New Publications: Genre Definitions, Publishing Contexts and more

Please note that Jodi McAlister's book on New Adult Fiction is available for free (to read online and/or download as a pdf) only until 8 November 2021.

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Awad, Amal (2021). “Desert dreamings and sheikh-lit.” Meanjin 80.3: 114-118.

Cuthbert, Kate (2021). "The Australian Digital Publishing Bubble, 2012-2016: An Insider Perspective." Post-Digital Book Cultures: Australian Perspectives. Ed. Alexandra Dane and Millicent Weber. Monash University Publishing. 115-138.

McAlister, Jodi (2021). New Adult Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Novakova, Iva (2021). "Les motifs phraséologiques pour distinguer les genres littéraires. Sur l’exemple des motifs de la communication verbale et non verbale." Kalbotyra 74:160–181.

Ntelia, Renata Elizabetta (2021). "How Damsels Love: The Transgressive Pleasure of Romance." New Horizons in English Studies 6: 146-159.

Parnell, Claire (2021). “Independent Authors’ Dependence on Big Tech: Categorization and Governance of Authors Of Color on Amazon.” AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research.

Pritchard, Jamee Nicole (2021). That 90's Kind of Love: the Rise of African American Romance Novels in Traditional Romance Publishing. Master of Arts Dissertation at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee embargoed until 2023.

Seifrit, Rachel Joy (2021). Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Sexuality and Gender Exploration in Contemporary Slash Fanfiction. M.A. English, Kutztown University.

Valovirta, Elina (2021). "Repeated Pleasure: Reading the Threesome Ménage Romance as Digital Literature." Powerful Prose: How Textual Features Impact Readers.  Ed. R. L. Victoria Pöhls and Mariane Utudji. transcript Verlag. 45-61.

Jonathan A. Allan's Men, Masculinity and Popular Culture (2020)

For some reason the book's available now, and my copy just arrived in the post today, but it says it's a 2020 publication. I don't know why that is. An excerpt can be found here (via Google Books) and here's the publisher's webpage about the book. I've added notes about the contents of some of the chapters since that may be of interest to people who want to get a taste of Jonathan's arguments but can't afford to buy the book, or who'd like to read a bit more before they make a decision about purchasing the book.

1. Introduction
2. Studying the Popular Romance Novel
3. Desiring Hegemonic Masculinity

As mentioned in the acknowledgements, this chapter "appeared previously as '"The Purity of His Maleness": Masculinity in Popular Romance Novels,' which appeared in Journal of Men's Studies (2016).

1. Reconsidering the Money Shot: Orgasm and Masculinity
2. Theorising Male Virginity in Popular Romance Fiction

As mentioned in the acknowledgements, this chapter "brings together two articles that appeared in Journal of Popular Romance Studies, 'Theorising Male Virginity in Popular Romance Novels' (2011) and '"And He Absolutely Fascinated Me": Masculinity and Virginity in Sherilee Gray's Breaking Him' (2019)". I don't think that second paper has appeared quite yet.

1. Slashing and Queering Popular Romance Fiction
2. Towards an Anatomy of Male/Male Popular Romance Novels
3. Vanilla Sex, or Reading Pornography Romantically
4. Conclusion
5. Epilogue: Are Billionaires Still Sexy?

Fiction, Controversy and the Sexual Double Standard

Laura Vivanco

The discovery that many women read "mommy porn" seemed to shock a large number of commentators who would, presumably, have thought that the existence of "daddy porn" was entirely un-newsworthy. As Roni Loren comments,

If you haven’t been living under a rock–or even if you have–you’ve probably heard of the book 50 Shades of Grey. It’s the BDSM erotic romance that has broken out into blockbuster status. It’s been on the Today Show, 20/20, and even Dr. Oz talked about it today. It’s everywhere [....] what’s getting REALLY old is the media’s portrayal of books “like that” being “mommy” porn. [...] But here’s the thing–why is it so scandalous that moms are reading sexy books? Once we procreate, are we relegated to being washed up women with used uteri (uteruses?) who are now supposed to focus on nothing but making the perfect lasagnas and singing choruses of Sesame Street songs with our kidlets?

Carola Katharina Bauer provides what, to my mind, is an even more striking example of how it's often thought to be barely worth discussing the reasons why particular types of fiction have a sexual appeal to men, whereas the equivalent material for women provokes extensive investigation:

In the Friends episode “The One with the Sharks,” aired in October 2002, one of the sitcom’s main characters, Monica Geller, catches her husband, Chandler, masturbating - apparently, while watching a shark documentary. Convinced that her partner is secretly into “shark porn,” Monica tries to accept and even re-enact his “perverse” desires - only to discover with quite some relief that Chandler just changed the channel when she came into the room and that he originally was getting off on “some regular […] old fashioned, American, girl-on-girl action.” [...] What I find particularly interesting in this scene is the naturalization of straight men watching “lesbian” porn. (1)

So what about the equivalent material for women?

as in most cases, gender proves to be of crucial importance: Despite the fact that there actually exists a large number of pornographic and romantic texts about male homosexuality consumed and produced by American women since the 1970s, the “abnormality” of these female “cross-voyeurs” is constantly underlined in U.S. popular and academic culture. [...]

In the academic publications on female “cross-voyeurs,” the application of “double standards” with regard to male/female “cross-voyeurism” is even more obvious. As Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse note in their “Introduction” to Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Internet (2006), slash fiction - fan fiction about male homosexual relationships mainly produced and consumed by women - has stood in the center of fan fiction studies so far, despite being merely a subgenre of it. The reason for this seems to be an urge to explain “the underlying motivations” for the fascination of women with m/m romance or pornography within the academic discourse (Busse and Hellekson 17) - a trend which differs completely from the extremely under-theorized complex of men interested in “lesbians.” Similar to those tendencies, a genre of Japanese manga called Boys’ Love - also concerned with gay men and directed at females - has equally received a disproportionately large attention in U.S. research papers in reaction to its growing popularity in North America since the late 1990s in the context of the “Japanification” of U.S. culture (Levi, “North American” 147; McLelland and Yoo 3). By concentrating on possible reasons for Japanese and American women to read and write these manga, the Japanese and American papers (Kamm 45-66) once again emphasize the oddness of those female “cross-voyeurs” - suggesting a “Never-ending Story” of over-theorizing and overanalyzing them. (2-3)

There's a long tradition of concern about women's reading; I suspect that "mommy porn" and other fictions for women which have sexual content are controversial because they challenge the widely accepted view that women are less interested in sex than men are and they therefore raise anxieties or hopes about how women's behaviour might be changed by such reading.

