Hey, everyone! It’s Wednesday!
We’re kicking things off with a serious story, as an FYI. Definitely heed Sarah’s warning.
I honestly can’t remember what has happened since last time. My home office is getting set up and I’m loving it. I have a pink candy jar with a ghost wearing a cowboy hat on top. I am going full on dopamine decor and I couldn’t be happier. I also bought organizers for my craft supplies and bought new bobbins to transfer my floss. I’ve also started my stitch along.
Are you a minimalist in your decor (my brother is!) or do you love maximalism? Do you have a space in your home that you’ve carefully designed for yourself?
…
Sarah: Lila Shapiro at Vulture wrote a truly devastating story about Neil Gaiman called “There is No Safe Word.” It is so difficult to read that I am putting the link and the rest of the warnings behind a spoiler tag.
I WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR HERE. THAT IS WHY THERE ARE CAPITALS AT THIS PART: This article is Extremely graphic. There are description of sexual violence, coercion, assault, and abuse. I do not say this lightly. I read it and had to put my phone down and breathe a few times. Please, PLEASE be careful with yourself. You are not required to traumatize yourself at any time.
The reason I am sharing this link is because I want to highlight the work done by the reporter, Lila Shapiro, and by the fact checking, editorial, and production team at New York Magazine and Vulture. Stories like this take work, and support from the publication, especially stories like these that are about much beloved figures.
Subscriptions to New York Magazine (which includes Vulture, The Cut, Grubstreet, and Curbed) are currently on sale for $4 for a month or $40 for a year. That’s .77 per week. I’ve run into the Cut and the Vulture paywall enough to have subscribed before, but it was this article and the work represented by this journalist and the publication that pushed me over the edge.
…
I want to carry on with some lighter things. I read the above article and it was much more violent and graphic than I was expecting.
Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry is in talks to get a television adaptation!
…
Loyalty Bookstore is hosting a virtual event this Sunday on comfort reads. The panel includes KJ Charles, T. Kingfisher, Malka Older, and Martha Wells. Details are here.
…
Lastly, have you heard about Truffles the cat? She helps children feel better and get used to wearing glasses. It’s very cute!
…
Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
So I have conflicted feelings about Heated Rivalry. I’ve heard that it was originally based on Crosby/Ovechkin fan fic and I really get squicked by RPF. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but it just seems a little dehumanizing?
I dunno, maybe I’m missing something about it? But I feel like it feeds into that parasocial dynamic wherein famous people aren’t granted privacy or complexity. And of course there’s the larger pattern of M/M romance being written by and for ciswomen and how that particular bit of potential identity tourism impacts the conventions of the genre.
Anyways!! Not to crap on Reid or other fic-writers, but it’s something that’s been bugging me for a while and I figured this was an opportunity for the Bitchery to set me straight (as it were).
Lila Shapiro’s article is horrifying. Triggering. Well documented. Graphic. Familiar. Appreciated. And, again, horrifying. It also offers glimpses into the necessity and value of MeToo. Read it yesterday, and I’m still trying to recover.
Yeah, I read the Shapiro article end to end on Monday, and came away so disgusted I couldn’t see straight. The cruelty he engaged in, coupled with how carefully he curated his image to seem non-threatening, made me want to set things on fire.
Some people deserve a hotter hell.
Re: OMPHALE’s comment on identity tourism- I think this is a pretty sticky area where you can easily tread into policing what others are exploring in their own personal literary/sexual experiences. If we were all only allowed to engage in content about people who were exactly like us sexually I think it would be a huge bummer.
In a culture that is still so deeply biased against women I think a lot of women (cis and otherwise) find it freeing to engage in romantic and erotic stories that are free of some of the baggage of the traditional M/F dynamic. Also if people aren’t allowed to imagine romance and eroticism from the view point of another gender it seems like we’re limited in expanding how we think of our own sexualities since we live in a society where things are set up on such an intense gender binary.
As a queer women is it “ok” for me to engage in identity tourism when I read “straight” romance or is it not? Is it “ok” to find it sexy to imagine things from the point of view of a male identifying character even though I identify as a woman?
I know this is all tricky territory but I think there are ways to talk about it without shaming women for exploring their sexualities.
I think it would be hard for me to watch the “Heated Rivalry” adaptation because the book is such an integral part of my reading life. It’s a perennial comfort read and reread favorite—and I have very specific ideas about what Shane & Ilya look and sound like. To quote Paul Simon, I know it could never match my sweet little ‘magination.
