Who reads & writes
Who reads & writes
Who reads & writes
Mm romance?
Mm romance?
Mm romance?
(
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And why we need
And why we need
And why we need
to talk about it
to talk about it
to talk about it
About this Project
Over the last year, there have been continuing and increasing conversations about the prevailing trend of women being the majority of authors and readers of MM/Achillean romance. There are a few unfortunate truths about these conversations: Some people saying that women shouldn’t write MM base their arguments in unabashed transphobia and misogyny. Some people sharing valid concerns are being accused of transphobia and misogyny without warrant. Some people are feeling fear and anxiety about publishing in the face of these conversations.
While this topic is certainly controversial and has already caused strife in various queer book communities, I think it’s important to talk and think about.
The information gathered here was also posted on Instagram and published in a text-only doc.
The goals of this series are to:
open a productive and respectful dialogue about a complicated and sensitive topic.
Encourage thoughtful and respectful choices in our reading, writing, and posting.
urge publishers, writers, sellers, and readers to uplift and include more queer men who write about men-loving-men.
Support the use of relevant and careful sensitivity readers when writing from an “outsider” perspective.
I ask that you consider everything with an open mind and respond with kindness.
(Please don’t message any authors you think are quoted.)
The point of this series is to share information and opinions about a genre we love - and to ask all of us (including me!) to do better with how we share that love.
Information comes from my own research (cited when applicable) and analysis. Some of this research includes communication with authors who are writing and publishing MM/gay/Achillean romance. I made available an anonymous survey for authors to share their opinions. Additionally, many authors emailed me outside of the survey, and these confidential conversations also helped me write these posts.
The survey responses informed the information shared in these posts and the language I used.
I want to thank everyone who answered the survey and spoke with me. The time and emotion you lent to this project is greatly appreciated.
There are also posts that include direct quotations from the survey responses.
These quotations are in response to specific questions. I solicited responses from queer men authors and authors who were not queer men, and each group received comparable surveys (the only difference being the wording of the questions to fit the respondent). When quotations are shared, The authors’ words will be clearly identified and may not represent my own opinions.
This is an incredibly nuanced and complicated topic that is not easily condensed or expressed through Instagram posts. With that in mind, please consider these disclaimers:
1.
“Women” can be a reductive category. It does not account for people who are not out or are questioning their gender (or sexuality. This is not limited to heterosexual women.).
“Mm” and even “Achillean” can be reductive categories. For the purposes of these posts, we’re mostly talking about romances where at least 2 of the main characters are cisgender Men in a sexual relationship (that may also be romantic).
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2.
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Transgender Men are fetishized in different ways.
3.
not all women readers and writers fetishize within the genre - or all the time - And some queer men fetishize some people/relationships in fiction and real life.
4.
this is in no way a call for women to stop reading or writing mm romance.
this is not a new conversation. Others have said very good, valid things. Every few years, there is a resurgence of this conversation, especially when an mm book or movie makes it into the mainstream. These conversations have also taken place for years in mm fanfiction and slash fiction.
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6.
I am not an expert. I am not a queer man. I am not a woman. (I am a white, nonbinary, queer person.)
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So why am I doing this? While I believe the subjects of the conversation should be the center of the conversation, I also believe they should not bear the responsibility or risk of instigating these kinds of sensitive discussions. It is precisely because I am not a queer man nor a woman that I want to hold space for this conversation. I can expend the emotional labor, and I do not share the risk queer men authors do (who are understandably anxious about publicly sharing their opinions amid accusations of transphobia and sexism).
Also, I am not the arbiter of “who can do this?” Or “is this bad?” These are not questions I am single handedly attempting or wanting to answer.
7.
I mostly use “queer men” to describe people who 1) identify as a man and 2) experience attraction to and/or are in relationships with men. I chose this to include all manner of possible gender and sexual identities, labeled or not.
I use “queer People” and “queer romance” to speak broadly about LGBTQIAA2s+ and questioning people and the romance books about them.
