Please Avoid These Gay Stereotypes In Your Writing Or I May Suffer An Aneurysm When I Read Your Book

This post grew out of a discussion I had with Roguemutt on his post yesterday that has to do with his novel, "Where You Belong" which I'm enjoying. However, one of his characters is gay and some of the stereotypes straight writers use when they are writing gay characters are annoying so I thought I'd point them out to you so you could STOP IT! Credit goes to writer Melinda Lo who provided much of the analysis presented here.

1.) The effeminate gay man. For many gay people, the flaming queen is a mixed blessing. I’m not denying that flamboyant, feminine gay guys do exist. In fact, one could argue that they paved the way for many folks to come out of the closet because it is impossible to hide their sexual orientation. It takes a ton of courage to be out as a flamboyant gay man in our culture.

But in many representations of gay men, being effeminate is dismissed as a joke — as something to laugh at or as entertainment. Being labeled as effeminate can also result in physical assault, verbal abuse, and murder. Keep this in mind if you’re writing about a character who is a feminine boy: Understand that living in the world is a more dangerous place for him because he presents as feminine. And if you describe a gay character in feminine terms, ask yourself: Why have you chosen this kind of representation? How does that change him? It’s not just about acting like a diva and being a girl’s best friend.

2.) The mannish lesbian. Similarly, butch women have also been on the front lines of gay representation, because this is what mainstream society tends to recognize as lesbian. But unlike stereotypes of feminine gay men, the masculine woman is rarely seen as something fun or entertaining. Mainstream society often condemns her as unnatural, or as a threatening figure. It also takes a lot of courage to walk in the world as a butch lesbian. To endure taunts and about your lack of femininity; to battle for your right to wear what you want. In the worst cases, those taunts can result in violence. From day 1, it seems, our culture encourages little girls to love the color pink and to want to be princesses. If you don’t want to do that, you challenge a deeply held belief about what a girl is. So if you’re writing about a lesbian who is masculine or butch, keep this in mind: Being butch doesn’t mean that you want to be a man. It’s a different way of being a woman.

3.) The promiscuous or devious bisexual. The stereotype of the bisexual as promiscuous or deceptive is probably less prevalent in YA than in adult fiction, film, or television, largely because this stereotype involves sex. But keep it in mind if you’re writing a character who is bi.

Often, people mistakenly believe that bisexuals have many sexual partners, or that they change sexual partners frequently. Alternatively, they may believe that bisexuals are being deceptive about their sexual orientation in order to trick someone. Even gay people can have the mistaken belief that bisexuals aren’t really bi; they’re just confused about whether they’re gay or straight.

But that’s not true. There is no evidence that bisexuals are any more promiscuous than anyone else. The word “bisexual” does not mean that a person is equally and continuously attracted to people of both sexes. It means that a person could potentially be attracted to people of both sexes. It may be true that all of us are, to some degree, bisexual.

4.) Dead gays. Gay characters created for the exclusive purpose of winding up dead in your fiction. Think of the Star Trek redshirt. Example in film: The Sopranos (only gay character dead). Orson Scott Card also uses gays as cannon fodder.

5.) The Pregnant Lesbian. For some reason, people who write lesbians think they're being incredibly original by having a story about a lesbian couple trying to get pregnant. This has been done exactly 2 million times before. It creates a scenario where, despite not having relationships with men, the lesbians still need men desperately.

6.) Homosexuals as villains. It's been done over and over and over. IT'S NOT ORIGINAL. IN FACT, IT'S CLICHE AND I WISH YOU WRITERS OUT THERE WOULD GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS THAT HOMOSEXUAL DOES NOT EQUATE TO EVIL. Here is the short list of films and books that I could think of where this occurs (there is more out there, this took me five minutes to compile). As you can indeed see by my list...yes, yes, yes, yes...this has been done before and is unoriginal.

• Diamonds are Forever
• Magnum Force (Dirty Harry movie)
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Detective
• Freebie and the Bean
• Mystic River
• The Boys of St. Vincent
• The Jackal
• Pulp Fiction
• Ace Ventura
• Braveheart
• Dune
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Rob Roy
• A Perfect World
• The Mexican
• Tron: Legacy
• 300
• Mutiny on the Bounty
• Casablanca
• Psycho
• Silence of the Lambs
• Ender's Game
• True Blood
• Where You Belong
• One Life To Live (soap opera)
• Desperate Housewives
• 24 (Fox's political thriller)
• Austin Powers
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• Interview With The Vampire
• The Talented Mr. Ripley
• Disney's "The Jungle Book"
• Disney's "Pocahontas"
• Disney's "Aladdin"
• Disney's "The Lion King" - Scar puts the gay in that pride
• A Portrait of Dorian Gray
• The Shawshank Redemption
• HBO's Oz (A prison drama)
• American Beauty

Rant over. Have a great Thursday :)

Abusing Your Reader - A Feast For Crows

I'm working my way through A Feast for Crows. This is the fourth and last book in the Song of Ice and Fire series until A Dance of Dragons is released next month.

This novel came out five years ago in 2006. Since then, there has been no follow up whatsoever by the author on any of the characters in this series. I liken this to the "Who Shot J.R." episode that occurred in the 1970's in the television show "Dallas" only far FAR worse. Additionally, this novel has none of the prominent characters that we've gotten to know up to this point.

There are no Daenerys chapters (she's the one with the dragons), there are no Tyrion chapters, no Bran chapters, no Jon chapters (the white walker storyline)... instead what we get is a prologue about dragons...and then no dragons in the rest of the 1500-page book...and a cliffhanger where Arya wakes up blind and no follow-up for five years.

Martin does give us a new enemy in this book as the other ones are basically destroyed. Plus he shoves us into Circe's head with her own chapters which are interesting. However, all of these new POV characters suddenly getting their own chapters seems like a big sellout. This smacks of a conversation between author and publisher that goes something like this: "Hey George, we are making millions off of these and you need to make the series longer.  Milk this for us baby." Response from Mr. Martin: "I think I can do that but in order to get more books out of this, I need a new enemy. But I know where to work on this...I'll spend a book building up the Greyjoys that no one gives a shit about and they will be a force to be reckoned with for at least three more novels."

The term, I guess, is "selling out" and I'm on the hook. I'm as powerless to the "sell out" as I am to iTunes hiking the price on songs to $1.25. I'm not going to stop buying music...so I guess I'll pay.

How does a writer get away with this behavior? How can you write a prologue that has nothing to do with the rest of the book? How do you suddenly depart from all the characters that you've been writing about to essentially produce a novel that "takes place in the same world" but essentially has nothing to do with the 6000 pages that came before it? And then to top it off...how on earth do you not provide a follow-up for half a decade?

Here's to you, Mr. Martin.

I'm intrigued by all of this. It's fascinating to me to see just how much the reader is willing to endure when the author decides to take a big steamy shit. Incoming New York Times bestseller...12 weeks at number one (or longer), anyone?

Oh we are all sheeple when it comes down to it, aren't we? And being that we are just sheeple...does it make any sense at all what agents blog about on how to get published? It all seems like such baloney.