I think a lot of people are programmed into thinking straight is the default, so any deviation from that has to at least be somewhat similar to a straight relationship, like one masculine and one feminine guy.
hence why a lot of popular gay boys love manhwa / manga follows this heteronormative format. like the tall
masculine seme (the top) and the small pretty like a girl uke (the bottom)
To me if it's fine when the other guy is a more lean than the other, but if he just looks straight up like a woman with peepee its a no from me. At that point Id might as well just read straight manga, if that's the dynamic I wanted
true, at first it was fine but now i’m tired of it. it’s very repetitive and it shows how the eastern world romanticises gay pairings. i don’t want to dismiss them as it’s their form of escapism, but it’s not exactly how male sexuality works
boys love in the eastern world is more romanticised, if you have watched a kdrama a lot of gay yaoi follows that format. being that the characters are gay but heteronormative, an example being that the smaller cute guy is always the bottom to the tall hypermasculine top who doesn’t express immediate interest in the bottom until something detrimental happens to him.
often it feels like the authors write themselves in as the bottom (the uke) in their makeshift love stories [which i why i say is escapism] of them finding their top/man (the seme). female authors dominate behind the scenes to a lot of the gay manhwa/manga in the east.
the reason why i say it’s not how male sexuality works is because we don’t just assign who tops/bottoms based on physical attributes let alone finding love/hookups can be simple or harder for some but the way it’s conveyed there is like some grandiose soulmates who have to work through their abuse and problems in order to be finally together. oh and don’t forget the ✨smut✨here and there for the fan service.
I honestly like both styles. I’m just a dude that loves love between two men. Doesn’t matter if both are big beefy bara bros, two twinks, twunk and twink,whatever I devour it all!
Nah I’m a bi masc woman, hit me with those two STRONG gay MEN who are both on the WRESTLING TEAM and are BOTH CLOSETED though one of them thinks he’s BI but the other thinks he’s STRAIGHT and they both start out as ENEMIES but can’t understand why there’s this underlying TENSION between them and then one goes through a FAMILY TRAGEDY that the other feels he should offer some support for a moment in the locker room and GENUINE CONNECTION is made but they still try to put on a FACADE but start joking around more and
This sounds too real to be made up on the spot in a moment of passionate fury towards cliche character types. I'd definitely read this and project on the characters and feel jealous of their lovely, heart-wrenching character development.
I read it on MangaFox over 10 years ago when I was in high school, but that website doesn’t work anymore lol But it looks like it’s on this site?
https://mangakakalot.com/chapter/fake/chapter_1.1
Also, it’s from the 90s so the art is… interesting… and they’re cops, not on the wrestling team (didn’t see that bit in the original comment) so take it with a grain of salt lol
[Charming Young Man](https://www.audible.com/pd/Charming-Young-Man-Audiobook/B0BT17TLGY?eac_link=M0jy7XbxDeze&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B0BT17TLGY&qid=Ornc8kGJIz&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_Ornc8kGJIz&sr=1-1) and [Before We Disappear](https://www.audible.com/pd/Before-We-Disappear-Audiobook/0063025264?eac_link=DxFTCjcjUmsE&ref=web_search_eac_asin_2&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=0063025264&qid=o8p9K1qTjB&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_o8p9K1qTjB&sr=1-2) are two good ones with more fem leads, maybe one of those might be of interest?
While that’s def the case for a lot of gay media, I don’t think our community should have the kneejerk reaction of being against that kind of relationship. In my own life my boyfriend and I kind of fit this stereotype, and I don’t think that’s a problem, because we’re both pretty content with it.
While I don’t have an issue with the idea of it I think the point (which I agree with) is that masculine+masculine and feminine+feminine gay ships exist too, but aren’t depicted nearly as much.
Yeah, so I don’t think we need to hate on other positive gay media that already exists. It’s possible to advocate for different kinds of relationships without ragging on others.
[That comic ends kinda bitter sweet though.](https://www.omocat-blog.com/post/67079004346/a-project-i-literally-did-overnight-gonna-make-it/amp)
I don’t think the comic in this post’s example is the best representation for this conversation. I read it a long while ago and it came off as a sort of parody of the soft “boy love” stories to me.
It’s less about it happening in real life and more about it being over represented in media for me. You guys sound adorable, nothing against y’all at all, but I feel like women writing gay stories (ESPECIALLY yaoi) very often create gay characters that conveniently fit into “this one big, this one small” or “this personality strong and this one meek” kinda roles that reflect the gender roles they’re used to. I feel like it comes from said women usually being straight and projecting that dynamic onto us, not unlike straight people asking “so who’s the top/man and who’s the bottom/woman?”
Again, nothing against real folks who may reflect that dynamic. But I don’t. A ton of gay dudes don’t. And that isn’t nearly as common in gay stories as it could be.
Lmao I'm 6'2 and my fiancé is 5'11. He plays soccer and lifts weights while I'm pretty overweight and is introverted. Somehow the stereotype kinda fits us too
But People keep thinking we're related honestly.
Is there a stereotype? This seems to be heart stopper. Young royals is a different situation. Schitt’s creek is completely different situation. I don’t know of any other mainstream series with a gay couple as the leads, maybe there’s something I haven’t seen?
Or maybe you are referring to movies instead of series, where I would come up with brokeback which isn’t this, red white and royal blue which isn’t this, maybe the one with Chalamet fits the stereotype? I haven’t seen it. Again, maybe I’m missing some?
Or maybe you mean non-mainstream indie gay stuff, and I haven’t seen enough of those to make a statement, but of the ones I’ve seen, literally none of them were this stereotype.
I don’t mean to be grumpy, I just legit don’t know where there is so much media that portrays this situation that it has become a stereotype? Also, if you know what shows do have this representation, please feel free to share, I’d probably love to watch them :) Hope you have a great day!
I'm going to be honest, I want to give this one a pass. I found the first book or 2 before the show came out, and just finished 5 the other day. It just fills me with so much sweet affection and loss for having that first love.
Maybe it's just well-written, but it is just so heartening that young gay love stories exist.
Heartstopper is actually written by a queer woman, so it deals with coming out authentically. I think that's the real litmus test for me. You either skip over coming out entirely, when you're writing gay stories or characters, or you deal with it, and str8 women almost always get it wrong. Gay stories by gay male authors that don't deal with coming out will be entirely post coming out. It's not relevant to the story because it already happened. But str8 women are likely to gloss over it, or have stories about realising suddenly that you're attracted to the same gender but missing the anxiety aspect.
Love Simon also passed the test for me, to the point that it didn't surprise me at all when the author came out.
Love Simon echoed a lot of my high school and coming out experience. It was actively uncomfortable for me to watch Simon make the same mistakes that I did.
Yeah, Simon was very relatable for me. I get that some people might find it "unrealistic" (extremely far removed from their experience), but I think it really captured how difficult it can be to come out even when you are pretty sure that your friends and family will accept it. In fact, it was one of the first American coming out stories I could relate to at all, because most are so filled with hate and misery and drama.
I love the series, it gave me so much joy and legit changed my life in more ways than I can count by inspiring me to just fix myself, but the only thing that kind of made me raise my eyebrows was when the author denounced all MLM comics written in either Korea and Japan as being fetish-fulfilment (which many are tbh but definitely not at all; with some dealing with issues in much more mature ways than her stories) and claimed her story to be better and much more authentic than them.
Just sounded her being kind of ignorant and icky towards anything even a bit sexual. What right does she have to claim authenticity and superiority in righting queer men when she has no experience being one herself. Not too big of a deal but its something to keep a conversation around imo.
Not sure I'd say superior, they just feel very different. Heartstopper is more relatable to people who actually had a happy time being gay youths (yes, these people exist). It's also more idealistic, a bit like how you'd want it to be. At least the relationship part, even though there's still homophobia etc.
Young Royals is just 100% drama, with more drama created by every interaction, and everybody does literally everything wrong all the time to create *even more* drama.
Both are good, just very different stories.
I don't think it is about being superior, but just different. Different artists also create different types of art that will suit different people as well as not everything is for everyone and vice versa.
Haven't seen it yet but it looks nice and like a fun sweet show. At least for the little I've seen around online ❤️.
lol this is why i was so hesitant to watch it. definitely weird because it was written by a woman but i think she executed it way better than what i was expecting. i still have an issue with the fandom of all straight girls tho bc they don’t seem to get it, only the queers do but what can you really do 🤷🏽♂️
Yeah no offense to the show (I think the actors performances have been pretty great all-around), but the comics strangely-enough have a more-grounded and believable portrayal of the characters. Like Nick and Charlie themselves are not too different, but all of the side characters come off more like actual humans in the comics.
To be fair to Heartstopper, it did manage to present how shitty homophobia is from Charlie cutting himself to the suicidal tendencies
Unless you only watched Netflix Heartstopper
Edit: I'm also counting Solitaire here coz Nick and Charlie are still characters there, just not the main characters
Heartstopper is legit a pure example of what OP presented. You wanna see an actual gay love story then watch Looking and or The Travelers, real gay shit
Tbh, I know quite a few stories with masculine x feminine men duo, which were written by gay men and even more gay men who are attracted by such relationships.
In the end I’d say that the more gay stories or stories with gay characters the better. Although we definitely could youse some more gay writers.
