In solidarity with Orlando, in opposition to hate

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Anti-Terrorism-Day-21-Maypulsestop gun violence

Many excellent viewpoints on Orlando have come out since the tragedy yesterday, many of them written by people more eloquent and insightful than me. I need to write about this, but I’ll keep it brief.

A colleague shared an article that especially propelled me to write this. It was a list of tips for allies and spoke to the importance of sharing sadness, outrage, love, and solidarity on social media, because when you don’t, those affected see that too. If this post might help one person who lost someone they loved, or anyone who feels shattered and afraid, it will have been worth doing.

Yesterday, I felt brutalized. My sense of the world as a generally safe and predictable place was stripped away, and like most of us in the new normal of gun violence and terrorism, it wasn’t the first time. I live in New York City where the sound of police and ambulance sirens are commonplace. Yesterday, every siren pricked up my defenses and paranoia. I even worried about the dangers of venturing out for my commute to work the next day.

Orlando had a deeper impact on me than 9/11 and the more recent terrorism in Paris, which is not to say that those events did not frighten me and make me cry for the victims. The difference was that Orlando was an attack on an LGBT institution, and I’m a gay man.

I grew up in fear of violence. I was bullied in junior high for being effeminate, had my property vandalized, and listened to hatred and faggot jokes and threats throughout my life. For about two decades, I watched the media debate whether or not people like me deserved the right to live our lives or even to exist in the United States. On balance, I’ve had it better than many LGBTs, due in part to my privilege as a white, middle class, cisgender guy.

Still, one of the first thoughts that occurred to me yesterday was: haven’t we been brutalized enough?

To me, Orlando felt more similar to Charleston. The difference may be hard for non-gay or non-Black people to understand. But when individuals succeed in carrying out the hate that simmers just below the surface of so many people on a daily basis, the terror carves us deeper. We hear it in the rhetoric of political leaders and religious leaders. We see it in the faces and reactions of people we encounter everyday. Orlando and Charleston are frightening reminders that hatred can come unbottled at any moment and strike us down in a hail of bullets.

I chose the three images above about Orlando with a purpose. None of them are more or less important than any other. They are equally vital to be addressed.

We need to condemn terrorism, bring its perpetrators to justice, and strive for non-violent solutions. Further, foreign policy must recognize the legacy of exploitation that has contributed to destabilization and powerlessness, an environment where radicalization and desperation thrive.

We must speak out about the humanity, ‘deservedness,’ and vulnerability of LGBT people, inclusive of LGBTs of color. We must stand against all forms of transphobia, homophobia and racism, whether they are based on political ideology, individual beliefs, or so-called faith. Believing in a punishing, hateful god does not make your condemnation righteous. It makes you a punishing, hateful person who needs to get his head on straight if you want to live in a pluralistic society.

We need sane gun control policies. There is no reason why anyone outside of the military or law enforcement should own assault rifles.

I realize those three images and messages still oversimplify the meanings of what happened in Orlando, as well as Charleston, Boston, and elsewhere. Another issue is mental health and others may be illuminated in the days to come.

For now, I needed to say that I cannot fathom what the LGBT community is going through in Orlando, but I’m with you all the way.

If you’d like to support the victims and their families, Equality Florida has created a GoFundMe project that has happily raised nearly $3 million dollars at the time of this post.

 

Genre Junkies coming to Flame-con!

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Genre Junkies 2

Flame-con 2 is coming up this summer (August 20th and 21st), and I am excited to be teaming up with three fantastic authors at an exhibitor table. We’re calling ourselves “Genre Junkies” since we all write books within the genre spectrum. From top left clockwise, that’s Christian Baines (The Beast Without, The Prince and the Practitioner, and Puppet Boy), me, J. L. Weinberg (True Religion), and David Swatling (Calvin’s Head).

There’s will be more to report about this mayhem, but for now I’ll just share the link to the event where you can see how the program is developing and purchase passes if you’d like (link embedded below).

Flame Con 2

 

The Queer Matrix: Game of Thrones

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For Pride month, I thought I’d bring back a feature I created some years back. I set it aside for a long while, but you can check out my past matrices on Broadway and popular culture in the 1980s, the 1990s, and the New Millennium as well as my original post on what inspired me to create it.

