Interview With an Agenda

Aug 19, 2010 08:21

Yesterday I read an interview in Out Magazine with alex_beecroft and erastes--and a commentary on the interview here.

I'm afraid that the interview and the commentary are not very accurate and are, in some ways, rather offensive. The Gawker article starts off this way:

It's a bit of a joke that straight guys are into "hot girl-on-girl action," but what's new is the burgeoning industry of "M/M romances," erotic novels about gay men written by and for straight women. What's that about?

From where I'm sitting, what both the original article and Gawker's interpretation of it are about are built-in assumptions, agendas and tropes. I counted twelve tropes. You may find more.

1) No Bisexuals: Cintra Wilson, the writer of the Out article started her piece with "Meet Alex and Erastes, two straight women"--even though both writers stated in the interview that they identify as bisexual. (Alex says in the comments section that she identifies as "genderqueer" rather than bisexual. I've double-checked, and the word "genderqueer" doesn't appear in the entire article. Probably a variation of this trope, I'd say.) Effectively, two LGBTQ people were "inned" by a gay magazine because Wilson wanted to prove that writing about gay men is something that only gay men and straight women do.

NOTE: This phrase has now been changed to "Meet Alex and Erastes, two women," emphasizing the otherness of women writing about men rather than the otherness of straight people writing about gay ones. The first sentence, I note, still doesn't mention that they're bisexual (as stated elsewhere in the article) or that one is bi and that the other is genderqueer but married to a man (as Alex states in the comments); I guess that Out didn't want its readers to feel that a reporter for a gay publication was sneering at LGBTQ people.

So instead it makes a major issue out of the fact that two writers of male characters are BIOLOGICALLY FEMALE. Which I think changes one trope to two--Token Minority and, by implication, Stay In The Kitchen. (And both women write under Moustaches de Plume. Gee, I can't imagine why.)

I'm glad Alex and Erastes aren't being inned anymore by Out Magazine--though Gawker still needs to do some judicious editing--but I really don't think that Out's reporter expressing shock and horror that women are writing about male characters instead of female ones is an improvement.

2) Oops I Forgot I Was Married: Gawker goes one better, though, by describing both writers as "two straight, married female authors." Not only is neither straight, but only one is married. The other is single.

3) All Gays Are Promiscuous: Both Wilson and Gawker describe m/m romance as "gay porn" because it contains the occasional sex scene. In fact, almost all romance novels nowadays--straight or gay--contain sex scenes...but no one is describing male/female romance as "straight porn" because of this. In fact, most people would consider "romance" and "porn" to be two separate categories. The underlying and unstated assumption is that gayness is always about having sex rather than relationships, commitment or love. Alex Beecroft pointed out the unfairness of describing romance as porn, too:

"It isn't all about the porn," Beecroft laments.

"I don't believe you," I say.

"I know. People don't, and it's such an annoyance. Do you think a 300-page book with three sex scenes in it is all about the sex?"

(And please note--the article writer admits in this passage that she's already decided that she doesn't believe what the writers are telling her about their own writing.)

4) Sex Is Evil: Gawker describes both authors as writing "dirty stories starring men sticking it to other men." Not only does that present a value judgment--that books containing sex are necessarily "dirty" and, by implication, bad--but it also presumes that the stories contain nothing but sex, dismissing the work of both writers based on a false assumption.

5) Still the Eighties: Gawker describes m/m romance as "meant for the types of suburban ladies who pick up those paperbacks with Fabio on the cover." Fabio Lanzoni isn't ON romance covers anymore. He's appearing in a comedy series and talking about developing audio-visual equipment.

6) Readers are Morons: Does "the types of suburban ladies who pick up THOSE paperbacks" sound just a trifle dismissive of the intended audience to you? Now, do you think that it would be just as dismissive if the article was talking about suburban men who pick up paperbacks by Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler? Yeah. Me neither.

7) Straw Critic: Out's article epitomizes this. Check out this question: "In Nasa/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America, academic Constance Penley asks the obvious question: "Why are women fans so alienated from their own bodies that they can write erotic fantasies only in relation to a non-female body?"

Left unexplored are the following unstated assumptions:

a) That academic Constance Penley is correct. (She hasn't been proven to be. Wilson simply takes for granted that she is.)

b) That women fans ARE alienated from their own bodies. (Again, that hasn't been proven; Penley assumes this because women are writing about men.

I would like to know if she assumes that male writers who write about female characters are ALSO alienated from their own bodies, or if she just applies the familiar double standard which says that of course men can write about women--straight, gay and bi--without being questioned, but women writing about men, especially sexual men in non-heterosexual relationships-- is shocking and wrong.)

c) That women writers who write m/m are incapable of having erotic fantasies that involve female bodies, i.e. themselves. (Actually, what you write isn't necessarily what you personally fantasize about. You write what fits the story.

