[this is a repost of an article for the Samhellion here in January 2009]
… like to write about gay men in love?
It’s a question most m/m authors are asked at least once in their careers, usually more than once, because on first sight, it seems counter-intuitive. Straight married women writing about gay men? Yet it’s a growing phenomenon. Increasingly the mainstream media is picking up on the fact that a lot of women really quite enjoy gay male romance (often in the form of slash fanfiction), with varying degrees of sniggering at fanfiction and romance readers overlain with a “Cor, gay men, eh? Cor!”
The reasons given vary as much as the women who answer. Two men are hotter than one. It allows women to write outside the usual power imbalance in heterosexual pairings. Or it lets women write about two heroes (and let’s face it, heroes are a big attraction in reading romance). Just a few articles talking about it here:
http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2007/02/women-writing-men-doing-men.html
http://thehighhat.com/Marginalia/005/slash.html
http://www.skeeter63.org/~allaire/SlashReasons.html
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp15.htm
There’s no way I can speak for all women since every woman is different and has her own reasons. I can only talk about me and since that’s my favourite subject [g] that’s what I’ll do.
I could talk about why I got into slash and now original m/m writing in the first place. All the cool kids were doing it, the male characters in the fandom I first became interested in were incredibly attractive and interesting (and as is so often the case in television, much more so than the female characters), and the best writers were writing it. More than that, I became interested in fandom almost at the same time as my best and oldest friend came out. Slash was a way of exploring my incredibly mixed and shocked feelings about that, as a way of proving to myself that my friend hadn’t changed at all, and that I just knew more about him now. It took me about three years of writing about fictional gay men before I entirely accepted and understood him and my reaction to him. Ironically, though he’s amused at what I write, like many gay men he has no interest in women-authored gay romance as it’s too soft. He likes the romance, but the bedroom bits aren’t realistic or involving enough for him. (A lot of gay men do, nonetheless, like female-authored gay romance.)
But none of this explains why I still write m/m, and why I want to continue writing gay characters and about their relationships, romantic or now. It’s not that I find the bedroom matters (keeping it clean here) compelling – though when it’s good, as it is in K A Mitchell’s writing, it’s very good indeed and works just fine for me. Writing that stuff’s really hard for me since, er, I have to use imagination and research for almost all of it.
Partly it’s because writing offers me a way to work through painful themes at a safe arm’s length. It allows me to explore interpersonal relationships, emotional issues using characters who are stronger, wiser, and better than me, and who aren’t hindered by my own problems in dealing with my gender or by misogyny or sexism. Using male characters give me a distance which, paradoxically, allows me to get close to my subject without it threatening me. Using a template for relationships I’ve never personally experienced lets me leave my baggage behind.
But a lot of it just comes down to the fact I love men. Historically most of my friends have been male even though, right now, most are female. Ever since I was a kid, I always found what my dad did around the house a lot more interesting than what my mother did. I kind of wanted to be a guy, though not to the point of wanting to pass as one or change genders, because they had so many more cool toys (never was a dolly-loving girl.) And the fact is, men get the best deal in popular culture, in books, film and television. They’re the heroes, they do the rescuing, they have the most excitement, and they do the stiff upper lip suffering so beautifully. Manly suffering has always been a bit of a turn on for me in fiction (not in real life though – ask my husband!) Men get the guns, horses and fast cars and they even survive the experience. When women get the guns and fast cars, Hollywood usually makes them drive over a cliff at the end of the movie. But men get to ride off into the sunset together, holding hands and pledging true love swearing eternal friendship to each other. Irresistible.
But I could write men and strong women too, right? Sure. But though I try to write good, independent female characters in every story – like Jati in Interstitial or Sora in On Wings, Rising – I don’t feel emotionally connected with them enough to be invested in their romantic liaisons. There, I’ve admitted it. I’m a terrible traitor to my sex. But why do something badly that other people do well? There are hundreds of talented m/f authors out there – some of them writing for Samhain. I want to write what I can put my passion into.
And I fall in love with my male characters so easily. Seb in Interstitial is the kind of man I’ve always been attracted to. Dinun in On Wings, Rising is the kind of man I’ve always made friends with. And Suaj from Reaching Higher is the kind of person I aspire to be – intelligent, calm, bitingly sarcastic and fearless. I know they’re not as realistic as they could be – men that open, articulate, good-looking, brave and honest are rare (fortunately one of them’s just been elected the American President). But that lack of realism is truly liberating for me as an author. I can write idealised relationships, where all the ‘isms’ don’t exist or are defeated by our lovers working together. I can have a couple who struggle to find a work-home balance where there are no traditional expectations or roles to fight against. When both partners are the hunters, not the gatherers and not the child-bearers, different and fascinating relationship dynamics come into play.
I find certain aspects of the gay existence resonate with my own – the need to find a way to build a family when one doesn’t have children, or family estrangement, for all kinds of reasons, makes the biological relatives not an option; the way gay people and women are considered substandard citizens for non-relevant factors despite equal or superior ability; and the way societies and governments all around the world casually and consistently deny equal rights to gay people and women simply because of who they love and what reproductive organs they have.
I can also create new settings and worlds, giving my gay men rights and freedoms and acceptance they don’t enjoy here and now. I’m a passionate believer in equal justice and rights for all. As a woman, I struggle against sexism all the time, but even so I’m aware that I, being straight, have privileges denied to non-straight men and women. I do have gay friends, and I would love a world where they were treated like the wonderful people they are instead of evil and corrupt influences. I like to make same-sex marriage a normal part of my world-building, to normalise its existence. I like to show women as equal in every way to men, and gay people utterly unremarkable on account of their sexuality, so they can be seen as who they are, not who they go to bed with. I love my characters, and so give them the happy ever afters that everyone deserves.
So I still write m/m because I love it, love reading it, because two men being romantic is the cutest thing, and tender men in love is just awwww-making. I’m always conscious that while my gay and bisexual characters may not be ‘real’, I should always be respectful of reality in their fictional existence. If there’s one thing I would love to achieve with my writing, is that the HEAs I create will one day be ordinary and commonplace for GLBT people everywhere.
“Reaching Higher” by Ann Somerville Visit my blog for excerpts and a chance to win one of five free copies of Reaching Higher!
Second chances are one in a million.
Encounters, Book 2
Reaching Higher , the sequel to On Wings, Rising is out 6 January.
Read An Excerpt Online
Price: $4.50
Review links here
Kine Raelne and his crew came to Quarn on a desperate, illegal mission to try to save his home planet. Captured and condemned to death for their crime, he and two other mission survivors are offered a chance to redeem themselves—and to go home, if they’re lucky. But it means working with a bunch of Quarnians who have every reason to distrust them.
Suaj qel Gwan knows what it’s like to be the outsider, and he has more cause than most to hate Raelne and his kind for what they did. Suaj’s telepathic ability might mean he has to work with the offworlders, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it.
As they learn to work together to achieve their goals, Raelne and Suaj find within each other a reason to reach beyond their ingrained prejudice. But there are others who would use their fragile trust to achieve their own ends…
