We all know the answer to the first question: Most are straight women. As for why, I hear the groans already. Hasn’t this topic been beaten to death? Probably. But I love animals and would sooner beat a dead horse than a live one. I readily admit that, since I don’t meet any of the criteria to speak for straight women—gender, orientation, professional training in psychology, etc.—my qualifications to answer the question are… well, questionable. However, as often as I’ve seen the subject addressed, I have yet to see it answered, at least to my satisfaction.
The reasons most often given are that straight women enjoy stories about finding love, feel-good happy endings, and hot men. But that says what they like about m/m romances, not why they like them. I mean, sure—why wouldn’t someone like to read about what they like?—but why do women like these things? And why straight women in particular? (Okay, I understand why lesbians aren’t particularly turned on by hunky guys.) But don’t gay men also like hitting it off with someone special and doesn’t it make them feel good when people they like find happiness? I know I do. As for hot men, that’s a no-brainer. So why don’t more gay men read m/m?
Well, maybe they do. There are roughly as many men as there are women in the US. (There are .03% more women. Over age 85, women outnumber men two to one, but I somehow doubt the over-85 set account for a significant portion of m/m readership.) According to the most recent survey, approximately 3.5% of Americans identify themselves as LGBT, nearly twice that for Americans under 30. About half of that 3.5% identify as bisexual. Demographic surveys in the UK, Canada, and Australia show similar results. I lack the mathematical ability to coordinate more than a single set of figures, but it seems reasonable to take the situation in the US as a representative model of the English-speaking world as a whole (excluding non-European cultures), give or take a percentage point. A few percentage points more or less become insignificant the closer one gets to one hundred, and as it turns out, we get pretty damn close.
How so? As I work it out, there are approximately 28 straight or bisexual women for every gay or bisexual man. I have no idea what percentage of m/m romance readers are women, but given that 91% of readers of any kind of romance are female, we would expect women to account for over 99.5%. In short, the actual figures (whatever they are) are underwhelming, especially considering that no doubt some men read their m/m in the closet.
These figures are unreliable, no question about it. I am, to put it mildly, statistically challenged in the extreme. But at least they show that the question is misdirected. If m/m romance has any readership whatsoever, the vast majority of that readership will be female, so there’s no point asking why. And it makes sense that most m/m is written to meet the demands of that majority. Now, why that makes a lot of gay men feel uncomfortable is a question I am qualified to address. But before I do, I’ll have to mull it over some more. What aspects of gay romance don’t gay readers like? Is there anything woman writers can do that will make everyone happy? (I specify women writers on the assumption they want feedback from their gay readers. Male writers may think they already know.)
Maybe someone should conduct a survey.
Anel Viz Contact Information
email: escuiruel@gmail.com
website/blog:http://bookworld.editme.com/AnelViz
Hi Anel – count me among those who groans and loudly so :). By now I just do not understand that immense fascination as to why the readers read specific books. Do you ( not you – anybody who wants to know why straight women love gay romance so much) also ask mystery or fantasy lovers why this is their preferred genre of choice. Do you ask men who love straight romances why they read a genre where women constitute vast majority of readers? I just cannot understand why women who love gay romances have to constantly justify it as if this genre is something special. Well it is special to me because I love it so much but no I do not think any reader who loves it needs to have a reason to do so. Let me tell you a story. I work in the office which is mostly female and a lot of us are friendly with each other and during lunch time we often discuss books we love to read. I never hide that I love to read gay romances – I seem to be the only one at work who does or at least who was open and outspoken about it. Recently I finally got the question why and implication that I must must be gay. I told her that I thought she knew me better and that if I were gay I would not have hidden it. I am not planning on hiding what I read but I now share the books I read from other genres with my colleagues. I do not like being have to justify my reading preferences. So no I cannot tell you why but consider this – I was always interested in the stories of adventures, wars where men played primary role. In my youth ( and I mean when I was a kid of seven or eight years old) I have read Dumas and Jules Verne, I stil reread those books. I was introduced to Illiad also very early as a teen and always wanted for Achilles and Hector ( not Patroclus) to be together . That was before my array in the world of het romances where I eventually run screaming from till couple years ago. But I still wanted to read stories where romantic love plays important role. Is it really such a wonder that after loving to read about male friendship, brotherhood, etc I easily moved on to the stories with men being in love with each other? I hope it answers your question somewhat. But again mostly I love gay romance just because I do.
