the subconscious, and that you can’t regulate even if you wanted to.
Still, I think that on the whole the thing that’s really annoying me so much about this is the way that they’re completely ignoring all the LGBT people in the genre – both readers and writers. Initially I could have written that off as Running Press’s fault for their misguided marketing campaign, but by now surely they’ve noticed that m/m fiction isn’t just a straight women thing? I’d very much like to see some acknowledgment of that from one of these articles, but I guess that muddies the clear divisions that people want to believe.
Link | August 22nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
Monday Morning Stepback: Featuring free romance novel premises « Read React Review wrote,
[...] article on straight women 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 [...]
Link | August 23rd, 2010 at 4:09 am