Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid, lgbtq characters edition

[elspethdixon]

Because I've been considering doing this, and talking about it, and I need to just stop being afraid and post it. I'll just pre-emptively tag this with "they should have left me in the ice," shall I?

If the mods at linkspam get ahold of this and feel that it's derailing, I ask that it NOT BE LINKED IN THAT CASE because that would only enhance any derailing effect.

Currently, everyone's discussing the ever-widening definition-creep of derailing, and before that, they/we were all talking about misogyny in slash. Unless we consider "slashers: there's something wrong with them" to be the general point of the discussion, with detours into "bisexual slashers: they're all liars, and even if they aren't their sexuality doesn't matter, and if they try to say it does, that's derailing," we've drifted away from the original topic of "slash and m/m romance: some of it has harmful stereotypes in it."

Since I don't think I can contribute in any meaningful way to the derailing debate, and since I've read at least three rounds of "slasher misogyny" debates over the past nine years, I'd like to get back to the original topic for a while.

Some fiction has homophobic or heterosexist stereotypes in it.



Fandom is generally very good at pointing out sexism and misogyny in texts. We're less good at pointing out more subtle forms of homophobia/heterosexism in texts, possible because as of right now, any movie where there's a gay character and they're not either explicitly condemned as an evil pervert by the text and/or dead at the end pretty much counts as a win.

So, while people are arguing elsewhere about what is and isn't derailing and so forth, I think it would be useful for LGBTQ slashers to analyze, not our "internalized homophobia," which implies that the problem is *us* being "bad queer people," but published m/m fiction and female-authored or straight person-authored fiction with male/male and/or female/female relationships in it, and figure out what we shouldn't be doing. Straight slashers can do this too, obviously, but I'd ask that y'all limit yourselves to analyzing other straight writers in the comments on this particular post.

Because I've realized over the course of this debate that I'm better at spotting racist and sexist tropes in fiction than I am homophobic ones, despite being bisexual. Because I've seen people in fandom discuss sexism and racism in source texts in excruciating detail, but not so much with heterosexism/homophobia, beyond the obvious Dead Lesbian/Dead Gay Guy thing (hi, BSG 2.0).

The Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books romance blog has a regular feature they call "good shit vs. shit to avoid." Consider this an LGBTQA-themed version of that.

So, Mercedes Lackey's Vanyel trilogy, Lynn Flewelling, Mary Renault, Libba Bray, erotic romance with f/m/f or m/m/f relationships, the published* m/m novel of your choice (that's not by someone who has publically IDed as male): anyone have any thoughts about what those writers and books do well/do badly in terms of the depiction of same-sex relationships and queer people? (obviously, some of them might contain other kinds of fail, but we're specifically diccussing queerness here).

I'll start:

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series contains several background f/f relationships between very minor characters. On the one hand, I found this awesome, because any queerness in epic fantasy is awesome (I also appreciate the fact that Jordan's books have multiple prominent female characters and consistantly pass the Bechdel test, even if he did have some, ah, interesting ideas about women, such as apparently believing they were a seperate species that men are fundamentally incapable of understanding, and vice versa) but on the other hand, I can't help but notice that the "pillow friends" among the Red Ajah/Sea Folk/Seanchan damane have no male equivalent. The f/f pairings don't feel to me as if they exist to titiliate male readers -- there's no onscreen girl-on-girl action, for one -- but still... why no male pillow friends, Jordan? The end result is a fantasy world that explicitly has queer women in it, but where queer men are invisible.

And another:
I sadly don't have a book citation on hand, but in one of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, in return to a sneering comment about her husband Aral's (canonical) bisexuality from someone who intended her to be shocked and horrified, Cordelis Vorkosigan says, "He was bisexual. Now he's monogamous."
Let's all wince together now. I love you, LMB, and your Miles books, but gah, that one sentence has bugged me for years.

edited to add: Logophilos brings up below that I don't actually mention any m/m romance stuff from the m/mromance genre per se here, which is true. I've actually read relatively little published m/m fiction in comparison with SF stuff with LGBTQ themes like Lackey's Vanyel books, and a lot of what I have read is available online for free, which makes me :\ about discussing it critically, for the same reasons that I don't feel comfortable critically discussing fanfiction in a formal atmosphere.

