The shitty dumbing down of 'gay literature' by straight women, exhibit #247

Fraus Takeover Bio:

As an avid reader and big romance fan myself, I love sharing the stories of the different people who live in my imagination. My stories are filled with humor, a few tears, and the underlying message to not give up hope, even in the darkest of times, because life can change on a dime when you least expect it. This theme comes from a lifetime of lessons learned on my own hard journey through the pains of poverty, the loss of more loved ones than I’d care to count, and the struggles of living through chronic illnesses. Life can be hard, but it can also be good! Through it all I’ve found that love, laughter, and family can make all the difference, and that’s what I try to bring to every tale I tell.

I’m a happily married mom with one snarky teenage boy, and three grown “kids of my heart.” I’m more widely known for my mpreg writings as Susi Hawke; this new name is a departure from that. Whether written by Susan or Susi, the books are filled with that all-important love, laughter, and family I mentioned; the only difference is that this name has no male pregnancy. I look forward to sharing my stories with you, and to bringing more romance and laughter into this world that needs it so very badly.

I would assume her market is fellow fraus like how yaoi manga is written by women for other women. I can't blame her though romance trash is easy to crank out and if you get a fanbase going, which is not particularly hard since you can start out by posting stories on fanfiction sites, you can made decent money. Amazon romance novels are the new pulp fiction.

Yes, except gay pulp fiction was lurid and camp, and had a link to the true cruelties of early gay male life.

These are straightified gay puppets serving a female gaze/masturbatory-mind fantasy that does not exist anywhere.

I read a lot of formerly gay now "MM" romance and OP is correct in saying that straight women are poison to the genre, but unfortunately they're also nearly ALL of the current authors in the genre as well. The author OP posted does it one better than just writing "MM" romance, but writes "omegaverse" romance, in which one of the "male" characters in the "gay" relationship can give birth (this particular trope almost always leads to what I call "MF fiction with the pronouns changed" MM romance, and is insufferable).

To add to OP's gripes, the other huge problem with MM right now is the frankly disgustingly large amount of "straight to gay" romance, wherein a totally "normal, non-gay, pussy crushing bro" discovers that suddenly he's now attracted to a man! How could it be?! Not only is this exploitative and low-key homophobic (sometimes blatantly homophobic), but it really reinforces the idea of gay relationships as playthings for these women, toys for them to play with before they go back to their heterosexual lives and probably vote for trump.

MM romance novels also almost exclusively feature bisexuals (much better than the icky gay people, right fellow heterosexual women?!). As you all know, the percentage of bisexuals in same-sex relationships is 8%, but in MM Romance (by women for women!) it's nearly 99%. This is also homophobic, but of course we gays are vastly outnumbered by fraus so we have no ability to dictate our own gayness in novels, so I'm forced to just deal with it and that sucks.

How can we get Amazon to reclassify these books into their own category and keep them separate from true gay fiction? Do we need to do a petition?

Is gay porn really 'literature' though?

Hardcore p orn with lesbian action is designed by straight men with straight men in mind, bearing little resemblance to the private lives of female couples.

Likewise, same-sex male softcore written by women is about women's fantasies of gay male life, not the nasty reality.

r4 Going off of r7, I noticed just a few weeks ago that despite the many MM romance novels I read, not once has a novel featured a guy on PrEP, which is telling.

The only tolerable stuff is the more hard-boiled detective stuff, unless it's Josh Lanyon (woman). Stuff by Sean Michael (woman) has just become bizarre.

All of these are predatory writers seeking to profit off the gay community by pretending to be gay men. Josh Lanyon was the worst. She claimed in her bio to be a gay man for years, until she got busted and had to own up to her lies. Women would be pissed to find out a straight man was writing their porn, impersonating a woman. They wouldn't tolerate it. African Americans aren't too fond of white people who whitesplain everything.

There's zero reason why Amazon can't verify the gender of the author and flag they're really written by a woman or a man. Any author who turns out to be a fraud should get kicked off Amazon and blacklisted.

So why don't more gay men stop bitching and start writing their own fiction?

r9 Agreed 100%, and I didn't even know that about "Josh" Lanyon. Jesus, it makes sense though, I stopped reading his/her books a few years ago because they felt off, now I know why.

The other one that I had stopped reading before the big expose of "Woman author masquerading as a man to sell gay fiction" was "santino hassell" a heterosexual women pretending to be a bisexual man writing MM, but this bitch took it further and invented a kid she was a "single father" to and actively ran a pateron grift to pay for it.

