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No really, that is my theory :)
Basically I am increasingly sick of male writers justifying(1) their creepy exploitive objectification of women by the fact they're being "thought provokingly shocking" yet consistently shying away from the slightest whiff of m/m(2) sexuality (especially on the part of their protagonists omg) even when the plot would naturally lead there, and even though it's a really easy way to shock a (typical) audience.
Unlike a lot ofwomen people I don't get any particular kick out of m/m sex scenes or romance, but I've read enough slash that they no longer stick out at me as being any more unusual than any other sort of sex/relationships. And as a result I've begun noticing how glaringly absent they are from mainstream science fiction.
The flip side of this problem, and they seem to pretty much always go hand in hand, is men never being seen as sex objects for women either. Women may be enthusiastic about sex, but the camera/narrator lingers on their body and hotness, or at most has them talking about how totally awesome the main character is.
(Another thing these sorts of stories tend to do, as part of their fairly strict gender hierarchy, is not having anyone who doesn't fit into neat male/female boxes. Also I've avoided talking about representations of f/f sexuality since I think that has a whole different slew of problems)
****WARNING: contains discussion of creepy, deliberately shocking writing. Also spoilers for Dollhouse.******
Some examples:
Iain M Banks (in an interview I found trying to see if anyone else had a problem with his books) said that he didn't write gay characters because "He didn't feel he understood the lifestyle". This from a man who has written cults, aliens, child slave owners, kings of small asian nations, psychopaths and AIs.
There's also a lot of sf which ignores the existence of same sex relationships or people outside the m/f binary etc when creating their premise eg the Lillith's Brood series which assumes that everyone wants to be in a m/f relationship and make babies (and thus when aliens force them into the former and get in the way of the latter it's only the lack of babies they complain about) But this doesn't annoy me anywhere near as much (YMMV).
And in case it's not clear: I do not in principle have a problem with sf which doesn't contain m/m sex or relationships because the plot just doesn't end up needing it. There's never been any in any of my stories, after all. And I don't even have a problem (in principle) with stories which are open about being softcore porn for straight men. But don't pretend that the reason I don't like it is because I'm an easily shocked prude or philistine :P
EDIT: The way sf (and most other fiction) avoids LGBT characters and issues is definitely a problem! I was just trying to avoid people saying "So what you're saying is I HAVE to insert a gay character into EVERY STORY or I'm a homophobe?". That said, nix's comment made me poke at the fact I've never written any gay characters (lesbian and bi, yes. But not gay, or for that matter trans) and I think it is to some extent a result of my heteronormativity, in fact my Enchanted fic falls into EXACTLY the same trap as Lillith's Brood. Hmm.
I thought about giving some examples of sf which doesn't elide m/m sexuality when it comes up as a natural consequence of the plot, but this post is already long enough. I will say that off the top of my head I can't think of any written by a straight man :)
1)In a lot of cases I've read interviews with the author, but you can often just tell that's the mindset. That's certainly what their male fans say if you complain.
2)I was going to say "gay" but that seems unfair to bi etc men.
Basically I am increasingly sick of male writers justifying(1) their creepy exploitive objectification of women by the fact they're being "thought provokingly shocking" yet consistently shying away from the slightest whiff of m/m(2) sexuality (especially on the part of their protagonists omg) even when the plot would naturally lead there, and even though it's a really easy way to shock a (typical) audience.
Unlike a lot of
The flip side of this problem, and they seem to pretty much always go hand in hand, is men never being seen as sex objects for women either. Women may be enthusiastic about sex, but the camera/narrator lingers on their body and hotness, or at most has them talking about how totally awesome the main character is.
(Another thing these sorts of stories tend to do, as part of their fairly strict gender hierarchy, is not having anyone who doesn't fit into neat male/female boxes. Also I've avoided talking about representations of f/f sexuality since I think that has a whole different slew of problems)
****WARNING: contains discussion of creepy, deliberately shocking writing. Also spoilers for Dollhouse.******
Some examples:
- Wanted: the various "uninhibited" bad guys are shown doing "shocking" things, up to and including raping women and having sex with goats (gender unspecified), but nary a whisper of m/m sex. Or in fact, any of the "bad" women doing anything beyond cheerful serial monogamy.
- The works of Iain M Banks (eg The Algebraist). His Culture are in theory this completely free and unselfconsciously fluid and enlightened post scarcity society where everyone changes gender, body type, brain chemistry etc at will. But his plots often seem to revolve around people (mostly men) outside the Culture, or misfits within it, who find themselves drawn to/part of much more sexist, violent, primal societies (ie like ours :)), and it seems to me at least that the reader is expected to be drawn to them too (despite their assumed left liberal, anti sexist etc leanings) While he sometimes writes from a female POV, and several of his male characters have been female at one point or another in their history, from my spotty memory all the (often quite violent) sexualised imagery is of women, and we never see any of his male characters show the slightest signs of attraction to any other men. And the only time I can remember seeing a male character be female "on screen" he was just doing it as a favour to his girlfriend and was still definitely male.
