Xan West's Blog, page 3

My Top Holiday Romances

This post focuses on fall and winter holidays and includes romances centered around these: Halloween, Samhain, Durga Puja, Chanukah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years Eve. (About half are Christmas stories,  there are so many more out there.) It definitely shows my bias towards contemporary romance, but there is a smattering of fantasy and historical romance too.

I read a bunch of holiday romances to get to this list. Most of these are novella length or shorter, which is one of the things I appreciate most about holiday romances–most are shorter, which is often more accessible for me to read. I am grouping them by theme. Most could belong in more than one category. I link to reviews where I have written them; that’s the place to find trigger warnings.

I’m listing rep at the end of my descriptions, which is a new thing for me. If you spot something incorrect, please do feel free to let me know. Also, I am not intending to out anyone; I get author info from the web and the book bio. If an author would like me to remove any info listed, please do let me know. I want to note that I use the word fat as a neutral descriptor when listing rep, and use the word queer when a character or author identify that way or when I am unclear about their identity but know they fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella.

For folks looking for sweet romance (romance with no on-the-page sex), I am putting three asterisks*** at the end of the description.

Chosen Family

Handmade Holidays by ‘Nathan Burgoine (Christmas, 82 p): This has a friends to lovers romance arc, but the center of this Christmas story is queer chosen family. We revisit a diverse chosen family of queer folks at Christmas over the span of fifteen years. (Rep: gay MC. Gay Japanese American love interest. Trans woman secondary character. Queer man author.)
A Little Queermas Carol by Sassafras Lowrey (Christmas, 75 p): A kinky queer retelling of the Dickens classic with a genderqueer Ebe who gives everything to the revolution as a way to manage their grief over losing their BFF, and isn’t sure they can commit to the Daddy/girl couple who want Ebe to be part of their family. Heartwrenching, intense, beautiful story that gave me so many feels. (Rep: Queer genderqueer MC. Queer trans masc love interest. Queer girl love interest. Queer non-binary secondary characters. Queer genderqueer author.) ***

Bringing the Humor

Beary Christmas, Baby by Sasha Devlin (Christmas, 64 p): Fun, playful boss/assistant snowed in friends to lovers m/f romance with a polar bear shifter hero and a dragon shifter heroine. (Rep: Black woman author.)
Some Kind of Magic by Suleikha Snyder (Durga Puja, ~60 p): Age gap m/f romance centered around Durga Puja. Complex nuanced compelling characterization and conflict, deeply drawn cultural context, great secondary characters, lovely humor, and sizzling heat and chemistry between the MCs; so much UST. (Rep: Bengali heroine. Older Bengali hero. Desi woman author.)
Tis the Season by Sommer Marsden (Christmas, 53 p): Cute m/f romance between neighbors. Marsden shines in characterization here, per her usual, with the touch of comic goofiness and smoking hotness that I especially enjoy in her stories.

Bringing the Heat

New Years Eve Unzipped by JC Long (New Year’s Eve, 34 p): Hot m/m erotica story about a gay caterer at a New Year’s party who connects with a partygoer through a dating app and has sex in a bathroom. (Rep: Gay MC. Bi MC. Gay man author.)
Merry Inkmas by Talia Hibbert (Christmas, 300 p): Geeky guarded heroine meets brooding grumpy tattoo artist hero, both are trauma survivors who struggle to trust each other. So much angst, so much heat in this m/f erotic romance, plus lovely fat rep. (Rep: Fat Black heroine with PTSD. Hero with PTSD. Black queer woman author.)
Eitan’s Chord by Shira Glassman (Chanukah, 18 p): This is an f/f/f erotica story where three Chanukah fairies visit a trans man and his queer girlfriend and raise energy to grant their wishes through having sex with each other. (Rep: Queer women Chanukah fairy MCs, one of whom is chubby and butch. Jewish trans man/queer woman secondary couple. Bisexual Jewish woman author.)
Callie Unwrapped by Amy Jo Cousins (Christmas, 97 p): This is an m/f/f kinky menage erotica novella centering a heroine seeking a new sexual experience after her divorce, with an ex and his lover. (Rep: Queer women MCs. Korean American MC. Bisexual woman author.)

Geeky Goodness

Eight Naughty Nights by Eliza Madison (Chanukah, 133 p) Heroine comes home after her mothers death and proposes a Chanukah no-strings-attached affair to a longtime friend as a way to manage her grief. (She has no idea that he’s been in love with her for years.) Deliciously geeky m/f romance; includes Star Wars marathon. (Rep: Jewish heroine, Jewish hero.)
New Game, Start by C.S. Poe (Christmas, 38 p):  Adorable fluffy and very geeky m/m romance between a medieval scholar and a famous gamer who meet online. (Rep: Gay MCs.)
Hearts Alight by Elliott Cooper (Chanukah, 56 p): Sweet geeky romance between a gay man and his long time crush, who turns out to be a golem. Loved the scene where they play D&D, and the Chanukah family gathering. (Rep: Jewish bi hero. Older queer love interest. Jewish trans man secondary character. Bi trans man author)***
Wrapped Together by Annabeth Albert (Christmas, 127 p): Friends to lovers kinky m/m romance between an introvert grump geeky experienced submissive and a novice dominant extrovert who bets that he can help him find the Christmas spirit again. Long term crush, intertwined families, grief arc. (Rep: Gay MCs.)

Meet Cute

The Longest Night by Yasmine Galenorn (Winter Solstice ~60p): Deeply pagan m/f romance centered around the winter solstice; older heroine reclaiming her life, her art, and her spiritual practice after an awful marriage. (Rep: Older MCs.)
Trick or Treat by Sydney Blackburn (Halloween, 28 p) A genderfluid pansexual man answers the door for trick or treaters and meets a bi man who is taking his nephew around on Halloween. This leads to a one night stand, and the possibility for more. (Rep: Genderfluid pansexual man MC. Bisexual man LI.)
Tow Trucks and New Years Kisses by Lila Leigh Hunter (New Year’s Eve, 34 p): Enemies to lovers m/m meet cute when a pansexual CEO covers for his godson on a snowy New Year’s Eve to help a grumpy man needing a tow. (Rep: Older Pansexual MC. Gay LI. Puerto Rican author.)
Home for Christmas by Lina Langley (Christmas, 74p) This is more a whirlwind mystery m/m romance taking place around Christmas than a classic holiday romance. The MCs meet cute when one of them has his hotel room robbed, and the other is a police officer investigating. (Rep: Gay MCs. Queer Latinx enby author.)

Blue Without You (Grief themed stories)

Breath on Embers by Anne Calhoun (Christmas, 98 p): A kinky m/f contemporary romance that is very much about sex as a resource for managing grief. It contains a m/f/m menage scene.
Lighting the Flames by Sarah Wendell (Chanukah, 158 p) Heartwarming m/f romance between two old Jewish camp buddies, with themes of grief woven in beautifully. (Rep: Jewish MCs. Jewish author.)***
Last Call at the Casa Blanca Bar Grille by Erin Finnegan (Christmas, 34 p): This is not exactly a romance, more of a Christmas story about grieving the love of your life, and coming to a turning point where you figure out a way to live with the grief instead of being subsumed by it. Workaholic gay man in politics is in deep mourning for his partner who died, returns to the bar they used to hang out in, and meets a cute younger bartender who helps ease his grief a bit. (Rep: Gay MC. Queer Latinx MC.) ***

Kids and Pets

His Perfect Partner by Priscilla Oliveras (Christmas, 330 p): Dance teacher clashes with a student’s father and then they keep running into each other in this beautiful single parent romance. Very much a holiday story, really holds that kind of sweetness and celebration, that centering of family and care. (Rep: Puerto Rican heroine. Mexican American hero. Puerto Rican-Mexican American author.)***
Halfway Home by Lilah Suzanne (Christmas, 62 p): Sweet dog-centered f/f holiday romance. I especially appreciated the slow pace that matched Avery’s numbness, and the way it matched pace with her approach to Rudy, the stray dog she finds. (Rep: Lesbian MCs. Bisexual author.) ***
Stone and Shell by Lloyd A Meeker (Winter Solstice, 39 p): Told from the POV of a single dad’s 8 year old son, this sweet m/m romance about a kid who really wants his dad to find a new boyfriend warmed my heart. I enjoyed the details about the solstice altar from a child’s perspective. (Gay MC. Gay Asian American love interest. Gay man author.) ***
A Perfect Holiday Fling by Farrah Rochon (Christmas, 99p): Small town m/f romance about characters who try a holiday fling and decide they may want more. Plus it has both a kid and a rescue kitten for added cuteness, along with many of the sweet elements you could want from a holiday story. (Rep: Black MCs. Black author.)