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• Bauer, Carola Katharina. The Strange Case of Female Cross-Voyeurs?: Slash Fiction, Boys' Love Manga, and Other Works by "Faghagging" Women in the U.S. Academic Discourses. Norderstedt: GRIN, 2011.

Joanna Russ (1937-2011)

Laura Vivanco

Having just learned, via Read React Review, that Joanna Russ has died, I thought readers might like to read, or re-read, K. A. Laity's guest post at Teach Me Tonight about Joanna Russ on slash fiction and Conseula Francis and Alison Piepmeier's interview with Joanna Russ which took place in May 2007 but was only recently published online in issue 1.2 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies. Francis and Piepmeir

became interested in Russ because of her involvement in the early days of the Kirk/Spock slash fandom.

As feminists, academics, and slash fans we went in search of what had been written about this phenomenon—women writing sexually explicit, largely homoerotic stories about characters from film, television, and literature. What had others, particularly feminists, made of this? Russ, we found, wrote the first important feminist analysis of slash fiction. Her 1985 essay, “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love” helped to set the terms of the discussion for feminist scholars who followed, and it is widely cited in fan studies. Russ argues that fantasy has to be read in more complex ways than simply seeing it as an effort at one-dimensional wish fulfillment. She posits fantasy as something rich and metaphorical. She reads slash as a genre that tells us new things about women’s sexuality and sexual desire.

Fan Fiction and Romance

Earlier this year, K. A. Laity wrote a guest post for Teach Me Tonight about Joanna Russ and slash fiction and since I recently came across Katherine Morrissey's 2008 MA dissertation, "Fanning the Flames of Romance: An Exploration of Fan Fiction and the Romance Novel," I thought I'd return to the topic. Morrissey found that

The majority of popular stories, the pieces of fan fiction which participants identified as their favorites, were nearly all focused on romantic stories. More significantly, most of these stories featured slash pairings. This differed from the broader reading practices reported by fans. When asked about their overall preferences, participants said that they read similar amounts of the major story types (specifically het, slash, and gen) and a smaller group of readers read femslash or lesbian focused stories. [...] While fans may be open to reading across categories, favorite stories, the ones readers return to and remember, were nearly all focused on male homosexual romance. This contrasts significantly with the focus on heterosexual pairings and female protagonists found in romance novels. (62)

This is something of a generalisation, given the long history of lesbian romance novels and the recent flourishing of m/m romance. Nonetheless, it seems safe to say that heterosexual pairings do continue to dominate the romance genre. Morrissey also found that despite the fact that "Romantic themes nearly always had a presence" in fan fiction, "most fans did not read romance novels. If they did, fan fiction stories were read more. For this population, fan fiction's approach to romance has significantly greater appeal" (78). Morrissey therefore compares and contrasts fan fiction with romance novels in order to answer the question "When fan fiction is examined side-by-side with romance novels, what are the textual similarities and differences that emerge in these romantic stories?" (2).

While it may be entirely correct to state that "Fan fiction and romance novels constitute two bodies of romantic literature being produced for and by women within dramatically different environments" (ii), direct comparisons between the two are somewhat problematic inasmuch as romance novels are not representative of all "romantic literature being produced for and by women" in the commercial fiction environment. If one were to seek out an area of commercial fiction which is comparable to romantic fan fiction, one should perhaps include all the commercial genres "produced for and by women," including "family sagas" of the kind written by Catherine Cookson, women's fiction, chick lit, the "bonkbuster," and "‘erotic fiction for women by women’ as exemplified by Virgin Publishing’s Black Lace imprint" (Sonnet)¹ or Harlequin's Spice imprint:

engrossing stories about women's lives, experiences and relationships, woven through with several explicit sex scenes that have context within the plot. We expect writers to be graphic—using the kind of frank language typical of the genre—as well as daring, exploring any and all sexual situations, even ones considered "taboo." [...] Spice Books are not traditional romances, nor do they require a happily-ever-after ending.

Despite the fact that Morrissey mentions Harlequin's Spice imprint, she nonetheless draws a distinction between romances and fan fiction based on

the fan's traditional comfort with the sexual content of their romance narratives. While romance novels have historically been careful to place sexual encounters within marriage (or the promise of an inevitable marriage), fan fiction textors [i.e. the creators of fan fiction] and readers happily produce stories in which sex may be enjoyed in a variety of circumstances and often write about sexual encounters without a larger courtship narrative accompanying them. (18)

By contrast, she suggests that romances,

By encoding sexuality and desire within marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality, [...] adhere to dominant social norms and constrain the diversity of sexualities and practices represented. Readers seeking more explicit and open sexual texts may go directly to the erotica genre of literature instead. However, as erotic texts for women establish themselves and loosen social stigmas, romance publishers also adapt, as is indicated by their increased focus on erotic romance. (51)

However, not all romances encode "sexuality and desire within marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality" and some people may choose to read erotica not "instead" of romance, but in addition to it.

Morrissey seems to hold certain basic assumptions which I think require a little bit more nuance. For example, Morrissey concludes that

Romance novels provide readers with fantasy experiences and an escape to happier or more exciting realities. The goal of these fantasy experiences is immersion. [...] While placing stories in historic settings or fantasy worlds far removed from a reader's daily life is an important method for initiating immersion into romantic fantasies, two additional storytelling techniques, focusing on food and costuming, cement this process and connect the reader's body to the heroine's. (48-49)

This seems to assume that female readers closely identify with the heroine and/or she becomes in a sense a "placeholder" into which they can insert themselves in order to share her experiences. This may be true for many readers but as I've mentioned before, it isn't true for me and I suspect I can't be the only one who adopts a more "fly on the wall" perspective. Indeed, Morrissey herself later writes that "The heroine may traditionally be offered as an identification point in romance novels but readers can choose to identify with the hero, both characters, or do something entirely different" (98-99).

The existence of romances about friends who become lovers and marriages in trouble seems to call into question Morrissey's assertion that

In romance novels, protagonists begin as strangers to each other. They may have been acquainted in the past, or in passing, but there is always sense of two individuals seeing and approaching each other for the first time. Contrasting this, in Stealing Harry, the two leads are life-long friends. (90)

It may well be true, as Morrissey states, that the most popular fan fictions

are significantly longer than most romance novels. They are also ongoing, updated over the course of years, another noticeable difference from romance novels, which typically focus on a romantic couple once and then move on. These contrasts with romance novels suggest that fan fiction readers may be looking for alternatives to romantic conventions, as well as more variety in the types of romance they consume. (64)

This does, however, seem to ignore the many romance series that exist, in which protagonists from previous novels in a series reappear as secondary characters in another, or secondary characters from one book are transformed into the protagonists of later ones. In addition, there are also series in which a single romance arc extends over various novels: J. D. Robb's In Death books, for example, are very popular with many romance readers, as are Dorothy L. Sayers's Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane novels, and Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.

