So Macmillan is moving from a "retail model"* (with a 50/50 revenue split) to an agency model (with a publisher-70/bookseller-30 split) in its relations with booksellers (and other publishers are quickly following suit), and the entire book-blogging community is flipping out. "This will mean higher ebook prices across the board," bemoans Jane of Dear Author. "But authors will earn less if their books are listed at $14 than if they're listed at $25.99 and discounted to a sawbuck by Amazon!" wail others. And dozens upon dozens of readers insist that "Macmillan just lost themselves a customer!"
*For those of you wondering, I employed quotation marks because since the 1930s, bookselling has been a gruesome marriage of retail and consignment. In a true retail model, retailers own the merchandise they buy from manufacturers and set the sale price at whatever they think the market will bear. If the merchandise doesn't sell, the retailer is stuck with it, and either shifts it to a liquidator or puts it on clearance--often for less than wholesale--because recovering some of their investment is better than nothing. In a consignment model, the providor of goods sets the consumer sale price, and if the item doesn't sell it either sits there unsold forever, or the consignment broker simply returns it to the owner, no harm no foul.
In bookselling, retailers are not stuck with unsold books. Those books are either returned to the publisher for full credit (in which case the publisher can remainder them to recover some of their losses), or stripped and pulped and the covers returned to the publisher for full credit (in which case, the publisher swallows a total loss on them). So for the retailer, bookselling embodies all the benefits of retail and none of the risks, and for the publisher, all the risks of consignment--and more, in the case of mass market paperbacks--and none of the benefits. Sweet deal for bookstores, no?
Like income tax--which was brought in to help compensate for economic stressors that were temporary--this hybrid consignment/retail model was created as an interim measure to help bookstores stay afloat in the Great Depression. And like income tax, we're still stuck with it, long after the initial conditions demanding its creation have passed. Frankly, this is not a situation that could have continued indefinitely. If publishers were to survive in an increasingly tight market, something had to give.
Like most industries undergoing a paradigm shift, there are some who will claim the sky is falling. And maybe it is.
But me? I'm not that worried. Certainly this news would dismay me more if I were a Macmillan author, but as an ebook reader and an ebook author, I'm pretty sanguine about the whole debacle. Here's why.
None of this is going to affect the way I purchase books, or negatively impact the publishers to whom I'm willing to submit my work.
With one glaring exception, I've never paid more than $8 for an ebook, and have never, ever bought an ebook that was priced higher than it's lowest-priced print version, so this move isn't going to affect my options as a reader one bit. To my knowledge, I have never bought a Macmillan ebook--if I have, it was priced under $7. The $9.99 ebook has never been an option for me, nor will it ever be one. So I couldn't care less if Macmillan books sell for $9.99 or $109.99, they weren't getting my money before, and they ain't getting it now unless the price comes down.
The publishers who got my money before will still get my money (a bigger share of it, in fact, if they also embrace the agency model with a 70/30 split), and the publishers who didn't won't unless they lower prices. And despite my strict personal policies on ebook purchases, there are plenty of ebooks available to me (and about 35 of them are sitting on my Sony right now, waiting for me to get to them). This is because no matter how bugfuck, baffled and blind most traditional publishers are about ebooks, there are a few out there (like Baen and HQN) who mostly know what they're doing and are cashing in on that knowledge.
As an ebook author published with a house that understands the market and the consumers who drive it, this shift in the marketplace is a net gain for me. The traditional publishers (like Baen and HQN) who understand their readers, will thrive. Those who don't and continue to refuse to learn, will falter. If, as Jane insists, ebooks from trad-pubs will only go up in price, well, the more $15 ebooks there are out there, the more attractive my own publisher's books will be to readers. I certainly can't see publishers like Samhain suddenly raising cover prices to $15. Just because Macmillan jumps off a bridge doesn't mean publishers with brains will join them.
Amazon's insane discounting of insanely priced ebooks from insanely clueless publishers has only subsidized their insanity and cluelessness and allowed it to perpetuate. It helped publishers like Macmillan with their ludicrous $25.99 ebooks to compete effectively in a market filled to brimming with smaller, smarter publishers who actually know what the fuck they're doing. Those smaller, smarter publishers have suffered because Amazon's deep discounting was making the biggies' products more attractive to consumers than they should have been. By discounting those Macmillan ebooks, Amazon was both subsidizing their stupidity, and making it harder for the good guys to get the attention they deserve.