While there are moments when I am referring to all queer people, this series is ultimately about queer men and romance books about queer men. (I could also say achillean or mm.)
8.
Important points:
Sexual content is not inherently fetishizing.
You cannot tell someone’s gender or sexual identity based on a name or appearance.
We can critique an author’s work without questioning their identity or outing them.
Critique is not an attack, nor exclusively negative. It is thoughtfully
evaluating something from multiple angles to form an opinion.
We can support more queer men writing and reading romance (about queer men) without saying or meaning women should stop writing and reading it.
We need to talk about it
This is a BIG conversation!
There are a lot of moving parts to this conversation, and a lot of the time, I see black-and-white thinking about it. It’s also a sensitive subject, so people get heated and shut down.
I believe most people who are talking about who writes and reads MM have the best of intentions, and most of it - in my mind - stems from inclusion. It does seem, however, that some voices are drowning out others, and some of the key points are being misunderstood as we each hold fast to our own opinions.
What I see happening is so common between marginalized communities in the fight(s) for representation, rights, and justice. The line becomes: “In order to include this, we must exclude this.” It’s a logical fallacy that only serves to divide and further oppress people, rather than uplift and liberate.
Queer men who write and read romance about queer men have repeatedly expressed the hurt and harm that has been caused by some of the writers and readers in the MM book community, many of whom are women of varying sexualities.
This does not mean 1) all queer men want women to stop reading and writing about men who love men or 2) all women who write and read in this genre have unilaterally caused hurt and harm.
This does mean that 1) we should listen to these expressions of harm and 2) we should do better for the queer men in this book community (and all spaces).
We should do this because we are committed to creating and maintaining a safe, welcoming, and supportive community for all writers and readers.
If you are not committed to that… well, then why are you reading MM romance? If you are not willing to listen and stand up for real queer men, you should not be reading about the lives of fictional queer men and claiming allyship.
Because they make up the majority author- and readership,
“women” becomes an umbrella term to describe anyone who is not a queer (often cis) man. I want to make some clarifying points about this that are always true but especially in this context:
- People are not their “parts.” A person’s genitals (or biology in general) do not determine their gender.
- “Queer” is a spectrum, and people on that spectrum have varying lived experiences based on many societal and cultural factors, including but not limited to gender, sexuality, race, disability, body size, social economic status, religion, etc. While there are many similarities in the “queer” experience, there are also many differences.
- Being somewhere on the queer spectrum (or LGBTQIAA2S+) does not mean you know exactly what it’s like for someone else of a different queer identity. The experience of a cis gay men is different from an AFAB transmasculine gay man, in part because they were probably socially conditioned differently based on others’ perceptions. Also, oppressions for gay and trans people are different in many ways, even as they are similar in others.
- Someone does not have to live an experience in order to “be able to” write about it, in no small part because people have freedom of expression. And this is true of any identity. There are, though, better -and worse- ways of approaching writing from an “outsider’s” perspective. There are ethical and compassionate ways of writing (and responding to readers) when approaching something from another identity.
- We can enact harm inadvertently. The phrase “intent does not equal impact” has become popular for a reason. When we do not exist as an identity, we tend to hold many assumptions about it, and most of those assumptions are based in oppressive narratives and violent histories. It can actually be very easy to commit microaggressions or act on biases without realizing. It’s important, though, to always keep learning what these assumptions are, how to un-learn them, and work at reducing the harm we cause because of them.
- People who exist in an identity are not exempt from internalized assumptions. In the context of this post, gay men can also hold harmful stereotypes about gay men as true, and gay authors can fetishize queer men in their books. That’s why this conversation is so much more than “women writing and reading MM” or “own voices.”
- “MM” does not mean gay. When we say “MM,” we should be very clear that we’re talking about romance books with fictional characters who are men in a sexual or romantic relationship. “MM” is
- “MM” does not mean gay. When we say “MM,” we should be very clear that we’re talking about romance books with fictional characters who are men in a sexual or romantic relationship. “MM” is not synonymous with gay, nor does it ensure any queer representation is authentic or not harmful. Similarly, FF does not mean lesbian. I think there is a lot of slippage in language and understanding when we’re talking about romance books, the characters in them, the real people who write them, and the real people who read them. The popularity of a genre does not in any way equate to valid or equitable representation for a group of people.
