Wait for it...wait for it....um...a little longer...

...and there it is. Delux_vivens says:

is it just me, or are these women complaining almost exclusively about not getting recognition for their m/m writing, and not talking about any f/f writing

Finally. Someone other than me, in this whole insane shitstorm that is the Lambda rule-change imbroglio, noticed. Granted, it's way down the line of comments, but it's there.



Disclaimer: You'll have to forgive any incoherence, clumsy sarcasm and incomprehensible logic on my part--I've got a miserable cold at the moment and am a little...buzzed on T-1s, Sleepytime tea and nasal spray--and also my ranty tone. I'm peeved. And I'm not sure why.



I posed this question at Dear Author last week during the big freaky Lambda Award comment debacle:

Would we be having this debate if the Lambdas had been inundated with a buttload of f/f (not calling it lesbian, because IMO not all f/f IS lesbian even when it’s written by women, TYVM) written by straight men and that’s why they were changing their rules? Would anyone here think angry straight guy writers had a leg to stand on?

...and I've been thinking about privilege, fetishism, the concept of allies and my own largely self-serving advocacy for bi-female slanted romance. Something in the OP--and lord knows I don't always agree with what Jane has to say about stuff--really got me:

With m/m romance written by women for women, you have ostensibly one power group writing for the, as someone else put it, “consumption and excitement” of the power group but not for the benefit of the oppressed group. I.e., I think I would be offended if white women were writing about African American romance but for white women and making money off of it. This is not to say that white women can’t write about characters of other races but that when you write your work to the exclusion of the minorities, it seems exploitative.

Um, yes it sometimes does. I think in many ways, the only thing that makes the LGBT community okay with m/m slash written by and for women is the relatively equal footing straight women and gay men share. Gay men have male privilege, but they're gay. Straight women have straight privilege, but they're women. Hence the age-old camaraderie between these two groups.



And I'll say I'm much more comfortable with female fetishism of Greek billionaires ("Harelquin HQ says we need more rich Greek dudes with punishing kisses! Get writing, stat! We have books to move!") or vampires (super-strong, live forever, and well hung? How much more privileged can you get?) or cowboys (dudes, they have guns. If they've got a problem with our fetish, they'll let us know), than their fetishism of gay men.



And however uncomfortable I am with the issues of appropriation and fetishism as pertains to m/m, I'm an order of magnitude more uncomfortable with the way f/f is treated by straight men--because there is no equal footing. Straight guys, almost to a man, don't care about getting it right (or even getting it human) because they don't have to--lesbians and bi-women are dually marginalized. They ain't men, and they ain't straight. If lesbo porn gets everything wrong wrong wrong, and is populated by blow-up dolls with three-inch swords growing out of their fingertips who care more about getting naked than getting to know one another, and more about camera angles than eating pussy with skill, well, the men like it fine, and that's all that matters, right?



And when I read The Comment by delux_vivens--whom I don't know from Adam (or Eve)--something in my head went all kablooie. And I'm only now--after boring (or infuriating) you all with this drug-induced post--figuring out why. I had a reply all written out, but then I realized I had no idea who delux_vivens was, or who any of the folks commenting were, or what the hell I was even DOING in LJ, since that place is like a bizarre quasi-steampunk alternate universe only without all the nifty scrollwork and cool clothes, so I C&Ped it and I'm putting it here:



F/F writing? In a discussion of LGBTQ fiction? Surely you can't be serious.


If lesbian lit is that social misfit, unpopular kid you had to invite to the party because her mom is friends with your mom, who gets a condescending pat on the head and exclamations of "Oh, you're writing one of *those* stories? Isn't that nice dear," then f/f with a bi slant is the girl who gets freaking snubbed the moment she walks in the room, followed by whispers of "OMG, I can't believe SHE showed up! No one even pretends to like her! Slut."


I've heard plenty of people say they haven't seen homophobia among the m/m community. Maybe they haven't been hanging out in discussions filled with readers advocating for mainstreaming m/m romance, but "OMG, f/f? No no no no. I mean, what if I accidentally *bought* one? ::shudder:: If I came across an f/f scene in a romance, I'd rip out the pages! ::gag::"


Readers like that aren't allies--they're fetishists. They're no different from the most rednecky, ramrod straight guy who votes against same-sex marriage because "all those queers are going straight to hell", then goes home to watch all-girl mudwrestling.



Yeah. I'm irritated. I'm starting to understand where my umbrage is coming from. It's coming from the fact that there are a buttload more straight men out there producing f/f than there are women.