Without Amazon absorbing losses that should have been borne by publishers and their dumb-assed pricing strategies, the products of publishers like Baen, HQN, Loose Id, Samhain, and others will have a better chance to shine, and idiots like Macmillan will either wise up or their ebooks will fail.
This system will benefit the publishers who get it right, and penalize those who willfully continue to get it all wrong.
And me, I'm just sitting back and smiling at the thought of walnut-brained, traditional publishing dinosaurs either evolving or going extinct, while the small, agile mammals of the epublishing age flourish. And I'm thanking my lucky stars I'm with a publisher who has eyes to see and a brain to think with when it comes to the digital market.
I don't have to boycott Macmillan. No one does. Just keep on keeping on, insisting on value before you hand over your money, and it will all come out in the wash.
Showing posts with label kirsten's been thinking too much. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kirsten's been thinking too much. Show all posts
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wait for it...wait for it....um...a little longer...
...and there it is. Delux_vivens says:
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:
...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:
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:
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?"
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?"
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Lambda fail
And no, this is not a rant where I take umbrage on behalf of all the straight female writers of m/m romance who've just discovered they've been disqualified from the awards. As touchy a subject as this is, I'm cursed to see both sides of it. I feel for the talented authors who in years past might have joined the ranks of Mercedes Lackey and Annie Proulx, but who are now excluded because they've become, on the whole, too successful.
That said, I'd guess the straight women professionally writing m/m now outnumber the gay men doing the same. The awards had not previously made an issue of the gender/sexual orientations of the authors--likely because up until recently virtually all the authors writing quality literature exploring GLBT themes were GLBT people. When a straight writer wrote a book good enough to win the award, it was cause for celebration. But now that a hundred other straight female writers are finding success with m/m, well, it's like they've crashed the party.
So while I feel for all the authors excluded, I'm not annoyed about it. But I AM annoyed.
Why, you ask? Well, before I get to the meat of it, let me steer you toward an appropriate and edumicational link: F/F vs. lesbian. If you were part of that discussion, you've already got some background info and might even be able to guess why I'm annoyed.
I'll admit, until this debate came up, the Lambdas weren't even on my radar. I was aware of them only as blurbs on book covers and websites, or on movie posters for Brokeback Mountain, but I'd never gone out of my way to learn about them. Never even considered entering. Now I'm pissed enough that I'd egg their website if it would do more than dirty my computer screen.
But after reading a bunch of comments in places like EREC and Dear Author, I checked out their website and discovered this:
LESBIAN and GAY CATEGORIES (14)
LESBIAN: Books eligible for this category are those that feature a lesbian main character.
GAY: Books eligible for this category are those that depict a gay main character.
Betty Berzon Prize for Gay Debut Fiction
Betty Berzon Prize for Lesbian Debut Fiction
Gay Erotica
Lesbian Erotica
Gay General Fiction
Lesbian General Fiction
Gay Memoir/Biography
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Gay Mystery
Lesbian Mystery
Gay Poetry
Lesbian Poetry
Gay Romance
Lesbian Romance
LGBT CATEGORIES (6)
These categories are non-gender specific. All LGBT individuals are eligible.
LGBT Anthology
LGBT Children's/Young AdultFiction
LGBT Drama
LGBT Nonfiction
LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
LGBT Studies
ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES (2)
BisexualFiction and nonfiction: novels, short story collections, anthologies, poetry, memoirs, cultural studies, public policy, law, history, spirituality, gender studies, etc.
TransFiction and nonfiction: novels, short story collections, anthologies, poetry, memoirs, cultural studies, public policy, law, history, spirituality, gender studies, etc.
See anything wrong with this? See why I might be pissed?
And even the LLF realizes there's something screwy here, because no book may be entered in more than one category, with the exception of bisexual and trans books, which may be entered in two. Because, in their words: "This exception is intended to bring more visibility to the most under-published segments of our LGBT community."
Um, no. No no no no.
