A response to a previous response
Aug. 23rd, 2010 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reviews_and_ramblingsI can't really forget what Victoria Brownworth wrote:
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/oped/08/19/the-fetishizing-of-queer-sexuality-a-response/
Dale Peck - News on Sprout: "First, it’s the “spotlight” book on a very nice blog by Elisa Rolle, who really works hard to promote gay books" (http://dalepeck.com/2010/03/17/news-on-sprout/)
Blair Mastbaum: "Favorite Books Column I wrote for Elisa Rolle's Amazing Blog" (http://blairmastbaum.tumblr.com/post/852016068/favorite-books-column-i-wrote-for-elisa-rolles-amazing)
Matthew Rettenmund: "I contributed my list of 10 favorite books (fiction or non-fiction) to Elisa Rolle's excellent LiveJournal blog" (http://boyculture.typepad.com/boy_culture/2010/06/books-i-would-marry.html)
Plus they are private emails, but I have similar words from Vincent Virga, Aaron Fricke, Jameson Currier, Michael Downing, Stephen McCauley, Felice Picano, K.M. Soehnlein, Eric Arvin, Josh Aterovis, Nick Nolan, Frank Anthony Polito, Jim Arnold, Keith Hale, Fenton Johnson, Anthony Bidulka, Lee Bantle, Aaron Krach, Brent Hartinger... all of them have (or will) contributed with a guest blog for this LiveJournal.
Ryan Field has written a book in which my blog is the favorite place on the net for his main character.
I will not put down the long list of authors who simply wrote to me to say thank you, and believe me, there are a lot of excellent names among them.
All of them are authors of gay novels and they are men, most of these novels are not romance, but they decided to direct people to me, a straight woman who read and review Gay Romance. But I suppose that, according to Victoria Brownworth, they didn't know better, since they were embracing the straight fetishizing of their relationships.
I want also to repost here what I commented somewhere else:
Victoria Brownworth wrote:
But maybe I don’t read enough...
To conclude I'm not posting this for having people cheer on me, or to arise sympathy. I'm posting this since Mrs Brownworth's words were hurting, most of her assumptions without basis, or at least she was using a very limited basis for a generalistic assumption. She even tried to pass me as unresearched in a followed comment, and that was probably what got me really upset.
I commented there and I'm doing the same here: I would like for a book to be judged for its merit, not for the gender of its author; I would like for authors to worry of their writing and not of what other are doing; I'm the first to say that it's wrong for straight women (or men) to assume a teaching post position and pretend to teach to gay men how they have to write; as I agree that straight women have to be more careful with the use of words than gay men in describing their relationships or lives, because it's true, if someone comes to me and says an hurting word, if he/she is a friend, I can laugh with him/her, but if she/he is a stranger, than I have the right to take offense.
ETA: I received these comments in the aftermath of my post:
As for me branching out into real fiction, thank you, done that, seen that and went over. I read Kafka when I was 12 years old. I bought Maurice with my pocket money when I was 14 years old. I ready Gorky, Dostojevsky, Tolstoy, Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Lawrence, Wilde, when other girls were reading teen novels. I also read Romance, yes, charge as guilty, and I liked it.
As for my little bubble, do you remember that they were little bubbles like mine (Mark Probst's blog is a LiveJournal, I was the first blogger to alert Chris Rice, that was at the time LLF president, and many other authors who moved to immediately resolve the situation) who helped many of the Lambda Literary authors to be aware of what was happening with Amazon? the same Amazon that now is paying for an author retreat, maybe since they are guilty and want to appear a little less guilty? I have nothing against Amazon, I'm a Top Reviewer there and a referral program associate, but this doesn't mean that I'm not watching out.
I read a book in a day, day and half. I don't watch tv, I sometime see a movie in DVD. I have time and I decide how to spend my time. Reading. And researching. My livejournal are only personal musings: maybe, but these personal musings help people selling books. I don't distinct between male and female when someone send me a book to review. I read the book and review it if it's good. It's my decision to not promote books I don't like. I dare you to tell me that I'm not impartial, that I'm promoting straight women writers better than gay men writers. It's not true since for me it doesn't matter.
ETA: I posted a very nice (meaning that it was polite) comment on LLF website, but unfortunately they closed the thread. I will repost it here but I don't think I will receive an answer... it's a pity.