Also, I’m wondering if the adaptation will include both HEATED RIVALRY and THE LONG GAME. The former ends with an HFN, but the latter has the real HEA.
@Omphale, your comment “…the larger pattern of M/M romance being written by and for ciswomen…” is something that I’ve mulled over – I lean towards associating a female person writing M/M with cultural appropriation – while at the same time admiring the imagination that goes into writing fiction.
@Plumyum, what you wrote goes a long way to answering my thoughts. Thank you.
There is a new romance bookstore in Orlando, Florida. It’s called The New Romantics – for the dreamers and romance readers.
I don’t recall reading about it here yet, although I may have missed the mention. My dear “romance-isn’t for-me” friend told me about it. I wonder if I can talk her into a road trip?
‘Nathan Burgoine has one of my favourite posts that addresses cis women writing m/m romance, and I really appreciate the nuance in it. That’s there’s not a simple answer (and I appreciate that he isn’t just blanket saying that only gay and queer men can write m/m romance, and he’s pretty clear about that not being his point), but that it is complex, and that who gets published, read, and awarded is important to pay attention to. I do read m/m romance written by cis women but I try to be mindful about also reading romance written by queer men. I know OwnVoices isn’t a perfect metric, for a lot of reasons, but it does matter to me to make sure I’m including at least some own voices writers in my mix (and I will admit that I do avoid cis women authors who only write m/m, because I have sometimes found them just lacking the versimilitude that Burgoine writes about).
https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2021/01/03/the-shoulder-check-problem/
The Gaiman article was devastating to read and to learn about. He’s been a huge part of my life for years. I met him at a signing when I was 17. His books have informed parts of how I understand my own identity. It feels so gross to know what’s been going on out of sight. (I felt similarly when Marian Zimmer Bradley was revealed to have been abusive, and I had to revise my relationship with her Mists of Avalon.)
I can’t support or continue to associate myself with someone like that.
I’m going to read some Tanith Lee this month, after seeing posts about Gaiman taking uncredited inspiration from her work.
I’ve been leery of saying anything about my discomfort with m/m by women for women, because I was not sure if anyone else here felt the same way. The fact that women have been and are often objectified does not make women objectifying gay (or bi) men somehow OK. Certainly some women writing m/m for women are writing with an attitude of respect and affection for their characters and with a genuine interest in accuracy, but I don’t think that is the case for all. I have read some m/m by women that I enjoyed, but I’ve also read some that made me uncomfortable.
@Omphale & @Tiffany, I appreciate what you wrote above.
@Plumyum– I agree women shouldn’t be shamed about their sexuality, but I don’t think questioning m/m is necessarily shaming, and repeated “ok” in quotes sounds a bit snarky about people who disagree with you.
RPF is about as old as human story telling tradition, and it runs the gamut from “you know what I heard from so-and-so?” to actual traditionally published novels – Curtis Sittenfeld “American Wife” and “Rodham” come to mind.
It’s good that you know your squicks though!
Well, teach me to toss into my request for a defense of Real Person Fiction a throwaway comment about identity tourism 😀
To be clear, I’m not saying the consumption of m/m romance by ciswomen is a problem, nor am I saying that ciswomen don’t get to write m/m romance, just that there are conventions of the genre that can reflect the fact that a majority of creators and consumers are not queer men. And that sometimes it has the potential to edge into cooption in a way that I think can be erasing and harmful.
In short, I think “identity tourism” was probably too inflammatory a term for the comment, but I appreciate the discussion and I thank everyone for their thoughtful responses, especially @plumyum for taking up the discussion and @Tiffany for the link to the Burgoigne post.
(And I am genuinely curious about the RPF thing)
Thank you for linking to the Shapiro article. I had seen it around a lot, but didn’t want to read it. But I want to support difficult and time-consuming investigative journalism. So I clicked on this link today and when the paywall came up, I signed up for an annual subscription. I still won’t read the story, but I want to support NY Mag so people can read such important stories.
Thank you @Glauke! It’s interesting that you position it within a storytelling tradition. Your first example seemed more to be the idea of gossip? I suppose the roman a clef would also fall into this tradition.
And given that I also felt uncomfortable with Sitterfield’s books, I think I may just in general not enjoy the concept. Therefore, I shall continue to find RPF and similar ilk Not For Me™ but thank folks for the opportunity to discuss.
I think about the question of m/m authorship and gender a LOT, and I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that this conversation has taken so far.
In December, The Culture Study podcast did an episode on Queer Romance with author Adib Khorram and talked about this very specifically.
