The Gay Man Who Loved Women by Rick R. Reed

58 comments

• 

  Do women have a place in m/m romance? Of course.
  Do I want women in my gay romances? Yes, why not.
  What I don’t want is het erotic/romance in my gay romance books because for that I read other books if I want. Having said that I don´t mind if it’s part of the “make it feel real” part and makes sense.
  What I don’t want is gay romance books where the women are all awful, all of them, maybe just because they are not men. That’s not real life.

  Thank you for your interesting post 😎

  • 

    Yes, I completely agree about not having het romance in m/m, at least not as a focal point.

• 

  Setting a story without any women just would seem odd to me (unless its a paranormal/parallel universe type one where the author can create any world (s)he likes) as in the real world, women are around! I always think the secondary characters in a books act as a show case for the mains, and love em or hate be they man or woman, they should be there. Very few of us exist in a vacuum of contacts. I may dislike a character but it wont be because of their sex!

• 

  Hi Rick,
  thanks a lot for this article!
  I’m (obviously) female, love to read gay romances and whenever I read (or hear) stupid sentences like “I don’t want females in it”, or “I don’t want to read about females” or “I don’t want female characters messing things up” like you mentioned, I really, really get extremely angry. And I always feel insulted. (In the same way insulted, as when I read only offensive or derogatory female descriptions in a book.) 😡
  I don’t know if female or male readers deliver such bullshit, and honestly, it doesn’t matter to me, because if it’s women then which twisted selfimage do this ladies have, and if it’s men, then I can only ask which image do this men have about women.
  And I want to ask if discrimination is a one-way-street for this people…..is it only discrimination when someone says I don’t want to read about gay people messing things up in het-romances (or thriller or SF novel and so on) ? Is it only discrimination when I don’t want to read about people with another skincolor than mine?
  How can I march in a parade waving a rainbowflag when I do discriminate half the world-population for exactly the same reasons as homophobic people do with gay men and women?!
  Really, how can this people look at themself in a mirror? And what is it they see if they look?
  They want respect from others but it seems to me, they have no respect at all for themself.
  I don’t want only “bitches” or ” holy” female characters in novels, be it in gay-romances or others fictional books. I do want real characters in the books I read (and yes, werewolves and vampires are real to me in novels, too). I have all these types of people around me in real life (okay, not the vampires etc), so I want to see them in gay romances, too.

  Sorry if there are wrong terms here and other errors, but unfortunately my english will always get bad when I’m angry about something. :blush:
  So again, thanks a lot for this article. It’s always a pleasure to read your posts here on this side. :bravo:

  • 

    I love what you said! 😀

• 

  Hi Rick,

  Thanks for writing this. I agree with you 100% and you raise a point that has long troubled me about the m/m genre. As an editor for LGBT romance, I see this time and time again–women are either relegated to bit parts that have no overall impact to the story, or they’re forgotten about.

  But I’d also take it a step farther and say that a lot of m/m writers–a lot of them women, I’m ashamed to say–don’t seem to know or care how to use female characters properly, in that, if women characters do appear, they are either so poorly written so as to barely warrant consideration, or they are featured as the one-note villain or “bitch” set out to destroy the male characters and/or their romance. As a writer, I find this to be a bad practice because it’s just, well… bad and lazy writing to have caricatures populating your text. If you want an evil villainess, watch a Disney movie. And as a woman, I find it insulting and appalling when women are portrayed that way. It’s reductive, offensive, and oftentimes blatantly misogynistic, playing into the idea you cited of how women “only mess things up.”

  While I do believe it is possible to have female characters in a story that don’t simply exist in relation to men as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, or jilted exes–and I do think we need to see more women characters who can stand on their own, even in m/m romances, to push the genre beyond its often narrow boundaries–it’d be a start to have writers, be they men or women, acknowledging that queer romance isn’t about erasing or demonizing the opposite sex and their importance in the characters’ lives. That isn’t real life, since we’d probably give those people a piece of our minds if we encountered them in our day-to-day lives (and I certainly have, because there are too many gay men who seem to find women “icky,” just as there are gay women who think all men are “pigs”), and good writing is not just about providing an escape, but writing things that are true to life and grounding characters in realism. That includes women (and men, in lesbian romance) who are fully-realized, complex and human characters, individuals who receive the same amount of respect as their male counterparts.

  I think women writers really need to take note of how important this is, because life really does imitate art all too frequently, and if we can’t start erasing hatred and disrespect in what we read and write, we really are in no position to start demanding that in the lives we lead out in the real world.

