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

[pameladean]

sartorias and 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.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's entirely compatible with my memory. Possibly, as adults, they're excused from having sex lives (at least in the minds of many of the YA range of readers).

I suspect it's very relevant that they don't engage in much of any flirting or any even subtextually sexual behavior.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I went and looked this up awhile ago, and there is also a minor and unrelated issue, apparently, of their being based on friends of hers who are /not/ together.

Which nicely dovetails with the perceived need to not have the gayness be particularly obvious.

Fried Green Tomatoes, the movie version, was a perfect example of the latter. (My father was one of the folks who chose to see them as not a lesbian couple.)