Why can't we all just get alooooong?

[mothwing]

I just found this post on queer_rage  , and I remembered why I stopped following this speeding failtrain. Ann Somerville continues to annoy me. Ever since Lambda Fail, the more I read about and by m/m writers, the less patience I have for these straight women (well, female and straight male M/M writers in general, to be honest) and their quest to write male-on-male porn or ~romance~ in peace. This "romance" usually is a type of porn, too, the only difference being that the emotional vulnerability of the characters is fetishized rather than their sexuality.

EDIT: I think it'd be a good idea to edit this because what has started out as a rant in response to reading a blog entry has grown into something completely different, so I ought to be making my points more concisely on here to save everybody from digging through the comments.

Just.... EUGH.

"Slash started out as a subversion of the overwhelmingly heteronormative fictional narrative in books, films and television. To slashers, that subversion was enough justification for the existence of slash fiction, and realism, because of the reliance on canon, secondary."

Ah, so long as we are ~subverting~ stuff, surely no one is being offensive! Also, I may not be that familiar with the history of slash, but I seriously doubt that that was always the main idea of writing slash fiction - sticking it to the man by cleverly subverting a mainly heterosexual literary landscape.

"Accusations of inauthenticity are bound up with accusations of appropriation and objectification, without any attempt to recognise that many attempt to write authentically – not attempting to imitate the voice of gay men, but by creating credible characters. That lack of recognition weakens the critics’ valid argument and leads to it being dismissed in toto."

Yeah, go girls, show those uppity fags! You are trying, so how can they be so meeen as to dismiss their valid herculean efforts? I bet those blokes who do the lesbian porn movies are trying, too.

"Critics also frequently accuse m/m authors and fans of fetishisation without qualifying it or examining the accuracy of the accusation. There is a lot of fetishisation in the way m/m readers and authors talk and write about gay men, but not all m/m readers/writers use m/m to get off (many readers/writers are lesbians, in fact), or consider the sexual content important or essential. Women write m/m for all kinds of reasons, and even erotic narrative may be much more about women’s alienation from their own sexuality or their own gender, or about exploring sexually explicit ideas and imagery in a non-threatening manner, than titillation."

Oh, really, that's cool now?

Well, then I think I'm going to go exploring my alienation from my own race and culture through writing a book about ~exotic~ POCs. Credible exotic POCs, of course.

"Yet without one, m/m will continue to be despised and derided by gay men angry at yet another betrayal by the straights, and by others who will dismiss it as porn or fluff and unworthy of serious dissection or analysis, while reinforcing straight privilege and discouraging self-examination among those who continue to write and read it. This is not the way that m/m will gain acceptance or excellence. Those whose first contact with the genre is through things like Lambda Fail are never going to delve further to discover the treasures the genre produces."

I... just... Seriously?

Dismissing mushy romance failbooks designed to make straight women and people who subscribe to the opinion that the only good sexuality MUST involve at least one penis and one scene depicting male tears feel all mushy and warm in their genital region is reinforcing straight privilege? Seriously, if that's all that takes to discourage these people who are, as she says later on, "devoted to equal rights" from examining their straight privilege and self-examination, why does she think that they don't deserve every bit of criticism they're getting...?

It's a shame that there might be people who try and steer clear of this genre entirely and read books written gay men which focus on gay men instead?

Wow. Just... Wow.

"Most are well-meaning. Most consider themselves devoted to social justice and equal rights, even if their reasoning and execution remain shaky. Many are clueless. Many of us are dripping with straight privilege. Where we’re not straight, we’re still not gay men. We are still writing the other. That’s why it’s both exciting and laden with pitfalls."

Oh, they are well-meaning? Oh, I guess that's ok, then.
Because it is totally necessary to write an other while self-exploring. And lesbians are doing it, too, and they are, like, also in the LGBT acronym, so it's totally fine, u guise!


For clarification, here is a summary of my problems with the M/M genre specifically (as opposed to slash within fanfic, which is a different kettle of fish in my opinion):

Good intentions can have bad outcomes. I don't think any of the straight people who write M/M are bad people. I don't doubt that no one purposefully sets out and writes something that is appropriative. Most of this seems to happen due to ignorance and the fact that this genre is so broadly accepted online.Still, good intentions do not prevent harm.
Even if the individuals concerned have good intentions, this does not guarantee that the cumulative effect is not negative for the minority they are writing about - and having to come across fetishised versions of yourself over and over again is definitely a negative effect, so are the blatant stereotypes that some writers are using in their writing.
 

