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seanan_mcguireAuthors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith have written a very brave, very straightforward article about being asked to remove homosexual characters from dystopian YA. Check it out. It's a fascinating read, all the more because it's so topical.
I have never been asked to turn a gay character straight; I'm very thankful for that. I have also, as yet, not been working all that extensively in YA (although I hope that will change in the future). So who knows what's going to happen? I have faith in The Agent, however, and I truly believe that she will fight for me, and for the integrity of my work. Both my houses (both adult houses) have been fabulous about my having gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters in my books; I do not yet have any explicitly transgender characters in published work, but I have absolute faith that when those characters appear, both DAW and Orbit will treat them with the same respect that they show to all my other characters.
That being said, I'm noticing one disturbing trend in certain replies/rebuttals* to this entry. Specifically, I've seen several people saying "There are absolutely gay characters in YA. What about ________?" and naming specific examples. Tom and Carl in the Diane Duane books. The protagonists of Annie On My Mind. Pretty much anything by Francesca Lia Block. And, well...
To me, this is the same as saying "Of course there are female leads in the movies! Didn't you see Bridesmaids?" or "Of course there are female protagonists in cartoons! Don't you watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?"
Yes, those stories exist. But they exist in the context of "chick flick" (how I hate you, rhyming label), or "girl's cartoon." If you omit "chick flicks" and action movies involving Mila Jovavich or Angelina Jolie, both of whom are basically playing video game heroines most of the time, it's really hard to find a female lead. We get romances and we get to fight evil in our skivvies. We don't get to have stories that are essentially gender-neutral. If you take out the cartoons where pink is the primary color of the universe, it's really hard to find a cartoon that has gender balance, much less a female in a leadership role.
When I talk about wanting diversity in my YA, I'm not asking for more specifically "queer YA." I love it, I want to see it keep getting published, I think it's important, and I think it's not the point of this particular sword. What I want is paranormal romance where the lead is in love with the head cheerleader, not the head jock. What I want is heist books and con men where it's Mike and Dan, not Mike and Dawn. I want gay best friends and gay parents and sisters who were born brothers but got that fixed. I want books that are sold as being normal, everyday, perfectly ordinary books, that just happen to have gay people in them, not the next! Big! QUEER ADVENTUUUUUUUUURE! I have plenty of queer adventures. What I want is gay men doing laundry, lesbians chasing werewolves, and transgender superheroes fighting to save Metro City. What I want is books where the story matters more than the sexual orientation of the characters it contains.
Saying "queer YA exists" distracts from the issue at hand: there is very little in the way of YA with queer characters, as opposed to queer YA. And that's something we should be aware of, and something we should be working to fix. My sexual orientation did not somehow change the stories that I was interested in, or the adventures I was able to have as a human being. It was just one factor, amongst a whole lot of other factors. We need explicitly queer YA the way we need sports books and horse books and The Babysitter's Club and every other niche story: to tell us that this is okay, that this is an option. But characters in apocalypse YA ride horses, play sports, and babysit for children. So why can't they date whoever they want, without being changed into something they're not?
It matters.
(*I don't really understand how you can present a rebuttal to something that happened. The surrounding circumstances can be argued, but if a dog bites me, you can't present an argument for why the dog didn't bite me. I'm bleeding, I was bitten. This does not stop people from trying.)
I have never been asked to turn a gay character straight; I'm very thankful for that. I have also, as yet, not been working all that extensively in YA (although I hope that will change in the future). So who knows what's going to happen? I have faith in The Agent, however, and I truly believe that she will fight for me, and for the integrity of my work. Both my houses (both adult houses) have been fabulous about my having gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters in my books; I do not yet have any explicitly transgender characters in published work, but I have absolute faith that when those characters appear, both DAW and Orbit will treat them with the same respect that they show to all my other characters.
That being said, I'm noticing one disturbing trend in certain replies/rebuttals* to this entry. Specifically, I've seen several people saying "There are absolutely gay characters in YA. What about ________?" and naming specific examples. Tom and Carl in the Diane Duane books. The protagonists of Annie On My Mind. Pretty much anything by Francesca Lia Block. And, well...
To me, this is the same as saying "Of course there are female leads in the movies! Didn't you see Bridesmaids?" or "Of course there are female protagonists in cartoons! Don't you watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?"
