Why Are So Many Gay Romance Novels Wrten By Straight Women? - Electric Lerature

Contents:

• BEYOND THE CLOSET: WRG GAY CHARACTERS
• WHY ARE SO MANY GAY ROMANCE NOVELS WRTEN BY STRAIGHT WOMEN?
• HOW TO WRE LGBTQIA+ CHARACTERS: GAY MEN

BEYOND THE CLOSET: WRG GAY CHARACTERS

I sometim refer to LGBT+ as gay this post. A lot of stereotyp around gay people make to stori wrten by straight thors–the token gay iend, for example.

Instead, I want to pot you to several articl wrten by LGBT+ people who generoly offer their perspective on wrg gay characters.

WHY ARE SO MANY GAY ROMANCE NOVELS WRTEN BY STRAIGHT WOMEN?

Fally, tumblr’s miss turdle has a brilliant pilatn of rourc for wrg LGBT+ characters wh articl rangg om “How to wre gay characters mastream fictn” to “Wrg lbians when you’re not a lbian. “If you’re wrg queer characters you need to have an awarens the text of the social climate, even if the story is not ‘about’ homophobia or transphobia or their attendant vlence.

Troop, a gay protagonist, the edor jt naturally assumed the thor was gay as well. By assumg he was gay, Burt’s edor ma an unrstandable mistake, bee why, after all, would a straight man want to create a gay protagonist? An olr gay man did, as I had had many olr gay men take an tert me and my life my 20s.

Forcg gay relatnships on otherwise straight characters.

HOW TO WRE LGBTQIA+ CHARACTERS: GAY MEN

This happens a lot fanfictn – characters who are tablished by the actual work as beg straight sudnly havg a revelatn and realizg how horrible the oppose sex is and beg gay – or even takg a character’s genr exprsn and nng amok wh , cidg that they’re “really” trans. I don’t md if ’s a natural progrsn of a close relatnship, but havg two characters sudnly bee “gay for each” other whout a reason beyond shippg brgs about a mental groan whenever I see .

This is a trend I’ve noticed when readg when to straight people wrg queer characters: Men wrg lbians, and women wrg gay men, tend to oversexualize the relatnships for the straight dience.