There's another one, "noah harris" whom has not yet been exposed as a women but I have no doubt that she is.

This genre is fucked, and the homophobia is disgusting.

You do have a point r7

Japanese Yaoi are produced for a mainly female audience.

Even though I don't understand a thing, I love the hand drawn watercolor style artwork.

Fuck that. I want my gay literature to have felching, breeding and seeding, fisting and prolapses.

Everything that makes the gay subculture interesting.

".. not once has a novel featured a guy on PrEP, which is telling. "

AIDS does not and has never existed in Frau Fiction Fake Fagvilles.

"I'm clean," the top says, and voila! Hot oddly described sex commences! Every fucking time in these shitty books.

It's really alarming. So many straight women are making so much money off of creating these romances using their sterotypes of what a gay man should be. I love romance and FINALLY there are some gay men actually writing them but the field is dominated by straight women. What is more troubling is that straight women prefer the ones written by women. If this was happening with ANY other group. I wish more gay men would speak up about this.

I don't think these women even write for gays, they write them for other straight women.

I said that earlier R16.

r17 and I said it first

R10, they do, but my point is they get overlooked because of the flood of shitty women-written 'romances' glut Amazon's sections and actual male-written literature gets bumped downward. These fraus have hubbies supporting them and mostly give their crap away for $1.00.

r19 But the people who buy the majority of romance novels are fraus and fraus want to read fake lovely-dovey the penis goes into the man stories and it's the women writers who are writing that shit. I don't think anyone considers that gay literature either, even the women who read them consider them trashy guilty pleasures.

Some of this, such as Josh Lanyon books, are not marketed as romance, but as murder mysteries.

The only gay fiction in my Kindle is by Chuck TIngle.

After r9 I've been looking up some gay authors' takes on the "'Josh' Lanyon is actually a hetero woman" and this blog has some really good insight into the problem which I'll quote here:

[quote]And the Cosmic Question is, if there aren’t any non-romance gay novels, are they not being written because gay authors (like me) know that the only way to make a living on gay novels is to write them as romances? Are gay men bored with gay stories, and they’ve moved on, or do they not bother because there are no gay stories that aren’t romances?

I think the answer to this question is actually quite obvious: there a fuckton more hetero women than gay men, and even the incredibly niche subset of "women who are actively reading MM romance" dwarfs the entire "gay men" set, not to say the "gay men interested in gay literature" subset.

[quote]I’m the very last person to say that Market Forces should be ignored. I Love Money. And I respect those who’ve found a way to make a mint doing something creative. But I blew my top when someone suggested that this was “cosa nostra,” Our Thing… Also, my father used to start his pompous lectures with “What you have to understand is…” So, yeah, telling me what I “don’t understand” is a trigger word for me 🙂

[quote]Those story lines that make your content richer? Those tales of the closet, of families who rejected gay children, of jobs lost, careers ruined? Those are our lives you’re writing about. I’m 52 years old. I grew up hearing that all gay people were child molesters, and AIDS is “God’s Punishment” and then after 9/11 hearing that it was the fault of the secular humanists and homosexuals… These are our lives you’re writing about. Don’t forget that you’re making a profit on someone else’s (sometimes very bad) experiences. Fine, good – treat them with respect. But don’t masquerade as someone who’s had to live through it. And for gawd’s sake, don’t try and lock us out of telling our own stories.

This, to me, is why there is a problem with heterosexual women appropriating gay romance, r20. I don't care who the audience is--it's far too blackface and minstrel for me to be okay with it morally, and personally it bothers me greatly.

100s of really good gay male writers died of AIDS. Their positions were filled by fat cat-collecting ladies who are not good writers and who think men should get pregnant.

Sadly, market forces support the female authors who write M-M romances for female audiences.

There are more straight women than gay men, a lot more by sheer numbers. So yes, the publishers and businesses that want to sell books will always give the author who writes for a large audience more support than one who writes for a smaller one... not that any authors get much support from publishers these days.

[Quote] I can't blame her though romance trash is easy to crank out and if you get a fanbase going, which is not particularly hard since you can start out by posting stories on fanfiction sites, you can made decent money.

And then before you know it, you too can have your own tv show and/or movie.

[QUOTE] To add to OP's gripes, the other huge problem with MM right now is the frankly disgustingly large amount of "straight to gay" romance, wherein a totally "normal, non-gay, pussy crushing bro" discovers that suddenly he's now attracted to a man!

That's what most DLers believe happens.

