For example, when I read gay romantic stories as a gay male, I’m not really going to think about how, “Wow, there’s no damsel in distress stereotype here, which is why I like this” (although, I grew up with Xena and Buffy, so I do look for that, but not in the same way). I’m going to be thinking more about gay male stereotypes, and often times M/M romance will utilize gay stereotypes in order to appeal to women, so that there is conflicting politics. Basically, I think there is still a different aesthetics between what women want in their gay male characters, and what gays want.

As Mizoguchi discusses about yaoi in Japan, there is an extent to which yaoi and gay subcultures intermingle because (1) we don’t live in social vacuums, and (2) storytelling about gayness leads to some antihomophobic thinking due to the requirement of research for the storytelling. Certainly there’s an extent to which feminist and gay interests overlap automatically if we think about lesbian authors in the subculture. But this is a work in progress, and to say that we’re “there” seems naive, utopian, or confusing the pluralistic world of e-publishing with real-world lives. It’s certainly market-savvy to say that “gay” and “M/M” are the same for those authors who want as large of readerships as possible.

LGBT writers who find homes in M/M presses do so partly because big presses are very choosy with LGBT fiction. With the explosion of M/M, LGBT writers can find larger readerships more easily and who doesn’t want a larger readership?

The situation reminds me of a gay club here in Seattle that now attracts a lot of straight couples. The club won’t refuse them because it’s money, and the extra cash exists because of growing understanding, acceptance of gay people, plus a sense that gay spaces are “fun.” Still, the gay folk are like, “What happened to our space?” and now they populate the club less than they used to. Obviously, an M/M press works differently as a space of shared/differing interests than a club, but in what ways?

One way is that, yes, it’s probably wise at this point to think of every M/M author as having a different readership. But I still think there’s something “het” going on in the M/M world and the lack of F/F content is just one example. Not that “het” is bad, but when a gay club is mostly populated by straight people, I personally have trouble thinking of it as a gay club. When a “gay [male] romance” convention is mostly populated by straight women, I scratch my head. Not that I haven’t attended Yaoi-con a few times myself, but then that’s called Yaoi-Con and not Gay Manga-Con.

One of the interesting things about gay romance or m/m is that a lot of the conventions of het formula are discarded — and that tends to turn off the readers who demand formula (one example being the absolute fidelity between the One True Pairing once they’ve met–that isn’t necessarily true in life or in m/m.

Please don’t analyze the covers. The covers are the work of publishers and their market-research studies, and often have nothing to do with what’s inside. Authors are more or less required to wax enthusiastic about the covers as part of their promotional responsibilities, but the cover is more often a matter of gritted teeth and resignation. I do love most of my Cheyenne Publishing covers because designer Alex Beecroft gets it that the cover should reflect the story. (I left one publisher because, after they asked what I wanted and I said “anything but naked torsos floating in space,” they gave me naked torsos floating in space. Above a ship.)

I think generalizing about the audience proportions of “gr” vs “m/m” is tricky, too. I think that is far more a matter of a particular author than the whole category. Look at Cheyenne’s ‘romance’ page: http://www.cheyennepublishing.com/romance.html

About half the books are by men, they have happy endings, they are romance–but they are not formula by any means. And – neither are the ones written by women.

Some of the ‘teasing apart’ may require a second look at the automatic disrespect given to any book categorized as “romance.”

It’s intellectual snobbery, and it is ignorant and offensive.

I’m not sure why this is a discussion that inevitably devolves into anger and fear on the part of so many, but it does. Every time.

I write mystery. I write action-adventure. I write romance. I write the best damn male male romance out there. And I’m not ashamed to say it.

Well, hardly that. It contains a host of interviews with authors and publishers and editors. Not one word was altered and nothing — not one word — was taken out of context.

It’s not like I asked tricky or complicated questions. The questions were things like…define the difference between m/m and gay romance. There’s no twisting of words or trying to fit slanted information to fit my agenda. What would my agenda be? It’s a book about teaching writers to publish in a particular market. Yeesh.

Has the make up of the m/m audience changed in two – three years? Yes. Certainly it has. Many more men are now reading and writing male male romance than when I published Man Oh Man.

But the market is still primarily made up of women writing male love stories. That’s neither bad nor good, it’s simply the reality. ALL romance is primarily written by women.

No matter how hard someone wishes to argue against the idea that m/m is any different from general gay fiction, the fact remains that one of these two things is not the same. I’ll leave it to others to determine what those differences are. But if male male romance was exactly the same as gay fiction, than there would be no such term as m/m romance. It’s not like I came up with the term. It existed long before me.

I read somewhere that hetero romance novels featuring Asian American heroines are rare, therefore Asian American females read less what would be considered strictly “romance,” and instead more what is considered Asian American fiction with a love story in it.

Then I read Erastes’ comment above, qualifying how gay romance mustn’t deviate too much from a formula hashed out over 100 years of hetero romance publishing if it hopes to get published, and therefore what Matthew reads (gay fiction with romance) isn’t actually “romance,” but gay fiction with a love story in it.

Hmm….

I think it’s worth teasing apart what exactly “romance” refers to because the term seems loaded with a lot of power dynamics and exclusions. I can see why people (namely gays/lesbians) think there’s exploitation going on, even if they readily admit that a straight woman can realistically write about two gay men.

In terms of demographics, although English-speaking boys’ love consumers who are male are at about 10%, we know that in Japan, BL is barely consumed by males at all because gay males there have their own dedicated manga. It’s also the case in America that gay males have their own dedicated fiction that often includes romantic elements. Thus, my sense is that M/M and gay romance aren’t interchangeable because they have established audiences that aren’t 100% female vs 100% male, but are more like (85% female/15% male) vs (85% male/15% female). Perhaps somewhere down the road it’ll even out gender-wise, but I think we’re still at least a few years away from that.

Personally, I find myself drawn more to books written by gay men as opposed to M/M romance that sometimes reads like, but more often looks like a hetero romance novel, just with two guys instead. Perhaps an analysis of covers would be appropriate.

PS: I tend to think of the phrase “gay romance” as including F/F — like how “gay marriage” isn’t just about men.