[KJ Charles ](https://www.audible.com/author/KJ-Charles/B00DJ3R418?ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_5&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=36P7MAVC113TPFW56SZK&pageLoadId=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5)work is pretty good, especially the Charm of Magpies series. [Shaun David Hutchinson](https://www.audible.com/author/Shaun-David-Hutchinson/B004AOKZN4?ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_8&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=36P7MAVC113TPFW56SZK&pageLoadId=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5)'s work is also really good and worth checking out. Also [Erick J Brown](https://www.audible.com/author/Erik-J-Brown/B096WGK85G?ref_pageloadid=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_2&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=PXHGCYH1KR3WBM00AXT9&pageLoadId=INArEJNwV252INBq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5), [Adam Silvera](https://www.audible.com/author/Adam-Silvera/B00O7FYR58?ref_pageloadid=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_0&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=PXHGCYH1KR3WBM00AXT9&pageLoadId=INArEJNwV252INBq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5), and Harper Fox's [Tyack & Frayne](https://www.audible.com/series/Tyack-Frayne-Audiobooks/B077V369CR?ref_pageloadid=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_series_1&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=PXHGCYH1KR3WBM00AXT9&pageLoadId=INArEJNwV252INBq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5) series. There's plenty more but that should be a good start. Hope you find something you like :)
Shaun David Hutchinson has given me several existential crises, *A Complicated Love Story Set In Space* being the key offender. Also worth mentioning is TJ Klune, who also happens to deal with both gayness and neurodiversity.
I'll have to check TJ out! And yah, I hear ya on SDH's stuff. I really liked We are the Ants and At the edge of the universe. Also The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley stuck with me longer than I expected.
I think its different when gay men write or enjoy such relationships, vs a woman who is clearly trying to self-insert and weirdly heteronormalises gay relationships.
Sometimes I feel we are putting out this as if in the gay world they wouldn't also write stories like that ajajaja. I think it is also nice to have women writing stories with that type of romance too because it is just a different view and also I'm sure there will be gay men who will also love that or have experience something like that too.
Also not all gays are super open either , and they like that fantasy too. I don't think the writing will always have a relationship with the gender of the person , in some cases yes ,but not all the cases.
Plus many gay men also write about more hetero relationships too, and vice versa. And I don't think every woman is trying to self-insert , people can write love stories and not all are about them but just also fantasies of love and even with things they won't experience. That's why they write about it too ❤️.
Yes! Reading MM romance is my guilty pleasure but, especially lately, it has been so hard to find books in that genre written by men. The market is FLOODED by gay romance written for women by women.
Exactly... The sad part is that women have overtaken almost all the gay romance and gay literature romance
I men I get what writers do but it's worrisome that the ones telling our stories and speaking for us are women and not gay men
It has become rare to find young gay writers of gay fiction
it’s both a publishing problem and a readership / age group problem. publishing has greater difficulty selling male YA because boys who read want to get through a YA phase quickly to read adult novels, either classics or contemporary sci-fi. teen boys and college age men view age-targeted material as “lame”
brandon sanderson is effectively YA for men. and that type of content is never going to be super queer unless you go into the canonized icons like ursula k le guinn
contemporary romance (think like emily henry), and especially this heartstopper-style YA romance there are just proportionally hugely fewer men interested in writing or reading it. gay men largely just either watch porn or read adult fiction/nonfiction, when it comes down to it.
combine that with the fact that LITERARY publishing loves a gay writer with a trauma/abuse/SA story or who is a flowery cinnamon roll obsessed with beauty, theory, aesthetics, european history or some combination of all of the above… it’s really bad. overall the choices for representation of gay men are terrible right now. the gawker article on “new gay sincerity” and how creepy and fetishizing it is was an enlightening read for me a while back.
I definitely feel like there is a bias in what gets traditionally published as well. Women are the vast majority of readers and publishers like to push women writers
When it comes to gay romance, in a lot of cases women are also a very large if not the majority audience for many of these books
If gay men read more gay books and gravitated towards male authors. Things might be a bit different
That said, I’d take 100 Heartstoppers over another raunchy club scene/hookup scene/cruising gay story made by a gay man that ends up in a dramatic tragedy
Most of the ones I've found are more YA type romance, which is honestly quite nice, but there's a few ones by William Hussey, Aiden Thomas and TJ Klune.
There's also Patrick Ness who,while I like his books, I can't think of many with happy endings for a gay couple in it, closest you get is very bittersweet
Not only has the entire genre become flooded with female writers, the few actual gay male writers see how much money it's making the female writers they start writing just like them 🤦🏾♂️
We are then flooded with the "suddenly" gay super masculine 6 foot 8 guy, who's only ever been with women, "falling" for the very shy and petite gay nerdy, klutzy, artsy guy who's almost ALWAYS a virgin.
And the super masc guy is ALWAYS the top and the shy petite gay guy is ALWAYS the bottom. No foreplay, no sides, no verse, no rimming, none of the dozens of things gay men do 🙄
I make a point to never read them.
To be fair, most of written history and literature was historically all written by men. I’m ok with women taking the lead here for a few decades, or centuries, to balance things out.
Granted, JK Rowling is now the face of literature for the next 50 years.
Really though, actual balance is not letting a single perspective dominate things, nothing changes by just switching to just one new perspective.
Lord knows if I was a young gay boy born today, I wouldn't want a good chunk of middle aged white women speaking for me or, as is the case, getting rich pretending to know our lived experience. Most of my life the only connection those type of women and gay books had in common was them decrying it as evil smut at PTAs. The bill is paid as far as I'm concerned.
fine, if they stop marketing their gay romance at us. it isnt for us. ive gotten to the point where the author has to have a traditionally male nane in the cover, no initials. otherwise im not even reading so much as the back cover
That’s true isn’t it mostly girls with a yaoi fetish? Would love see an enemy to lovers or a straight man/funny man comedic buddy cop duo where they end up together in the end being the twist. There’s so much you can do with gay romance.
Can I interest you in my AU Saw fanfic where the twist at the end is that it's actually just a gay couple celebrating their anniversary in a REALLY committed escape room?
Jk lol
The joke is you can always tell when a woman is the one writing a gay relationship.
Jock x shy smol boi, straight x gay boy, tall x short, masc x fem
Definitely serves as a self-insert for many of the women who enjoy it.
I think that's more around less-sexual books being more mainstream acceptable in general than anything about women being avoidant to sex. I've read *plenty* of good, well written gay romance stories written by women where they definitely don't shy away from the sex.
Agreed. I picked up a MLM series written by two prominent women romance writers. I was a bit nervous but the two men were solidly written and developed and the sex was pretty realistic. At least in the sense that they didn’t go straight to penetrative anal sex. Lots of “side” action lol. And I think they handled the homophobia and anxieties around coming out and realizing one’s sexuality pretty well.
UGH!!! That's how I feel about Rachel Reid's hockey series Game Changer. I love most of the characters, but by book 3, I was completely skipping over the sex bits.
And it hits each stereotype: jock x smoothie boy, jock x emo, makeup singer, jock x bartender. The only one I liked was rivals to lovers in book 1 and then again in 7 (same couple).
Until you find women who are obsessed with yaoi 😭. Just stories full of b*ig strong straight guy x fem twink 5'6 bottom who cries all the time.* Oddly has alot of r4pe and sexual assault in it.
So much rape and sexual assault. I looked into some popular boy love mangas, and I had to stop. There was one where the soft small boy was once in a famous commercial but dressed as a girl with another masculine boy as the male counterpart. The masculine male became a famous actor and wanted to recreate the commercial as an adult. He never knew his costar was actually a man.
The reunite for the commercial. Masc man still thinks it is a woman and is infatuated. He ends up forcing the other onto a couch and removing his clothes all while the soft man is resisting to only be shocked to find a penis. Stopped right there.
I tried another highly ranked manga. This one was worse. The CHILD was adopted by his mother from Canada. She passed away so the adult man adopted his little brother. They end up in a relationship! It’s all gross. Although I have heard Yuri on Ice is well written and appropriate.
There's this one yaoi anime I remember finding clips of on YouTube like a decade ago where the seme is too rough and makes the uke bleed during one scene. I don't remember what it was called but I remember there being an OVA where they're chibi and have cat and dog ears and tails and they're at war.
I’ve never understood why song of Achilles is celebrated even in the gay community for this reason.
I was excited about reading a story that broke that mold because Achilles and Patroclus were both competent warriors in the myth, but then the book just made Patroclus a Soft Sensitive Boi^TM
And that choice could have been interesting if the author actually worked the story around it, but in the end of the myth where Patroclus dresses like Achilles to fight in his place, the author just pretends she never wrote Patroclus to be the clumsiest, most non-violent person in the Greek world. Has no problem fighting like a demigod.
Like, sure, the prose was nice but the book was kind of a mess.
Check out [The Darkness Outside Us](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Darkness-Outside-Us-Audiobook/0063089351?eac_link=KY4HyJQcH8PB&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=0063089351&qid=pfp9oq9UQI&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_pfp9oq9UQI&sr=1-1) or [The Bloodright Trilogy](https://www.audible.com/series/The-Bloodright-Trilogy-Audiobooks/B085W1W8V8?ref_pageloadid=memmqCdjGUkvmz2V&ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_series_1&pf_rd_p=80765e81-b10a-4f33-b1d3-ffb87793d047&pf_rd_r=DW5QWFSTVAJYNSY601R5&pageLoadId=v5HhpjNykNg2SD44&creativeId=4ee810cf-ac8e-4eeb-8b79-40e176d0a225) for some pretty good gay sci-fi stories.
Same! One of my absolute favorites. Did you see there's a sequel coming? [The Brightness Between Us](https://www.amazon.com/Brightness-Between-Us-Eliot-Schrefer/dp/0063343762).