- We do not have to “demand” the identity of all authors in order to celebrate and uplift the identities of authors who are publicly and loudly out.
- Just as much as identity politics can be inclusive, they can also be exclusive if deployed in certain ways. “Own Voices” can be just as problematic as it can be celebratory. Most things that start off with good intentions can be manipulated to be exclusive and weaponized to be a measure of policing. In our efforts to support inclusion of some people, we might pivot too hard at the expense of excluding others - people who are still marginalized.
This is not a conversation that can be had in sweeping generalizations. However, there are a very large number of women who refuse to listen and learn when queer male community members raise concerns. This makes it impossible for men writing MM to speak openly and honestly about concerns in the genre because speaking up against any of the prominent women writing MM cuts them off from some of the biggest online spaces in the genre. There is a HUGE marketing disparity that favors women uplifting each other and nobody else.
There's a very real reality that is glossed over about queer men writing gay fictions of every genre in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, including romance: many of us died; often without any way to leave a literary authority to ensure those stories remained in print.
Saying "it's important the people being represented have a significant place crafting that representation" shouldn't be particularly fraught or even controversial or something to argue about, but somehow when it's queer men talking about how we're represented in mm romance, that's exactly what it becomes. Every single time.
I think it’s easy to lose our way in this conversation because in western society books are viewed as entertainment. And entertainment has a protective energy around it; let individuals enjoy what they enjoy. However, stories are the building blocks of how we understand the world we live in. I think it’s essential that we give credence to criticism raised from within a community about how their identity is being used in entertainment. Because these stories are shaping the narrative around queer male identities and by a large margin that narrative is not being written from within the queer community. [The discussion is] about how our identity is being used as a playground in the publishing world. Asking these questions and voicing our hurt is not wrong. And if we continue to be told that there is no space for our hurt and distaste, then that feels like it just proves that our identity is being used as a prop to benefit other people.
When this topic (i.e. women writing MM romance) comes up in the public social media sphere all I see is "I'm queer. I'm bi. I'm demi/ace/whatever." And it's their way of saying that "they're a part of the LGBT community". That's well and good, but to be frank, to me - a gay man - it's pretty much the equivalent of saying "I'm cool with black people, I have a black friend."
This is impossible to discuss 99% of the time. There's always someone who twists the conversation into an attack on their agency as an author to write what they want, and that's never what this conversation is actually about. Every time I see it come up, I see queer men ostracized from the broader MM community while women flock to the defence of other women who are in the wrong. I no longer talk about this with anyone because I feel like if I did, I would no longer have the ability to build a career I could support myself with.
Why are women drawn to mm?
There aRe cultural reasons for the boom in mm romance over the last 2 decades (and especially the last 10 years).
(with a focus on Anglocentric or “Western” cultures)
Many readers (and writers) find MM romance through fanfiction, and most popular shows, films, and books feature developed protagonists and side characters who are men. There are fewer women leads, and women side characters tend to be under-developed and one-dimensional. This is slowly changing, but the legacy of MM romance as we know it today is due in large part to early-2000s fandoms of male-centric media.
Beyond that, romance as a genre in any media has been a “woman’s” domain. Romance novels and movies are “chick” lit and flicks. That’s a whole other conversation about gender stereotyping that especially harms women and gay men.
The popularity of imagined romances between fictional leading men rose at the same time as increased cultural and political discussions about equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. These cultural shifts influenced each other!
Specifically, though, the discussion that gathered steam (while others were deliberately ignored) centered on same-sex marriage (the L and G - maybe the B, which was sometimes also ignored).
Globally, but especially in the United States and United Kingdom, most examples of same-sex relationships and marriages in the mainstream (real or fictional) were between men (the G).
