This is so brilliant! Thank you (straight female author here)
Well, I gotta newsflash for you: when I handed over a copy of The Beautiful Room Is Empty and told my teenaged customer, "this book won a Lambda award, and it's about a gay character and the author is gay," -- maybe that statement would mean nothing to you, Ms Straight Writer Who Bemoans Being Excluded -- but you better fucking believe it meant everything to that kid.
Yes! This!
I said something like this in my blog last year (http://logophilos.net/blather/?p=456) when a huge fight broke out on Dear Author (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/11/18/does-an-author-have-to-live-it-to-write-it/) over whether authors needed to live it to write it (no, they don't of course). Gay romance became the focus, and it was apparently insanely difficult to get people to distinguish between books *about* gay people, and those *by* and *for* gay people, and why authenticity mattered more in some cases than in others. A number of GLBT authors and bloggers - the same ones leading the anti LLA charge now in fact - confused the issue by claiming all that mattered was the book. But I didn't agree with them, and don't now, and you've just crystallized why
When a minority group is looking for a genuine expression of genuine experience, it doesn't matter how good an imitiation is. It's *not* what they need or want. Too many of my fellow m/m authors think all that matters is 'fooling' people.
I want to write gay people authentically and respectfully. But I never want anyone to think I'm speaking *as* a gay person, because that's a crock.
I support the LLF and the LLAs and what they're trying to do. They might have done it clumsily or whatever but their goals are unarguable, at least to me.
no subject
Yes! This!
I said something like this in my blog last year (http://logophilos.net/blather/?p=456) when a huge fight broke out on Dear Author (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/11/18/does-an-author-have-to-live-it-to-write-it/) over whether authors needed to live it to write it (no, they don't of course). Gay romance became the focus, and it was apparently insanely difficult to get people to distinguish between books *about* gay people, and those *by* and *for* gay people, and why authenticity mattered more in some cases than in others. A number of GLBT authors and bloggers - the same ones leading the anti LLA charge now in fact - confused the issue by claiming all that mattered was the book. But I didn't agree with them, and don't now, and you've just crystallized why
When a minority group is looking for a genuine expression of genuine experience, it doesn't matter how good an imitiation is. It's *not* what they need or want. Too many of my fellow m/m authors think all that matters is 'fooling' people.
I want to write gay people authentically and respectfully. But I never want anyone to think I'm speaking *as* a gay person, because that's a crock.
I support the LLF and the LLAs and what they're trying to do. They might have done it clumsily or whatever but their goals are unarguable, at least to me.