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Straight but not narrow
May. 4th, 2007 03:06 pmGiven the current uproar over Romantic Times and their attitude to m/m romance, I think I need to make it clear that I'm a straight (as in Kinsey 0) woman, and I read and write m/m gay romance.
I mention this because a couple of people have already referred to me as a gay man in some of the discussion. While in general I have no objection to being thought of as a gay man, I think in this specific case it needs to be clear that there are a *lot* of straight women reading and writing m/m gay romance. Telling us that there are separate magazines for queers and that the queers should be reading their own sub-culture's magazines instead of demanding space in the straight people's zines is sort of missing the point that a lot of the gay romance fans are fans of gay romance but aren't gay themselves. We're here and we *aren't* queer.
Oh, and for the "I don't want Teh Gay in my zine, but I'm not a homophobe because some of my best friends are gay" crowd -- a lot of our friends really are gay, and some of us are a tad annoyed on their behalf that they're being told that their relationships aren't really romance, just because there's more than one cock involved.
(Explanatory note for the non-British -- I'm British, and in the UK "Jules" is more likely to be male than female, but is commonly used by both, especially as a nickname.)
I mention this because a couple of people have already referred to me as a gay man in some of the discussion. While in general I have no objection to being thought of as a gay man, I think in this specific case it needs to be clear that there are a *lot* of straight women reading and writing m/m gay romance. Telling us that there are separate magazines for queers and that the queers should be reading their own sub-culture's magazines instead of demanding space in the straight people's zines is sort of missing the point that a lot of the gay romance fans are fans of gay romance but aren't gay themselves. We're here and we *aren't* queer.
Oh, and for the "I don't want Teh Gay in my zine, but I'm not a homophobe because some of my best friends are gay" crowd -- a lot of our friends really are gay, and some of us are a tad annoyed on their behalf that they're being told that their relationships aren't really romance, just because there's more than one cock involved.
(Explanatory note for the non-British -- I'm British, and in the UK "Jules" is more likely to be male than female, but is commonly used by both, especially as a nickname.)