After much consideration, RWI regretfully announces the MTM Published Author Contest has been cancelled. All monies and books received from entrants will be returned as soon as possible. We have heard and understood the issues raised, and will take those concerns into consideration should the chapter elect to hold contests in the future. Please note: our contest coordinator, Jackie, is a chapter member who graciously volunteered to collect entries and sort by category. It is unfortunate that she has become the object of personal ridicule and abuse. We recognize the decision to disallow same-sex entries is highly charged. We also opted not to accept YA entries. We do not condone discrimination against individuals of any sort.

If you don’t “condone discrimination” why in the hell were you caught blatantly doing it then you freaking nimrod?

Queer activists have historically used glitter-bombing as a tactic against conservative politicians and high-profile anti-gay bigots, Vancouver protester Lavender Menace notes. Asked if she lumps Savage in with such people, she says people have different ways of contributing to oppressive systems.

“Savage is taking on being a speaker and leader in this movement. We have to take that into account,” she adds. “He’s part of a broader [group] of gay, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied gay men focused on gay-marriage priorities. We want to say those priorities are messed up.”

Basically their message is an anti-gay marriage & anti-DADT deal. Sounds pretty white Republican social conservative to me.

So these trans activist are appropriating the Gay Glitter Bomb style of protest and using it to “proclaim their individuality” from the majority of the Gay Community whose main concerns they want to hijack because they want to use our resources currently dedicated to marriage equality for their own political gain?

As I said it’s a confused and poorly thought out plan being used to publicly attack Dan Savage for a lot of shit he himself says he never intended as hurtful in the first place and it is essentially a juvenile temper tantrum. And look at these fucking names Lavender Menace and Fister Limp Wrist? Is it showing your individuality by appropriating Gay Drag Names now?

A huge ass wank if you ask me.

“cis” is hate speech
By the way, anyone referring to natural-born women as “cis” women is indulging in anti-woman hate-speech. These whack-tivists will do anything, say anything to tear down natural-born women, to diminish us, to invade us, to destroy our safe and private spaces. Why? Because they’re eaten up with jealousy towards women in general — and outright hatred towards feminist lesbians who call them on their sexist “gender role” stereotypes. The sooner the gay and lesbian communities as a whole figure out the true agendas and intentions of these sexist heterosexual MALES parading as “women”, the sooner we can realign our loyalties and priorities. As others have pointed out before me: how would African-Americans feel about white men in black-face and afro wigs parading around, demanding to be called “black” because they “feel black”? Claiming that natural born African-Americans aren’t “real, true” African-Americans, they’re just on a continuum which includes the black-face, afro-wig wearing “blacks” who grew up white in a white family, but “always felt ‘black’ inside”? Uh-huh. Think about it people.
RoseVerbena, Seattle WA

OH SHIT! Wow! Here we go get the popcorn out!

What does “a gay man who isn’t defined by his sexuality” even mean?

It means the gay character is not in the book or on the screen to simply get AIDS and die to provide cheap sentimentality or do the ladies hair or choose their dress for them.

It means the gay character is being fully written into the story but treated equally not like some “very special” one shot national exposure deal on your typical sitcom.

It means the gay character is more than a one dimensional stick figure used as a place holder to appease the politically aware and is actually doing something to further the plot for a change.

It means people are growing the fuck up.

And lastly it means get over your fixation on terminology and the way someone says something and over analyzing every single word chosen. Jesus Mary!

Sure I disagree with some of his opinions. That’s what opinions are for. And I’m not going to argue he’s is the perfect spokesman for the movement: Some of his antics—like re-branding Santorum or licking doorknobs to get Gary Bauer sick—are just a little too juvenile.

And kind of gross.

But after all my experience with him and his views I can say pretty confidently that he’s not anything-phobic. He tolerates, even triumphs, orientations, kinks, lifestyles and points of view that both I and Limp Wrist would turn our noses at.

What few examples Savage Haters can muster to prove he’s the son of Satan are snippets taken out of context from 21 years’ worth of columns, podcasts, lectures and books. Mahatma Gandhi could look like Fred Phelps under that kind of scrutiny.

Here we WANK yet again. First RuPaul gets major hate for being a GAY MAN doing drag on Logo and saying tranny even though guys wearing women’s clothing fits under the transgender definition like a lot of other things and now Dan Savage gets glitter bombed a third fucking time for being a GAY MAN who says faggot and tranny on national television and in his newspaper articles.