Members of a majority writing about a minority is always problematic.
On a societal level, if a majority writes a minority, there is always the danger that this version becomes the definitive version and replaces voices of real gay men in the minds of the readers. Until the respective genres are dominated by the minorities they focus on, I think they continue to be extremely problematic, because it is easier for a privileged group to drown out minorities. So in my ideal version of the world, stories about minorities would be dominated by minorities and it would not matter much if the odd member of a majority chimed in. However, this is not the case in this reality at all. 
Of course individual authors can write whatever they want, but the freedom to write what you (general you) write ends where the freedom of another person to be protected from e.g. homophobia and objectification begins. And that includes being fetishised, othered, and exotised. No one can physically restrain people and keep them from writing, but people should critically examine why they feel it necessary to write a story about a minority they are not a part of, appropriating their experiences, fetishizing their relationship in the case of m/m romances.
There may be solid reasons for doing so, but apart from purposefully subverting these fetishistic tendencies in the story at some point or therapeutic exercises I can't see many.

Gay characters in stories written by straight people in particular are problematic, because
Of course I am not arguing that no straight person anywhere should ever think of writing a gay character, far from it. My main beef is with are two specific constellations, motivations and their implications

gayness is not a metaphor for straight experience 
Yes, I do think a story that is basically a straight women writing a story about straight women through gay men is wrong and should find other means to express herself that are less colonising. This is constellation is questionable on a fundamental level. There might be enough similarity between gay people and straight people to allow empathy, but to equate the two to such a degree that a story about gay life becomes a metaphor for straight experience is appropriative and insulting.
I deeply sympathise with the need to disassociate yourself so completely from your sexuality that you need to project it onto another person who doesn't resemble you entirely, I was like that when I was coming to grips with my own dykeness, but I never considered that that was a good thing and meant I was being all subversive and exploring. The way its done in M/M reminds me eerily of projecting sexual desires and fantasies on POC by white colonial authors. Icky and wrong. Using minority experience as a colourful metaphor for your majority experience comes from a place of privilege and can't prevent being informed by that privilege. And no, just because you also love men, you are not a gay man inside

the fetishisation of gay men is wrong. 
Of course this point may well be moot since we are essentially discussing porn, but if a particular trait of a character (gayness, in this case) becomes more important for your arousal or your sympathies than the character itself, that is dehumanising. Consider the very title of the genre - "gay romance" or "m/m" in itself are simplistic because they reduce complex people to their sexual orientation. This may be a part of being gay, but no character one outside of extremely simplex PWP can be successfully subsumed under this label.
M/M authors themselves have pointed out that they use m/m to make conventional stories more interesting, or that they prefer them because their lives are "more interesting". This is exotising gay men. Gay people are not inherently more interesting than straight people, I can promise you that. In that vein, I am deeply suspicious of people who describe m/m relationships as their "kink" - how can you have a relationship between two people as a kink? The mind boggles. 

Even though exploring female sexuality is necessary and good, doing so through gay romance is troubling. 
Another problem that ties in with this is that there are still women who can't explore their sexuality freely because they live in a what the mainstream media says is sex does not encompass all that is sex. I think it is valid and necessary that women explore sexualities that lie beyond the mainstream view of what is sexual - the realisation that things like hurt/comfort can be a valid sexual kink is one of the best byproducts of fandom.
Still, I maintain that doing so at the expense of minorities is wrong. Sometimes, people do wrong things for good reasons - as in the case of therapeutic writing, but on the a whole it remains very questionable.

Fiction is fiction, reality is reality: it's not that simple.
Of course you can distinguish between fiction and reality in a way that allows you to distinguish between the non-fiction and the fiction section in the bookstore. Still, books and stories exist in the real world, and I don't believe that everybody, or, indeed, anybody can make a clear distinction between fiction and reality so effectively that they can prevent a straight, female narrative from influencing their view of gay men.

 

Claiming that writing m/m is an LGBT activism is completely out there.
The nerve! Especially if the demography you're writing about says that what you are writing is unrealistic and offensive, you really might reconsider awarding ally cookies...! I can't even begin to understand this position. Especially considering people keep pointing out the genre was totally and absolutely not about gay males, but for and by straight writers to explore themselves.

Tone arguments used against gay critics are wrong.
I despise misogynistic commentary and I think that anyone inclined to make them can go screw themselves, but that does not mean that any concerns raised by the people you are writing about is to be completely dismissed.
Slash as a means for exploring and liberating female sexuality specifically strikes me as problematic as long as it is not done for purely therapeutic purposes. How can any genre that eradicates your own experience as a woman so entirely be liberating?
 

The genre is not subversive, it's porn. And it does not subvert gender roles.
Subversiveness" and a genre written by women for women - in romance writing, this is new how? I am not that familiar with the genre, but as far as I am aware, it has a loooong tradition of being a genre primarily written by and for women. Although usually it included, well, women somewhere.
There have been some claims that using M/M instead of M/F helps subverting gender roles - this works only if you have a very static view and expectation of how gender works. In many of the (without a doubt low-quality) stories I have read male characters were thinly veiled female avatars, and there was no reason in the world why the author did not just use a female character instead.

