Gay YA: a question of intent

[utsusemia]

It takes a lot to make me overcome my inertia and actually make a blog post, internets, but that time has come.

So, you might not have heard the YA blogosphere blow up yesterday, but it did! Here are good summaries:

cleolinda makes an excellent and well-reasoned overview of the situation, complete with many links to the major players that you should

Comments

[novin_ha]

I am particularly astonished by the cheek of someone from the publishing industry coming up with that a solution.

Just give us your money. How selfless.

[paranoidsistah]

Great post. This issue has had me flustered all day. It's almost 3am and I'm still not done reading what I can. Though it's well written posts like yours that has really explain the key points and made it easy for readers like me to understand the issues. Thank you.

[shalanna]

I'm so sorry this has hurt people. I can remember two novels with gay characters in recent years . . . can't really think of too many others. Mercedes Lackey used to have them in one of her series. Hmm . . . underrepresented in general, perhaps. I always have thought that _A Separate Peace_ was somewhat about gay-phobia, though. Which is a different issue. But they're still reading that in school. Although it's more subtextual than anything else. Do we have a character who is depicted as normal but is incidentally gay, in any current book or TV series? No, they're usually played for "laughs" or extremism. Well, okay, wait, Fran Drescher's new series "Happily Divorced" has a gay ex-husband. But he's kind of played for laughs. I don't know whether to like it or not. *aarghh*