Various saved up writerly rantings

[erastes]

I've never been one to insist on any sort of female solidarity; I don't see why - just because I have hidden plumbing - and am apparently from Venus - that I should back another woman up or join some mythical sorority. Part of that, is, I suppose, because we don't have the whole sorority ethos over here, and I for one would find that deeply disturbing if we did. I never wanted to join "women's club" - I always wanted to storm the bastions of the men's clubs, create one big happy unisex club. That's the ideal.

I don't really get on with women en masse. I have a few close female friends but activities that make them happy, hen nights, Chippendale parties, window shopping, hours on the phone, children - leave me cold and often nauseated.  I don't dislike women, but I just don't have a lot in common with the larger proportion of them. I quite dread going to huge conventions like the RWA, because I'm sure I'll wilt into a corner. Send me to a computer games convention though and I thrive.

Why this wibble? Well, there's a column over on ERWA that my Google Alerts picked up talking about the tired old subject of women writing m/m but in this instance, it's not the same-old tale of a man saying how women shouldn't do it because "gay: u iz doin' it wrong" - this time it's a woman accusing us/m/m writers/me of gender treachery and "hate" because we aren't writing about women, and are shunning our sisters. Hence I am having to express my views here, because there is no option on ERWA to discuss the opinions with the "columnists."

She says that the reasons why I write it (and yes, I'm saying "I" because I'm pretty steamed about it) is not self-evident to her. Well - tough, sister. I don't know why people continue to write clichéd vampire fics, or Mary-Sue bodice rippers. The reasons why people like rape fic is not "self-evident" to me, but yanno? People write them, people read them. That's their prerogative. And no. The fantasy genre has no influence on my writing other than I came to m/m from Harry Potter fanfic. What I write is historical fiction. Emphasis on the historical. So yes, I am trapped in the pillory, as you describe it. And damned proud of the hard work I put in, too.

Most of the article I just don't even understand, perhaps I'm just too dim to do, but phrases like "Squicks expressed as explanations of reality are a different can of worms," just go over my head. What does it mean? I'm clearly not a college professor. But what's the difference between some m/m writers not liking to write or read het sex and some writers of het writers not liking to read gay sex? Why do we all have to like the same things?

And I'm expressing a hatred of women because I decide not to write about them? I'm sorry? What? How does that work? Do I express a hatred of black people by not including them in my fiction? Am I anti-Iraqi because none of my stories are set there? I'm a bigot now? By the same token - surely that means that all het-only writers are haters of The Gay?

I find the entire article incomprehensible, and the final paragraph just compounds my confusion. What is her view?

I'm pleased to see that lee_rowan has also posted about this matter, as it was very personal to her, as Ms Roberta attacked her specifically by being a lesbian and that post is here. 

There will be a (much better written than mine) rebuttal to that column up on Speak Its Name in a few days, T J Pennington is working on it right now.

I just spotted some sales figures over on valarltd's LJ and was slightly shocked by them, it's very brave of Angelia to post them, but they convince me, were I to need convincing, that ebookery (on an exclusive level) is just not for me right now. I had nothing much to compare my publishing experiences with, but Standish which has been print only has been selling in larger figures than those figures quote for Ellora's Cave - whereas Chiaroscuro, which is ebook and nothing else has been deeply disappointing and earns peanuts. I read recently that EC was boasting that some of its authors were regularly making six figure sums per paycheque. I'd like to believe this, but that would mean they are selling hundreds of thousands of copies, surely. Wouldn't this be huge literary news, if so?

And good god, covers don't get any better do they? Who are Torquere using? Their kids?

Comments

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I ran into the whole "women writing m/m = mysogyny" thing back when I was reading tons of X-Files slash. There I was, hoovering up all the Mulder/Krycek fic I could get my mouse on, and suddenly people were saying that I must hate women because I didn't read or write Scully-centric fic. Given the messed up nature of the relationships in the Mulder/Krycek fic I was reading, I expect that replacing either one of them with Scully would have elicited even louder howls of anguish. Now some of the ways writers got Scully out of the way so the guys could get busy were not true to her character, so I could see some accusations of women-hating there. But that was rarely the complaint. Choosing to read or write the men's relationship instead of one of the men with Scully was viewed as hating women, rather than just enjoying the mental picture of two hot, messed up men having sex. It's like saying that I hate apple pie because I plan to nosh on chocolate fudge over the next few days. I adore apple pie. I make a durned good one, too. And I can't make decent fudge to save my life (which probably makes my desire to wallow in it even stronger--oh, hey this works on several levels). My fudge munch-fest doesn't mean I hate pie.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I somehow thought that when I came out into the big world of real publishing that there would be no wank. That we all would work away and nod appreciatively at our peer's efforts.