 

So, what am I saying to you M/M writers? You can, of course, write whatever you want and no one can keep you from it.
I would like you to know what it means that you are writing, however, and critically and thoroughly examine why you are writing a minority and what implications your writing may have for the minority you are writing about.

Comments

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

It's possible that we've just got different opinions there. This is not even about what is "allowed" in fiction or what fiction "is for", but about how people behave when they are being pointed to the fact that their fictional stories harm real people. I think this particular kind of literature is about writing about a literary Other, in part so as to deflect of their own sexuality, exploring a fictional trope, and to enjoy yourself. Reading is also about enjoyment, reading about men engaging in potentially titillating activities, and exploring a fictional trope. What do you think it’s for?

My problem with this entire thing is that if its not fun for members of the demography you are writing about, then there’s something wrong. I also believe that if people are pointed towards this and don’t take this into consideration, they’re just being ignorant fools. Especially if the people who received those comments then start pointing out that they are free to write everything they want. That is true, of course, but it’s also true that their readers should be free from stumbling upon fetishized, unrealistic versions of themselves while trying to enjoy themselves.

Of course not all fiction has to be realistic, but if you look at the rants on lube and anal sex, or yuke/seme stereotyping on FFR, people seem somewhat invested in "getting it right" and being realistic. There appears to be a whole lot of effort make things as realistic as possible, but that stops right where it would start taking real gay men and the concernes they raised seriously.

Especially describing male-on-male relationships as a "kink" or a "fetish" rubs me the wrong way because it is demeaning and dehumanizing to people who are in a male/male relationship. Yes, even if it is fictional. Even then I would still be fine with that if they would agree to this fact when pointed out instead of trying to defend their skeevy views with "morality" and "being an ally" and "subverting heteronormativity" written on their flags (it’s as though the people who make lesbian porn saw that as a contribution to fighting the good fight against homophobia).

I strongly believe that the M/M writers know this difference, too. If you are writing about a kink, there is generally some sort of mentioning of it – in fanfiction, there are the warnings or tags, but here, I don’t see anything that suggests “distinctly off M/M written by and for (straight) women”. To avoid people stumbling upon anything triggering or distasteful there are plenty of warnings that point out “rape”, “torture”, etc., but there’s no “exotized version of gay men for the straight eye”. That fact in itself is a problem – if something becomes so common that it does not need to be pointed out, people stop being aware of the fact that it is a problem at all.

I don’t agree with using people as kinks, but they’re not even really going with that, either. If exotizing gay men is a kink, then it should be treated like one, too. It's like the difference between gratuitous torture scenes in BDSM fiction, where it is fully understood and disclosed that these things are written for sexual or romantic benefits and torture porn in mainstream literature that is written with similar, yet unconscious or at least non-voiced views. If someone writing the second kind of story were to point out the great compassion they have for survivors of abuse and how much they can empathi
se with their struggle, I would be similarly repulsed.

This kind of disclosure, however, does not seem to happen among the writers of M/M fiction - or at least not from what I have seen. There were plenty of people pointing out that what they are doing was in some way supposed to help equality, though, and that is just nonsense.

I hope that makes my position a bit clearer. I'm a bit woozy in the head from my flu meds. :)

[lordhellebore]

so as to deflect of their own sexuality

Sorry, my English is leaving me. Could you please re-phrase that?


Reading is also about enjoyment, reading about men engaging in potentially titillating activities, and exploring a fictional trope. What do you think it’s for?

Basically, that's what it is for for me.


their fictional stories harm real people[...] My problem with this entire thing is that if its not fun for members of the demography you are writing about, then there’s something wrong.

And I think there is where our disagreement lies. Fiction is fiction is fiction is fiction. Reality is reality is reality. The two are different. Ideally, everybody would know that. Now, I realise that sadly, that is not the case, but still, I don't want to censure fiction writing because of what the readers do with it. There was literature that drove people to suicide (Werther), and even back then, it was "only" forbidden in a few regions.


if you look at the rants on lube and anal sex, or yuke/seme stereotyping on FFR, people seem somewhat invested in "getting it right" and being realistic

Some people, not all of them, or else the rants couldn't exist to begin with. There was a lengthy discussion on D/s and BDSM recently in some fanfic circles - someone who lived in that lifestyle (at least I think I remember it was that way) made a post and ranted about how it had to be all realistic, all the way, 100%, and that the writers got this, that, and that wrong, and how it was so frustrating etc. etc. The general reaction was either "WORD!" or: "Er, excuse me, but I don't want this to be realistic, I want it to be hot, and we don't want to read about every little realistic detail. It doesn't have to be realistic, because it is fiction, and we know that it is fiction.


Especially describing male-on-male relationships as a "kink" or a "fetish" rubs me the wrong way because it is demeaning and dehumanizing to people who are in a male/male relationship.