It's hard to imagine there's anything worse than Ethan Mordden's "The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man" collection of short stories.

Related thread:

Sorry but that's not gay literature.

They are romance novels writen for female readers, and they are as shitty as the romance novels with straight couples.

Gay literature is a very different thing, and there are good gay writers and good female writers with good gay novels. There are even good straight male writers with good gay novels

That's exactly what I wanted to say, R29. Those are trashy harlequin novels, not actual gay literature.

I heard a couple years ago that the market for buying new books is dominated by a majority of 42% females aged 40 and over. If that's your crowd then you have to draw.

Yes, but women read everything. You don't need a shitty romance to get women reading your novel.

But it's true that the percentage of readers has a big influence on the publishers. I remember Ross Raisin having a lot of trouble to get published A Natural even when he was a granta writer. The problem was the main character was gay, but that problem was only supposed for male readers who like soccer (the novel is on the soccer world), the problem with female readers was never the homosexuality of the main character but the soccer theme itself.

But the novel got published and got good reviews, and given the fact that it's the first of Raisin novel that gets published in my country i suppose it was successful enough

"it's the first of Raisin novel "

Que?

The first novel of Raisin. The others are not published here

Raisin in da Sun?

So recommend some decent gay literature. Any good genuine pulp out there?

We were wondering when the WHOLE Jerry Falwell Jr. story would finally be revealed. Well, here it is:

Everyone is loosing their shit over "American Dirt" but the same ones complaining are the ones writing gay male romance which they have no issue with.

We need to get it through our heads that straight people don't give a damn about us. The quicker you realize that, the better. Anything they "do for us" is for their own benefit. The gay man's only real ally is the gay man.

Gay literature is not this. If you think this is an example of gay literature you've been duped by the idiotic straight people who call shit like this gay literature. Here, let me spell it out for you:

An example of gay literature: Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

An example of a book written by women for other women: Simon Vs The Homosapien's Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Another example of gay literature: Eighty-Sixed by David Feinberg

Another example of a book written by women for other women: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Here's a tip to know if it's gay literature or not: if it's written by a woman then it is not gay literature, it is straight women writing porn for themselves.

I brought this up to a white woman saying that no white woman should be writing a story like American Dirt. I asked if she was outraged over a woman writing about two gay men's romance in Red, White, and Royal Blue. She stated that gay men aren't oppressed so, no, that was fine.

I lost my shit.

R41 This is what I mean. Straight people don't think we're oppressed or discriminated against. As I said before, the gay man's only ally is the gay men. That is how it has always been and that is how it will always be.

[quote] Here's a tip to know if it's gay literature or not: if it's written by a woman then it is not gay literature, it is straight women writing porn for themselves.

What's frustrating is that these fraus are giving a bad name to a genre where, once upon a time, women writers such as Mary Renault (The Charioteer) and Patricia Highsmith (the Ripley novels) created genuinely great literature about gay men.

R43 I don't consider Ripley to be gay literature. It was more just a thriller/crime novel with a gay main character. Gay literature has more to do specifically with the lives and struggles of gay men in my opinion. Highsmith was a wonderful writer who was amazing with representation, but I don't really think the Ripley series counts as gay literature.

Someone on another thread recommended The Nothingness Of Ben by Brad Boney. It was one of those "gay for you" books. I know the author is a man, but I have never read anything so unrealistic in my life. If anyone else has read it, am I just salty that nothing like this ever happens to me, or was that premise completely unbelieveable?

[quote] I don't consider Ripley to be gay literature.

Which is why I said: "...created genuinely great literature ABOUT gay men."

r45 The entire "gay for you/G4Y" trope is utterly ridiculous. There are not millions of straight guys just waiting to fall into sweet homosexual love when the right bottom passes them by... there's not even one. And it's always the plot of "gay bottom gets with the straight masc top" since the straight women who write the overwhelming majority of this homophobic garbage are using the gay character as a vehicle for themselves to escape the social trappings of gender. Which is sad, but straight women should look elsewhere than to appropriating an already marginalized minority just to get themselves off.

I love the idea of straight masc bottom gets with gay top more so than the other way around, it's far more interesting.

Well your in luck r48 because that's the premise of The Nothingness of Ben. And he doubles down on that, There is no real lead up. Straight guy meets gay top, decides to bottom immediately without any....other activities. Loves it "so much" from the get go. I mean, yeah, it inverts the trope, but the book was not advertised as fantasy. Maybe the whole straight bottom gets with gay top could be done well, but this author missed the mark, in my opinion.