Of course I can’t find a transcript (harrumph). The relevant part start at about 20:00 (yes I’m re-listening so I can quote correctly, and lemme tell you, transcribing is HARD). Some of the highlights that I am still thinking about, weeks later, are below.
Among the points Khorram makes:
“Authors never owe anyone their identity, there are lots who self identify as straight who aren’t.”
“The broader question of who gets to write what is complicated. There are countless axes of privilege, domination and oppression in each story. Each writer has their own moral compass.”
This part blew my mind:
“People are rarely harmed by someone sharing in a joy that is not their own, and are often harmed by people exploiting a pain that is not their own.”
Listener question: How are the queer guys finding ownvoices books among the absolute torrent of m/m books written by ladies? Like, as a gender queer person, the trans bestseller lists are a horror show of fetishization and it’s hard to find rom rep that resonates. It may actually be worse for queer guys than for me (an nb person) I want to prioritize ownvoices MM.
Side note: AK shouts out Dahlia Adler’s LGBTQReads.com and compliments Dahlia and it’s so lovely.
AK: “As far as the deeper question about how it feels to read books that feel like it gets, like, the sex wrong? Which I feel like is the sub-question?
“I don’t know if anyone has seen Arrested Development, which I think about a lot, but every member of the Bluth family has a chicken dance that they do, and none of them sound anything like a chicken.
“And that’s sometimes how it feels reading m/m sex. There’s a line where Michael Bluth, where everyone is doing the chicken dance and he says “Has anyone in this family ever seen a chicken?”
“Sometimes I feel like him, but it’s like, “Has anyone in this family ever seen a butthole?”
“Like, every time I see spit used as a lube I’m like NO. That is NOT healthy or safe or loving for a partner.”
“But there’s a reality of sex and there’s a fantasy of sex, and I think every author and reader has to decide where they want to fall on that line.”
…
That’s a small portion of the conversation, but, as I said, I am still thinking about Korram’s perspective. This is one topic that is very tricky to discuss because, as Korram pointed out, there are so many axes of privilege, oppression, sexism, racism, and history which all instruct us on who is worthy of identifying with, and whose story is centered.
I don’t think there is a simple answer or that this conversation answers the question.
But if this topic matters to you as a reader, or if you really like m/m and wonder why that is, I think this episode will have a lot of thoughtful insight that might appeal to you.
Thanks, Sarah, for encouraging me to subscribe to NYMag, etc. I hit the paywall and didn’t read the article, and read summaries/discussion of it, but this pushed me to monetarily support Shapiro’s work. I’ve been waiting since the summer for this to hit a more mainstream publication and I’m so glad to see it.
@Omphale – to be clear I wasn’t trying to be snarky in my commentary and I appreciate your gracious openness to it. Obviously this is a space that should be kind and open to discussion.
The Shapiro article was necessary and well done, and devastating.
I loved NG’s books, and now we’re done. And it hurts somehow, I have spent so long loving so much of the language – quoting it, finding comfort in it. He’s worse than this, but there’s a resonance with the Joss Whedon stuff that came out.
@Taylor – Lila Shapiro also wrote the exposé on Joss Whedon.
I like m/m, as a straight woman, because I will never be able to have sex with a man or be in a relationship with a man as a man, and I like to project. But so much of what I’ve read does read as though the author has never met a man, let alone researched how men come together, and if I of all people am able to notice that, it must be pretty bad. So I don’t read as much of it as I’d maybe like to.
Having Gaiman turn out to be so shitty hurts more for me than watching Rowling descend into TERFdom (mainly because the Potterverse was not an entry point to fantasy for me, by the time they hit I was already a voracious reader and have never lacked alternatives), but I have loved so many of his books and the adaptations of Good Omens/Dead Boy Detectives/etc, and now they’re forever tainted.
So any way huge thank you for the comfort reads panel link, I could use some Kingfisher and Wells talking distractions this weekend and am sharing that event around because I know I’m not alone there.
To answer your question, I tend to lean towards minimalism personally. I don’t like most decor – I look at it and just see something I will have to dust, which my allergies don’t like. There’s also the mental clutter that physical clutter causes; I just can’t focus or think when the space I’m in is crowded with stuff or messy. I do have an overabundance of books, and that’s where the clutter in my space comes from (mostly). Otherwise it’s stuff that I just put down “for now” (Chiaki from the manga adaptation of Kondo’s book and I have that in common). Procrastination clutter, if you will.