Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia

      40 Comments on Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia

UPDATED MAY 27TH: I have a winner! Selected through Random.org, and proving that coming late to the party is no handicap, Peggy has won the drawing for Werecat: The Rearing. I will be in contact with her very soon to provide her with the e-Book.

A million thanks to each of you who stopped by. This was my first blog hop, and I have definitely caught the bug; so there will be more giveaways on the horizon. 🙂

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Hop against Homophobia and TransphobiaI’m participating in this year’s Hop to raise awareness of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The Hop was organized by authors of gay romance around the globe, in order to: “stand as a writer community against discrimination of our works.”

As a promotion for this event, I’m giving away a free copy of my upcoming (May 28th release) e-novelette Werecat: The Rearing. For a chance to win a copy, read this short post and drop a comment below.  I will randomly select a winner on May 28th and send her or him the e-book (Kindle, Nook, MOBI and pdf formats available).

Here’s the back cover blurb for Werecat:

WerecatFinalCoverWithLogo5.25x8inchesCMYK300dpi

For Jacks Dowd, a gay college senior who feels ungrounded from his family and life in general, an alcohol and sex-infused weekend in Montréal sounds like a pretty good escape. His Spring Break binge takes a detour when he meets Benoit, an admiring drifter with startling green eyes. A hook-up turns into a day, two days, and then a full week in Benoit’s hostel, making love and scarfing down take-out food. But at the end of the week, Benoit demands that Jacks make an impossible choice: stay with him forever or never see him again.

The night before Jacks is supposed to return to college, he  meets Benoit in Mont Royal Park to try to work things out. Benoit springs on Jacks an unfathomable secret: he’s a werecat. He traps Jacks in an abandoned cabin and performs an occult rite so they will be mated forever.

With his dual nature, Jacks can shape-shift at will, and he has amazing new senses and physical abilities. But how will he live as an unfathomable hybrid creature? When Benoit shows Jacks the violence he’s capable of, Jacks may need to find a way to destroy the one person who can help him survive.

Now, my thoughts on homophobia and transphobia…

The extent of anti-LGBT discrimination in the literary community is a frequent topic of discussion among the LGBT writers I know. Most of us would say that some degree of bias exists. Why should the literary community be different from any other?

The impetus for the Hop, back in 2012, was the discriminatory practices of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), who hosted a writers’ contest with the stipulation that stories featuring male/male couples would not be considered.

Notwithstanding that ugly incident (which resulted in the chapter cancelling their contest altogether), I think LGBT discrimination in the literary community, as in other arenas, has generally moved from overt, sanctioned forms to de facto, more subtle practices.

For example, when readers and writers point out that there are too few LGBT-themed books getting published and/or those books don’t receive the attention — marketing-wise and media-wise — that they deserve, the typical response is that it’s a problem of supply and demand. The LGBT market is smaller. There are fewer people who want to read those books.

That’s still discrimination. Regardless of the forces at work, writers of LGBT stories have a steeper mountain to climb to reach readers. Readers of LGBT stories have fewer choices and have to put more time and effort into finding the literature they like. Of course, small presses and self-publishing have widened the access point significantly. But for the mass market — the featured titles at the big on-line booksellers, and the type of books anyone can find at the newstand/bookstores at the airport — books with LGBT content remain seriously underrepresented.

I think it’s a problem of an entrenched mindset. When people believe there’s a limited market for LGBT stories, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. LGBT stories get marginally published, they make marginal profits, and the publishing gatekeepers say: see, I told you so!

See also: racism in publishing, sexism in publishing, ableism in publishing, etc.

Some people have asked me if I ever experienced discrimination as a gay author who writes gay stories. My answer is a bit nuanced. I’ve never received feedback from an editor or an agent that I would characterize as discriminatory. I’ve also never of course been a fly on the wall when editors or agents were discussing my work. The big publishing houses haven’t been interested in my work so far, but there are so many factors there that invoking homophobia would be a pretty unreliable conjecture.

What I have experienced is strange comments from non-LGBT writers that I think reflect a lack of understanding, and — dare I say — heterosexism.

“Why do all the bad things in your story have to happen to gay people?”