*you're

I suggest r23 and others get over it.

Yes, it’s good to review and determine which authors are serving men well versus women, which authors are true-to-life and which authors are serving porn/romance versus realistic literature.

But I don’t see any of these people or purposes as bad. Maybe not what you want and there should be better filters/classification on Amazon.

But everyone is entitled to a fantasy life, regardless of gender, orientation or even disgusting politics.

I have violent and rape fantasies sometimes. I objectify straight men sometimes. And I’m going to keep doing it because I don’t hurt people in real life.

I need an active fantasy life just to cope with reality!

And so do those schmaltzy fraus. They just want more tenderness and devotion without disease from their love objects, it’s in their nature. So what? Let them have the fantasy. I don’t get offended when women flirt with or objectify me in real life. I’m flattered that anyone wants to use me and I’ll take support that’s harmless. I don’t care if they alter people’s sexuality in fantasy, as long as they’re not supporting churches, Republicans or ISIS who want to do it in real life.

So maybe let the fraus have their wet dreams. They pay a price when their work doesn’t reflect reality: they get reviewed as such and go down several grades from relevant literature or erotica that pleases men.

What bothers Op the most?

Another thing I want to add is that nobody should be limiting other people’s opportunities.

Truth is, sometimes women write hot, gay erotica and empathize with men realistically.

I’m not hip to the gay romance writers out there. But in porn, I know Nica Noelle at Icon Male occasionally does something hotter than most gay porn. It’s usually soap operatic cheese and pretentious nonsense. But every once in a while she does something hot.

In legit literature, Annie Proulx wrote Brokeback Mountain in a way that’s true to life and romantic.

So even those “fraus” can get it right. The ones who can’t will get a reputation.

Ahahahahaah. This is hilarious. Men have been writing and exploiting female characters for fucking EVER---for fun AND profit. Women weren't even allowed to write about their own life experiences until very recently in human history. LOL. Cry me a fucking river, gays. So tender to the touch. Mary x 1000.

[quote]There's zero reason why Amazon can't verify the gender of the author and flag they're really written by a woman or a man. Any author who turns out to be a fraud should get kicked off Amazon and blacklisted.

Oh my sides. Well now, Queen Mary! Tit for tat. I DEMAND that any book written by a male about the female experience be banned immediately. That would be millions of books written over millennia---not just a few craptastic, pulpy romance novels hawked on Amazon in the last ten years.

In fact, to be fair, let's start burning books in the streets written by anyone who does not share the exact skin color, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, religion or life experience of the characters. That sounds like a great idea don't you think?

Don’t forget the prostate. Female m/m writers are obsessed with the prostate.

While we're at it. Men (mostly gay) should not be allowed to design clothes for females. They don't understand or appreciate our bodies.

I’ve not shopped Amazon or anywhere much, R36.

But Telemachus’ website has a bunch of free erotica of, by and for gay men. Usually, they have action-adventure elements and the sex is occasionally hot. There are photo essays, too.

Telemachus, Wolfpek and Herodotus tend to have content I like, but you just have to sample authors until you find something you like.

It's not about who should be allowed or not allowed it is as the previous poster pointed out the outrage over American Dirt and NOT Red, White and Royal Blue. There are gay romances by gay men and I hope there will be more.

Just put it in its own genre (yaoi) and be done with it.

[quote]Someone on another thread recommended The Nothingness Of Ben by Brad Boney. It was one of those "gay for you" books. I know the author is a man, but I have never read anything so unrealistic in my life. If anyone else has read it, am I just salty that nothing like this ever happens to me, or was that premise completely unbelieveable?

He's not a terrible writer and is actually male, so he gets credit for that. I've actually read a few of his books, and they all have some kind of supernatural element. Silly, but diverting. And one of his later books actually subverts Nothingness of Ben being one of those "straight guy turns gay" stories.

"Cry me a fucking river, gays."

People like you are the reason I think that the DL should no longer brand itself as a gay site, R54. Black homophobes and straight female homophobes have ruined this forum and turned it into a place where gay men are no longer able to express themselves and live in peace.

Which book r61? I'll give it a read.

I think he's written five. "The Nothingness of Ben," "The Return," and "The Eskimo Slugger" are all tied into each other.

I guess who cares about spoilers. Reincarnation is a runner throughout them. The middle one has long segments set during the AIDS crisis, and is actually quite moving in parts.

I mean, this isn't literature, but it's at least written by someone who knows how a gay man thinks. And unlike most of the women, understands the mechanics of gay sex.

