The Problems with Representations of Bisexuality in M/M Romance

Here's a cross-post of a piece I wrote for Prism Book Alliance last month, written in response to some of the issues being raised lately in the m/m genre. 

Bi-erasure in M/M romance is not entirely a surprise. The genre is defined by the fact that the two guys have to get together in the end. Unfortunately this reinforces one of the more pervasive myths about bisexuality that exists: that it’s just a stepping stone on the inevitable path between straight and gay.

Remember how cutting edge Sex and the City was? Remember when Carrie said this about bisexual guys: “I'm not even sure bisexuality exists. I think it's just a layover on the way to Gay Town.”

And therein lies the problem with the entire Gay For You trope, particularly in Romance where of course the guys will end up together forever, and of course their previous relationships with women can be easily brushed off as a phase, or an aberration, or a stepping stone, in this case, not to Gay Town necessarily, but to HEA Town. Which just happens to look exactly the same as Gay Town in this scenario.

When I first released Dark Space, I was surprised to see it described as “Gay For You.” I’ve said it before, but if there’s really a need to slap a label on Brady, then it’s at least Out For You. And that’s out as in queer, not out as in gay. Brady has an ex-girlfriend and--intense amount of internalised homophobia and acute self-denial notwithstanding-- there’s no reason for the reader to think that Brady wasn’t genuinely sexually attracted to that girlfriend. Brady’s out for Cam. But it’s not like Cam magicked him True Gay or anything. And it’s something that I specifically wanted to address when I wrote these lines in the sequel:

Which wasn’t to say that a hot girl in a tight shirt couldn’t still get my attention. She couldn’t keep it, though, not when I had Cam.

Brady is with Cam because he loves him and is attracted to him. At the same time he is still, and always will be, sexually attracted to women. This in no way devalues his relationship with Cam. And I feel that this is a problem in Romance as a whole. That when you meet The One, you no longer have eyes for any other. Which is probably one of the bullshittiest of all the bullshit fairy tales ever invented about love. Because, let’s face it, unless finding your true love also involves ritually removing your eyeballs, you’re still going to look at hot people. You’re still going to be attracted to them. You still have a pulse.

The thing that I find most problematic about the GFY trope though, is its logical conclusion. If Gay For You is a thing, then surely so is Straight For You. Why, with the right girl and (probably) just a little bit of prayer, there would be no gay men at all!

Because of the inherent constraints in the M/M genre, it’s sometimes too easy to play into that whole bi-erasure thing. Because an M/M HEA between two guys looks exactly the same, whether it’s gay or bi. Two men overcome whatever was standing in their way and end up together…aww. Which is why I think it’s important for writers to remind our readers that one or both of these characters may be bi.

Bi-erasure is incredibly harmful for people who identify as bi, and romance novels, which offer an escape for so many other people, aren’t as warm and fluffy when they’re quietly denying or invalidating your existence. And bi people get enough of that shit from other media. Bisexuality in popular culture is way too often associated with duplicity, with untrustworthiness. In Hollywood, in terms of shorthand for evil, bisexuality is right up there with an English accent.

As writers, I think we have an obligation to try to do better. We need to be certain that we don’t treat bisexuality as a phase, or as a part of a process of denial, or as the fucking no man’s land between where Gay and Straight have planted their flags and dug their trenches. Bisexuality is its own valid identity.

A beta reader pointed out that in my newly-contracted novel I have two instances of briefly described m/f oral sex, and that some readers wouldn’t like this. I knew that, of course. I’d thought about that when I was writing those scenes, and how fucked up is it that I actually stopped writing, squinted at my screen, and wondered if that was okay? In the end those scenes are staying precisely because I had that reaction. One of my MCs is bisexual, and just because he finds himself in a relationship with another guy doesn’t mean that it automatically wipes his identity clean and he can start over as a gay man. He is and will always be bisexual, whoever he ends up with. He is not confused, he is not in the process of realising he’s attracted exclusively to men, and he’s not Gay For You. He’s not gay for anyone. He’s bisexual, and that in no way invalidates his, or anyone else’s, HEA.

M/M Romance is supposed to embrace diversity, and promote inclusiveness. Romance is supposed to make a reader feel happy, not invisible. And that’s something that clearly needs some work. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m aware that writing this post from my position as a cishet woman that there will be things I have overlooked, or misconstrued, and am just plain ignorant about. But I know that we can do better, and I hope that we can all try.

TENTACLES!