How naive was I?

I actually hate apple pie. But I don't expect anyone to make judgments on me because of that...

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

I have a few close female friends but activities that make them happy, hen nights, Chippendale parties, window shopping, hours on the phone, children - leave me cold and often nauseated. I don't dislike women, but I just don't have a lot in common with the larger proportion of them.

Amen, amen, amen and again, amen.
People routinely ask me why I haven't got any children and are always shocked when I reply truthfully that I don't find them interesting in the least. And I don't. The idea of spending large amounts of time with pre-adult humans - my own or anyone else's - makes me want to claw my own ears off. Unlike most of my "sisters" (ugh) the screaming, dot-eyed little malcontent on the morning bus doesn't instill in me the maternal desire to coo, but the desire to take its britches down and warm its little backside until it learns some manners. And although I haven't played video games in awhile (fifteen years) I'm more interested in gangsters (the sharp-dressed, 1930s variety) and guns than various feminist issues. Like you, I have a handful of female friends that I truly love and want to spend time with, and most of them are women like myself - writers or artists, some with military backgrounds or experience (the best time of my young life was crawling through the underbrush on elbows and knees in the mud, holding my rifle) who know how to do things besides the traditionally 'girly' stuff, who are strong and independent, and who have minds of their own.

I've been blessed with a lot of great male friends, too - my best mate at work is a man with the same quirky sense of humour as me - and have no problem bending my elbow in the pub with the guys.

I think you and I would prolly get on great. :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

There must be a gene for it, I guess. I knew that I was different from my friends even when I was young when they all poured constantly over fashion magazines and spent days deciding on what they were going to wear at the weekend. I did this too, but I also invented plays and would spend every hour I could with my pony. Or up trees.

I'm definitely up for a night in the pub, that's for sure!

[rwday.livejournal.com]

For the life of me, I can't understand why people care what other people write. Male/male, female/female, male/female/martian, whatever. Write what you like, read what you like and leave everybody else the hell alone.

[aunty_marion]

Oh, how true... I got inoculated with the philosophy of IDIC at a tender age (oh, OK, I was 15!) and thought it was an excellent one. And I still do. Also, of course, the idea that There Is No One True Way. You don't try and indoctrinate me, I won't try and indoctrinate you...

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

The last two paragraphs boggle my mind.

>The occasional lurid accident which happens when a sadomasochistic scene goes wrong is overshadowed by the constant, nonconsensual, institutionally-enforced oppression of whole demographics in most cultures on earth.

What?

And the last final assertion that "human beings are sexual and complicated" um...way to make a controversial statement! WTF?

As for there being no history of men writing f/f erotica.... Has the woman never read Penthouse Forum?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

If you ever work out what that means, do tell.

Oh, and...

[rwday.livejournal.com]

I don't care if female m/m writers are motivated by self-loathing, misogyny, penis envy, or just plain greed. All I care about is whether or not they can tell a story.

(And now you can tell why I didn't stay an English teacher...)

Re: Oh, and...

[haydenthorne.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

That said, I despise chicklit, which I suppose means I'm a self-loathing estrogener.

Re: Oh, and...

[clarelondon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comments - they express exactly how I feel! :)


I'm female, I'm straight, I'm happily married and lustful for my equally passed-youth's-first-flush husband, I love reading and writing m/m because it appeals to me, I don't see I need to say more than that, or explain why, unless it's to someone I trust and who is genuinely, respectfully interested. I like apple pie, I like beautiful things, I love shoes and I have been known to read and enjoy chicklit. But I don't like Fashion (with the capital letter) or Gossip or many other stereotypically girlie things, just for their own sake. I feel comfortable with a few good friends, I don't like all women unconditionally just because they have similar, feminine plumbing, but then I don't like men unconditionally either because they don't. Most of my good friends have a similar background and/or have the same core attitudes toward life and its citizens. I may have noticed their plumbing, but I haven't bothered checking their reading list as a resume recently.