A lot of the unpublished, free stuff I've read has been heavily influenced by yaoi, which has a very strong top/bottom dynamic with the sexual roles carrying over into the characters' day-to-day personalities and interactions, usually with at least one man being both young and androgynously beautiful. This has some of the same issues as both Pern (fixed sex roles that double as a sort of heteronormativity-imposing gender role, though without the Dragon-ex-machina doing the fixing) and the Vanyel books (Vanyel basically = every tragic yaoi/shonen ai uke ever), and is often not making any effort to actually realistically depict what actual gay or bi men are like. I suspect some of this is what people may be talking about when they talk about m/m sometime being just so much wank fodder for straight women. Some of the sites I've been to say "this is a heavily stylized yaoi fantasy." Most don't, and you have to be at least a little familiar with yaoi to know going in that that's what you're getting and reality is back that --> way.

edit the second: Um, not that I don't still love a lot of yaoi manga and have about a gigabyte of old Gundam Wing fanfic lurking around my hardrive, and haven't spent the past week mainlining Metal Gear Solid fanfic. I got into fandom at least partially via anime fandom as a college student.



*I'd like to limit this to published books, because the conversation began with criticisms specific to the m/m publishing industry and their depiction of gay and bisexual men. I think that fanfiction and slash are a different conversation that it would also be useful to have, but I'd prefer to let someone else host that.

This post is mirrored on LJ

Comments

[senmut]

I'm very intrigued by the responses you get, but aside from the blatant screw-ups of McCaffrey (giving us a world with canonical gay, then putting dampeners on the hows and whats, no lesbians, and trying to rule out bisexuals...) and the fact that Heinlein would slip in bisexual men, but they were always femme oriented first, and there are no straight out gays/lesbians, (and now, I think about it, the bisexual women always go male oriented first), I can't think of the Things to Avoid either. Possibly because I don't read a lot of fiction that has alternative lifestyles outside of fandom (bad bi, no cookie for that).

Obviously I need to go read more books.

[melannen]

That line in Bujold really annoys me a lot. And I've seen people in fandom talk about it as a favorite line, which bothers me *even more*. It works in the story - Vordarian wouldn't've exactly been up for a Betan-style discussion of fluid sexual identities, and it serves Cordelia's purpose - but it's a quite, quite bad out of context, and really not great in context.

Honestly, a lot of the stuff around Aral's attraction to men in Barrayar bothered me; the correlation of homosexual behavior with being self-destructive and/or evil, the statement that Cordelia "solves a problem" for Aral as if *that's* a basis for a relationship, and, yeah, the "was bisexual" line. I'm also somewhat annoyed by her repeated use of "sexual sadist" to mean "sociopathic rapist and serial killer" without ever acknowledging that actual s/m players aren't, um, sociopaths, but that's a bit OT. Though I didn't find anything in Ethan of Athos too terribly winceworthy, except the science (though it's been awhile since I've read that one.)

I'm looking through my catalog to try to remember books with glbt characters, and it says *something* about the SF genre that there are a lot more books on the list with genderqueer or non-gender-binary characters than there are with cisgender-but-not-heterosexual characters. I guess part of that could be that if you're working with historical conceptions of gender and sexuality, the two do blend in to each other a little. I suspect a lot more of it is that some SF writers will write about trans characters as a purely speculative thing without ever actually connecting that to trans *people*, though....


I still really do like the "Tale of the Five" series by Diane Duane, though. It certainly doesn't confront a lot of "gay" issues, since it's deliberately set in a world where sexuality *isn't* an issue, but it normalizes bisexuality really convincingly, I thought, without blurring the wide spectrum of sexuality completely out.

And I remember really liking Delia Sherman's "Through A Brazen Mirror" when I first read it a long, long time ago, but, mmm, it talks about homosexuality through a mirror built on genderqueerness, too, and doesn't really do anything with the genderqueer stuff *except* use it to reinforce her gay character's binary sexuality, which bothered me at the time.

I've read "Swordspoint" and "Point of Dreams" - both not too long ago, as a result of seeing them talked up by slash fans - and I liked them both okay but wasn't really enthusiastic, and I'm not sure why - there was nothing about the handling of the central relationships that stuck out as terrible, I just didn't find them - interesting? Itchy? I dunno. Maybe the style/mood/atmosphere they both kind of share just didn't really do it for me.

Though Elizabeth Willey's "Well-Favored Man" books have a bi main character and a gay secondary character in a similar urbane-fantasy-of-manners series, and I love love love them. If you read them in chronological order, they come off at first as an evil bisexual and an effete prince stereotype, but it very quickly becomes clear that both of those things are fronts and nothing it what it seems. Plus, the two of them have a really great relationship, that's built on mutually-but-not-publically-acknowledged-attraction, but isn't actually about them being in love (they are so not MFEO and they know it. Plus it turns out that they're totally cousins, not that that stops anyone in that series.) And the series isn't really about sexuality - it's just a Chronicles of Amber/The Tempest crossover fic high fantasy that has some quietly queer people in it, which is wonderful. (What it doesn't ever do is specifically address *why* the characters have to all keep the m/m sex on the down low, or have any of them really objecting to that. Though really in that world any publically acknowledged affair is just asking for somebody to use it as a weak point to take you down, so the m/m relationships actually come off better for being below the radar.)

