I google that stuff. All i get under gay male is hook up sites and porn sites. Wheres the "gay life" sites?
I beg thee for links.
I see now my first post sounded whiney. Sorry about that.
Hey so several of the writers posted being gay isn't a big part of their identity.
That makes me wonder now. Since there are many writing associations that do organize for women exclusively and other minority writers exclusively, and writers tend to be at the forefront of social change, and gay writers don't see the need any longer to organize as gay anything since thats not the key to our identity - if our identities are assimilated within ourselves and the mainstream -
why am I seeing so much stuff in the media about gay marriage, gay rights, boy scouts not letting gays participate etc?
oh my god gayauthors.org on the surface that looks awesome how the heck did you find that? when I google "gay fiction" i got everything but gayauthors.org. Can't wait to look at this. Thank you very much.
The "lesbian writers and lesbian fiction" troubles me. Once again thats women only which goes right to my point. definitely women gather and discuss so its pretty inevitable gay women will do so as well. the organizing of males exclusively has been so demonized as male chauvinistic and discriminatory against women, that men are trained to avoid doing so. The best men can hope for is to be included in co-ed gay forums.
I'm not sure if gayauthors.org includes such co-ed forums for discussion but I sure hope so. I'm certainly going to investigate the site thanks again.
Unimportant, I think I'm after "The International Gay Writer's Guild". I'm after "Blah Blah Lake, a retreat for gay people (of both sexes)" I'm after gay writer's groups. I'm after "a show case of gay writers at the blah blah writer's Center" Not lesbian writers for any of the above. Gay and Lesbian writers for any of the above. I'm after gay literature with topics outside of the gay stereotypes. I'm after the "Gay Memoir Project"
I'm after gay forums where people provide anecdotes of the small moments in their lives where they remember its great to be gay, where its great to be married and other gay people bounce off that.
I think we've conceded AW doesn't ahve much action in that regard and thats fine, since it is a writing forum and we should concentrate on writing. Fair enough and thats correct.
But all the examples I give two paragraphs above are institutional examples of how other minority writers organize and share and network as writers. And those minority retreats, those minority organizations are seeing a lot of action.
Thats what I'm after. Not political action where we're chasing monetary benefits equal to the monetary benefits of straight people. I know we're already doing that.
I mean sharing our assimilation with each other, emotional networking with each other the way other minorities, through blogging, through conferencing, through retreats, through organizations acknowledge and treasure our unique gay identity.
Thats what I'm after.
Okay, I think I see the problem. Well, problems.
And they're much smaller, less insidious, less broad, and more fixable than you think.
Problem #1: A tendency to interpret a very small number of results as the majority of the world. (Because a few people here said that their QUILTBAG-ness is not that huge a part of their identity, you've interpreted that as "ALL gay people don't feel it's a huge part of their identity." Likewise, I'm assuming that the small number of search results you got when you looked for groups was interpreted as "there are no such things in the world.")
Problem #2: A lack of search engine skills.
Of course you're going to get porn if you search for something as broad as "gay male." That term is so general as to be useless to you. Likewise, "International Gay Writers Guild" is so specific as to be useless, unless that exact thing exists with that exact wording--but wording can be so variable. You need an in-between--terms specific enough to find what you're after, but not so specific as to be uselessly exclusive. I also suspect that you give up too fast, without changing the wording of your search terms, which can vary the results.
Search for things like "gay writers group" or "lgbt retreat" or "gay retreat" "gay mens retreat" "gay discussion boards" or "gay life forum" or "gay travel" or "lgbt community forum" or use terms like "lgbt community" in relation to your specific location. (Unimportant already gave you some awesome links for things
) Even if you search "gay writers," which is quite broad, you come up with gayauthors.org and gaywritingtoday.com (along with lists of great gay authors, and also a bunch of irrelevant stuff, as is always the way with search engines). I even found
a workshop for gay and queer writing students in Seattle, run by The Bent Writing Institute, by searching "gay writing showcase."
Saying that such things don't exist because you don't search for them properly is like saying there's no such thing as an Irish Car Bomb Cupcake because I can't find any when I search for "cupcakes." But
they certainly exist...
Don't be so quick to judge the world, eh? There's so much out there. There's always more than you think. It can be hard, when all you see in your immediate area are closed doors. I succumb to that mindset sometimes, myself, and it's usually to my detriment when I do. But, well,
frog in a well, know what I mean?
But, back to the original point, as others have already pointed out: You're welcome to discuss stuff here if you want.