Sorry, but it is a kink. Same as rape porn is a kink - would yous say rape and torture porn is dehumanising rape victims? I don't feel dehumanised, just FYI. (On the contrary, it's one of my own kinks, even.) Of course, other people see it differently, but not everybody has to have the same opinion on this. Indeed, why can't we not just get along and let the other one have their fictional kink? It's not reality.



I strongly believe that the M/M writers know this difference, too.

I'm sure of it, but does it have to be written on every book?


but here, I don’t see anything that suggests “distinctly off M/M written by and for (straight) women”. [...] there’s no “exotized version of gay men for the straight eye”

Well, I'm not sure I follow you here. Isn't it relatively easy to inform yourself about what happens in a book before you buy and read it? The blurb, reviews on the net...these alone make it quite obvious, I think. Take Remastering Jerna from ann Summervile.

In a world not unlike our own, Jerna Setiq has a perfect life, a beloved wife and two adored children, with his past desires and needs firmly put behind him. But when he's falsely accused of child abuse and imprisoned, he's cast into hell, with no apparent means of redemption, or regaining all that he's lost. In the most unlikely of places, in the most unpromising of circumstances, fate offers Jerna his second chance and a path to freedom. With the cruelly fascinating Tolomy, a dominant in need of education and a patient submissive, Jerna dares to satisfy the long denied passions of his dual nature - but will he risk losing what has become so dear to him, all over again? Remastering Jerna is a complex, erotic story of redemption, love, and the contract of trust in a relationship of control and submission.

This summary is imho very clearly showing who the audience is - women who get off at reading about men in D/s relationships.

[lordhellebore]

And also, other fiction genres also don't have warnings for who is painted in which light in the book, and why. Warnings happen only in fandom culture, as far as I know.


If someone writing the second kind of story were to point out the great compassion they have for survivors of abuse and how much they can empathise with their struggle, I would be similarly repulsed.

Why? It could be true, after all. Would you be repulsed if someone who was an abuse victim wrote torture and rape porn on the mainstream market, too?

In conclusion, it seems to me that there are two opposing camps, and maybe you and I each belong to one of them.


There were plenty of people pointing out that what they are doing was in some way supposed to help equality, though, and that is just nonsense.

THIS is the one thing we completely agree on. It's absolute hogwash. Its a KINK, it's supposed to get people off, at least mentally, and that should be clear to everyone.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

In conclusion, it seems to me that there are two opposing camps, and maybe you and I each belong to one of them.

Isn't this what Anne Summerville was trying to avoid? *g*
Sorry to barge in. Moth was buried in her room for so long earlier that I took it upon myself to see what she was doing and now I got curious. But perhaps I can help shedding some light on a few things you two have been discussing.

The problems with Summerville
Summerville is doing two things.
a) She is advocating her own position in the two-camp fight by positioning herself among those fighting for women's liberation and literary freedom.
b) She is trying, as best as she can, to come up with explanations why she thinks it's perfectly okay to write m/m slash stories, regardless the offence taken by the group of people she claims to write about.

Personally, I agree with her notion that women should be allowed to write their sexual fantasies and occasionally I even find a story or fanfic of this genre, which is appealing enough for me to read and finish it.
What I don't agree with (and I have a hunch that Moth shares this opinion) is the obvious delusion that this kind of work is anything other than a sexual fantasy.
Summerville emphasises that most m/m slash writers never claim that they are writing gay literature (which is frankly untrue, considering Lambda Fail) and almost in the same paragraph, she herself claims that her writing deserves "serious dissection or analysis" and whines about how, with all this fighting, m/m slash fiction will never "gain acceptance or excellence", which she appears to think it deserves.
She refers to her genre as follows:
Those whose first contact with the genre is through things like Lambda Fail are never going to delve further to discover the treasures the genre produces. And there are treasures – book which illuminate and elevate the human spirit, masterpieces of emotional richness and literary style.

Now, I'll bet you two apples and a twig that this person would not, never, speak about standard misogynistic pornography this way. She does not consider her work (and others) a mere expression of straight female sexuality. She considers it to be erotic art. And this is where her statement gets annoying. It is hypocritical to the utmost extreme. On the one hand, she points out that everyone should have the right to express their sexuality, on the other hand, she wants to be read and understood as something else. She wants literary credit, she wants others to see the "spirit" and "emotional richness" in her works. If she didn't, she wouldn't try so very hard to convince people that what she writes is essentially good quality literature.

"Fiction is fiction and reality is reality"
Summerville tries to position those who fight over what they perceive to be an attack on their identity (gay men) as aggressors over something that is really just harmless and a well-meant effort by women to write for other women. Now, we all know that fiction doesn't work this way. By writing fiction, especially widely-received fiction, you are shaping society. You are creating conceptual frames for hundreds of people. Fantastic source for this: George Lakoff's work on cognitive theory.
The gay stereotypes that are created through m/m fiction threaten the real life LGBT movement much more than the authors' supposed undermining of heteronormativity in literature helps the cause.