And again--is anyone asking male writers who have written f/f at some point in their careers--Edgar-winning mystery writer Lawrence Block springs to mind--if they're incapable of having erotic fantasies that involve male bodies? Or are such silly questions not being asked of men, because what men write is SRS BSNS?)

Wilson never answers any of these questions. Indeed, she doesn't appear to realize that the underlying assumptions even exist. I consider that highly problematic.

8) Did Not Do The Research: Both Wilson and Gawker state that m/m romance originated with slash fanfic. This is not true. Male/Male romance has been around in stories since at least the myth of Zeus and Ganymede, the Biblical David and Jonathan, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. And there was a substantial trade in pulp paperbacks that dealt with male/male and female/female romance since at least the 1940s, as anyone who cared to do the research could discover.

Sadly, most reporters seem to find it easier to quote incorrect statements other reporters have made rather than actually checking the facts. Of course, such facts would tend to disprove the reporter's agenda.

9) Straw Feminist: Out Magazine again: "Femininity, in this genre, is a culture so completely conquered as to be utterly vanquished."

First of all, that sounds a tad redundant to me...unless you can explain how "completely conquered" could FAIL to mean the same thing as "utterly vanquished."

Second, what exactly is Wilson objecting to? The fact that books about men focus on the worlds of those men--the worlds of business, law, medicine, the Army, the Navy, war, and so on--rather than on the more socially and legally confined worlds of women.

Which, I must say, is a rather odd objection. Writers write about various characters, but they focus on their main ones. And if the main characters are both men, then the book's story will focus on those men rather than their wives, their fiancées, their sisters, their mothers, or their daughters. I see nothing wrong with this. But then, I do not object to the main characters BEING the main characters.

10) You Fail English Forever: "While the men described in m/m novels are invariably described as looking like Roman gods..."

The correct expression is "Greek gods." I've never heard of anyone described as looking like a Roman god.

11) Sweeping Generalization: See above. Actually, I've seen a fair number of m/m romances, and there's a wide range of attractiveness from godlike to ordinary to downright homely and/or irrelevant.

12) Completely Missing the Point: "...the women--auxiliary characters such as unwanted wives or nosy scullery maids--are not portrayed as sexually or emotionally desirable at all."

Gee--could this possibly be because the men in the stories are, y'know, GAY, and therefore prefer sex and relationships with other men?

It does seem rather remarkably silly to object to fictional gay men not being attracted to fictional women.

Most of the objections seem to come from poor research, unfamiliarity with the genre and expectations that make no sense in context. It is very clear, for example, that Wilson expects women to write books about women, even if the genre in which they choose to write does not focus on women. (The flip side of this would be a reporter complaining that writers of female/female romances focus too much on the women characters and should spend more time writing about the heroine's studly second cousin instead.)

So I'd like to explain something to the reporters who don't grasp why women would choose to write about men and who are determined to "other" the writers who write about characters that do not bear a striking physical resemblance to themselves:

WRITERS CAN WRITE WHATEVER THEY FEEL LIKE WRITING.

That's it. No explanations. No justifications.

I do not have to explain WHY I'd rather write about spaceships and magic instead of contemporary slice of life. Mac doesn't have to justify writing mystery horror and inspirational. Joanna doesn't have to explain why she writes about male/male romance and always fades to black.

In fact, let me say it again: WRITERS CAN WRITE WHATEVER THEY FEEL LIKE WRITING.

Sometimes the story will dictate the form that the story takes, or the nature of the plot, or the type of characterization. As Albert Bester said, "The book is the boss." This happens in all genres. And you know what? It's okay.

Stop being horrified that women could want to write about--GASP--male characters. Men and women have been telling stories about each other since the beginning of time. I really do think that the bloom is off the rose by now. (This also applies to people of different races writing about each other, people of different nationalities writing about each other, people of different religions writing about each other, and people of one time writing about those in a completely different era.)

Stop using pop psychology to speculate about why this writer writes this or that subject. If we could explain why we write what we do in the way that we write it, we wouldn't need to write the stories in the first place.

Stop automatically equating straight sex with romance and gay sex with porn.

Stop judging people all the way through an article and then tacking a "Oh, well, who are we to judge?" at the end. It's not convincing.

STOP OTHERING PEOPLE. (This includes "inning" people as straight, by the way. Bisexuals exist. Deal with this--in your life and in your magazine.)

Treat novelists of genres you don't care for not as people to be patronized, but as colleagues to be respected. The way that YOU would want to be treated.

Because this is beyond old now. This attitude toward writers has gotten so old that it can now be classed as belonging to the Paleozoic era.

Other links:

erastes: At least eye rolling is good exercise for my eyes!

lee_rowan: Lambda, Thy Name is Tedious

rants, lgbt, writing

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