And all of those are stories where the main queer characters are gay or bi men written by straight women. That might be 'cause there are so few books SF books about lesbians, period, and that lately I read mostly books by women writers. Or it might be something I'm doing wrong in my self-filtering that I should look at. Hmmm.

[schmevil]

The Gemma Doyle series is certainly an interesting case. I'd have to reread it to really draw out the nuances, but I have to say that I was taken aback by the queer characters having both been sexually abused and exploited to varying degrees. Their relationship is obviously more than their having turned to each other in their time of need, but it kind of had shades of "women! because men suck too much!" going on there. It's also striking that they start out as the primary antagonists of Gemma's school life, and then become (at different points) antagonists in her magical life. But on the other hand, they're both richly drawn characters, and so totally in love. I've never been able to decide if Doyle was consciously engaging with those tropes, or not. I mean, Gemma herself has some serious girl crushes going on, and none of them are presented as being bad, in and of themselves. Felicity and Pippa's relationship is a Good Thing, save for all the external factors that turn it into a Bad Thing (impending marriage, the laws of the magical world). I mean, for long stretches, it's presented as a good and pure relationship.

idek, what on your thoughts on yaoi yuri?

[logophilos]

So far none of the comments or your own examples are from the "m/m publishing industry". They're mainstream works from other genres which happen to feature gay/bi characters.

M/m is 'gay romance by [inaccurately-labelled] straight women' as sold by Romance publishers and there's only one NY company who has picked any of that up - Running Press. (http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/runningpress/home.jsp)

If you want to look at slash gone pro, then you need to look at stuff published by
Torquere - http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=index
Loose ID - http://www.loose-id.com
Samhain - http://samhainpublishing.com/category/gay-lesbian-romance
MLR - http://www.mlrbooks.com
DreamSpinner - http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/

etc

Or as featured in reviews here:
http://unique.logophilos.net/
http://bookutopia.blogspot.com/search/label/genre%3A%20gay

Some gay presses also publish "m/m" (if you define it as a gay romances by straight people.)

I like a number of authors also self-publish (and that doesn't necessarily mean at a lower quality, since too many of the pro epresses don't exercise high standards at all).

SF has always had a stronger representation of queer characters than most genres. But it's not 'm/m' just because you have a gay character or even two of them. At least, it's not how the industry defines it. After our discussions elsewhere, I assumed it was the potentially exploitative stuff you focused on here? If not, I apologise for butting in.

[tsukinofaerii]

You know, I thought I'd end up having to sit this one out, and then I looked at my bookshelves. Hello, books I completely forgot about, how are you?

The series that is sticking out in my mind right now is the Hollows by Kim Harrison. The (arguably) most important minor character/best friend Ivy is canonically bisexual, and there's a pretty open subplot about main character Rachel dealing with this and her possibly attraction to Ivy. Rachel has spent the last three books (I think) basically either running from or dealing with this. What is bugging me most is that Ivy is a sort of vampire, and Rachel is especially susceptible to certain vampire powers to the point where she could become addicted. It gets even more uncomfortable when Ivy's Deep Dark Angsty Past (can't have a happy bisexual, of course not) reveals that she can't separate love (which means sex) and blood, and she loves Rachel. The few times Rachel gives her blood, there's angsty "no no no yes no" scenes that barely don't go into sex. So, in other words, Ivy's sexuality is intimately tied up in addicting Rachel (presented as straight, currently very confused) to her, when Rachel's attraction could just be to the vampire pheromones.

I didn't realize exactly how much that's skeeving me out until now. The only way Rachel's ever going to be able to decide for herself is if Ivy stops being a vampire. Which is... actually part of Ivy's character movement. The series is still running, so there's a chance it could end up somewhere that's not horrid, but the power dynamics (Ivy = predatory bisexual confusing love & sex/blood, Rachel = confused/straight girl trying to hold out) don't leave me much hope.

[whatistigerbalm]

I don't know how many people have read John Varley's Gaea trilogy (it's a strange mix of fantasy and sci-fi but I love it for that) but the main characters are two women who end up being in a relationship. Both of them have been with men in the past, and while one of them, Rocky, continues having relationships with both men and women, the other, Gaby, remains faithful to Rocky. There is also an entire community of women who breed by themselves; one of its members ends up with a man, much to her mother's dismay, but I don't think this affects the community much. (Her newly found bisexuality, while genuine, is portrayed as an act of youthful rebellion.) I can't think of male characters having a homosexual or bisexual relationship - I last read these books some years ago - but I wouldn't assume there aren't any.