[lordhellebore]

regardless the offence taken by the group of people she claims to write about.

Ah, I think this may be part of where the problem lies. She is NOT writing about this group. She's writing about an entirely fictional version of men, a version catering to the tastes and wishes of the women who read this stuff. If she admitted to that, it would make more sense, as you said yourself:

the obvious delusion that this kind of work is anything other than a sexual fantasy.

I agree.


She considers it to be erotic art.

If you disagree with that, you might have a different definition of art than she does. What, precisely, is art? Prodesse et delectare - is that how we should define art? This clearly doesn't fall into the category, of "prodesse" - therefore no art?


The gay stereotypes that are created through m/m fiction threaten the real life LGBT movement much more than the authors' supposed undermining of heteronormativity in literature helps the cause.

That might even be so - still, what are we supposed to do? You can't prevent her or others from writing.

*sigh* I sometimes seem to forget that sadly, most people will not think things through, and not know that fiction and reality are distinct things, and that the gay characters in m/m novels are not how real gay men are.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Hey there, welcome to this discussion. :)

Now wait, you had me confused there for a second. In your original statement, you wrote:
The way forward surely is to acknowledge that women can write about realistic gay men in a respectful manner, while still expressing their sexual being and writing sexual situations in a way that other women will find appealing, without trying to make it fit gay male perceptions and expectations of erotica.
How is this not a position of women's liberation and literary freedom? And how, when you describe one camp as the relentless warriors for women's sexual liberation by means of direct statements such as "Since it’s not gay literature, it doesn’t have to reference real gay existence/issues," which could or could not be reporting your own opinion, while describing the other camp's position from an outside perspective ("we" as opposed to "they") and by means of phrasings like "Those who say" and "Many of those in this camp consider", does that not clearly show your own position more to the side of the other?

Don't misunderstand me, please. It is very clear from what you wrote that you were trying to document the current situation and, perhaps, to convince people to stop fighting over the matter. I read your good intentions, all right. But this is not what you were, in fact, doing with the words you chose and it's not what people got from them. Otherwise, I expect, the reactions would have been very different.
I know Mothwing here had an instant, instinctive reaction of anger when she read your blog entry, as did I, in a way, not because I disagree with the concept of women being free to explore their sexuality through fiction (on the contrary, in fact), but because you seem to be going out of your way to portray m/m slash writing as feminist purely on the basis that it is primarily women who author it, as well as helpful to the LGBT movement and its aims since, as you say, it subverts the heteronormative mainstream. Both of which I believe to be outweighed by the great disadvantages for the movements in question.
- Regarding women's sexual liberation, I fail to see how a genre which negates the existence of female sexuality helps the recognition of the same. Yes, these are straight women's fantasies on paper, but there are very clear historical and sociological reasons why so many women (including lesbians, apparently) find it easier to express their own sexual fantasies through writing or reading about two males in a relationship. And I think m/m slash doesn't help uncovering and fighting those reasons of self-negation and self-othering.
- Regarding the LGBT movement, your main argument seems to be that the genre helps subverting heteronormativity by means of existing. That it is better to have unrealistic, "female gaze" stereotypes taken from traditional romance novels and pressed into "gay" shape than not to have any representation of gayness in fiction at all. Regarding this point, it is my opinion that by portraying one (false) story of gayness over and over again, using the same stereotypical roles, you are hurting the movement more than it gains from the awareness-raising. It is the so-called single story problem.
In essence, this means: even if you are writing for straight women only, you are nevertheless taking part in the creation of a false "mental frame" (Lakoff) concerning gay males. Regardless of who your target audience is, this hurts the movement.

I have to say that you come across as clearly wanting literary recognition and acceptance for your genre, while, at the same time, basing your whole argument on the claim that "very few m/m authors pretend to be writing gay literature". From my perspective, there is scarcely any middle ground here. You can either try to defend the m/m slash genre as literature, which leaves you on shaky ground, or you position yourself as a writer of pornography that is designed for the sexual gratification of straight women alone, which still doesn't render the exploitation and the reduction of a minority to their sexually interesting traits (emotional vulnerability) unproblematic. But claiming both makes you come across as hypocritical.

Re: Answer part 1

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for joining in, it's certainly good of you to come by. I can only answer part of this discussion now because I don't have a lot of time, but I'll come back to this later. :)

I am not against the genre, I am not against slash, but I am about straight and gay women writing about gay romances in an appropriative way, yes. What you give as reasons for why you yourself write M/M (dealing with your friend coming out, your love for men, your mixed feelings for your own gender, men being hot, gay experience resonating with your experience) is essentially appropriative. It's taking someone else's story and making it About You when it really shouldn't be, because it is not your story to tell.