While I would agree that transgender-themed books are pretty few and far between, books with bisexual main characters and bisexual themes being underpublished? Hogwash. Even dismissing the dearth of f/f/m and bi-themed f/f out there (often mislabeled by publishers and misconstrued by readers, further contributing to its invisibility) do you have any idea how much bi-male erotica and romance there is out there? You'd think no one had heard of m/m/f menage (except readers, that is, who gobble it up like popcorn).
But even setting aside all the menage romance out there, bisexuality is everywhere in GLBT fiction--it's just largely invisible. Or ignored.
Case in point: Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, one of my favorite books evah, and my intro at the tender age of 16 to guy-on-guy action. Oh, a stunning gay romance! Except not precisely. Yes, one main character is for all intents and purposes gay. The other--in fact, the hero of the story--is bisexual. Just because he's in love with a man doesn't make him any less bisexual. Yet his bisexuality is invisible. Ignored by the readership. He's defined by his current relationship.
Case in point: Ally Blue's Adder. No, I didn't manage to finish it (contemp setting, rock stars, megalomaniac hero--three strikes, you're out), but from what I read, the hero of this "gay romance" is--you guessed it--bisexual. As evidenced by this line, on page 7: "The swooping high of performing, coupled with the adoration of his fans, would carry him through the pain. Then after the show, he’d pick one lucky girl or boy from the audience to help him feel better."
Case in point: My own Crossing Swords. The heroine, Lianon falls in love with a man. Yes, there's some girl-on-girl action in it, but it's an m/f romance. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a het romance. Even if I'd left out the two f/f scenes, it STILL wouldn't be a het romance. Lianon is bisexual. She was married to a woman. She's still attracted to women. She's also *gasp* attracted to men.
I think you might find that there are many bisexual main characters in fiction, just like there are in real life (know any male politicians who've been caught on the down low lately? Somehow they're always described as gay men living in sham het marriages) but you won't find them labeled as such. Except in erotica. Plenty of bisexual erotica out there, haha.
But as far as stories about regular, monogamous, boring people who don't go from partner to partner as if they're playing a game of musical genitals, or engage in spectacular three-ways every Tuesday and Thursday night, well, if they're men who like dudes, they're automatically considered gay. If they're women who like chicks, they must be lesbians. And if they leave a m/f relationship to explore a same-sex one, they're inevitably seen as transitioning to their true orientation--as gays or lesbians!
Who perpetuates this misperception that all m/m stories (and relationships) are about gay men and all f/f ones are about lesbians? Who perpetuates the belief that every m/f romance--whether in books or in real life--is about straight people?
Well, everyone. Readers, writers, publishers, writers' organizations. And the LLF, with its stupid assumption that there are no bi books out there because you can only be bi if you're a swinger or promiscuous and you sleep with both genders over the course of a book and angst about how you can't decide who you want to be with.
You know what, LLF? I'm guessing, if you want to really get down to numbers, there are as many--or more--bisexuals out there as there are gays and lesbians. And just as many bi books. You just don't see them, or us.
That said, I'd guess the straight women professionally writing m/m now outnumber the gay men doing the same. The awards had not previously made an issue of the gender/sexual orientations of the authors--likely because up until recently virtually all the authors writing quality literature exploring GLBT themes were GLBT people. When a straight writer wrote a book good enough to win the award, it was cause for celebration. But now that a hundred other straight female writers are finding success with m/m, well, it's like they've crashed the party.
So while I feel for all the authors excluded, I'm not annoyed about it. But I AM annoyed.
Why, you ask? Well, before I get to the meat of it, let me steer you toward an appropriate and edumicational link: F/F vs. lesbian. If you were part of that discussion, you've already got some background info and might even be able to guess why I'm annoyed.
I'll admit, until this debate came up, the Lambdas weren't even on my radar. I was aware of them only as blurbs on book covers and websites, or on movie posters for Brokeback Mountain, but I'd never gone out of my way to learn about them. Never even considered entering. Now I'm pissed enough that I'd egg their website if it would do more than dirty my computer screen.
But after reading a bunch of comments in places like EREC and Dear Author, I checked out their website and discovered this:
LESBIAN and GAY CATEGORIES (14)
LESBIAN: Books eligible for this category are those that feature a lesbian main character.
