pameladean | One step forward, six steps back (Say Yes to Gay YA)

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One step forward, six steps back (Say Yes to Gay YA)

rachelmanija have an essay up on Genreville (a site well worth the attention of readers of sf and fantasy in general) about sending a collaborative YA fantasy novel to an agent and being told that the agent would represent and expect to sell it if they would just remove a gay viewpoint character, or make the character, at least apparently, heterosexual -- one suggestion was that, should the series the book is part of be a huge hit, the character could be revealed to be gay later on. Ugh.
I am frankly astonished that anybody should have such an experience in 2011, but that just shows my naivete, and my enormous good luck in having an editor who told me that the same-sex relationship in my forthcoming novel was one of the things she liked.
The article is set up so that other authors who have had similar experiences can comment pseudonymously if they like. I am curious but alarmed to see how many more writers have had this happen to them.
Pamela

ETA: The agent not named in the original Genreville post has responded:

http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2011/09/guest-blogger-joanna-stampfel-volpe.html

sartorias and

rachelmanija have responded in turn:

http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/969918.html

And Malinda Lo, who has published YA novels with gay characters, produces some statistics, which demonstrates that really, there is a serious problem here:

http://www.malindalo.com/2011/09/i-have-numbers-stats-on-lgbt-young-adult-books-published-in-the-u-s/

Having known

sartorias for the better part of 25 years, and having known

rachelmanija for a much shorter but non inconsiderable amount of time, I am inclined to look askance at the agent's version of events.

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I tracked down that story. The post on Jessica Verday's site includes this:

UPDATE - 3/22 - The editor of the anthology, Trish Telep, has replied to this post. Her comment in it's entirety:

Trisha Telep said...

Oh dear. Might as well give you my two cents. Not that it really matters but... Don't take it out on the publishers, the decision was mine totally. These teen anthologies I do are light on the sex and light on the language. I assumed they'd be light on alternative sexuality, as well. Turns out I was wrong! Just after I had the kerfuffle with jessica, I was told that the publishers would have loved the story to appear in the book! Oh dear. My rashness will be the death of me. It's a great story. Hope jessica publishes it online. (By the way: if you want to see a you tube video of me wrestling a gay man in Glasgow, and losing, please let me know).

It's not just that some people can't read subtext: it's that some people, some of the time, don't want to notice some of it. Subtext is great for seeing what you're looking for, and overlook what you aren't, or would rather not see. Someone who likes a book, and would prefer not to read about gay characters, is more likely to overlook subtext that indicates that the characters are gay.

A non-YA example: in the Patrick O'Brian books, what is the relationship between the two main characters? Is Stephen Maturin in love with Jack Aubrey, who he often addresses as "my dear"?

I agree with your general point, but I'll quibble with your example: Maturin and Aubrey love women and do not share a home, or even a cabin on voyages. Sure, you could write fanfic in which they sneak off for some quality time, but you'd have to be a mighty fine writer to make that fit with what O'Brien gave us.

Slash with Holmes and Watson is easier; all you have to do is assume Watson is bi or more closeted.

Of course not! O'Brian has gay characters and isn't hesitant about talking about sex, if he'd wanted to write Jack and Stephen as gay he'd have done so on the page.

I very much like to see all kinds of relationships in fiction, and close non-sexual friendship is one of those kinds.

Yes, they clearly are; I was talking about possible broader actions to really improve things. And not saying that's the only thing at all; it's the only simple and clear thing, but rather wishy-washy.

Having a minor, non-viewpoint character who might be gay (or two, in this case) is very different from having a protagonist who has an ongoing relationship with somebody of the same sex during the book. Defining anything beyond some line to be "gay fantasy" doesn't seem useful to me exactly, at least as a basis for our future behavior.

I do see the utility of having some vaguely clear definition to use for counting things already published and coming up with statistics.

I do think this business of anticipating what 'the public' will and won't accept is very often damaging for everyone involved: in a case like this, the authors don't get represented, the agent loses the chance at what could have been a very successful manuscript, likewise the publishers if the writers can't find another agent with a different set of preconceptions, and the reading public has their reading pre-selected for them and doesn't get a chance to figure out for itself what it likes.

It seems to me like there are (at least) two basic pieces of the problem. The first is that very often, it seems to me, the actual popularity of something depends on the weirdest vagaries, not the big issues that people cite as reasons to accept or decline. I've seen terribly conservative and bigoted people love something that represents viewpoints they abhor because it's a movie with an actor they like, or because it's a novel set in their home town, or because there's a housewife character who's wonderfully funny, never mind that she's not the protagonist. They say, 'There's a gay guy in it, but I really like it anyway, because--' and come up with a reason that an agent couldn't have predicted if they'd made lists of possible selling points for a week. And then they recommend it to their friends.

It sort of makes sense to me. The people who have to gamble on successes need some metric, something more than their personal taste or whim. They can't begin to predict the myriad small things that come together to make something successful or not, so they use the big line items instead, because at least they're something.

The second thing, though, is that another term for the big issues is 'sweeping generalizations', and another word for that is, 'preconceptions.' They don't often seem to be...er, in the jargon of my field, evidence-based practices. Why assume that young SFF readers (and adult readers of YA fiction, of whom there are many, of course) will be put off by having a gay POV character? It seems more like a tenet of faith than anything else - not just an example of playing to the most conservative denominator, but of playing to an /imagined/ conservative baseline.

'Frustrating' doesn't really cover it, even if stretched.

I wouldn't say those mentors are minor. Well, unless you think Dumbledore is minor.

Still, my bad. I remembered them as being more clearly out. I completely agree that if this is an issue, the way to respond is to point out the successful writers with prominent unambiguously gay characters.