We were seeing a lot of male-centric media (not unusual) at the same time as we’re seeing the assimilation of gay romance into mainstream media (eg, Will & Grace, Dawson’s Creek, Modern Family, Glee). Of course, these are only certain kinds of gay romance and only under certain conditions. Still, the majority of queer media, romance or otherwise, was about men.
Let’s dive a little deeper…
Being able to explore emotional bonds between men is a compelling reason to read and write MM romance.
Romance novels between men-who-love-men provide so many opportunities to imagine all types of relationships (romantic, sexual, platonic, familial, work, etc.) in a way that completely centers intimacy between men. We don’t see that celebrated a lot in real life!
Also, we’ve been conditioned to think that relationships between men must fulfill certain expectations and adhere to specific standards of masculinity. Think about the “bro code” or the “bro hug.” Chances are you know exactly what I mean by those phrases. They convey expectations for masculine intimacy.
Often when we see relationships between men that exist beyond those rigid expectations, it’s easy (and usually subconscious) to place familiar explanations of intimacy on these unfamiliar expressions of male intimacy.
Imagining a romantic connection between male characters who openly display emotional intimacy is actually not a huge cognitive leap, which is why it’s so common to see fanfiction with romances between male characters - especially when their (strictly platonic) relationship is based on care, compassion, and affection.
Pop culture Breakdown
![[ID: two white men, Nick and Schmidt, look at each other across 8 panels. Subtitles with dialogue found in plain text doc]](images/5d0f2a2eb651f5d2c0be53196cbe92ce.jpg)
In the sitcom New Girl, best friends Nick and Schmidt have countless jokes about their emotional intimacy, often with Nick agonizing that Schmidt “loves him too much.” (Gave me cookie, got you cookie!) (Also, tinfinity.) There’s a scene in “Road Trip” (s5e17) when Schmidt worries he won’t be a good husband to his wife-to-be, Cece. Nick uses examples of Schmidt treating Nick with care and compassion to prove Schmidt is already a good husband - putting familiar (heteronormative) romantic language to an unfamiliar homosocial relationship.
The increased popularity of fanfiction with MM romance, and the recent exponential growth of self-publication, saw a boom in published romances featuring men-who-love-men as the protagonists (in various genres across platforms like Archive of Our Own and Wattpad, as well as Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords).
When one book (and/or movie) reaches groundbreaking levels of mainstream popularity, we see a surge in popularity in its overall genre.
Notably, MM romance saw big booms in popularity in 2019 and again in 2023 with the book and film releases of Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (a nonbinary author).
See also: Call Me By Your Name (written by a straight man)
There are a lot of reasons why women write and read mm romance.
Some are positive,
some are well-intentioned,
and some are more than a little problematic.
It’s a popular genre! There are more mainstream and indie MM romances now than ever before. Some authors are finding more success in MM than they do/did in MF or FF (also an important convo to have about why that is!).
Reading and writing MM allows women to explore their gender and sexuality in a safe and affirming way.
Women who experience dysphoria or trauma when reading MF or FF can find enjoyment and escape in MM.
Women want to write and read books about queer men because there are queer men in their lives - sons, fathers, friends. Books about queer men falling in love can give insight into their lives and be a display of love.
There’s still a lot of misogyny in MF and FF romance. Of course, there’s misogyny in MM romance too! But it’s often easier for women to remove themselves from it when there are no women MCs.
There are opportunities for new and unique storylines (not seen in most MF) about coming out, family acceptance, peer relations, and other queer-specific things (like drag). It also opens up different workplace and friend relationships.
Reading about characters who are not one’s own gender can allow for a more “outside” perspective, removing the emotional weight of empathizing with the woman MC, for instance, if the reader is a woman.
MM romance can be sexy! It’s a common saying among readers: “If one dick is hot, two (or more) is better!”
It’s these last three points we need to talk more about. Reading and writing outside of our communities can lead to fetishization. This includes sexual fetishizing and trauma fetishizing. Both are harmful and need to be critiqued.
Women read more period. That's been the statistical norm for years. There are a lot of nuances around why I think straight, bisexual, lesbian women read MM.