I despise being categorised, and I don't want my fellow authors and readers to be, either. I don't want to go into battle about it on a daily basis, but I will if I'm personally challenged. But for me, your comment summed it up: Write what you like, read what you like and leave everybody else the hell alone.

And I'm so sorry to have vented like this all over your LJ *lol*.

I Can Answer That For Her

[ggymeta.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

So why is such a large, prolific, enthusiastic tribe of women writing m/m erotic romance, sometimes to the exclusion of anything else?

Because a large, prolific, enthusiastic tribe of women are READING m/m erotic romance, most times to the exclusions of anything else. ^_^ It's that simple. Perhaps if she took the time to understand the readership beyond pegging them into the slash/fan-fic template, she'd have an answer to her own inquiry.

I course I would never say this to her, because I might be accused of irrational bias and therefore undeserving of giving her a clear answer.

Re: I Can Answer That For Her

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes, I liked the way she deftly covered that base...

[cleo]

You should really post the link and your commentary to metafandom. Of course, then it just might cause a hullaballoo. And I'm here via the "friends of friends list" thing (because it was too shiny to resist this morning). So, I have no idea who we have in common in friending, but I'm glad I found this.

But it really seems like this woman hasn't read anything actually published academically on slash (Henry Jenkins and co) or really bothered to read any fan generated meta. I had trouble figuring out the point of the article too. It was pretty rambly and ridiculous.

...but phrases like "Squicks expressed as explanations of reality are a different can of worms," just go over my head. What does it mean?

I am a college professor, and I can tell you that it means she doesn't know what she's talking about, and this is her way of hedging herself out of it.

Why do we all have to like the same things?

Because liking different things might make us *gasp* different. And we wouldn't want that.

Seriously, if she is going to accuse slashers of hating women, can't we say the same of typical romance authors who continually put women in powerless, demeaning situations? No? We can't? Oh, darn.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

if she is going to accuse slashers of hating women, can't we say the same of typical romance authors who continually put women in powerless, demeaning situations?

See, that's something I hadn't thought about before-- maybe I like slash and m/m stuff because there's no gender politics and expected gender norms and behaviours from either participant, whereas in het "romance," it often comes back to that.

Not only do I not identify without, but I don't have any interest in seeing it. I feel similarly about porn, actually, too...

Wow. I'd never thought about it like that. Thankyou for that comment. :)

[kalitakasar.livejournal.com]

The article made my head hurt.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Glad it wasn't just me!

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

I don't get what she's saying, either.

And yes, I'm a feminist. I write a fair degree of m/m stuff. And honestly, as a reader, I'd rather see women not included (and then question that from the genre rather than specific writers) than see badly written or stereotypical-- or gawd forbid-- token-- female characters in what I read, watch, or play.

As for the "sisterhood" thing-- I'm not down with it, either. I'll support women being fucked over by the patriarchy, but the patriarchy also screws over some men and minority groups, and I'm not going to ignore them. (Class also plays a part-- is someone seriously going to try and argue that a white, educated het woman is in as crappy a position as a lot of other people?) Nor am I blindly going to follow someone because they're a woman. There are plenty of women who've managed to use the whole system to their advantage and who continue to screw over other women, and people from minority groups, too. Fuck that.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I agree, absolutely!

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

and breathe
someone made a comment about my novel that they were surprised in an m/m novel that some of the women were so strong and some of the men so "weak" because women do get sidelined
now i come from a fandom whcih sidelined the women anyway and with good reason (the women of weiss - shudders) but it depends on the character, if a character has more leeway as a girl then make her a girl, if it's more powerful that a girl you planned is a boy what of it
I don't technically write m/m as much as love is- ie anything goes, the characters have their preferences and aren't afraid to show them, be that for another man, another woman, or a group effort.
And as i grow older (thirty in january) the more belligerant I become about it
if bob loves bill good on him, and if maria loves bill too then it's up to bill isn't it, the same way it would be if maria was a mark.
women are just as capable of being strong and dependable just as men are of being useless, i say sod the article and write the boys the way that they want to be written
although I am running across this happy ending thing a lot more, for some reason people seem to expect it and then they read my work where it doesn't always work out for the best, but works out the way it would (how many happy ever afters do you get in real life) and people torture themselves for love and tell me they love my work but they can't market it

how about the two of us sod RWA and go to yaoicon where lots of screaming women gather together to talk gay sex and squeal over actors you've never heard of.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I seem to be getting more belligerent too...

