At one point in my life I was dressing a statue as a part of a day that included so many impossible things. The owner of the statue looked at me and said, "If you put today in a book, no one would believe you. [Famous literary author he knew] said he was always criticized as fantastic for the the things that came straight from his experience."
Fiction is generally a pack of lies, especially when it is most True.
As with you, the thing that struck out most was this: In other words, this response suggests that "real" gayness is reached through experience of victimization. The full experience of being gay involves discrimination, from mild to extreme. The full experience of being female involves sexism, from mild to extreme, and the constant potential threat of rape. (Yes, men can be raped, and it sometimes happens as part of harassment of gay men--just as much an expression of power as raping a woman. Statistically, it's less likely.) So when a male author writes a convincing female character, do we discount it because he hasn't experienced sexism? Or because he's a male writer, do women read the unconscious sexism in male character behavior and that helps us mark the character as realistic? Or if the writer has written an idealized world where sexism does not exist, do we believe the character because it is what we would want the world to be?
Men have written successfully from a (straight) female point of view. Women have written successfully from a (straight) male point of view. Why does it seem so wildly unlikely that straight woman could write from a gay male point of view? There's a valid argument that gay men are not women with dicks, and a lot of female m/m romance writers tend to do something like that. The earliest slash I read was rife with feminization of characters. Men can be emotionally vulnerable, but they don't generally express it in traditionally feminine ways. And not all men are the same. And, and... The experience of victimization is a part of what makes up the character of any gay person. That cannot be denied. The story may not always require depicting that part of a gay person's life. But when it should, then it should.
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Date: 25 Oct 2010 03:00 pm (UTC)Fiction is generally a pack of lies, especially when it is most True.
As with you, the thing that struck out most was this: In other words, this response suggests that "real" gayness is reached through experience of victimization. The full experience of being gay involves discrimination, from mild to extreme. The full experience of being female involves sexism, from mild to extreme, and the constant potential threat of rape. (Yes, men can be raped, and it sometimes happens as part of harassment of gay men--just as much an expression of power as raping a woman. Statistically, it's less likely.) So when a male author writes a convincing female character, do we discount it because he hasn't experienced sexism? Or because he's a male writer, do women read the unconscious sexism in male character behavior and that helps us mark the character as realistic? Or if the writer has written an idealized world where sexism does not exist, do we believe the character because it is what we would want the world to be?
Men have written successfully from a (straight) female point of view. Women have written successfully from a (straight) male point of view. Why does it seem so wildly unlikely that straight woman could write from a gay male point of view? There's a valid argument that gay men are not women with dicks, and a lot of female m/m romance writers tend to do something like that. The earliest slash I read was rife with feminization of characters. Men can be emotionally vulnerable, but they don't generally express it in traditionally feminine ways. And not all men are the same. And, and... The experience of victimization is a part of what makes up the character of any gay person. That cannot be denied. The story may not always require depicting that part of a gay person's life. But when it should, then it should.
Rambling post rambles. Sorry.