So, I read (and write) a lot of YA starring LGBTQ characters. It’s my thing, as it were.
Lately, because of several factors but especially the hoopla over the now-canceled Wicked Pretty Things anthology, people have been talking a lot in the blogosphere about LGBTQ YA. Which is fabulous. More dialogue translates into more book buyers, which, hopefully, translates into more LGBTQ YA being published, which translates into more LGBTQ YA for teen readers to choose from, and everybody wins.
So I feel bad for even thinking the way I am in this post. Shouldn’t I just be thrilled these conversations are happening in the first place, and not let myself get bothered by the odd detail?
Ah, but writers spend our whole lives noticing and being bothered by the odd detail. It’s why we scream when we pick up our book in Barnes & Noble and spot a glaring typo on page 64. (Or, in the case of us not-yet-pubbed authors, it’s why we dream about doing so.)
So in that light, I’ll just list a couple of my personal pet peeves when I see people talking about LGBT YA.
Pet peeve #1: “Coming out stories are overdone.”
I’ve never once heard anyone argue that coming-of-age stories are overdone in YA. That’s because YA is ABOUT coming of age. Well, for LGBTQ kids, coming of age IS often coming out. See where I’m going with this?
Coming out tends to be part of books with LGBTQ characters in some way or another, whether it’s considered a “coming out” story or not. Hero by Perry Moore? The book about the gay superhero? Is about him coming out. And saving the world, but guess which storyline resonated with me more. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the bestselling LGBTQ YA of all time, is about lots of things, but I would argue the most powerful scene in it is Will coming out to his friends in the cafeteria.
Not to mention that nothing in LGBTQ YA can possibly be overdone. There have been too few YA books with openly LGBTQ main characters for that to have been the case yet. If you’re tired of reading about kids coming out, well, I’m tired of reading about heterosexual girls falling in love with sketchy paranormal beings, and look where that’s gotten me.
Look, kids will always be coming out. Unless the book is set in an Ash-like alternate universe, coming out is something every single LGBTQ character will have to deal with at some point. And usually it’s a pretty big deal for them. It’s usually a pretty big deal for LGBTQ teen readers, too. If an LGBTQ teen character is narrating the story of their life, odds are, coming out will be a part of it, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s a realistic thing.
Pet Peeve #2: “Avoid stereotypes.”
I would scream this from the rooftops if I could figure out how to get up there. This is how strongly I feel about it:
It is totally OK if your gay male character is a lipsing cheerleader who wears nothing but pink and loves Barbra Streisand.
It is also totally OK if your lesbian character has a crew cut and rides a motorcycle. It is totally OK if your bisexual character sleeps around a lot.
What matters, the only thing that matters when you’re writing ANY character AT ALL, is that all those people are REAL.
So often I see people in Twitter chats asking which LGBTQ stereotypes they should avoid. As if they’re making a checklist so they can feel satisfied that they’ve written a strong gay character, just because he doesn’t have a lisp.
WHETHER OR NOT YOUR CHARACTER HAS A LISP HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHETHER HE’S THREE-DIMENSIONAL. HE’S ONLY THREE-DIMENSIONAL IF YOU’VE GIVEN HIM OTHER CHARACTERISTICS TOO. IF YOU WANT TO WRITE A THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTER, YOU NEED TO WRITE A THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTER.
I’m not going to bring up Glee as an example here, since we could be here all night arguing about that, so instead I’ll use Scott Pilgrim v. the World. Awesome teen movie. It includes a gay-male-best-friend character who exhibits just about every stereotype every gay-male-best-friend character has ever exhibited since the beginning of time. He sits around in the background of every other shot, a martini glass permanently in hand, stepping in to offer sassy commentary on the action and offer insightful heterosexual love advice. And yet he’s as three-dimensional as every other character in that movie. Because the writers made an effort to make him so.
Pet Peeve #3: “More YA authors should write about characters who ‘just happen’ to be gay.”
I wrote a whole post about this a while back, so all I’ll say here is:
No good book is only about any one aspect of a character’s life. I have never read a single YA novel that I would describe as being only “about” a character’s sexual orientation or gender identity or, for that matter, their race, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, etc.