Morrisey goes on to state that

Romance novels end with established, monogamous relationships. Partners marry, build homes together and create families, moving onto another stage in their lives. At the end of most romance novels, a relationship is permanent. (81)

whereas fan fictions

balance happiness and progress with a sense of realism. The message is that relationships are hard, they require work, but the characters are probably still up to the task. These less utopian endings present relationships a little bit closer to those in the real world. (84-85)

However, given that many people in the "real world" do form permanent romantic relationships, "marry, build homes together and create families," is the fact that romance protagonists also do these things really an indication of a lack of realism?

Morrissey also contrasts romances with fan fictions on the basis of statements made by

Commercial romance authors and defenders Ann Maxwell and Jayne Ann Krentz [who] discuss several traditional romance novel story types in their article, "The Wellsprings of Romance," and critique what they identify as two emerging modern hero archetypes or myths, the "househusband" and the "Alan Alda clone." One is a homemaker, the other a supportive partner and listener. Maxwell and Krentz acknowledge that these characters may have some attraction to readers, but issue a caution, "[...] these myths lack an ingredient that is vital to popular fiction: conflict." (85)

Morrissey therefore concludes that

The presence and popularity of fan fiction stories incorporating [...] more balanced, less aggressive and dominant characters challenge Maxwell and Krentz's assertion that these protagonists do not provide the right dynamics to entertain their readers. It is not that they stories lack conflict, as they suggest, the textors have just found different character journey's to build stories and relationships around. In many of the slash stories dramatic tension is connected to sexuality and societal expectations, in others the story setting and plot provide the characters with their challenge. [...]
The popularity of these different stories is an important reminder that the heroic alpha-male character does not hold romantic appeal to all readers. Instead, readers are interested [in] various depictions of masculinity. Stories can be written about partnership, family building, and a couple's growing understanding and connection through communication as well as conflict and power struggles. This does not mean that fan fiction stories cannot also play with power and control. Neither does it mean that conflict will not exist between two protagonists. It simply means that romance is not being limited to one particular relationship type. Again, within fan fiction stories, the romance formula is being broadened and diversified. (88-89)

I would suggest alpha male heroes don't appeal to all romance readers either, and that the reason Maxwell and Krentz were so trenchant in their statements was due to the fact that, at the time they were writing, there had been an increase in the genre of "hero archetypes" other than the alpha male which these authors preferred. Their statements, then, can perhaps be read as evidence that the romance genre itself is "diversified." I would go further, and claim that it has never been "limited to one particular relationship type": the beta hero

is not a recent invention. Edward Ferrars in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) is

too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open affectionate heart […]. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life. (Vivanco and Kramer)

It should be acknowledged that Morrissey is aware both of some of the limitations of her source material, and of the dangers of generalising about genres which include vast numbers of texts:

The difficulty in writing about entire categories of literature is that there are always so many more topics to be discussed. For every generalizing statement, there are further contradictions to be accounted for or explained. Thousands of romance novels are published each year and a seemingly infinite amount of fan fiction stories are available online and off. Only a small sample of romance novels and fan fiction could be examined for this project. (105)

I suspect that Morrissey's conclusions are far stronger when they focus solely or primarily on fan fiction: they are based not only on a reading of a selection of primary and secondary sources but also on her survey of fan fiction readers which "received nearly 1000 responses in the first twenty-four hours alone and this pace remained steady throughout the two-week process. At close, the survey had 7,748 participants" (58). As mentioned, she discovered that "The majority of popular stories, the pieces of fan fiction which participants identified as their favorites, were nearly all focused on romantic stories. More significantly, most of these stories featured slash pairings" (62). She also discovered that "Most of [the] survey population was younger that that of romance novel readers. The majority of survey participants were eighteen, but the dominant age group ranged between eighteen and twenty-eight years of age" (65). It is probable that there are younger readers and writers of fan fiction who were excluded from the survey, since it stated that "You may NOT participate in this survey if you are under 18 years of age. By completing this survey you acknowledge that you are OVER 18 years of age" (109). She also found that there was a "near complete absence of men within the survey population" (66) and that while "The majority of the survey population was [...] heterosexual (68%), [...] over a quarter of the group identified as bisexual or homosexual (23% bisexual, 4% homosexual)" (66).

With regards to the content of the fan fictions, Morrissey claims that "without the publishing industry as a dominant gatekeeper, textors are able to engage in greater experimentation with story structure" (76). She gives as an example "the most popular [of the fan fictions mentioned in her survey,] Speranza's Written by the Victors (Stargate Atlantis) uses an innovative story structure. This story is presented in two formats. Half of it is told through excerpts from fictitious articles, book reviews, and academic debates, the other half is traditional fiction" (80). She also mentions that

As a form of literature now produced primarily online, fan fiction textors are taking greater advantage of the opportunities digital creation provides. There is a long history or fan art and video creation within fan communities. Now, these objects can be combined with stories to enhance the reading experience. Images and artifacts are created in photoshop to develop stories further. Textors do not need to limit themselves to describing a character's apartment, they may now link to pictures of it, and to the coffee shop down the street. Stories constructed in smaller sections can be linked together into a larger story in whatever order the reader wishes to place them in. (104)

Morrissey herself suggests that "recent changes in the romance publishing industry suggest that the opportunities found online may be influencing traditional publishers as well" (104) and this does indeed seem to be the case. Publishers have begun experimenting with incorporating a variety of features into books originally written for publication in paper:

E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can’t agree on what to call them.
In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an “enriched” book. Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein.

All of them go beyond the simple black-and-white e-book that digitally mirrors its ink-and-paper predecessor. The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers. (Bosman)

Harlequin, too, has been experimenting with enriching ebooks:

Have you ever read something in a novel and wished you could see a picture, find a definition, or learn more about it without having to look it up? Now you can with Harlequin’s Enriched eBooks. This special electronic book is enhanced with web links to information about the setting, ceremonies, and other unique elements in Hotly Bedded, Conveniently Wedded, along with an author note, recipe, and photos from author Kate Hardy!