GAY: Books eligible for this category are those that depict a gay main character.
Betty Berzon Prize for Gay Debut Fiction
Betty Berzon Prize for Lesbian Debut Fiction
Gay Erotica
Lesbian Erotica
Gay General Fiction
Lesbian General Fiction
Gay Memoir/Biography
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Gay Mystery
Lesbian Mystery
Gay Poetry
Lesbian Poetry
Gay Romance
Lesbian Romance
LGBT CATEGORIES (6)
These categories are non-gender specific. All LGBT individuals are eligible.
LGBT Anthology
LGBT Children's/Young AdultFiction
LGBT Drama
LGBT Nonfiction
LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
LGBT Studies
ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES (2)
BisexualFiction and nonfiction: novels, short story collections, anthologies, poetry, memoirs, cultural studies, public policy, law, history, spirituality, gender studies, etc.
TransFiction and nonfiction: novels, short story collections, anthologies, poetry, memoirs, cultural studies, public policy, law, history, spirituality, gender studies, etc.
See anything wrong with this? See why I might be pissed?
And even the LLF realizes there's something screwy here, because no book may be entered in more than one category, with the exception of bisexual and trans books, which may be entered in two. Because, in their words: "This exception is intended to bring more visibility to the most under-published segments of our LGBT community."
Um, no. No no no no.
While I would agree that transgender-themed books are pretty few and far between, books with bisexual main characters and bisexual themes being underpublished? Hogwash. Even dismissing the dearth of f/f/m and bi-themed f/f out there (often mislabeled by publishers and misconstrued by readers, further contributing to its invisibility) do you have any idea how much bi-male erotica and romance there is out there? You'd think no one had heard of m/m/f menage (except readers, that is, who gobble it up like popcorn).
But even setting aside all the menage romance out there, bisexuality is everywhere in GLBT fiction--it's just largely invisible. Or ignored.
Case in point: Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, one of my favorite books evah, and my intro at the tender age of 16 to guy-on-guy action. Oh, a stunning gay romance! Except not precisely. Yes, one main character is for all intents and purposes gay. The other--in fact, the hero of the story--is bisexual. Just because he's in love with a man doesn't make him any less bisexual. Yet his bisexuality is invisible. Ignored by the readership. He's defined by his current relationship.
Case in point: Ally Blue's Adder. No, I didn't manage to finish it (contemp setting, rock stars, megalomaniac hero--three strikes, you're out), but from what I read, the hero of this "gay romance" is--you guessed it--bisexual. As evidenced by this line, on page 7: "The swooping high of performing, coupled with the adoration of his fans, would carry him through the pain. Then after the show, he’d pick one lucky girl or boy from the audience to help him feel better."
Case in point: My own Crossing Swords. The heroine, Lianon falls in love with a man. Yes, there's some girl-on-girl action in it, but it's an m/f romance. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a het romance. Even if I'd left out the two f/f scenes, it STILL wouldn't be a het romance. Lianon is bisexual. She was married to a woman. She's still attracted to women. She's also *gasp* attracted to men.
I think you might find that there are many bisexual main characters in fiction, just like there are in real life (know any male politicians who've been caught on the down low lately? Somehow they're always described as gay men living in sham het marriages) but you won't find them labeled as such. Except in erotica. Plenty of bisexual erotica out there, haha.
But as far as stories about regular, monogamous, boring people who don't go from partner to partner as if they're playing a game of musical genitals, or engage in spectacular three-ways every Tuesday and Thursday night, well, if they're men who like dudes, they're automatically considered gay. If they're women who like chicks, they must be lesbians. And if they leave a m/f relationship to explore a same-sex one, they're inevitably seen as transitioning to their true orientation--as gays or lesbians!
Who perpetuates this misperception that all m/m stories (and relationships) are about gay men and all f/f ones are about lesbians? Who perpetuates the belief that every m/f romance--whether in books or in real life--is about straight people?
Well, everyone. Readers, writers, publishers, writers' organizations. And the LLF, with its stupid assumption that there are no bi books out there because you can only be bi if you're a swinger or promiscuous and you sleep with both genders over the course of a book and angst about how you can't decide who you want to be with.