Home for the Holidays

True North by Pene Henson (Christmas, 48 p): Sweet f/f holiday romance between a Black lesbian WNBA player and the girl she had a crush on when she was a teenager, when she visits home for the holidays. (Rep: Black lesbian MC. Bisexual love interest. Queer woman author.) ***
Kiss Me at Kwanzaa by LL Bucknor (Kwanzaa, 36 p): A sweet m/m romance about coworkers with secret crushes on each other. One finally invites the other to his family’s Kwanzaa celebration, and they awkwardly work their way around to acknowledging their feelings, (Gay MC with an Irish-Honduran-Black-Jewish family who we meet in the story–his ethnicity is not clearly marked. Gay love interest.)***
A Holiday Ruse by Stephanie Hoyt (Christmas, 43 p): Cute, sweet, friends to lovers, bringing you home for the holidays as my fake girlfriend f/f romance. (Rep: Black bisexual heroine. Latinx lesbian love interest. Black gay secondary character. Bisexual woman author.)***
A Family for Christmas by Jay Northcote (Christmas, 136 p): Shy awkward hero with crush on his new coworker invites his standoffish crush with no family home for the holidays. I liked the slow pace of this m/m romance, and the interspersal of sweet family moments, walks in the snow, and an adorable puppy, with the angst and social awkwardness. (Rep: Gay MCs. Trans man secondary character. Trans man author.)

Snowed In

A Special Delivery by Laura Bailo (Christmas, 25 p):  A meet-cute m/m romance full of sweet holiday stuff, with lovely food-related moments. A mistaken package leads a sweetheart with an awesome dog to walk it over to the right address, and he gets caught in a blizzard, and is forced to stay the night with the handsome bookish man at the correct address. (Rep: Gay MCs. Ace author.) ***
The Working Elf Blues by Piper Vaughn (Christmas, 53 p): Magical m/m romance starring an elf who falls hard for a human and runs away from the North Pole to be with him. Wonderful dogs, brooding loner/sweet and cheerful pairing. (Rep: Gay MCs. Latinx bi enby author)
Hot Coded Xmas by Nana Malone (Christmas, ~112 p): Second chance geeky snowed in m/f romance centering a heroine who is trying to save her gaming company and a hero who wants to buy it. Wonderful chemistry, so much heat and so much rivalry, and this lovely flashback to play 7 minutes in heaven in high school. (Rep: Black heroine. Black hero. Black author.)
Under the Mistletoe by Everly James (Christmas, 188 p): Cute f/f romance between two lesbian romance writers who clash, are forced to share a room, and then get snowed in at a writers retreat. (Rep: Latinx lesbian MC. Black lesbian MC. Non-binary secondary character. )

Kinky Stories

Christmas Stockings by Teresa Noelle Roberts (Christmas, 40 p): Nerves before her dominant’s workplace Christmas party spark this BDSM m/f erotic romance novella. I especially appreciated the nuerodivergent submissive character, particularly the way she navigates the party and her POV of the BDSM elements. (Rep: Neurodivergent heroine with synesthesia and dyslexia.)
Baxter’s Boy by Xan West (New Year’s Eve, 3 p): Queer femme submissive woman crushed out on an m/m dominant couple (one of whom is trans) shares a surprising new year’s kiss with one of them, then goes home and fantasizes about submitting to them both. (Rep: Queer MCs. Trans man MC. Queer disabled trans masc author.) **Use code BIGLOVE18 thru 1/2/18 to get 30% off the ebook of Show Yourself To Me, the queer kink erotica collection that includes this story**
The Ugliest Sweater by Gillian St Kevern (Christmas, 65 p): Meet-cute m/m heartwarming erotic romance that begins with an ugly Christmas sweater. Both of the MCs have a Christmas kink, and the story is all about finding a match you thought was impossible.  (Rep: Gay MCs.)
One Hot December by Tiffany Reisz (Christmas and Chanukah, 224 p): Second chance kinky m/f romance novel with a bisexual welder/artist heroine who I adored, family drama, class issues, and smoking hot D/s. (Rep: Bi heroine. Jewish hero. Bi author.)

Please Sir, May I Have Some More? (food themed stories)

Wrapped by Rebekah Weatherspoon (Christmas, 119 p): Baker heroine reconnects with sweet hero former coworker to try romance again after divorce. Glorious food details, so much Christmas sentiment; full of heat, heart and humor. (Rep: Fat Black heroine. Black queer author.)
The Remaking of Corbin Wale by Roan Parrish (Chanukah, 237 p): This is my favorite holiday story I read this year, a beautiful rather angsty m/m romance with so much baking, a lovely Chanukah feast, and characters that stole my heart and gave me so many feels. I especially appreciated the autistic artist MC, and the kink, and also the dogs. (Rep: Jewish gay MC. Gay autistic MC.)
A Little Familiar by R Cooper (Halloween and Samhain, 91 p) Gorgeously written witch/familiar romance complete with long term pining, pagan community, a ghost, and so much cooking it made me ravenous. I fell hard for the genderfluid familiar, and had so many feels for the witch hero who thought he’d always be alone. (Rep: Gay MC. Genderfluid love interest.)
A Great Miracle Happened There by Kim Fielding (Chanukah, 62 p) A latke surprise meal for the first night of Chanukah, a baker love interest who is more than a one night stand after all, a m/m romance that was just the kind of sweetness I needed. (Rep: Gay Jewish MCs.)

Free Online Shorts

Miss Dominguez’s Christmas Kiss by Lydia San Andres (Christmas): Sweet historical f/f romance short about two women who share a room at a boarding house (and a secret attraction to one another). (Rep: Latinx lesbian MCs. Latinx author.)
Elixer Fixer by NG Peltier (Christmas): This is a lovely f/f friends to lovers short set at a Christmas party, centering Gale, a woman who is facing her first Christmas after her mother’s death, who decides to take a magic potion her sister made as a way to deal. It’s a prequel to a romance novel not yet published, so there is no HEA yet. (Trini MCs. Trini/West Indian author.)***
Bring out D’Ham by NG Peltier (Christmas): This great m/f short gives you a second taste of one of the secondary characters in Elixer Fixer, Gale’s sister Sky, a witch who has a meet-cute clash with her love interest over the last ham in the supermarket. It’s a prequel to a romance novel not yet published, so there is no HEA yet. (Trini MCs. Trini/West Indian author.)***
Solstice Miracle by Alexis Daria (Winter Solstice): Cute m/f short where a librarian heroine who does witch improv as a side gig has two kids grieving their mother show up at her door with their very cute uncle requesting a solstice miracle. (Rep: Latinx hero. Latinx author.)***

Tagged: book recommendations, holiday romance, reading

Valuing the dominants consent and needs in kink negotiation

(As a heads up, this post will discuss consent and negotiation in BDSM, and specifically focuses on D/s. It briefly references consen violations, abuse, and sexual assault) 

 

“Building Something New” is a D/s focused story centering two trans queers who have been regular play partners for two years and are exploring taking their D/s dynamic outside of scene-based play and into the world, on their first romantic date. The story begins with their negotiation of whether they want to do D/s in public and what public D/s could look like for them.

That negotiation is led by Rickie (the submissive character). His focus is on supporting Jax (the dominant character) to say what he wants, and on Jax’s consent. You can see that in his thinking about the conversation before they have it, as well as the conversation itself. This moment in the story holds the dominant character as vulnerable, as someone with needs. The submissive character wants to be a support to him, but only in the context of a D/s dynamic if it actually will be supportive. They will be in public, and doing it discreetly, which means nonverbal communication is important, so that’s part of the conversation as well.