Morrissey also suggests that unlike romances, in which the protagonists' appearances are often described at length,

within the works of fan fiction [...] descriptive moments were primarily limited to character makeovers. [...] The absence of these scenes within fan fiction stories may be explained by fan cultures' general familiarity with the appearance of the original characters. [...] No matter what the origin, however, the importance of awe inspiring, dramatic physical beauty is diminished within many of these stories. This leads to depictions of attraction in which physical appearance has a presence, but its role is not as strong, or as consistent, as it is in romance novels. (92-93)

This seems an interesting hypothesis, and I would have been fascinated to read more about it. If any of you are fans who also read romances, I'd love to know your opinion of this point. Many fandoms are wholly or partially based on TV shows and movies, and many actors are more attractive than average so I wonder if fans may already have formed their own assessment of the actors'/characters' physical attractions. On the other hand, jennygadget has commented that slash fictions are more likely to

describe men's bodies in a more submissive and wanton way, rather than as pervasively dominating. [...] The way men's bodies are objectified in romance seems to more mirror how they are idealized in comic books.

Morrissey also speculates that fan fictions with heterosexual pairings reveal an

ongoing confusion over women's power and agency within relationships and suggest similar confusion for women in the real world.
One way of circumventing these issues is to eliminate the male/female dynamic and replace the woman with another male. Suddenly moments of aggression, parenting, empathy, action etc. do not carry with them the attachments and ramifications they have within the male/female dynamic. (87)

This is a hypothesis which might also be relevant to the study of m/m romances.

Finally, since this has been a post about slash fiction, romance and an MA thesis, I thought I would take the opportunity to mention another, but much more recent MA thesis: Meredith S. Faust's ""Love of the purest kind": Heteronormative Rigidity in the Homoerotic Fiction of Ann Herendeen" (2010), which is available online from here. To date Herendeen has had two novels published. She has stated that the first, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2008), "was inspired both by my reading of historical romance and by [...] “slash fiction.”" However, as far as slash is concerned, Herendeen finds that

there's one aspect of them that doesn’t appeal to me: it’s all “look but don’t touch.” Here are women writing about men having sex with each other, for the delectation of women readers, but all the main characters are men and the women never get any of that action.

In her first novel, therefore, she

slashed a genre, not a specific story or set of characters. And then, I slashed the slash. I introduced the hero as gay from the beginning, and showed him in love with a man and attracted to men—that's the first slash. But then I slashed again, writing a heroine back into this all-male paradise.

Her second novel also includes both heroes and heroines, but this time she isn't slashing "a genre": her Pride / Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers (2010) is quite explicitly based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
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• Berens, Jessica. "She's gotta have it." The Observer, Sunday 10 September 2000.
• Bosman, Julie. "E-Books Fly Beyond Mere Text." The New York Times, 29 July 2010.
• Faust Meredith S. ""Love of the purest kind": Heteronormative Rigidity in the Homoerotic Fiction of Ann Herendeen." MA Thesis, Department of English, DePaul University, 2010. [Pdf downloadable from here.]
• Morrissey, Katherine. "Fanning the Flames of Romance: An Exploration of Fan Fiction and the Romance Novel." MA Thesis, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University, 2008. [Pdf downloadable from here.]
  
• Sonnet, Esther. "‘Erotic Fiction by Women for Women’: The Pleasures of Post-Feminist Heterosexuality." Sexualities 2.2 (1999): 167-187. [Abstract]
• Vivanco, Laura and Kyra Kramer. "There Are Six Bodies in This Relationship: An Anthropological Approach to the Romance Genre." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1 (2010).
  

1 Interestingly, slash fiction is known to have influenced at least one of the books published by Black Lace. In 1999 Black Lace's editor, Kerri "Sharp edited Wicked Words, a collection of erotic short stories that became the first British book to introduce slash lit to mainstream publishing" (Berens). It includes work by

Kitty Fisher. Her short story 'Shadowlight' was modified for Black Lace, but reflects the traits of slash in that it is a sci-fi narrative about an affair between two men.

Pam Rosenthal's Paper at the 2010 IASPR Conference

Laura Vivanco

At the recent IASPR conference, Pam Rosenthal gave a paper on "The Queer Theory of Eve Sedgwick at the Edges of the Popular Romance Genre." She's now put up a summary of the paper at the History Hoydens' blog. Here are a couple of quotes from it:

Brussels sounded like a great opportunity to think hard about something I've been wanting to understand better for a while now: the hot new trend of male/male or male/male/female romance -- written by women for women. [...] I took on this project because I wanted to understand more specifically how this new development of male/male love works in individual texts, and most particularly in Ann Herendeen's recent tour de force, Pride/Prejudice.

and

In the centuries since Austen, the romance novel (and sometimes the literary novel as well) hinged upon a simple, but incendiary, paradox: that a man occupies a primacy of position in the public world, but the power of the female subjectivity cannot be denied.

Until the 20th century, perhaps -- when in romance this changed again. when male power began to be understood as a fraught and painful thing -- with, I think, the tortured heroes of the 70s to the 90s. My own untested theory is that this occurred in a parallel development to Second Wave Feminism. We started seeing tortured lonely hero subjectivities in deep third person (Dr. Sarah Frantz of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance has often written and spoken on this, and I was delighted that she and I were on the same panel in Belgium).

To read more and/or join in the discussion, please head over to the History Hoydens' blog.

Response to Victoria Brownworth: Yes, it's ROMANCE.

Sarah S. G. Frantz

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the recent internet outbreak of speculation about OMG!why? do “straight” women read and/or write romances about gay men (LINKS: OUT magazine article that started it all, Gawker’s response, Lambda’s original response, Erastes’ response to Gawker, TeddyPig’s response, Gehayi’s response, Victoria Brownworth's Lambda-sponsored response that is the subject of this post), it’s that everyone has their niche to fill and their script to follow and that everyone does an admirable job of doing precisely that.

Cintra Wilson fills her role of (apparently) being snide and supercilious quite well in the original OUT article. I can’t quite make out her stance on the issue, but I do appreciate that she let Beecroft and Erastes mostly talk for themselves, despite how wrong the headline-writer originally was in calling Erastes and Beecroft "straight". Gawker does a great job of being snarky and impenetrable. I’ve read their response four times and canNOT make out which side of the issue the author is arguing from. In the comments to Brownworth's hatchet job (which, OMG, you fall into them and never get out), Paul Bens does a great job of following his self-imposed script AND of cuing the scripts other people follow as if it were somehow their contractual obligation. They, of course, oblige with his cues. The layers of irony are mind-boggling.