Ok, go with the number (a professional deviation). I read 1553 M/M novels or Gay Romance (believe me I read all of them, and my reviews are a proof of that, mine are not simple re-blurbs of the story). I will identify M/M novels with what you are identifying as novel written by straight women for straight women, and Gay Romance the most generic sub-genre (i.e. Timothy James Beck or Gordon Merrick or Scott and Scott). I use themes to classify them, and the themes that most are near to what you are referring are probably:
- the Alpha Male character: 121 reviews / 1553 books –> 7% of the total. Mostly by women, and here you are right, but also by Bobby Michaels, Gary Martine, Eric Del Carlo, Scott & Scott, D.J. Manly. All of them are men, so even the Alpha Male character is part of the Gay Romance imaginery.
- the Breeches Rippers: 108 reviews / 1553 books –> 7% of the total. This is probably the nearer theme to what you are referring, the equivalent of the Bodice Rippers in the ‘70 romances. All of the are Historical Romances. Again I found: Johnny Miles, M. Kei, Mark R. Probst, D.J. Manly, Mark Alders, J.J. Sagmiller, Dusk Peterson, J. (Jim) P. Bowie, Terry O’Reilly, John Simpson. Same as above.
- the Gay for You: 80 reviews / 1553 books –> 5%. A Gay for You story is about a straight man who falls in love for a gay man, and so he “chooses” to be gay. But most of the time this plot revolve around the fact that, indeed, the straight man was not so straight. Here I have, among the male authors: Kyell Gold, Victor J. Banis, D.J. Manly, Gary Martine. Same as above.
- the Male Pregnancy (and here I’m doing the devil advocate, this is probably the worst theme according to the Submission rule of most of the LGBT publishers): 11 reviews / 1553 books –> less than 1%. No male authors here, of course.
So yes, there is a minimal % of M/M novels that fall in the type you are referring to, but again, I’d like to prove that they are not the majority. between 1% and 7% (and inside the 7% you have also male authors), it’s not the majority.
Then Victoria Brownworth wanted a prove that this is the new black. This is a bit more difficult to prove. Go back on 1553 to see when I wrote them and see if there is a trend it would take me too much time. I will use exactly the contrary method: how many books I have in my reading list, unread, in the last years? (I read mostly ebooks, so this is more simple to count):
2005 1 book
2006 13 books
2007 162 books
2008 170 books
2009 507 books
2010 481 books (and the year is not yet complete)
I will not consider the 2005-2006 years since I was not reading only Gay Romance then. But you can easily see that from 2007-2008 to 2009-2010 the production is 4-5 times bigger.
Did the market “discover” it? Did the readers (both male than female) discover it? On this point I want to agree with you (I think): before 2009 the typical reader of Gay Romance was a gay man. Despite the straight/gay, men are always less “talkative” on reading venues, blog, so they are there, but they are more lurking. After 2009 the women in mass (since also before there were women, but they were like the men, lurking), discovered Gay Romance. Is this point you are referring to “fetishizing”? If so, all right, it’s true.
But my point is that not ALL the straight women writing Gay Romance are fetishizing, as they are not ALL the readers. And most of the time, you can’t really say if a Gay Romance is written by a man or a woman. Please notice that I said “most of the time”. I’m well aware that there are some example (probably around 1%) of M/M novels written by women for women.
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/oped/08/19/the-fetishizing-of-queer-sexuality-a-response/
When we embrace the straight fetishizing of our relationships, we aren’t heading toward acceptance or tolerance. When we give straight writers the power to say we got our own relationships wrong and they know better, we are embracing our own oppression. That’s at the core of M/M writing–not the queer gaze but a distorted gaze. And that does not broaden perspective on our lives even a little bit.Aside from the fact that I think this statement quite scaring, claiming that it's better not to "embrace": does she think this is a good way towards acceptance and tolerance? True she is talking about writers, but after the writers there are the readers, without the readers a writer has no loud voice, and so, she is talking also about me, a straight woman who reads gay novels. She is saying to me, hey, step out, this is not your place.
Dale Peck - News on Sprout: "First, it’s the “spotlight” book on a very nice blog by Elisa Rolle, who really works hard to promote gay books" (http://dalepeck.com/2010/03/17/news-on-sprout/)
Blair Mastbaum: "Favorite Books Column I wrote for Elisa Rolle's Amazing Blog" (http://blairmastbaum.tumblr.com/post/852016068/favorite-books-column-i-wrote-for-elisa-rolles-amazing)
Matthew Rettenmund: "I contributed my list of 10 favorite books (fiction or non-fiction) to Elisa Rolle's excellent LiveJournal blog" (http://boyculture.typepad.com/boy_culture/2010/06/books-i-would-marry.html)
Plus they are private emails, but I have similar words from Vincent Virga, Aaron Fricke, Jameson Currier, Michael Downing, Stephen McCauley, Felice Picano, K.M. Soehnlein, Eric Arvin, Josh Aterovis, Nick Nolan, Frank Anthony Polito, Jim Arnold, Keith Hale, Fenton Johnson, Anthony Bidulka, Lee Bantle, Aaron Krach, Brent Hartinger... all of them have (or will) contributed with a guest blog for this LiveJournal.