But it’s impossible to write a fully developed character who “just happens” to be any one attribute, and have that attribute be otherwise irrelevant to the book. Every attribute of a character dictates other things about that character. Every aspect of a character’s identity is part of their story. Whether the A-plot of your book is a girl coming out to her parents or a girl colonizing the planet Xenu, if she likes other girls, that’s going to affect her life sooner or later.
Pet Peeve #4: “There are more books about gay boys than gay girls because no one is writing gay books about girls, and/or because most readers are straight girls and straight girls don’t want to read about lesbians.”
That’s not why. There are lots and lots of writers writing books about gay girls. And plenty of straight (and “straight”) teen girls are interested in reading about characters who are different from themselves.
But for whatever reason, books about LGBTQ girls don’t get published as often as books about LGBTQ boys. As for why that’s the case, I don’t know, but I’m sure there are a million contributing factors (and I have lots of theories, but I won’t go into that without a few glasses of wine first).
All right, that’s enough ranting for seven in the morning. I should note that this isn’t targeted at any one person or site in particular; this is all stuff I’ve been thinking over for years as I’ve read discussions about LGBTQ YA on the Internet (which I’ve been doing since 2007 or thereabouts).
And as I’m still actively thinking all this through, I could very well be wrong about any of the above. So if you disagree with me, please let me know! I am totally up for having my mind changed.
Except about the lisping.
#morelispinginYAnow!
Apr 26, 2011 @ 10:28:01
It’s interesting to me because in my #WIP, one of the gay characters does appear to be very “stereotypical” at the beginning of the book. I was tempted to fight him on this (I have very pushy characters), but then I realized that having him start out looking a bit stereotypical made it more punchy when we found out the ways in which he’s not…. which brings up a pet peeve of mine: The Token Gay. It bugs me when it feels like a gay or lesbian character has been thrown into the story just so that the author can say she has one there – and in such books it’s almost always just one.
Apr 26, 2011 @ 20:18:50
I would argue that it doesn’t matter whether your character embodies or doesn’t embody stereotypes; what matters is just that the character is a strong character. So if he’s pushy you should already be in good shape, IMO!
Good luck with your WIP!
Apr 26, 2011 @ 11:02:49
Now I am curious about why you think there aren’t as many books about gay girls as gay guys! Discussion topic for next JMFC meeting? We can have the wine!
Apr 26, 2011 @ 20:16:58
Oh totally. When there’s enough wine involved you will have to stop me from talking about this stuff all night…
Apr 29, 2011 @ 07:53:47
Can I buy you a bottle? I’d like to hear your thoughts, too. I’ve some theories, too… but I guess I hear you on the wine, because when I think about writing up a blog post about it I get the jitters.
I do think, at least, it has a lot to do with the gender skew at every stage in the YA lit publication process (writers, agents, editors, readers…) — the skew toward women, especially straight women. I’ve got what I call the “one is hot, but two are hotter” theorem. It’s true in porn (especially “lesbian” porn for straight men), and I could see it being true in romance (especially gay romance for straight women) and, trickling down, regular YA, too. There’s more on my mind, but my dog’s whining at me to go out…
In any case, thanks for this post. Some of your pet peeves are mine, as well. And you’re right, a fully realized character should trump all.
May 03, 2011 @ 06:33:32
Definitely! I think alas this is alas the kind of conversation that always has to happen off the record, as it were. Someday there should really be an LGBT YA writers conference where we can all openly dish about this stuff without having to be paranoid.
I agree with you about the gender skew in publishing likely playing a part.
Speaking of gay girl books, your book sounds fabulous by the way! Can’t wait to check it out next year!
Apr 29, 2011 @ 07:57:08
(Sorry, that was meant to read “gay *male* romance for straight women.”)
Apr 26, 2011 @ 11:30:29
This post is made of AWESOME. As a writer of LGBTQ YA, I too get tired of hearing that “coming out” stories are overdone. Sorry, but it’s an important part of adolescence. I’m a middle school counselor, so I see firsthand how many of my students still struggle to just admit to anyone that they’re gay. I would love for us to live in a world where one day it’s not a big deal what sexual orientation someone is–but until then, we need to keep our YA authentic.
