Gay Male Erotic Fiction Written by Straight Women
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Hi,
there is no much of this around these days, especially in ebooks, it is hard to find something written by a gay man. Especially because so many of these women use male sounding pseudonyms. The audience for these books seems to be mainly straight women too.
I read a theory that these books are really about women fantasising about having a penis but since they are straight women, they are still attracted to men. Superficially they therefore appear to be gay men, but the straight women authors as well as their audience are fantasising about being one of the men.
I find these books very bad because they always push the idea that bottoms are passive and feminine and tops are masculine and dominant and there is always the suggestion that tops are only slightly kinky straight men. That is probably because the straight female author wants to maintain the possibility that he will want her.
This kind of gay fiction for a straight female audience has been popular in Japan for much longer that in other countries. In Japan it is a common idea that being gay is a kind of sexual fetish or subculture rather than the way people are born. I wonder how much of this misconception is caused by the popularity of Yaoi amongst straight women.
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I'm going to mainly disagree with you.
1/ Is there no good gay romance written by (straight) women?
Brokeback Mountain, The Front Runner, the Nightrunner series, and The Catchtrap come to mind as good gay romance stories written by women.2/ The Seme/Uke tendency of (mostly) straight men fucking chicks with dicks is something that gay men write as well. The fantasy of straight men fucking other men is very popular even in porn for example Broke Straight Boys.
3/ Yaoi developed in Japan quite separately from the development of m/m in North America. Here it came out of fanfiction culture, largely female but not exclusively, who write romance stories about their favorite characters. M/M represents male with male, M/F represents male with female, and F/F represents female with female. Quite often you'll see men forced into hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine roles but that's based on how heterosexual romance tends to be written: Mr. Darcy is older, wealthier, higher social status and smarter than Elizabeth Bennett. Women will write X-Files fanfiction where Scully is completely subordinate to Muldaur as well as fanfiction where Krychek is completely subordinate to Muldaur.
4/ Homophobia doesn't come out of reading YAOI. It doesn't particularly get rid of homophobia either. It's no different from straight men watching "lesbian porn".
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:clap2:
Perfect… Everything you said.
:thankyou:
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I'm going to mainly disagree with you.
1/ Is there no good gay romance written by (straight) women?
Brokeback Mountain, The Front Runner, the Nightrunner series, and The Catchtrap come to mind as good gay romance stories written by women.2/ The Seme/Uke tendency of (mostly) straight men fucking chicks with dicks is something that gay men write as well. The fantasy of straight men fucking other men is very popular even in porn for example Broke Straight Boys.
3/ Yaoi developed in Japan quite separately from the development of m/m in North America. Here it came out of fanfiction culture, largely female but not exclusively, who write romance stories about their favorite characters. M/M represents male with male, M/F represents male with female, and F/F represents female with female. Quite often you'll see men forced into hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine roles but that's based on how heterosexual romance tends to be written: Mr. Darcy is older, wealthier, higher social status and smarter than Elizabeth Bennett. Women will write X-Files fanfiction where Scully is completely subordinate to Muldaur as well as fanfiction where Krychek is completely subordinate to Muldaur.
4/ Homophobia doesn't come out of reading YAOI. It doesn't particularly get rid of homophobia either. It's no different from straight men watching "lesbian porn".
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The problem is though that for most of the straight women who read these books, as well as for closeted young gay men discovering their identities, fiction purporting to be "gay romance" which is actually a heterosexual woman's fantasy about what it would be like for her to have a cock, with a fake gay male identity and name and a fictional backstory about how they grew up as a gay man, is going to be the primary source of information about what gay men are actually like.
Yes, some women write good gay characters, but why do so many straight women writing "gay romance" have to lie about who they are?
There is a good article here on this question:
"Seeing yourself, whether it’s on the screen or on the page, is a powerful experience. So often, though, for queer people, the options are either super whitewashed or rooted in hurtful stereotypes. In gay romance novels, it’s both, and straight women writers are responsible."
"The author handles her gay characters like dolls, using them to act out her desires. She shoves the rubber faces together and smudges them against one another: Now kiss. The characters, who are labeled as gay, are only fantasies — -straight women’s fantasies, shared with an audience of straight women. The first time I read a novel like this, from its sex scenes to its deep, emotional dialog, all I could think was, Is this what we are to you?"
But it is worse than that, because so many young gay men reading this shit think that is what gay men ARE like. There is nothing in the book information or online that tells you that this was actually written by a straight women.
I remember when Josh Lanyon finally publicly admitted that she is a woman how upset a lot of her young gay male fans were.
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1/ Is there no good gay romance written by (straight) women?
Brokeback Mountain, The Front Runner, the Nightrunner series, and The Catchtrap come to mind as good gay romance stories written by women.The Front Runner was not written by a straight woman.