Ryan Field has written a book in which my blog is the favorite place on the net for his main character.
I will not put down the long list of authors who simply wrote to me to say thank you, and believe me, there are a lot of excellent names among them.
All of them are authors of gay novels and they are men, most of these novels are not romance, but they decided to direct people to me, a straight woman who read and review Gay Romance. But I suppose that, according to Victoria Brownworth, they didn't know better, since they were embracing the straight fetishizing of their relationships.
I want also to repost here what I commented somewhere else:
Victoria Brownworth wrote:
If you aren’t familiar with M/M fiction here’s what it is: Straight women fetishizing the lives of gay men.Really? Do you now William (Maltese), Victor (Banis), Ethan (Day), Johnny (Miles), Bobby (Michaels), Kyell (Gold), and many, many other male romance authors, that you are a straight woman?
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 reviewed 1553 gay romances (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” (ETA: someone, not Victoria Brownworth, gave me an exampe... 1 example, in 1553 books, for sure this is not the common practice); 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.
A feature of M/M novels is often rape. A stronger man rapes a younger, more feminine man. This was often a feature of lesbian pulps and lesbian porn written by men. The “male” lesbian raped the “female” lesbian, making it easier for her to desert the lesbian for a “real” man because there was suddenly no difference between a lesbian and a “real” man.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 in one book the rape was between the same men that then became lovers.
In the M/M stories–a majority of which are historical romances in which class and age inequities prevail–there is a “male” man and a “female” man.In the last years I read 138 Historical Gay Romance against 908 Contemporary, 140 Fantasy, 119 Sci-Fic and 304 Paranormal, all of them M/M of course. And considering that I like Historical Romance it’s not that I’m not searching for them. Second I have a contest open for LGBT fiction and non fiction; against at today 184 submissions, only 18 are Historical fiction.
But maybe I don’t read enough...
To conclude I'm not posting this for having people cheer on me, or to arise sympathy. I'm posting this since Mrs Brownworth's words were hurting, most of her assumptions without basis, or at least she was using a very limited basis for a generalistic assumption. She even tried to pass me as unresearched in a followed comment, and that was probably what got me really upset.
I commented there and I'm doing the same here: I would like for a book to be judged for its merit, not for the gender of its author; I would like for authors to worry of their writing and not of what other are doing; I'm the first to say that it's wrong for straight women (or men) to assume a teaching post position and pretend to teach to gay men how they have to write; as I agree that straight women have to be more careful with the use of words than gay men in describing their relationships or lives, because it's true, if someone comes to me and says an hurting word, if he/she is a friend, I can laugh with him/her, but if she/he is a stranger, than I have the right to take offense.
ETA: I received these comments in the aftermath of my post:
A livejournal blog is NOT a respected literary magazine. sorry to burst your bubble on that one--not mine, not yours, not anyone's. that's personal musings. period.
If you are counting 1,553 m/m novels that you have read (which would mean you are reading several a day since this hasn't even been a genre for very long), i suggest you branch out into real fiction. it might broaden your perspective on actual gay people.Really? Gay Romance is so young? do Victor J. Banis and William Maltese know that? Did Wayne Gunn in his essay on the Golden Age of Gay Fiction know that? Did Gordon Merrick know that? Did E.M. Forster know that? Vincent Virga wrote the first Gay Gothic romance in 1980, despite publishers (and editors) telling him there was no market for Gay Romance. The Lord Won't Mind by Gordon Merrick is dated 1970. Scott&Scott published they romentics novels in 2005. The first Gay Romance by Timothy James Beck is dated 2001 (BTW that was a woman writing together with three men, care to tell to Becky Cochrane that she was fetishizing the gay relationships?). Gay Romance was kicking and alive well before you, and me, started reading it.
As for me branching out into real fiction, thank you, done that, seen that and went over. I read Kafka when I was 12 years old. I bought Maurice with my pocket money when I was 14 years old. I ready Gorky, Dostojevsky, Tolstoy, Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Lawrence, Wilde, when other girls were reading teen novels. I also read Romance, yes, charge as guilty, and I liked it.
As for my little bubble, do you remember that they were little bubbles like mine (Mark Probst's blog is a LiveJournal, I was the first blogger to alert Chris Rice, that was at the time LLF president, and many other authors who moved to immediately resolve the situation) who helped many of the Lambda Literary authors to be aware of what was happening with Amazon? the same Amazon that now is paying for an author retreat, maybe since they are guilty and want to appear a little less guilty? I have nothing against Amazon, I'm a Top Reviewer there and a referral program associate, but this doesn't mean that I'm not watching out.
