Okay, maybe this is just me...

Well, I'm always reading all these books about straight people in straight situations. It drives me nuts! I don't need to read about one more action hero thinking with his genitalia. And I'm also sick to death of women who can't be anything until they find themselves some nice heterosexual loving, who swoon all over the nearest dude, or brood over their dirtbag ex-boyfriends. Geez, does everything have to be about the opposite sex or what?

Seriously, love plays a part in almost every story we tell. Likewise, society plays a part in almost every story we tell. So a gay character is going to have a big gay story with a big gay subplot! And every time they interact with others, guess what, they are still gay! When you can get beaten up at the bus stop because some random person doesn't like fags, you don't 'just happen to incidentally be gay'.

I don't base everything in my life around being gay, but I'm gay in everything I do in my life. Same for a gay character.

Zoombie said:

We need more hot gay cyberpunk stuff...<writes this down>

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Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale.

Cheers, Lisa.

You are forced to read? Where can I put some of friends into this program?

My gold standard for breaking free from the staring-at-the-minority syndrome is decades old: Classic Star Trek. The infamous episode in which Kirk kisses Uhura. Okay, so some people made a big deal about this FIRST INTERRACIAL KISS ON TV. The episode itself didn't. Come to think of it, same episode gives us an INTERSPECIES KISS (Spock and Christine Chappell.)

Much later, Star Trek introduced a black Vulcan entirely without fanfare. Oh, sure! Why shouldn't Vulcans have races, and what does it matter? No one notices, within the story world.

Same with gays. And the great thing about Dumbledore is that he isn't really in the closet -- I figured very early on that he was gay. However, JKR never makes it an issue, and why should she? Dumbledore's sexuality is never an issue -- leave it to sweaty fan fictioneers to pair or slash every character in the book with every other character, including the Hogwarts squid. Mmmm, squid...

What Dumbledore is gay? And he's allowed around all those yummy boys? Oh fie, fie! Not to be endured!
C

Argh, I know exactly where you're coming from! I get so frustrated whenever I have my work critiqued and get asked "oh, another lesbian/gay main character?" Uh... yes? Is that a problem? Guess what, I'm gay! Do you really think I'd be able to get inside the mind of a girl swooning over the star of the football team, when I was busy riddling myself with self-doubt about whether my best friends would be disgusted with me? They look at me skeptically and ask if I want to be known just as a "gay writer". Am I not allowed to be a writer who just happens to have gay characters? I have to write something straight for you to respect my works?

I'm working on a graphic novel for my thesis, and I've ended up writing page after page of garbage to "justify" my "decision" to write about a lesbian couple. You can't be left in peace unless you talk about the "Other" and Heteronormativity. :| I just want to ask the next person "well, what are you trying to say with your depiction of a straight couple 'falling in love'"?

But yeah. I am purposefully writing Highwater to be a non "gay" story-- it's a story that just happens to be about a lesbian couple. I'm tired of so many gay-themed novels (YA especially) just being about coming out and coming to terms with your sexuality, or having to deal with homophobic surroundings. The SF&fantasy I read as a kid was so much better at offering a story- and oh, btw, the main char's gay. It was often presented so off-handedly that I didn't realize it until years later when I reread them (Mercedes Lackey and Tanya Huff, in particular).

elae. I know what you mean about being tired of sooo many gay themed novels. However, there are legions of gay girls/boys/teens/and adults, who for what ever reason, take nourishment from them. I'll admit being a person who writes gay novels is limiting in that publishers will then restrict your work to a gay audience. The downside of that focus is they ignore or don't seem to recognize a large straight audience who do read gay stories.

But here is where my argument breaks down. My informal study, taken over the course of the last nine years, shows there is a global audience for gay male romance novels among straight women. Most, but not all, are either married with grown children or with children at home. Some are single straight women. I also noted the women I interviewed preferred the stories to focus on the romance rather than on other aspects of the character's life except when gayness impacted those aspects. In other words keep it gay. These women want good writing too, no shlock.

Interestingly, none I interviewed had told their husbands about their reading habits. I got the sense I shouldn't ask why.

Among straight men none said they read lesbian romance novels yet they do read lesbian porn. And they absolutely no not read gay (male) romance. At least they wouldn't admit to it.

Have I polled every gay person alive? Of course not. But I have spoken with what I believe to be a healthy cross section of people from Europe, Latin America, North America, and Asia Pacific. Many do not have English as a first language yet they buy authors like, John Simpson (Murder Most Gay), Evangeline Anderson, (Slave Boy), Josh Lanyon (The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks), Michael Halfhill's trilogy (Bought And Paid For, Scimitar, Sons), David Valdes Greenwood (Homo Domseticus: Notes From A Same-Sex Marriage).

So in short the gay genre is alive and well. Should the genre be abolished and be included in an overall genre that discounts sex/sexuality altogether? I don't know.
I have read with some sadness people declaring that had they known a gay character was in a particular book they would not have read even a part of it. As some would have it we should all be put in some safety deposit box in a dry-veined restricted community married off to an Aryan from Darien with braces on her brains. (Auntie Mame)
C

I've got plans for a future story (fantasy, of course), where the main character is questioning another man about a murder. The other man, who's very powerful and charismatic and charming, deflects his questions and makes a pass at him.

The main character becomes aroused and struggles to control it. He's straight, but since their society is fine with people being gay or bi, his reaction is more along the lines of "crap, I couldn't keep my cool" rather than "holy shit, I'm gay!"