I agree. There are strong women, and weeping men, doesn't have any reflection on the writer when they write about any of them.

Don't get me started on the Happy Ever After.. !!

Even yaoicon would terrify me. I'd have to go to a gay convention with gay men I think!

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

All of the Arcana line looks like it was done by my 16 year old with colored pencils. They look fine compressed, but you get a full size pic and it's bad.


Naomi and I have been going "huh?" since "Tuition Fees" came out.

I was actually hoping to start a sales discussion. I know Phaze requires a novel to sell 150 copies before it goes print. (I've sold 118 copies in a year) Torquere talked on the authors' list about how anything under 200 copies makes a dicey print proposition. (I tend to sell about 50-75 copies) And I keep seeing EC sales figures around 900-1200 where mine are 650 and I wonder...
Are they inflating the figures?
Is it the economy?
Is it just ME?


The women writing m/m gave voice to something I've been wondering. I rate movies by a Beschdel test (Are there 2 women? Who talk to each other? about something other than men?). Why am I less demanding in my fiction, especially fiction I am writing?

I find f/f difficult to write. Too much of myself ends up on the page. I have the same problem with het love scenes.

But I have a full length novel where the only women that appear are something on the order of mobile scenery. (No women on a pirate ship) How is that not erasing women from media in my own small way?

In 36 published pieces (I'm counting the forthcoming "Eight Days Ablaze"), I have 44 female characters. That's 1.2 women per story. Two of these are f/f, and Ellora made me cut the lesbian scene from Eight Days.

Anyway, my point is that I write. I write the stories I need to tell with the characters I need to tell them about. I try to do it well.

But if I can advance the gay agenda, and I freely admit I do that, why should I not be advancing a woman's agenda as well?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*Loses tea over pictures of dreadful covers* Good Lord. Well, I suppose you can't enter into a contract with a child!!

I don't know about the sales figures, I really don't. Until the day I can afford to get hold of the figures bible I suppose I never will!!

And yes. I try hard to write realistic women. In Junction X I have a married man who has an affair with the teenager next door and it would have been SO easy to fall into the cliche of having her a shrew and cold and the "reason" why he strayed but she isn't and she wasn't. It's just a tragic situation with 2 people who should never have married.

[shiawmeimei.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. What would she label me? I write it all--m/m, m/f, menage in all its forms and I recently sold a short story with menage heavy on the f/f. (Can't announce just yet but I found the call for subs on ERWA! *grins*) My tag line is "Because everyone deserves a little romance..." and I mean it. And I love to write it all.

I didn't see those sales figures you mentioned on valarltd's LJ. I'm always curious about sales numbers. Do you have a more direct link? Thanks!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It was a while back - here you go

http://valarltd.livejournal.com/831207.html#cutid1

[zehavit-lamasu.livejournal.com]

Oh BUWAHAHAHAH - she sounds like Ayn Rand on a really bad hair-day ("If you don't think like me then you are the enemy of the people THERE IS NOTHING FORCEFUL ABOUT MY BULLYING!!!") with all the ... I wonder what crawled up her arse... but I am really not curious enough to crawl up there and find out.

I wouldn't pick up a fight with an irrational person who accuses everyone of being irrational because they don't agree with her irrationality *stomp-stomp feet* ^^;;

Just someone pass her the lube and tell her to shove something where rad-fems think from.

I am sorry - I am finding her highly amusing ... I probably shouldn't but ... it is made f half arse-talk half women hysterics and errr... another... half *coughs*... of FUNEH XD.

And I think the excessive butt references indicate which side of the camp I am firmly parked at... despite being girlishly obsessed with shoes and raising children ^^.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

She certainly seems obsessed with plumbing.