And I will now fulfill my role, follow my script, say the predictable thing that I always say because of my own particular obsession and the position from which I’m commenting. At least I know I’m doing it—that should count for something, right? But I’ll say it anyway, because, like the other commenters, I’m convinced that my piece needs to be said and recognized by everyone else, even if no one really listens because they’re caught in their own little circular script.

I'm discussing here the Brownworth article in particular, not only because it's the most desperately defensive but also because she's the new voice in the debate. As I said, Erastes, Beecroft, Bens, Gehayi, even Lambda in their original article (schizophrenic as it is) all fulfill their predetermined script/role. But Brownworth is a new voice, a voice backed by an extensive resume that she doesn't hesitate to wield rather indiscriminately. And it was her arguments that were the most egregiously incorrect, badly written, and offensive, which was disappointing precisely because of her credentials as a writer and a journalist.

In discussing her article, then, I could fulfill my role as a scholar pissed about inaccuracies in reporting and just plain bad writing:

• It doesn’t help your case by accusing something you don’t like (m/m romance) of all the –isms (sexism, racism, homophobia). It just makes you sound like Chicken Little.
• Surely there is SOME difference between m/m romances with their prescribed HEAs and the lesbian pulp fiction of your youth which pathologized lesbianism? No? Really? Nothing?
• Do your (insert swearword) research:

1. Not ALL m/m authors take male names. Not even when it first started, even though there were certainly more then. Most have rather sheepishly come out of the closet in the past few years.
2. No, the majority of m/m romances are NOT historicals. People who don’t do their research think this because Erastes, Lee Rowan, and mainly, Running Press, have quite the little publicity machine going (and good for them, I say). But in the comments to Brownworth's article, Elisa Rolle provides some amazing statistics showing that historical are 10% of m/m romances published.
3. I have NEVER read a rape in a m/m romance. This might (I said MIGHT—I don’t know!) be a feature of some slash writing, but I’d say (educated GUESS here, please advise) early slash and/or very specific niche slash. But NOT m/m romance.
4. No, there is not a “male” man and a “feminine” man. Or at least, there isn’t in most m/m romances I’ve read. Maybe in yaoi. Maybe, again, in slash. Not in m/m romances. This presents its own problems, in that most of the heroes of m/m romances are constructed as very “straight looking, straight acting” men. In fact, when more stereotypically “feminine” gay men are portrayed (the wonderful Joey in the incomparable K.A. Mitchell’s Collision Course), I usually applaud it. As long as it’s well-done, it speaks to the many variations of the gay experience.
5. No, most m/m authors are not straight women. Or at least, in my experience, most of the best m/m authors are in some way either gender queer or have some sort of alternate sexuality (and no, GLB just doesn’t cover all “alternate” sexuality, thank you very much). (NOT all m/m authors are not-straight, I hasten to add. I present Heidi Cullinan as Exhibit #1.)
6. No, there is NOT an inherent disrespect of gay male relationships--although I'm sure Brownworth would argue "Who am I to make that determination?" But from my understanding of her article, the disrespect she's talking about is not how the best of m/m romance treats its subjects. And most of the egregious vocabulary has changed, at least in the best of the fiction. And, personally, I’ve read about men “fisting” their cocks (ie: jacking off) in stories I KNOW are written by men, both gay and straight.

• I might also say to Brownworth: Get over yourself. “Our relationships and sexuality are sacrosanct in their differentness from heterosexual relationships.” Really? REALLY? My same-sex relationships haven’t been, but maybe I’m not REALLY gay, considering I’m only bisexual? Or maybe it’s a generational thing. Coming out in 2009, versus coming out in the 1970s or 80s is, admittedly, a hugely different thing.

But, that’s not really the niche I want to fill right now. My response, my script, is not generic scholar writ large or the very small subset of m/m romance scholar/reader. Rather, I am writing here as a POPULAR ROMANCE scholar. And in the comments, Ms. Brownworth said something so egregiously rude and dismissive in the comments, that I would argue that the issue is not that (supposedly straight) women are writing about—or even fetishizing—gay men (and I’m not going to deny that particular claim, actually), but that anyone is daring to give anyone else a happy ending.

Brownworth said to Elisa Rolle, who continues to communicate brilliantly in English considering it’s not her first language, that “that she might have less of a language problem if she were reading something less low-brow, but that was probably mean of me.” Yes, indeed it was. But really, Brownworth's fundamental assumption that these m/m ROMANCES are low-brow, are NOT art, are trash, pulp, worthless, worthy of derision, is, I argue, the real issue. I’m not even going to get into the commercial debate (would we be having this discussion if m/m weren’t successful?), because, to my mind, that’s not what you’re talking about here. Brownworth isn't upset that m/m romance is successful; she's upset that it’s low-brow. She's upset, specifically and in my opinion, that m/m romance is ROMANCE.

And really, THAT’S what pisses ME off more than anything else.

More Calls for Papers: Vampires, Erotic Adaptations and Serial Narratives

Vegetarians, VILFs and Fang-Bangers: Modern Vampire Romance in print and on screen, 24 November 2010

De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Vampires have had a long and complex relationship with human beings and have been threatening and attracting us through folklore, literature, film and television for centuries. But now they walk among us, seeking to integrate themselves into our culture, to be our business partners, friends and lovers. Why do we now prefer our vampires with a sensitive nature or with their ruthlessness focused on business deals? How does this change affect the relationship between both species and genders? This one-day conference seeks to understand and criticise the phenomenal popularity of what is sometimes termed Dark Romance. Papers are sought on authors such as Stephanie Meyers, Charlene Harris, and Laurell K. Hamilton, the adaptation of Dark Romance books for both film and TV and a general consideration of the change in our relationship with the vampire.

Deadline for abstracts: 8th September 2010. More details.

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Erotic Adaptations One-Day Symposium (26 January 2011)

Centre for Adaptations, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Proposals are invited for papers on erotic and sexually explicit adaptations and appropriations, from film versions of erotic classics such as Justine, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Story of O to contemporary slash fiction and porn parodies. The focus will be on screen adaptations but papers are welcome on graphic novels, novelisations, video mashups, photography, manga, book illustrations, radio and video games.

Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2010. More details.

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Serial Narratives and Temporality

NeMLA Convention 2011, Rutgers University

The serial principle has a important influence on contemporary culture: novels, movies and television shows, comic books, video games, etc. are published in series. Consequently, this principle largely informs contemporary ways of conceiving, producing and making sense of narratives in general. This panel wants to locate the importance of seriality within our present-day mediascape.
It is interesting to see that, while individual studies of mostly 19th-century serial novels and 20th-century television shows are available in large numbers, the phenomenon of serialization has rarely been acknowledged as a medial practice that informs contemporary culture as a whole. [...]