1. It allows them to experience the world where they have power and get to step out of our misogynistic world for a moment.
2. They can explore more kinky sex without feeling concerned about the MC's safety.
3. Two men having sex is titillating.
The list goes on an on. I also think the generation of older men who WOULD be reading at this point were decimated by HIV in the 1990s. There's just simply MORE women between the ages of 50 to 80 (our main reading age) than gay men. And that was BEFORE the death of gay men in the 1980s, 1990, 2000s due to HIV related deaths.
[Women say:] “I like men. I like romance. Not having a woman in it helps me escape from the bone-crushing reality that is being a woman in America. By not having a woman in the book, it's an escape.”
I often hear MF romance is also toxic (after all, it's MF, not FM - men come first even in acronyms). Personally, I wondered why they don't try to write "good" MF romance and maybe some do, but mostly, I think a lot of women find the idea of two men together hot. And also, it's a fantasy. America has also fucked men up, so men in MM romance are idealized men. Idealized men are perfect and another escape.
Fetishizing Queer Men
Fetishization in the Queer romance community
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Fetishization is the reduction of a person to aspects of their body, identity, or relationship structure.
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Fetishizing people - real or fictitious - reduces them to stereotypical attributes related to their cultural community (typically based on race, sexuality, gender, and disability).
It is the hyperfocus on a superficial attribute for the purpose of sexual gratification (or entertainment).
It objectifies the person and the whole community they are a part of.
When we’re talking about the fetishization of a community, we mean there is a “sexual investment” in an identity (sexuality, gender, race, etc.) “as an overvalued sexual object, rather than the holistic individual” (Anzani et al., 2021).
It often creates and enforces harmful generalizations about groups of people.
“Redheads are fiery and wild in bed!” “Twinks are sassy power bottoms!”
These stereotypes are examples of fetishization.
The fetishization of marginalized and oppressed peoples is rooted in long histories of stigmatization and violence.
Studies have shown that prolonged objectification and sexualization of marginalized communities can lead to negative behaviors, like compulsive exercise and disordered eating, as well as body dissatisfaction, dysphoria, and dysmorphia (Brewster et al., 2019; Moradi, 2013; Velez et al., 2016).
Tayi Sanusi writes about racial fetishization:
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Implying that you are into a certain group because of their perceived spiciness, sassiness, submissiveness, or any other ‘exotic’ trait is not only reductive, but it can also be dehumanizing and degrading.
”
This applies to the fetishization of queer men.
this includes, but is not limited to,
language used to describe people (eg, limiting them to a body part)
Reduction of people to “types” (eg, stereotypes, caricatures, tropes, etc.)
HyperSexualized images (like those sometimes posted on social media)
immediate or inappropriate discussions of sexual fantasies and desires
(to or about individuals in the community)
When we’re talking about the fetishization of queer men by women, it can also extend to the
hyper-focused fantasy of the straight woman having a gay best friend.
Or saying something like, “I’m a gay man in a woman’s body.”
Or the belief that all gay sex is always sexy.
Or thinking all gay couples are cute or “goals” - especially when we don’t actually know them.
These all stem from ideas of gay men - ideas often born in harmful stereotypes and myths.
Queer trauma is fetishized, too.
It becomes a source of entertainment. It diminishes pain and violence to a trope. It becomes a lesson in morality.
It’s similar to the way certain stereotypical classifications of gay men become tropes (eg, when the main personality trait of a twink is that they are a “twink”).
It reduces a whole identity to a singular event. Or more accurately, it reduces a whole identity to the perception of an event, and it’s cloaked in the very specific traumas experienced only by queer people.
There are experiences unique to queer people of familial neglect and estrangement, religious trauma, and bullying, among others. They may be similar to, but are not the same as, traumas experienced by other marginalized communities. They are different, and they are real.
Queer people, then, become objects of trauma. They become an object treated as a lesson, a moral, a warning, a threat. “This is what could happen if…” “Be careful who you hate…” “Thank goodness my life isn’t this way…”
Those sentiments aren’t inherently bad. They become issues when they prevail as the sole purpose for consuming that media and the sole way of thinking about queer people.