But again mostly I love gay romance just because I do.
Great answer Sirius. I couldn’t have said it better.
I love gay romances but it’s only one genre that I love to read yet no one wants to find out why I love mysteries, horror, fantasy adventures, sports – especially sports – etc.
I think maybe because we’re straight there is the wonder on the part of some people (and Anel is not the only one) – straight, bi, gay, genderqueer or whatever, who always ask me why I have this website and why do I read these books. It’s as if, because of my gender and sexual orientation, I should only like those genres that straight women are supposed to like. Hmmmm… I wonder what those are? 😆 Maybe books about knitting, babies, cooking, craft etc. 😕 😮 there’s nothing wrong with those books – I just don’t read them. Now if you were to ask me why I love sports I could probably write a book. 🙂
I agree completely with Sirius, Wave. The one I don’t agree with is you, on one point: I do NOT wonder why straight women read m/m – I wonder why people wonder why they do. As I point out, the demographics show that more women read than men and even more women like romances, that most women are straight, most men aren’t, etc., etc. So we ought to be astonished, flabbergasted, if the situation were otherwise. Note that my topic sentence is “So why don’t more gay men read m/m?” That’s the question that really interested me… until I started playing with the numbers to demonstrate the extent to which they don’t, only to realize that, proportionately, they do, or nearly. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was, probably because of all the pointless brouhaha about most of the readers being straight women. So the first part of the question (who) came already answered, and the why has nothing to do with their reasons for reading it, which of course need no justification.
Maybe I’m naïve, but I assumed it was no different from asking why more people attend orchestral concerts than chamber music concerts. When I ask a question like that, it’s to figure out how to attract more people to chamber music, not to challenge the taste of those who go to hear an orchestra.
As a for-the-time-being gay man, I can tell you what has turned me off in some m/m books by authors of both genders. In most cases, I would have been turned off if I wasn’t gay or, for that matter, a man.
Now I do wish historical romances had as large a following of contemporary, but I don’t bother wondering why except insofar as that might provide some ideas for attracting more readers.
Hi Anel
The title of the post said Who Reads Gay Romance and Why? So I went with the title.
I know I’m not the only lesbian who enjoys reading m/m enough to write it. And it has been my first choice of love story since I found one. I truly did play Barbies by putting the men in bed together, and thought two boys kissing was cute, even in grade school. I can no more figure out why I fall in love with women but like to read about men falling in love than I can tell you why I am right handed but play speed card games with my left. I love a world where everyone can find what they love to read.
This. I have several lesbian friends who love reading m/m-fiction, just like I have straight, bisexual and asexual female friends who enjoy reading m/m romance or slash fanfiction or both.
I also have gay friends who wouldn’t touch a romance book (gay or straight) if you paid them to.
Could it be the same deal of straight men prefer lesbian porn?
By the same token, women who, I would considered, had the propensity toward reading, would wants to read about men who get together with other men but in a more romantic way which perhaps the majority of women would fantasize instead of straight up erotica.
What I would wondered though, is why gay men don’t read as much… Are they are all read Men Fitness mag and spend more time in the gym instead?
Hey Pete
Are they are all read Men Fitness mag and spend more time in the gym instead?
That’s the subject of a new post. 😆
As I said, my “why” is “why is it that”, not “why do they do it”.
Women buy 80% of all books purchased.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2780
We read more than men do, and especially more fiction. So of course we read more same-sex romance. (My father and BG Thomas are the only men I know personally who read. My husband and sons do not.)
Also, remember that m/m is NOT Queer Lit. It was started by fannish women for fannish women in zines of the early 70s. (I don’t say “straight,” because about 35%+ of women in fandom identify as GLBT)
Queer Lit is literature by and for the QUILTBAG and has been around for at least a century.
Craft and Cooking porn–beautifully shot books of items I will never make–is my sleeping drug of choice. I read fiction while in lines or waiting rooms.
