I had a wonderful opportunity to do something new to me this weekend. On Saturday, I was part of two panels at the Rainbow Space Magic online conference. This was both my first time attending and my first time speaking, so it was doubly exciting.
First, I read an excerpt from my upcoming novel, Every Time We Meet. It’s a time-loop story, and sadly, this was not entirely well-received by the NetGalley reviewers. But if you’re interested in bisexual women, bad cover bands, lilacs, my hometown (Rochester, NY), and repeating a day until getting it right, then this may be the book for you.
Next, I was on the bisexual #OwnVoices panel. That was a lot of fun. There were four of us, and we had a lively discussion about writing bisexual characters and the challenges of being multisexual (bi, pan, fluid, etc.) in a world of monosexuals (hetero and gay/lesbian).
I won’t go into detail about that, as it’s not the purpose of this post. I want to remark on something that struck me: Science fiction and fantasy, when stripped of the requirement to be primarily Romance Genre, becomes more inclusive and diverse.
Over the years, I’ve gotten used to queer lit being focused on MM or MMM+ (gay male) romance. There isn’t really anything wrong with this, but it’s the lens through which a lot of queer lit is filtered. For example, in my earlier years booking blog tours for my books or hosting them for others, I noticed that the intake forms heavily emphasized male characters. One notable form included a line about introducing readers to our “boys,” as if every person writing queer lit was writing about men (or exclusively men). Don’t even get me started on how referring to grown-ass men as “boys” feels extremely infantilizing to me. (I could write a whole blog post on how LGBTQ+ people are frequently treated like children, both in literature and in real life.)
There’s also a distinct lack of representation of bisexual and pansexual characters who are not in gay-passing relationships. That is, nonbinary people are typically squeezed into relationships that align with their genitals, not their identity. Bisexual characters are expected to land in same (cis)gender relationships. Pansexuals have slightly more flexibility in that they may be allowed relationships with nonbinary/trans characters, but it’s still expected to “look queer enough,” whatever that means.
But this is a problem with Romance Genre, not an across-the-board queer lit issue. When the expectation of romance is removed, and when reviewers align with that preference, that lens disappears almost entirely. Not only that, there’s a wider variety of genders and orientations as well as more diversity in other ways. While it still may not be quite level, this is largely a problem of mixed-genre romance/speculative fiction, not one inherently present in queer sci fi/fantasy/horror on their own.
Another thing of note is that the removal of a primarily Romance Genre focus means a greater proportion of authors writing #OwnVoices stories. My theory on this is that speculative fiction gives many of us the means to explore things we haven’t been able to in our contemporary real lives. Writers who are not part of the LGBTQ+ community may have less need to use queerness to do this because they have other aspects of their lives to contend with.
I’m aware that this is an unpopular opinion, but I genuinely believe allosexual (i.e., not asexual), alloromantic (i.e., not aromantic), cisgender, heterosexual authors should spend time thinking about why they want to write primarily or exclusively about a population they don’t belong to. I’m not even speaking about questioning folks here, only those who are solidly in the allo-cis-het camp.
I can guarantee many of the themes allocishet/non-queer folks want to address can be done so without using our lives and bodies. I highly recommend giving it a go instead of complaining about what’s lacking in non-queer books. If you can’t find a compelling reason, and you’re not writing for us, and you complain when we write about real things we experience and real ways we relate to each other, then you’re objectifying us. Don’t squish us into your boxes just to prove we’re just like you but with 57% more gayness.
If readers are genuinely open-minded, then that has to include dealing with their own discomfort over what queer relationships are. Do some look kind of heteronormative? Sure, and that’s not a problem. But it is a problem when that becomes the only thing that’s acceptable. When even your polyamory mimics a socially constructed western ideal of the nuclear family, something is wrong.
I’m not over here to tell anyone what they can or cannot write. It just frustrates me, as a queer person who is not a gay man and who doesn’t write male-centered Romance Genre, that this is the lens through which queer lit has been filtered. It bothers me that “writing to the market” means catering to a small-minded audience with a narrow set of preferences.
It’s always rubbed me the wrong way that the same people who say “love is love” also often don’t seem to notice that the G isn’t the only letter in the rainbow alphabet. Comments like, “Gay men give me hope that anyone can love who they choose” and “I feel so sad for them” coupled with “I avoid the bisexuals in books and in real life” or “I don’t want to read about girls/girl parts parts in my MM” or “Where’s the sex, this isn’t sexy” are antagonistic toward bisexuals, women, lesbians, asexuals, and trans folks. If you are uncomfortable with open relationships and polyamory and sex work, then you don’t truly support the LGBTQ+ community. You value us if we look and act within your parameters for normal and acceptable, not ours.
(And on a side note, it makes my skin crawl when I see authors of #OwnVoices LGBTQ+ books saying on one side that they dislike these limits and want to write what they prefer but on the other side fawning over their allocishetero audience and obliging their desires.)
Over the last several years, I’ve enjoyed writing contemporary fiction despite always feeling at odds with the expectations of readers. But now that I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to be part of something with much more diversity, it’s left me longing for more of the same.