So what is the Queer Matrix? It’s an analysis of popular culture along the dimensions of queer sensibility and queer content.

I define queer sensibility as a way of looking at the world based on the shared experience of queerness. Some common characteristics are an outsider point-of-view, an unapologetic belief that queer is beautiful, and the subversion of heterocentric, ciscentric, and gender-normative narratives. To say that a queer sensibility exists does not mean that every queer person in the universe has the same attitudes and perspectives. But it does avow that queerness creates distinct cultural constructs and aesthetics.

Am I being too academic? I’ll try not to turn this into a college thesis project.

Queer content is easier to explain. It is queer representations in our culture, whether literature, art, film, music or television. Queer content is explicit. It is gay sex on the page, and lesbian romance in the lyrics,  and gender-bending in the visual arts.

The Queer Matrix endeavors to illustrate my belief that not all queer content reflects a queer sensibility. Furthermore, some non-queer content can be said to reflect a queer sensibility. I call the antithesis to queer sensibility: non-queer sensibility, which is the mainstream, heterocentric, cis-centric, gender-conforming point-of-view. One example of taking queer content and making it non-queer is the plethora of comedies that play around with gay situations for laughs (see: The Wayan Brothers franchise).

I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones and doing a queer matrix on the show had been bouncing around my head for a while. Before we get to that, here are some disclaimers to reduce the potential flaming I will receive. Both the topic of Game of Thrones and the topic of queer sensibility have a tendency to evoke passionate opinions.

Disclaimer #1: My queer matrix is adapted from New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix, and in the same vein: “a deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where” on the queerness hierarchy.

Disclaimer #2: I cobble together the queer matrix by working in Word and converting the file to a jpg. Hopefully the result is passable.

Disclaimer #3: I haven’t read the books, so the matrix is entirely related to the HBO adaptation.

Disclaimer #4: If you want to pay me to do a queer matrix on your favorite topic, I won’t take money but I will happily accept your appreciation in the form of buying one of my books. 🙂

Here it is! It’s a lot easier to look at if you open it in a new tab.

queer matrix game of thrones2

And now, the discussion…

Is GoT the queerest show on television as Flavorwire pronounced a few years back? I’m not sure since I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I suspect it’s in the running, and that’s one of the reasons why I love it.

Though I’d argue that the reason GoT’s may be the queerest is not so much because of the quantity of its queer content but because of its queer sensibility.

Queer content can take several forms: sexual, romantic or gender-bending; and when it comes to the first two categories, there’s actually not a lot, despite all of the attention GoT has received for its graphic and catholic portrayal of sexuality. One, short-lived, minor point-of-view character (Renly Baratheon) has a boyfriend, and two non-point-of-view characters (Loras Tyrell and Olyvar) are shown on screen having sex with men. One minor point-of-view character (Oberyn Martell) is a proud and quite active bisexual. All four of those are men. That probably works out to one or two percent of the gargantuan cast over six seasons, and two of those guys are now dead. More about that later.

One point here is there are zero principal queer relationships that span the seasons on GoT. All of the enduring romantic storylines are heterosexual. Danaerys Targeryean falls in love with Drogo and later seems to be in love with Daario Naharis. Sersei and Jaime Lannister maintain their forbidden love affair throughout the saga. Samsan Tarly and Gilly are the couple that most people root for.

The only queer sexual/romantic content between female characters is a minor lesbian dalliance for point-of-view character Danaerys Targaryen, and a handful of instructional or orgiastic scenes involving whores in Kings Landing. That’s an even more stark disparity (pun intended).

Another disclaimer: at the time of publishing this post, season six, episode seven just came out, in which we learned that Yara Greyjoy is interested in women. That was a welcome addition to the show.

On the other hand, a lot of gender-bending goes on in GoT, particularly among the women. Point-of-view characters Breanne of Tarth and Arya Stark would rather dress in armor and trousers and wield swords than wear make-up and dresses and hope to marry well. The Sand Sisters of Dorne and Yara Greyjoy are two more examples.

So, in contrast to representations of sex and romance, queer female characters, with respect to gender non-conformity, tend to be treated more seriously and more kindly than GoT’s effeminate male characters. Mama’s boy Robin Aryn is a deranged lad who is practically comic relief. The androgynous, vampiric Warlocks meet a righteous, painful end at the hands of Danaerys and her dragons. I’m not saying that strident homophobia doesn’t fit the world of GoT, but it can make for queer portrayals that are unlikeable and reinforce a belief in inferiority, if not pathology.