So, it's true that "M/M" is not going to go away, it was there long before straight, female slashers started ~subverting~ the mainstream heterosexual genre, too. It's fascinating that you don't seem to be aware of this. What should go away is the appropriation and objectification of others.

I don't get where you get from that any of us here are telling women that what turns them on is wrong - far from it, and quite the opposite, in fact. No one told "women that they can't write this kind of material", what I am saying is that they can't write it like this. Women always were writing and exploring this kind of material in a more direct way, you know, by exploring these issues from their own point of view (like Anne Descalos did - and by the time she published The Story of O, it certainly was seen as transgressive and "forbidden"), and I think that is very interesting.

As I myself said, I can sympathise with the need to disassociate yourself from your own sexuality, I did so myself, the only difference being that I never felt the need to publish a story about my own experiences written by colonizing another person's experiences. I can understand why gay men would be upset at that, I certainly would be.

I am still trying to figure out what those valid, healthy reasons might be, because certainly can't think of any, really. I get that the way society at large treats female sexuality in general as dangerous and forbidden absolutely makes it necessary to write explicit sex scenes from male point of views because women are not allowed to have this kind of feelings without being severely sanctioned, but that situation in itself is very troubling and not healthy, wouldn't you agree?

Re: Answer part 1

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Oh, lots of material to answer to. I'll do my best and work through all of it from top to bottom. Hope I'm not repeating much of what was already said below.

Thank you very much for the links. It is quite fascinating to read how many different kinds of m/m writers there are. There are, of course, blending areas between the porn argument and the literature one. Marya does make very clear that she sees the m/m genre as part of gay literature and that this is where she sees its value. However, she doesn't mention why her pairings of choice are always m/m. I asked.

But many women, straight and queer, write it as a form of sexual liberation, and exploration of forbidden erotic feelings and practices which aren't 'safe' for them to admit to wanting for themselves, perhaps.
I completely agree that this is probably the intention. What I don't understand is why people think it is sexually liberating if you deny your own body the right to even exist (within the narration). The problem with contemporary Western society isn't that women aren't allowed to express sexual desire for a male body, after all.

Women being told what they can't write is problematic.
Yes. And there are some idiots out there who are extremely misogynistic and will express this attitude in their comments on the Lambda issue. What I think is important, though, is that there needs to be a way to criticise specifically the problem of straight women writing m/m slash for sexual or romantic gratification while falsifying gay men's real life thoughts and experiences. Because there is a problem, however awkwardly some people address it.

Now m/m is undoubtedly potentially - and probably almost always - exploitative. Nonetheless, women are using it in ways which are very different and more complex from straight men watching lesbian porn
I'd say that in both genres, there are grey areas. In the porn movie genre, we would have to extend the question to straight male directors/producers/screen writers shooting lesbian romance and sex scenes in ordinary movies. Is Willow/Tara from Buffy pornographic and intended to satisfy straight men's sexual desires? Not exclusively, I'd argue, but it is hard to prevent that their scenes will have this kind of effect to some.
Now, it feels to me as though you are saying that because m/m slash isn't necessarily about actual bodily sex that it is therefore more morally acceptable, sort of, than a sex scene shown on TV?
This is where our definitions differ, I think. The movie genre is so successful in the selling of sex to a certain kind of straight male precisely because it caters to their needs in that it displays sex very bodily, very graphically. And now we have a society where, as you rightly point out, women don't feel they can express their sexuality in a way that will be accepted. We live in a society where suddenly a genre develops in which female sexuality is eradicated from view, but which triggers a specific kind of "oh this is cute" kind of sensation in some women, gay or straight.
If this isn't sexuality in disguise, I don't know what is. And of course the majority of women readers will not call this sensation sexual or even perceive it as such. A society that doesn't provide any frames for female sexual desire other than what the porno industry has created for the benefit of the "male gaze" will necessitate different outlets. In Europe, we used to have the sexualisation of the "wild" black or Latino woman. The femme fatale. The mad woman in the attic. In m/m slash, we encounter female sexual desires projected on one man and one self-insert in male shape. Because God beware that a white woman should write about white female sexuality.

My own sympathies are very much with camp 2, but not with those who believe women should not write gay-charactered fiction at all.
Okay, I completely accept that, of course, but here's my feedback that your blog entry came across as the complete opposite. Sorry.

Re: Answer part 2

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately (most recently seen in LambdaFail but definitely not exclusively) there is a cadre of female writers - straight, lebsian and bi - who believe they are allies, or even queer, just because they write m/m. This is really not the case.
Ahhh, thanks for that clarification. :)

As for idealisation - maybe it's because of my own beef with the romance genre and the idealisation it frequently contains, but I don't see how idealisation is not in itself also problematic, really, especially if that idealisation is on the level of characterisation rather than not getting pubic hair between your teeth.

