We interrupt this program to bring you… a chance to add your voice to the conversation!
I hope you have been enjoying our fabulous bloggers thus far. We have been honored and astounded by the outpouring of support from authors and readers alike. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Our “Gay in YA” blogathon will be wrapping up at the end of the week. We are thrilled to say that we will be able to continue featuring some incredible authors and bloggers throughout the next several weeks, and we have decided that it’s time to take the next step. We’d like to open up this blog to submissions from you. The LGBTQ story includes everyone & touches everyone, and it’s going to require everyone to get where we’re trying to go.
So straight, gay, lesbian, or questioning*: wherever you are on your journey, we invite you to add your unique voice to the conversation and join the outcry for acceptance of Gay in YA.
We will accept whatever’s on your mind, so if you already have an idea skip the rest and email maria@gayYA.org with a little bit about yourself, a link to your blog (if you don’t have one, a writing sample will also suffice) and the topic you’d like to write about. If not, we have our handy dandy….
List of Specific Things We’re Looking For:
Tell Your Story: Creative Nonfiction Submissions
Multimedia – We strongly believe it’s important for people from diverse subcultures to support each other in the fight. We are open to featuring film, music, comics, and visual art provided it relates to the topic at hand.
Note to Authors: If you have an LGBTQ book you are interested in promoting, we don’t take ads but we would be happy to consider publishing a guest blog. Please contact maria@gayya.org for details.
If you have questions, leave them in the comments!
Tomorrow we will return to your regularly scheduled programming with a visit from the lovely ladies Cassandra Clare and Holly Black.
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* or bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer…. you get the idea. 😉
I love your blog very, very much–as a lesbian YA author, having a space where GLBT inclusion in YA literature is discussed is a wonderful, amazing and magical thing on this wide sea of the internets. 🙂
However, when I read this post and came to the portion of “we’re looking for An Ally’s argument against Gay in YA Lit,” I stopped cold. This is your blog, and you can do whatever you wish with it, obviously, but I have to ask why you might think this is a good idea?
Being gay, I get the “you are so totally wrong and terrible for what you are” stuff all the time. I’m no longer a young adult, but I can assume that I come to this blog for some of the same reasons that gay kids who love YA literature will be coming to this blog–because straight characters and stories and books are everywhere, and there is precious, precious little that portrays the GLBT community in YA literature. You do that. I love you for that. This blog does that, and it’s amazing…so I guess I’m a little saddened that on this safe and awesome space that celebrates the Gay YA community that you would even WANT to give voice to the opposition?
I’m assuming that if anyone is an ally of the gay community, they won’t argue against GLBT characters in YA, and–honestly–I don’t see that there would be any argument against the inclusion of gay characters save for on religious grounds, which is saddening, disheartening and frustrating–and something I hear everywhere else. Something that I don’t particularly wish to see here.
Just my two cents, but I did want to voice them. I love what you do, and support you guys completely–I hope you reconsider adding a different face to this blog–something we see every day in the “real” world, and something I’d rather not see on a blog that’s supposed to celebrate the GLBT community. 🙂
Thanks for commenting, and I think I understand your concern completely. If we get significant opposition from readers, we will of course consider removing that option — HOWEVER, please allow me to explain our reasoning.
There are many reasons that people don’t want Gay in YA. Some of them are homophobic or simply nasty. Those aren’t ideas we want to give any voice to. We will never accept flaming or mud slinging.
That said, there are also people who don’t want Gay in YA for reasons OTHER than homophobia. They think it won’t sell well. They think it’s not an accurate representation of the actuality of being a gay teenager. I have read one woman’s thoughts on how Gay in YA actually HURTS the LGBTQ cause. I may not agree with this, and our readers may not agree with this, but it does exist. There are all sorts of other ideas out there other than blind hatred and bigotry.
It is my belief that in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish (the seamless incorporation of LGBTQ characters and pairings into YA lit — I would love to see this blog become completely pointless in the coming years) we need to understand the opposition. And I think that while we are not here to deal with blind hatred, we CAN respond to more reasoned arguments and open up a conversation that perhaps will lead us all closer to working together.
An example of this, in my mind, is Trisha Telep. I don’t think that her actions in regards to Jessica Verday’s story in the WICKED, PRETTY THINGS anthology was based on hatred, but on a simple misunderstanding and another mindset. Her actions were undoubtedly wrong, but the idea that (for example) LGBTQ pairings are sexually inappropriate ( “These teen anthologies I do are light on the sex and light on the language. I assumed they’d be light on alternative sexuality, as well. ” ) is something that CAN be dealt with and addressed.