Tangent: Something that became clearer to me while I was doing this matrix is that things get queerer as you go farther south in Westeros, with its southernmost point Dorne being an oasis of pansexuality and gender-bending. Most of the queer content happens in King’s Landing, Dorne and (presumably) Highgarden.

I noted the queer characters who have died (R.I.P.) as a nod to the debate over whether GoT is guilty of the “bury your gays” trope. It’s true that all sorts of characters meet untimely ends in the series. Some of them were beloved like Eddard Stark and Robb Stark (and we all thought Jon Snow), and some of them we couldn’t wait to be killed off like Joffrey Baratheon. By quantity, more have been heterosexual than queer.

What I’d say though is that when you have only a handful of queer characters and most of them get killed, the writing is slipping off the tightrope into the gay burial ground cliché. It’s hard to imagine anything good will come to the remaining gay characters Loras Tyrell and Olyvar. Both have been written into the margins of the story in any case.

Still, it’s hard for me to criticize GoT too harshly. It’s written primarily as a story of the trials and triumphs of heterosexual, cis-gender people, but I do feel it’s been groundbreaking in terms of its handling of gender and, to a lesser extent, sexuality.

I think its greatest success in those areas has been portraying women as having power and agency. In some cases that occurs through using the tools they have in the world of men, such as seduction, wisdom, or mysticism (i.e. Sersei Lannister, Melisandre, Margaeray Tyrell, and Lady Olenna Queen of Thorns). In some cases, it’s through holding their own in ferocity and martial combat (i.e. Breanne, Arya, and Yara). Danaerys is a unique example, I feel, in that she establishes herself as a force to be reckoned with through a combination of ambition, supernatural powers and a strong sense of justice via liberating the enslaved.

If The Known World held a popular election on who should take The Iron Throne, it’s pretty apparent that Danaerys would win handily. And that says a lot about the writers’ attitudes toward gender.

What’s it like to be a queer teen in rural Minnesota?

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morris area gsa

Morris area GSA logo from their Facebook page

A little while back, I saw a post in the YA LGBT Books discussion group on Goodreads, asking folks to donate books to a fledgling Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) in Morris, Minnesota.

I pretty much instantly responded. In addition to my passion for LGBT YA, I spent eighteen years as a social worker for LGBT youth in suburban Long Island. This goes back a few decades (I share with a bit of 40-something humility) and to a time when there were zero GSAs in existence in the community.

I remember when the first high school GSA was launched amid a great deal of trepidation and some sensationalism. Many schools my organization dealt with had the attitude: “Well, that’s fine for that district, but it could never happen here.” I’ll reign in my reminiscences so I can get to the main point of my post. Suffice it to say, there were a lot of battle stories, and it was tremendously gratifying to witness schools turning a corner in the new millennium and now GSAs being the norm in Long Island rather than the peculiarity.

Map from Sperling's Best Places to Live

Map from Sperling’s Best Places to Live

I had to Google Morris, Minnesota. I learned it’s a small city in the western part of the state, surrounded by dairy farms, and home to a great state university. It’s a long way from Minneapolis-St. Paul, and I gathered that growing up LGBT in Morris is a far cry from the experience of urban and suburban teens. At least in Long Island, teenagers were aware of, and in some cases could participate in the adjacent, diversified New York City LGBT community. There were ‘out’ politicians, the Harvey Milk High School–the first LGBT high school in the country, and a huge annual Pride Parade. Rural areas tend to be more socially, politically and religiously conservative, so I imagined that the need for support in Morris was huge.

I sent the GSA advisor copies of my two YA titles, and a few days later I got back a thank you note from one of the students in the group. It was one of the most kind and thoughtful notes I’ve ever received. I asked the student if I could share it on my website, not to brag about my donation, but because she articulates so well the importance of LGBT YA to teenagers. I understand that the GSA has received over 40 titles as a result of the Goodreads announcement, and they welcome more. After the letter, I’ll include links to the thread where you can see how to help with the campaign, which I hope you will.