So Queerty decided to defend Dan Savage.

Just look at that comment thread.

cissexist white able-bodied male-identified movement

Who could say that with a straight face? What the fuck mumbo jumbo gobbledy gook masquerading as some kinda politi-speech thingy… who the hell knows what that is?

First rule of activism: Keep your message clear and concise.

All I get from all that hashed together Live Journal slang is that these activists seem to hate gay men having a voice and are jealous that gay men are on the television and are upset their causes whatever the fuck they might be, since they are never exactly clear about that part of the political activist deal, are not being promoted by these guys.

Why would anyone speak for another group they are not a member of and promote their concerns on television? Why the hell would a gay man promote transgender causes and represent them in “normal opinion based conversations” like they were his own or that he in any way represented that experience? We would be ripped to shreds by those same bitching trans folk for not being one of the them if we even so much as tried to comment or give an opinion on anything like that. Just like I see happen all the time online.

It’s the whole “you don’t understand me so you have no right to judge me” deal. See how that shuts down any conversation and basically you are left on your own at that point because you demanded we leave you alone. If you want to be supported in your endeavor then you must listen and work with others not shut them out. Self defeating idiocy does not work either.

Hell, we barely remember to discuss lesbian causes but live in fear they will beat us up or not invite us for those really good cocktails like at that last party. But… you know I always see the lesbians participating at every gay community event I have gone to so that’s probably why we remember to include them because they are there and they make themselves a necessary part of what we are doing. You know, being a constant participant in a community makes you an important part of that community. That would take a lot more effort on the part of these protestors right?

Seems like what I am seeing is people trying to take political shortcuts in making their “cause” relevant to the discussion and throw hissy fits when they can’t dictate without any compromise and everything must be in their favor.

Also why are these trans hooligans not glitter bombing Rachel fucking Maddow for doing pretty much the same thing? Sexist much? Lesbians not good enough for your wrath? It’s only gay men who are the enemy?

Randomly attacking folks in a community and taking what they say out of context and ignoring intent in order to use it as a platform for your childish online diatribes of hate speech against gay men will most certainly make you the last person they want to promote or have around. I might be wrong there but they probably should check that next time if their intention is conversation and “exchanging ideas” and not screaming unintelligible words at the naughty gay man, throwing glitter at him, and stamping their feet while calling him whatever-phobic when he looks at them funny for acting like an insane bitch.

Something about all this just comes across to me as really silly immature overly verbose and overly justified sour grapes of a few apparent man haters trying to dictate their way into some conversation they feel left out of and they are, if they want to constantly demand to be the center of attention. I love how all these “online” transsexual activist want to speak for everyone else in their group not present and threaten to leave the LGBLT (hold the mayo) movement enforce or whatever they think is more threatening… like them sticking around might be worse in my opinion after perusing their comments about those horrid nasty evil gay men.

I still do not get how any of these theatrics would change anyone’s mind about supporting their cause after observing their actions in person or reading their constant hate speech online but that seems to be the big plan. I guess going the “feel good” positive social message route was a no go.

So it looks like they want to isolate themselves even more from any “former” designated allies and bitterly lash out at everyone equally after they realize that pouting and holding their breath while running to the bedroom and slamming the door won’t get them what they want either. Nice work if you can get it.

Anyway, grab some popcorn and dive into that comment section it is getting extremely laughable.

From: 9 To 5 Mac ~ AT&T CEO: Recent price jacks due to AT&T’s attempt to monopolize GSM in US

AT&T has a grudge with the Federal Communications Commission, and during the mobile carrier’s quarterly earnings call today, CEO Randall Stephenson criticized the FCC over spectrum availability and the bombed acquisition of T-Mobile USA, with him further claiming AT&T’s spectrum crux is forcing jacked prices against its highest data users.

I am so dumping AT&T. This is really their view of you as a customer. Someone they can blackmail and jack around because our government won’t allow them to become a monopoly because we the people know they would turn around and act like even bigger dicks.

Their lack of bandwidth is because they refuse to put in enough of the right equipment to serve the density of customers they keep OVER selling.

It’s like selling internet access to ten people and while owning equipment allowing only four limited user connections at a time and then having the nerve to blame the customers and jack up the fees you agreed upon in the first place knowing you could not provide them proper service.