Although The Return also has a cameo from characters who are clearly supposed to be Willy and Fuzzy from Longtime Companion. I'm sure that flies over the head of the fraus, but it's kind of cringe-y if you know what you're looking at.

Not true, r47.

Tons of woman-oriented men DO fall for the right twink now and then. Especially in prison!

Most every straight guy has their Brad Pitt / Tom Brady / Jon Stamos “Hall Pass,” the honest ones talk about it. And Kinsey found that 38% of men had a homosexual encounter in their ADULT lifetimes.

OK, I will withhold all further judgement until I read the others, but would you still maintain that The Nothingness of Ben---as a stand alone novel---accurately portrays a gay "romance"?

[quote]Tons of woman-oriented men DO fall for the right twink now and then. Especially in prison!

Why are you looking at me?

[quote]OK, I will withhold all further judgement until I read the others, but would you still maintain that The Nothingness of Ben---as a stand alone novel---accurately portrays a gay "romance"?

Of the three in that series, it's definitely the weakest. But I don't think it's without merit. But an accurate romance? Probably not.

Aaron Hernandez was a closeted gay.

What is "decent money," r2?

How much do these "novels" pay?

Publishers like the now-dying gay romance house DreamSpinner Press (who have bilked 100s of authors of royalties) pay a $500 advance against royalties, which get a few hundred a year. Ebooks sell ten times more than paperbacks, but the author gets less than 50 cents an ebook.

Small Presses like GreyWolf, University of Wisconsin, etc. pay $2000-$5000. Some offer a prize and only publish a few award-winners a years for $2000-$5000.

Upper-level houses like Penguin advance anywhere from $5000 to $50,000 (for name authors of mainstream genres; mystery, crime, straight romance, etc.

Big houses contract with celebrities through their agents for anywhere from $50,000 to a few million. Add another $50K or more for film rights.

I must admit, r47, that almost all of the bisexual or "straight" men who do switch sides and fuck men in real life DO NOT fall in love and live happily ever after.

The "straight" / bi guys are just looking for a cum dump! They don't really have the capacity to fall in love with other men. Especially when women are plentiful. They also prefer female spouses because of homophobia, a desire to have kids and the pressure to conform with society.

So switching genders for love and relationships in these novels is bullshit and something that female sexuality is more capable of in real life.

Note the Harry Styles lookalike on the cover. Many Larries have published their explicit fics with names, but not appearances, changed.

Isn't the real problem, r25, that gay men would rather WATCH their porn than read it?

Romance novels and elaborate stories are the female version of porn in the first place. Female pathology is more interested in story, character and consummate devotion than male sexual pathology, which is physically focused.

Once in a while, I go searching for gay erotica because it can do fantasy, illustration, animation or odyssey better than porn videos. But i know the market for Male-for-Males erotica must be minuscule.

I guess the gay men complaining here are looking for real literature that has some gay sex and romance, but not Harlequinn romance novels and the problem is there is no sorting the different genres?

[quote] I guess the gay men complaining here are looking for real literature that has some gay sex and romance, but not Harlequinn romance novels and the problem is there is no sorting the different genres?

That's precisely the issue, r75. My favorite fiction genre is historical tales; but if I go searching for "gay history novels" at Amazon, 99% of the results are M/M books written by women for women. I'm looking for something like "At Swim, Two Boys," not "Smoke & Mirrors: A Gay Historical Romance (Gilded Lily Book 1)."

^There's an extraordinarily long gay "historical" (starts during the British age of exploration and follows a Royal Navy sailor moving up the ranks) novel at Gayauthors. I read a lot of it but it started to become too repetitive for me after a while. Might interest you.

r75 I agree 100% with r76 that the sorting is the problem. In addition to what r76 said about amazon, they (or maybe the "authors" themselves) routinely classify MMF, bisexual, and sometimes even MFF or FF(!) as "gay fiction." Amazon has tags for lesbian, bisexual, etc, yet you'll see at least one of the previously mentioned NOT gay fiction tagged as gay fiction nonetheless.

Authors self select their tags on Amazon. They get to choose 6 keywords from a list.

r79 Well then, that's strong supporting evidence for the "shitty dumbing down of 'gay literature' by straight women" theory.

And by:

[quote]yet you'll see at least one of the previously mentioned NOT gay fiction tagged as gay fiction nonetheless.

I meant:

[quote]yet you'll see at least one of the previously mentioned NOT gay fiction tagged as gay fiction PER PAGE nonetheless.