 

Dear Andrew J. Peters,

I am writing as the representative for the Morris Area GSA, a fledgling GSA, which has been sponsored by our school board for less than a year. This letter is being written as an expression of deep gratitude for donating books containing queer characters.

As you probably already know, today’s media is barren of representation for queer peoples, especially where gender is concerned. In many of today’s fictional novels targeted for young adults, the story features a straight, cisgender couple. If there is [sic] are queer characters, they are commonly shoved off as a side character, and a painful stereotype; a white, gay male who is flamboyant and obsessed with fashion, beauty, etc. To read a book containing any queer characters, there is a specific genre (usually titled “Gay and Lesbian”), and the stories tend to [sic] dramatic misinterpretations of what it means to be a queer person; not to mention, most queer characters are simply “gay,” with few characters exploring concepts such as bisexual, and almost no books with a transgender/otherwise genderqueer character.

I, as a young queer person, frequently found myself feeling invalidated growing up. The age when you are learning who you are is a very impressionable time. My early developmental years were spent in an area where “queer” was never even a topic. The lack of representation of queer people is detrimental to queer children. I felt as if I was wrong because I didn’t fit in with what society expected of me. Some people who have never experienced this may say the lack of affirmation of who they are does not bother them. The truth is, many queer people try to force themselves to fit into roles they were assigned rather than let themselves be who they truly are simply because they never were taught it was okay.

That’s why what you’re doing is so wonderful. Our GSA is filled with young, queer people who struggle with their own identities, whether because of people within their own life, or they are just trying to figure out who they are. These books provide comforting, realistic characters whom we can relate to and even learn with. The inclusion of queer characters is a refreshing change of pace and a fantastic feeling of validation for those of us who never feel that way otherwise. It’s one of the best feelings to know that who you are is okay, and I thank you. Truly.

Sincerely,
Teresa Boyd

Secretary of the Morris Area GSA
And Morris Area GSA members

Thank you, Teresa for bravely making the GSA possible so that other queer students have a place to gather safely and support each other.

If you would like to get involved, check out the thread from YA LGBT Books on Goodreads. My thanks to Kaje Harper for letting me know about the cause!

Read an excerpt from Banished Sons of Poseidon

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This is my third excerpt feature this year. Keeping a New Year’s resolution all the way through May is pretty good, huh? I chose to share a passage from my most recent release Banished Sons of Poseidon, which is the story of a disgraced, novice priest who must find a way to lead the survivors of Atlantis home.

Banished Sons of Poseidon cover

Banished Sons of Poseidon is a follow up to The Seventh Pleiade, and a question I get a lot is: “Should I read the first book first?” My impartial answer is maybe. While my publisher and I worked on plugging the release of the second book, many readers who hadn’t read The Seventh Pleiade picked up the book and posted reviews. Few mentioned they had trouble with the plot or wished they had read the first book first. I’m really happy we pulled the manuscript together in a way that makes it work as a standalone.

Naturally, some people will still prefer to start at the beginning of the story, which is something I usually do. Though there are so many fantasy series out there, I have to admit that I have sometimes picked up a second or third book in a series by mistake and not been disappointed.

I recently read the below excerpt at The Rainbow Book Fair, and introduced it as a preview of what I feel is the heart of the story. Amid sixteen-year-old Dam’s big adventure in an underground world where the survivors of Atlantis take shelter, he’s also contending with baggage from the past, in the form of a falling out with his only blood relative Aerander, who was the hero in The Seventh Pleiade. But Banished Sons of Poseidon is Dam’s story. He’s an orphaned son from a minor noble family, who was raised in the grandeur of a house governor’s palace. He and his cousin Aerander were inseparable until Dam parted ways to make his own way in the world.