In order to create a comprehensive theoretical framework for the various serial practices, this panel will focus on the concept of temporality. Many series experiment with narrative time. The individual episodes/installments/posts allow for the most diverse temporal structures: continuous, constellatory, reverse or cyclical. Time stretching, acceleration as well as ‘real time’ are integral parts of recent narrative experiments. What can we learn from these experiments about the ways in which we conceive time and about how these notions are expressed in narrative?

Deadline for abstracts: September 30, 2010. More details.

Guest Post: K. A. Laity on Joanna Russ on Slash Fiction

Joanna Russ on Slash Fiction
K. A. Laity

K. A. Laity is both a fiction writer and an academic scholar. Her short story collection Unikirja (Aino Press), for which she won a Eureka Short Story fellowship and a Finlandia Foundation grant, grew out of her love for Finnish myth and folklore. She writes and presents scholarly essays on medieval literature and culture, gender, film and comics. As C. Margery Kempe, she is also a writer of erotic romance such as Chastity Flame (Ravenous Romance), Spinning Gold (Noble Romance), Sex Cymbals (Freya's Bower) and many more. In response to a recent post at Teach Me Tonight, K. A. Laity responded that

people writing about M/M romance and slash fiction really should read Joanna Russ's far-too-seldom read piece on it in her unfortunately OOP collection Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts (1985). Very insightful about how readers tend to use these M/M pairings in fan fic.

Laity then offered to write this post about Russ' "Pornography By Women For Women, With Love," published in Russ' Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing P., 1985. 79-99.
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One of the moments in romantic scholarship herstory that gets too often overlooked, is the work by "the first openly gay, feminist spitfire of fantasy and speculative fiction," Joanna Russ. To be fair, much of Russ' work has been overlooked for far too long because of the lingering reputation of her work as "difficult"—particularly her innovative 1975 novel The Female Man. Its taut examination of gender roles and intertwined time lines, which challenged readers upon its release, now fit easily into the mainstream of postmodern literature.

Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts: Feminist Essays was written when the MacKinnonite anti-pornography movement had reached its peak. In the collection, Russ not only writes about her own process of coming out and the cultural forces that mitigated against it, but also about the larger questions of pornography and female desire. While the entire collection makes fascinating reading, I want to focus on the chapter "Pornography By Women For Women, With Love" as it provides some interesting roots for the ongoing academic dissections of romance writing today and its sometime step-sister, slash fiction. Russ draws specific parallels between the two genres.

Russ examines Kirk/Spock slash fiction, which was still largely unknown at the time beyond its practitioners. She finds herself delighted that "all of the editors, writers and readers are women" and finds that fans portray Spock and Kirk "like Tristan and Iseult, the two are fated to love" (81). Russ compares the focus on postponement of desire to romance novels of the time, where "the lovers must be pushed together by some force outside themselves" and "somebody is always bleeding or feverish or concussed or mutilated or amnesiac." This element is key, Russ argues, for "the stories over and over set up situations in which the two are not responsible" (82), allowing them to give in to the urges that society—or more often, their own scruples—would condemn.

While the pairing appears to be M/M, due to the actors involved, it's important to remember that it is a human/alien pairing. Referring to Lamb and Veith [Lamb, Patricia Frazer, and Diana L. Veith. "Romantic Myth, Transcendence, and Star Trek Zines." Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature. Ed. Donald Palumbo. New York: Greenwood P, 1986. 235-56.], Russ reminds us that Spock's "alienness is a way of 'coding' into the K/S fantasies that their subject is not a homosexual love affair between two men, but love and sex as women want them" (83). This is key to the appeal of slash, but also perhaps to that of the modern M/M romance. Russ points out that the traditionally masculine and feminine traits fluctuate between the characters, creating an ideal relationship:

Neither has to give up 'his' work in the world; both have adventure and love; telepathy provides lifelong commitment and the means of making such a union unbreakable and extremely intimate; and while both partners are 'masculine' in the sense of being active in the world, they provide tenderness and nurturance for each other in a very 'feminine' way. And the sex is marvelous. (84)

Why use male characters then? Russ agrees with Lamb and Veith's conclusion that no one "can imagine a man and a woman having the same multiplex, worthy, androgynous relationship, or the same completely intimate commitment" (84). While we might hope that things may have changed since 1985, I suspect the plethora of supernatural titles that have made paranormal romance the pre-eminent genre suggest that this is still not possible for many to envision that kind of relationship with human males.

In part, Russ believes, this sexual fantasy, which commonly relies on the repeating "hurt-comfort" motif, developed because "we have—ingeniously, tenaciously, and very creatively—sexualized our female situation and training, and made out of the restrictions of the patriarchy our own sexual cues" (86). But she also makes clear that "sexual fantasy can't be taken at face value" and that the situations depicted in K/S stories are not ones the readers and writers would like to actually experience, just like the rape fantasies of the earlier bodice-rippers. "We know that women don't want to be raped; episodes in female fantasies that look like rapes really are something else, i.e. Will somebody, something, for heaven's sake, enable me to act?" (88). Russ ties male rape fantasies to the same patriarchal restrictions, exacerbated in the States by the tendency to substitute violence for sexual enjoyment in popular narratives.

And as scientists would agree even now, Russ is right on target when she writes that "we do not have nearly enough knowledge about female sexuality" (94). What she is certain of is that slash fiction offers something "raw, blatantly female and very valuable and exciting" (95). It also offers an important insight on the popularity of M/M romance and the reasons women choose that palette, though it still skirts the issue of the exploitative aspects of that appropriation. For Russ, the appeal is clear:

What they do want is sexual intensity, sexual enjoyment, the freedom to choose, a love that is entirely free of the culture's whole discourse of gender and sex roles, and a situation in which it is safe to let go and allow oneself to become emotionally and sexually vulnerable. (89)

The continued popularity of M/M slash and romance suggests that even in 2010, it is still difficult for women to imagine that happening between heterosexual couples.

Assorted Links

Laura Vivanco

Since the start of the holiday season we've written a lot of to-do lists at my house so I thought it would be appropriate to write another list, this time for the blog. It's a list of links to thought-provoking, controversial, or perhaps simply irritating, items:

• In the Women's Studies Encyclopedia, in the entry on "Supermarket Romances," written by Karen S. Mitchell, Mitchell states that "The juxtaposition of a multidimensional heroine with a somewhat one-dimensional hero is a characteristic of the romantic historical novels written today." She also writes that,

  While the heroines of historical novels have become increasingly competent in their domains, they are limited by the social constructs of the historical time. In this way they are forced to be subservient and are often subjected to rape, dominance, and violent abuse. Helen Hazen argues that romances include rape fantasies because "rape fantasy is quite healthy" (17).