Hey Angel
I should correct my earlier comment about not reading cook books. I just remembered that my porn of choice now is Fifty Shades of Chicken by FL Fowler. WOW. I want to change places with that damn chicken. 😆 :blush:
Just about all my friends and relatives read fiction, whether they’re men and women. And I love reading cookbooks, not the recipes so much as the introductions when they tell about the culture of the cuisine, its origins, influences, significance: India, Morocco, Italy, China…
I’ll agree with above, I think, I don’t understand the continuing–and having been in the genre now for ten years, and this subject comes up about every 3 months–obsession with it. Lambda tried to make gay fiction purely by gay men – that didn’t work–you had to literally self-assess yourself as being a gay man or living as a gay man or identify yourself as a gay men to enter their awards.
As has been said above, no one obsesses about why people like murder fiction. Perhaps we should! ONLY MURDERERS ALLOWED TO READ AND WRITE THIS STUFF!!
and I know many many many lesbians who write gay romance.
Like you said – more women read books than any other demographic, so it’s pretty obvious that more straight women read it than otherwise. However, it’s nice that 99 percent of the emails I get about my work are from men.
Murderers and their victims, Erastes, to underline what nonsense it all is.
I’ll join the groaning chorus. I’ve seen this question being asked again and again both when it comes to m/m fiction but also when it comes to slash (actually I saw it in fandom first). I don’t think the issue is actually sexual orientation but the point that women have to justify the things they do that fall outside the “stereotypical, expected norm”.
20 years ago as a teenager I had to justify reading and enjoying fantasy and SF books and movies. Just last year I was expected to justify being a feminist and wearing heels and make-up. I no longer see any point in justifying what I enjoy reading or writing. I’m getting too old and ornery for that. I might not always advertise it loudly but I also refuse to feel bad about it, or ashamed.
I no longer see any point in justifying what I enjoy
*standing ovation*
:bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:
Yes.
Here’s my theory, and I’m stickin’ to it.
You know, there could be a certain amount of gender and orientation fluidity operating here. I believe there are countless, subtle gradations of sexual identity. So, there could be shadings of “straight woman” in gay men who are drawn to the genre, or of “gay man” in women who are. Then again, maybe we’re all varying degrees of bisexual, even though we might not be aware of it.
Anyway, when I was in my twenties (well before I began writing m/m), a boyfriend once told me, “You’re the only woman I know who wants to be a gay man.” At that point in time, the notion had never occurred to me. But if someone were to say the same thing to me now, my response would be, “Pal, I am a gay man, somewhere inside. And I’m hardly the only female who feels that way.” 🙂
K. Z., I am absolutely blown away by your insight. :bravo: It explains everything by acknowledging a wholeness to our inner reality. Brilliant.
And I could say exactly the same thing: “Pal, I AM a straight woman, somewhere inside. And I’m hardly the only gay man who feels that way.”
And that’s how I wrote/published a het romance this year under a pen name, and had so much fun doing it.
And I’m prepared to postulate that the same diagonal exists between straight men and lesbians:
I AM a lesbian/straight man, somewhere inside. And I’m hardly the only straight man/lesbian who feels that way…
Fascinating.
“And that’s how I wrote/published a het romance this year under a pen name, and had so much fun doing it.”
All right! Good for you, Lloyd! :skoal:
Well done, KZ. I always say that if I were a man, I would be a gay man. That’s how much I love men. And two are always better than one. XD
This is one of the best answers I’ve read to the dead-horse question, and partly one I’ve said before: mostly women read M/M romance because mostly women read any kind of romance (or really, any kind of book, as you note). The specific reasons women write M/M are as varied as the women themselves, so no one will ever find a single answer to that question.
As for the question “Is there anything woman writers can do that will make everyone happy?”, the answer is no, of course not. Nothing any writer can do will make everyone happy. 😉
My point exactly, Shae. A question tells us more about the people who ask it than the answer tells us about what they’re asking about.
That poor horse got beaten so often, it’s probably hamburger by now. 😉
My best friend runs a gay porn site and 95% of his subscribers are men. We both used to be active in some fandoms for gay storylines in daily soaps and there around 50% of the fans were male even though the storylines were highly romantic and there was no explicit sex.