They did it on purpose to make money ripping off their customers and T-Mobile was only an excuse to get some used equipment real cheap so they did not have to invest in any new networks for a while. It’s very simple really they would end their self made “bandwidth crunch” with more investment into their infrastructure with better equipment, BUT… then the stock holders would not get those great returns they see now off those stupid customers already over paying for those ancient crumbling slow networks and the company would have to accept the realities of an economy in depression and that just does not work for them so you stupid customers must pay even more.

Nothing will keep them from selling you yet more bigger faster bandwidth hogging Android and Apple smartphones because they make money from that shit but god forbid they take that money and turn around and buy a proper network. Has not happened today and not gonna happen tomorrow. So expect this same excuse whenever their CEO needs another benefit increase because I expect he still got his benefits this year even after they took a 7 billion dollar dumpster dive you poor stupid customer.

Take my advice get the hell off AT&T NOW before they jack you up but good! Gee, where have we seen losers failing in their speculation and their risky business decisions and then handing the bill to the American people. I swear I have seen this show before. Was it something like planes, banks, and automobiles or…

I say let’s do a cut & paste copy of the European cell phone regulations here in the US and hang these guys out to dry. They require these fuckwads to cover all the areas and bandwidth they purchase with proper coverage OR THEY LOSE IT ALL. No buying frequencies for future use that they might get around to using in areas they might someday get around to servicing. Use it or lose it. Do your job or else we lease those frequencies to someone local who wants to do it properly!

Look into my eyes and basque in the power of the loon!

Lucía Etxebarría career plagiarist and all around literary whack job has announced she will quit writing… or is that copying… my translation of hysterical whackabasque might be wrong.

Anyway, missy cut-n-paste with a fake accent refused to publish her new xeroxes in eBook format because then we could use all that new software to uncover who she was stealing her work from. Well she got into a complete tizzy when she found out people will just go and create eBooks of her overpriced hardcovers of other people’s words to enjoy on their Kindles anyway. Without her permission! Like how she uses other people’s writing without their permission. IT’S NOT FAIR! Whaaaaaaaaaa…

Who saw that coming? eBooks is such a fad I tells you.

Wait till she finds out no one gives a shit about her entitled cut-n-paste ass. Buh bye Crazy Burglar Basque Barbie!

Gatekeeping Ignorance & Disdain For Self Published Or ePublished Titles & Authors With The Current Realities Of The Digital Market…

Todd Dickinson, co-owner of Aaron’s Books in Lititz, Pa. commented: “We’ll treat them the same as self-published authors that use Amazon, only on consignment if they are local and link to our store.”

Blaming The Competition Instead Of Accepting Market Change & Doing A Better Job To Meet Customer Expectations…

Christine Onorati, owner of WORD Books in Brooklyn, “It’s very hard not to constantly rail against Amazon as the enemy. I believe they are killing small business by undercutting everyone and constantly drilling home the point that price is all that matters. I have never ordered much from Marshall Cavendish in the past, but I will definitely not order anything from them in the future. We have to take a stand however we can. I will also not order any books published by Amazon right now.”

Irrational Demonization Of Technology & Customers Looking For A Decent Price…

Kenny Brechner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Me., are angry. He calls Amazon’s new price check app “the virtual equivalent of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil gas station strategy” and regards its acquisition of Marshall Cavendish as “a naked move toward vertical monopoly.”

Morrow adds, “This only highlights why we need some version of minimal retail pricing. Why should a customer be in my store and compare Playmobil to Amazon and see the same price, but see that the Steve Jobs book is half price? The book has been substantially devalued in the last decade.”

Yeah, because that anticompetitive Agency Price Fixing under investigation as we speak worked so well for you the first time and that anticompetitive keeping Self Published and ePublished books off the shelf even if your customers buy them all the time online is going to stop the market changes from taking place.

Buh bye now little Dutch Boy you stop the big bad ocean of change!

Let’s see we have Denial and then obviously Anger so Bargaining comes next I think. I bet they try and politically stop this self induced travesty by buying off some brain dead Republicans and Fox News commentators or should that be just taters…

The comments are so good…

A customer who comes into a bookstore to learn about books and then buys on Amazon is committing a crime: intellectual shoplifting.

Yeah, just wait till this guy hears about used bookstores and comparison shopping boy will he be pissed. People who help you ONLY because they expect you to buy something in return are called “hucksters” dude look it up. If I want to “learn” about books I think a librarian is the more qualified person anyway not some literary scam artist like you.