It becomes even more complicated when queer trauma is fetishized alongside queer sexuality.
I think the biggest issue attached to women writing MM is misrepresentation for the sake of entertainment. People forget that where queerness is involved, things are inherently political, and that includes how they decide to portray queer men in their books.
What happens as a result of this dual fetishization of
queer sexuality and queer trauma?
Queer people become only their pain and sexuality, and - importantly - it is done primarily for the purpose of consumption. When it’s fetishized, it anlso becomes entertainment by and for non-queer people.
Even when education or empathizing is happening in the reading of these stories, you should ask yourself:
Why am I seeking these things (only or mainly) from an outsider’s perspective?
How are these fictional stories influencing the way I see real queer people?
CAUSES FOR HARM
you might be thinking, “ok … but we’re not talking about real queer men. We’re talking about books! they’re fake! It’s not that serious!”
or maybe you’ve said, “Oh, so only shifters and vampires and tentacled aliens can write about shifters and vampires and tentacled aliens?!”
these are not great equivalents!
Queer people have different experiences to non-queer people.
Queer relationships are different from Non-queer relationships.
and also, very importantly,
queer people are real.
That last point is the most obvious of the three, but it seems to get lost in this conversation.
just because we are talking about fictional characters, their queerness is based on reality.
Have you ever heard someone say, when talking about racism, “I Don’t care if someone is black, brown, blue, or purple!”?
The intention of that statement is usually tolerance.
However, it erases the very real harm and oppression black and brown people experience by lumping them in with these imaginary blue- and purple-skinned people.
It equates “brown and black” with the alien-like “blue and purple,” reinforcing ideas of otherworldly difference…
…and it suggests we should ignore the differences - have tolerance despite them - when we should actually care deeply about the differences, understand the ways they create multiple experiences, and affect people in multiple ways - positively, negatively, and/or neutrally.
this is similar (but not the same!)
to how we talk about queer romance.
Two things usually happen when we’re talking about fetishizing queer men in romance novels:
The “difference” of being queer is exaggerated and central to the character and/or story, making the act of being queer and different the sole character trait or plot device.
The “difference” of being queer is completely ignored. In this context, it’s taking any old romance and giving the MCs men’s names. It’s applying heteronormative values and relationship constructs to queer lives. It’s erasing any trace of queerness.
what are potential problems with the saturation of the mm romance genre with “women” readers & writers?
- imagined realities vs. reality
- eroticizing fantasy gaze
- heteronormative values prescribed to queer people and relationships
- decentering queer men from the stories of queer men
Imagined realities vs. Reality
This is representing queerness through a filtered lens. It often looks like an overeliance on stereotypes or a singular depiction of “queer” life (eg, only writing about gay men being kicked out of their homes) and/or masculinity. These stories lack authenticity and may feel like they are mimicking stereotypical or well-known depictions of queer men in mainstream media.
Eroticizing fantasy gaze
An eroticizing fantasy gaze is all about fetishizing queer men. It uses queer men - and queer men having sex - for the primary purpose of fulfilling the sexual fantasies of others (who are not queer men). For MM authors, it often looks like hyperfocusing on or only writing “spicy scenes“ - and maybe with the explicit intention of writing for women audiences and their satisfaction. Often, books are only about gay men, and other queer identities are erased or vilified. For readers, it often looks like only reading Achillean open-door romances because it is “sexier” than other gender pairings/groupings.
Heteronormative values
Heteronormativity is a worldview that prioritizes heterosexuality and ways of life that support heterosexuality over other sexualities and relationship types. In romance novels, heteronormative ideals and expectations can look like relationships only/always finding success through marriage, kids, and owning a house. This resolution reinforces heteronormative ideals and supports the (false) narrative that marriage between two people is the ultimate goal and path to happiness, and further, that reproduction is the “natural” next step for married couples.
