Still Grumpy

[erastes]

GREAT NEWS!! Going to see POTC3 this week on the opening night. Not only that we are splashing out on tickets for "The Gallery" which are Pullman seats, and no under 18's allowed in. Plus you get unlimited scoff - which is well worth the £10 ticket price! Tickets are normally £6.10 each, then I spend £5.25 on nachos and a drink (are you fainting yet, America?) so the bloody gallery is a BARGAIN - I don't know why we never went there before.

NOT so Great News: seen via queertext Journey Books Publishing is accepting submissions for an anthology called UNPARALLELED JOURNEYS 2. I could (almost) forgive them for the ½ cent a word - making a 3000 word story worth crap $15, but I can't forgive anyone this:

We do not accept work that promotes gay lifestyles.

Look. If you don't wish to publish gay material, then don't publish it. But don't make yourself look like a horse's arse by coming out with statements like this. And gay "lifestyles"???? What is homosexuality? A HOBBY or something?

Look Journey Books, being gay isn't a life choice. It's not something you wake up one morning and think, "I'll have a go at that today, and if that doesn't work I'll join the Caravan Club." For some people it's a very traumatic experience, learning to cope with it, having to tell others about it not to mention the million other problems, and to have it trivialised like this - particularly within a genre that has traditionally, for fifty years, explored gender and bent it, played with it, threatened it, questioned it.

Are you expecting to land on your planet in one of your Parallel journeys and find a lovely planet full of heterosexual aliens who don't swear? (yes, they don't want cussin' either, folks)

As I said. It's their decision not to publish whatever the hell they want in their magazine (although I won't ever publicise them after this, and I'm expressing my distaste to Ralan, Duotrope and Journey Books themselves) but for FUCK's sake, don't treat it like it's a communicable disease.

I think this little used icon sums it up. Thnx

Comments

[ter369.livejournal.com]

I recommend Lois Bujold's books (the Vorkosigan series, definitely) for her speculative look at societies and gender ... issues, health care, voluntary adjustments, etc, etc. Her world contains bisexual characters, gay characters, hermaphrodites, clones, sexually liberal cultures, misogynist cutures, and reproductive processes unique to certain planets and societies. There's a lot to think over in her space operas with deep characterization.

Bujold doesn't put sex on the page, but the core of her world-building deals with gender identity -- and there are no cliches.(Well, until the series gets to an issue too close to the author, but a lot of authors with bad divorces let that creep into their work).

Probably should be read in order, certainly to appreciate the late-series complexities in A Civil Campaign, a comedy of manners and courtship novel in space.

I use my Athos icon, because Bujold loves Dumas.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'll definitely look it up. I'm wary of hermaphrodites (although I've just been discussing that it is an ideal alien way to be, and that Journey's End would be revolted) after coming across the subjectively dreadful Wraethlu...

[ter369.livejournal.com]

I'm wary of hermaphrodites (although I've just been discussing that it is an ideal alien way to be, and that Journey's End would be revolted)....

There's only one, supporting character, and Bel Thorn is far more important plotwise for military skills and personal loyalties. In the broad cast of Bujold's galaxy, this is just one variation from what we experience on Earth.

I second that!

[queertext.livejournal.com]

I second all that: Lois McMaster Bujold's stuff is very good. Other speculative fiction with queer characters and ideas I also recommend are: Candas Jane Dorsey, Samuel R. Delany, and my two all time favorites Octavia Butler and Joanna Russ. You can't go wrong with any of these four.