  • 

    Five things:

    1) Word.
    2) So knew you were going to respond to this post, and eloquently at that.
    3) The self-hatred and insecurities that come out in any community when their status quo is challenged is a sad thing, but it’s especially sad when a sub-culture turns on its own and/or people who are equally marginalized. As you say, life does imitate art, or I guess in this case it’s an artist succumbing to the worst parts of life.
    4) This phenomenon is not relegated to the m/m/ genre. I’m taking a writing workshop right now, and it has astounded me the level of misogyny and boy’s club attitude that still gets a pass. Out of 12 writers, three of them (myself included) wrote pieces that portray women in a positive light, as well-rounded characters with a voice. The amount of students – women included! – who marginalized their female characters and refused to give them a real voice was shocking to me.
    5) But it’s posts like this that can get people thinking and prompt change, so good for you, Rick! 😀

  • 

    Beautifully said. I was going to leave my own comments, but I really can’t top yours, Mal. 🙂

    I will say this: when it comes to storytelling, we should create three-dimensional characters and use them as the story dictates. Brokeback Mountain would be an entirely different story without Alma in it–precisely because her relationship with Ennis is contrasted to his relationship with Jack. And the author didn’t have to vilify her to get that point across either.

• 

  I’ve always eyerolled when I see women griping that they hate getting “girl cooties” in their m/m. Seriously, are we in second grade here, or what?

  I get someone not wanting het sex in a romance if what they bought was m/m, and not m/m/f or m/f/m, although even there I’ve seen it taken too far — bisexual characters, anyone? It seems we’re only allowed to write bisexual characters if they’re getting together with someone of their own sex. If they fall for someone of the opposite sex, then the book is “really” het and there’s snarking and griping. But that’s another post, I suppose.

  Even in m/m, though, I think it’s a legitimate character arc to have a gay man questioning his own sexuality, maybe trying hard to be straight because that would avoid so many problems with family or church or community or work. So long as he ends up having his HEA/HFN with another guy, then to me that’s m/m, even if he’s with a woman at the beginning, or tries to have sex with a woman in the middle. And yet there are m/m readers who’d howl and complain if we told such a story. So do we tell it, and ride out the storm, or avoid a whole chunk of the gay experience because it’s not worth the fall-out?

  I also agree with Helena above, that it’s annoying to read a book where all the women are bitches, just because they’re women. Sure, there are some nasty women out there, but there are a lot of great women, too. Sometimes a story only requires one woman, and sticking more on with duct tape just for the sake of balance is silly. But if there are several women in a story and all the female characters are either paper thin — the nameless barista, the bus driver, the neighbor woman who has one line of dialogue — or are nasty people you want to smack, that’s a larger pattern that says something about the writer. Or at least about what she thinks of her audience.

  I agree that the world has both men and women in it, and both men and women can be kind or selfish, good or evil, accepting or bigoted, and our fiction — especially stories with non-magical, non-paranormal modern settings — should reflect that.

  Angie

• 

  I absolutely think women belong in m/m romances for all of the reasons outlined above. I do find it annoying when, as Eve noted, they are presented as stereotypes and don’t read as real women. I also don’t like stories where the woman is the “necessary” third in what has been a committed relationship between two men – I find that extremely offensive.

• 

  Great post Rick! It would be ridiculous not to have women in m/m books . As for me, I moved away from m/f because of the poor portrayal of heroines as often weak, whiny, dumb, manipulative creatures. It was hard to find a woman who was reflective of the women who actually exist in my world. I don’t mind women in my m/m books, but it seems that some authors only use them as the force of evil. While this is fine in moderation, it gets tiring as a repetitive plot device. I actually find many women in m/m romance who are strong, supportive, intelligent characters that I rarely see in m/f romance and I enjoy reading them.

• 

  Gosh, I’ve been fielding this question since my C.A.M.P. series in the 60s – which, btw, had very few female characters in them with the exception of a few lesbians. But let’s face it, those books were hardly reflecting real life. And gays had been so excluded from positive books – i.e., books that made them feel good about themselves – so the series really was meant to celebrate gays. Since then, however, I honestly don’t give much thought to it one way or another. Angel Land has plenty of female characters, gay and straight. I think Belle Blessings is one of the more interesting characters in Lola Dances. There are plenty of women scattered throughout the pages of the Deadly Mysteries – Nancy, in Deadly Slumber, gets my vote as one of my best characters.

  It does bother me, however, that I was not permitted to post a review here of one of my favorite books last year because it had a (completely necessary to the plot and brief) sexual encounter between a man and his wife – and soon after a review appeared of another book (as it happens, my other favorite for the year) which had more hetero sex than the one I got turned down for. I don’t think arbitrary discrimination is good for the genre (or either side of it, gay fiction or m/m) – but I am long used to being in the minority.

  I’d say a writer should follow the dictates of his own conscience and /or muse – and let the lotus petals fall where they may.

  • 

    Love this: a writer should follow the dictates of his own conscience and /or muse – and let the lotus petals fall where they may. Thank you, Victor! And I just reread JUNCTION X…what a wonderful book. 😀

  • 

    Victor

    If a reviewer tells me in advance that a book has hetero on-page sex I tell them, respectfully, that it’s the policy of the site not to post such reviews. I’m sorry you felt my decision not to go ahead with your review was arbitrary, but when we have reviewed these books in the past on a few occasions there was a backlash from the readers, so I try to avoid this wherever possible. As for the other book you mentioned, unless a reviewer tells me before posting a review that there is on-page het sex in the book I have no way of knowing this since I only read a small portion of the books that are reviewed here and trust the reviewers.