I want this to be a place for people to share their opinions. I want people to feel safe sharing their stories. But I also want to accomplish something — and I think that understanding where the “other side” is coming from is critical to that.
Thoughts?
A community that fancies itself all-inclusive needs to be aware that the “other side” will always have the louder voice. There is no need to ask it for reasons why; it does not usually consider itself accountable to those without privilege. I am really very curious as to the reason given as to why GLBTQ representation in YA fiction hurts the cause. I mean, I was a queer teenager not so long ago, and I ate up every. single. representation of myself that I could find.
When I was that queer kid, I knew very well where the “other side” was coming from. At heart, it was fear of what they didn’t understand. How they were going to understand without seeing representations of queerness was kind of beyond me, which was also why I came out in high school. The girl next door was also the bisexual girl next door–and that only really offended the people who had religious objections.
Had I been a book, those would have been the people who chose not to buy me. The thing is that even in my white Protestant small town, that was a tiny number. The vast majority of my classmates and teachers thought no worse of me for being who I was.
So. Pandering to the hyperreligious minority over the queer minority: we’re doing that now? I’m already viewing YA publishing with a jaundiced eye, here, and this is not making me want to buy any of it.
Hi, Maria and Sarah.
I can understand both sides of this, and I do think it’s valuable for writers to understand the opposition that’s *not* just of the “queer is wrong” variety. As a writer of YA currently struggling with a WIP that centers on a lesbian pairing, I’d get a lot of value from hearing why allies in the business might still be against taking on my work.
That being said, I think the issue may come down to who the intended audience is for this blog. If it’s primarily geared for writers, then the more information we have, the better. However, if it’s intended as a place for gay YA readers to find support and reading resources, I don’t know if that’s an audience who needs to hear why an ally is still against stories that represent them. When I was part of the target YA audience, I would have been interested in that perspective, but I would have gone to a different forum to find it than one where I went looking primarily for support.
I’m . . . with Sarah. “Stopped cold” was precisely my reaction. As for arguments that gay YA just doesn’t sell–isn’t that institutionalized homophobia? Likewise, Telep’s (rather flawed) thinking that a gay relationship be equiv to sex or language . . . has its roots in homophobic rhetoric.
Homophobia out of ignorance is still homophobia, you know? I’ve been enjoying this blog, but it makes me worry that it’s not quite the safe space I’d hoped for.
I guess my instinct is that this is sort of like the knee-jerk responses you hear from some people about Black History Month–“What about White History Month?!” As if the other 11 months of the year aren’t dedicated to white history! The rest of the industry, as well as the communities around it, often already contain a subtle anti-gay-bias. I’m not sure that these voices need to intrude on a space that’s been erected to help find a place for gay YA?
I think the argument that Gay YA is not actually representative might be an interesting one, but surely that’s not an argument being made by allies but by actual queer people, right?
I love this blog but I just can’t get behind this thing either. An ally? How can they be an ally if they’re against what so many are fighting so hard to achieve?
The Wicked Pretty Things case was a mess and I think ignorance and institutionalized homophobia definitely had something to do with it (see Telep’s twitter comment about liking a so-called old fashioned idea of romance). You don’t need to present an opposing view point dressed up as so-called balance for this blog. That’s what terrible cable news outlets do to prove how unbiased they are when in reality they’re scared. You’re better than this.
YA publishing is not looking like a happy place these days, for reasons that are perhaps as personal as they are political, and this only makes me shy further away. It’s bad enough a plagiarist can get published because she has the right friends, but now we want straight people telling queer people they need to stop writing characters like themselves? You really want someone with privilege–oops, I mean an “ally”–to talk down to–I mean “explain to”–queer authors why they don’t deserve to be represented in YA fiction?
You people, and I am saying this as a woman who has faced mental illness for years, are crazy.
First, Cassie, we are not pandering to a hyper religious anything. As I think was made clear, we are NOT here to offer a voice to flames or fear-based discussions. What I was looking for was somebody who is against Gay in YA lit /because they support the LGBTQ cause and believe Gay in YA hurts that/. Personally, I thought it would be an interesting viewpoint.
However, since “no no no no no” seems to be the prevailing opinion, we will be taking down that topic.
I still believe (and will always believe) it is an important part of this conversation, but it is clear that this is not the best place to host that conversation.
Thank you all for sharing your opinions. 🙂
Also: I am interested in the theory here and if you would like to continue the discussion, I started a forum thread for it: http://www.gayya.org/forum/index.php?topic=60.0
I will listen to the wishes of our readers and not feature that post. However, I still think it would not, ultimately, be damaging — so I’d love to hear more on why you think it would.