Re: Answer part 2

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

God no. Really no. If you can't make it right and truthful as possible, then you shouldn't write it at all. I admit all my characters, whatever their sexuality, tend to be a bit on the unrealistic side, but that's my weakness as a writer. I do my level best to make them truthful.
Where would you draw the line then? Which kinds of characters would you accept as realistic (aka. "good") and on which basis would you judge them?
Who gets to decide whether your characters are actually as realistic as you try to make them? We have a situation here where gay people, actual gay people (not all of them, but several) make a clear statement that they don't find the majority of m/m slash characters realistic. Never mind your valiant efforts, never mind the best of intentions. Here we have the best barometer of credibility any supposedly "gay" character can get, yet many m/m slash authors try to shoot it down and deny it the right to function for them. How does that work?

Idealisation isn't stereotyping.
It can be and often is, especially with Mary-Sue-like stereotypes, which rely on perfection as their main trait.
I agree that writers should be given the chance to learn. I just think that, in this specific context, it is more important to cut down the existing exploitation and the disadvantages the LGBT movement suffers from the situation at hand than to give a majority time to get over its privilege. These things take time and sometimes damage aversion is more acutely necessary than other things.

Re: Answer part 2

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

"In media fandom, slash *had* to be subtext. Purists wouldn't call fanfic based on Queer as Folk to be slash because that's *text*."

As a purist, I've said that very thing.

"The whole point was to take characters that were coded, ostentibly, as straight, and pick out cues to say, hey, actually...."

Well, sometimes they "pick out cues," sometimes they make up cues, sometimes they don't care if cues are there or not--they just happen to like the idea of two (or more) particular fictional characters (or real people) together and they're going to write them that way regardless (and this applies to many "het" pairings as well).

I've been known to suggest that a better definition of slash is "taking characters represented canonically with Sexual Orientation A and presenting them fan fictionally with Sexual Orientation B." Thus: Kirk and Spock, Starsky and Hutch, Josh and Sam. It also would include, should anyone ever write such a thing, stories about Melanie and Michael from QAF.

Mind you, I'm sure that will never catch on. :-)

Modern fandom defines slash simply as "same-sex" relationships, whether canon or not. They do, in fact, call Brian/Justin in QAF a slash pairing.

Re: Answer part 3

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

And I want that to be the *norm*, not the exception.
I'd want that for my genre, I can sympathise. I'd also very much like recs for the masterpieces you mentioned in your other post.

As for porn - you say you do not write porn, but I you two might have different viewpoints on what constitutes porn and what purpose porn serves. Romances, in a way, are porn for women.

As an exploited group, women know what exploitation looks and feels like, and rightly or wrongly, believe they are can judge if they are doing it to someone else.
First of all, I deeply sympathise with your frustrations with your fellow writers and their shortcomings, and it was probably wrong of me to pick your post as an example of a mess which does contain things that are far more annoying - but the thing is, I can see that you are honestly trying, and that you have good intentions, but you still... well, you don't get it right, IMHO. If you, and I can see that you are among the more sensible writers in the genre from what I've read, are getting things so wrong, then I'm really pessimistic about the chances of the genre as a whole to have good chances of evolving into something less offensive and exploitative. I'm glad you took it upon yourself to do so.

The thing is, women and gay men are exploited in completely different way, and it is extremely ignorant to suggest that just because they're both not privileged in one area of their life, this does not mean that they can't be privileged in another. This ties in with the "forbidding women to write X"-thing. Yes, women should not be encouraged to write certain things, much like everybody else. Being a woman does not inoculate one against being homophobic, transphobic, ablist, racist, classist, etc., and since these different epxloitations differ so wildly, its impossible to sensibly transfer the experiences of one of them to another level of privilege. You know?

It's possible to change hearts and minds, surely, but I don't see how anyone can do that but the people who the hearts and minds belong to.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Just to clarify, I have the same problems with so-called "lesbian porn" that is written and produced for male sexual gratification. The difference between the two, in my eyes, consists in the choice of focus (female sexual organs and/or traits vs. male emotions). You wrote that not all women "consider the sexual content [of m/m slash] important or essential". My question is: in your opinion, what if not sex is it that interests these women about unrealistic, gay characters in unrealistic relationships, written by an author who can clearly not draw from personal experience? And is it possible that our society's definition of sex is just too narrow to call a certain kind of fantasy (male emotions) sexual, possibly for the very reason that they are expressed primarily by women?