I've always preferred that people make their biases and prejudices known. One is safer knowing than not knowing, I think.

Which is, as I told

sartorias and

rachelmanija, exactly what I looked in vain for when my kids were young--not regarding (though certainly open to) GLBT characters, but Asian American, or in adoptive families, or in multiracial families, or with disabilities: I wanted books that weren't about that aspect, but it was just taken for granted, part of the background of the story--like it was in our lives.

I don't think Jack and Stephen are lovers, but there are people who read it that way, or as Stephen being in unrequited love with Jack. The point is that people read text, and subtext, differently. The subtext is available there if someone is looking for it, between the ways they address each other and the fact that they do, in fact, share a cabin much of the time (rather than Stephen sleeping in the standard location for a ship's surgeon).

While readers are going to read what they will into stories, I don't subscribe to the school that says whatever a reader thinks is legit. Crazy readers impose crazy readings and ignorant readers impose ignorant ones. But I also don't think the author's intention is paramount--though I do think it should not be ignored. I guess I think reading subtext is detective work, and you have to be careful that you're not making up clues.

For me, the gay relationship in the Wizard books was so obvious that I remembered it as explicit, I didn't read a gay subtext in the Aubrey/Maturin books (I would've expected a bit of recognition from one or both of them during the scenes where homosexuality comes up), but Holmes/Watson can seem deliberately self-slashing, especially after Reichenbach Falls, when Doyle seems to have said, "Okay, it's obvious what my readers want, so I'll chuck Watson's marriages and write about the odd couple sharing a flat."

My. I wrote my response before reading yours. We're in agreement.

Emma also has little patience with people who read non-sexual friendships as repressed romances.

You must be easily astonished.

Just for the record, since this is bugging me for no good reason -- Tanuki Green is hosting that. Rachel Manija and her blog-commenters are the ones who compiled that list. So she's less commenting on it and more using it as a useful piece of activism.

I'm not following your distinction. Didn't Rachel say something about commenting on stuff there? That's why I used the word.

It is interesting to me that this activism isn't to make something new but to establish that something has existed for some time.

Ah. When you say “have you seen the list that Rachel is commenting on” it implied to me that she was simply someone remarking upon it, one of a group of commenters, and not a creator of it. Thank you for clarifying.

I think it’s a perfectly reasonable kind of activism. If I (as a hypothetical teenager in, to pick an example, relatively isolated northern New Hampshire) don’t know more books about queer kids exist, it’s hard to read them. Lists help. Lists also help those of us who want to buy more books, buy more books. (Mind you, it’s only one small part of the activism suggested in her post, too.)

Anyway. I’m going to bed. G’night!

Oh, I agree about the usefulness of lists. If you track back the conversation here, I was saying I hoped someone was making some before anyone mentioned that some existed. What strikes me is that this advocacy is proving something that's been true for a while; I'm used to advocacy that's fighting for something new.

But sometimes you have to fight rearguard actions.

Anyway, I hear Rachel and Sherwood are getting some interest in the book now, so here's wishing them the best of luck in selling it!

G'night!

"minor" means gets relatively little narrative time and/or point of view compared to MAJOR characters.

"Minor" does not mean "unimportant to the protagonist or the plot."

Someone left a screen comment to me that I can't reply to. In response to:

I wouldn't say those mentors are minor. Well, unless you think Dumbledore is minor.

Still, my bad. I remembered them as being more clearly out. I completely agree that if this is an issue, the way to respond is to point out the successful writers with prominent unambiguously gay characters.

Their reply was:

"minor" means gets relatively little narrative time and/or point of view compared to MAJOR characters.

"Minor" does not mean "unimportant to the protagonist or the plot."

So you don't mind that Rowling never bothered to say that Dumbledore was gay?

I think you need at least three categories: minor, supporting, and major. Dumbledore and the mentors in Duane's Wizard books are not minor; they're supporting.

Edited 2011-09-14 15:41 (UTC)

Marketing books has always seemed to me a very hit-or-miss affair, more art than science, with the reasons given often obviously nonsensical. Some people have good intuitions about it, but I think most theories and reasons given are just rationalization, really.

As for your second point, yeah, in general younger people are much more likely to take gay people for granted, so that seems a particularly stupid assumption on the part of that agent. What I don't know is how much the opinions of the parents are taken into account, as possible buyers of the books. This is a big deal in literature for younger children, but I don't know about YA.

P.

Sorry. I've unscreened it.

I think the step from supporting to major is the sticking point at the moment, as is the step from having gay characters whose gayness is the central issue, as opposed to gay characters who are just there living their lives.

I am not saying there are no books with gay protagonists or with gay characters whose existence is taken for granted, but it's not the way to bet, and there should be more.

P.

Full agreement that there should be more.

Because your comment had been screened, my answer is below: http://pameladean.livejournal.com/141554.html?thread=2470642#t2470642

Diane Duane posted on Usenet a number of years ago to the effect that it was intentional that Tom and Carl's relationship NOT be unequivocally either gay or not gay. http://groups.google.com/group/soc.motss/msg/25c9214646dd8589

> What might be good reasons for
> me _not_ getting too definite on this subject in the books themselves?
> Hint A: Discard what will possibly be the first reason to come to
> mind (i.e. anything to do with potential sales, marketing, or possibly
> being banned anyplace).
> Hint B: I really dislike labels. _Any_ kind. I look forward to the
> day when there will be no need for them any more, and nothing left but
> people for whom it is OK to love other people in ways that do no harm
> to the loved (or others). I much doubt I'll see such a time in this
> lifetime, but it's a goal worth working for.

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