Sexuality and Gender

I promised I would keep communication open on this. If you haven’t read the previous post, this is a good time to do it so you can catch up on my initial thoughts and the responses. There’s also been good discussion elsewhere, and I’ve had some dialog via private message from people who didn’t feel ready to take their thoughts public.

Smaller conversations have been happening on and off for as long as I’ve been part of the published book world. My recent post was sparked by a particular thing I read in which there were multiple characters identifying as something other than gay (yay!) but who were drawn so badly it produced anxiety in me just reading it (boo). It felt to me as though the author wanted greater representation but had no idea how to achieve it and was also trying to fit the characters into an “MM” box. A lot of us who don’t write MM romance have had this experience—make the characters fit or expect your work to receive poor reviews because it didn’t.

I’m going to sum up the things I’ve been hearing people say they need in queer lit. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I’d love to keep adding to it. I’m sure there are things I’ve forgotten or misunderstood or wasn’t aware of. It would be great if in the comments, folks could add to or change items on this list.

• More queer lit which isn’t romance or romance is secondary
• More overtly queer science fiction and fantasy (again, without romance or romance as secondary to the plot)
• Queer romance with a greater variety of pairings across the gender spectrum
• More and better representation of transmasculine characters, especially in MM romance (in particular, allowing transmasculine characters to have a full range of sexual expression; also less emphasis on transitioning)
• Better and more accurate representation of transfeminine characters, including in FF romance (less fixation on genitals, coming out, and transitioning)
• Wider diversity of socioeconomic class, both in characters and in readership
• More asexual and aromantic characters, with a full range of self-expression within that
• #OwnVoices, particularly within LGBTQIA books written by LGBTQIA authors (i.e., trans people writing books with trans characters rather than exclusively cisgender people writing them)
• Uplifting of books by, about, and for people of color (as opposed to white people writing stories about people of color)
• More diversity in books written by white people
• Sub-communities for topical interests, genre interests, and individual letters within LGBTQIA, as well as specific to communities of color
• A place to discuss issues that come up within queer lit, preferably with other LGBTQIA people
• The examination and avoidance of certain tropes which are overtly harmful
• Both books which include spiritual and religious content and books which have none at all
• Books about bisexual characters in which they are allowed a full range of romantic and sexual expression, including romantic pairings with people who are not their same/similar gender (e.g., a bisexual man in a romantic relationship with a woman, a woman in a polyamorous relationship which isn’t a threesome, a bisexual woman in a relationship with a transfeminine non-binary person, two bisexual non-binary people on different parts of the spectrum in a relationship)
• Both gay romance and gay fiction which are not MM romance (this seems to me to be somewhere in between the books of yore which ended tragically and contemporary MM, and they are definitely different from either category)

Again, I realize that’s not a full list, but we can add to it as we go.

So, how do we match readers with books? How do we help authors find readers who are interested in what they’re offering?

The current problem is that a lot of “lgbt” review sites (which is where a lot of people get their recommendations) focus heavily on MM romance. There’s a lot of MM romance out there, to be sure, but this makes it difficult to connect authors and readers. It becomes a problem when an author requests a review of a book with gay or bisexual men in it and the reviewer pans it because it isn’t a romance—even if the author specified that it wasn’t. This is a repeated pattern, and it’s not just one or two authors complaining about it.

This is also a problem for people specifically writing about other letters and genders besides gay and bi cisgender men. It’s become a problem in some discussion groups too, when readers make comments about finding trans people “uncomfortable” or when asexual folks are excluded because they’re “not queer enough.” And not that our allies experience the same things we do, but I’ve seen genuine allies trashed for standing up for us when things get heated (and I wholeheartedly thank you for it!). Some allies understand queerness better than people who identify as “family.”

What I would like to be able to do, rather than creating a “queers-only” community is to be able to connect readers with books that might interest them. But I’m only one person! I can’t read every book every written, no matter how much I want to. I also need this to be something we can do for free. I know there are paid listings where people can share their books, but we need something we don’t have to shell out more money on. Not all of us have the advantage of financial security.

So there you have it. Some of what people are looking for, and the beginnings of what we might need to do about it. I am open to suggestions, but again, I’m only one person. This is going to take team effort to make it happen.

I’m opening this conversation because I’ve been out as a member of the LGBTQIA community for about three years, and I’ve been a published author of books with LGBTQIA characters for just over two years. Over that time, I’ve had many discussions in particular about the MM romance branch of queer lit. This is of interest to me for a couple of reasons.

I don’t technically write romance or even “MM” (male/male) pairings. As a result, I’ve had some negative experiences with reviewers who had expectations I didn’t deliver. I began to notice I’m not the only one. While I may find this mildly annoying when it comes to my books, it bothered me much more when I saw it happening to other authors. I also saw many people asking for MM to open its doors to a wider range of genres and characters. At first, I agreed with this, and to an extent there are things I still agree with (like the inclusion of asexual and trans characters).

