ltleflrt:

bendingsignpost:

ltleflrt:

Hey folks, I’ve already said I’m done discussing my opinions on what constitutes fetishizing gay men. I will not respond to any further anons on the subject, however you’re welcome to message me privately off anon if you’d like to discuss it. But let me make one thing very clear: My opinion on this does not matter.

If you’re concerned, talk to gay men in fandom. Ask them what they find uncomfortable, and then avoid using those things in your own writing. Going around asking female writers their opinions is more likely to cause fights than to enact positive change.

Hi, fandom gay man here! At the risk of putting my foot in it, there’s always two things that jump out at me when I see an author receiving asks or comments about whether they’re objectifying gay men by writing slash fic. 

1. Despite having written porn in the past that involves women, gay guy me has never received an ask or comment about whether I am objectifying women. It’s more than possible that these asks and comments concerned about the objectification of women occur within fandom and I have simply never seen them, but I have seen loads of “aren’t you worried about objectifying gay men?” in fandom (typically directed at women and nb peeps). Just something to think about.

2. 

When writers of queer fiction are prodded with concerns of “but what if you’re objectifying them?” the desired result of the prodder seems to be to get that writer to stop writing queer fiction. Which results in consumers of queer fiction (which certainly includes the people the prodder states they want to defend) ending up with less content. 

Fewer things to read. Fewer pieces of fiction that depict us as normal, as being loved, as deserving love. Fewer pieces of fiction where we might even discover ourselves for the first time. 

Fewer writers who are putting themselves in our shoes. Fewer writers willing to even try, if they’re too afraid of the backlash. Fewer writers making mistakes and thus learning and growing from those mistakes. 

And sometimes, after a day of being closeted at work by direct order of my boss, sometimes I really just want to read a story about some of my favorite characters being gay or queer men like me, maybe even in an AU where they have a job like mine–and the more people who are discouraged due to the fear of making mistakes, the less material there will be out there that tells us that we are normal people deserving of having stories about us.

Thank you @bendingsignpost!