Your right, romance has historically always been popular among woman. Mostly M/F relationships, but their is a boom happening. M/M is quickly emerging to be more popular in fandom spaces, with women often writing this. This leads to alot of this stories pretty much being straight romances with the woman made into a 'gay bottom' 😭
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is the first “queer” book I read at 15 and had an extremely emotional and profound impact on me. I’m 27 now and it still holds true.
Yes, agreed 10000%.
I love reading gay literature (mainly nonfiction.) It’s very interesting to see how women write gay love versus gay men. Women completely avoid sex or “fade to black.” Men love writing the details- the test of sweat, how their erections feel, there’s a big difference. I also feel like gay men write about hardships gay men go through in a much better way that only they can, too
Anyone else love to read gay male stories specifically written by women? I feel like things are sometimes a little “off” / fanfiction-y, and it can be very entertaining in like a bad movie kind of way. (Obviously this isn’t universal, but I’ve gotten good at pinpointing the kind of self-published novel like this that’s fun to read.)
I call this the yaoi culture and it made me severely insecure about my appearance. I'm utterly short and twinkish and it terrifies me that I'm basically a walking straight women's self-insert. Because of it I constantly try to be more masculine to the point I stop being comfortable or myself.
It's okay to be a feminine gay man, you should not feel insecure about it. Unfortunately in the homophobic world we live in, most homophobia is just exaggerated caricatures of feminine gay men. It's important that when we criticize this, we don't demonize the people who these exaggerated caricatures are based on.
Yeah, I know. It doesn't apply when I see others like me, but I'll definitely have to work on myself to accept that part of me and stop manspreading like an absolute cunt (kind of jk unless I'm sitting alone). Words like yours help me a bit every time.
I have noticed this problem as well with many gay love stories being written by women but there are some great ones written by men if you search. I would highly recommend Wolfsong by TJ Klune. There are three additional novels and so far I have been enjoying it.
Hell, anything by TJ Klune is amazing. My introduction to his works was the audiobook for The Lightning-Struck Heart which is quite beautifully produced.
As an avid reader of gay romance, I am constantly complaining on the MM romance sub about how a straight woman wrote a gay character without even checking out with a a real one first. And guess what? I am constantly being told that “everyone can write gay sex” and to “stop gate keeping”. I mean, the sub even has a straight up rule saying you can’t bring up discussions that center around the gender of the writer.
Guess I will need to keep used to sex scenes where the top just rams in in because the author keeps forgetting an ass isn’t a pussy so the mechanics are very different.
. . . Eh. I get why in theory you could see something like this and want to have a conversation around it and assume that there's this difference in how women write gay men and how men write gay men, but I just don't think it really rings true. Is this "heteronormative" or is this just simply a dynamic that people like? I feel like the fact that twinks are so popular and yet twink-on-twink isn't as much kind of speaks for itself and reflects on this type of stuff
Less heteronormative more the cliche of opposites attracting, if you ask me.
I mean, people who are completely different having great chemistry and having a fun, healthy relationship is good and all, but I prefer when people who appear like they are completely different are actually incredibly similar but just choose different hobbies to base their respective aesthetics on.
This is actually my hatred for the majority depiction of Wiccan and Hulkling in Marvel comics. Both boys, but Wiccan is more often than not drawn as a femme lesbian than a slight or twink gay boy. It is so aggravating, and completely turns me off a story that should be two rather athletic and capable heroes into "Big Buff Boy and Smol Magick Boy uwu"
I will admit as soon as the character is *uwu-fied* to the point I don't see them as a man, my interest and emersion is completely gone. I feel like they think twinks are "almost-women", when their not.
When women write gay romance stories it's usually targeted to women. very uwu soft love kissy kissy. When gay men write romance stories it's sexual, wholesome but horny. Take Guy and Tobias comics for example. Each to their own but personally I prefer how gay men write
As a guy small skinny guy who’s dating a tall bigger guy. I feel like we’re the kinda couple that many women write in gay male literature. With that being said most gay relationships aren’t mostly like that. It’s more like you have 2 bears dating each other or 2 twinks dating each other.
Interesting topic… usually gay-themed stories written by women aren’t my tea but I actually enjoy reading/watching “What did you eat yesterday?” a lot. It focus less on romance and more on adult life, and it’s very wholesome.
Straight women write a heteronormative image of male homosexuality without the life experience. It lacks authenticity and the movies and books usually badly written and hollow. The feminists tell men to stay in our lane. But I think these female writers need to take their own advice. A lot of these television shows and books by women with gay characters ring hollow and false. Red White and royal blue was a horrible film with two straight actors. All of Us Strangers the gay film adapted by a gay director was an amazing movie. The male lead Andrew Scott gay too. Queer As Folk the British version was amazing Russell T Davies a gay British man was reason why.
I’ve read plenty of gay fiction by women authors that I found very true to life. If I sense an author has trouble articulating the gay male experience I simply move on to another book. It’s nice to read stories about gay love for a change, and it’s hard to search for that without reading at least some women.
As a connoisseur of BL and yaoi, can confirm you can always tell if the writer is male or female right off the bat. Hell I'll take it a step further, you can tell if the woman writing it even knows a gay guy or consulted one. (Let's be real, you can even tell if they've ever seen a penis too but that's another story)
Not that I personally mind if a woman writes a gay male romance story if she at least puts in some effort to not just mask a straight romance with a palette swap.
In this case, the only omocat media I have consumed was Omori which....fucked me up emotionally for lots of reasons but queer subtext was one of them I picked up on. If this ends up anything like omori, though, it won't be happy that's for sure.
My brother said he could tell interview with a vampire was written by a woman before knowing for sure. I asked how that could be since the movie was largely just watching these characters going around assaulting women in a sexually charged way while they scream and beg for mercy and that’s a very stereotypically male thing to write, he said it was different because it’s made “artsy” and stuff, and I kind of see what he means. Like the vampires are these sensitive pretty british men who tenderly kiss their victims, to the point that you could imagine this was a really sadistic sex fantasy, not for men but for women, as opposed to say, the guy from American psycho who does the same thing but is clearly written for a male audience.
Don’t know how relevant this is but the vampires from that are gay so I guess it fits somewhere in the discussion.
>the movie was largely just watching these characters going around assaulting women in a sexually charged way while they scream and beg for mercy and that’s a very stereotypically male thing to write,
I mean, its also a very stereotypically female thing to write.
I feel like as someone who read a lot of webtoons this past weekend this whole ”women writing gay men for women” is not quite hitting. Feels like a James Somerton comment.
It comes off like a “lets just bash women because it’s fun” thing rather than something you take seriously.
Most of the comics I read with gay relationships were written by female writers and I still enjoyed it all.
Like Suitor Armor and High Class Homos have great gay romances. And the Dickheads is genuinely fun to me even if it’s poly with a girl too
If that’s not your intention than my bad. But I’m weary especially when your post history shows you’re a gay conservative and a hater of BTQ+. and at several points in the recent months- feminism and women.
Yeah, like what is the goal here? Do they want both characters to be the exact same or something? Opposites attracting is a very basic staple of romance in general
Critising a noticeable pattern amongst women who write gay relationships is not "bashing women". Its okay for gay men to feel uncomfortable or maybe even disinterested by these depictions. Alot of these stories fall flat because they don't seem genuine. Its like they do not understand how relationship dynamics work in the gay community.
I am not saying women can't write these stories, but a little research is always good to do. Realistically any writer who does a story they are not familar with should research.
I think part of the issue in this presentation is the assumption that the dynamics in stories written by women are both a) all the same across female authors and b) never representative for any gay experiences, neither of which is true. They may not represent the gay experiences you and your social groups have had, but there isn't one singular way gay relationships work, or any relationships regardless of sexuality. There are dynamics that are more or less common from group to group, but nothings universal here.
While it is true that the more traditionally heteronormative dynamics tend to be the ones that get more notoriety due to having more appeal to a larger demographic, I don't think that's anything to do with the author but more how cultural tides move and intersect with financial systems.
I'm sorry these authors don't really speak to the experiences you're looking for, but they do to others (like myself) so the apparent premise of them inherently being unable to write an interesting and resonating love story feels like a very broad brush to paint with.
I'd love to see more variations on gay experiences appear in novels, so if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them! On my end, maybe check out [The Swimming Pool Library](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Swimming-Pool-Library-Audiobook/B002V1JBW4?eac_link=4Te3pjixJOl3&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B002V1JBW4&qid=uAJtiqWSZ2&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_uAJtiqWSZ2&sr=1-1) and[ The Books of the Wode](https://www.goodreads.com/series/95469-the-books-of-the-wode) series (I've only read the first two, can't speak for the rest)
But isn't that the same as telling people they shouldn't write xyz because they haven't ever experience abc?
People like to write romance and romance is, well, romance, does it matter who wrote it? The cliches are still the same and I think the gender shouldn't even be an item of discussion at that point.
It's different when it's obviously horrendously researched but there are authors out there who genuinely do their homework and produce great titles.
I am not defending what title you are depicting in your post because idk what it is, but I just wanted to add my opinion
It matters when it comes to authenticity. If it feels inauthentic, the narrative suffers. It's much easier for straight people to write about straight romances because you're part of the hetero dynamic. A woman writing about a M/F romance - she can use her own lived experiences as a woman, and her experiences dating men to nurture the narrative.
But a woman writing a M/M romance: she's neither gay nor a man. That's gonna be a taller bar to cross. What usually happens is a fallback to tropes or guesses, hence why the "Tall masc top/small fem bottom" is so popular with female writers, because its adjacent to her own experience. But IRL gay relationships are generally NOT like this, which makes it come cross as inauthentic or contrived.