Rickie leads the negotiation, and makes sure he understands what Jax wants, that he establishes a safe signal they both can use in public to indicate that they want to ease off a bit on the D/s dynamic. His own consent as a submissive is important, too. He talks about what he wants. But the framing of the conversation, Rickie’s intention, really starts with Jax’s needs and wants, with Jax’s consent.

I have never read D/s negotiation like it.

Negotiation is one of those things in kink life that is theoretically mutual, but often much less mutual in reality, especially when D/s is part of the picture. Scene negotiation often solely focuses on the bottom’s needs, what the bottom desires, and what the bottom consents to. That’s what is modeled in kink education, depicted in kink fiction, the norm in kink communities. In power-neutral scene negotiation, where D/s is not part of the picture, tops sometimes advocate for their own needs and desires. It’s rare, but it can happen. Dominants are expected to focus on the needs, desires, and consent of the submissive. Dominants are expected to not bring up their own needs, desires and consent. To either not have them or quietly take care of them without drawing attention to them. Submissives are not expected to ask about them, or even to consider them.

I’ve referenced these issues before, discussed how talking about top needs and consent is taboo in kink communities and how I think that’s due largely to domism and misogyny and an over-valuing of top inscrutability. I have written about the ways that sadistic desires are taboo and folks are afraid of what people outside our communities might think if tops talk openly about what we want. I’ve written about the impact these norms and values in kink communities have had on me as a disabled top, how they do not make room for disabled tops to have needs. I’ve written about my own consent as a sadist, and the mutuality I need in play where I trust a partner to hold my sadism.

I haven’t written much non-fiction (yet) about the importance of a dominant’s consent. Specifically consent for D/s, and for service. That’s what this post is about.

For the most part, dominant consent is elided, silent, invisible, assumed and ignored in kink communities, kink culture, and kink fiction. In negotiation, a dominant is often thought of as the partner who facilitates the process, asking questions to aid the submissive in communicating what they want, what they need, what their limits are, what they consent to. It’s rare to imagine that a submissive might initiate or lead negotiation, that a submissive might be concerned about a dominant’s consent, or that a dominant might need help in articulating their own needs and desires.

These cultural norms have an impact. They create a culture where dominants feel like they have to be the only one watching out for their consent and needs in a scene. They make it harder for tops to articulate their needs, including access needs, aftercare needs, etc. They make it less likely that negotiation will include an easy way for a dominant to pause dynamic or end a scene, which may make it more difficult for dominants to do those things when they need to. They create a culture where people aren’t thinking about or careful around the consent of the dominant. Which helps to shape a kink culture where dominants who are abused, sexually assaulted, or have their consent violated by submissives have very little room to articulate that experience, much less be believed or supported by others should they try.

All of which makes it harder to create full consent for dominants. This is especially the case for marginalized dominants where other power dynamics may be at play in a relationship, for dominants who have communication difficulties, and for dominant trauma survivors who may have complex concerns around consent.

I write queer kink fiction to reflect the realities of queer kink life, to reflect my communities. But fiction does more than offer a cathartic mirror. It offers a vision for the future. It challenges the status quo. It gives insight into how things are and also what it might feel like, look like, be like…if they were different. I am invested in offering kink fiction that honors top vulnerabilities alongside bottom strengths. That values mutuality between and consent for both dominants and submissives. That shows what consent could look like if we valued the dominant’s consent and needs as well as the submissives. Given the impact of the cultural norms that I discussed above, these things feel especially important to me.

Part of what I love about “Building Something New” is that it shows Rickie leading the negotiation as a way to support Jax, and then following Jax’s lead when they are doing the D/s. I love the dance of that, the way he takes both aspects of it seriously, the care he brings throughout the story, the way he shows who he is by how careful and invested in attuning to Jax he is. He gets strength from their dynamic, from following, and caring, and being present and open. And leading the negotiation to focus on Jax’s needs is part of that, not in contradiction to it.

These are characters I love deeply. I’ve been writing them since 2014. You may recognize them from the story “My Pretty Boy” in Show Yourself To Me, and in excerpts I have posted from Shocking Violet, a novel I have been working on for the last three years (and am trying to finish writing in the next month or so). This moment in their relationship is a turning point, a precious one. I am incredibly glad that it has been published in a book about submission because it so deeply centers Rickie’s submissive self, in all his complexity.

[image error]“Building Something New” just came out today, December 19, in the ebook version of The Big Book of Submission Vol 2, which was edited by the amazing Rachel Kramer Bussel!

I’m joined in the table of contents by a cadre of brilliant erotica writers, including:

Sommer Marsden
Rob Rosen
Annabeth Leong
Jade A. Waters
Giselle Renarde
Malin James
Sonni de Soto
Donna George Storey

Ebook available now! Print version available in January.

Tagged: Big Book of Submission Vol 2, consent, D/s, dominant consent, domism, erotica, flash fiction, kink, kink community, mutuality, publications, queer, queer characters, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Shocking Violet, trans, trans characters, vulnerable tops, writing erotica

An Interview With Shira Glassman about Eitan’s Chord

I adored Eitan’s Chord, the queer Chanukah erotica rerelease by Shira Glassman in which an trio of queer women Chanukah fairies (including a butch fairy!) have sex to create the energy to grant the wishes of a sweet trans man/cis woman couple. I was lucky enough to get a chance to ask a few questions of the author!

Q: How would you describe yourself to a new reader just discovering you?

A: I actually think fellow SFF author Rose Lemberg described me better than I could ever describe myself: queer Jewish candy. While I do get deep or serious at times — Queen Shulamit coming to terms with the threat to her country’s economy from agricultural sabotage, in The Olive Conspiracy — for the most part my books are intended to be the story version of a comfort food, of one of those super soft blankets that feel like a cat’s belly (I have one from Bed Bath and Beyond with pumpkins on it!), of that song you pull up on YouTube when you need a safe place. My subcategory of fantasy is that I’m very inspired by growing up without a Disney princess to reflect either my sexuality or my people, but I also write contemporary romance.

I also tend to write the kind of romances where other types of relationships are given a lot of weight, too, whether it’s the protagonist’s friend, daughter, grandfather, knitting group, etc. Showing that f/f romance doesn’t inherently threaten f-f friendship is very important to me.

Q:  What sparked Eitan’s Chord for you? What made you want to write this particular story?

A: My former publisher published a Christmas-and-Chanukah anthology every December, but one year they made the theme really specific: all submissions had to have something to do with the classifieds. (“Holiday Want Ads” was the anthology title.) I didn’t even think I was going to participate, originally, but then I realized that Craigslist counted. Add to that my frustration with how I make really cute beaded jewelry that hardly ever sells — maybe it’s not that cute! I’ll live — and a thread I accidentally started on Tumblr about Jewish fairies , and you have the origins of “Eitan’s Chord.” Also, I just really like thinking about sapphic fairies and think there should be more of them.

Eitan and Abigail look like what my life looked like at the time I wrote it, so that’s another factor — at the time, I was hungry for representation that looked like my marriage, especially since most of the trans men in romance were featured in m/m stories, not m/f. It may not apply to me anymore but it’s still really good that this is changing with the introduction of more trans m/f books into the world.

Q: Eitan’s Chord is, at its center, a Chanukah story. What do you love most about Chanukah?

A: Snap answer: the moment when a candle finishes burning out and it turns from being this tiny pinpoint of orange glow to suddenly pop now it’s a wisp of gray smoke, reaching up, up, up.

Not so snap answer: my father’s parents were German Jews who escaped in 1938. The last decade of his life he spent working in Germany, and one year he called me during Chanukah and left me a voicemail in which he sang Maoz Tzur in Hebrew and told me he’d lit the menorah in his business-trip apartment. In Munich. For a holiday that’s literally supposed to be about rededication (because of the temple in the story that had gotten messed up), that’s pretty goddamn fierce and amazing.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I appreciate those tiny lights in the dark.

Q: “Which one of the fairies are you?”

[image error]

Chanukah fairies Latke, Menorah, and Dreidl. Art by Agaricals.

A: I’m Dreidl. I freaking want that dress I designed for her. (That doesn’t mean I want to replace her in the sex scene; who went where just kind of went with the flow! But her aesthetic and mood is mine, when I’m okay.)

Q:   It’s incredibly rare to find f/f/f stories, and Eitan’s Chord is one of the few out there. Most of your stories center wlw relationships. What do you love about writing wlw?