You know what, LLF? I'm guessing, if you want to really get down to numbers, there are as many--or more--bisexuals out there as there are gays and lesbians. And just as many bi books. You just don't see them, or us.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Where are the men in lab coats when you need them?
When I wrote my piece for Victoria Janssen's blog, it originally contained this paragraph:
While I would assume most romance readers are straight women, f/f sex and three-way sex are two of the most common sexual fantasies for women, regardless of their orientation. I’d extrapolate that straight women fantasize about f/f sex as much as lesbians fantasize about m/m—which is rather a lot more than logic might predict. Which has made me wonder why f/f and f/f/m erotic content has been less than enthusiastically embraced by romance readers.
After sending it to a couple of buddies to vet it for me, one of them replied with this:
I'm not sure about. There are a lot of assumptions, and a lot of arguable points. Lesbians fantasize about m/m? f/f and three ways female fantasy? I think you need to add more to support these claims. Or give a reason why you think this.
Now, this is a case of "I know what I know". I know some lesbians fantasize about m/m sex, because many of the best m/m writers and most avid (and exclusive) m/m fans are lesbians. I personally know a fair number of women (who identify as straight) who not only fantasize about f/f sex, but have experimented with it in real life, or engaged in f/f/m threesomes at their own behest, not their boyfriends'. And I absolutely know women of any orientation get physically turned on by it, because this study proves it. But that doesn't mean any of them go out of their way to think about it, just that they respond to it when it's put in front of them.
In a climate predisposed to sneer at the mere mention of two girls kissing, and in a community prone to blanket denials of f/f's appeal or claims that only straight guys would ever want to read/fantasize/think about women together, anecdotal and tangential evidence are not evidence at all.
So off I went on a quest to find some hard numbers to back up my claims. After two days of combing the internet, I ended up feeling like Frodo Baggins would have felt had he crossed Middle Earth and climbed Mount Doom only to find a pile of cold cinders and an "out of order" sign.
My path was strewn with pitfalls, baited traps and mirages. I mean, how serious can you take the claim that getting it on with another girl and three-way sex are two of the top ten things women fantasize about when the list is posted at askmen.com alongside articles on how to pick up hot chicks? And every time I found a promising lead on a sexual health or women's health website, it turned out to be merely sun-shimmer on sand--advice columns where straight women wonder if it's normal to fantasize about f/f, the expert reply always being that it's "normal" or "common" or that "many" or even "most" straight women have these feelings.
But numbers? Links to research papers? Nary a one.
At last, I found this:
Masters and Johnson (1978), for example, found that what they term "cross-preference encounters" were the third most frequent category of sexual fantasy for both homosexual males and homosexual females, the fourth most frequent fantasy for heterosexual males and the fifth most frequent fantasy for heterosexual females.
At last! Hard numbers! Except, they're not. Fifth most frequent? What the eff does THAT mean? I mean, say they studied a hundred straight women. Fifth most frequent could mean that all hundred women fantasized about f/f, but they did so less frequently than, say, non-con, stranger sex, boyfriend sex and double penetration. Or it could mean 80 of the women NEVER thought about it, and the other 20 thought about it to the exclusion of anything else. Or pretty much anything in between.
And Masters & Johnson, 1978? Seriously? Dudes, this is absolutely sad. Nobody's bothered studying this or writing any articles about said studies since 19fucking78??!! No wonder so many women were writing into those advice columns asking whether they could think about chicks doing each other and still be straight. It's not like they can actually, you know, google it and find out. Unless they have academic privileges, I guess.
So where the eff are the men in lab coats? What are they doing? Apparently, they're studying the effectiveness of condoms fitted to order, or how many women fantasize about rape (lots of hard numbers there) and its impact on the perceptions of violence against women. There are tons of recent studies on how diligently teenagers apply safe sexual practices. Just none, apparently, on what percentage of women fantasize about f/f sex.
I am, to put it mildly, disgruntled.
While I would assume most romance readers are straight women, f/f sex and three-way sex are two of the most common sexual fantasies for women, regardless of their orientation. I’d extrapolate that straight women fantasize about f/f sex as much as lesbians fantasize about m/m—which is rather a lot more than logic might predict. Which has made me wonder why f/f and f/f/m erotic content has been less than enthusiastically embraced by romance readers.