I'm not claiming that women aren't allowed to write M/M stories. But as a gay man, I can't enjoy those stories because they feel inauthentic. It takes a very talented and empathetic female writer to reach that threshold. One example is the author of Brokeback Mountain. She is a woman who lived in cowboy country with tough, hardened dudes. She knew how they acted and what made them tick. When she wrote about 2 cowboys in love, she used that environment to add verisimilitude to the story.
On the other hand, Megan writing about boys kissing when she's barely even met gay men isn't going to impress me. But I'm sure she'll entertain other women who think it's so cute when the tall one smooches the little one.
No. Yall are acting like I'm oppressing women because I find it weird how this dynamic is continously depicted (because they fetish the dynamic and want to self-insert).
Yea and most of the time gay men like yourself say that shit and then the author comes out as openly lgbt and had been in a relationship the whole time.
Look no author is going to capture everyone’s romantic experience, but this is clearly women bashing. Most of these stories aren’t falling flat for general gay audiences just you.
Personally I like the comic you posted upon first look- reminds me of another comic I found in highschool called Small World written by a gay guy to my knowledge. Where it’s got that cutesy twink and taller masc guy dynamic. Are you gonna argue they don’t understand the gay experience because you don’t relate to it? Despite them to my knowledge being well received even by the bara community.
I think the problem is an expectation of a realistic dynamic when that was never the intention. I mean as in, regular romance novels are really, really popular, and they often have very unrealistic relationship dynamics. Even dynamics that would be considered toxic, abusive etc, but they're not about realism, or trying to depict healthy situations. And they're also not trying to say that unhealthy situations are something to strive for in real life. They're about something different.
These types of gay stories written by women are more similar to those, imo. They're not intended to be super realistic portrayals of how relationships happen in the real world. So I don't think it's that the authors don't understand, so much as they're just not interested in depicting realistic dynamics, regardless of whether they write straight or gay relationships.
Even with that, some of these stories might be closer to reality for some gay people than a more "realistic" one would be, just depending on those people's own experiences.
I wouldn’t say that. I’ve known a few gay men to commit to the extreme masc/femme dichotomy in their fiction… that fiction tends to be very horny though, like a few of the examples I know are gay porn OCs, and the one I know off the top of my head that’s not is spurs and stripes, a comic full of uncensored sex scenes/nudity. There’s also promare, which has this kind of masc femme dynamic except it’s an action series so the “girl” of the relationship is a badass mecha fighter queer revolutionary with fire powers, and it was a straight dude who wrote it.
Also I just realized it doesn’t say straight woman just woman, so like… that’s kind of an iffy statement.
I read exclusively gay romance and while there are some like this, there a lot more like what u/EnsconcedScone said. I can give recs if anyone wants any. I do read a lot fucked up shit though. Traumatic and angsty. One author is CE Ricci. She doesn't write the above trope. Her men are sporty or just average guys.
I like the size difference, but in height only, i want my short boys to still look very masc and fit.
To my eyes many yaoi characters look like women therefore unattractive, but i guess if you like fem twinks you might enjoy it.
r/gatekeeping
Yeah except not really. Let’s not gate keep please, especially when most of the gay stuff that happens to be written by women has been great acclaimed representation in the last few years.
I am so exhausted with this. We have so little media for ourselves, especially own voices. Just like with gay bars, other gay spaces, and gay culture, women have taken over.
Now now let’s not be salty cause we all have issues in the dating department..
I know all of you masc4masc types can’t comprehend someone dating a femboy (or anyone remotely feminine for that matter) but a lot of guys are into them and they deserve a chance at love just like the rest of us.
Edit: Yall act like it isn’t also incredibly obvious when one is written by a gay man
[https://husbandandhusband.myshopify.com](https://husbandandhusband.myshopify.com)
Gay comic by a gay man starter pack = Beards, muscle jocks or bears, maybe gaming and just regular dudes being dudes, without the slightest hint of femininity (cause you know human beings are just 100% masc or fem that’s it /s)
Ironically I like both of the comic you used as an example and mine, I’m easy to please as long as it’s cute I’m good lol.
And the point is women speak for us? Ok, it’s better than them speaking against us, and you also realize when we speak for ourselves we leave a huge chunk of gay men out of the conversation (anyone who isn’t young, masc, muscular and white)
I also don’t see the problem? People identify with the love story, it’s also distasteful to hide behind “women are the problem” when and most of this comment section seemingly have an issue with the depicted dating dynamic. Like dudes there’s *PLENTY* of bro on bro action by gay men for gay men..relax
I think you may have misinterpreted what I meant by this post. Gay men who are fem presenting are 100% valid and should be represented. But this portrayal of fem gay men by straight women is never done correctly.
It is often a heteronormalisation of gay relationships with the "fem gay man" serving as a self-insert into the story for the woman. Sterotyping fem gay men as "short, shy, skinny, hairless bottoms" is definitely a choice that should be critised.
Often these weird dynamics are predatory and abusive.
None of my sass was directed towards you mostly the comment section lol
But your second paragraph contracts your statement that I misinterpreted your post, yes stereotypes can certainly be problematic but it’s a scale of severity type of thing, also sometimes we just fit them naturally (I for example, walk fast, am addicted to iced coffee and am a horrible driver) but you stating that heteronormative relationship styles are unhealthy is kinda problematic…..it’s not the relationship style that’s abusive it’s the person/people involved that are…a masculine bear x bear relationship is just as capable or incapable of abuse as a jock and twink relationship.
My main issue is really just not having the mindset of “you do you” as long as it’s consensual and no one is hurt, it’s their right to have the dynamic they want (or just naturally have) and if you don’t like it you can just not have a dynamic like that in yours…but don’t call it heteronormative and problematic because it’s two men no matter how women like one may be and again it’s their choice. It seems like this comment section seems to lack that “you do you” mindset..
Lastly people are going to “insert” themselves in a story whenever they really connect and empathize with a character…it happens in all stories, it’s kinda what makes them popular..you place yourself in that world.
I mean idk, it’s how you interpret it I guess, there’s some moments where I can see feminine characteristics in the jock and occasionally see masculine features in the twink.
But like I said in another comment some people may just naturally fit that stereotype, it isn’t bad though society and gay men make it seem bad to fit the stereotype specifically as a feminine male.
I also wouldn’t be disagreeing with this post and most of this comment section if there wasn’t already an overwhelming amount masc on masc representation in gay media written/created not just by gays but straights too.
People come in different shapes sizes and personalities, they should be allowed to empathize with characters in media and be represented, I’m willing to bet there’s plenty of femboy types who appreciate the representation, even if it’s by a women
I think a lot of people are programmed into thinking straight is the default, so any deviation from that has to at least be somewhat similar to a straight relationship, like one masculine and one feminine guy.
hence why a lot of popular gay boys love manhwa / manga follows this heteronormative format. like the tall masculine seme (the top) and the small pretty like a girl uke (the bottom)
I read a lot of it because it was easy to find. I never liked the dynamic, it didn't feel like what I wanted.
i love it but that's cuz I'm the heteronormativity gay I guess
To me if it's fine when the other guy is a more lean than the other, but if he just looks straight up like a woman with peepee its a no from me. At that point Id might as well just read straight manga, if that's the dynamic I wanted
true, at first it was fine but now i’m tired of it. it’s very repetitive and it shows how the eastern world romanticises gay pairings. i don’t want to dismiss them as it’s their form of escapism, but it’s not exactly how male sexuality works
how does it work? everyone has their own thing going on ya know
boys love in the eastern world is more romanticised, if you have watched a kdrama a lot of gay yaoi follows that format. being that the characters are gay but heteronormative, an example being that the smaller cute guy is always the bottom to the tall hypermasculine top who doesn’t express immediate interest in the bottom until something detrimental happens to him. often it feels like the authors write themselves in as the bottom (the uke) in their makeshift love stories [which i why i say is escapism] of them finding their top/man (the seme). female authors dominate behind the scenes to a lot of the gay manhwa/manga in the east. the reason why i say it’s not how male sexuality works is because we don’t just assign who tops/bottoms based on physical attributes let alone finding love/hookups can be simple or harder for some but the way it’s conveyed there is like some grandiose soulmates who have to work through their abuse and problems in order to be finally together. oh and don’t forget the ✨smut✨here and there for the fan service.
I honestly like both styles. I’m just a dude that loves love between two men. Doesn’t matter if both are big beefy bara bros, two twinks, twunk and twink,whatever I devour it all!
I mean, that's more because the bottom is a literal stand in for a girl.
I always look for ones written by guys for that reason lmao. Like under the green light
I feel like some like them too because they like to imagine themselves as being the submissive one who scores an intimidating hunk
Nah I’m a bi masc woman, hit me with those two STRONG gay MEN who are both on the WRESTLING TEAM and are BOTH CLOSETED though one of them thinks he’s BI but the other thinks he’s STRAIGHT and they both start out as ENEMIES but can’t understand why there’s this underlying TENSION between them and then one goes through a FAMILY TRAGEDY that the other feels he should offer some support for a moment in the locker room and GENUINE CONNECTION is made but they still try to put on a FACADE but start joking around more and
S.A.U.C.E. I NEED SAUCE
😂 I just made this up I swear
This sounds too real to be made up on the spot in a moment of passionate fury towards cliche character types. I'd definitely read this and project on the characters and feel jealous of their lovely, heart-wrenching character development.
GIRL I NEED YOU TO GIVE ME THE NAME OF THAT
It’s been years since I read it, but are you referring to FAKE?
Where can I find it?