She's still ranting on her LJ. I am not going over there again. This is as much publicity as she's getting from me=teh mock.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I actually do consider myself a feminist, and I was concerned to find that 'False Colors' doesn't meet the criteria of that test (you know, the one where there have to be two women who talk to one another about something other than men?) I have a decent number of women, I hope, considering that half the action is on board ship, but none of them meet each other.

I try and include female characters because I do think there's a prevalent sexism in society which means that male characters are seen as more interesting. But I don't think you need to give up writing m/m just in order to give more page space to women. Work the women in some other way! The idea that a woman is only important as a love object is hardly progressive either, is it?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

None of my books have women having a conversation. Not alone. Even in H&F when Emily and her friend are left alone in a park and Geoffrey goes to fetch the coach - and Ambrose's sisters are never seen interracting without his or other male input.

This was a deliberate choice as I copied Austen - she only once has an tiny instance of men talking together without women in the room.

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

That's been around for a while, and it's just as ridiculous now as it always was. [sigh]

I can see if some entire genre (or fandom or whatever) was exclusionary or snubbed characters from a certain group or whatever, but that's not the case here. Het romance outsells m/m and f/f by a couple of orders of magnitude at least. People who want original het romance to read can fill an Olympic pool with books and roll around in them if they want. There's romance, erotic romance, erotica, porn -- you name it, if you want women, they're there. The genre as a whole could do a better job incorporating characters of color (and then getting those books on to the Romance shelves in the bookstore, rather than stuck in the "African American Studies" or whichever ghetto they're all stuffed in) but that's not what this person is complaining about.

Apparently, to satisfy her, Every Single Woman writing has to write about women, period. It's not a matter of there being good books about women available, but rather it's about every female writer marching in lockstep with what this particular woman wants.

Umm, no.

I've written het romance in the past and probably will again in the future some time, if I feel like it. I'm certainly not going to go back to it just because some female bigot thinks I should, or thinks that the whole world has to conform to her personal expectations of what's right. :/

About the covers, I agree that Torquere's Tarot covers aren't that great, but I still much prefer them over those horrible poser covers some of the other small presses use. To me, that's much higher on the scale of Major Cover Ick -- having an expressionless plastic doll on the cover of your book, or two expressionless plastic dolls placed in a sort of getting-it-on pose. Blech. :(

Angie

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Apparently, to satisfy her, Every Single Woman writing has to write about women, period. It's not a matter of there being good books about women available, but rather it's about every female writer marching in lockstep with what this particular woman wants.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I think 25 years of teaching intro English has given her the notion that it's her job to force everyone into her mold. I feel incredibly sorry for her students. Can you imagine that attitude applied to grading an essay? Or, god forbid, a thesis?

But I think the condescension is just part of her personality. It isn't just m/m writers. Look at her LJ userinfo (lizardlez). She talks about people being unable to pronounce Saskatchewan....la, how stupid everyone in the world is, besides herself.

Sad.

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

I just read the article. I can't find a point in it; J. R. seems to floundering about toward several, and there is a thinly veiled complaint that she couldn't actually write what she really wanted to for risk of offending readers, which I take as evidence of J. R. not having the *coughs* balls to say what she means. I'm completely unimpressed by her lack of understanding of just why m/m erotica is hot for some writers and readers, and by her implication that the genre is new. Well, okay, perhaps it's relatively new in the publishing world as an established genre, and I suppose that it would be fair to say that it's new to people who haven't known where to look for it, but there has been m/m erotic subtext in works from Gilgamesh onward—and I don't believe that it matters why that is or who's been reading those stories; people do read them, end of story.

Further, I don't believe that a writer requires permission to explore the experiences of others, and the idea that only certain experiences should be explored by writers of a particular sex/gender identification is beyond nonsense as far as I'm concerned. Censorship and plagiarism—these activities are treacherous; everything else is just writing.

*puts this twit out of her mind*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

What's hugely amusing is that I've found she's written m/m - and that in a more recent post she says that she doesn't think that any writer should be put off what they want to write.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

six figure sums per paycheque.

Are they counting the .00 as two figures?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Giggles! How true!

...nearly finished... I think I'm going to DIE....