A: Writing f/f or f/f/f gives me an outlet for my sapphic feelings, especially because I’m single. Also, it’s a way to hold fast against a universe of m/f, m/f, m/f, nothing but m/f, in most of the genres I care about. Jane Austen movies don’t have ladies sharing romantic moments. Operas certainly don’t. Disney princess movies don’t. Big-budget SFF only goes there if it wants to kill us, so I’m happier when we’re not even there. So I write. So I create my own princesses and fairies and superhero girls who want to kiss each other. A lot of us are doing it. They can’t keep us down forever.

Q: We first met on Twitter, talking about stories and fat representation, if I recall. (A subject dear to my heart.) Tell me about your chubby and fat characters, both in Eitan’s Chord, and your other stories.

A: Real life includes people of all different sizes, including my real life, so I find it frustrating and erasing that so frequently there’s a layer of skinnywashing on fiction.

 Unless you’re trying to code for something negative about a character, which is harmful and dangerous and reinforces all kinds of awful myths that affect both how fat people feel and how thin people treat fat people.

[image error]

Esther and Tzuriel from A Harvest of Ripe Figs. Art by Laya.

[image error]

Danielle and Clara from Knit One, Girl Two. Art by Andrea Sutinen.

I just want my writing to reflect the reality I see around me. So we have characters like Esther and Tzuriel, two musicians drawn to each other as they deal with the stress of her violin being stolen and him being suspected of the theft in my fantasy-mystery cozy A Harvest of Ripe Figs. We have Danielle, the chubby femme bombshell artist from Knit One Girl Two who uses her own body as a canvas to decorate when she’s at her absolute lowest.

And here in “Eitan’s Chord” we have Latke, the muscular “derby girl” with big thighs and strength both physical and emotional.

[image error]

Farzin and his prince, Kaveh, from Climbing the Date Palm. Art by Noah Toklum.

An answer like this wouldn’t be complete without me mentioning two other fat dreamboats from my Mangoverse series: Farzin, the gay math nerd and passionate advocate for worker justice who sweeps the youngest prince off his feet and teaches him all about human rights, and Isaac, the smirky older wizard who fell for the lady knight he trained in combat.

[image error]

Isaac and his lady knight, Rivka. Art by Lynxina.

Isaac is one of the dearest to my heart of all my characters, given that he’s based on some of my very first favorite characters and attractions, and also in part on my childhood idea of what dragons were like. (He can turn into one; it’s just one of his unexpected charms.) Most of all, he comes from a desire to take the aesthetic of all the villains I felt tricked into liking — by virtue of the hero belonging to various oppressive groups, or the villain wearing dramatic black clothing and having sexy eyebrows — but then applied to a character it was safe to love.

[image error]

Queen Shulamit and her partner Aviva from Glassman’s Mangoverse, celebrating Chanukah. Art by Laya.

I should also mention Aviva, the love interest and eventual partner/wife (the words change from book to book because the characters are supposed to be speaking Hebrew, which has the same word for ‘wife’ as ‘woman’) of the Mangoverse’s lesbian protagonist, Queen Shulamit. Aviva is a whimsical, protective, nurturing young palace cook who was the only person to realize the princess wasn’t faking her food problems. She’s the one on the right in this Chanukah scene I commissioned a few years ago from Laya. With her calmness, she makes a good foil for the tightly-wound little queen, her messy bun contrasted with Shulamit’s intricate, never-out-of-place braids symbolic of their differing approach to problems.

Q: I love the idea of fairy roller derby!  The second I saw it I asked you to write a sports romance showing me the fairy roller derby team. Which of your other characters might play a sport in a modern AU?

A: Well, Rivka (the lady knight/captain of the guard in my fantasy series) is already pretty athletic in her approach to combat, and a lot of her training and practice is sports-focused. She’d be a definite asset to any derby team, or maybe rugby or boxing. I bet the lead in my 2018 superhero release Cinnamon Blade, Knife in Shining Armor would be really good on a gymnastics team, since she’s a reformed cat burglar and can easily scale a building without any supernatural powers.

If Queen Shulamit from the fantasy series were in a modern AU I imagine her father might have signed her up for tennis lessons, since she grew up wealthy, but she probably gets super distracted and stares off into space thinking about more academic subjects or daydreaming about famous tennis lesbians! (This may or may not be me using her as a self-insert again.)

Q: What do you enjoy about writing erotic fiction? What are the challenges?

A: I feel like writing erotica puts me in an entirely different style than writing everything else, because for me unless you’re only talking about emotions, suddenly there’s this extreme closeup focus on physical actions. I’ve described this out loud to friends as “she wrapped each finger tightly around the steering wheel, feeling the chilly vinyl warm up to her sweaty hands. Feeling each bump of the road beneath her wheels, she scanned the street signs for University of Florida. First, second, third. She had a ways to go.” etc. That would drive me nuts if it wasn’t a sex scene, but in order for a sex scene to Describe All The Things, you need that much detail. So it’s a different headspace.

What do I enjoy? Writing makes it feel real to me.

Q: It’s clear that one of the core things you do in your work is create warm and fluffy Jewish queer stories. Can you tell me why that’s important to you?

A: Ladies who love ladies die on television. Jews get persecuted and die in fiction. Holy crap, let me live!

Look, there’s a lot of literature and filmed media out there, much of it not by queer people or not by Jews, focusing on the worst things that can happen to us. If that’s the majority of what you see, you start believing you’re basically done for. Why would anyone believe us about the inner peace of queerness or the joyous parts of Jewishness if fiction keeps telling the world that only our oppression gets to steer the ship?

Hope. And also truth, because some of that peace and joy is real right now. It’s not just about hope.

Q: What’s up next for you? What stories are you working on?

A:  So, in 2018 at some point, the world will meet Cinnamon Blade. She’s the snarky, former bad-girl sidekick on the fictional TV show that the two leads in Knit One Girl Two read fanfic about, but once I finished inventing her, I realized I really wanted to write her — and not just as part of a fake fandom. She’s secular Jewish, best friends since childhood with Captain Werewolf, who’s more observant. Knife in Shining Armor is about how she finally asks out the damsel in distress she keeps rescuing in adventure after adventure — Soledad Castillo, another one of my ultimate-sweetheart awkward nerd heroines. But will they ever get to enjoy an entire romantic evening together if aliens, vampires, etc. keep attacking Miami/Ft. Lauderdale?

The story is very queer, very Jewish, and very Florida. I love to create validating little experiences like that.

Also, since this interview is airing on November 20: on the 22nd, Ylva Publishing’s imprint Queer Pack will print my age-gap historical fantasy romance short “Gifts of Spring” in the first volume of the Queerly Loving anthology. It’s the story of Rosamund, a young and book-smart, street-clueless trans mage who rescues Elias, a cis Jewish acrobat/street performer, from an angry mob. This is the first time I’ve ever set anything in my father’s family’s ancestral Bavaria, so in a way it’s my own little “menorah in the apartment.”

[image error]More about Eitan’s Chord:

Fairy magic requires fairy intimacy, so when the three Chanukah fairies—cute butch Latke, enthusiastic party girl Dreidl, and their elegant leader Menorah—decide to help an impoverished young couple, a fairy romp is in order!

Eitan, a trans man, and his cis wife Abigail work retail and live on love in a studio apartment with broken blinds. If only Abigail’s beaded jewelry would sell online, they’d have a little more cash, but nobody’s biting. While they sleep, the fairies bring the miracle they’re looking for.

[image error]

Bio: Shira Glassman is a bi Jewish violinist living in north Florida. She is best known for her fluffy queer Jewish fantasy series ‘the Mangoverse’, some of whose books have been shortlisted in the Golden Crown and Bi Book Awards, and for the wlw rom-com Knit One Girl Two. Her work draws heavily on her life, loved ones, heritage and upbringing, and French and German opera for inspiration.

Website: https://shiraglassman.wordpress.com/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Shiraglassman

Tumblr: http://shiraglassman.tumblr.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ShiraGlassman

Tagged: butch characters, Chanukah, erotica, f/f, f/f/f, fairies, fat characters, fat representation, Jewish characters, queer, queer characters, Queerly Loving, Shira Glassman, trans characters

Personal Update

I want to thank you for  boosting and donating to my fundraiser this spring to help me resist homelessness and secure my housing until I was able to get on SSDI. It means so much to me to be part of such amazing communities who gave so generously to support me. I am more grateful than I have words for.