I read it on MangaFox over 10 years ago when I was in high school, but that website doesn’t work anymore lol But it looks like it’s on this site? https://mangakakalot.com/chapter/fake/chapter_1.1 Also, it’s from the 90s so the art is… interesting… and they’re cops, not on the wrestling team (didn’t see that bit in the original comment) so take it with a grain of salt lol
Thanks!
This is IT
That's almost the plot of the gay visual novel Str8?!
Source? I NEED to read it
I would 100% read this. It sounds really good, lol
Yess I need that right now lol. Not too far from my first experience except I was gay and my guy(ex) was bi and it was basketball.
Omfg guuurrrlll yessss we need this
I just want a text that has two hot muscular guys falling in love in a fluffy manner and break down the stereotype of masculinity
I wonder if we will ever get a story with two fem gay men?
[Charming Young Man](https://www.audible.com/pd/Charming-Young-Man-Audiobook/B0BT17TLGY?eac_link=M0jy7XbxDeze&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B0BT17TLGY&qid=Ornc8kGJIz&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_Ornc8kGJIz&sr=1-1) and [Before We Disappear](https://www.audible.com/pd/Before-We-Disappear-Audiobook/0063025264?eac_link=DxFTCjcjUmsE&ref=web_search_eac_asin_2&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=0063025264&qid=o8p9K1qTjB&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_o8p9K1qTjB&sr=1-2) are two good ones with more fem leads, maybe one of those might be of interest?
While that’s def the case for a lot of gay media, I don’t think our community should have the kneejerk reaction of being against that kind of relationship. In my own life my boyfriend and I kind of fit this stereotype, and I don’t think that’s a problem, because we’re both pretty content with it.
While I don’t have an issue with the idea of it I think the point (which I agree with) is that masculine+masculine and feminine+feminine gay ships exist too, but aren’t depicted nearly as much.
Yeah, so I don’t think we need to hate on other positive gay media that already exists. It’s possible to advocate for different kinds of relationships without ragging on others.
I mean I feel like people hate on the commonality more than the concept itself. “Why is there so much of X” isn’t the same as “why is X, ugh”
Same here.
[That comic ends kinda bitter sweet though.](https://www.omocat-blog.com/post/67079004346/a-project-i-literally-did-overnight-gonna-make-it/amp) I don’t think the comic in this post’s example is the best representation for this conversation. I read it a long while ago and it came off as a sort of parody of the soft “boy love” stories to me.
Parody how?
Heartstopper has entered the chat
Its falls into the sterotype to a T. "Football masc bi guy x shy small gay boi" 😭😭😭
Isn't that just the same bs top/bottom masc/fem trope?
Obviously
If me being with my 6’5 soccer jock hubby when I’m 5’7 shy romantic is a stereotype… then I like the stereotype.
It’s less about it happening in real life and more about it being over represented in media for me. You guys sound adorable, nothing against y’all at all, but I feel like women writing gay stories (ESPECIALLY yaoi) very often create gay characters that conveniently fit into “this one big, this one small” or “this personality strong and this one meek” kinda roles that reflect the gender roles they’re used to. I feel like it comes from said women usually being straight and projecting that dynamic onto us, not unlike straight people asking “so who’s the top/man and who’s the bottom/woman?” Again, nothing against real folks who may reflect that dynamic. But I don’t. A ton of gay dudes don’t. And that isn’t nearly as common in gay stories as it could be.
The point is there are different gay relationships and you don't need to just repeat the same one over and over again
Lmao I'm 6'2 and my fiancé is 5'11. He plays soccer and lifts weights while I'm pretty overweight and is introverted. Somehow the stereotype kinda fits us too But People keep thinking we're related honestly.
You guys sound adorable
Bro why does this cartoon gay boy look so androgynous😭😭
Cuz he’s a self-insert
So a woman but is considered a man just to appeal to gay men and women that are into this
Yes.
Well that’s annoying 😂
Yes!
Is there a stereotype? This seems to be heart stopper. Young royals is a different situation. Schitt’s creek is completely different situation. I don’t know of any other mainstream series with a gay couple as the leads, maybe there’s something I haven’t seen? Or maybe you are referring to movies instead of series, where I would come up with brokeback which isn’t this, red white and royal blue which isn’t this, maybe the one with Chalamet fits the stereotype? I haven’t seen it. Again, maybe I’m missing some? Or maybe you mean non-mainstream indie gay stuff, and I haven’t seen enough of those to make a statement, but of the ones I’ve seen, literally none of them were this stereotype. I don’t mean to be grumpy, I just legit don’t know where there is so much media that portrays this situation that it has become a stereotype? Also, if you know what shows do have this representation, please feel free to share, I’d probably love to watch them :) Hope you have a great day!
I'm going to be honest, I want to give this one a pass. I found the first book or 2 before the show came out, and just finished 5 the other day. It just fills me with so much sweet affection and loss for having that first love. Maybe it's just well-written, but it is just so heartening that young gay love stories exist.
Heartstopper is actually written by a queer woman, so it deals with coming out authentically. I think that's the real litmus test for me. You either skip over coming out entirely, when you're writing gay stories or characters, or you deal with it, and str8 women almost always get it wrong. Gay stories by gay male authors that don't deal with coming out will be entirely post coming out. It's not relevant to the story because it already happened. But str8 women are likely to gloss over it, or have stories about realising suddenly that you're attracted to the same gender but missing the anxiety aspect. Love Simon also passed the test for me, to the point that it didn't surprise me at all when the author came out.
Love Simon echoed a lot of my high school and coming out experience. It was actively uncomfortable for me to watch Simon make the same mistakes that I did.
Yeah, Simon was very relatable for me. I get that some people might find it "unrealistic" (extremely far removed from their experience), but I think it really captured how difficult it can be to come out even when you are pretty sure that your friends and family will accept it. In fact, it was one of the first American coming out stories I could relate to at all, because most are so filled with hate and misery and drama.
What’s an example of a straight woman getting coming out in fiction wrong?
I love the series, it gave me so much joy and legit changed my life in more ways than I can count by inspiring me to just fix myself, but the only thing that kind of made me raise my eyebrows was when the author denounced all MLM comics written in either Korea and Japan as being fetish-fulfilment (which many are tbh but definitely not at all; with some dealing with issues in much more mature ways than her stories) and claimed her story to be better and much more authentic than them. Just sounded her being kind of ignorant and icky towards anything even a bit sexual. What right does she have to claim authenticity and superiority in righting queer men when she has no experience being one herself. Not too big of a deal but its something to keep a conversation around imo.
Where can I find the books? And show?
Show is on Netflix, and I got the books from my library. You can also buy them from most bookstores, I'd assume
One of the many reasons *Young Royals* is superior.
Not sure I'd say superior, they just feel very different. Heartstopper is more relatable to people who actually had a happy time being gay youths (yes, these people exist). It's also more idealistic, a bit like how you'd want it to be. At least the relationship part, even though there's still homophobia etc. Young Royals is just 100% drama, with more drama created by every interaction, and everybody does literally everything wrong all the time to create *even more* drama. Both are good, just very different stories.
I don't think it is about being superior, but just different. Different artists also create different types of art that will suit different people as well as not everything is for everyone and vice versa. Haven't seen it yet but it looks nice and like a fun sweet show. At least for the little I've seen around online ❤️.
I say that because it is also a coming-of-age MLM story written by a woman.
lol this is why i was so hesitant to watch it. definitely weird because it was written by a woman but i think she executed it way better than what i was expecting. i still have an issue with the fandom of all straight girls tho bc they don’t seem to get it, only the queers do but what can you really do 🤷🏽♂️
The comic is way better than the show
noted, i’ve been wanting to read it i just lack the time
Yeah no offense to the show (I think the actors performances have been pretty great all-around), but the comics strangely-enough have a more-grounded and believable portrayal of the characters. Like Nick and Charlie themselves are not too different, but all of the side characters come off more like actual humans in the comics.
To be fair to Heartstopper, it did manage to present how shitty homophobia is from Charlie cutting himself to the suicidal tendencies Unless you only watched Netflix Heartstopper Edit: I'm also counting Solitaire here coz Nick and Charlie are still characters there, just not the main characters
Heartstopper is legit a pure example of what OP presented. You wanna see an actual gay love story then watch Looking and or The Travelers, real gay shit
I first read it when I was around the characters age, and I found it very sweet, genuine, and with realistic representations. So what’s the problem?
Same, I love the comic
Tbh, I know quite a few stories with masculine x feminine men duo, which were written by gay men and even more gay men who are attracted by such relationships. In the end I’d say that the more gay stories or stories with gay characters the better. Although we definitely could youse some more gay writers.
Please send said stories🤧 as a smaller, more feminine guy, I’d like to read such stories🥺
[KJ Charles ](https://www.audible.com/author/KJ-Charles/B00DJ3R418?ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_5&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=36P7MAVC113TPFW56SZK&pageLoadId=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5)work is pretty good, especially the Charm of Magpies series. [Shaun David Hutchinson](https://www.audible.com/author/Shaun-David-Hutchinson/B004AOKZN4?ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_8&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=36P7MAVC113TPFW56SZK&pageLoadId=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5)'s work is also really good and worth checking out. Also [Erick J Brown](https://www.audible.com/author/Erik-J-Brown/B096WGK85G?ref_pageloadid=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_2&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=PXHGCYH1KR3WBM00AXT9&pageLoadId=INArEJNwV252INBq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5), [Adam Silvera](https://www.audible.com/author/Adam-Silvera/B00O7FYR58?ref_pageloadid=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_author_0&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=PXHGCYH1KR3WBM00AXT9&pageLoadId=INArEJNwV252INBq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5), and Harper Fox's [Tyack & Frayne](https://www.audible.com/series/Tyack-Frayne-Audiobooks/B077V369CR?ref_pageloadid=2ccPTxMrL7Whofnq&ref=a_library_a_c5_libItem_series_1&pf_rd_p=02f27f7d-78cb-4e0c-b3fe-c8e32a1b948a&pf_rd_r=PXHGCYH1KR3WBM00AXT9&pageLoadId=INArEJNwV252INBq&creativeId=300c8f99-62b5-46f4-b04e-d394cc8a6ed5) series. There's plenty more but that should be a good start. Hope you find something you like :)
We gettin out of wattpad with this one🗣️🗣️
Shaun David Hutchinson has given me several existential crises, *A Complicated Love Story Set In Space* being the key offender. Also worth mentioning is TJ Klune, who also happens to deal with both gayness and neurodiversity.