    Authors have always written what they want, so this policy has absolutely no impact on the content of M/M books.

• 

  Women have played an essential role in every M/M story I have ever read and/or written. I’ve never given it a second thought.
  Your post did, however, spark a realization I had overlooked until now. The women in my stories have all been supportive and I’ve inadvertently given the antagonist roles to other men: fathers, friends, brothers, etc.
  I suppose I’ve done this on a subconscious level to some extent because of my own experiences with people (friends and family members) when confronted with LGBT issues, such as dealing with someone initially coming out. Women have been more accepting, whereas the men have been uncomfortable and resistant, especially when the person coming out is male.
  Your post just might have prompted me to reevaluate whether I am being fair and true to reality where characterization is concerned. Definitely food for thought!
  As for whether women should have a spot in M/M romance … unless it’s some sci-fy, futuristic setting where women are no longer necessary to the species or the characters are shipwrecked on a deserted island, how many men, gay or straight, can realistically get through a day without at least one woman somewhere in their lives? 😀
  Fantastic post!!!
  Robin / Tyler

• 

  Rick
  This is a really interesting article, and I agree with you that women do have a role and should be in M/M romances, after all, we live in a diverse world, so what kind of fictional world would it be if M/M romances ignore half of the population? However, I have a problem with the way women are portrayed by authors (mostly female authors) in these books so I would much rather they are not in gay romance books if we are always disrespected. But if there are going to be female characters in your books I don’t want to read about them having sex with the MCs, so I don’t buy those books but every reader is different.

  4 years ago I wrote a post on this topic because I had had enough of books where the women were all portrayed negatively. OTOH there are a few authors who always portray women as strong and positive role models in their books and Sean Kennedy has done this consistently, which is why I love his stories, so I asked him and Jenre (who was a reviewer on the site at the time) to join me in writing a post about this, and here’s a link to our article:

  http://www.gayromance.org/?p=4784

  This is part of what I said:

  If you are going to have females in these stories there is no need to demonize them and portray them as the bitches from hell, or that other character some authors love – the slut who would open her legs 24/7 to any man. In some cases these portrayals might be true to life e.g. the “barracks bunnies” and “buckle bunnies,” etc. but do we need to read about them in M/M stories? Are you not perpetuating old stereotypes about women which have very little validity if you consider the gender as a whole? I know authors like to feel that their characters are edgy, but in M/M romances this seems to be taken to extremes at times in terms of the women in the books.

  There will always be villains in books, but in M/M most of the villains are females who are so extreme (the exes who can’t let go of the man who no longer wants her etc.) that she’s like a cardboard cutout, so it’s no wonder that some women don’t want female characters in their gay romances if that’s the way they are treated by authors. Let’s not continue to marginalize women, whether it’s fiction or real life.

  I read these books for the gay men since these are gay, not het romances but if you’re going to have women in your gay romance authors, don’t treat us as if we were the scum of the earth.

  • 

    Sometimes it’s necessary to have your MC having sex with a woman to further the plot especially when he’s questioning his sexuality, examples: Amy Lane’s -Chase in Shadow, and Anna Martin’s – Another Way both fabulous reads.

    • 

      I agree, Janet, that it’s sometimes necessary. I had a behind-closed-doors het sex in my first novel when the main character was struggling with accepting his identity. I did get flack for it, but it was necessary to further the plot.

      Great article, Rick 🙂

• 

  Everyone is entitled to an opinion. While some (or one) doesn’t want women the opinion is that person’s.
  For me, fiction is about life with zany twists and hot scenes thus women belong there.

  LOVE your stuff Rick, you’re a good human and grand author. If I ever grow up I want to be like you.

  David S

• 

  Interesting. I’m getting the impression that there’s almost a trope I wasn’t aware of out there–the unsympathetic bitch in m/m romance. I hadn’t realized there were all that many when I wrote my post; I was just commenting on the fact that I had run across some mostly female readers who have an “ick” reaction to women in their m/m. As for me, I try to portray my female characters realistically, so that means some will be good, some bad, but mostly all of them (male and female alike) will be a mixture of both. You know, just like your friends and neighbors.

  • 

    Rick, if you haven’t encountered the unsympathetic bitch in m/m, you’re more fortunate in your reading than I’ve been. I would almost rather be marginalized out of the story as a gender than encounter another woman who exists only to be a bitch, and an uncomplicated bitch at that. It’s like a factory decants some of these characters as Evil Harpy #2, Mom Flavored, or Pushy BFF #4, Perky-type, add name and return to simmer.

    George R.R. Martin was asked recently how he wrote such excellent female characters. He replied, “You know, I’ve always considered women to be people.”

    I don’t think every writer out there does, even if they’re women themselves.

    • 

      I think George has hit on the key–real people. When your characters are “plot devices” or stereotypes, they’re never going to garner anyone’s sympathy. And I think that sympathy, that relatability, is key to whether you have a good experience or a bad one with a book.