I recently got my letter confirming that I am now on SSDI, which means that I am financially secure and my housing is secure, through the next year and a half at least! You helped me survive to get to this point. Thank you so much for that.

Since I received this news, it has been such a weight off my shoulders, and has made it more possible for me to write. I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month, with the hope of finishing a draft of Shocking Violet, a novel I have been working on since 2014. So far, I have written over 16,000 new words in this novel, and I am very hopeful that I may have a completed draft by the end of 2017. Your help was instrumental in making that happen.

I cannot thank you enough for your tremendous support. It has meant the world to me.

Tagged: crowdfunding, Shocking Violet, survival

Books I Enjoyed This Summer

For purposes of this post I am defining summer as June-August, though the heat this week definitely tells a different story. I’m including links to my reviews if they exist, or to the Goodreads entry for the book, if they do not.

New Reads

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai
Sultry in Stilettos by Nana Malone
North to You by Tif Marcelo
Heels Over Head by Elyse Springer
Life is Wonderful, People are Terrific by Meliza Bañales
A Harvest of Ripe Figs by Shira Glassman
Illegal Contact by Santino Hassell
When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller
Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy
Madly and About Last Night by Ruthie Knox
Noteworthy by Riley Redgate
It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Seguira
The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee
A Portrait of the Desert in Personages of Power by Rose Lemberg
The Soldier’s Scoundrel by Cat Sebastian
The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson
Beyond Ruin and Beyond Surrender by Kit Rocha
Insert Groom Here by K. M. Jackson
Summer Research by Rain Merton
Ashwin by Kit Rocha
Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live by Sacha Lamb
Stars in Their Eyes by Pema Donyo
Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee
Team Phison by Chace Verity

Rereads:

Sated by Rebekah Weatherspoon
For Real by Alexis Hall
The Companion Contract by Solace Ames
Beyond Shame, Beyond Control and Beyond Possession by Kit Rocha
A Boy Called Cin by Cecil Wilde
Small Change by Roan Parrish
Knit One, Girl Two by Shira Glassman

Books I’m Excited to Read/Finish This Fall

His Perfect Partner by Priscilla Oliveras
Wintersong by S. Jae Jones
Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds
Brilliant Imperfection by Eli Clare
The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales by Yoon Ha Lee
Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic ed by Tobi Hill-Meyer
When the Chant Comes by Kay Ulanday Barrett
When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore
Triad Blood by ‘Nathan Burgoine
Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali
The Root by Na’amen Tilahun
Heroine Complex by Sara Kuhn
No Strings Attached by Mina V Esguerra
Niks Road Revenge Mixtape by Jack Swift
City of Strife by Claudie Arsenault
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia
Enter Title Here by Rahul Kanakia
The Trouble by Daria Defore
Brew by Dane Figeroa Edidi
Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai
Knife’s Edge: Kinky Lesbian Erotica by Emily L. Byrne
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom
Deacon by Kit Rocha
Ragdoll House by Maranda Elizabeth
Perv by Dakota Gray

Tagged: book recommendations, reading, summer reading

Navigating Kink Life as a Disabled Butch: Workshop Materials

I am teaching an interactive discussion-based workshop on Navigating Kink Life as a Disabled Butch at Butch Voices on Friday August 18 at 10:45am in Oakland. In this post, I’m going to share information and resources that I’m including in that workshop.

Here is the description:

If you are a kinky disabled butch, or you do kink with disabled butches, this interactive workshop is for you. We will discuss our kink lives with folks who get what it’s like to experience the changeable nature of chronic illness and disability, with its unpredictable energy/pain levels. We will share our tips & tricks for topics such as adjusting BDSM play around mobility disabilities, playing while in pain, disclosing disability to new play partners, developing access intimacy, adjusting D/s around things like mental health flares or brain fog, and getting the pain play we ache for.

For an interactive discussion-based workshop like this, I don’t generally have a set plan. It’s more loose and responsive to what folks bring into the room, what they are seeking. I start there, start by asking participants what they are looking for from the conversation. What I do prepare are offerings of material that I can use to guide discussion, and that participants can take home with them as resources. That’s what the handout is for, to be a jumping off point for conversation.

So, this post is me sharing those offerings with you, so you can use them in the workshop (to make it more accessible) and so folks who aren’t in the room have things they can chew on too.

I come to this conversation as a kinky person who has been doing kink for over 15 years, and teaching about it over a dozen. I come to this conversation as an autistic trans butch who has multiple chronic pain and autoimmune conditions and diseases, has PTSD, and a mobility disability, all of which have impacted and continue to impact my kink life. I come to this conversation with a wide definition of disability and a wide definition of kink.

I prepared three offerings for the workshop. One is a list of ten core concepts. Another is a quote about and set of links on access intimacy. The last is a set of self reflection questions about adjusting kink around changing disabilities/capacities. Depending on where folks in the room are, we will engage with these, and with the questions, thoughts, and experiences that emerge from them.

Core Concepts:

BDSM can be wonderful, transformative, spiritual, glorious, positive and hot for everyone involved, whatever their ranges and combinations of bodies, limitations and abilities.
However a disability exists (whether someone was born with it, or acquired it, whether it is temporary or permanent, changing or constant), it’s valuable to determine the current reality and figure out how to do the kink you want to do in that reality.
It’s ok to go at your own pace and honor the capacity and limitations you have, whatever your kink role.
Bodies and abilities may change throughout a person’s lifetime, relationships, and sometimes several times a day, or hour. Kink desires and limits may change just as much.
Knowing, communicating about, and respecting the limits and desires of all parties involved enhances your kink life.
You do not need to wait to “get better” to do kink (or do kink again). You can meet yourself and meet others where you’re at.
Each person is responsible for their own decision-making about their own body, disability, health, and physical/emotional resources.
Not all BDSM is sexual. It’s ok to do kink for disability related reasons, like meeting sensory needs, pain relief, or meeting emotional needs. It can be helpful if all involved know what participants are seeking from play.
Adjusting BDSM play around changing disability and access needs often means taking risks, trying things out, and being vulnerable.
Butches are often expected to already know how to be good in bed, to be experts at sex. Butches also are frequently expected to be in control and not show vulnerability. These expectations can make it difficult for disabled butches doing kink to take risks, try things out, and ask for their access needs to be met.

Access Intimacy:

“Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level. Sometimes it can happen with complete strangers, disabled or not, or sometimes it can be built over years. It could also be the way your body relaxes and opens up with someone when all your access needs are being met… Sometimes access intimacy doesn’t even mean that everything is 100% accessible. Sometimes it looks like both of you trying to create access as hard as you can with no avail in an ableist world. Sometimes it is someone just sitting and holding your hand while you both stare back at an inaccessible world.” –Mia Mingus

Resources on Access Intimacy:

“Access Intimacy: The Missing Link” by Mia Mingus. Describes what access intimacy is, gives examples and talks about how it feels. Great place to start.
“Access Intimacy, Interdependence & Disability Justice” by Mia Mingus. Recent talk on access intimacy between abled and disabled folks. This is an especially useful read if you are abled & in relationships with disabled folks.
“” by Jacks McNamara. About access intimacy & mental illness.
“The Lack of Access Intimacy” by The Uninspirational. Describes what it feels like when there isn’t access intimacy.
“See the cripple dance: Bruises as a sign of healing, lilac season, & becoming nobody” by Maranda Elizabeth. An exploration of access intimacy, experiences of inaccessibility, & the Three of Swords (a tarot card).
“A Valentine’s Day excerpt from Shocking Violet” by Xan West. An excerpt from my novel in progress that illustrates access intimacy.

