Are gay male stories only marketable when written by women?
With the massive popularity of stories like Love, Simon and Heartstopper, critiques have popped up about them being written by women – especially straight women. The critiques on straight women writing queer stories became so loud that some authors have felt pressured to identify their sexualities publicly — sometimes before they'd even processed their sexualities for themselves.
Author and YouTuber Savy Writes Books launched a recent conversation about the topic on Threads with her own "Pride month hot take."
"The 'straight women are dominating MM [male-on-male] fiction!!' is a moral panic rooted in misogyny," she wrote. "Let's look at some examples, all of authors I LOVE. Hank Green was still publicly identifying as straight when he wrote his FF [female-on-female] series (which I loved), and nobody ever got mad at him for being a straight man writing FF with a bisexual FMC [female main character]. Nobody demanded he come out of the closet, and he got to do so on his own terms, when he was ready."
She gave the examples of Becky Albertalli, Casey McQuiston, and Alice Oseman, who wrote Love, Simon, Red White and Royal Blue, and Heartstopper, respectively. "All these authors were presumed to be cishet women, then were harassed for writing MM fiction, harassed to the point of feeling pressured to out themselves. That is not safe or okay."
Men continue to dominate the film industry, even when it comes to female-centered films. "Men lead the exploitative lesbian porn industry, creating it for a straight male gaze," she says. Ultimately, she's calling for readers to stop policing authors' sexualities and just enjoy the book.
"My point is, stop wasting time speculating which authors might be cishet women and just read some queer books. You never know who is straight or who is cis. You never know what someone might be questioning. There is LITERALLY no way for you to know that about an author. And accept that some of this stems from James Somerton style queer misogyny. Because it does. Signed, A very queer woman who writes FF, MM, and more.