Odd thoughts knocking around
Nov. 12th, 2013 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdMay be offensive
The usual "Women writing gay men is appropriative" stuff is going around.
And a gay friend was shocked to find out I don't consider men when writing same-sex romance. For me, m/m romance is a LESBIAN encounter. I am a woman, writing for the erotic pleasure of women readers. I choose to convey this pleasure through male bodies, since the female body is marginalized, the words to describe it are silly or crude, and most of us have body issues and sex issues. We are used to identifying with male protagonists, and so, the maleness of the characters is no big deal. In fact, the simplicity of the penis and the straightforwardness of male orgasm allows a very safe space to explore our own complicated sexuality.
I've also been having qualms about writing men. Just in general. It comes under author responsibility issues. I have a responsibility to my reader to get the details right.
So why am I making men palatable to women?
One in three people--regardless of gender--in a romantic relationship with a man reports domestic violence. (I found that stat years ago, when someone was arguing that 1/3 gay men abuses their partners. I found the stat was the same for heterosexual couples, but nobody liked the idea that the problem factor was simply being in a relationship with a man.)
Intimate partner violence is 22% of the violent crime committed against women. (1)
25% of women report having been raped. In my experience--real life, online and across many states and countries--the number of women raped (defined here as sexual penetration of the body by genitals, hands or objects without the penetrated one's consent) or molested (defined here as any sexual contact with a child incapable of consent) is 85%. In my husband's experience, it's 100%.
Between 1200 and 1600 women are murdered every year by their partners. The number for men has fallen sharply from 1300 in 1976 to about 500 in 1998. (1)
These things alone would argue that no, I shouldn't be writing about men for women.
(1) http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ipv.pdf
I know there are good men. I know there are kind and loving men. But all I ever seem to hear about are the kind who want control.
They don't love their wives. Their daughters are property.
The behavior of their women is a point of honor with them, regardless of religion (although this is primarily found in monotheistic fundamentalist circles in ALL three Abrahamics)
And even those who do care about the women in their lives seldom realize exactly how they treat them. (most often it's as an appliance with sex settings)
My mother was telling me about lobotomies. How they were commonly done on difficult housewives, turning them into order-following drones. My response was "We're lucky any woman escaped the 50s with a functioning brain." I read The Stepford Wives as horror, as a prediction of what most men would prefer in their women.
"Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. (I love that wonderful rhetorical device, "a male friend of mine." It's often used by female journalists when they want to say something particularly bitchy but don't want to be held responsible for it themselves. It also lets people know that you do have male friends, that you aren't one of those fire-breathing mythical monsters, The Radical Feminists, who walk around with little pairs of scissors and kick men in the shins if they open doors for you. "A male friend of mine" also gives--let us admit it--a certain weight to the opinions expressed.) So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.
--Atwood, Margaret, Writing the Male Character (1982)
These are thoughts that bother me as I write male characters. I am making men palatable to their prey.
The usual "Women writing gay men is appropriative" stuff is going around.
And a gay friend was shocked to find out I don't consider men when writing same-sex romance. For me, m/m romance is a LESBIAN encounter. I am a woman, writing for the erotic pleasure of women readers. I choose to convey this pleasure through male bodies, since the female body is marginalized, the words to describe it are silly or crude, and most of us have body issues and sex issues. We are used to identifying with male protagonists, and so, the maleness of the characters is no big deal. In fact, the simplicity of the penis and the straightforwardness of male orgasm allows a very safe space to explore our own complicated sexuality.
I've also been having qualms about writing men. Just in general. It comes under author responsibility issues. I have a responsibility to my reader to get the details right.
So why am I making men palatable to women?
One in three people--regardless of gender--in a romantic relationship with a man reports domestic violence. (I found that stat years ago, when someone was arguing that 1/3 gay men abuses their partners. I found the stat was the same for heterosexual couples, but nobody liked the idea that the problem factor was simply being in a relationship with a man.)
Intimate partner violence is 22% of the violent crime committed against women. (1)
25% of women report having been raped. In my experience--real life, online and across many states and countries--the number of women raped (defined here as sexual penetration of the body by genitals, hands or objects without the penetrated one's consent) or molested (defined here as any sexual contact with a child incapable of consent) is 85%. In my husband's experience, it's 100%.
Between 1200 and 1600 women are murdered every year by their partners. The number for men has fallen sharply from 1300 in 1976 to about 500 in 1998. (1)
These things alone would argue that no, I shouldn't be writing about men for women.
(1) http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ipv.pdf
I know there are good men. I know there are kind and loving men. But all I ever seem to hear about are the kind who want control.
They don't love their wives. Their daughters are property.
The behavior of their women is a point of honor with them, regardless of religion (although this is primarily found in monotheistic fundamentalist circles in ALL three Abrahamics)
And even those who do care about the women in their lives seldom realize exactly how they treat them. (most often it's as an appliance with sex settings)
My mother was telling me about lobotomies. How they were commonly done on difficult housewives, turning them into order-following drones. My response was "We're lucky any woman escaped the 50s with a functioning brain." I read The Stepford Wives as horror, as a prediction of what most men would prefer in their women.
"Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. (I love that wonderful rhetorical device, "a male friend of mine." It's often used by female journalists when they want to say something particularly bitchy but don't want to be held responsible for it themselves. It also lets people know that you do have male friends, that you aren't one of those fire-breathing mythical monsters, The Radical Feminists, who walk around with little pairs of scissors and kick men in the shins if they open doors for you. "A male friend of mine" also gives--let us admit it--a certain weight to the opinions expressed.) So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.
--Atwood, Margaret, Writing the Male Character (1982)
These are thoughts that bother me as I write male characters. I am making men palatable to their prey.
