Anonymous #1 3w

idk. I think it depends HOW it’s written. reading and writing are about empathy, being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. there’s absolutely NO issue with someone writing a character that’s a trait they aren’t as long as they’ve done their research and can genuinely portray being that trait accurately

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Anonymous OP 3w

The main issues I have with it is over saturation and people just not writing said perspectives well. Examples of badly done perspectives are A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. As for over saturation, and example to use is MM romances. Likely around ninety to ninety five percent of MM romance novels are written by people who aren’t queer men, so the market is overwhelmingly full of books starring queer men who aren’t actually queer men at all and don’t (1/2)

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Anonymous #1 3w

? then maybe queer men need to start writing books about queer men. if non queer men didn’t write books about them then they’d be severely underrepresented in books and then people would complain about that

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Anonymous #1 3w

Who aren’t written by queer men and don’t understand queer men at all.*

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Anonymous OP 3w

The thing is that queer men DO write these books but we’re not supported or represented by publishers a lot of the time

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Anonymous OP 3w

Plenty of queer men write about queer men, they just don’t get nearly the same traction as straight women writing about queer men

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Anonymous #1 3w

idk that this can be an excuse anymore. you have self publishing, you can market yourself on social media. also publishing houses really aren’t “we only publish cis white men” anyone bc they KNOW there’s a market for other authors

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Anonymous #2 3w

highly disagree considering I’ve read a lot of LGBTQ books and the ones about gay men are 99% of the time written about gay men. sounds like you’re only looking for the MM books written by women which is more of a you problem than a society or publishing agency problem

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Anonymous OP 3w

That’s not the case at all. I have to go out of my way time and time again to find books by queer men. It’s exhausting but I do it constantly. I can only name a few queer men writers in the MM romance genre, as compared to dozens of women. I’ve literally had to start compiling a list because queer men are so rarely authors that I write down their names so I can know them. Achillean literature is dominated by women, to the point where MM is still considered a “women’s genre.”

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Anonymous #1 3w

?? you just told me that there’s lots of queer male authors (in response to me saying women and straight men have to take over in order for queer men to be represented in literature) and now you’re saying “I can only make a few queer men writers” which one is it. I’m also not even sure why you’re arguing about this at all considering it’s not the topic. it’s like men talking about themselves on a topic about women. this is a different topic which needs to be it’s own post

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Anonymous #1 3w

also, again, just bc YOU only know a few queer male authors in this genre doesn’t mean only a few exist. again, the problem is what YOU are looking for and how you’re looking for it, not a publishing house issue. but, also again, this isn’t even what I was talking about and I don’t really appreciate my topic being ignored to speak about a non issue

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Anonymous #1 3w

if a woman refuses to read a book just bc it’s written by a man, she needs to get a grip. if a gay person refuses to read a book just bc it’s written by a straight person, they need to get a grip. and I’m not even talking about men writing female MC or women writing MM MC, although (as long as the character is written well) I also think not reading it for this reason is also dumb and the person with this mindset needs to get a grip

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Anonymous OP 3w

I didn’t say lots, I just said that they’re there. It’s taken me years to get to the point where I have a list, and I can’t even confirm that all of them are even men. I care because I am a queer man and I want to find books written by men like me. And yeah, we can go back to the original topic. Yes, it can be a little odd, but I think it can be justified in certain circumstances. Art and artist cannot always be separated.

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Anonymous OP 3w

And to use an example for your topic, let’s say sci fi/fantasy. Both are very much dominated by straight cis white men, and are generally about straight cis white men. So if someone were to specifically go for books not written by men or not by white people, etc, especially as an act of resistance, I think that’s very respectable

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Anonymous #1 3w

you’re trying too hard. listen to what I say and don’t say “but what about.” there’s clearly bad male authors. you don’t have to read them. but not reading a book just bc it’s written by a male author. what’s the point? how does that benefit the world in any way? it’s causing more harm to you (by missing many great books) for absolutely zero benefit

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Anonymous #1 3w

what is the resistance? it’s unbelievably performative to not read any books by white people just bc they’re white. how is it benefiting the world at all? it’s not. all you’re doing is stopping yourself from reading many great books bc you wanted to feel like you were doing something grand. just read books by poc AND white people and move on. you can support poc authors WHILE reading and books by white authors

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Anonymous OP 3w

I dont see how it does any harm at all. If someone doesn’t want to support white authors or men authors, then they can do that. It doesn’t matter if they’re missing out on “good books,” there are other books out there by people they want to focus on. They may be much harder to find, but they’re there. Representation in both writing and authorship can be very important to those who are marginalized.

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Anonymous #1 3w

that’s weird as fuck like actually. if you can’t read a book just bc it’s written by a man (or any other fill in the blank) you need to put your phone down, touch grass, and talk to a person face to face bc that’s next level of chronically online. if you can’t see how it harms someone then idk what to tell you. you don’t have to avoid a whole group of authors to support another group of authors. doing so is performative and pathetic asf and I have things to do besides argue basic life skills1

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Anonymous OP 3w

-so this is the last thing I’m saying on the topic. I really won’t hear any argument otherwise bc there’s zero GOOD reason to not read books just bc they’re written by someone different than you. that’s like white people refusing to read a book by a poc author. literally what’s the point. you’re lacking empathy if you can’t read a book written by someone different from you

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