Gay and bi-male erotic/romantic fiction has a long history of being written by gay and bi-male men. It's only now that the number of women m/m authors is being perceived as a threat (or hordes upon hordes of competition) by the arbiters of the LGBT lit community.



Lesbian and bi-female erotic/romantic fiction has a long history of being written by...whom? Half the lesbian and bi-female writers I know of write m/m and m/m/f, often to the exclusion of anything else.



If you totalled up all the f/f and f/f/m written by women, straight and not so straight, if you stacked those books one on top of the other, it wouldn't even cast a shadow on the mountain of lesbo porn DVDs and girl-on-girl erotica and voyeuristic mainstream media crap produced by and for men. F/F and f/f/m has become so...colored by the straight guy brush that some lesbian and bi-female authors I know have told me they won't write it because it's like standing in a room full of two-way mirrors and stripping down until even your soul is on the outside--and not knowing if the people on the other side of the glass are women like you who see and understand and appreciate everything about you, or a bunch of guys wondering "Dude, why isn't she playing with her tits? I want her to play with her tits. Is there a microphone in here?"



And so many female authors (even ones who don't gag at the thought of two girls kissing) still won't touch f/f (or even m/f sometimes) because they don't want to deal with feminist/women's issues (a fallacy--if you can create a SFF universe where everyone's OK-homo, you can create one where women are equals--or superior!). They prefer the male as a character template, because he's not bogged down with "gender politics". Or he's strong and honorable and dynamic, and of course, women can't be any of those things. Or maybe they don't find a woman interesting enough, except as she relates to a man (or two, heh).



From kaigou on that DA comment thread:

Tangentially, I’ve always found it more than a bit problematic that the LGTQ community, like its cousin the het community, figures that a woman attracted to other woman who’s currently with a man is really just ‘hot for chicks to turn on [her] boyfriend’ — as though a woman’s sexuality, and her exploration of it, exists only within scope of her boyfriend’s interests. I mean, obviously, if my spouse didn’t dig two chicks together, then I wouldn’t find women attractive! Because my sexuality exists only to please him.

I guess it really is a man's world, right?



I don't know what I'm trying to say here, except that I'm disappointed that yet again, a discussion of LGBT fiction has been all about the guys. And I don't know if any of this long-ass, wandering, tangentially-challenged post makes any sense, because it hardly makes sense to me. I mean, if the LLF is trying to keep m/m for women from turning into f/f for men--well, they can stand there with their figurative finger in the...ah, dike, but the tsunami is coming. And I'd guess, considering the traditional straight woman/gay man camaraderie, it will be a kinder, gentler tsunami than the one that washed over f/f at the dawn of time and left a mess of mud-covered strap-ons, broken acrylic nails and empty bottles of lube on the beach.



And part of me--the really mean, snarky, NyQuil-impaired part--is ready to say the hell with it. What do I care if gay men are being fetishized? Hell, sauce for the goose, you know. If you can't beat 'em, beat their less privileged brethren instead.



So that's it. I give up. All the straight guys want to see chicks doing each other. All the gay men and all the straight women and half the queer ones want to see guys doing each other. I can't change the world. Why bother toiling away in obscurity writing stuff only a handful of freaks like me want to read--stories about actual really-and-for-true women who have conversations and feelings and souls and who also like to get it on with other women?



So if you all want me, I'll be standing in a dark room behind a two way mirror, looking in on two guys and saying "Dudes, they're still talking! Why aren't they fucking yet? Is there a microphone in here?"

On forced seduction, rape fantasies, bondage and f/f(/m) romance...

I'm going to share a secret with you all (okay, knowing me and my penchant for oversharing, it might not be a secret at this point): I enjoy reading a little non-con now and then.

Especially f/f non-con. Also, f/f/m bondage--in fact, while m/f BDSM doesn't really float my boat at all, throw a second woman into the mix and it's like popcorn with a gallon of artificial, imitation, butter-flavored topping for me. So sinful, so delicious...

Although I've noticed of late that these particular scenarios have been making less frequent appearances in my repertoire of fantasies, and I've been wondering exactly why that is. And why they were such reliable sensual fodder for me in my youth.

Unlike my blogging buddy Leah, I came to my affinity for girl-on-girl action early on--before I knew sex was more than kissing, even. I can still remember myself at age ten or so making my Barbies kiss each other, often while Ken watched from the sidelines, calling instructions and encouragement. I also remember "mean" Barbie making "nice" Barbie do things she didn't want to do (mostly cook and clean and stuff, because hey, I was ten), and the thrill I got from imagining myself as "nice" Barbie, subservient and sweet and infinitely biddable, going about my tasks, eager to please "mean" Barbie and earn more kisses. In these games, Ken was often involved peripherally, a guiding hand to the system of reward and punishment, alternately praising both Barbies when they pleased him, and ratting out "nice" Barbie when she misstepped, and making suggestions for suitable retribution.