Apr 26, 2011 @ 20:15:39
Thank you! And wow, that’s got to be intense, talking to middle school kids about that type of stuff on a regular basis — I really admire you for being able to handle it!
Apr 26, 2011 @ 12:44:03
I’m all for BOTH coming out stories (they’re always needed) and “non-issue” stories or stories where characters “happen” to be gay. The latter point isn’t about ignoring a character’s sexual orientation, but, rather, portraying it as a non-issue in different genres. I’ve seen responses (from both young and adult LGBT readers) that every once in a while, they want to read YA fiction that doesn’t focus on the struggles of being gay. The main characters are gay, sure, but the book’s plot doesn’t revolve around that detail but rather around an adventure or a mystery or a romance.
I’ve always considered that to be one way of “leveling” the playing field (for lack of a better term) by offering young LGBT readers a broader range of material to enjoy. Sometimes it’s good to just solve a mystery or tumble headlong into an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ kind of world and represent other kids your age by being front and center and the hero of a great book.
Apr 26, 2011 @ 20:14:19
I agree that fantasy worlds in which sexual orientation isn’t an issue are awesome, and certainly needed. If such books had existed when I was a teenager I think I would’ve devoured them like candy. I’ll be interested to see if the success of Ash and Huntress ushers in more of these.
For books that are set in a world that has our world’s view, or approximately our world’s view, of queerness, I would argue that including a same-sex romance means that book is, to some degree, “about” the characters’ sexual orientation, because same-sex relationships in a text by necessity will come up against certain problems, even if that problem is just “We don’t acknowledge it outside our limited community of people who think we are cool just the way we are.” But with these as with all good LGBTQ YAs, it’s just one of many factors influencing the characters’ lives.
And on a final note, man, now that you’ve said that, I am so craving a lesbian Alice in Wonderland. Might have to go seek out some fanfic, in fact…
Apr 26, 2011 @ 12:45:16
I might need to write a blog post about this, but until then–gay men joke about the “lisping” stereotype because it’s such an outsider’s gloss on what we call “gay voice.” It’s quite the opposite of a lisp, actually, involving hyper-officious pronunciation and excessively sibilant esses. This is not to say gay boys and men never lisp, but to signal effeminacy with it in a novel is both lazy and clueless.
Apr 26, 2011 @ 20:04:54
Thanks for the comment. I agree with you that having a character lisp for the purpose of conveying gender presentation or sexual orientation would be lazy and clueless. I can’t think of a time when I’ve seen that done in YA (though I’m sure it has been). Of course, as you noted, some gay kids, just like some straight kids, do lisp. And my concern is that if an author is feeling like she can’t write a character with a lisp because that character is also gay, then that’s taking things way too far. In the same way, I don’t like to see writers feeling like they have to shy away from writing gay girls who are “too butch.” I remember reading a criticism long ago of Hard Love that centered on the fact that Marisol didn’t shave her legs and was therefore obviously a walking embodiment of a lesbian stereotype — as if the fact that Marisol was otherwise a fully realized character didn’t matter in the face of this hard evidence to the contrary. (And to carry that to its logical conclusion, would this reviewer have suggested that Marisol had to shave her legs because she was gay? Certainly not, but…)
That being said, stereotypes can of course do significant damage when written badly (or maliciously, though I’d prefer to think we’ve entered the era when badly written embodiments of stereotypes are the more common problem in mainstream publishing). I think I’ve had the good fortune of not having read most of the books that are guilty of that, though.
Apr 27, 2011 @ 13:33:40
Well, a character who has a lisp and one who “is a lisping cheerleader who wears nothing but pink [and] loves Barbara Streisand” are two very different characters! My point is the lisp, as well as the cheerleading/pink/Streisand attributes, is a lazy rehearsal of old TV cliches that rely more upon straight perceptions than gay realities. Any queen can–and will–tell you it’s spelled “Barbra.” I don’t want to make too much of a common spelling error (or lisping) but it is these kinds of near-misses that make a book seem less in touch than it wants to be.