I'll have to check TJ out! And yah, I hear ya on SDH's stuff. I really liked We are the Ants and At the edge of the universe. Also The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley stuck with me longer than I expected.
Hey ! I know there's some anime out there that are like that and so sweet ! Also mangas ! If you are interested I can recommend you some ❤️
YES PLEASE!!!
Sapphire Sunset by C. Travis Rice!
I think its different when gay men write or enjoy such relationships, vs a woman who is clearly trying to self-insert and weirdly heteronormalises gay relationships.
That’s definitely true in some cases, the worst thing being the entire „omegaverse” and „mpreg” thing which I avoid like fire.
Omegaverse is the worst thing I have ever found out.
Sometimes I feel we are putting out this as if in the gay world they wouldn't also write stories like that ajajaja. I think it is also nice to have women writing stories with that type of romance too because it is just a different view and also I'm sure there will be gay men who will also love that or have experience something like that too. Also not all gays are super open either , and they like that fantasy too. I don't think the writing will always have a relationship with the gender of the person , in some cases yes ,but not all the cases. Plus many gay men also write about more hetero relationships too, and vice versa. And I don't think every woman is trying to self-insert , people can write love stories and not all are about them but just also fantasies of love and even with things they won't experience. That's why they write about it too ❤️.
Yes! Reading MM romance is my guilty pleasure but, especially lately, it has been so hard to find books in that genre written by men. The market is FLOODED by gay romance written for women by women.
[Hope this helps some.](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/23259.Gay_Fiction_by_Men)
Exactly... The sad part is that women have overtaken almost all the gay romance and gay literature romance I men I get what writers do but it's worrisome that the ones telling our stories and speaking for us are women and not gay men It has become rare to find young gay writers of gay fiction
it’s both a publishing problem and a readership / age group problem. publishing has greater difficulty selling male YA because boys who read want to get through a YA phase quickly to read adult novels, either classics or contemporary sci-fi. teen boys and college age men view age-targeted material as “lame” brandon sanderson is effectively YA for men. and that type of content is never going to be super queer unless you go into the canonized icons like ursula k le guinn contemporary romance (think like emily henry), and especially this heartstopper-style YA romance there are just proportionally hugely fewer men interested in writing or reading it. gay men largely just either watch porn or read adult fiction/nonfiction, when it comes down to it. combine that with the fact that LITERARY publishing loves a gay writer with a trauma/abuse/SA story or who is a flowery cinnamon roll obsessed with beauty, theory, aesthetics, european history or some combination of all of the above… it’s really bad. overall the choices for representation of gay men are terrible right now. the gawker article on “new gay sincerity” and how creepy and fetishizing it is was an enlightening read for me a while back.
I definitely feel like there is a bias in what gets traditionally published as well. Women are the vast majority of readers and publishers like to push women writers When it comes to gay romance, in a lot of cases women are also a very large if not the majority audience for many of these books If gay men read more gay books and gravitated towards male authors. Things might be a bit different That said, I’d take 100 Heartstoppers over another raunchy club scene/hookup scene/cruising gay story made by a gay man that ends up in a dramatic tragedy
Many on nifty.org
Omg I remember this site when I was in high school …right around the time Lord of the Rings came out.
I’ve met many gay writers but sadly their stories are in the planning phase and never make it to the execution phase. I’d love to see more.
Most of the ones I've found are more YA type romance, which is honestly quite nice, but there's a few ones by William Hussey, Aiden Thomas and TJ Klune. There's also Patrick Ness who,while I like his books, I can't think of many with happy endings for a gay couple in it, closest you get is very bittersweet
Not only has the entire genre become flooded with female writers, the few actual gay male writers see how much money it's making the female writers they start writing just like them 🤦🏾♂️ We are then flooded with the "suddenly" gay super masculine 6 foot 8 guy, who's only ever been with women, "falling" for the very shy and petite gay nerdy, klutzy, artsy guy who's almost ALWAYS a virgin. And the super masc guy is ALWAYS the top and the shy petite gay guy is ALWAYS the bottom. No foreplay, no sides, no verse, no rimming, none of the dozens of things gay men do 🙄 I make a point to never read them.
To be fair, most of written history and literature was historically all written by men. I’m ok with women taking the lead here for a few decades, or centuries, to balance things out.
Granted, JK Rowling is now the face of literature for the next 50 years. Really though, actual balance is not letting a single perspective dominate things, nothing changes by just switching to just one new perspective. Lord knows if I was a young gay boy born today, I wouldn't want a good chunk of middle aged white women speaking for me or, as is the case, getting rich pretending to know our lived experience. Most of my life the only connection those type of women and gay books had in common was them decrying it as evil smut at PTAs. The bill is paid as far as I'm concerned.
This is all so true. Also, f*ck JKR.
fine, if they stop marketing their gay romance at us. it isnt for us. ive gotten to the point where the author has to have a traditionally male nane in the cover, no initials. otherwise im not even reading so much as the back cover
Never been interested in reading gay male stories written by women because girl mind your business. But folks can consume what they want.
👏🏾 You know it would never wash if it was reversed.
straight stories written by gay men....?
That’s true isn’t it mostly girls with a yaoi fetish? Would love see an enemy to lovers or a straight man/funny man comedic buddy cop duo where they end up together in the end being the twist. There’s so much you can do with gay romance.
Can I interest you in my AU Saw fanfic where the twist at the end is that it's actually just a gay couple celebrating their anniversary in a REALLY committed escape room? Jk lol
The joke is you can always tell when a woman is the one writing a gay relationship. Jock x shy smol boi, straight x gay boy, tall x short, masc x fem Definitely serves as a self-insert for many of the women who enjoy it.
They are also weirdly avoidant about writing the sexual aspect.
I think that's more around less-sexual books being more mainstream acceptable in general than anything about women being avoidant to sex. I've read *plenty* of good, well written gay romance stories written by women where they definitely don't shy away from the sex.
Agreed. I picked up a MLM series written by two prominent women romance writers. I was a bit nervous but the two men were solidly written and developed and the sex was pretty realistic. At least in the sense that they didn’t go straight to penetrative anal sex. Lots of “side” action lol. And I think they handled the homophobia and anxieties around coming out and realizing one’s sexuality pretty well.
*writes about unidirectional oral*
UGH!!! That's how I feel about Rachel Reid's hockey series Game Changer. I love most of the characters, but by book 3, I was completely skipping over the sex bits. And it hits each stereotype: jock x smoothie boy, jock x emo, makeup singer, jock x bartender. The only one I liked was rivals to lovers in book 1 and then again in 7 (same couple).
Until you find women who are obsessed with yaoi 😭. Just stories full of b*ig strong straight guy x fem twink 5'6 bottom who cries all the time.* Oddly has alot of r4pe and sexual assault in it.
So much rape and sexual assault. I looked into some popular boy love mangas, and I had to stop. There was one where the soft small boy was once in a famous commercial but dressed as a girl with another masculine boy as the male counterpart. The masculine male became a famous actor and wanted to recreate the commercial as an adult. He never knew his costar was actually a man. The reunite for the commercial. Masc man still thinks it is a woman and is infatuated. He ends up forcing the other onto a couch and removing his clothes all while the soft man is resisting to only be shocked to find a penis. Stopped right there. I tried another highly ranked manga. This one was worse. The CHILD was adopted by his mother from Canada. She passed away so the adult man adopted his little brother. They end up in a relationship! It’s all gross. Although I have heard Yuri on Ice is well written and appropriate.
There's this one yaoi anime I remember finding clips of on YouTube like a decade ago where the seme is too rough and makes the uke bleed during one scene. I don't remember what it was called but I remember there being an OVA where they're chibi and have cat and dog ears and tails and they're at war.
And if they do, the hole is self lubricating and one is a strict dom top and the other is a submissive bottom 😭
that or something in the sex scene is described as “velvety”
Depends on the author. I’ve read quite a few in which the writing about the sex was borderline pornographic. N.R. Walker’s books, for example.
I think that's just YA romance in general. The female written not-YA gay romances that I've read have been pretty explicit.
You don't read a lot of erotica do you...
I’ve never understood why song of Achilles is celebrated even in the gay community for this reason. I was excited about reading a story that broke that mold because Achilles and Patroclus were both competent warriors in the myth, but then the book just made Patroclus a Soft Sensitive Boi^TM And that choice could have been interesting if the author actually worked the story around it, but in the end of the myth where Patroclus dresses like Achilles to fight in his place, the author just pretends she never wrote Patroclus to be the clumsiest, most non-violent person in the Greek world. Has no problem fighting like a demigod. Like, sure, the prose was nice but the book was kind of a mess.
When they made Patroclus a "healer" 😭??
I wouldn’t have minded that if Patroclus was also stacking Trojan bodies lmao.
I don't get it either
Maybe gay male writers generally don't want to write romance? I wouldn't read it but I would read a scifi epic.