Adjusting Kink around Changing Disabilities/Capacities: Self reflection questions



Access to Space : Where is play possible? What will make it possible for me to get in the door? What furniture needs do I have? What environmental needs do I have (e.g. lighting, sound, fragrance-free)? What spaces are inaccessible? What spaces are accessible sometimes but not always? What spaces work for some kinds of play but not others?
Physical position : What positions work for me? How do positions need to be adjusted? What positions will not work? What equipment or furniture do I need to make a position work for me? How long can I be in the position?
Timing : How does the pace of a scene need to be adjusted? Do I need to take breaks to rest or stretch or attend to physical needs? How does the arc of the scene need to be adjusted to work for me? When are certain scenes possible? When are certain scenes desired?
Communication Needs : How can play be adjusted to meet my communication needs and capacities? What kinds of communication work best before a scene? During a scene? After play? What impacts my ability to communicate? What do I need if I go nonverbal? How can I communicate continued consent if I go nonverbal?
D/s structure : When does D/s feel like a structure I need/a structure that helps? When does D/s feel overwhelming or impossible? When do I need a break from D/s? How can structure be adjusted to make breaks possible? To make it possible to access power-neutral aspects of a relationship? Can structure or ritual make some things more possible? What disability-related things are off limits for control or D/s?
Service : What kinds of service are doable from where I am now? How does service need to be adjusted as my disabilities flare and change? What disability-related needs/tasks are off limits for receiving service?
Kink meeting disability needs : What sorts of play meet my sensory needs? What kinds of play work best when I’m in pain/for pain relief/for distraction from pain? What kinds of emotional or psychological needs do I want to try to meet with kink? What sorts of play meet those needs? How do these things change with disability flares?
Edgeplay : When do I want to push edges? When do I need play right in my comfort zones? What do I need to make edgeplay work for me?
Shifting roles : What roles work when? How do kink roles (top, bottom, Daddy, puppy, little, pony, etc.) need to shift around my disabled reality?
Disclosure : What adjustments in play/disability related needs feel private, where I’m not up for sharing with play partners? Can I adjust for them myself? What do my play partners need to know about my disabilities? When and how do I want to share information with my partners about my disabilities? What do my play partners need to know about my access needs?
Unknowns : What aspects of my capacity/limitations/disabilities are not known? What aspects are unpredictable? What will I need to experiment with, or work together with partners to figure out? What would make it more possible for me to do play that is exploratory/experimental?

Hope you found something useful in the materials, whether or not you were at the workshop. I am excited to have this conversation; I always learn so much from talking to other disabled folks. I would be glad if you shared any thoughts and questions you have in the comments; we can have a conversation here too!

Tagged: access, butch, disability, kink, kink education, queer, workshop materials

On being careful what we call fluff

Note: while this discusses a particular book, it is not a review. It’s an essay talking about the way we frame books like this, discuss them, rec them, promote them, and especially, review them.

(As a heads up, this post contains discussions and examples of bullying, sexual harassment, outing, and sexual violence. It also discusses erasure of and silence around these things.)

Yesterday I read a queer YA book that has been almost universally described as cute, fun, and fluffy. It’s told from the POV of a gay main character who is bullied, outed, and sexually harassed.

The book I’m referring to is Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli.

Are there aspects of the story that are cute, fun, and fluffy? Definitely. The tone is generally lighthearted and humorous. One of the central aspects of the story is Simon’s involvement in the production of a musical. The gay MC has a rather sweet family, a supportive friendship group, and a central romantic arc, all of which get ample focus in the novel.

That said, the book centers around Simon getting bullied, which includes him getting outed and sexually harassed, and which drives the core of the plot. It is threaded throughout the story, intertwined with the majority of the cute and humorous bits, all the way to the end.

I’m going to ask you to take a moment to recall what you’ve heard about Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, if anything. It definitely got a huge buzz, won a bunch of awards. What I heard over and over was: cute, fun, fluffy, adorable, sweet, funny.

That did not match my reading experience.

My reading experience was deeply shaped by the bullying Simon experiences throughout the book, the sexual harassment, being outed. These things may have been mostly framed by a light tone and jokes, but they did not feel light to read. As a bullying survivor, and as a queer survivor of sexual violence, when I read about this happening to Simon, I felt deeply for him, connected with him. I also recognized that he likely was joking about these things because that was how he was getting through the day, not because he took them lightly.

I am troubled that so much of the discussion of this book frames it as solely fun, fluffy and cute, and seems to erase the bullying and sexual harassment Simon experiences. This essay is about unpacking that, and discussing why it is important to be careful when characterizing this book (and books like it) as purely fluff.

I am invested in this partly because I think fluff is really important, as a resource, especially for marginalized readers. I want queer teens to be able to find queer stories that are cute, fun, and fluffy, and not be surprised that they depict bullying, outing, and sexual harassment in detail. I want queer readers (including myself) to be able to find these kinds of fluffy queer stories, especially on a hard day when they are needed most. When we talk about books, as readers, its to help other readers know about them, and make choices about what to read and when. Calling Simon vs fluff, in an uncomplicated way, without mentioning the bullying and sexual harassment, isn’t helping readers make these choices.

I’m going to start by describing the nature of the bullying and harassment in Simon vs, which means some spoilers. I’m doing this because it feels like these elements of the story are perhaps not being perceived as bullying and sexual harassment, and that’s why they aren’t being discussed that way. It feels important to name them, to be clear about them.

The next two sections include spoilers, particularly the next one.

What does the bullying, harassment and outing look like in this book?

The novel begins with another student, Marty, having read Simon’s email exchanges with another closeted gay boy (with whom Simon has a romance arc). Marty has taken a screen shot of the emails, and uses that as a weapon to threaten to out Simon (and possibly the boy he is emailing with)…unless Simon helps him get together with one of Simon’s friends. This is referred to as “blackmail” in both the book blurb and in the text, which is told from Simon’s POV. Most of the book elapses before Marty openly admits that this is blackmail, even though he persistently threatens Simon over a long period of time.

The thing is, I got why Simon used the word blackmail. But I never thought of it as blackmail, exactly. This is a allocishet guy threatening to out a gay guy unless he does what he wants. It’s not just blackmail, it’s bullying. It’s targeting a queer person, threatening him, and using his queerness as a weapon against him. And it’s really just the beginning of the bullying, because it escalates.

Marty does more than threaten Simon. He also outs him, publicly, on an open internet forum for all his peers to see. He doesn’t just out him, either. He does it in a particularly loaded and awful way. He posts something on the internet where he pretends to be Simon, uses his full name, and invites all the boys in the school to have “anal buttsex” with him. This is more than just outing Simon. It’s sexual harassment. It’s evoking queer hatred that uses slut shaming to target gay men. It paints a target on Simon’s back for further sexual and queer hating harassment and bullying. Which then occurs throughout the rest of the book, as a constant part of Simon’s school experience. The book describes incidents of bullying and sexual harassment that include: a group of boys joking about taking turns sexually assaulting him, lewd gestures and comments, constant comments as he walks the halls, queer hating slurs used to deface pictures of him. The bullying and sexual harassment is so widespread that Simon doesn’t even try to identify which people are doing it, and it’s pretty clearly implied that we as readers only hear about some of what happens to Simon at school.

Simon being outed is important in the story; it drives a good portion of the rest of the book. And being outed is an intense and awful thing for him. But how he gets outed, that it involves sexual harassment of this nature, that it’s the culmination of bullying, and sets him up as a target for more bullying by others…those pieces are also very important. It feels like the text minimizes them. I’m going to unpack how I think the text does that.

When Simon tells Marty off, he focuses on getting outed and how that is not ok. He doesn’t hold him fully accountable for the bullying, for the sexual harassment, for placing a target on his back for other bullies. Simon’s sister doesn’t name how it’s more than just outing, and neither do his friends. When his friend finds out about the blackmail, she doesn’t name how this is bullying and not ok, she gets angry with him for what he was forced to do. Marty doesn’t hold himself fully accountable, either. He makes a ton of excuses for most of the book, attempts to elide what he is doing. Later on, the text gives a bunch of space to Marty apologizing, at length, multiple times, with a ton of explanation. He never names the sexual harassment aspect of this, or takes responsibility for setting Simon up to be targeted by other bullies. In my read, it feels more like the text is asking the reader to empathize with Marty than that it’s attempting to hold him accountable for his actions.