  It's probably worth noting that Hazen's book was published in 1983. Although Mitchell is clearly aware that the genre has changed since then, her description of historical romances doesn't match the contents of the historical romances I've been reading recently. Does it describe recent historical romances you've read?

• The next item on my list has been discussed in some detail by Jessica. It's Critelli, Joseph W. and Jenny M. Bivona. "Women's erotic rape fantasies: an evaluation of theory and research." Journal of Sex Research (2008). Hazen is again used as an important source:

  One review of historical romance novels found that 54% included the rape of the lead female character (Thurston, 1987). In particular, Hazen's (1983) analysis of rape in romance novels also functions as a theory of women's erotic rape fantasies.
  
  In essence, both romance novels and rape fantasies are created works of fiction. Sexual fantasies are self-generated erotic stories often intentionally initiated to provide enjoyment and sexual arousal. Romance novels are structured erotic fantasies that individuals intentionally expose themselves to, typically for emotional satisfaction and sexual arousal. In a rape fantasy women create an imaginary scenario and they participate in the fantasy through the rape experience of their self character. In a romance novel that includes rape, women identify with the lead female character and vicariously experience her rape.
  
  Hazen (1983) notes that, although the hero in romance novels must be handsome, he may also be cruel. Gorry (1999), in a content analysis of male romance heroes, found that these men are strong, masculine, muscular, sexually bold, and dangerous.¹ According to Salmon and Symons (2003), romance heroes are not gentle and sensitive; they are men with the physical and temperamental qualities of warriors.²

  And

  Hazen argues that the romance novel presents the heroine with an exciting challenge. [...] In romance novels, there is often a violent confrontation with a dominant, sexually aggressive adversary who appears to be evil. The challenge for the heroine is to conquer his heart, seduce him into falling in love with her, have him voluntarily make a lifetime commitment to her, and transform his apparent evil and cruelty into something more socially acceptable without diminishing his masculinity. In romance novels, rape is used as an effective means of creating excitement and dramatic tension. Hazen argues that, in the female imagination, shattered purity through violent sex is a primordial danger whose tension creates a powerful story.
  
  In romance novels the narrative structure allows the fantasy to continue to completion in marriage.

• Salmon, Catherine and Don Symons, "Slash fiction and human mating psychology," was published in the Journal of Sex Research in 2004 and can be found online:

  Before discussing slash and its fans, however, we first consider the general question of why human beings enjoy fiction at all. Our discussion is animated by the premises that mental phenomena, such as enjoyment, are the products of brain states and that the human brain, like every organ in every species, is the product of evolution by natural selection.

  and

  Written fiction probably contains elements of both engagement of organizing adaptations and of pleasure circuit lock-picking, and different kinds of fiction may contain different proportions. Perhaps "great" works of fiction are those that most fully engage organizing adaptations, which is why they have survived the tests of time and translation, while "lesser" fiction, including genre romance novels, may primarily pick the locks of the brain's pleasure circuits.
  
  THE NATURE OF THE GENRE ROMANCE NOVEL
  
  Romance novels have been called, with some justification, "women's pornography." [...] If we can persuade the reader that porn consists almost entirely of lock-picking rather than engagement of organizing adaptations, our subsequent argument that the same is true of genre romances may be more persuasive.

  While I cannot comment on the evolutionary biology underpinning these statements, I would like to challenge the classification of romance as a "lesser" form of fiction. It would appear to be based on an assumption that romance is read solely, or primarily, for different pleasures than those derived from more intellectual fiction. As I hope we've demonstrated on this blog, some (though certainly not all) romances can be extremely intellectually rewarding to a reader who approaches them with a mind which is respectfully open about their literary and intellectual merits. Salmon and Symons might also benefit from a little more thinking about how much intellectual activity can be involved in the writing and reading of porn. Pam Rosenthal, for example, has said that she

  come[s] out of that highfalutin French intellectual porn tradition. Story of O was absolutely formative for me in the 1960s, and so was Sontag's essay The Pornographic Imagination. I read a lot of the Marquis de Sade in my teens, too.
  
  And I've gotten a fair amount of mail from highly intellected porn readers as well

  In fact, Salmon and Symons would appear not to be aware of erotica and porn written by women, because on their list of "erotic genres [which] could exist, but to our knowledge, none of them does" they include

  Narratives with little development of character, plot, or setting in which heroines have brief, impersonal sexual encounters with attractive male strangers, with no obstacles, no falling in love, no strings attached, and no happily-ever-after endings (i.e., narratives that directly mimic male-oriented porn).

  Salmon and Symons seem aware only of women authors of romance novels: "What, then, actually does characterize women's erotic fiction? The genre romance novel has the following features. The goal of the heroine is never sex for its own sake, much less sex with strangers."

• A more recent, item which has already deeply irritated many romance readers is a study which, as reported by the BBC, found that "Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life." The study's already been discussed at AAR and at the Smart Bitches'. It's probably worth acknowledging that research can sometimes be reported in the press in ways which lack the nuances present in the original. I'm not sure exactly which study is being referred to, but there are a variety of papers and other items on this and related issues which have been produced by members of Heriot-Watt's Family and Personal Relationship Laboratory. They are:
  
  • Holmes, B.M., & Johnson, K.R. (In Press). Adult attachment and romantic partner preference: A review. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
  • Johnson, K.R., & Holmes, B.M. (In Press). Contradictory messages: A content analysis of Hollywood-produced romantic comedy feature films. Communication Quarterly.
  • Holmes, B.M. (2007).In search of my "one and only": Romance-oriented media and beliefs in romantic relationships destiny. Electronic Journal of Communication, 17 (3).
  • Holmes, B.M. (2004). Romantic partner ideals and dysfunctional relationship beliefs cultivated through popular media messages: Implications for relationships satisfaction. Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest Information and Learning.
  
  I haven't had time to read these over (due to a need to get on with some of the items on my other lists). Does anyone else feel like taking on the task over the holidays?

• And finally some good news, via AAR's new blog,. The original source of the news has subsequently been deleted because, as Paula Guran explains,

  the numbers I was mentioning yesterday were compiled from the only the lists of the top fifty bestselling books for the week (in whatever the category and whatever week) on Bookscan — not ALL the books sold. Evidently, that was not clear — especially when taken out of context elsewhere.
  