I found myself liking the other man a lot for having that effect on my protagonist.

I'm bisexual, or at least I think I am. I'm not really confused about it, I just don't like having sex with people I know, or like. My wife explained to me why readers don't like the MC to be gay whether there's sex involved or not. It's because when a lot of people read they become the MC in their minds. If they're not gay, or harbor some hatred, it's disturbing to them, so you'll lose a lot of sales potential if your hero is so much as leaning. I also think it's hard for people who don't know gay men to picture them as tough because it's a stereotype.

The Wire, the TV show, had a gay main character named Kema and it managed never to make too big a deal about it. She was just gay - it never played heavily into the plot. The occasional "dyke" comment that angered her, but nothing more.

Wayne, Your wife in a sense makes perfect sense. Tell the truth I haven't looked at it that way.

But what of the gay man who reads Elizabeth George's Inspector Thomas Lynley or Steve Berry's Cotton Malone characters? Does he / will he / can he identify with a British cop or a retired spy? Then there's Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski Detective series. Upon reading Sara's books will / can a gay man suspend his reality and identify with Chicago's premier female private detective? And if so, how and why? Are gay men then supremely adaptable.
C

If anybody can identify with the themes of a story in some way, then the characters' sexuality should mean squat. A coming out story is thematically no different than any other story on "the journey of self-discovery and enlightenment". Mentioning a character is gay, lesbian, or asexual is pretty much a personality trait and can be written as you would anything else; going out of the way to tell the audience somebody is gay is sloppy, IMO.

Zoombie said:

Or is it that we can't have a gay character without the book being about them being gay.

And by gay character, I mean a MAIN character, not just a side character.

It was hammered home to me when I was in class and we spent TWO DAYS of class time talking about why the characters in a novel are gay.

Do we ever spend hours debating why characters in a novel are straight?

Noooooooooooooo

God, this is getting really annoying to me. Being straight isn't all straight people think about, being gay doesn't mean you constantly base everything in your life around being gay...

So...why do we look at a book about a gay man and assume that its about him. Being gay.

Or having the AIDS.

It bugs me!

Am I alone? Or am I just reading the wrong books?

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There are several things I want to discuss here: first, lit classes don't always bring focus to what's important about a novel or story. Ignorant people often bring focus to the sexuality in a story when it isn't something the author was using to bash over someone's head.

I think using a character to further the gay movement is insulting to homosexuals (and fictional characters!) everywhere. It's as if to say gays are no more dimensional than a bumper sticker that can sum up the whole equality movement. It's as if to say a character who is homosexual has no purpose but to yell about being homosexual, no greater call than martyrdom, no dreams, no aspirations, no yearning to grow as every person does.

If literature is to mirror life, in the present, one's life may necessarily have to hurdle ignorance and opposition to homosexuality. But if a book is to say, the most important thing a homosexual person can offer us is a stab at homophobes, I cannot help but feel that author has not dug deep enough.

citymouse said:

elae. I know what you mean about being tired of sooo many gay themed novels. However, there are legions of gay girls/boys/teens/and adults, who for what ever reason, take nourishment from them.

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Oh, I'm not trying to say I'm tired of gay themed novels! I definitely don't think the genre should be abolished or anything.
All I'm tired of is when it seems like every gay novel deals only with the character realizing they're gay/coming out. Sure, some of those are great to read when you're a confused teen, but afterwards? Personally, I think those questioning kids would get a lot more "nourishment" from novels in which the gay characters are part of storylines you'd see any straight character be a part of. As in, oh, hey, there's gay detectives/scientists/adventure heroes too! I can lead whatever kind of life I want, just like they do!

But here is where my argument breaks down. My informal study, taken over the course of the last nine years, shows there is a global audience for gay male romance novels among straight women. Most, but not all, are either married with grown children or with children at home. Some are single straight women. I also noted the women I interviewed preferred the stories to focus on the romance rather than on other aspects of the characters life except when gayness impacted those aspects. In other words keep it gay. These women want good writing too, no shlock.

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Oh, definitely! No argument there. Slash/"boys' love" wouldn't exist without the legions of straight (and lesbian, actually ) women who love to read/write it. I know romance publishers are increasingly picking up m/m titles. Honestly, I think it's because they (and I) welcome the absence of the strict gender-roles between the characters (and they like dreaming about sensitive, emotion-driven men, heh).

elae said:

All I'm tired of is when it seems like every gay novel deals only with the character realizing they're gay/coming out. Sure, some of those are great to read when you're a confused teen, but afterwards? Personally, I think those questioning kids would get a lot more "nourishment" from novels in which the gay characters are part of storylines you'd see any straight character be a part of. As in, oh, hey, there's gay detectives/scientists/adventure heroes too! I can lead whatever kind of life I want, just like they do!

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Trust me. We eventually find those books.

The speculative fiction spectrum (SF, fantasy, horror) seems to have a lot of gay/bi/lesbian characters. Especially dark fantasy, which is primarily what I write. My stories and novel do tend to have gay and bisexual characters, but the stories aren't primarily about being gay. I wouldn't say that it has no impact on the story (my characters' lovers and relationships are often mentioned or part of the story), but it's not the main point of the story. I never understood why some people think that having a gay character means that the story is about being gay.

Anyway, yes, I think you're reading the wrong books.

BenPanced said:

Trust me. We eventually find those books.

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Of course. But it doesn't necessarily mean there's enough of them out there.

To coin a phrase, trust me. The market is much, much larger than as portrayed in this thread.