- Dollhouse: The female dolls are shown in skimpy outfits (even when it's impractical), do a lot of often fairly degrading sex work, and are shot in an objectifying way. The male doll is mostly shown doing non-sexual stuff like being a government agent, and in his ONE sexual/romantic engagement (with a fairly attractive woman) he spends most of the time in a suit being all James Bond-ish (I'll admit he was objectified or at least shown semi naked a little, but not a whole lot). Most male prostitution is m/m yet it's existence at the Dollhouse is at most vaguely alluded to. I think the questions of consent the show claims to be exploring would be MUCH more effective if straight male viewers imagined being (consentually!) brainwashed into wanting m/m sex.
Iain M Banks (in an interview I found trying to see if anyone else had a problem with his books) said that he didn't write gay characters because "He didn't feel he understood the lifestyle". This from a man who has written cults, aliens, child slave owners, kings of small asian nations, psychopaths and AIs.
There's also a lot of sf which ignores the existence of same sex relationships or people outside the m/f binary etc when creating their premise eg the Lillith's Brood series which assumes that everyone wants to be in a m/f relationship and make babies (and thus when aliens force them into the former and get in the way of the latter it's only the lack of babies they complain about) But this doesn't annoy me anywhere near as much (YMMV).
And in case it's not clear: I do not in principle have a problem with sf which doesn't contain m/m sex or relationships because the plot just doesn't end up needing it. There's never been any in any of my stories, after all. And I don't even have a problem (in principle) with stories which are open about being softcore porn for straight men. But don't pretend that the reason I don't like it is because I'm an easily shocked prude or philistine :P
EDIT: The way sf (and most other fiction) avoids LGBT characters and issues is definitely a problem! I was just trying to avoid people saying "So what you're saying is I HAVE to insert a gay character into EVERY STORY or I'm a homophobe?". That said, nix's comment made me poke at the fact I've never written any gay characters (lesbian and bi, yes. But not gay, or for that matter trans) and I think it is to some extent a result of my heteronormativity, in fact my Enchanted fic falls into EXACTLY the same trap as Lillith's Brood. Hmm.
I thought about giving some examples of sf which doesn't elide m/m sexuality when it comes up as a natural consequence of the plot, but this post is already long enough. I will say that off the top of my head I can't think of any written by a straight man :)
1)In a lot of cases I've read interviews with the author, but you can often just tell that's the mindset. That's certainly what their male fans say if you complain.
2)I was going to say "gay" but that seems unfair to bi etc men.
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Yeah, y'know, it just looks weird, how freakin' heteronormative and gender-binary scifi is. It's like -- really, all (or almost all of) these alien life forms have male people with dangly bits who are butch and female people with vaginas who are femme, and the only relationships are between those two genders? When real-life humans have more diversity WRT gender, gender expression, & sexuality than your ENTIRE GALAXY, you have a problem.
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I once encountered the idea that Time Lords see humans as pets and sex with us as bestiality, it makes a lot of sense, especially the doctor's attitude towards the Master having a wife :)
What also weirds me out is when the aliens don't look/act like us, but are still attracted to us (especially our ladies).
About the only exceptions to the mammalian male/female model is cloning and hives of one sort or another :/
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sqbr - I'm in total agreement with your theory by the way. I'd add that in the case of depicting male-male sex or attraction in TV programs, the biggest constraints are almost certainly coming from the broadcasters and producers.
Back on books and away a bit from what gets called "sf", did you read the review+rant of Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains on
Samuel Delany does a nuanced job of portraying the wide-range of male sexuality in his books about Neveryon ...
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Samuel R Delaney awesome (I haven't read Neveryon, but thought he did a good job in "Star in my pocket like grains of sand"), but he's also gay :)
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Delany's Neveryon: the story "Gurgik the Liberator" was pretty mind-enlarging when I read it aged seventeen or so. It features a lot of light bondage and fetish sex, bisexuality, anonymous sex, and sex between people of vastly disparate power and social status, with careful framing of the impact on the participants. I'd have to read it anew to check what my opinion would be as an adult. It's not soft stuff ...
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Heh. See the thing putting me off Neveryon is it's epic fantasy-ish-ness, since I'm not in one of my epic fantasy reading moods.
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Babel-17 and Nova are both probably better than Tales of Neveryon anyway. I found Neveryon interesting, and very worthy, but not that gripping.
His longer works such as Dhalgren and Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand I think also cover the same ground, but they're bloody difficult to read (I actually finished Stars ... but I was completely on autopilot).
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I liked "Stars.." too, though :)
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