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.
