Women Writing Gay Fiction

Why would a straight woman want to write novels about homosexual men?

I pondered this question myself until I read a few… now I’m hooked.

It's like straight men who like to watch lesbian porn. We are voyeurs looking in a window of something we cannot take part and in reality most of us wouldn’t want to but it is still titillating. There are no women in the way, only hot guys and who could complain about that?

There’s nothing wrong with female/male romance my house is full of them as well but male/male romances are different. You are probably thinking, well duh but aside from the obvious body parts and how they fit together the emotions are different. They don’t have the cattiness and mind games you find in your typical romance with a female main character. Women think differently (again, obviously), they don’t behave the same way and there isn’t the same chemistry. 

How do gay men feel about reading fiction written by straight women? 

Most of them love it at least the well written books. I’ve read many reviews and comments by men that are positive. When you have more writers you have more books and a greater variety to choose from so the majority of guys aren’t complaining.

With that said there are a few gay men who aren’t happy about it and refuse to read anything written by a woman but these guys are in the minority. Huffington Post has an article written by an angry gay man who is unhappy with women encroaching upon their domain. You can’t please everyone.

The few that scoff are of the opinion a straight woman can’t possibly know what a homosexual male feels much less thinks and they are correct but most authors must get enough of it right otherwise men wouldn’t read them at all. 

Sneaky Writers

Some female writers use a male sounding pseudonym and give a vague bio so that people might not notice. The guys that are adamant at only reading work written by men may be misled into buying their work but in the end it never works. Eventually the truth comes out and in my opinion they are better off being honest. There are enough readers out there that don’t care if the books are written by a squirrel in the woods as long as it’s a good story.

Who wants a pissed off reader? When feeling deceived they may give a bad review out of spite even if the story is good and none of us needs a bad review.

And speaking of reviews it appears that a large number of the readers are also women unless the male readers are too busy to write a review.

It’s kind of like men who write romance novels for women. Some use a fake name but these days it isn’t really that important. Most people have tossed out prejudices and don’t care who wrote what as long as the book is good.

Acceptance

With more m/m novels saturating the market it’s kind of like gay marriage and other equality issues. The more you see the more mainstream it becomes. I’m not saying there won’t still be those ignorant people who bash, snub and are otherwise rude. We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day. What I’m saying is when you see more of something it becomes normal. Look at interracial marriage and multicultural schools. Once we rub elbows with people who are different we don’t notice their differences quite so much.