Who knew that these bookstores were run by a group of people who hated their customers so much?

I’m the queen of my castle
I’m the king of my room
Get out
Get out of this house
I got more than I need
More than I ever could use
Get out
Get out of this house
Shawn Colvin ~ Get Out Of This House

Who the fuck hired you? No, I mean it!

Who do you think you are? Where the hell did you get the idea I worked for your ass? I have a “real” job and by the way I probably pay more in taxes and medical insurance than an idiot such as yourself makes all year.

Who the flaming fuck hired the most unprofessional clueless “marketing team” on the god damn planet and then to make matters worse in this economy of all times authorized a pea brain like you to send these emails out to every fucking book blogger on the Internet? Are you naturally suicidal or is this a seasonal occurrence?

Are you related to the boss? Did you marry into the company somehow?

Because if I worked at William Morrow in any capacity right this moment I would be firing your ass and the fool who hired you so fast your pointy little pinheads would be spinning off into the far horizon.

What a mess and too bad for all the authors involved but that’s life they signed those contracts with you, not me, I do not have to put up with you loser. You are just one less brain dead legacy publisher heading for bankruptcy court as Amazon eats your lunch I will be bothering with. Just one more channel I choose not to watch and I have hundreds, no thousands, to choose from. All your authors gone just like that because you are nothing special and never were. My memory of you will be something like… Great books, too bad their attitude toward free word of mouth promoters sucked ass… You and your begrudging charity act are so fucked right now.

Catch a clue on your way to the unemployment line jerk… you need us… we do not need you… we never needed you… and with your irrational Agency pricing and mangled newly published DRM laced big name author eBooks And then to prove my point you mangled yet another big name author eBook AGAIN! So that I for one cannot even begin to promote or recommend an outright idiot factory like you or your parent publisher Harper “Mangled eBooks” Collins to anybody and now add on top of that your even more irrational customer relations you are exhibiting right here in this love note you sent out with no clue what a royal fucktard you sound like to all of us… well, we need you oh gate keeper, of the broken busted down fence, less every god damned day Amazon sells another New York Times Bestselling eBook you can’t because you were too lazy to bother to play the game right from the beginning.

You are now dismissed.

I really have to stop reading this crap. No, I mean I REALLY just have to stop reading these Gay Romance blogs.

Sean Kennedy

Here’s a personal story. I believe Armistead Maupin helped save me when I was a teen. His books were the first that I ever read that showed me gays in a positive light. That showed me I could love, and be loved, and survive in a world I thought was out to get me at times.

And so I also looked up to Maupin, as he was a gay man who had survived and wrote the life he knew about. I would have been crushed if I found out he wasn’t really gay, or a man. Not because of his writing – that still would have been great. But the authorial persona and the role model would have been nothing but a lie

So if you lie about your gender or your sexuality writing Gay Erotic Romance… Sean Kennedy is gonna come down on you like a ton of bricks and make jokes about Milli Vanilli because he read Armistead Maupin as a kid and wants you all to “think of the gay children”? HUH? WTF? No wonder I am reading blog posts like this now! Sean Kennedy talks like a Republican candidate for President at a DOMA rally.

Why is anyone publishing this jack booted thug? He hates half the folks writing Gay Erotic Romance obviously and the other half he thinks he is personally entitled to “Lambda Lit dick check” just to be sure they are real?

Who is he? Who was he? Who does he think he is now?

Oh and then the frosting on this shit cake kids… Ann Somerville

I named this author for a couple of reasons – one is that they were engaged in genuinely harmful behaviour outwith the gender issue (and that behavious is still wrong even now he’s stated he’s transgender.) His behaviour since my ‘outing’ has confirmed that naming him was the right thing to do.

The other reason was that the innuendo was hurting the innocent. As you are aware, the habit of straight women claiming to be gay men (and there’s your appropriation right there – it’s not a matter of writing under a male pseud but writing under an assumed identity if you’re straight and claim to be gay, just as it is to be white and claim to be black etc) has meant that actual gay men are being told they’re fakers. Why should real gay people suffer because of the misbehaviour of straights?