Some of the bullying Simon experienced from others in school does get challenged textually and by other characters, including an adult in the school, and the outing gets challenged, but that’s really it. A lot of it gets elided, feels minimized, ignored, especially the sexual harassment aspect. Which might be what Simon is doing to survive it (although it’s not framed that way, textually). In my reading experience, because there is nothing in the text that challenges the sexual harassment, not even a hint or a moment, something to show the impact on Simon, someone to say that part of it was wrong and violating, it felt like the text treated it as if it wasn’t real or important, didn’t need to be challenged. Like the “real” problem was only that he got outed, and that he was “blackmailed”.

This translated into the reviews, I think. The book doesn’t frame it (or challenge it) as sexual harassment or bullying, in the text or the blurb, and most reviews don’t do that either (a few reference bullying). Many of the reviews that do reference bullying seem to only refer to one incident of it, one that was challenged by several other characters in the book, including an adult at the school. When I read the book, I saw a pattern of bullying targeting Simon that traced throughout the story, beginning with the threats and “blackmail”, and escalating as the story went on. It makes me wonder what folks think bullying is? Does the absence of physical violence mean that folks don’t think of things like this as bullying? Does what Simon experienced from Martin somehow not count? What about the multiple things that happen to him at school after he is outed?

Some of the reviews I read gave trigger warnings. The ones that did include trigger warnings generally listed that a character gets outed and often listed blackmail and homophobia. They didn’t talk about sexual harassment or bullying. And these reviews pretty much all framed the story as solely cute, fluffy, and fun.

What does it mean to frame stories like this as purely fluffy, fun and cute?

Here’s the thing. Bullying, harassment, and violence targeting queer people often include sexual harassment and sexual violence. That is incredibly common, and a very important aspect of the experience, for survivors. This is something we need to talk more about; it’s often erased or minimized when talking about the way queer folks are targeted by violence.

When stories that include this kind of content are painted purely as light, fluffy, fun and cute, it sends a message to survivors. A familiar one, that’s often sent, about bullying, sexual harassment and anti-queer violence: that it will be ignored, that people will pretend it away, that it’s not ok to talk about it. I finished this book, and went back to reread a bunch of the reviews, seeing fluffy, fun, cute over and over and no mention of the sexual harassment, no reviews that use the word bullying. It felt like this oh so familiar blanket of silence. I know this blanket of silence well, as a survivor of bullying, sexual assault, sexual abuse and sexual harassment, including in the context of queer and trans hatred.

I worry in particular that the sexual harassment isn’t challenged in the book, or named in reviews. I wonder…if there was a book where a character posted something like this about a girl, on an open internet forum for all her peers to see, someone pretending to be her, using her full name that invited all the boys in the school to have sex with her…would that be challenged in the book? Would that be named in a trigger warning as sexual harassment? I have a feeling that it would be. It’s worth considering why it wasn’t here.

I am going to take this hypothetical one more step. This kind of sexual harassment is really common, and girls are frequently targeted by it. What might it be like to be a teen girl who has been or is currently being targeted in this way, and to read Simon vs, to see how nothing in the book names this or challenges it as sexual harassment, how it’s not in trigger warnings, how almost everyone calls the book cute, fluffy, and fun? Are you worried about this hypothetical teen girl reader, and the message she might take from this?

I worry about the message that any and all survivors take from this, especially teen survivors. Please don’t only worry about the girls. Trust me, they are not the only survivors.

I will tell you this: as a queer and trans survivor reader who is an adult, it was hurtful to me that this has been left out of the way folks talk about this book. And I have many years in the trauma field to bring to my understanding of why this might be left out, elided, erased. Teen readers who are survivors of sexual violence, who deal with this kind of bullying and sexual harassment…they are reading these reviews, listening to this buzz, checking out this promo. What message does this erasure send?

What does it say to teen readers who are survivors of bullying, that this story is solely painted as adorable?

What does it say to teen readers who are survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault, that this story is discussed as purely fluffy?

What does it say to queer teen readers that this story is presented as a just a cute fun light read?

For that matter, what does cute, fluffy and fun mean for queer MCs in YA? Does it always include bullying, violence, outing, or sexual harassment? Does this story feel so fun to readers because it’s fluffy and cute alongside those things instead of just bleakly only about those things?

Ideas for ways to discuss books that are complex like this

There may be fluff and cuteness in Simon vs, but that’s not all there is. Even though the tone of the book is generally full of humor, this not just a fluffy story. We need ways to talk about stories like this. Queer stories that include romance, humor and friendship, and also include hard things like bullying, sexual harassment, and being outed.

I can tell you how I talk about books like this. For me, one of the keys is holding the complexity, holding both aspects of the story in how I talk about it. I often talk about the way stories like this balance humor with the hard things, and are able to hold them both. I talk about the different strands of the story—the romance arc, the bullying, the relationships Simon has with his friends, the play, and how they intertwine. I talk about the tone, the voice, and how it felt to have hard things framed with humor. I name the kinds of violence and trauma that are part of the story, often not just in trigger warnings, but definitely in those.

For me the key questions are:

How can my review be clear about the fact that the story is both humorous/fluffy and also has difficult intense content?
How can my review give other readers the information they need about the content of the book? (I especially consider readers who share experiences depicted in the story, like queer teen readers and teen bullying survivor readers in the case of Simon vs.)
How can my review avoid erasing/minimizing/eliding experiences of violence depicted in the book?

We each review and discuss books in different ways, ways that suit our own style and interests. I’m not suggesting mine is “the right way”. I’m talking about how I do this, to offer one set of ideas to bounce off of. I want to hear yours.

What ideas do you have? How do you approach stories like this? What are you hoping from reviews of stories like this?

Tagged: Becky Albertalli, being outed, bullying, coming out, fluff, queer, queer characters, queer oppression, queer romance, romance, sexual harassment, silence, Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda, writing reviews

TRANS BOOK MONTH: Corey Alexander recommends “A Baker’s Dozen of Stories Centering Non-Binary Characters”

I put together this list of stories centering non-binary characters!

Just Love: Queer Book Reviews

[image error]

[image error]

Throughout the month of July, we want to highlight and invite discussion about transgender literature and representation in media. We’ve invited some absolutely incredible authors to the site to discuss trans topics that mean the most to them, and today we’re thrilled to have Corey Alexander joining us!

A Baker’s Dozen of Stories Centering Non-Binary Characters
 By Corey Alexander

I came out as a non-binary trans person over 20 years ago. The mid 90s were a time when finding stories about non-binary characters was extremely rare. Part of being non-binary in a society that is deeply binarily gendered is that often the world tells you that you aren’t real. That you don’t exist. That at best they might humor you in your imaginary gender, but they know the truth. Having people like me in a book, seemed like proof that I could eventually have a future where people in my…

View original post 1,488 more words

Stories with non-binary characters

My post recommending a baker's dozen of stories centering non-binary characters went up this morning at Just Love Reviews!

One (rather personal) trans response to Noteworthy

Note : This is a personal response, not a review. It’s focused on my personal reactions to this book, and attempts to put them in context. It’s about how the book made me feel, instead of my evaluation of the quality of the book. If I post a review, I will link it at the bottom of this post. I am linking other reviews at the bottom of this post as well.

Further Note: This doesn’t have huge spoilers, but it’s not spoiler free, either.

(As a heads up, this post discusses cissexism, gender dysphoria, internalized trans hatred, internalized queer hatred, queer and trans stories containing violence and/or sexual assault)

When I was young, I watched Just One of the Guys over and over and over. I was an autistic kid who often watched movies over and over, but I watched this movie differently. The ending made me nauseous. That moment, when Terry’s “true” gender is “revealed”, after months of passing as a teenage boy, that’s when I would start to feel sick, and watch the last ten minutes of the film feeling terrible. It would last for days, this sick feeling in my stomach, accompanied by this sense that my body was both wrong and was going to be exposed, and this deep feeling of despair. And I would sign myself up for that again, a few months down the line. I couldn’t not watch it again. It was the closest thing to a trans teen film I had access to.

I did the same thing with the only queer YA books I had access to, where the queer characters are killed, tortured, and/or sexually assaulted at the end. I would make myself sick reading those books over and over. They were the future I imagined I would have, that I was terrified of, and my only way of accessing queerness, so they were also deeply precious to me. I described this in more detail in a post about the importance of queer stories that don’t end in tragedy.