“I think your story would work better if there was a more positive portrayal of gay people.”

Here’s the context: in most of the stories I write, the main characters are gay. So when drama happens — good or bad — it’s going to happen to someone gay. Sorry, no handling of minority characters with kit gloves.

What I like to say when I get those reactions is: when you read a non-LGBT novel, say The House of Sand and Fog, does it concern you that all the bad things happen to non-LGBT people? Or that the story portrays non-LGBTs as damaged, desperate, or immoral?

Of course not, because non-LGBT characters have the privilege of  being received as multi-faceted, villains or heroes, villains and heroes at the same time even, without being called up as a reflection of all non-LGBT people.

See also: racism in the media, sexism in the media, ableism in the media, etc.

I think there’s still much work to be done regarding public attitudes and perceptions of LGBTs. And the funny thing is that there’s a two-way feedback loop between public attitudes and literature — which I’ll include under the umbrella term “media.” Public attitudes can change the media. I would venture to say that a book like David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing would never have been mass published ten years ago when public opinion polls showed that less than half of the general public believed that LGBTs deserved basic human rights like the right to marry. On the other hand, media can change public attitudes. When J.K. Rowling announced that she had always imagined that her beloved character Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series was gay, it had a huge impact on attitudes and perceptions of LGBTs (too bad Rowling didn’t write that part into the story).

What are your thoughts and experiences regarding homophobia and transphobia in literature? How do you think authors and writers can have an impact?

To hop on over to other authors who are participating in the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia, check out the links below:

 

 

 

 

 

40 thoughts on “Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia”

  5. Trix

    You make really good points here, and WERECAT sounds amazing!

    vitajex(at)aol(dot)com

  10. Karl

    I book set in my country and even a location I have visited. It is great that you are participating in the hop. Please count me in. Thanks

  11. Beth

    Thank you so much for participating in the hop. I think that authors just need to write more GLBT characters in their stories. Yes, there is a wonderful genre for that, but we really don’t see GLBT issues hitting the NY Times bestseller list. We need to encourage the J. K. Rowlings of the world to write gay characters in their novels and wrote about them as they would any straight character.

    Anyway, thank you for doing the hop and I would love to enter the contest. Thanks.

  12. Löni

    the power of media … you raise some interesting points there.

    Well being at the less rich end of readers I tend to use the library a lot – and I have to say lately I have been using the “ebook” section a lot – there are all in all 5 books that have a a gay character, I haven’t found a book featuring a lesbian character there yet. 4 of those books are filed under romance, 1 under crime novel. Oh and they haven’t added any book to that collection of 5 in over a year.
    So much for representing every “taste”.

    My thoughts on literature – well I often find that a much higher percentage of books with homosexual characters is going to end up with them dealing with their relationship in some way. I wonder why there are so few books where the lead character simply is homosexual comes home to his man / her lady (husband/wife/life partner pick something) and that’s just it. I have to think of Torchwood now in a way (that BBC series) one of the lead characters is well maybe fluid you don’t really know but then you are also much more focused on what’s actually happening than obsessing over the sexual orientation of the characters. [Does that make sense?]
    Same with YA books – the only ones I’ve read so far I would characterise as “paedagogical novels” with have the aim to show the young reader a certain behavioural norm he/she is supposed to understand and follow. I know of no YA fantasy novel where one character simply happens to be homosexual while the book focuses on I don’t know the quest to find the blue sparkling stone that will safe the world and everyone will live happily ever after.
    In my experience as soon as a QGLBT character turns up in a book that fact usually becomes an issue – so dear authors – how about some more of easy to read novels with one tow three QGLBT characters that want to safe the world – Oh yeah and why always 2 or more? Why not a single one solving a crime? saving the world? have something weird happen to them?

    But then there are a lot of things authors don’t write about publishers don’t publish – I know the teeny tiny little collection of books at home me and my mum have been working on of good books for kids about divorce, single parenting, abuse and the like – but that’s a different story.

    Ok I will stop now because the more I think about it the more I think about what’s wrong and I have to say things are slowly starting – but the media are always lagging behind same as politics. If we want change we have to do it ourselves and can’t wait for them to do it.