• 

  It’s a bit unrealistic to exclude the opposite sex in fiction unless the book is sci-fi and some kind of disease or something wiped out said sex. For me I think I can understand where the reviewer was coming from. I’ve read books where females have not been depicted in a great light and have come off grating on the nerves because of their personality. But I’ve read plenty of m/m books where female have been depicted as strong willed (but not pushy and understands boundaries), self-sufficient and downright badass. It’s these type of female characters that I don’t mind reading about. What i don’t want to see is a women trying to take charge of other people lives (i.e. forcing a male lead to do things he doesn’t want to or making decisions that force his hand) and females who act like children (i.e. crying when they don’t get what they want).

  I just finished reading Rhys Ford’s Black Dog Blues the other day and the females depicted in that book were very likable. I’ve found that a lot of Mary Calmes books have some very interesting female characters written in. Force of Law by Jez Morrow was another m/m book that comes to mind with awesome female characters in it.

• 

  Okay if you cut women out of m/m then how were the men conceived, immaculate conception? I certainly wouldn’t want my mother cut out of my life. She formed a lot of what I am. She taught me to read and appreciate learning. Half my family is female, half my friends are female. where would I be without them? When does being gay exclude more than half the world’s population? The best m/m books I have read, have strong females, in good and bad roles. We are all human beings regardless of sex or preference. Thanks for an excellent piece.

• 

  This is going to sound stupid since I don’t express myself very well, but here goes. I was raised by an abusive manic-depressive hell on wheels bitch and an passive aggressive heavy drinking father. My mother was a piece of work but she wasn’t all bad. I learned to love books and word games because of her love of them. Basically I don’t have a problem with any kind of women in m/m just make them human and well rounded as characters. No one is all bad or all good for that matter. Give your villians good points give your female best friends flaws. Real people make stories more interesting. Side note, I absolutely adored It’s Raining Men.

  • 

    It doesn’t sound stupid at all. Your comments about “human” and “well rounded” characters make a valid and critical point. It’s always more interesting to me as a reader to read about flawed characters and people who make mistakes–hey, I can identify. I have a few flaws myself (as my dear hubby will tell you) and Lord knows I’ve made many mistakes! Thanks for the kind words on Raining Men–now there was a flawed character, but one we could root for? And how could you not love his mom?

• 

  Hi Rick, interesting topic!
  I don’t have female characters in my short story erotica because when the sex is the centrepiece of the story, in my opinion and in that context, they don’t belong. Who would include disruptive elements in their fantasies that kill the mood? But there are female characters in my novels because they are necessary to my story building. Up to this point they have played minor roles, though they aren’t unimportant ones. Now I’m dealing with issues I never knew I had because I’m writing – or attempting to write – a fully engaged female character who is central to the plot, and I’m finding it difficult. I just don’t know what to do with her. She’s important to the story, so I can’t eliminate her and I can’t push her off into a corner with nothing to do. I need to do her justice, but I just don’t know how.
  This whole struggle is making me confront a few things about myself – why is it that can I only seem to write from a masculine perspective? I don’t feel like my thinking or actions are limited in that way. But it also makes me sympathetic to my readers, and their feelings about female characters in male focused stories. Some gay men really don’t like women, some straight women really don’t relate to female characters. There’s a whole continuum of readers who want stories they can connect with, and that’s fair. But we all live in this world together, so I don’t understand going after writers who don’t adhere to individual expectations.

• 

  I really your story. I think the book is good without women, and I agree with you 100%

• 

  Hiya’ Rick~
  I’ll add my 2 cents for what it’s worth, even though the comments before mine have stated about the same thing…I do enjoy women being featured, (no matter the size of the role), in mm romance/erotica…if it’s a realistic & plausible character…NEVER a sexual role, but that’s just me, I know plenty of readers who enjoy bi triad stories; and I must admit that even being bi, I am not a fan.
  I have become a big fan of yours since GRL, and I so far really love the dichotomy you strike with female roles.
  🙂 thanks for the question.
  M.J.

• 

  I think it is just silly to say there shouldn’t be women in M/M books. Are we to believe that gay men don’t interact with women at all? Do gay men not have mothers, sisters or female friends? Obviously I wouldn’t expect a female love interest in a M/M romance, but why not a bestie or a close sister? I love the women you and other authors include in their stories. That is my 2 cents, for whatever it’s worth :).

• 

  I’d really have to know the context of those statements. Usually when people say they don’t want “girl cooties”, they mean they don’t want to read het sex.

  And I wonder if the person who said they don’t want women in their M/M books had an unspoken “if they are just going to be bitchy exes or evil mothers” at the end of the statement. I am sure there are a few people who really don’t want any women in their M/M (because there are a few people who think any crazy thing) but I really doubt many people feel this way.

  • 

    I never intended to imply that “many people” felt that way, but I have run into this perception often enough to make it worth noting. 😀

• 

  In the minority here – I like the nasty bitch types in M/M – I also like the nice ones. I just don’t want any of them in the bedroom. You wrote the nastiest woman I’ve ever read in Dignity Takes a Holiday but what would the story have been like without her?

  • 

    Boring. She was the mother from hell, wasn’t she? When I was writing her, I swear I didn’t know what was going to come out of her mouth next.