So...tentacles. Specifically, in m/m. Look, you'll either like them or you won't, and nothing I say will change your mind. 

*whispers* I like them! 

But if you want to dip your toes into the dark, mysterious waters of tentacle sex, here's a good place to start. My three favourite m/m (m/something else?) tentsex stories: 

The Tentacle Monster Everyone Wanted, by Evie Kiels 

This free, fun, and surprisingly sweet story is all about the tentacles. But more than that, it's all about the boy with the tentacles -- Kip -- who is lonely, unloved (except for his sister, who's off to join the Peace Corp) and still suffering from being rejected by Aniket, his high school crush, when they both realised the same night he was a tentacle monster. Then, years later, Aniket walks back into his life. 

Most tentacle stuff I've read is all about the alien non-con, but not here. Here, the monster is just a sweet young guy with some unusual biology. 

Read this one, guys. It's super short, super fun, and has some seriously hot scenes going on. Check this out even if you don't like tentacles, because Kip is such a lovely character that it won't take you long to see past them. 

Gay Tentacles From Space! by Charlotte Mistry

First of all, ignore the title, the cover, and probably the blurb. This isn't cheesy like you think it is. We all know how it's going to go, right? Sexy, cocky guy gets entangled and ravished by a tentacle monster, and has the forced-gay time of his life. 

Well it kind of goes there, but for starters the writing is better that. There's some nice world building that you don't usually get in shorts like these, but more than that it's atmospheric. I mean that. This isn't PWP tentacle sex, this is almost a horror story. It's dark and weird, and the ending was really, really unexpectedly creepy and wonderful. 

Much more than I was expecting! 

And now, the best for last: Kraken, by M Caspian

I thought I knew was I was getting into -- a smutty piece of fluff with a man who is molested by a tentacle monster but it's okay because he likes it in the end. That is not this book. This book is creepy. I said that, right? It's the word I keep coming back to. 

It has the following elements: 

1. A monster. See title. Check. 

2. An isolated location. An island. Check. 

3. Creepy locals. You know those assholes know exactly what's going on, but you don't know whose side they're on. Check. 

4. A guy who wanders into the middle of everything and happens to be the next chosen sacrifice. Check. 

But that's not all this book has got. It's got a fantastic sense of place -- the descriptions of the landscapes weren't just visual, they were visceral. The island has it's own history, of both its people and its industries. And the atmosphere just gets creepier and creepier, like the rolling fog in a 1940's gothic film. The details here are fantastic. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll just say -- the birds! Oh my god, the birds! There are so many layers here, that I will definitely be rereading it, and at a slower pace this time so I don't miss a thing. 

Make no mistake. Kraken is not romance. What Kraken does is take the basic set-up of a romance and twist it around until you realise you're looking at a horror and you have been since the very beginning. 

This is a great book if you like darker fiction. Dip your toes into these waters, and I guarantee you'll be back for more. 

And I'll be interviewing M Caspian soon on my blog, so stay tuned for that! 

Free Read! The Last Rebellion

God, I hope I've done this right. Because I am about as computer savvy as those apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where they throw the stick up, and it spins, and then it's a spaceship, and I really can't remember anything that happened after that. But I'll bet it was just full of metaphors. 

Anyway, I wrote a thing. 

And did I mention that it's a free thing? This is for two reasons. 

Firstly, it's because it's got non-con and violence in it, and Amazon gets snarky about that. And I don't really know how to upload stuff to Smashwords.

Secondly, and most importantly, if I give it to you guys for free, I don't need to write a blurb. 

I hate writing blurbs. But you get what you pay for, right? So here it is, my free, almost completely blurbless story, The Last Rebellion: 

Rho is a prisoner of war. Miller is the man who intends to break him. 

Warnings: contains scenes of violence, torture, and non-consensual m/m sex.

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And hopefully, if this actually worked, you can read it or download the PDF here. And the mobi here. And the epub here. 

Oh, and also via the FREE READS tab at the top of this page and on my webpage. 

My LHNB story is out: Falling Away

My Love Has No Boundaries story is here! 

You can find Falling Away over at Goodreads (you must be a member of the MM Romance Group), or over on the MM Romance Group site, where it will soon be available to download. 

Here is another look at my picture prompt because...hello! 

Why yes, I will tie you up and do nasty things to you, since you begged so nicely. 

And you should all get onboard at the MM Romance site, since all these stories are FREE! 