    [sorry for some of the spelling/word choices – my school English never really prepared me for writing about that kind of topic – and of course I haven’t read all books that were ever written so if the books I’m missing exist – I’m sorry and would love to know titles authors publishers]

  13. andrewandrew Post author

    Thank you Karl. Montréal is one of my very favorite cities, and I grew up across the Niagara River from Canada and a fan of the country. 🙂

  14. andrewandrew Post author

    I agree, Beth. While it frustrates me that many authors have been writing LGBT characters for years — and not getting the attention they deserve — mass-market authors like Rowling have the power to change the industry (and culture) in a bigger way. Thanks so much for stopping by! 🙂

  15. andrewandrew Post author

    I’m so glad you stopped by Loni! I wonder where you live? And by the way, your English was certainly very easy for me to follow, on a complex topic.

    First, that’s very sad to me that your local library has such a poor collection of e-books with LGBT characters. How can five books represent the breadth of LGBT experiences? Of course, they can’t, while I imagine there are many hundreds, thousands?, of books about non-LGBT people in their e-book section.

    There ARE many, many books about LGBTs who just happen to be LGBT, and the story is about their struggles and victories in a different context (i.e. going on a fantasy adventure, solving a mystery, etc.). I would suggest you check out publishers like Bold Strokes Books or Alyson Books (this is now out of business but for years was a premier publisher of LGBT fiction and I believe they had a worldwide distribution).

    Also, you may have seen that I have a young adult fantasy coming out The Seventh Pleiade which is the story of a gay prince who becomes a hero during the last days of ancient Atlantis. I could not resist the shameless plug. 🙂

    He isn’t after a blue stone that can save the world. He is after a red stone that can change the world. Ha, ha. I would be curious for your opinion about the story. His adventure is the major theme, but there is some romance and coming to terms with his identity in a gender-segregated culture where it’s OK for boys to fool around with each other but being the passive versus the aggressive partner has serious implications for social status.

    I hope you will stay in touch!

  16. andrewandrew Post author

    K-Lee, I’m a dreamer too. We need dreamers to change the world, or I guess I should say dreamers who put their dreams into action. You have certainly done that by organizing the Hop. Thank you for that! I’m loving being part of it. 🙂

  17. Urbanista

    I remember when I found, to my delight, my first Josh Lanyon book at the public library. I didn’t care that the protagonists were gay–it was a great story! I searched for more by my new discovery, but that was the only Lanyon book available. I think things are better now, but there is absolutely not reason to “censor” gay authors. It can’t be a moral issue, can it? If hetero romances that are little more than porn appear on the recommended reads shelf, what could the possible objection be to gay romance. Let alone trans* stories…
    Urb
    brendurbanist @gmail. com

  18. andrewandrew Post author

    Of course I agree! And you bring up the issue of a double standard for LGBT romance. There are all those scantily clad men and women on the covers of books in the library or bookstore romance section (and some supermarkets and drug stores). Where are the scantily clad m/m couples or f/f couples? Thanks so much for stopping by. 🙂

  19. Elin Gregory

    Thanks for an interesting and thought provoking post. I like the idea of stories where LGBTQ characters just are, without having to justify their sexuality in some way rather than the usual ‘heterosexual by default’ genre fiction.

    Looking forward to hearing more about your Atlantean story too.

    elingregory at gmail dot com.

  20. andrewandrew Post author

    Hi Elin – So glad you hopped over! I like a good story about LGBT characters free of persecution or personal angst too. Especially when I’m at the beach. 🙂

  21. Nancy S

    I remember the local RWA debacle with much embarrassment; they are neighbors. I contacted the group to voice my displeasure and disgust at their actions but received no response. And that is why I believe it will be a cold day in hell when equality comes to Oklahoma and I wish I lived anywhere else. I will continue to read what I like and thank heavens for ebooks and ebooks dealers.

  22. andrewandrew Post author

    What a horrible experience. But I appreciate your sharing it here. It was hard for me — as a New Yorker — to believe that such blatant discrimination happens in a literary organization, in this day and age. You remind us that there is still very active bias and discrimination in the community. Thanks Nancy.