The Bechdel test passes with flying colours, seeing that, like I said, the main characters are women, there are many major female characters, and they all have lives and missions and whatnot. Where I need to put a caveat is that I'm straight and therefore likely oblivious to stereotypes and nuances that lesbian and bisexual readers might pick up [SPOILER: One of the main couple dies, causing much angst for both the other and the reader, but is later revealed to have been transformed into a more powerful being, and they both remain together and pretty much superhuman.].

For what my opinion is worth, I thought Rocky and Gaby were an ass-kicking pairing, and remain one of my OTPs.

[cadenzamuse]

I would think an obvious example is Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett's Havemercy, in which two of the four main/POV characters are gay, and eventually end up together. I'm not sure I can comment on their relationship, although I thought it was sweet, but I thought overall that book had enormous race and gender issues, which saddened me as I think they are fandom-ers gone pro. Some of the race stuff is because there is a war on, so the "other side" (which is modeled on Japanese culture, I think) is of course all evil, inhuman heathens. This gets corrected for some in the second book (Shadow Magic), which is set after the war ends, and has two protagonists who are from the Japanese-style culture, but I thought in Havemercy came across as these-are-the-authors'-opinions, rather than these-are-the-characters'-opinions. And I don't think a single woman in either book is viewed as/treated like/written as a human being.

...having now eviscerated both books, I will say that I really did enjoy them anyway! *laugh/sigh*

[facetofcathy]

I would love to hear peoples' opinions on Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Catch Trap. I decline to comment under the terms of the post, but it is essentially a m/m romance, and the closest thing I know of to the modern genre of female authored m/m.

A completely different story, and not a female author--Robert J. Sawyer wrote a trilogy, Homonids, Humans, Hybrids about a parallel Earth populated by Neanderthals. The Neanderthal society has a kind of mandatory bisexuality. Men and women live mostly segregated lives with their same sex partner, and when the women are fertile they interact with their opposite sex partners mostly for the purpose of procreation, but they do share parenting in a way.

There's some good stuff in these books, a very stable, functional, same sex partnered society and the same sex relationships are happy and fulfilling and kind of sweet and not horribly heteronormative, but the society essentially is. Gender determines your societal role and your job, and there is a violence against women subplot that is baffling given the poly structure of the society, but he writes it as if that kind of male desire to violently control women is inherent somehow.

The books read like he could imagine individual gay relationships existing outside our social construct of gender and sexuality, but he couldn't imagine a whole society that was fully queer.

adding in comment, because I don't feel like editing the post itself

[elspethdixon]

So, on the topic of professional m/m fic... I have found an honest-to-god piece of published Pride & Prejudice slash.

No, seriously, my hand to God. It's P&P slashfic -- explicit P&P slashfic, and I checked it out of my local library. Pride/Prejudice by Ann Herendeen.

In terms of serious treatment of the topic, well, it's more serious than Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, but IDK. On the one hand, it does a very good job of making the male characters' bisexuality fully realized and obvious (it's Darcy/Bingley, Bingley/Jane, Elizabeth/Darcy, and Elizabeth/Charlotte Lucas), with narrative attention paid both to Dacry and Bingley's relationship and to the slowly-building attraction between Darcy and Elizabeth, but on the other hand, I think the attitudes toward sodomy are a little too... casual? Elizabeth and Charlotte being able to have sex without having to worry too much about or cease being seen as marriagable virgins is, alas, probably pretty on the mark (British sodomy laws didn't address lesbians any more than the Bible does, because sex isn't sex unless there's a cock involved, and a woman isn't "ruined" unless a man's involved), so I buy them having relationship prior to their marriage without thinking much of it, just your classic 18/19th century particular friends who are a little closer than most. But sodomy is death-penalty-worthy illegal, so I think it would be more of a Big Deal than the book's thus far portrayed it as (I'm only on page 60 of 350 pages, mind you). And I think there's be less punishable-by-death penetrative sex and more intercrural, but that's just me nitpicking.

Also, could Elizabeth and Charlotte have sex onscreen, please? Darcy and Bingley have done so twice at this point, whereas with Lizzy and Charlotte we've just gotten one bit of cute flirting and a fade-to-black. I'd actually be happier with fade-to-blacks all around, because R-rated Pride & Prejudice just feels weird to me (people don't have onscreen sex in Jane Austen novels -- they just go get compromised/married/pregnant offscreen and we witness the results afterward), but if the guys get sex scenes, I think the girls should as well. I think the male bisexuality is better realized than the female varient thus far (Elizabeth getting aroused by witnessing Darcy and Bingley making out should not be all "oh, what is happening to my body" like your classic historical romance virgin ingenue if she's been having sex with Charlotte. Or even making out with Charlotte, since I don't know how intimate things got during that fade-to-black).