Bit of a rant
So the M/M romance genre seems to be acquiring a growing number of stories with trans main characters! That's pretty cool. Except for some of the responses I'm seeing in reviews, which admittedly I should know better than to read, but read anyway. And I keep seeing variations of a specific sentiment popping up: "This book didn't give me enough
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And I totally see why those reviews creep you out. They creep ME out and I'm cis, haven't had to deal with those crazy invasive questions. A couple of my best RL friends are trans and we've... basically never talked about their transitions? In one case I met this person years later and in the other I've been around for like, being sympathetic over chest surgery pain. But those kind of intimate details are just... so so so not my business, not unless people ACTIVELY SHARE them. It just wouldn't occur to me to ask. This kind of wanting all the "fetishistic details" as you v appropriately put it is so gross and dehumanising.
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Right? My friends for the most part have all been pretty good -- or I guess I should say that the friends that stuck around were the ones who didn't feel they were entitled to all the details of my transition in order to try to wrap their heads around the change in name and pronouns. But some of the shit my co-workers used to ask, dear gods.
I actually thought it was worse when one person said "I hope we see more trans characters in M/M fiction, I'm proof the market is there" -- like, how about no, your cishet self should not be the standard for whether the inclusion of minorities in a genre is worth publishing, that implies the minorities' presence doesn't have literary worth without your majority seal of approval. That's just not okay. Because on the one hand wanting the medical history is definitely gross and dehumanising, but on the other it implies a certain level of curiosity and desire to learn, whereas setting oneself up as the ideal market is... ( ... )
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no matter how frustrating I may find them, these attitudes are still a step up from the bullshit I was seeing two or three years ago, with a lot of people -- cishet, again! -- saying they were totally uninterested in reading sex scenes with trans male characters, or insisting that M/M meant two penises
Eesh, yeah. That's seriously awful. And while yep, there's clearly still an insane amount of bullshit, at least there's more M/M romance with trans guys - I think romance, and stories about trans characters who find love and sex and romance, who are lovable and sexy and romantic and get a happy ever after, is likely an especially important form of representation.
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