Apr 27, 2011 @ 14:25:57
You are correct of course, and I hope that anyone who writes a character who embodies a stereotype of any sort does make the effort to educate themselves about the origins and implications of that stereotype and takes that into account in creating the character. The cheerleader example I used here was of course an extreme example of an over-the-top hypothetical character, the likes of which I have never actually encountered in my YA reading. I’d be more than happy never to encounter it. But when written well the most theoretically stereotypical characters can be some of the most fun (I’m thinking of Freak Show here).
And mea culpa on Ms. Streisand. I have always had trouble with the spelling of her name (though in my defense if I had written the post today instead of yesterday I would’ve gotten that right thanks to last night’s “Glee”. (And people say you can’t learn anything from Fox.))
Apr 26, 2011 @ 20:47:29
I could make an entire rant just about gender roles, never mind how they apply to LGBTQ people. In fact, I had an interesting discussion in my Poetry and Pragmatism class just this morning about gender roles. At one point people brought up the concept of androgyny, and I said “But even then you’re using stereotypes, because saying someone is androgynous means you’re thinking ‘Well he doesn’t look like a man’ or ‘She doesn’t look like a woman.’” I think a lot of the issues come from people who are hyped up about defying gender roles, and what defies gender roles more than a guy who likes guys? But then here comes society, wanting to dress a gay guy up all shiny and sparkley, maybe with a nice scarf, and their reaction is “NO DON’T DO THAT.”
I, personally, enjoy things like the Sassy Gay Friend videos. I may be a closet gender psychologist, but I’m an out writer and if you need to do something for your writing, then I say do it.
Apr 26, 2011 @ 22:23:55
I like the Sassy Gay Friend too. Are there people who dislike the Sassy Gay Friend? For reasons aside from the bizarre new trend toward product placement? People need to lighten up.
I agree that in the end it all comes down to perceptions of gender roles. I wish now I’d taken more gender studies classes in college, so I’d have more of a basis for arguing one way or the other about this stuff instead of relying on gut instinct. Ah well…
Apr 26, 2011 @ 23:52:25
I can’t imagine someone not liking Sassy Gay Friend, hah. But there are people who can’t take a joke. I dislike those kinds of people
May 02, 2011 @ 10:34:55
I just posted on “other” characters (racial, sexual, developmentlly-challenged, etc). My general conclusion was this. If you’re going to write “other”, you have to know how it affects your character. Do they struggle with it or not? Do they class against colleagues/classmates/society? Are they discriminated against?
And just as importantly, you have to know when it does not affect your character. For example, I am always Black, but not everything I do has something to with me being Black.
Great post. Thanks!
May 03, 2011 @ 06:43:52
I definitely agree about the importance of thinking it all through. I think it’s easy to just create a list of character attributes without thinking about how each of those attributes affects each other and how they add up to affect the character as a whole. It all winds up being an awful lot of work in the end of course. But it’s also the fun part!
Thanks for commenting!
Oct 25, 2011 @ 08:52:25
Great post Robin. I agree 101%!
Apr 30, 2012 @ 05:12:45
I’m a little late to the party, but I just found this page through Google, haha. I’m currently writing a story with a gay character and part of the sub-plot deals with him being in the closet and eventually coming out (along with the other stresses in his life). I’ve seen some criticism about coming out stories being overdone. On one hand, I don’t want to right something that’s cliche or disrespectful. On the other hand, I can’t bring myself to just skip that element of the story. I feel like after putting so much work into this character and his background, to not talk about his sexuality is like I’m keeping him in the closest. And I get angry just thinking about having to do that.
Anyway, since I’m straight myself, I’ve been nervous about writing his part of the story; I don’t want to write it in any way that would be offensive or inaccurate. So, I’ve been reading up on coming out stories and doing as much research on the topic as I can. It was a relief to find a post that didn’t talk about coming out stories in a negative light. I feel a little more confident about writing this story, now. Thank you!