Yes, those stories exist. But they exist in the context of "chick flick" (how I hate you, rhyming label), or "girl's cartoon." If you omit "chick flicks" and action movies involving Mila Jovavich or Angelina Jolie, both of whom are basically playing video game heroines most of the time, it's really hard to find a female lead. We get romances and we get to fight evil in our skivvies. We don't get to have stories that are essentially gender-neutral. If you take out the cartoons where pink is the primary color of the universe, it's really hard to find a cartoon that has gender balance, much less a female in a leadership role.
When I talk about wanting diversity in my YA, I'm not asking for more specifically "queer YA." I love it, I want to see it keep getting published, I think it's important, and I think it's not the point of this particular sword. What I want is paranormal romance where the lead is in love with the head cheerleader, not the head jock. What I want is heist books and con men where it's Mike and Dan, not Mike and Dawn. I want gay best friends and gay parents and sisters who were born brothers but got that fixed. I want books that are sold as being normal, everyday, perfectly ordinary books, that just happen to have gay people in them, not the next! Big! QUEER ADVENTUUUUUUUUURE! I have plenty of queer adventures. What I want is gay men doing laundry, lesbians chasing werewolves, and transgender superheroes fighting to save Metro City. What I want is books where the story matters more than the sexual orientation of the characters it contains.
Saying "queer YA exists" distracts from the issue at hand: there is very little in the way of YA with queer characters, as opposed to queer YA. And that's something we should be aware of, and something we should be working to fix. My sexual orientation did not somehow change the stories that I was interested in, or the adventures I was able to have as a human being. It was just one factor, amongst a whole lot of other factors. We need explicitly queer YA the way we need sports books and horse books and The Babysitter's Club and every other niche story: to tell us that this is okay, that this is an option. But characters in apocalypse YA ride horses, play sports, and babysit for children. So why can't they date whoever they want, without being changed into something they're not?
It matters.
(*I don't really understand how you can present a rebuttal to something that happened. The surrounding circumstances can be argued, but if a dog bites me, you can't present an argument for why the dog didn't bite me. I'm bleeding, I was bitten. This does not stop people from trying.)
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Date: 2011-09-13 03:59 pm (UTC)We need explicitly queer YA the way we need sports books and horse books and The Babysitter's Club and every other niche story: to tell us that this is okay, that this is an option.
Yes. A thousand times yes. If I had had more of that to read when I was young, I might have figured it out for myself a lot sooner than college.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:06 pm (UTC)On a non-Ya note: I just read The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. One of the things I LOVED about it is that the protagonist is gay, but his sexual orientation isn't the focus of the novel, or even a subplot, just another facet of his character.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 04:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:19 pm (UTC)A-freakin'-men.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:23 pm (UTC)But characters in apocalypse YA ride horses, play sports, and babysit for children. So why can't they date whoever they want, without being changed into something they're not?
Exactly.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 04:37 pm (UTC)And then her Tamir Triad was a girl born as a girl turned into her murdered twin brother for fourteen years to save her life, adapting to being a girl again when she was a boy in every sense of the word for the longest time. I thoroughly enjoy the way Lynn touched on the forbidden back then, and hasn't hit the trope of "HEY THESE GUYS ARE GAY GAY IS MY PLOT LOOK LOOK GAY," which gets done in certain genres.
It's the way people are. It's fine. There.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:38 pm (UTC)Another thing I'd like to point out is that a lot of characters who get mentioned in this kind of thread are characters whose orientation is never explicitly mentioned in the text.
We're never told explicitly that Tom and Carl are together; it's implied but also written in such a way that if we really really want to believe they're roommates/buddies, we can.
We're never told that Dumbledore is gay; it's hard to read book 7 and think there was nothing going on there, but it's only ever mentioned in an authorial interview that most of the young kids who need to know that gay people exist won't come across until/if they get into fandom or hear about it from someone who thinks it's hilarious. (Also, Dumbledore lives in The Well Of Loneliness--he had one love affair which may or may not have ever been consummated that ended BADLY, whereas Rowling makes it explicit that if you're heterosexual--especially if the fans ever thought you might not be--you WILL get married and have kids dammit. The parallel is loud and clear and really not OK. Are we supposed to think that everyone who isn't married is queer, unless they were evil? As much as I like the idea of dyke!McGonagall I am so freaking tired of the notion that gay people lead lonely lives and even if they get to have sex do not get to have long-standing relationships or family lives.)