Menages were my gateway drug...

Why m/m? Well, why not? 

When my co-workers first found out I was writing smut, sorry, erotica, the assumption was that it would be boy/girl stuff. And I let them keep that assumption for a while, until the sneaky bastards tracked down my books online. *Waves to cheeky bastards* 

Well, needless to say the list of co-workers wanting to read my books diminished quite quickly. Apparently the straight guys just really aren't too keen to read about what publishers and sellers refer to as "male/male sexual practices" and I refer to as "fucking awesome". On the plus side, I've picked up some very keen fans in the workplace, both guys and girls, who love a bit of boy-on-boy action. And who wouldn't? 

To honest, I haven't been writing m/m romance for long. 

The first romance I attempted was way back in high school. It was terrible. It was also m/f. It's probably still lying at the bottom of a cupboard somewhere. Hopefully not still at my mum's house, because we've had enough awkward talks, thanks. 

I don't remember the first m/m book I read. 

The first m/m scene I read was in a book with an m/m/f menage. And m/m/f menages are like a gateway drug. Pretty soon I was like, "You know what would make this scene even hotter? If they got that girl out of the middle." 

So I read one without the girl. Boom. I was hooked. 

I like reading and writing m/m because I am a fundamentally shallow person who can only do basic mathematics. Here is an example of my basic mathematics: 

1 x hot guy = hot. 

2 x hot guys = double hot. 

This doesn't work ad infinitum, of course. I tend to get lost on who is who and what's being put where once the number of participants get past about three. Which is why I've never written a threesome. Dammit, Jim, I'm a writer, not a choreographer!

So that's the why of why I chose m/m. 

If we want to get into why I'm such a fan of dub-con, non-con, more angst that you could throw at a French philosopher, emotional baggage that would sink the Bismarck, and just good old-fashioned fucked-up characters, I think we're gonna need a longer post. 

Much longer. 

Do you read Historicals?

I was having an interesting conversation the other day about historical fiction, and I was genuinely surprised when I was told by a friend that she didn't read it. 

As a history nerd, I was SHOCKED. I blame my love of history on not have a television for a period as a child, which led to looking to alternate sources for stories. That, and a mother who loved history even though she failed it miserably at school. (Hi, Mum!) Because it occurred to me at a very early age that history, literally, is EVERY STORY IN THE WORLD EVER. And how is that not awesome? 

But my friend told me that she finds it difficult to invest emotionally in historical fiction, since the protagonists -- had they lived -- would already be dead now. Which I can kind of understand, but also I can't. Because If I only stuck to stories that might be real and happening now, wouldn't that restrict me to contemporary, realistic fiction? And if I did that, wouldn't I be missing out on a lot of great fiction? 

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I love history, so I'm completely biased on the subject. I"m also currently writing another historical, so yeah, I've got a horse in this race.

I love when the world-building in historical fiction is vivid, and I love when the writer gets the details right. On the flip side, I HATE it when they get it wrong. I read an m/m historical recently where there was a very big Public Display of Affection, and it threw me out of the story straight away. Because no way, just no fucking way, would two men kiss and grope each other in public in the middle of the day in Victorian London. Just no. 

You're writing history, not rewriting it. Just...just don't. 

Of course if happened. The proof is all over Victorian Gentlemen in Love. But it happened in private, it happened underground, and these men must have lived in constant fear of discovery. Let's not diminish that by jemmying in PDAs that couldn't have happened. 

Wow. That turned into a slight rant, didn't it? So let's get back to the point: Do you read historical fiction, or does it just not work for you? Whatever your answer, I'd love to know your reasons. 

What's on your m/m wishlist for 2013?

So here's a sort of a wishlist for 2013, things I'd like to see more of in m/m, and things I'd like to see a lot less of as well. 

Dub-con. I do love me some dub-con. Blackmail stories are really doing it for me at the moment. I love the power games at play there, but I've yet to find one I really love-love. Any recommendations are welcome! 

Puppy play. Hot, cute, and at the same time weirdly humiliating...or so I thought. So often puppy play involves the big nasty Dom getting his rocks off by humiliating his sub, the the puppy play becomes -- and this may be the point, I guess -- dehumanising. The problem with dehumanising a character though, is that pretty soon I stop giving a damn about him. M/m needs more sweet puppy play...but J.A. Rock and I have got some of that covered... :) 

Humiliation. No apologies, I love it. But, like with the puppy play, it's a fine line. Cross it into dehumanisation, and you've lost me. 