Yup. I can hear Hank Hill's voice in my head as I type this: "Only ten years old, and already the girl ain't right," LOL.

I've read a bit on the dwindling prevalence of rape fantasies among women (most memorably Nancy Friday's Women on Top, which combines research and scientific speculation with some blammo one-handed reading--no dry academic analysis to be found there, heh). She posits that the rape fantasy--once a staple of Rosemary Rogers and the rest of the old guard of romance novelists--was popular among women raised before the sexual revolution because they were raised to be "good girls" and "good girls" don't have sex--especially not for pleasure. It seems strange for me to think of a time when the only acceptable sexual equation was 1 penis + 1 vagina = 1 baby, or where noted sex experts insisted that cunnilingus (or anything extraneous to the above equation that might gratify a woman sexually) interfered with fertility and was therefore to be eschewed by married couples.

Keeping in mind that we're not talking about actual rape, but rape fantasies, the premise is that removing the power of consent freed women from those daunting social strictures. To remain a "good girl", one had to keep one's legs together. Withholding consent was one way for women to give themselves permission to have sex--and enjoy it--without the shame of being labeled a fast woman. It only stood to reason that a romance heroine raped by her hero would then fall in love with him--the man who'd given her that pleasure and allowed her to transcend the dictates of those ingrained pressures in the only way possible. And because he invariably married her, in the eyes of society at the time, she'd done no wrong.

What does this have to do with my diminshing love for f/f non-con? Everything, really.

I remember hiding my Barbie play from my mother. It was a secret, shameful joy for me, tainted with the inherent understanding, even then, that were I caught, those Barbies might end up in the trash and I might end up in a counsellor's office. I suppose I ought to have given my mom more credit than that, but homosexuality in general was still largely in the closet at that time. I'd never seen two women holding hands or kissing, had never even heard the words "lesbian" or "bisexual". I had no social yardstick by which to measure my feelings. I only knew they were not the norm. And the fact that both Barbies still liked Ken only confused things further.

Looking back on it now, I realize that having "mean" Barbie dominate "nice" Barbie was my ten-year-old way of giving myself permission to fantasize about f/f sensuality while still being "a good straight girl". "Nice" Barbie never had a choice--she did what she was told, and took her rewards and punishments without complaint, free to enjoy them as much as she wanted because the burden of accountability had been removed from her. Ken's presence in the scenario increased the sense of security and freedom from judgment, because when he was dictating the action, even "mean" Barbie was liberated from the power and responsibilty of autonomy, so the shame of those feelings was one more step removed from them.

And having recently had "the talk" with both my parents and my kids, and finding them accepting, though not enthusiastic, about my attraction to women, I've discovered I don't really need the fantasy anymore. And when I do have it, I'm no longer "nice" Barbie. I'm not "mean" Barbie, either. I'm strong, dominant Barbie, the tender alpha in the scenario, not forcing but seducing. "Nice" Barbie might be confused and unwilling at first, but she comes around because she knows it's okay to feel and act on an unexpected attraction to another woman. The fantasy has become tempered by me giving myself permission to like what I like.

What does all this have to do with f/f(/m) romance? Plenty.

There are plenty of women out there who have no compelling feelings of attraction toward other women, but who still enjoy reading and watching f/f erotic material. For many of them, it's kind of a secret shame, complicated by the fact that they're straight and don't want others to speculate about their sexual orientation. For them, there may be a certain comfort to be found in books like Mackenzie McKade's Lisa's Gift, where the two straight women are friends, love each other and share incredible intimacy, both emotional and sexual, within the insular comfort of an m/f/f BDSM relationship. The hero's dominant guiding hand liberates them from choice, from shame, from confusion. They can have sex with each other and enjoy it, and it's okay. Straight women can read it and enjoy it, and it's okay.

In another way, it skates very close to the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon, where it's socially acceptable for women to be sensual with each other so long as it's at the behest of a man, while those who exclude men are still considered anathema. The whole, "Those lesbians are going straight to hell. Soon as I finish watching these chicks on the TV washing cars and rubbing their wet, slippery bodies all over each other, I'm going to go cast my vote against same-sex marriage," kind of attitude.

I'm kind of wondering whether women as a whole will ever reach a time when the majority of us, straight or queer, will give ourselves permission to like what we like, without that external stamp of approval. Because freedom without autonomy may be comforting, but it isn't exactly freedom, either...