Just a little more set-up from the scene: it takes place in the hours before the survivors are to attend their first celebration with an ancient race of men who have given them shelter underground. Dam was invited to attend with an underground warrior and is rushing to get ready.

~~~

Entering his house, he spotted Aerander in the middle of the room. His cousin had fixed his hair in sculpted waves with some sort of concoction and put on a fancy chiton that draped from one shoulder down to the middle of his calf in the style of a statesman. It was spun from elegant silk, and its seamstress had embroidered hems across the top, the single sleeve and around the bottom in the indigo hatch mark pattern of the House of Atlas. With a shadow of a beard growing in, Aerander was looking more like his father by the day. The only thing missing was a gilded lariat for his head.

“Naturally, you’re the last one to get ready,” Aerander said.

“I overslept.”

“You wouldn’t have that problem if you got to bed at a normal time.”

“What happened to your hair?”

That left Dam’s cousin chuffed for a moment. His hair didn’t actually look bad, but saying it made a mischievous little ember inside Dam glow.

“It’s a special oil they get from fish,” Aerander said. “But it doesn’t smell. See?” He bowed his head, inviting Dam to take a sniff.

“No thank you.”

“A lot of the boys are using it. I brought some for you.”

Dam stepped past him to pick out some clothes. He needed a dry pair of trousers and a clean shirt.

“I brought you an outfit, too.”

Dam followed Aerander’s gaze to his bed. There was a chiton laid out there. It was the same style Aerander was wearing. All the highborn boys must have requested noble clothes for the occasion. He was supposed to wear a chiton to the feast while his friends were going in plain shifts and trousers?

“There’ll be two head tables,” Aerander said. “One for Ysalane and her people, and one for us.”

Dam skirted his glance. He felt like a cold shadow had descended on him from above.

“Go on,” Aerander said, glancing at the bed. “We have to get over to the hall.”

“I made plans for the feast.”

Aerander twitched his nose, and then he grinned as though Dam was putting him on. Of course, Dam wasn’t. “What do you mean?”

“Hanhau asked me to go with him as his guest.”

“Hanhau?”

Dam nodded.

“I thought—” Aerander started to say. He grimaced. “It’s a public occasion, Dam. People are supposed to sit with their family.”

“You’ll have Lys and Dardy and Evandros.” Dardy and Evandros were Aerander’s best friends. They were from House Gadir. But they were all so close, they called each other brothers.

“They’re friends. Not family.” Aerander said.

“It’s just a dinner. We’ll all be in the same room.”

“It’s not just a dinner. It’s diplomatic. You knew that, and you made plans without even talking to me about it.”

“It only came up last night.”

“How could you do that to me?”

Dam winced. He pushed on. “Hanhau asked me to go with him, and I told him would. Because I want to.”

“Because you want to. Did it ever occur to you that I need you at the feast? I’m representing everyone. Is it too much to ask that my only flesh and blood could sit beside me?”

Dam looked at his cousin helplessly. Ever since they had been reunited by the disaster, they were like lost pups who rediscovered each other in the wild. Aerander pushed too hard, and Dam nipped and clawed back. He needed time to go back to the way they had been with one another.

Aerander’s face was flushed and trembling. Dam stepped near. “I’ll be there to support you. Does it matter that we’re at the same table?” He reached to clasp his cousin’s shoulder. Aerander jerked away from him.

“What did I do to you to make you treat me like such a shit?”

Cold irons sank into Dam’s chest.

“Why can’t we be brothers, the way we used to be?”

Aerander had lost his birth mother when he was a baby, just like Dam had lost both his parents. They had been raised together by nursemaids in the Governor’s palace. They had both been taken into a household where they didn’t belong, which made them feel like they belonged to each other even more.

“When the flood came, and I couldn’t save my family, all I wanted to do was bury myself in my bed and die,” Aerander said. His eyes were watery and haunted. “You pulled me out of that. You told me that people needed me to give them something to believe in. You said we would stand together. Just like I took your side when everyone thought you double-crossed Leo and Koz, I might need your help someday.”

Dam stared at Aerander, frozen. “It’s only a feast.”

“Is everyone right about you?” Aerander said. “You lie and steal, and you only care about yourself?”

“Aerander, don’t.”

He eyed his cousin steadily. If Aerander wanted to have a conversation about the past, they could start with Aerander’s family brushing Dam aside like a domestic to clear a gleaming path for their one and only rightful legacy. Maybe Aerander couldn’t have done anything to intervene, but at least he could admit that it was House Atlas that had abandoned Dam, not Dam abandoning them.

Aerander drew a breath, and his diplomatic airs came back to him, albeit strained. “Do what you want,” he said. “There’ll be a seat at the table if you change your mind.”

He glanced at the chiton on Dam’s bed, and then he stepped out of the room.

~~~

If you liked what you read, you can pick up the book at my publisher’s online bookstore, Indiebound (to find an independent bookseller near you), Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or anywhere else you like to buy books. 🙂