We also both like gay-themed movies and watched a lot of them together. When the sad lack of happy endings in them let me to discovering m/m romances, he wasn’t interested at all although he was just as frustrated by movies. He will read fanfic but when I gave him a gift certificate for All Romance ebooks, he didn’t use it. We ended up with me buying the books and him getting a DVD instead :hysterics:
We talked about it and he thinks that most men prefer their porn/romances in (preferably moving) pictures not words. With fanfic he knows what the characters look like, but in regular romances he doesn’t so he has a hard time getting into the stories.
I read m/m romance because I like men, happy endings are more or less a must in m/m (although sometimes I like bittersweet too), the men are portrayed in a more than usual emotional way and it’s fascinating how varied the stories can be within that sub-genre.
I don’t read m/f because the female characters are mostly portrayed as weak and needy and I’m not interested in descriptions of the female anatomy. I have those bits and I know all about them, so reading about them is boring. m/f sex is something I have all the time in our bedroom so I don’t need to read about it.
“I’m not interested in descriptions of the female anatomy. I have those bits and I know all about them, so reading about them is boring.”
Yes. And all too often either laughable or disgusting, given some of the descriptions that are commonly used. They make me feel like a cross between some slimy sea creature and a none-too-appealing alien. Slippery? Oozing? Really? :fish:
Maybe so many women read gay romance, because gay mysteries and gay thrillers are far less available. Romance by default?
I’d certainly rather pick up a great gay mystery or Clancy-like thriller, but my constant search doesn’t yield many results.
Reading is an escape. For me, Enny had it right: >>m/f sex is something I have all the time in our bedroom so I don’t need to read about it.<<
I read to get away. And as a woman I can't get further away than to slip into a man's mind 🙂
Nadja
Oh. I thought question included everything – including gay mysteries and gay fiction. Eh I love gay mysteries even if the only romantic moment in them is when we learn that gay detective has a partner at home and they are happy. If you want some recommendations let me know. To me it is definitely not either/or . And the more books we see where the character just happens to be gay while investigating the case or saving the world the happier I will be as a reader – that does not mean I will love Romance any less.
Ame to that! So very very true.
I think all too often “gay romance” is used synonymously for other gay genres as well, as Anel did here. I’m sure he meant to be inclusive. But I almost think we’re doing gay fiction a disservice by sweeping everything under the romance umbrella.
Having said that, I’m totally looking for recommendations. Anything but 1st POV 🙂
Wave & Co. do such an awesome job with reviews (too awesome for my bank account), but I’m always looking for more.
Nadja
Hey Nadja
Happy New Year. Here’s a link to a post with recommendations by readers for other readers and they are all mostly free:. Enjoy!
http://tinyurl.com/4cl6ywo
Here’s another post with readers’ recommendations of their favourite books this year:
http://www.gayromance.org/2013/01/07/what-was-on-your-top-ten-list-in-2012/
How else can I help? 😆
Oh that is indeed much harder since a lot them are in first POV. That means Michael Nava is out, so is Richard Stevenson and so is Dorien Grey. Okay, let me see the only one I can suggest on the top of my head right now is David Lennon’s series. I mean it is not quite on the top of my head, because I just checked that it is in third person. The series start with Quarter boys – I only read that book, there are four or five more out I believe. There is Steve Neil Johnson with Doug Orlando mysteries and one of them I reviewed on the site, so I am sure you saw those. Will try to think of more.
I like my UF with a strong female character. And I like my romance to be m/m. I think part of this is that a relationship is a balance of power. With two men I do not have to be self-conscious about the sex roles. The power issues are still there, but my feminist baggage isn’t. I’m very comfortable with a guy topping a guy. And not so comfortable with all the alpha males in straight romance. I can relax with a m/m romance.
good point you make, Anel. If the expected sexual orientation of readers of male gay romance would be those attracted to men, then the readership of gay fiction would be straight women and gay men. Now If gay people make up 10% of the population, then the percentage of straight female readers of gay fiction could be potentially 90%. So if, in reality, less than 90% of the readers of gay romance are straight women, then the real question would be, why do so FEW straight women read gay romance?
I think the question is all tied up in those old straight male attitudes of misogamy and fear of homosexuality.
1/ why do women get the question as to what they read? it is so often asked in a discriminatory, derogatory way; as if women shouldn’t be allowed to read what they want.