• 

  I don’t want to read about a man sexing up a woman in my M/M romance any more than I’d want to read about a man sexing up another man who is NOT the main love interest, or any more than I’d want to read about a man sexing up a woman not the main love interest in a M/F romance. I read for the romance, and to me, the MC sleeping with someone other than the main love interest isn’t romantic to me.

  Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes it’s a menage type of scene that fits the story. Sometimes it’s a man questioning his sexuality, so he’s still sleeping with women. I’d just prefer not to see the down and dirty details of that last one. It’s actually what is giving me pause on a popular M/M title that was just released- the first scene has the guy balls deep in some woman in an airplane bathroom, and I know it’s supposed to show his man whore, do anyone side, but I really don’t need the dirty details, it would be enough for me to have them meet, walk to the back of the plane, then cut to the end of the flight or something. So, this book is still languishing in my TBR.

  I always find it odd when no women are to be found anywhere in M/M. It’s just not realistic, unless it’s some off male only alternate universe. I also despise it when the only female in the story is the token “evil bitch” character, usually an evil bitch girlfriend/wife/ex. It’s like some authors can only stick women in there who are totally awful, to make the men seem better, or more meant to be together. I read a book a while back that had not one, but TWO evil manipulative bitch characters, and it was just too much, almost ruined the whole book for me.

  I love natural, warm relationships, be it best friend, sister, mother, whatever. It just adds more depth to the story for me for the MCs to have good friendships, no matter the gender.

• 

  It’s a really narrow world if you leave out half of the population, and it’s sloppy writing if you only write one type of stereotypical woman in your books. But when I think about it, I haven’t read many books without women in them and few that are stereotyped. Either I’m lucky or I am picky on what books I pick up to read. Probably a bit of both.

  As far as sex scenes go, I don’t mind girl parts or even gay guy on girl sex in any of my m/m reading. I don’t require warning labels and I won’t throw the book at the wall should I stumble on more than just male on male sex. Gay men have all kinds of complex relationships with women, always have had, and will continue to do so. To leave out these story lines which play out all of the time in real life is limiting yourself and limiting the genre.

  My first boyfriend was gay. My mother and I were the first people he came out to. What was he doing with me? He wanted to be sure.

• 

  Like some women I did ask myself why I do seek out gay fiction and already did practically as a teenager and long years before the term M/M was anywhere out there. I found quite a range and with that also reasons why some women might feel uncomfortable with and don’t like female characters in the picture. But I don’t dwell on it.

  In the compartment of female characters “Chasing Cold” from Stephan Graham King impressed me. Being Science Fiction it had great personal of characters, a lot of them female, portraits of different relationships too, so much so, that at one point it actually didn’t felt like reading gay romantic fiction anymore, even if it absolutely was.
  And *that* to me was somewhat exciting, because one attraction of gay fiction to me is that it’s supposed to be the proverbial “missing scenes”, the missing people that conventional fiction just leaves out, but who are a important part of our society. They were there, they did their part, acknowledged or not.
  I also like “Ghost Station” from Adam Fitzroy, which has a female character keeping a low profile during the plot, but is suddenly crucial to the solution in the end.

  If there are books where those people missing are put in again, they are a special pleasure to me. Good M/M or gay fiction I think is often that way. Focused on the M/M relationship but in a setting and conditions that feels real. Bad is a chamber play. 😀

• 

  Of course this is a different question than a lack of well-rounded female characters in m/m, but it seems to me that any author writing a bi character would be wise to avoid the fall out and just put f/m sex safely off-screen. (Or have two versions of the book… hmm…)

  Some readers are fine with it, and no one is forcing an author not to be true to her story. But. An author does want to have readers–and reviewers–and it’d be a hard choice to step outside or to the fringe of the m/m-reading and -reviewing community. My impression from general comments-about-town, not just here, is that it cuts down the potential audience much too severely if a protagonist who’s exploring/unsure/confused/pressured actually acts on that in the course of the story, whether off screen or on screen or squinted at through a half-open door. It feels like a lot of pressure for an author who actually wants to sell a reasonable number of books. Reaching the larger market means no girl cooties in the m/m, no gay cooties in the f/m.

  Hopefully, it can include more well-rounded female characters, nonetheless.

  I don’t say all the above in a cranky way, but in asking myself whether it simply makes much more sense to make a reasonable compromise in one’s writing, to be practical and give a story its best chances in the world. Is there a bi-fiction market the way there’s m/m?

  • 

    I have the same concerns, and wonder the same things. I combined m/m and m/f in the erotica I wrote, but now in the m/m romance genre… I’m not sure. So far, it hasn’t been an issue, but it is in my WIP. What to do? On one hand, I don’t want to care what people think. I want to write my story and that’s all. But then, if it will not be reviewed, if people will be “disgusted” or “turned off” by the inclusion of m/f sex, maybe I should re-think it.

    I wonder why, in a genre which celebrates (and almost requires) explicit, graphic sexual descriptions, this is even an issue? Why is it okay for me to write every detail of a m/m sex scene, but “fade to black” if it is m/f?