Age play. Sometimes creepy, sometimes awesome. I want to read more of the awesome, please. 

More drag queens! But only if we also get to see what happens once the make-up comes off. 

Frat boys. Because they're young, cute, and a completely foreign species to me. We don't have frats in Australia, so all my working knowledges comes from movies and TV. So I basically know nothing. 

ANGST! MORE ANGST! I do love a book that puts me through emotional hell. As a writer, I'm a sadist. As a reader, I'm a total masochist. But it's totally subjective. A book that makes you cry might just make me roll my eyes and wish every character hurried up and died. And vice versa. Everyone's taste is different, which is what makes comparing opinions so much fun. 

And now for the things I'd like to see less of. 

I'd like to see less insta-love, but that's always been a pet peeve of mine. 

I'd also like to see less of what's become a staple in m/m -- the solo shower jerk-off. Now admittedly I have one of these in one of my WIPs, but ever since it was brought to my attention how common it is (thanks, Ami!) it's going to go. 

And while we're on cliches, why are so many Doms multimillionaires who do nothing else but hang out in mysterious sex clubs? Seriously guys, you don't get to be a multimillionaire without at least occasionally going to work. This year, I'd like to see more Doms with real jobs and mortgages, who have to stop off on the way home from the mysterious sex club to buy milk. 

And I hate -- and will always hate -- when a Dom is a Dom because he was abused, abandoned or unloved as a child. Or, worse, when a sub is a sub because he was abused, abandoned, or unloved as a child. Not every kink needs a nasty psychological trigger, and not every scene is a therapy session. Sometimes you just need what you need. It really can be as simple as that. 

What would you like to see more of in m/m? And what really annoys the hell out of you? 

I'm very excited to tell you that my next novel, The Island will be coming out in the New Year, from Loose Id. It's set on a Fijian island that looks a little like this: 

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But it's not all sand and sunshine. In many ways, the tone of The Island is darker than Tribute, but I hope that you will fall a little bit in love with my two guys --  one, who tells himself he's there for the money  and everything else is none of his business; and the other, who knows from experience that the most painful thing in the world is hope. 

Here is the blurb: 

Shaw is in Fiji to sell a stolen painting to a crime boss. It will be the deal of a lifetime, if he can pull it off. He isn’t expecting Vornis to parade his latest toy around in front of him - a captured DEA agent whose time is running out. It’s none of Shaw’s business, and it doesn’t matter that under any other circumstances Lee would be exactly Shaw’s type: he’s young, he’s hot, and he might even have a personality if they hadn’t beaten it out of him. Too bad there’s no way Lee is getting off the island. Too bad there’s nothing Shaw can do for him. And too bad there are some lines that even Shaw won’t cross -- keeping his hands off Lee proves harder than he thinks, but Shaw’s not stupid enough to fall for the tortured captive of a dangerous crime boss. If he does, it won’t be just his job he'll be risking -- it will be his life. 

I can't wait to share the cover art with you! 

I saw a fairytale kiss

When I was a young girl, probably about ten or eleven, I was on a train going through the rainforest to Kuranda, in tropical North Queensland. The journey was wonderful and magical, and I was spellbound. 

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There were two young men in the same carriage. I was eleven -- young enough to imagine they were fairytale princes, and old enough to feel awkwardly shy because they were so good looking and I had braces and puppy fat. And then -- I remember it just as the train passed the waterfall -- those two young men kissed. One of the other passengers swore and left the carriage. 

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I asked my mother later what was wrong with what those boys had done. 

"Nothing," she told me. "Loving someone else isn't wrong." 

And how could it be? We were in an enchanted forest, they were handsome fairytale princes, and I was the plain little girl who had glimpsed something magical. 

If I grew up to write m/m erotica, maybe I can trace it all back to those boys on the train. When I was eleven they were beautiful. Now they would be hot. But underneath all of that there has to be a love story. There always is, otherwise it isn't magic. 

And what I saw was magic. 

A new blog design...

The difficulty in so many great free blog designs available, is that I don't know which one to choose! I've settled on these lovely roses for now, but I will very probably change my mind in a few weeks. 

In exciting news, I am about to start working with my lovely editor on my next book. I'll let you know the details soon. It's difficult to explain -- in some ways it has a darker psychological tone than Tribute, but the sexual relationship is more vanilla. It also has a modern setting this time. It's m/m again. I do love m/m pairings!