[hildea]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

My only problem with gay romance is that it is overwhelmingly written by women, often for women.

I'm not a believer in cultural appropriation. Anybody should be able to write about anybody. But if you go to Amazon's best sellers in gay fiction, of the top 50 books there are five male authors. That does bother me.

I agree that's a problem. Like you, I don't think it's wrong for authors to write about people who are different from themselves (although they should make a serious effort to be knowledgeable and respectful), but I do think it's a problem that voices from minority authors get drowned out by the majority. This drowning out is made worse because the more privileged authors tend to get more and better publication deals and more PR, including when they write about less privileged people.

I try to counter it by seeking out books by authors who aren't cis and straight. I also know that queer romances where the protagonists aren't cis gay men get less attention, so I try to look for that as well.

There are also a pretty big elephant in the room regarding objectification.

Alexis Hall (he writes queer romance) has written some thoughtprovoking articles about this issue, including this one.

Originally Posted by Alexis Hall

I genuinely cannot reconcile the idea that readers of LGBT fiction are blind to the genders of the protagonists of their love stories with the industry reality that well over 90% of LGBT romance is m/m, and a very particular type of m/m. By my limited understanding of the market, the overwhelmingly popular books in the genre are about kink, college boys, shifters or soldiers, and involve conventionally attractive white protagonists. I do not think there is anything wrong with people liking what they like, and reading what they read, but these trends do not to me reveal a market that is primarily interested in challenging normative ideas about romantic relationships. It certainly doesn’t look like a market which is incompatible with material that could be seen as objectifying or fetishising.

...

M/m fiction, and LGBT fiction in general, has the capacity to be extremely powerful in promoting LGBT rights, particularly in promoting the normalisation of same-sex relationships. But this does not mean that it is never possible for m/m fiction or LGBT fiction to be harmful, marginalising or undermining. M/m fiction has the potential to be a tremendous force for good, but the very fact that some of the people it is supposed to be good for feel marginalised and excluded by it suggests that the genre as a whole has some way to go before it lives up to that potential.

Originally Posted by Logseman

I'm a bloke and I want to read romance: I also expect the writer to try to spin a story. These days, the only chance I'm not thrown some millionaire (or even billionaire) with a sob story/score to settle is to sidestep the guys altogether and go for lesbian romance. Carsen Taite, for example, doesn't necessarily throw me more interesting romances (although in a good day she can), but usually the whole setups on how characters have to navigate legal mazes are credible and well done.

Thanks, I'll seek out Taite.

Originally Posted by Logseman

Love is complicated and messy because our lives are complicated and messy, which is partly due to the rules we have to follow and the fetters we have as members of a society. I can't really care about a fellow (or a gal) with more money than God who can buy their way off most problems, because then it's clear that the problems are of their own making and all the book is superfluously waiting until they snap off their funk.

You might like Meet Cute Club, by Jack Harbon -- not a millionaire in sight (although admittedly a lot of the couple's problems are from their own emotions and hangups).