Annie on my Mind, Francesca Lia Block, sure, but Annie on my Mind is an ISSUE BOOK and a lot of Francesca Lia Block's books are ISSUE BOOKS with added magic.
The whole point of wanting more queer characters in YA is that being GLBTIQA&c should not be a big fat hairy ISSUE. There would be a lot less need for books that tell us that it's OK to be queer if there were more books where people's queerness was acknowledged instead of being obvious but never talked about. Things that are obvious but never talked about are almost always things that are BAD, things that we don't discuss because of the assumption that the person concerned will be embarrassed or the assumption that discussing them is offensive somehow.
"Plausible deniability" undoubtedly sells more books and gets things past the radar of Focus to the Family but it does so by implying that being queer is something people will ordinarily want to deny. :( I expect it might be nice if one were asexual to think that some of these characters are aces, but again, the fact that nobody ever SAYS that they're ace makes that out to be an abnormality/shameful thing, too. Plus, if you've ever written slash you have heard from the people who think that if a character ever expresses interest in the opposite sex or has an opposite-sex relationship, slashing them is "making them gay" and an omfg Violation Of Canon because apparently bisexuals don't exist, or nobody can be one unless they talk about it all the time, and nobody ever falls in love with someone who isn't the gender they're usually attracted to, either.
Sigh.
And there are almost no trans characters that aren't in issue books (which makes me sad because I tend not to like issue books or romances, not because I think issues are terrible or love is bad, but because I like fantasy/horror/sf and action/adventure), and there is very little asexuality.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:42 pm (UTC)And there's Tammy Pierce's books.
...yeah, that's all I've got.
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 04:52 pm (UTC)That said, I agree with everything in your post and wanted to say so.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 05:07 pm (UTC)It never really occurred to me that the reason I've read so few books with gay characters is that they're not getting published, not that they're not getting written. Of course when I type it out like that, I sound like a naive idiot.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:21 pm (UTC)(Love your icon.)
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Date: 2011-09-13 05:15 pm (UTC)I want options, and I want people, and I want to publish stories about people being awesome and problematic and adventurous, no matter who or what they might be.
Also, I would publish the hell out of transgender superheroes fighting to save Metro City.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 05:17 pm (UTC)A little more acceptance of reality might have helped my youngest sister in law when she was at school, with a girlfriend who didn't dare admit same sex attraction to her parents. Now my sister in law is grown up and happily married (well, strictly civil partnered), so probably took little long term harm. I hope. Still I suspect most teens get enough anguish without making life difficult and adding extra pain for no good purpose.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 05:20 pm (UTC)And thanks for May and Jazz.
Visibility matters.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:35 pm (UTC)You're very welcome.
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Date: 2011-09-13 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 05:37 pm (UTC)Mentioning it because it's one of my new favorite books and I wanted to share. Because yes, you're right. How can we learn about Other if we never allow it into our lives? No matter what Other includes for us individually.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:27 pm (UTC)Incidentally, there's a sequel out. :)
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 06:48 pm (UTC)I clutch those books like stars.
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Date: 2011-09-13 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 06:53 pm (UTC)"After we thanked the agent for their time, declined the offer, and hung up, Sherwood broke the silence. “Do you think the agent missed that Becky and Brisa [supporting characters] are a couple, too? Do they ever actually kiss on-page? No? I’M ADDING A LESBIAN KISS NOW!”"
Thanks for posting this, and your reaction.
(
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Date: 2011-09-13 07:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-09-13 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 07:09 pm (UTC)Upvoted
Date: 2011-09-13 07:56 pm (UTC)Re: Upvoted
Date: 2011-09-13 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 08:03 pm (UTC)He also happens to be the finest swordsman of his (or possibly any other) generation, and so when The Big Bad shows up, and said family shows up demanding help, Ringil (our hero) tells them to sit on it.
Loved that.
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Date: 2011-09-13 08:07 pm (UTC)Incidentally: there's a sequel coming out. :)
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Date: 2011-09-13 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 08:36 pm (UTC)