That's more a question than a rhetorical title to a rant. I had a friend ask me last night if I would change a main character into a woman so that I could get a book published. Truthfully I don't know. It would depend on who was asking or was willing to publish and how much they offered. Yes, that's right, I would consider it for a dollar amount since I am poor and have student loans to start paying off.
One of the reasons I started writing and continue to write is because aside from it being an outlet for my sometimes overflowing juices it has always irritated an saddened me that there aren't more gay lead characters anywhere in our culture. Now, television has come along, however slowly that has been compared to British TV. But what about the literary world? Where are the gay characters in mainstream commercial fiction?
There is for sure a market for gay fiction and publishers at small presses, and some imprints of bigger publishers, who do publish fiction with gay main characters. By and large those novels have never really circulated in the mainstream market, with one exception - bisexual or gay female characters. Why would anyone be surprised that people are more willing to accept some lesbianism in their fiction than even think about gay men. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, I certainly recognize that gay women face just as many hurdles to equality in our culture as gay men, aside from just the gender gap. It is still true, though, that gay male sexuality is still largely taboo no matter how much we try to present ourselves as Mike and Joe humdrum from down the block.
But here is the rub - if we don't have gay characters out there to become mainstream, to step out of the supporting gay friend role and into main character status, is it going to get any better? Will people be more willing to publish stories with gay leads, or read them?
It is hard for me to grasp that with the number of gay people and gay friendly people, especially considering how huge the slash fanfiction genre is online, that there aren't enough people to read fiction about gay characters. Can you bridge the gap between romance/erotica and something a mainstream audience will warm to though? Can you do that especially when so much of the mainstream of the Urban Fantasy subgenre is falling into the sub-subgenre of Paranormal Romance and has some pretty erotic parts to it too?
Listen, I don't know how to write about sex with a woman. Believe it or not I am pretty sure that things happen a little differently in the lead up to and during the actual act of hetero love than when it is two men. More than that, I understand how the hetero intercourse happens but I think that I'd be laughable writing about female anatomy and the sense experience of it.
So...basically...would I change my main character to a woman for money, yes, though I'd be very uncomfortable with it and the actual work would suffer. Maybe instead people should take a chance at publishing a novel with compelling gay characters with a very infrequent love scene that doesn't get graphic about the prep-work and the lube and all of that. Maybe the mainstream fiction world can just suck it up and get over the fact that there are compelling gay characters out there who still pay lip service to the double standard out there keeping gay male sexuality out of mainstream books.
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