So the evil queen Logophilos/Tritorella/HoniSoit has spoken (Go google it with the term Journalfen or Fandom Wank sometime before buying her crap or follow this link left on my blog in the second comment and go from there. She is an expert on bad behavior. I mean just think about how many people had to document all that crap about Ann Somerville aka Logo/Tri/Honi/whatever her next fake online persona) and on top of that is now claiming to be the vanguard to end Gay People suffering from what? Other nasty evil fake online persona “wanna be gay men” just like her?

This is why even though I am a “real big” grown up gay man who can think for myself and decide what matters to me and what does not. I am so not participating in the Gay Romance blogs no more because they seem to feel they can tell me what is really important even if it seems to be more insider wank and those never ending grudge matches between authors etc than anything else.

I not only need a break I need to go clean my brain of all this. How can anyone review in this community and not know that gender is fluid and does not always match the stupid fake pen name? HOW? How do you even begin to do that?

Not to mention WHY are people buying into whatever gender they think the Gay Erotic Romance Fiction author is or says they are etc etc etc? There is a question I had that no one could answer. Just because Wendy Carlos changed her underwear but first promoted her successful album as a man she is no longer a valid musician because now she is different somehow than when the album was recorded? How about The Matrix, did that movie’s success suddenly change just because one of the brothers might be a sister who wrote that film?

I swear people are listening to the wackiest whack jobs they can find in the “can’t write shit but they sure can talk their ass off” category. And the scary part is people are obviously buying into it from word on the street about threats and harassment and other childish behavior.

Back to Skyrim… maybe I will stay in there. Will the NPC characters all shun me for being real in their little fantasy world you think?

Wow! And even off that damn screwed up website and they keep smacking you in the face with their garbage… I am so fucking glad I quit Goodreads before reading Monica/Delta/whatever’s little comment on this post or I would have had to double dog quit. Those are the type of people running that zoo. Just wow! A little insensitivity to go with all the name calling is what makes Goodreads the website no one smart wants to be seen on.

But I have to question how it is right for you to go after the things you didn’t like that were said with equally negative comments directed at all?

Hmm, maybe because it’s his blog and he can say what he wants about that witch hunt we all saw going on in your forum that you did nothing to stop. Just saying pookie.

I just wanted to say my best conversation so far over this whole event was with Sunita and she pointed out two things that made me think which is pretty impressive with my hard head let me tell you.

Now she did not really connect the two of them but left them sitting there for me to ponder last night. I want to share them with you now…

One was this Damon Suede deally where he goes on about AJ.

I like Damon but I have to say I have only ever seen him participate on Goodreads an “author promo” website which frankly is like the new Livejournal with all the same old fanbois, same old sock puppet infestation just a different format. So what the hell? He has written what… all of one whole book and maybe it is selling well, it is not the first time that I have scratched my head over sales. But… I don’t think one book makes him no instant expert on the Gay Romance Community. His statement sure did get linked to and passed around like wild fire.

Then Sunita being smarter than I ever will be says this in response to me being puzzled by the community reaction to AJ and all that when I thought the ground rules were to treat people according to the “pen name gender” unless otherwise noted and we had seemed to be all playing along…

I don’t think everyone was just giving him the benefit of the doubt and going along with the authorial convention. I think they were giving him that extra authenticity bonus that comes with “gay male author.” I really hate the idea that being a gay man makes your writing automatically more authentic, as if every gay male author’s book is better than every non-gay-male author’s book. And I’m tired of having an author’s gay male attributes waved at me as confirmation of how good he is at writing gay romance (not all authors do this by any means, but some sure do).

There it is the core of this whole thing in a summation that while I think I would love to see her explain it a bit better… Well, it explained enough to me in this case and the reason for several people’s overly violent reactions and why everyone is clamoring about Damon Suede’s opinion and and and there you go the whole tempest and the teapot.

You want the biggest issue I see in Gay Romance look no further than that right there and think about it. The whole Lambda Awards thing and what they and their nasty cheerleader Victoria Brownworth published on their own website particularly about “straight women” writing Gay Romance despite knowing full well about such talented and highly awarded authors like Annie Proulx and then look at all these “male pen name” scandals that keep popping up every so often.

Do I think people will learn anything from all this? No
Not as long as they accept or expect this type of treatment and the witch hunts.

Do I think it will happen again? Yes
As long as the deck is stacked against women in this case by other women which I do not believe is restricted to this particular genre.

Will I say the same god damned things over and over again like some broken record?
Sure, why not. That’s how my mom taught me…

Update! Vacuous Minx ~ Since you asked so nicely … The VM ponders authenticity