I read a book in a day, day and half. I don't watch tv, I sometime see a movie in DVD. I have time and I decide how to spend my time. Reading. And researching. My livejournal are only personal musings: maybe, but these personal musings help people selling books. I don't distinct between male and female when someone send me a book to review. I read the book and review it if it's good. It's my decision to not promote books I don't like. I dare you to tell me that I'm not impartial, that I'm promoting straight women writers better than gay men writers. It's not true since for me it doesn't matter.
ETA: I posted a very nice (meaning that it was polite) comment on LLF website, but unfortunately they closed the thread. I will repost it here but I don't think I will receive an answer... it's a pity.
Can straight writers write about queers? Of course they can. But the M/M genre is not that. It’s about reinterpreting gay male relationships for heterosexuals in a fashion that is fetishistically sexual and which thus can be accepted–because it is ultimately negative. The straight readership may not see it, but queers do.Victoria Brownworth main point is that M/M novels are mainly of the masculine male-feminine male type, sorry I will not consider the rape factor since, I really don’t want to go into detail listing the very very few titles I read with a rape in it, and since I don’t like it, I don’t even use a tag to remember them, enough to say I read very, very few, less than 10 in total probably.
Ok, go with the number (a professional deviation). I read 1553 M/M novels or Gay Romance (believe me I read all of them, and my reviews are a proof of that, mine are not simple re-blurbs of the story). I will identify M/M novels with what you are identifying as novel written by straight women for straight women, and Gay Romance the most generic sub-genre (i.e. Timothy James Beck or Gordon Merrick or Scott and Scott). I use themes to classify them, and the themes that most are near to what you are referring are probably:
- the Alpha Male character: 121 reviews / 1553 books –> 7% of the total. Mostly by women, and here you are right, but also by Bobby Michaels, Gary Martine, Eric Del Carlo, Scott & Scott, D.J. Manly. All of them are men, so even the Alpha Male character is part of the Gay Romance imaginery.
- the Breeches Rippers: 108 reviews / 1553 books –> 7% of the total. This is probably the nearer theme to what you are referring, the equivalent of the Bodice Rippers in the ‘70 romances. All of the are Historical Romances. Again I found: Johnny Miles, M. Kei, Mark R. Probst, D.J. Manly, Mark Alders, J.J. Sagmiller, Dusk Peterson, J. (Jim) P. Bowie, Terry O’Reilly, John Simpson. Same as above.
- the Gay for You: 80 reviews / 1553 books –> 5%. A Gay for You story is about a straight man who falls in love for a gay man, and so he “chooses” to be gay. But most of the time this plot revolve around the fact that, indeed, the straight man was not so straight. Here I have, among the male authors: Kyell Gold, Victor J. Banis, D.J. Manly, Gary Martine. Same as above.
- the Male Pregnancy (and here I’m doing the devil advocate, this is probably the worst theme according to the Submission rule of most of the LGBT publishers): 11 reviews / 1553 books –> less than 1%. No male authors here, of course.
So yes, there is a minimal % of M/M novels that fall in the type you are referring to, but again, I’d like to prove that they are not the majority. between 1% and 7% (and inside the 7% you have also male authors), it’s not the majority.
Then Victoria Brownworth wanted a prove that this is the new black. This is a bit more difficult to prove. Go back on 1553 to see when I wrote them and see if there is a trend it would take me too much time. I will use exactly the contrary method: how many books I have in my reading list, unread, in the last years? (I read mostly ebooks, so this is more simple to count):
2005 1 book
2006 13 books
2007 162 books
2008 170 books
2009 507 books
2010 481 books (and the year is not yet complete)
I will not consider the 2005-2006 years since I was not reading only Gay Romance then. But you can easily see that from 2007-2008 to 2009-2010 the production is 4-5 times bigger.
Did the market “discover” it? Did the readers (both male than female) discover it? On this point I want to agree with you (I think): before 2009 the typical reader of Gay Romance was a gay man. Despite the straight/gay, men are always less “talkative” on reading venues, blog, so they are there, but they are more lurking. After 2009 the women in mass (since also before there were women, but they were like the men, lurking), discovered Gay Romance. Is this point you are referring to “fetishizing”? If so, all right, it’s true.
But my point is that not ALL the straight women writing Gay Romance are fetishizing, as they are not ALL the readers. And most of the time, you can’t really say if a Gay Romance is written by a man or a woman. Please notice that I said “most of the time”. I’m well aware that there are some example (probably around 1%) of M/M novels written by women for women.