2/ straight men’s paranoia about gay sex makes them fear women reading gay fiction. Agh! they will really be sidelined if women start doing this.
3/ at the same time straight men are allowed to be turned on by lesbian sex, no one seems to question a guy’s sexuality if he admits to that.
4/ men (of any persuasion) are not allowed to admit to liking romance, cos that will make them less than manly. despite the fact that sociologists say men are just as interested in love and romance as women, and women want sex just as much as men, the myth still exists that all ‘real’ men want is sex, and women are only interested in romance.
I agree with everything in this response.
As a het married woman I am still fascinated with my fascination with m/m. I’m trying to understand it myself. I bought the book Why Sraight Woman Love Gay Romance but I haven’t read it yet. I’m sure as stated by others that the reasons vary. For me I’ve always loved reading the male POV & with m/m you get two.It also stands to reason that one d**k is great, two is better! lol.
And I had to laugh & agree with Enny & K. Z. Snow:
Yes. And all too often either laughable or disgusting, given some of the descriptions that are commonly used. They make me feel like a cross between some slimy sea creature and a none-too-appealing alien. Slippery? Oozing? Really?
Romance readers as a whole have always had to justify why they read what they read. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard it mocked as tripe and garbage by men and women despite it’s size and readership. It’s stupid that someone who reads a cozy mystery thinks he/she is better by default than one who reads a romance. I think gay romance is tossed in with the whole romance package but gay romance is new enough and specific enough to carve out and ask more questions about. If you think this question has been beaten to death, it doesn’t compare to the general why do you bother with romance debate.
Yes, but as far as I have read (mostly from reading Dear author I do not read any other sites which review straight romances) readers of straight romances usually have to justify themselves to lovers of more “serious” genres. Heck, another story from my work would go like this – this was in times when I was still buying paperbacks from Amazon in much bigger quantities than I do now and I was often getting Amazon packages at work. The guy who also really loves books (literary fiction of course) asked me what is in the package. I told him that it was a book. He asked me what kind of book and I told him a romance. He stood there near my office literally gaping at me (forgive me guys if I mentioned that one before). The next sentence out of his mouth was – weren’t you the one who was walking around with War and Peace only few days ago.
My answer was yes, that was me rereading War and Peace, now it will be me reading a great romance (no, with him I did not go into the fact that it was a gay romance – that conversation would have been longer and much more annoying).
I am not sure where you got the idea that the fact that I love mysteries means that I consider myself better than somebody who loves pure romance. I read across the genres, always did – five or six years ago I fell in love with gay romance. That did not make me want to abandon other genres – so I am not going to apologise for it, for loving Russian classics which I grew up with, but romance holds a very steady and dear place in my heart, well written romance that it is.
I digress – as I said I was under impression that het romance lovers have to justify what they read as being worthy against literary snobs. I did not realize that they also have to defend their choice of reading because it is strange to their critics that they are reading het romance? I could be wrong but I thought that those who sneer upon women who read het romance think that romance is women’s choice read by default so to speak?
I thought situation with mm romance justifications is different because the question comes up why straight women read it – as if people of our gender and sexual orientation are not supposed to read it?
I’ve looked over your response Sirius a couple times and I’m probably not interpreting completely right (sorry!) but I’ll add a little more about my experience. I have been part of several threads on different sites where readers of other genres, not literary, but mystery, thriller, general fiction, etc, trash romance. I mentioned cozy mystery because that’s a genre I really dislike but there is a whole group of fiction readers who feel then can pan romance just because. They don’t pan anything else. I would never dream of asking someone to justify why they read political thrillers so why do I (general) have to justify what I read. So when the question comes to me about why would I, a straight woman, read gay romance it just seems like another trashing of romance just in a different way.
I’m not saying there isn’t some interesting data to consider on the question, I’m as fascinated by the numbers as anyone, but I just don’t understand why romance readers, of all kinds, have to continually justify their reading choices.
I agree with you that romance readers should not have to justify their reading preferences. I was just saying that the questioning of straight women who read romance seems to me to be unique. I have not seen people saying ” oh why would you read het romance as a straight woman”. What people seem to be saying at least what I saw was that het romance is an an inferior genre ( and same thing is often said to mystery lovers and fantasy lovers – that unless you are reading literary fiction you are reading inferior books).