  Second, I evidently was not supposed to put those figures “out into the media” at all. I didn’t put them “out into the media”. The media picked up a public posting. To me, there’s a difference, but evidently there is none to Bookscan and I see their point.

  However, they're still available at Galleycat: "compared to the first 49 weeks of 2007 [...] mass market paperback sales are up 14 percent—and overall romance sales are up 83 percent, with mass market paperbacks alone experiencing a 50 percent boost." I suspect those might be US figures, but romance seems to be doing well in the UK too: "The real winner in our economic meltdown, you see, is the book publisher Mills & Boon" (Black).

And that's the end of my list, and probably my last blog post of 2008. Happy Holidays!

1 April Gorry's Ph.D. thesis, "Leaving Home for Romance: Tourist Women's Adventures Abroad" (from the University of California Santa Barbara), is unpublished and therefore not readily available, but descriptions of her analysis of the heroes of romance novels can be found here and here. It should be noted that the thesis is not primarily about romance novels. The abstract of a conference paper presented by Gorry in 1995 gives an indication of the focus of her research:

the mating behavior of Caucasian tourist women vacationing in tropical locations such as the Caribbean, East Africa, Indonesia and Greece. The widespread occurrence of a phenomenon that cannot easily be explained by evolutionary theory makes female romance tourism worthy of ethnographic attention. An initial three month period of field research conducted in the Caribbean has revealed the following behavioral anomalies: tourist women tend to engage in more promiscuous behavior than they would at home, taking one or more different lovers in the span of a few days, choosing men of lower status than themselves, providing payment for "romantic services," and prioritizing male appearance and reputed love making ability over other mate selection criteria.

2 Salmon and Symons's book, Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality, while it includes statements about romance novels, seems to be only partially about them. The description of the book is as follows:

The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. [...] The authors focus particular attention on slash fiction, an erotic subgenre written by and for women and found on-line and in fan magazines. Slash—so-called for the punctuation mark indicating a romantic pair—depicts sexual relationships between heterosexual male television and film characters such as Starsky and Hutch (S/H) and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (K/S). Salmon and Symons argue that—despite some differences—slash fiction has much in common with romance novels. The authors examine the essential ingredients of female sexual fantasy and how slash fiction provides them.

The photo of the list is from Wikimedia Commons.

Alpha male syndrome

I just started watching the first season of Queer as Folk. A friend lent it to me, saying it was Hot! especially since I like gay male romances so much.

She wasn't kidding. QaF is about four gay men who are all friends and a hot little twink one of them picks up and deflowers. It's also got a couple of lesbians as primary supporting characters. It's lauded as the first show that has an entirely homosexual main cast, and let me tell you, the "breeders" aren't represented well, when they show up at all. And it's got lots of nudity, lots of sex, lots of m/m kissing. If you like that sort of thing, it's definitely hot.

The Wikipedia entry about the show says something that I find fascinating:

The network's initial marketing of the show was primarily targeted at gay male audiences, yet a sizeable segment of the viewership turned out to be straight women.

Whoa! Big shock here, people! A certain segment of the straight female population loves romances between gay men!

This is something that is NOT a shock to anyone who knows anything about Slash fiction, which originated from a reference to the "/" punctuation between "Kirk/Spock" fan fiction written by and for women that depicted Kirk and Spock in a sexual and romantic relationship. This is also not news to the producer of Brokeback Mountain who told Ang Lee, the director of the movie about a pair of gay cowboys, that their core audience was not gay men, but rather straight women (although five years of experience runs between the makers of QaF and the producer of BbM, so hindsight is indeed 20/20). And male/male erotica (or m/m/f) is certainly the growth industry in the online erotica publishing houses. In an interview with the Smart Bitches, two editors from Ellora's Cave said:

And an up-and-coming genre that we are eagerly acquiring is m/m erotic romance, as well as m/m/f ménage.

So, what's up with that? Why might women be attracted to gay male romance and/or gay male sex?

Because, if, as I argue in my article*, romances are actually about watching the hero figure out and confess his feelings, if they're about watching him move from the "masculine economy of use" to the "feminine economy of exchange," then watching TWO men have to figure it out for and with each other is more than twice as wonderful as watching one man figure it out for and with a woman. As Meghan Daum says:

With Jack and Ennis, however, there's no woman to pick up the emotional slack, and they're forced to experience their feelings without the benefit of female translation or analysis. In other words, they are (at least for each other) as emotionally available as it gets.

That's not actually the point of my post, however. ::sigh:: My point--and I do have one, to rip off Ellen Degeneres shamelessly--is to speculate on why it's the complete jerk alpha male in QaF, Brian Kinney, who is most attractive to everyone, both in the show and in the audience.

If women are attracted to romances to watch the men realize that they can't survive without love, and if they're attracted to Slash (which, in its purest form, focuses on relationship rather than just sex) and m/m romance to watch TWO men have to deal with the vulnerability of falling in love, then why is the irresistible alpha male quite so irresistible?

Because it's much more impressive to make the rake, the asshole, the user, fall in love than to make the nice guy fall in love. If the one man who refuses to admit that love exists (Brian says in the pilot episode, "Love is something that straight people tell themselves they're in so they can get laid. And then they end up hurting each other because it was all based on lies to begin with") can be seen to be emotionally vulnerable, then causing or watching that vulnerability gives a female reader/viewer power over everything that user, that alpha male, represents. A friend of mine recently wrote on her blog:

I want to take a man who doesn't express love and inspire him to express it to *me*.

I think this says it perfectly.

This connects, I believe, to my point about m/m romances. Ennis Del Mar is the much more affecting character in Brokeback Mountain, precisely because he's the most emotionally stunted. Watching him deal with his emotions is so much more heart-breaking because he has no idea how to go about doing it. A romance with a HEA would show Jack and Ennis finally able to express their love. Their story is a tragedy, however, precisely because they were never able to verbalize their emotions to each other.

My husband, one of the good guys, was slightly put out over my tongue-dragging, panting interest in the character of Brian Kinney in QaF. He complained that all his life he was told to be considerate of other's feelings, kind, and unselfish, only to find that women are most attracted to the emotionless jerks who treat them like dirt and discard them without a thought, all for the hope that they'll be the one to affect him and make him change his ways. I told him there was a big difference between the fantasy of conquering the alpha male and the reality of having him in your life. After all, I ended up (very happily!) with the nice guy. I just enjoy watching the alpha male get his come-uppance.


*Frantz, Sarah S. G., 2002. "'Expressing' Herself: The Romance Novel and the Feminine Will to Power," in Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America. Eds. Lydia Cushman Schurman and Deidre Johnson. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press) pp. 17-36.