    So the lesson I have learned from this and other blogs, and from various reviews and discussion threads on m/m, is that readers want female characters, they want them to be real and interesting and sympathetic… but they don’t want to see women have sex, or have any romantic involvement with anyone at all? Nice.

    I think things are changing quite a bit in m/f (slowly), and there are more m/m scenes slipping in there. Hopefully, someday the genres will merge, and the “LGBT” label can be dropped entirely. I wish to one day live in a world where we can just say we write “romance”, without adding the qualifier m/m at all.

    • 

      I think things are changing quite a bit in m/f (slowly), and there are more m/m scenes slipping in there.

      This. I’ve thought for the last couple of years that, at the very least, we as a community should be at least somewhat ashamed that the mainstream het romance community is more accepting of gay sex in their books than we (the open, accepting, GLBT romance community) are of the slightest hint of het sex in our books. Seriously, do we have to be that judgy and intolerant? Especially when the mainstream readers aren’t? :/ Is it really a majority of us, or just a really loud minority?

      I don’t necessarily want everything to blend — when I’m in the mood for a book that’s primarily a romance between men, I like being able to find one without having to read fifty back cover blurbs because all the romances are shelved together — but there are fuzzy fringes around the edges of every genre, and there should be a place for those books. Not everyone has to enjoy reading them, but there’s a difference between saying, “I don’t care for that myself,” and saying, “That’s not m/m!”

      Angie

  • 

    I don’t say all the above in a cranky way, but in asking myself whether it simply makes much more sense to make a reasonable compromise in one’s writing, to be practical and give a story its best chances in the world.

    This is a question each writer has to answer for her/himself. My answer is no. I won’t compromise my work because a few people are loud about what they dislike. They’re entitled to their opinions, but my writing is mine.

    Another way to think about it is that every subgenre, and quite a few full-blown genres, started out as a writer here or there writing something completely different, something that nobody had ever written before, despite the fact that there was no sign or clue that the readers of whatever the closest genre was “wanted” that kind of work. Paranormal romance started back in the 70s, and IIRC wasn’t even considered romance half the time — you don’t find Yarbro’s Saint Germain books in the Romance shelves even now, and that’s the first I recall. “Weird” romances snuck into the mainstream through the occasional one-off — anyone remember The Elsingham Portrait? — and then in the 80s, time travel romance were huge for a few years. There were a bunch of books on the shelf with pocket watches on their spines, so TT fans could find them, while people who preferred “normal” romances just thought they were weird and dumb. Fantasy romances and SF romances (oh, excuse me — “futuristic” romances) appeared in the late 80s as subgenres, when there had been little or nothing like them before in romance. Enough people glommed on to keep them going, which people who preferred “real” romances about doctors and secretaries and cake bakers and decorators made snarky comments. As late as 2008 a columnist at a major romance blog (now defunct) was griping about how there were “too many” of those weird romances around, about how they were pushing out the “normal” contemporary romances. She was kind enough to allow that there should be “a few” of the weird romances published, but only the very best. (Nice of her to allow people like me a few of The Very Best of the subgenres I like most — maybe she’d be the one to vet them for me?)

    What would romance — het or GLBT — look like now if writers who love writing about vampires and aliens and mages and interstellar ambassadors and shifters had read the gripes and snarks of people who only want contemporary romances, and thought, “Gee, if I write this stuff I really love, nobody will read or review it! I’d better toe the line and write about doctors and secretaries and dog walkers, because I want my books to sell and be reviewed!”

    Will writing what you love yourself limit your market? Sure. That’s always true. If you write mystery romances, there are people who don’t like those. If you write about shifters, there are people who’ll eyeroll and move on. If you write about cross-dressing main characters, there are people who aren’t into that. If you write BDSM romances, plenty of people will avoid them. That’s their choice to make, and always has been. I know that no matter what I write, I’ll never capture 100% of the market. Not even the biggest, most popular NYT bestsellers capture 100% of their target market, no matter how many marketing weasels call something “the must-read book of the year.”

    Will writing certain things limit your reviews? Sure. Again, that’s always true. If I put a m/f sex scene in a book, Wave won’t review it. She pays the hosting fees, so the site runs by her rules. That’s not a limitation on what I can or should write, though, and I doubt very much that even Wave thinks it should be.

    I’ll write what I want to write, and let each book find its audience. Some audiences are going to be bigger than others — that’s how the business works. Trying to guess ahead of time what’s going to be huge or what’s going to be smaller, and then writing only what you think will be huge, is a fool’s game, though. Coincidentally, Dean Wesley Smith posted about something like this just a day or two ago — The Myth: To sell either to editors or readers, you must write what is hot. Dean’s answer to this question is, “Kick all the editor and agent and online board voices out of your writing office and write what makes you passionate or angry or excited.” That, right there — do that, or IMO there’s no point in being a writer. We’re certainly not here to get rich, right? If your number one goal is making money, there are a lot of easier, less chancy ways of going about it. [wry smile] If I’m not having fun, if I’m not writing what I want and what I love, then I have no reason to be here.

    Angie

    • 

      Oh Angie, I think I love you. Very wise words, indeed. Thank you.