After sending it to a couple of buddies to vet it for me, one of them replied with this:
I'm not sure about. There are a lot of assumptions, and a lot of arguable points. Lesbians fantasize about m/m? f/f and three ways female fantasy? I think you need to add more to support these claims. Or give a reason why you think this.
Now, this is a case of "I know what I know". I know some lesbians fantasize about m/m sex, because many of the best m/m writers and most avid (and exclusive) m/m fans are lesbians. I personally know a fair number of women (who identify as straight) who not only fantasize about f/f sex, but have experimented with it in real life, or engaged in f/f/m threesomes at their own behest, not their boyfriends'. And I absolutely know women of any orientation get physically turned on by it, because this study proves it. But that doesn't mean any of them go out of their way to think about it, just that they respond to it when it's put in front of them.
In a climate predisposed to sneer at the mere mention of two girls kissing, and in a community prone to blanket denials of f/f's appeal or claims that only straight guys would ever want to read/fantasize/think about women together, anecdotal and tangential evidence are not evidence at all.
So off I went on a quest to find some hard numbers to back up my claims. After two days of combing the internet, I ended up feeling like Frodo Baggins would have felt had he crossed Middle Earth and climbed Mount Doom only to find a pile of cold cinders and an "out of order" sign.
My path was strewn with pitfalls, baited traps and mirages. I mean, how serious can you take the claim that getting it on with another girl and three-way sex are two of the top ten things women fantasize about when the list is posted at askmen.com alongside articles on how to pick up hot chicks? And every time I found a promising lead on a sexual health or women's health website, it turned out to be merely sun-shimmer on sand--advice columns where straight women wonder if it's normal to fantasize about f/f, the expert reply always being that it's "normal" or "common" or that "many" or even "most" straight women have these feelings.
But numbers? Links to research papers? Nary a one.
At last, I found this:
Masters and Johnson (1978), for example, found that what they term "cross-preference encounters" were the third most frequent category of sexual fantasy for both homosexual males and homosexual females, the fourth most frequent fantasy for heterosexual males and the fifth most frequent fantasy for heterosexual females.
At last! Hard numbers! Except, they're not. Fifth most frequent? What the eff does THAT mean? I mean, say they studied a hundred straight women. Fifth most frequent could mean that all hundred women fantasized about f/f, but they did so less frequently than, say, non-con, stranger sex, boyfriend sex and double penetration. Or it could mean 80 of the women NEVER thought about it, and the other 20 thought about it to the exclusion of anything else. Or pretty much anything in between.
And Masters & Johnson, 1978? Seriously? Dudes, this is absolutely sad. Nobody's bothered studying this or writing any articles about said studies since 19fucking78??!! No wonder so many women were writing into those advice columns asking whether they could think about chicks doing each other and still be straight. It's not like they can actually, you know, google it and find out. Unless they have academic privileges, I guess.
So where the eff are the men in lab coats? What are they doing? Apparently, they're studying the effectiveness of condoms fitted to order, or how many women fantasize about rape (lots of hard numbers there) and its impact on the perceptions of violence against women. There are tons of recent studies on how diligently teenagers apply safe sexual practices. Just none, apparently, on what percentage of women fantasize about f/f sex.
I am, to put it mildly, disgruntled.
Head on over!
to Victoria Janssen's blog, and read about some of the tips and pitfalls of writing f/f(/m) for a female readership. Don't forget to tell me if you wholeheartedly agree, or think I'm full of shit.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Bound by Steel--print release and contest
I'm running a release day poetry contest over at my blog. Up for grabs is a signed copy (or two?) of aforementioned f/f/m poly erotic fantasy romance (now that's a cross-genre mouthful).
Funny, succinct, profound, boneheaded, whatever you do, it's all good. Hell, borrow a Shakespeare sonnet and bastardize it, just indulge my yearning for cheesy poetry and I'll be happy. Leave your entry in the comments of my blog post, enter as many times as you like.
To read an excerpt and some review snippets of the book, click here.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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...
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...
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