  23. Sophie Bonaste

    That was a great post. There a great power to words. Authors have the ability to help shape societal views. I wish that more mainstream authors would use that power to further equality. However, so many times the best messages are spread by the lesser-known authors. Thanks for participating in the hop!

  25. Jürgen Siege

    Hey Andy,
    This is really happening, isn’t it? Your first novel is going to be published next week. And this Hop – even if I don’t get the whole meaning of it – is a very important event. I thought about your question, and I think that LGBT-stories are mainly read by LGBT-people. Which means that statistically about 10% of the world’s population reads LGBT-stories. So, you write only “special interest” which only the mentioned 10% plus a small part of the rest of the world is literally interested in. To be honest: in my huge shelf of books you find exactly 7 books with gay content. But with you in my circle of friends there is a real good chance that the amount will be double digited in a close future.
    Good luck for the Hop and for the publishing date.
    A big hug,
    Jürgen

  26. andrewandrew Post author

    Hi Jurgen! Thanks for your kind words. I think you’re right — there are many gay readers like yourself who just occasionally read gay-related books, so the market is more complex. Genaro is similar in his reading taste. I’d say 50% or more of the books I read have gay themes, but that percentage can change from year to year.

    Thanks for stopping by. 🙂

  27. Max

    Löni has a point about libraries. At least there are more YA titles that mention LGBT in mine. Adults can fend for themselves, I guess.
    Thanks for the post and the insights to publishing.

  28. Lucas J.W. Johnson

    Great post, Andrew. I especially think your point about bad-things-happening-to-gay-characters is an insightful one. It’s an issue I think about a lot, as I write and plan my own stories and projects. The fact that I have to worry that by writing a gay protagonist I’m limiting my potential audience is just absurd — and yet it’s the way things are.
    I also wrote an article for Lambda Literary about how these issues affect shelving space and visibility a while back, at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/01/27/rethinking-the-lgbt-book-shelf/

  29. andrewandrew Post author

    Hi Max!
    That is interesting that it’s easier for you to find LGBT books in the YA section. Perhaps to the extent that YA is viewed as educational for developing teens, there is an interest in bringing in LGBT titles, along with those that address sexuality, relationships, bullying, etc. YA librarian friends of mine assure me that some libraries have a rich collection of LGBT YA (those in big cities at least). But you make an excellent point: adult readers of LGBT fiction should be able to find a variety of titles in their local library as well.

    Thanks so much for stopping by!

  30. andrewandrew Post author

    Hi Lucas!

    I read your article, and it’s uncanny how I have pondered a lot on the quandary you raise: to segregate or not to segregate LGBT books (in bookstores and I’ll extend that to libraries). I totally agree that I would miss the convenience of not being able to go directly to the LGBT section when I’m looking for an LGBT book; I also bemoan that the LGBT section is almost entirely celebrity non-fiction or memoir, romance, erotica, and maybe mystery. Nothing against those genres. I read and write stories in several of them. But what about LGBT literary, sci-fi/fantasy, horror, etc.?

    On the other hand, as you say, if all LGBT books existed in one section, they wouldn’t reach non-LGBT readers (and LGBTs who are afraid of checking out those books in public).

    Yet, as much as I hate to say it, because I love brick-and-mortar bookstores, it feels to me that on-line retailers are solving the problem. The search engine allows you to pretty quickly pull up LGBT books across the genre spectrum. The stock of titles can’t be matched, including many books from small presses that would never be purchased by a mainstream brick-and-mortar bookstore, not to mention self-published books.

    Thanks for stopping by and sharing your article!

  33. H.B.

    Thank you for joining in on the hop and for the great post. I think LGBT novels and authors have man a big difference towards tolerance and acceptance. It’s my belief that stories aren’t just stories, they weave messages and allow a person to feel the emotions a character may be experiencing and to take that and apply it themselves. That the reader can feel the seriousness of a situation or what kind of effect a scenario can cause. Books are movies except with words.

  34. andrewandrew Post author

    Hi H.B. – Thanks for your kind words. I share your belief that stories can make a big difference both for the individual reader and society as a whole. I’m glad you stopped by!

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