Often, homophobic and misogynistic stereotypes prevail, even subconsciously. The relationship will conform to stereotypical gender roles (masculine/feminine), and these are reinforced by stereotypes about body type/size and preferences for sexual positions. For example, the smaller bottom is feminized, often submissive, and the bigger top is masculinized, often dominant.
Decentering queer men
There is often a narrative that (women) authors are “giving happy endings” (not dirty!) to queer men through fiction, which isn’t inherently bad. However, it can suggest queer men need to be given happiness from others or at least need women’s help in finding happiness. When women
are the main writers of queer men‘s HEAs, it perpetuates this narrative, however implicitly.
At the heart of this whole conversation is the concern that queer men are being excluded from stories about queer men. The majority of MM romance has been and continues to be written by women for women. Women authors typically gain more visibility, popularity, and income than queer men, often because they are more likely to be traditionally published (although there has been an increase in trad published queer men, and part of this is because the long held cultural belief that only women are interested in romance stories.) There are many instances of queer men being excluded from all-women writing groups, anthologies, recommendation lists, and book boxes (intentionally or not).
Even when we’re having these conversations, the concerns of queer men are often belittled or dismissed.
It looks like believing your own views and opinions about queer relationships and sex between men rather than the realities and opinions of actual queer men. It looks like prioritizing your feelings about reading romance about fictional queer men over the feelings of actual queer men. It looks like the elevation and promotion of allies (in this case, non-queer men) over queer men.
the lone action of reading or writing mm is not allyship.
You do Not have to be acting maliciously
to perpetuate harm.
We should be prioritizing the feelings and well-being of the actual people we read and write about.
representation matters
if you are a woman and having a hard time conceptualizing where queer men
are coming from in this conversation, let’s think about the phrase
“not all men”
have you heard this and thought
“of course not all men, but enough men!”
the point is not about it being all men.
you know it is not all men.
you do know, however, that it is a lot of men in a system that supports
discriminatory and violent behaviors of men toward and against women.
So it is “not all women” who write and read mm romance.
that is absolutely true.
what is also true:
there is a system (romance as a genre) that supports
and benefits women over queer men.
that system supports the discrimination of and harm towards queer men.
not all women writers and readers -
but it is enough of them that it is causing lasting harm.
If you suggest folks uplift and highlight own voice/lived experience authors more, folks say you're POLICING who can/can't write MM.
Not the case.
There is a long history of queer men and women finding friendship and safety with each other, and this is true for many reasons. This is something that should be celebrated and maintained.
Part of being good friends, though, is respecting individual spaces and ownership of those spaces. There is also a long history of women claiming spaces for queer men as their own (think about all the bachelorette parties at gay bars).
I'm absolutely here for it [women being the majority of the writers and readers of MM romance]. Women have always been my safe space and my closest confidants, so I feel right at home having my followers mainly being female.
You, female authors, are visitors in this space. And you always will be. And fans of those female authors, please remember that they are visitors in this space. Because you are all visitors, you can leave whenever you want. But us queer men, we have to deal with this, day in and day out. This isn't a fun writing experiment, this is our lives. So please make the space accordingly.
If it matters who is represented (and it does!), then it also matters who is doing that representing … and why.
The media we consume has an impact - on ourselves and the people around us. We don’t make choices in a vacuum. There are so many things that influence us to pick up a book, watch a movie, talk with a stranger… or to not pick up a book, not watch a movie, or not talk with a stranger. Even when we’re reading for fun, it’s important to ask ourselves why we decide to consume the media we do.
We should ask ourselves why we seek or are drawn to only certain representations, or representations primarily from an outsider perspective.
Why do so many MM anthologies lack inclusions from queer male authors? Why do so many MM book boxes neglect the regular inclusion of queer male authors? Why do so many Pride lists of MM books feature not a single book written by a queer man?
It’s not about “only male authors writing MM.” It’s about intentionally including queer men in the genre written about them.
