Interview With an Agenda

[gehayi]

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

Comments

[lls_mutant]

WOW. That ticked me off about as much as it did you. What a fucking offensive commentary.

You know, if I only wrote books based on my life and what I know, they would be incredibly boring books. I like my life. I'm happy. But let's face it- it just doesn't make for super scintillating reading :)

(The lack of length in this comment is brought to you by me trying to finish up an epic in a spaceship that involves people being mindwiped and a robot struggling with questions of free will. Because isn't that more interesting than reading about trying to make two kids eat their quesidillas? Yeah, I think so.)

[gehayi]

The lack of length in this comment is brought to you by me trying to finish up an epic in a spaceship that involves people being mindwiped and a robot struggling with questions of free will.

I'd read it and I don't even know BSG!

(And I'm in the middle of a crossover involving robots and political intrigue. It bears no resemblance to my life, but my life is pretty dull. Even the crises are not especially interesting. Which is okay. I don't want interesting crises. I don't want crises at all.)

And oh yeah. VERY offensive and the reporter wouldn't change a thing even when Alex and Erastes asked her to.

[lls_mutant]

I know! I wouldn't want to live half the stuff I write. What makes good TV/literature often isn't fun to go through.

And robots and political intrigue sound exciting :)

What amazes me is how much the interviewer missed. I haven't read Alex's or Erastes' books, but I've read other books with gay heroes and I write a LOT of slash. And my frustration with that interview is that there's so much about being gay in terms of historical context and how you relate to society. For me, that's what actually makes the whole story interesting. Sure, sex can be hot and I'm not going to deny I enjoy reading it. But sex doesn't make a character, and the sex becomes hot because you care about these characters and their stories and their lives.

I also got the impression that the interviewer was really trying to shoehorn all M/M writers into one sexuality, and that sexuality was... I don't want to say "wrong," because I don't want to imply that I'm saying a sexuality is wrong. But the two women interviewed seemed to have similar approaches

[rubygirl29]

That's exactly my response! LOL. My fantasy life as a writer is just so much more interesting than my RL. Why would I want to write a boring story? LOL.

Hell, yeah. I'm more interested in the story you're writing than making quesadillas -- even spicy ones!

[leaper182]

And this was published in a gay magazine? What?

[gehayi]

Oh yeah. In a gay magazine. And the article was Phelpsian in its patronizing tone.

[becky_black]

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.

Well quite. You can almost see the untyped "weirdos" on the end of it.

I mentioned this on Erastes LJ too, but the use of "obsessed" in the Gawker article bugs the hell out of me. Seems like women can't just be interested in something, you know, with their intellect. No, they're "obsessed", implying irrationality. Women, see, we're all a bit crazeeee. Must be our hormones.

[gehayi]

Women possessing INTELLECT? Are you mad? Why, Gawker couldn't possibly say that! It would imply that women could think and reason and function as rational creatures, and then men would have to take them seriously instead of being able to dismiss them out of hand for being overly emotional and insane! The HORROR![/sarcasm mode]

[lamardeuse]

Yes. Thank you so much for this.

[gehayi]

You're very welcome. I'm extraordinarily tired of seeing people who work hard at their craft being dismissed out of hand because of the subject matter or the genre that they choose to write. This was just too maddening for words. I had to say something.

[rubygirl29]

I loved your rant! You hit all the right buttons, just as the interviewer hit all the wrong ones.

I stopped making assumption about women and why they read/write slash or m/m romance, the day a little old lady and I had a discussion about Suze Brockmann's books featuring a gay couple. She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye when I told her that that particular book did feature some discreet, gay sex. She said, "Oh, I think Jules and Robin are hot! I nearly fell over

[gehayi]

I don't write slash because I want to be a man, or I'm denying my femininity. I write slash because it's the story. I've set out to write gen stories that turned into slash, and slash stories that I decided needed to be gen.

YES. THIS.

I would tell the interviewer (who is a dreadful writer, BTW), to stop trying to analyze in order to create sensationalism, and work on his own skills. And just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's bent.

Wilson seems to make a habit of vilifying subjects of her articles.

I was insulted on all levels, as a writer, as a woman, as a reader, by the tone of the interview. What a putz!

A-fucking-MEN. Perfect description.

[spindriftdancer]

So, you mean to say that was Cintra Wilson trying to be *nice*?

Hmm.

She needs to practice a little bit, maybe.

[gehayi]

No, I think she learned her lesson about being nasty with the J.C. Penney article, so she was trying to push the envelope here and see how much she could get away with. She suggests far more than she actually says, and what she mostly suggests is that she's thought ever so much more about feminism, womanhood and sexuality than the writers.