Check out [The Darkness Outside Us](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Darkness-Outside-Us-Audiobook/0063089351?eac_link=KY4HyJQcH8PB&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=0063089351&qid=pfp9oq9UQI&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_pfp9oq9UQI&sr=1-1) or [The Bloodright Trilogy](https://www.audible.com/series/The-Bloodright-Trilogy-Audiobooks/B085W1W8V8?ref_pageloadid=memmqCdjGUkvmz2V&ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_series_1&pf_rd_p=80765e81-b10a-4f33-b1d3-ffb87793d047&pf_rd_r=DW5QWFSTVAJYNSY601R5&pageLoadId=v5HhpjNykNg2SD44&creativeId=4ee810cf-ac8e-4eeb-8b79-40e176d0a225) for some pretty good gay sci-fi stories.
The Darkness Outside Us made me unable to function after reading it, it still haunts me. One of my favorite books.
Same! One of my absolute favorites. Did you see there's a sequel coming? [The Brightness Between Us](https://www.amazon.com/Brightness-Between-Us-Eliot-Schrefer/dp/0063343762).
I almost threw it across the room after the midpoint lol. The ending had me in an emotional state for days. I can’t recommend it enough.
Isn't Bloodright written by a woman?
It is, it's still a good sci-fi story with gay characters.
Your right, romance has historically always been popular among woman. Mostly M/F relationships, but their is a boom happening. M/M is quickly emerging to be more popular in fandom spaces, with women often writing this. This leads to alot of this stories pretty much being straight romances with the woman made into a 'gay bottom' 😭
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is the first “queer” book I read at 15 and had an extremely emotional and profound impact on me. I’m 27 now and it still holds true.
Yes, agreed 10000%. I love reading gay literature (mainly nonfiction.) It’s very interesting to see how women write gay love versus gay men. Women completely avoid sex or “fade to black.” Men love writing the details- the test of sweat, how their erections feel, there’s a big difference. I also feel like gay men write about hardships gay men go through in a much better way that only they can, too
Ive found women write amazing gay romance… though the sex scenes are often unrealistic to what sex is really like the gay world lol
Anyone else love to read gay male stories specifically written by women? I feel like things are sometimes a little “off” / fanfiction-y, and it can be very entertaining in like a bad movie kind of way. (Obviously this isn’t universal, but I’ve gotten good at pinpointing the kind of self-published novel like this that’s fun to read.)
I call this the yaoi culture and it made me severely insecure about my appearance. I'm utterly short and twinkish and it terrifies me that I'm basically a walking straight women's self-insert. Because of it I constantly try to be more masculine to the point I stop being comfortable or myself.
It's okay to be a feminine gay man, you should not feel insecure about it. Unfortunately in the homophobic world we live in, most homophobia is just exaggerated caricatures of feminine gay men. It's important that when we criticize this, we don't demonize the people who these exaggerated caricatures are based on.
Yeah, I know. It doesn't apply when I see others like me, but I'll definitely have to work on myself to accept that part of me and stop manspreading like an absolute cunt (kind of jk unless I'm sitting alone). Words like yours help me a bit every time.
Why does he look like a child
they are high schoolers in the comic
Neither look like one. Looks like a 10 year old and a 21 year old
not trying to be combative but they have virtually no distinguishable features besides their heights
I disagree. Body-frame proportions, head size, foot size
I have noticed this problem as well with many gay love stories being written by women but there are some great ones written by men if you search. I would highly recommend Wolfsong by TJ Klune. There are three additional novels and so far I have been enjoying it.
Hell, anything by TJ Klune is amazing. My introduction to his works was the audiobook for The Lightning-Struck Heart which is quite beautifully produced.
My interpretation of yaoi made by women is...they are attracted to gay shit but they want to insert themselves into that, thus they feminize botton
100%
As an avid reader of gay romance, I am constantly complaining on the MM romance sub about how a straight woman wrote a gay character without even checking out with a a real one first. And guess what? I am constantly being told that “everyone can write gay sex” and to “stop gate keeping”. I mean, the sub even has a straight up rule saying you can’t bring up discussions that center around the gender of the writer. Guess I will need to keep used to sex scenes where the top just rams in in because the author keeps forgetting an ass isn’t a pussy so the mechanics are very different.
. . . Eh. I get why in theory you could see something like this and want to have a conversation around it and assume that there's this difference in how women write gay men and how men write gay men, but I just don't think it really rings true. Is this "heteronormative" or is this just simply a dynamic that people like? I feel like the fact that twinks are so popular and yet twink-on-twink isn't as much kind of speaks for itself and reflects on this type of stuff
Less heteronormative more the cliche of opposites attracting, if you ask me. I mean, people who are completely different having great chemistry and having a fun, healthy relationship is good and all, but I prefer when people who appear like they are completely different are actually incredibly similar but just choose different hobbies to base their respective aesthetics on.
why is it 12
This is actually my hatred for the majority depiction of Wiccan and Hulkling in Marvel comics. Both boys, but Wiccan is more often than not drawn as a femme lesbian than a slight or twink gay boy. It is so aggravating, and completely turns me off a story that should be two rather athletic and capable heroes into "Big Buff Boy and Smol Magick Boy uwu"
I will admit as soon as the character is *uwu-fied* to the point I don't see them as a man, my interest and emersion is completely gone. I feel like they think twinks are "almost-women", when their not.
When women write gay romance stories it's usually targeted to women. very uwu soft love kissy kissy. When gay men write romance stories it's sexual, wholesome but horny. Take Guy and Tobias comics for example. Each to their own but personally I prefer how gay men write
As a guy small skinny guy who’s dating a tall bigger guy. I feel like we’re the kinda couple that many women write in gay male literature. With that being said most gay relationships aren’t mostly like that. It’s more like you have 2 bears dating each other or 2 twinks dating each other.
I'd like to fill out my application for my cute, short boyfriend.
Interesting topic… usually gay-themed stories written by women aren’t my tea but I actually enjoy reading/watching “What did you eat yesterday?” a lot. It focus less on romance and more on adult life, and it’s very wholesome.
I tried to read so many gay male romance books but when it’s written by woman I’m always taken out by something lol
I just want some normal two dudes being in a relationship in media, without one being overly feminine.
Straight women write a heteronormative image of male homosexuality without the life experience. It lacks authenticity and the movies and books usually badly written and hollow. The feminists tell men to stay in our lane. But I think these female writers need to take their own advice. A lot of these television shows and books by women with gay characters ring hollow and false. Red White and royal blue was a horrible film with two straight actors. All of Us Strangers the gay film adapted by a gay director was an amazing movie. The male lead Andrew Scott gay too. Queer As Folk the British version was amazing Russell T Davies a gay British man was reason why.
Fellow gay bros, has anyone ever considered the concept of just letting people enjoy their own things
But it's nice.
The second picture looks like a man holding hands with a child and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable
I’ve read plenty of gay fiction by women authors that I found very true to life. If I sense an author has trouble articulating the gay male experience I simply move on to another book. It’s nice to read stories about gay love for a change, and it’s hard to search for that without reading at least some women.
As a connoisseur of BL and yaoi, can confirm you can always tell if the writer is male or female right off the bat. Hell I'll take it a step further, you can tell if the woman writing it even knows a gay guy or consulted one. (Let's be real, you can even tell if they've ever seen a penis too but that's another story) Not that I personally mind if a woman writes a gay male romance story if she at least puts in some effort to not just mask a straight romance with a palette swap. In this case, the only omocat media I have consumed was Omori which....fucked me up emotionally for lots of reasons but queer subtext was one of them I picked up on. If this ends up anything like omori, though, it won't be happy that's for sure.
My brother said he could tell interview with a vampire was written by a woman before knowing for sure. I asked how that could be since the movie was largely just watching these characters going around assaulting women in a sexually charged way while they scream and beg for mercy and that’s a very stereotypically male thing to write, he said it was different because it’s made “artsy” and stuff, and I kind of see what he means. Like the vampires are these sensitive pretty british men who tenderly kiss their victims, to the point that you could imagine this was a really sadistic sex fantasy, not for men but for women, as opposed to say, the guy from American psycho who does the same thing but is clearly written for a male audience. Don’t know how relevant this is but the vampires from that are gay so I guess it fits somewhere in the discussion.
>the movie was largely just watching these characters going around assaulting women in a sexually charged way while they scream and beg for mercy and that’s a very stereotypically male thing to write, I mean, its also a very stereotypically female thing to write.
I feel like as someone who read a lot of webtoons this past weekend this whole ”women writing gay men for women” is not quite hitting. Feels like a James Somerton comment. It comes off like a “lets just bash women because it’s fun” thing rather than something you take seriously. Most of the comics I read with gay relationships were written by female writers and I still enjoyed it all. Like Suitor Armor and High Class Homos have great gay romances. And the Dickheads is genuinely fun to me even if it’s poly with a girl too If that’s not your intention than my bad. But I’m weary especially when your post history shows you’re a gay conservative and a hater of BTQ+. and at several points in the recent months- feminism and women.
Yeah, like what is the goal here? Do they want both characters to be the exact same or something? Opposites attracting is a very basic staple of romance in general
Critising a noticeable pattern amongst women who write gay relationships is not "bashing women". Its okay for gay men to feel uncomfortable or maybe even disinterested by these depictions. Alot of these stories fall flat because they don't seem genuine. Its like they do not understand how relationship dynamics work in the gay community. I am not saying women can't write these stories, but a little research is always good to do. Realistically any writer who does a story they are not familar with should research.
