On Fri, 20 Dec 1996, Teramis wrote:
>
> As to your other posit, that an author is gay but it is never mentioned, and
> does it help or hurt them - although as you can see by this post I am very
> out about my gayness (and my kink orientation also, for that matter) - my
> personal sexual orientations are no more relevant to my writing, in and of
> themselves, than those of a heterosexual author. I am not driven to make a
> political lesbigay statement with my writing; I am focused on telling the
> story and letting the characters develop in their own way and express
> naturally (so to speak) within the pages. If a character has an alternative
> sexual orientation, then it is there and is dealt with. If not, then not. In
> my book MAINLINE the protagonist Reva has a bisexual interest that is never
> seriously pursued, altho it impacts on emotional developments. In my fantasy
> book KAR KALIM the characters are very het. Why should there be an
> assumption that my lesbianism informs or directs my writing? For some gay
> authors this is the case, because they want to write about lesbigay
> characters. I will write about such, when such a character evolves and
> suggests him/herself to me.
Sorry, but you're kidding yourself if you think your sexuality
doesn't have an affect on your writing. To begin with, it means that you
don't "assume" that your characters will be straight, and that the gay
characters you create will not fit into straight stereotypes of queer
persons/culture. Furthermore, being a lesbian gives you a lot higher
probability of being a feminist--after all, its easy to see (and get
pissed about) patriarchal attitudes/behavior in men when you don't need
their sexual and romantic attentions. Not to mention how important the
pay-scale differential becomes when there's never going to be a man in the
household. Anyway, my point is that your orientation affects your writing
regardless of the subject matter, just the same as your race, gender, and
class do. It doesn't matter whether you have a queer-positive political
agenda or not.
But, returning to a much earlier thread on the appearance of
strong women in sf--could this be due to the influence of queer female
authors? The lesbian community certainly has different standards of
"sexiness" (except for us poor sops who keep falling for straight
women--and then have to go to all the trouble of converting them <wink>).
Also, is it just my imagination (and selective memory), or are a
really high percentage of female SF authors queer? I'm basing this on a
recurrance of queer female characters, esp. when their orientation is
*not* central to the plot (based on my assumption that straight authors
only create gay characters when they want to explore sexuality issues).
Unfortunately, I can only come up with Marrion Zimmer Bradley offhand, but
I know a lot of the female sci-fi out there has homo-erotic over-tones,
under-currents, and themes (and $5 to anyone who can clearly define the
difference between over-tones and under-currents). Actually, I've noticed
an overabundance of queer women in poetry too (Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Elizabeth Bishop, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Nikki Giovanni,
etc)--keeping in mind that overabundance means more than 10%. Is this
some sort of general trend among female literary figures? Is it all in my
head? And if it's not all in my head, *why*? Much as it might appeal to
my perverse sensabilities, I refuse to believe that gay people are more
creative or artistic or what-have-you.
Jennifer
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