#why can’t y’all ever be normal about mlm relationships

[catboyglover]

the way every mlm ship inevitably falls victim to the “uwu hyperfeminine soft boy” x “𝖎’𝖑𝖑 𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖊𝖈𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖓.” fandom characterization

[colorisbyshe]

(1/2) I, a known gay, was reading a LAMDA winning literary collection of mlm erotica (as one does) and I noticed something... In this and other books on mlm sex/romance, there are female authors that are known for only writing mlm relationships. So, this "women write only slashfic" thing isn't just a fandom thing, as I'd previously thought. And I was wondering... why??? I understand it happening in fanfic because 99.9% of media centers on male characters.

(2/2) But in original media? You have the opportunity to write about women and you just don't?? Why? Also, these authors often use "male sounding" aliases, and that's shady and misleading and it bothers me for some reason. Why do you think this happens? It's not straight women only, it's wlw too, which is even weirder to me. I'm not saying women can't write about men or shaking my fist at the heavens while shouting WOMEN! under heavy rain, btw. But it's still weird...          

Because women are raised to central the narrative of our actual, lived lives around men, so it’s not surprising that women end up writing fictional narratives around fictional men. It really is that simple. It’s why a lot of books written by women are still... about men.

Making it gay is just to tap into a more relatable narrative because homophobia is steeped in and connected to misogyny, so it’s a “conflict” women can relate to. If they’re straight, they obviously cannot fully relate to it and obviously they are responsible in creating and upholding it, but I think this is part of why “(straight or otherwise) woman/gay man solidarity” is somewhat of a thing, besides the shared cultural space.

It’s also a way to perhaps write content sort of distanced from themselves--like romance and sex without having to think about women having sex and romance, which is something all women are shamed for wanting. Like, gay women might write about gay relationships to be able to explore “gay themes,” without really having to introspect on their own gayness and interest in women.

Of course, this doesn’t fully excuse that. Like, if a straight woman has made her entire career on writing gay content, especially gay porn, we should definitely take a step back and be wary of that because she is exploiting a market that perhaps doesn’t have many other options.

But it’s also like.... really hard for me to prioritize this as an important issue as someone who recognizes that women consistently live lives where often 90% of the media we consume about women was written, directed, produced, published, and/or edited by men. Y’unno? Most LGBT movies are produced or directed or written by straight people (often straight men). Most content... in general is written by cishet (and especially white) men, including those with LGBT themes or about women or about trauma or literally any topic you can think of.

So it’s really... it’s hard for me to like give a lot of fucks when suddenly it’s women writing about men, even if it is gay men. Especially since as much as straight women oppress gay men, gay men oppress straight women back, so it’s like... here we have women, dedicating their entire careers to creating and humanizing gay characters, oh god the horror except not really. I don’t like... care. Especially since the reason they’re writing about gay men and not gay women is because of misogyny and because they care about men more than women because that’s how they were raised to prioritize people. Hell, writing about gay men might be a way for straight women to ONLY write about men without ever having to care about women characters.

Because let’s be honest, unless it’s super fetishizing, straight up PWP, even in “erotica,” women go out of their way to make you care about the characters, the men, and see them as more than “fucked” and “fucker,” y’unno?

It’s why Queer Porn for the Straight Girl can’t ever be compared to lesbian porn by and for men, especially since a lot of gay content (like fic) written by women is consumed and enjoyed by gay men as accurate or at least enjoyable reflections of their lives. While sometimes when I read fic/published work I can immediately sniff out the hetero behind the scenes, it’s normally just a couple times while reading and not like... “Oh, this is completely homophobic and dehumanizing writing.”

And I think we should maybe respond to this “issue” of gay content written by straight women by prioritizing finding content by LGBT people (whether it focuses on LGBT issues or not). Like, I don’t think it needs to be a big deal of shaming these woman writers or even necessarily avoiding their work; we can just use it as a reminder that... oh yeah, we actually live in a space where actual LGBT writers are being published without being censored and we can support them as well or just them, if you want it to be that way.

So, like, yeah, here’s why I think that happens and also a preemptive response to the discourse that’s gonna come with my answer because I know y’all are going to see me talking about women and cry “Well what about the men” the second I stop speaking.