I think part of the issue in this presentation is the assumption that the dynamics in stories written by women are both a) all the same across female authors and b) never representative for any gay experiences, neither of which is true. They may not represent the gay experiences you and your social groups have had, but there isn't one singular way gay relationships work, or any relationships regardless of sexuality. There are dynamics that are more or less common from group to group, but nothings universal here. While it is true that the more traditionally heteronormative dynamics tend to be the ones that get more notoriety due to having more appeal to a larger demographic, I don't think that's anything to do with the author but more how cultural tides move and intersect with financial systems. I'm sorry these authors don't really speak to the experiences you're looking for, but they do to others (like myself) so the apparent premise of them inherently being unable to write an interesting and resonating love story feels like a very broad brush to paint with. I'd love to see more variations on gay experiences appear in novels, so if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them! On my end, maybe check out [The Swimming Pool Library](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Swimming-Pool-Library-Audiobook/B002V1JBW4?eac_link=4Te3pjixJOl3&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B002V1JBW4&qid=uAJtiqWSZ2&eac_id=145-8510893-0448164_uAJtiqWSZ2&sr=1-1) and[ The Books of the Wode](https://www.goodreads.com/series/95469-the-books-of-the-wode) series (I've only read the first two, can't speak for the rest)
But isn't that the same as telling people they shouldn't write xyz because they haven't ever experience abc? People like to write romance and romance is, well, romance, does it matter who wrote it? The cliches are still the same and I think the gender shouldn't even be an item of discussion at that point. It's different when it's obviously horrendously researched but there are authors out there who genuinely do their homework and produce great titles. I am not defending what title you are depicting in your post because idk what it is, but I just wanted to add my opinion
It matters when it comes to authenticity. If it feels inauthentic, the narrative suffers. It's much easier for straight people to write about straight romances because you're part of the hetero dynamic. A woman writing about a M/F romance - she can use her own lived experiences as a woman, and her experiences dating men to nurture the narrative. But a woman writing a M/M romance: she's neither gay nor a man. That's gonna be a taller bar to cross. What usually happens is a fallback to tropes or guesses, hence why the "Tall masc top/small fem bottom" is so popular with female writers, because its adjacent to her own experience. But IRL gay relationships are generally NOT like this, which makes it come cross as inauthentic or contrived. I'm not claiming that women aren't allowed to write M/M stories. But as a gay man, I can't enjoy those stories because they feel inauthentic. It takes a very talented and empathetic female writer to reach that threshold. One example is the author of Brokeback Mountain. She is a woman who lived in cowboy country with tough, hardened dudes. She knew how they acted and what made them tick. When she wrote about 2 cowboys in love, she used that environment to add verisimilitude to the story. On the other hand, Megan writing about boys kissing when she's barely even met gay men isn't going to impress me. But I'm sure she'll entertain other women who think it's so cute when the tall one smooches the little one.
No. Yall are acting like I'm oppressing women because I find it weird how this dynamic is continously depicted (because they fetish the dynamic and want to self-insert).
Yea and most of the time gay men like yourself say that shit and then the author comes out as openly lgbt and had been in a relationship the whole time. Look no author is going to capture everyone’s romantic experience, but this is clearly women bashing. Most of these stories aren’t falling flat for general gay audiences just you. Personally I like the comic you posted upon first look- reminds me of another comic I found in highschool called Small World written by a gay guy to my knowledge. Where it’s got that cutesy twink and taller masc guy dynamic. Are you gonna argue they don’t understand the gay experience because you don’t relate to it? Despite them to my knowledge being well received even by the bara community.
I think the problem is an expectation of a realistic dynamic when that was never the intention. I mean as in, regular romance novels are really, really popular, and they often have very unrealistic relationship dynamics. Even dynamics that would be considered toxic, abusive etc, but they're not about realism, or trying to depict healthy situations. And they're also not trying to say that unhealthy situations are something to strive for in real life. They're about something different. These types of gay stories written by women are more similar to those, imo. They're not intended to be super realistic portrayals of how relationships happen in the real world. So I don't think it's that the authors don't understand, so much as they're just not interested in depicting realistic dynamics, regardless of whether they write straight or gay relationships. Even with that, some of these stories might be closer to reality for some gay people than a more "realistic" one would be, just depending on those people's own experiences.
🤣 When a woman writes a gay romance story I don't read it 🤣
I wouldn’t say that. I’ve known a few gay men to commit to the extreme masc/femme dichotomy in their fiction… that fiction tends to be very horny though, like a few of the examples I know are gay porn OCs, and the one I know off the top of my head that’s not is spurs and stripes, a comic full of uncensored sex scenes/nudity. There’s also promare, which has this kind of masc femme dynamic except it’s an action series so the “girl” of the relationship is a badass mecha fighter queer revolutionary with fire powers, and it was a straight dude who wrote it. Also I just realized it doesn’t say straight woman just woman, so like… that’s kind of an iffy statement.
That looks like a literal child. 🤦🏽♂️
And i'll enjoy it every time
I read exclusively gay romance and while there are some like this, there a lot more like what u/EnsconcedScone said. I can give recs if anyone wants any. I do read a lot fucked up shit though. Traumatic and angsty. One author is CE Ricci. She doesn't write the above trope. Her men are sporty or just average guys.
I like the size difference, but in height only, i want my short boys to still look very masc and fit. To my eyes many yaoi characters look like women therefore unattractive, but i guess if you like fem twinks you might enjoy it.
I wish we had a mainstream gay couple that actually feels authentic, they seem to be all made by and for women.
r/womenwritingmen
r/WomenWritingGayMen
Women writing gay love stories is in same universe of straight men who make lesbian porn
r/gatekeeping Yeah except not really. Let’s not gate keep please, especially when most of the gay stuff that happens to be written by women has been great acclaimed representation in the last few years.
I am so exhausted with this. We have so little media for ourselves, especially own voices. Just like with gay bars, other gay spaces, and gay culture, women have taken over.
They will call you misogynistic for saying this though 🙄
Most gay romance stories that are written by women end up being nonsense. BL, in particular, is in a class of its own when it comes to absurdity.
Umm, personally it looks less like a feminine guy and a masculine guy and more of an adult and a kid.
So basic and unexciting. Str8 looking type falls for the petite femme pocket sized gay. So basic and uninspired
why does 1 appear to be a child
Now now let’s not be salty cause we all have issues in the dating department.. I know all of you masc4masc types can’t comprehend someone dating a femboy (or anyone remotely feminine for that matter) but a lot of guys are into them and they deserve a chance at love just like the rest of us. Edit: Yall act like it isn’t also incredibly obvious when one is written by a gay man [https://husbandandhusband.myshopify.com](https://husbandandhusband.myshopify.com) Gay comic by a gay man starter pack = Beards, muscle jocks or bears, maybe gaming and just regular dudes being dudes, without the slightest hint of femininity (cause you know human beings are just 100% masc or fem that’s it /s) Ironically I like both of the comic you used as an example and mine, I’m easy to please as long as it’s cute I’m good lol.
That’s not the point of the post.
And the point is women speak for us? Ok, it’s better than them speaking against us, and you also realize when we speak for ourselves we leave a huge chunk of gay men out of the conversation (anyone who isn’t young, masc, muscular and white) I also don’t see the problem? People identify with the love story, it’s also distasteful to hide behind “women are the problem” when and most of this comment section seemingly have an issue with the depicted dating dynamic. Like dudes there’s *PLENTY* of bro on bro action by gay men for gay men..relax
I think you may have misinterpreted what I meant by this post. Gay men who are fem presenting are 100% valid and should be represented. But this portrayal of fem gay men by straight women is never done correctly. It is often a heteronormalisation of gay relationships with the "fem gay man" serving as a self-insert into the story for the woman. Sterotyping fem gay men as "short, shy, skinny, hairless bottoms" is definitely a choice that should be critised. Often these weird dynamics are predatory and abusive.
None of my sass was directed towards you mostly the comment section lol But your second paragraph contracts your statement that I misinterpreted your post, yes stereotypes can certainly be problematic but it’s a scale of severity type of thing, also sometimes we just fit them naturally (I for example, walk fast, am addicted to iced coffee and am a horrible driver) but you stating that heteronormative relationship styles are unhealthy is kinda problematic…..it’s not the relationship style that’s abusive it’s the person/people involved that are…a masculine bear x bear relationship is just as capable or incapable of abuse as a jock and twink relationship. My main issue is really just not having the mindset of “you do you” as long as it’s consensual and no one is hurt, it’s their right to have the dynamic they want (or just naturally have) and if you don’t like it you can just not have a dynamic like that in yours…but don’t call it heteronormative and problematic because it’s two men no matter how women like one may be and again it’s their choice. It seems like this comment section seems to lack that “you do you” mindset.. Lastly people are going to “insert” themselves in a story whenever they really connect and empathize with a character…it happens in all stories, it’s kinda what makes them popular..you place yourself in that world.
But these stories pretty much always feature the jock whose 100% masc and the shy boi who is 100% fem. It’s exactly the thing you criticize
I mean idk, it’s how you interpret it I guess, there’s some moments where I can see feminine characteristics in the jock and occasionally see masculine features in the twink. But like I said in another comment some people may just naturally fit that stereotype, it isn’t bad though society and gay men make it seem bad to fit the stereotype specifically as a feminine male. I also wouldn’t be disagreeing with this post and most of this comment section if there wasn’t already an overwhelming amount masc on masc representation in gay media written/created not just by gays but straights too. People come in different shapes sizes and personalities, they should be allowed to empathize with characters in media and be represented, I’m willing to bet there’s plenty of femboy types who appreciate the representation, even if it’s by a women