The “I don’t care about who the author is, it’s whoever writes the best story/does the most research/writes the best characters” stops short of taking into account who decides which narratives have quality in the first place, and what counts as "good." [...] the non-queer-men readers and writers outnumber the queer-men readers and writers, so what's considered "good" MM Romance is weighted away from the people it's written about. It doesn't matter if gay and bi and pan+ men point out how "Gay for You" plots are often incredibly problematic and bi-erasure if for every one of us pointing that out, there are dozens who love the trope and don't care. And since places like Amazon lump all MM and gay romance into one category, those ratings matter, create visibility and placement. Publishers want to make money—they're a business—so they're going to care more about what sells the most, not what represents well.
When I've discussed it with other male authors, there's very frequently overlay of opinion. We pretty much all accept women can write what they want and buy what they want. The problem is the market's being trained to imagine they are right about gay/queer romance, while gay/queer men are wrong - which means we get scathing reviews for good books, telling us for example, "It's not romance!" (because it doesn't follow female-led MM dynamics or paths) or "So-and-so cheated!" (because it's poly) or "They're just fuckbuddies" (because it's poly or because the characters experiment or explore). There's a lot of frustration about it but no one wants to close other people down or push away the support we do have among female readers and authors, so we end up a bit stuck.
Quite a few of my romances are "closed door" or "fade to black." More than a few reviews speak of both of those things "costing a star"—but those reviews don't come from queer men reading my stories. So I know writing facets of my lived experience, (and not always including explicit content) is often considered "not as good" as what MM readers want vs the queer male readers of my work.
Many authors noted lower-rated reviews for books that lacked “spicy” scenes, and it seems like many of those reader complaints come from women more often than men.
Importantly, though, only certain “spicy” scenes - or types of sexual content - are well-received by the majority of audiences. Many authors also talked about their experiences with readers disliking and avoiding expressions of sexuality that weren’t monogamous or leading to monogamy.
My main struggle with it is that there is a culture surrounding queer male stories and that culture is not being centered on queer men. That means there is a lot of opportunity for harmful narratives and stereotyping to be prevalent in the space which could further empower bias and bigotry that queer men face in real life.
I do get a LOT of women which wasn’t surprising but it’s incredibly frustrating when they give it low ratings with reasons like “they never had sex” or “it wasn’t intimate” because intimacy in machismo spaces looks a LOT different than how women see it.
There is often open dismissal (and disgust/horror) of certain behaviours & activities common among gay men as 'wrong' e.g. polyamory, hookups/insta-sex, presumably since again these are not the behaviours most female readers want from male partners. MM romance (that fits their criteria) therefore gives them a validating space in which to fantasise - sexually and romantically - about ideal men and relationships.
My biggest issue is the f-slur. That word is a fucking gut punch to a lot of gay man, and it's not something for non-gay or bi men to use liberally for shock value. Please respect the people you're writing about and take their feelings into account before having some random side character mutter the word "f*ggot" when it does absolutely nothing to advance the story.
I'm very happy that so many women authors do the work to get it right. Use sensitivity readers, ask other author friends to read. I do that quite often for women author friends. For me, I can tell when I read a book if a woman has gay friends/family, etc or not. There's a difference between writing men who sleep with men and QUEER men with all the culture and emotional baggage that comes with that.
So much of what occurs in MM romances exists in sociocultural contexts ESPECIALLY when you get into power dynamics and kink. It's easy to get things wrong and fetishize men who love men when you, an author, are having fun but are not part of the community.
The main thing is that women writing MM is not the problem. The problems arise when the women who objectively have control over the genre don't use their platforms to uplift anyone but other women. The problems arise when queer men writing MM aren't presented with the same marketing/participation opportunities because they aren't as prominent in the genre despite sometimes having better written books that actually feel queer. The problems arise when these women don't create the space they claim exists for a rising tide to lift all boats. From everything I've seen, the only boats allowed to float are the ones that look like and think like women writing MM. It's unfair that women who have outright stated "MM is by women and for women", and "most of my readers are cis-het women so I don't have to care what queer men think", are given opportunities to succeed that are denied to queer men in MM. And yes, those are both real statements made in 2023.