      • 

        Rick — welcome, and thanks back for starting this discussion. 🙂

        Angie

    • 

      Yes, thank you, Angie, for lifting my mood (which was getting a little gloomy).

      You’re right: not every book will suit everyone. I have a manuscript out for submission (yay?) and I worry that it won’t fit any category and no one will want it, much less read it. But your comment reminds me that I knew from the start it wouldn’t suit readers who have a stricter definition of Erotic Romance (versus Erotica). I tried and that just wasn’t the sort of story I wanted to tell. I do still feel a bit like it’s shooting myself in the foot to put scenes on-screen when I could easily elide them with a few keystrokes…but thinking that way makes me gloomy and sad, while reading what you wrote makes me happy and inspired. There’s always going to be that little frisson of worry that, eventually, the niche gets too small, that the characters never get to live because they’re never read, etc. etc. On the other hand, maybe I’ll stumble into a whole new niche that, as you say, could be building critical mass.

      We’re not here to get rich? Drat. It seemed like such a foolproof plan 🙂

      • 

        Carolyne — best of luck with your manuscript! And if none of the publishers want it, publish it yourself. With a good cover and summary blurb, and judicious use of the vendors’ key words and categories and such, there’s no reason you can’t sell a good book just as well on your own.

        It might be that there are a bunch of readers out there waiting for your niche to re-emerge. The big publishers go with what they think will sell huge, but they only give a book six months or maybe a year to hit. And a book can do perfectly well without being a huge hit anyway, especially when you give it time to find its audience, as small presses and indie publishing writers do. There are people writing and publishing Westerns, frex., — whodathunk? New York declared the Western dead ages ago, but individual writers are publishing Westerns and they’re selling, and Western fans are rejoicing. In romance, the big publishers have wiped out whole swaths of the historical subgenre, which used to be the number one seller in single-title romances. There are still readers looking for Italian Renn., War of 1812, ancient Greece and Rome, English Civil War — all sorts of settings that you used to be able to find on the shelves, even if there weren’t dozens of them at any one time. New York isn’t publishing them anymore, but we’re seeing them pop up again on the indie side.

        Whatever you’ve got, if the publishers don’t want it, put it out there yourself and let the readers decide. It’s their opinion that counts in the end anyway, right?

        Angie

    • 

      Will writing certain things limit your reviews? Sure. Again, that’s always true. If I put a m/f sex scene in a book, Wave won’t review it. She pays the hosting fees, so the site runs by her rules. That’s not a limitation on what I can or should write, though, and I doubt very much that even Wave thinks it should be.

      Angie, I would never try to tell authors what to write. The site reviewed the odd gay romance in the past with on-page het sex, but there was backlash from readers and I decided it wasn’t worth it since I don’t read these books. I read books that range from mainstream fiction to horror but you don’t see me reviewing them here do you? And the authors don’t think this site should do so.

      Everyone has to do what they consider the right thing for them, and after all this time I think M/M authors know what books this site reviews and which ones we don’t. The header says it all and I won’t apologise for it. There are enough review sites that review the full range of GBLTQ books so it really doesn’t matter nor should it that this site does not.

      • 

        Wave — exactly. [nod] Every review blog or reviewer has their own guidelines and limitations and preferences, whether they publish them or just act on them. And that’s how it should be. Nobody has the power to dictate to anyone else what they can write, what they should read, or what they have to talk about on their blog. There are lots of reviewers out there, and if you pool everyone together, there are probably at least a few places that’ll review just about any given book.

        Angie

        • 

          Angie

          Wave — exactly. [nod] Every review blog or reviewer has their own guidelines and limitations and preferences, whether they publish them or just act on them. And that’s how it should be.

          And yet so many authors are pissed at me because I exercise that same right. I suppose they don’t feel that I should have any rights regarding the review policy on this site. Other site owners can do what they choose, but I’m always criticized for doing the same thing probably because my policy is explicit and posted on the site.

          You may not remember this Angie, but in mid 2008 every publisher, except Dreamspinner (which was brand new at the time), TQ and Amber Allure chose to flood the M/M market with menages, and the plot of most of these books used the women as sex or baby machines (I guess because men couldn’t have babies unless the books were paranormal, in which case MPreg would work). It got to the point where I couldn’t find enough M/M books to review because the majority of books released every week by Loose-id, Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were menages with women – no M/M. I was so mad I wrote a post protesting this new direction.

          M/M has evolved since then and will continue to evolve, but at least we’re not being flooded with M/M/F, I guess because a lot of M/M readers stopped buying these books. I have no idea where M/M will be in another 5 years, but I’m sure readers’ tastes will drive any future changes since publishers are in the business of making money or they would not be in business very long.

          This started out as a very small 1-person review blog that took off and sometimes I wish I could go back to the “good old days” because then no one would care what the site reviewed.

          To come back to Rick’s post, many M/M readers don’t want female characters in these books because of the way they are portrayed. Based on the number of books I have read in this sub-genre, which is a lot, the authors who have written the most offensive female characters are themselves female. Go figure.