continuation

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Reflection
Now, strangely, the most controversial subject here seems to be the question of what is a kink and what isn't. I'll admit that I'm too lazy to go into definitions here, because I think it's not worth the linguistic debate. It seems to me as though you have different definitions on the word, to be honest.
Not to leave the subject entirely untouched, though: I do think it is possible to fetishize particular constellations of people, but I also think that this can become very dangerous if one remains unaware of why one fetishizes a particular constellation.
If a person feels very drawn to m/m slash, this may be for several reasons. One (and I think this is the one that is rubbing Moth the wrong way) may be a tendency of our society to render female sexuality nonexistent and to deny the possibility of female pleasure to such an extent that writing and reading m/m slash is easier than writing and reading very explicit sex scenes that involve a woman's genitals.
This may not be the only possible reason for why so many people feel drawn towards reading m/m slash, but it is one, which
a) makes for a convincing contemporary successor of white male/exotic female fiction, where Victorian sex repression found an outlet through the non-involvement of a "civilised" female in the relationship, and which would
b) explain why there are even self-declared lesbians who find this genre appealing.

Anyway, I'm drifting off-course. My point is that without a visible reflection on the side of the authors (or at the very least the majority of readers) of what m/m slash really is (read: fetishizing porn), this genre comes across as invasive and presumptuous.
I really believe that many women authors are not aware that their writing of men in emotional positions is a sexual fetish in itself and that the gay community's claim that their gay characters are "unrealistic" (at best) is absolutely level with feminists' claim that women in pornos are being dehumanised and objectified. Both, to me, constitutes a process of reducing a specific demography to their sexually interesting traits (genitals/emotions) for the benefit of people who find this interesting and/or arousing.

Re: continuation

[lordhellebore]

It seems to me as though you have different definitions on the word, to be honest.

I'll only know if you tell me what your definition is.

One (and I think this is the one that is rubbing Moth the wrong way) may be a tendency of our society to render female sexuality nonexistent and to deny the possibility of female pleasure to such an extent that writing and reading m/m slash is easier than writing and reading very explicit sex scenes that involve a woman's genitals.

I agree that this one would bother me a well.

b) explain why there are even self-declared lesbians who find this genre appealing.

Er, I'm not following. Lesbians like m/m, because they want to render their own sexuality nonexistent?

or at the very least the majority of readers

This is true, I agree. I apparently tend to forget that it's not necessarily happening.

the gay community's claim that their gay characters are "unrealistic" (at best) is absolutely level with feminists' claim that women in pornos are being dehumanised and objectified.

It is absolutely level indeed. But we both know that there are also feminists who proclaim the exact opposite of women's roles in porn, right?

Re: continuation

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Ah, I think this may be part of where the problem lies.
I agree. And I am very sure she doesn't make the distinction you just made, because she does consider her work subversive of hereronormativity and because she claims that only "allies" should write m/m slash.

I'll only know if you tell me what your definition is.
Not we. You. You two. I can't speak for Moth and I don't want to. As I say, I think linguistics are irrelevant here.

If you disagree with that, you might have a different definition of art than she does.
Oh, come on! Fine, Summerville considers her work a kind of art that is different from your everyday run-off-the-mill porno movie. If you want to call this kind of work art, too, please yourself. I was refering to art in the category of actual gay literature or any other piece of work that is read for reasons other than sexual gratification alone.

Lesbians like m/m, because they want to render their own sexuality nonexistent?
M/m as a way for women to write graphically sexual acts without including women would be one plausible way of explaining why women who declaredly do not fancy men like the genre, yes.

This is true, I agree. I apparently tend to forget that it's not necessarily happening.
I am glad we agree on this. It is one of the best reasons I can see for calling authors out on this kind of thing. How did Spidy's uncle put it - with great publishing numbers comes great responsibility... :P

It is absolutely level indeed. But we both know that there are also feminists who proclaim the exact opposite of women's roles in porn, right?
I would love to engage in a discussion on feminism with those.

Re: continuation

[lordhellebore]

I would love to engage in a discussion on feminism with those.

I can't give you one, since I'm undecided on the issue. I would have to get more information from both sides before coming to a conclusion.

Fine, Summerville considers her work a kind of art that is different from your everyday run-off-the-mill porno movie.

That is probably a delusion on her part.

If you want to call this kind of work art, too, please yourself

Why not? There are different kinds of art with different audiences and intentions, and I'd say different levels of depth.

I think I'm getting part of Moth's position now, and I'd say we agree partly. It's ridiculous to claim that m/m is somehow subversive, or liberating and a great help to the GLBTQ community. It's porn. But I think we won't agree on whether or not it's legit to write such porn.

However, I think it would be better to retract my earlier statement of "Such authors needn't put explicit disclaimers of This is porn, a kink, and is not depiction real dynamics between gay men", because I constantly underestimate the general audience's (and author's) ability of self-reflection and awareness of their own motives and thought processes.

[lordhellebore]

I shall, because now I'm very curious.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

o_O I also thought that was the audience she had in mind. Huh.