However, I now see that the way forward is not to make a closed genre open itself. I think MM romance is a highly specific category, and unless we allow it to return to being as narrow as the name implies (that is, exclusively books about two male characters in a relationship), we won’t see progress.

In the act of asking to be let in the door but knowing the expectations, few options are left to authors. They can openly defy the parameters; they can quietly subvert them; or they can conform their writing to them. The first one frequently leads to ostracizing and poor reviews. The second may gain some ground but ultimately can feel like suppression. The third leads to a vast number of problems which can be summed up with the following formula:

1 penis + 1 penis = “MM” romance

That’s a bit crass, so let me be more specific in how that looks:

• Trans women but not trans men are included in “MM” (and excluded from “FF”)
• Non-binary people are exclusively transfeminine
• Transfeminine people are hypersexualized and often depicted as sex workers, “everyone’s fantasy” (because they “look like a woman” but have a penis), highly sexual, conventionally beautiful, immodest, and/or mentally ill (either as part of their sense of gender or with an overemphasis on self-harm and eating disorders)
• Transmasculine people are erased entirely
• Intersex people can exist as long as they “appear male” enough to satisfy the fixation on genitals
• Bisexual men must downplay their enjoyment of relationships with people who don’t have a penis (this is frequently shown by having the character describe sex and romance with vagina-equipped people as lesser, sloppier, or unsatisfying in some other way)
• Asexual characters, if they do exist, must at some point become sexual without any examination or discussion within the context of the relationship
• Asexual, trans, and particularly non-binary/gender non-conforming characters being cast as mythical creatures or aliens in a book full of otherwise human or humanoid characters
• Disabled characters who never experience any kind of sexual dysfunction nor any need to address their disability before or during sexual situations (aside from the occasional “maybe you won’t find my body attractive”)
• Misogyny, expressed through violence against women and lack of positive representation

In other words, for the most part, MM conforms to a cisgender and/or heterosexual gaze. This is unsurprising in a genre heavily populated with cisgender heterosexual writers. (I have not delved into the issues within FF romance, but I gather some of the same themes occur there, perhaps to a lesser extent.)

I am by no means suggesting all MM authors play into those tropes, nor that all MM books can be lumped together. Still, it’s disconcerting that these things happen so often that I can make a list. Over the last two and a half years, I’ve read over 400 books, which isn’t a small sample size. Expanding beyond that are all the conversations I’ve had with people who have read an entirely different set of books from mine yet see the same patterns.

For me, it boils down to a problem of who is being empowered and who is controlling the market. I have no problem with authors writing characters who are not like themselves, and I would not suggest that cisgender heterosexual people should stop writing LGBTQIA characters. The question is, who is benefiting from it and in what way?

The argument in favor of cis-het authors writing queer lit is often along the lines of “But we write about elves, vampires, and werewolves, and we’re not those things either!” True, but since those things do not exist, they are also not protected classes of people within society.

So I think we need to open the conversation about, in particular, what queer readers want and need. If we are writing about LGBTQIA folks, they should be our top priority. Allyship, cisgender heterosexual women’s sexual empowerment, and education of cis-het people should all be secondary. I want queer readers and queer authors to be empowered (including those who are not yet out, perhaps not even to themselves).

Here is a list of things I see as community needs to balance out the heavy emphasis on what I call “pairing romance” (i.e., specifically romance or erotica which emphasizes the binary gender of the couple: MF, MM, FF, MMF, FFM, MFM, FMF, and other multiples; MF is included because bisexual and trans characters are still queer, even in relationships which look cisgender heterosexual).

1. A free list where authors and readers alike can make entries of books
2. A de-emphasizing of MM romance as the main category of queer lit
3. A de-emphasizing of binary gender pairing in general
4. Inclusion of books which contain no romance or romance only as a secondary/sub-plot
5. Discussion and dialog led by LGBTQIA people about our books (and a gentle reminder that A = asexual, not ally)
6. Reviews (either by fellow authors or by readers) for a wide range of queer lit
7. Safe space for LGBTQIA people to have conversations about what is empowering and what is harmful, without fear of repercussions from cisgender heterosexual readers and writers
8. Safe space for LGBTQIA people of color specifically to have dialog about what is empowering and what is harmful, without fear of repercussions from white readers and writers
9. Opportunities for authors and readers to connect, including linking authors with beta and sensitivity readers
10. Anything else that LGBTQIA readers and writers would like to bring to the table
11. People willing to come together to organize this into something to which we can all contribute

It’s not an exhaustive list, of course. This is to open us up for discussion on what we’d like to see the queer lit community become. My main concern is that we provide a way in which people can sift through what may be considered mainstream in order to find what we’re looking for.

Maybe it’s too much to ask, but given how many people seem to be looking for more (even if they aren’t sure what more means), I don’t think it is. With so much going on in the world right now, I think more than ever we need something to bind us as a community.

Leave me a comment, start a discussion, anything to get this going. What do you think? What would you like to see in a queer lit community?