• 

  I think there’s always been a misogynist thread in romance written by women for women. Pick up half a dozen old Harlequin romances from the charity shop and I bet you at least two will have a heroine surrounded by evil scheming bitches who denigrate her, want to steal her man, are jealous of her looks, or are just simpering dullards and much less interesting than men. There’s a whole line of romance heroines who have no female friends and are much happier in the company of men. And that’s women writers presenting women characters to women readers.

  My theory, which is 100% unsupported by academic research, is that the ‘other women are bitches’ trope migrated over from het romance when women started writing m/m. it’s just that much more obviously misogynistic when you can’t even say, ‘Of course this book doesn’t hate women, the heroine is great!’ because you don’t have a heroine.

  As to why you get this self-hating misogynistic strand in romance… no idea. Someone ought to do a sociological study.

  • 

    This is actually why I hate this “new genre” they are calling NA romance. Never mind the fact that it’s all cookie cutter stories, trying out out-angst each other, most of them are fully of bitchy slutty female characters, put in solely to make the sweet innocent heroine look even better. IMO, if your character’s goodness can’t stand on it’s own, without making all the other characters bitches who’ll nail anything that moves, you haven’t done your job right.

    I just want to read about regular female characters, whether in M/M or M/F.

• 

  I would have leapt around yelling, “Yes! Yes!” to this, however at 6.30 in the morning I wouldn’t have been popular.

  Personally I just want to see male and female well-rounded characters in the books I read. I brought this up on another forum and was told pointedly that gay men have no need to come into contact with women therefore why should they appear in books. I think that was more indicative of the person who replied.

  I don’t mind a bitchy girlfriend if she has character beyond pettiness. I just want to see them as people, not stereotypes. The same goes for all the usual tropes.

• 

  Excellent, articulate post, Rick. Thank you.

  I am guilty of casting a bitchy ex-girlfriend in my first novel. There’s even a perfunctory sex scene between the narrator and his soon-to-be ex. The relationship was on the rocks before the story started and both the sex scene and the subsequent bitchy behaviour of the girlfriend were there for good reasons: (a) to show how far the couple had drifted apart and (b) to help the narrator to realise he had been with the wrong person for too long. In spite of this, this book has received more reviews and attention than all of my other stories put together, so I must’ve done something right!

  I do use female characters in most of my stories, mainly as sympathetic sounding boards for my narrators, friends and relatives who are there when the MC needs a shoulder or someone to talk to. I like having the women there. As Rick said, a lot of gay men have important women in their lives. My aim, as a writer, is to portray real life as much as I can, if that means having an MC who has a relationship with a woman that has gone behind the bedroom door, then so be it.

  That’s how life is.

• 

  Rick, you’re a mensch.

  Separatism is stupid. It just doesn’t work. The world has all kids of people in it. I’ve read enough of the Terrible Awful Bitch stories that I tend to just stop reading a writer’s work if one of them pops up (you know the sort of thing — the cougar boss who fires Our Hero or makes his life hell because he won’t shag her, the ex-girlfriend religious nut stalker, etc.) It isn’t just the mysogyny, it’s the cliche. Sure, there are some awful women. Awful men, too. And good ones.

  Some people buy romance, especially erotic romance, to get their own buttons pushed. I had some twit write me demanding that I promise her I would NEVER have one of my heroes get involved with a woman in any way, or she would never buy my books again. WTF?? What if I happened, some day, to write a bisexual character (which I have) or have a gay character marry a woman (with full disclosure and her approval) to keep his secret in a society that would kill him if he were found out? Sorry, no promises.

  I’m bi–I appreciate both genders, so maybe my perspective is different, but the gynophobic vehemence is troublesome. I scratch my head at heterosexual women who freak out when there’s opposite-sex sex in a book. What, is it THAT bad for you, ladies? To me, if there’s sex and it says something important about the characters, it’s useful to the story. BUT — I don’t want anything where two men “can’t be complete” without the magic ladyparts in the equation. That’s nauseating, as bad as two women “needing” a penis in there somewhere.

  Comes down to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it? Good writing versus poor writing, believable characters versus stereotypes. But some readers want stereotypes. You can’t please everybody and you make yourself crazy if you try.

• 

  Hi Rick. Thanks so much for your thoughtful article. I’m a straight woman who loves M/M (not sure why I disclosed that but it seems like we’re all sharing 😀 ). Whether there are or are not women in the story depends on how the author chooses to develop the story and secondary characters. I don’t mind either way as long as it makes sense. What REALLY bothers me is when every single woman is portrayed as an bigoted, evil bitch. I have read countless books in which the mother, sister, and girl friend are all to nasty creatures. Really? Every single one? Really?! These authors typically go to my “do not ever buy from” pile. I appreciate your sane perspective on this.

• 

  Do you have a favorite gay romance that features a female character or characters? Which is it?

  Tigers and Devils by Sean Kennedy; the sequel Tigerland; *Dash & Dingo by Catt Ford and Sean Kennedy. *The female character had a small but very positive role even though she was Aborigine and the story was historical.

  I have a few others but these come to mind quickly because I’ve re-read them so often. 😀

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