The question @ you are of certain genre ” so why would you read a book seems to be reserved exclusively to the straight women who love
Oy hit the button too early. Continued from the previous post – such question seems to be reserved for straight women who love mm romance only. I mean this does not distract from your bigger point that lovers of any romance should not have to justify themselves to anybody. My point was only that I have not seen this question asked of lovers straight romance ever. It seems that as women we are allowed to read straight romance but not gay romance. Heck, one of my most beloved family members told me only half jokingly – look what you came down to – from Dostoevsky (we both love him) to gay romance. Yeah, whatever.
Ah, War and Peace. I’ve read it 5 times. It is, among other things, one of the world’s greatest romances. The other things include history, social commentary, and philosophy. And the beauty of it is that the romance parallels all the other elements in it, comments on them, and draws meaning from them. Without the story of Natasha, Pierre and Andrei, the book would be little more than pompous and opinionated spouting (like the 2nd epilogue). The romance humanizes it. It is by no means an easy read, but I still wish there were more romances like it. Challenge adds dimension to any book.
I am in such an agreement with you Anel, it is indeed amongst other things one of the world’s greatest romances :-). I wish more people saw it that way.
Comments are just as interesting as the post. Great job, Anel.
I’ll try to answer how it is for me.
Reading some of this comments, got me thinking: “Well, why do I as straight woman love to read mm?” I checked some of offered answers:
“I have female bits and don’t want to read about it.”- Hey, I love my female bits, I have no trouble reading about them.So, no, it’s not that.
“m/f sex is something I have in my bedroom, I don’t want to read about it”- Nope, that’s not for me either. I love great sex in my bedroom and in my books.
“It’s my inner gay man”- Hmm, it suggest I’m somehow divided and I’m not. When I read mm, it’s my inner, my outer, my straight and my gay, my woman, mu guy side equally engrossed in story, equally cheer for characters and equally wants to know what’s going to happen.
So, basically, I came to this: I can’t answer why I as a straight woman love to read mm, because for me it isn’t a gender or sexual orientation question. What I can is answer is why I as a reader love to read mm. I haven’t come across good contemporary m/f romance for years and m/m is like a treasure that always gives. There are so many mm authors who enthralled me with their words and who amaze me with their talent. I want to read their work. They know how to make me care for their characters.
When I first began writing erotica and posting it on the nifty archive, I received a lot of feedback, over a thousand emails from my first story, and most of it was from male readers. I was kind of shocked when I started getting letters from female readers, not because I didn’t realize that women read more than men, but because the material I posted was pure smut. I’m talking about one-handed reads, the kind of stories where you skip the plot, skimming through until you find the “action”.
There are quite a lot of gay men who read, and we can debate the hows and whys, but I like to think of it as one more thing that we have in common with women that most straight men don’t. However, there are a lot of gay men I’ve encountered who are literary snobs. Reading a romance of any kind, or any story that even hints at sexual activity, is beneath their dignity. They consider it literary porn. I think they are generalizing, making assumptions about what an m/m romance book is based upon what they know about the material that is published elsewhere (like the nifty archive).
It’s so hypocritical, because this kind of “smut” is our dirty little secret. For many years, long before the internet, we had these little magazine-style novellas that we gay men would pass around to each other (under the table) while we stocked our libraries with literary classics (which most of the time were just for show).
At this point in time, I honestly do not care how many gay men read my books. Sure, I love and appreciate all of my readers, but why should the gender of my audience make one bit of difference to me? I do want to give readers the kinds of stories that they want, and perhaps there is a difference between what gay men and straight women like to read. But I haven’t really figured that out yet, and I’m doing all right.
Yeah, I think the topic really is a dead horse. If there is one thing I learned from attending the GRL Retreats, its that the thing that unites us is not our gender or sexual orientation. It is our passion for a common interest: m/m fiction. Shouldn’t that be the thing that matters most?
Hey Jeff
Yeah, I think the topic really is a dead horse. If there is one thing I learned from attending the GRL Retreats, its that the thing that unites us is not our gender or sexual orientation. It is our passion for a common interest: m/m fiction. Shouldn’t that be the thing that matters most?
I think this will become my standard response whenever I’m asked this question in the future. Well said.