Objects of Desire, or Girl Cooties, Part 3 (adult content advisory)

I was going to name this one ‘Male Objectification’, but that’s wrong. For one thing, it follows the standard practice of somehow ignoring bi and trans* issues, in favor of a strict dichotomy of ‘straight’ vs. ‘homosexual’. The truth of human experience, and thus the grist for writers’ extrapolations thereof, is rarely that simple.

I’ve been following some threads over at AbsoluteWrite, re: the M/M debate. Some very sharp comments made me want to look a little closer at my own prejudices and reactions.

One writer said she was sick of being accused of homophobia because she “…Found characters boring or plot holes annoying. M/M is not immune from having bad books but try telling that to some fans.”

Part of this is a legitimate defensive reaction, I think. The Romance Writers of America has just recently begun to allow M/M works in some of its contests. The romance industry in general is still rather put-off by anything other than straight M/F romances, even boisterous erotic romances (I saw that recently during the countdown to a local romance writers event). So the M/M readers who came in from straight romance, who often do not even know about their literary or SFF counterparts, rightly feel maligned and sidelined.

In that context, Jessiewave’s objections to diluting the purity of a dedicated M/M romance review site made more sense. I still think they were framed far too broadly for reasonable discourse, but what do I know? I’m just a SFF geek in a new world.

When you love something passionately, when it fills a gap in your world you never knew existed, it is human nature to lash out when you perceive a threat to that love. I still do that, a little, when satirists poke at some of my sacred cows. Even though I know objectively that the satire does not hurt the original.

I adore Jack Black, but I cringed at his SNL Lord of the Rings parodies – until I remembered howling with laughter at National Lampoon’s ‘Bored of the Rings’ years earlier. I got over some of my discomfort, and realized my love of the material was strong enough to accept the ribbing. Some folks can’t manage that cognitive separation yet, if ever.

In the case of M/M romance, the market has exploded so much in the last few years there’s a glut of works available. It’s not always going to be gold standard, and critical review is necessary to justify the genre to outside scrutiny. Inexperienced and/or uncritical readers, however, will shrug off external critique as meaningless noise, and punish thoughtful internal critique as a slam against them.

That way lies danger. That path keeps the M/M genre from really opening up and growing. It keeps us from celebrating crossover novels that can match anything in the major genres’ highest-ranking awards categories. To the outside world, we’re still a joke, gang. We’re lumped in with Fifty Shades of Grey – which, while it has earned a bazillion dollars, is not the best writing around. We should be standing up to ‘Game of Thrones’ in the mass-market SFF world, and saying ‘bring it…’

Another AW writer pointed out: “Anyway, my annoyance is, as I say, the accusation that readers who want their m/m pure are full of self hatred/ hatred of women. That’s a huge generalisation, and I’m not convinced it’s even slightly true.”

Okay, mea culpa. I was harsh in thinking that. I know there have been long, scholarly tracts analyzing this claim in slash fan fiction, and I don’t recall what those researchers discovered. I’m not sure that the real psychological argument is self-hatred, so much as competition for self-insertion into the portrayed relationship. Psst, newsflash: women are often incredibly competitive, we just generally do it in different ways.

Again, my own solution was to empathize with the female character in some of the problematic M/F-in-M/M stories I read early on, when I was still ‘against’ M/F romances. Not to become her, and certainly not to regard her as a competitor in my fantasy life. Being a writer as well as a reader helps: I have to share mindsets with all my made-up characters, good and bad, whatever gender they present. Doesn’t mean I am them, at all.

I saw a writer posit: “What I see when I look at that site is a fetishization of cis gay men. Not respect for them or their stories, but fetishization. The whole “these stories are for gay men!” bit is completely disingenuous. “I have a gay friend” doesn’t excuse behavior that perpetuates the oppression of others based on their sexuality and/or gender.”

C’mon, we all know those writers’ websites and blogs. You’ve seen ’em, if you read M/M. Blogs with pictures of really gorgeous guys, sometimes verging over into shameless P0Rn. It’s eye candy, and most of the time I think it’s harmless. It gives pretty male models another career choice beyond Abercrombie & Fitch: they are celebrated cover models and convention guests, and most of them seem to bear it with grace and joy.

Ah, but I can also direct you to any number of M/M erotic romance writing that does objectify its male characters. Part of it – I think – is the plot-what-plot response of readers who frankly just want a quick fix unencumbered by literary complications. Part of it is the market, which is structured to reward swiftly-written and swiftly published series novels with a minimum of internal scaffolding. And, well, admission time: it is objectification. The main point of writing erotica in any form is to arouse.

Lastly, this: “It’s one thing to be annoyed by a M/F scene (for whatever reason) and a completely different thing to be “offended” by a FTM trans* or a bi male having sex with cisgendered female.”

It would be different, if the former reactions hadn’t been repeatedly blown out of all proportion on multiple review sites. The anti-M/F protesters have been at it a long time in fan fiction, and their reactions are often even more vituperative. It would be different, if that latter well-meaning statement didn’t point right at the lower status of bi and trans* people in our society – even compared to the male homosexual culture.

I’m a SFF geek, as I’ve said. I come from a different tradition regarding genderfluid, bi, trans*, and gay characters. I thought Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkoverian female-run societies were nearly as flawed as the horrific patriarchies of the Dry Towns. By contrast, I thought some of the loveliest and subtlest moments in fictional, functional matriarchies came from Diane Duane’s ‘Middle Kingdoms’ fantasies (where characters were assumed to be bi but not censured for anything else) and from Melissa Scott’s elegant Point of Hopes and its sequels (where a mother told her daughter ‘don’t be rough with your little brother’ because boys were culturally deemed more fragile.) Or Steve Brust’s magnificent Taltos and Dragaera books, where the long-lived dominant humanoid species wishes newlyweds ‘fierce daughters and beautiful sons’. Or Amanda Downum’s incredible MTF side character in The Bone Palace: a generous and intelligent concubine who forges a city-saving alliance out of a dysfunctional royal marriage.

There’s worldbuilding you probably won’t see in the latest M/M series bang-fest. For a frustrating long time, J.R. Ward herself only hinted at M/M relationships in her Black Dagger Brotherhood novels. Until fans begged, and the publisher took a risk. I hope the precedent is set.

Do I have a point with any of this? Only to wish the M/M genre might take more risks, challenge a few more assumptions, and maybe grow up a little, toward a sane mingling of the best of all genres.