Time for a 101 Class
Feb. 25th, 2015 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdAll right. Another day, another article expressing shock and surprise.
Let me walk you through Male-male Romance 101
1) Most of the readers, about 90%, are women. Male readers have been slow to adopt the genre. It was not created for them. It is not targeted to them. Women, studies show, read more than men anyway.
2) Most of the writers are women. M/m romance comes out of slash fiction, created by female fans in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, fans started their own presses, began publishing original slash-style fiction. Some male writers of gay romance have started drifting over to genre, tired of having their work whacked to nothing more than anonymous sex scenes by editors.
3) Most of the female writers are straight, but a significant portion, about 30%, are bi or lesbian. This is based on numbers from a survey done in Buffy fandom around 2002. These numbers may have changed. There are a few genderqueer writers in there as well.
4) Many of the writers are married and have kids. Nothing about being a mother makes you automatically hate sex.
5) Most of the publishing houses are owned by women.
In short: This is a genre created by women, written by women, published by women, for women readers. We use male bodies, as media has taught us, to tell stories, because they come unfreighted with all the baggage of female bodies. We write sex because we like sex. A good portion of us find men sexually attractive and understand what sex with a man is like.
Now, can we move on to other discussion rather than the "Why do women like this stuff, hyuck, hyuck?"
Let me walk you through Male-male Romance 101
1) Most of the readers, about 90%, are women. Male readers have been slow to adopt the genre. It was not created for them. It is not targeted to them. Women, studies show, read more than men anyway.
2) Most of the writers are women. M/m romance comes out of slash fiction, created by female fans in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, fans started their own presses, began publishing original slash-style fiction. Some male writers of gay romance have started drifting over to genre, tired of having their work whacked to nothing more than anonymous sex scenes by editors.
3) Most of the female writers are straight, but a significant portion, about 30%, are bi or lesbian. This is based on numbers from a survey done in Buffy fandom around 2002. These numbers may have changed. There are a few genderqueer writers in there as well.
4) Many of the writers are married and have kids. Nothing about being a mother makes you automatically hate sex.
5) Most of the publishing houses are owned by women.
In short: This is a genre created by women, written by women, published by women, for women readers. We use male bodies, as media has taught us, to tell stories, because they come unfreighted with all the baggage of female bodies. We write sex because we like sex. A good portion of us find men sexually attractive and understand what sex with a man is like.
Now, can we move on to other discussion rather than the "Why do women like this stuff, hyuck, hyuck?"