There were no YA books I knew that had stories like Just One of the Guys. (It abounds in other genres, most notably historical romance. I have a friend who tracks these stories, and there are so many to track.) YA like this may have existed back then, but if it did, I hadn’t found it. Until recently, I did not know any contemporary YA with a similar storyline. Until Noteworthy by Riley Redgate. (It’s of course completely possible that there are many such stories.)

I just finished reading Noteworthy, and am having a similar reaction to watching Just One of the Guys. I know the words for it now, can identify dysphoria and depersonalization and despair, all those d words that are so familiar. I knew going in that this was a classic cross-dressing story, with a main character who identifies as a girl, and passes as a boy, to achieve a specific goal. It hit all the classic marks of a story like that, including having a crush on a boy that when revealed leads the character to be read as gay and outed to everyone as gay, being hit on by a cute girl, and a gender “reveal” moment where of course someone sees the character’s chest. So it’s not exactly surprising to be feeling this way.

I want to unpack it here, though. Because I think it’s notable, that even a story that acknowledges that Jordan is doing something that may negatively impact trans people, a story where a character first thinks that Jordan must be a trans guy after seeing Jordan’s chest, where the idea that Jordan is gay is really not a huge deal to anyone except a closeted gay character, and there are multiple queer characters including Jordan (who is bi), where Jordan isn’t shunned by everyone for passing as a guy even after the “reveal” happens…even with all that queering up of a usually deeply queer-hating kind of story, I still feel awful after reading it. I still cannot bear to use the pronoun she to refer to Jordan. I still have waves of dysphoria. It still hurts.

A good portion of that is because of what I bring to the story, of course, as is often true with reading experiences. I have a lot of baggage here. But I think there is more to it than just my baggage.

There is only one queer character who gets a happy ending, and that’s Jordan. Which I gotta say, is pretty hard to take. Especially when we have a self-loathing miserable deeply closeted gay guy who is basically the villain, if there is one at all. While his arc is heartwrenching and awful and touched me, it also makes me want to cry. And we have a gay guy who comes out to Jordan because he thinks Jordan is also a gay guy, and is treated badly by both the other gay character and Jordan. His arc is also pretty miserable. I would really like it if there were some other queer characters who got to be happy. I’d also really like it if the guy who outed Jordan to everyone was held accountable for it more; it’s treated like it’s no big deal that he does that.

The queer rep is definitely not great, despite being miles above the usual cross dressing story in terms of queerness. But for me, what was really hard were the gender aspects of the story.

Noteworthy frequently evokes and reinforces common cissexist concepts of gender. In particular, the book depicts Jordan’s presenting as a boy in a way that constantly marks Jordan’s boyness as false and fake. It frequently refers to it as acting and theater, all the way through the story. The mechanisms of how Jordan presents as a boy (clothing, hair, makeup, binding, etc.) are described in minute detail, a common narrative choice in cissexist stories about trans people’s genders being false and heavily constructed. There is a very stark and constantly reinforced real/fake binary presented around Jordan’s gender. Jordan’s boyness gets fairly constantly disrupted throughout the story, which leads the reader to constantly be thinking about how Jordan’s “true” gender might be “revealed” at any moment. (The detailed descriptions of menstruation are particularly stark.) There are several “reveal” moments to different people; the most difficult one uses a classic trans reveal trope of nakedness. In that moment, a character concludes that Jordan is a trans guy, which on the surface might seem like it’s trans inclusive, but made me cringe super hard because it frames trans bodies as telling the “truth” about the trans person’s “real” gender.

One way to mitigate some of how painful it was to read all of this cissexist framing of Jordan would be to also have a trans guy main character who is depicted without evoking these cissexist concepts of gender. Or, the engagement with Jordan’s gender could be framed with much less cissexism. Ideally both, as this cissexism is both unnecessary and hurtful.

It is really marked to me as a trans reader how much Noteworthy suffers from a lack of named complex trans characters (there are a couple trans students who are briefly referenced who we don’t meet). The author could have made one of the other boys in the a capella group trans, which would have created opportunities for some really complex moments throughout the book, I think. (I am especially tempted to headcanon Jordan’s love interest as trans, and imagine a dual POV book with both of them.)

At the core, this is a book about Jordan’s gender identity exploration and experience of living into a boy identity, being read as a teenage boy, and belonging to an all boy a capella group. And, in many ways, that is likely to resonate with a trans and/or non-binary readership, regardless of authorial intent. It definitely resonated for me, as someone who fantasized for hours on end of auditioning for and getting a man’s part in whatever musical my high school was putting on, and practiced various audition pieces until they were perfect, dreaming of having the guts someday to try out as a boy, just once. Who loved playing Nicely Nicely Johnson at age ten when there weren’t enough boys to play all the roles in Guys and Dolls. Who did improv theater for years as a child, where we got to play characters we made up, and almost always chose non-human characters, because it was better to be a word processor or a phoenix than a girl. Jordan gets to live something that I wanted desperately for much of my youth. Of course I am going to identify with a character like that.

Noteworthy isn’t only a book about gender. It centers an a capella competition where teams take competing a bit too far. It shows a main character joining a group and feeling a sense of chosen family and belonging. It shows a main character grappling with poverty while surrounded by wealthy people. It has a central romance arc. It shows a family grappling with a parent’s newly acquired disability. It shows a main character exploring and affirming a bisexual identity. This book has multiple moments that are orchestrated to be comic, and a generally lighthearted tone. There is one fistfight, but basically no bullying, violence, or sexual assault, or threat of these things. Jordan is read as a boy and never misgendered, never feels despair because of the deep disrespect of others, is not intensely self-loathing regarding gender identity.

It was striking to read, because I cannot imagine a contemporary YA like this about a trans boy. One that doesn’t contain a lot of violence. One where the trans boy doesn’t hate himself and feel awful all the time. One where the trans boy main character gets to do something he loves, like singing, and take part in a music competition, and have the competition be the backbone of the story. One where he finds a brotherhood, a chosen family, with other boys. One where there are complex family issues, and identity struggles, and they aren’t about gender. One where he gets a central romance arc that’s also not the only center of the story. One where his gender is not framed as something cis people, including his love interest, have to work at to accept. One that has a lighthearted tone, and multiple comic moments.

I mostly cannot bring myself to read trans contemporary YA because it is generally filled with bleakness and despair and self-loathing and violence. I have been searching for lighthearted trans YA, with incidental trans representation, where the trans character gets to do something other than be trans and hope cis people accept their gender. I have not found it. And that makes me bitter about Noteworthy, because this should not be the case, that I can find a lighthearted complex nuanced crossdressing YA, and there is nothing even comparable that centers actual trans teens.

Which, y’know, isn’t really Noteworthy’s fault. It delivered on being what it set out to be, and it did that pretty well, I think. It was gripping, I couldn’t put it down. It sidestepped much of the queer hatred that these stories often don’t, and centered complex queer characters of color, portrayed nuances of class in a way that I thought was very effective, offered a critique of misogyny, and a very sweet romance arc. The ending, while a bit rushed, is satisfying in a way that a lighthearted book should be and only somewhat strains reality to get to the happy ending. There’s a lot that is wonderful about this book, on its own merits, separate from the state of trans YA and from my own reaction of gender dysphoria. There is a lot that readers of color in particular have praised about this book, and it’s portrayal of characters of color. All of that is hugely important, and makes this book absolutely worth reading and easily getting 4 stars from me. (I plan on writing a review, separate from this response. For now, I have posted trigger warnings for the book, if you are looking for those.)

There’s just the other stuff. The hard stuff. The way it hurt to read, and made me feel sick and awful about myself. The way I fear that trans youth reading it may have similar experiences. The way that there is a vacuum in trans YA and this might be the closest thing to a lighthearted trans contemporary YA that we will see for many years, and how harmful that vacuum is for trans youth. The way I am still waiting, 20 years after my own high school experience, for a trans contemporary YA that shows a trans kid doing something fun like an a capella competition and not hating himself or being constantly targeted for abuse, misgendering and violence. The way I can, if I squint and don’t peer too close, see how Noteworthy could have centered Jordan as a trans boy who joins a boys a capella group, and maybe has a similar arc of lightheartedness and romance and brotherhood, complete with a happy ending.

Links to reviews of Noteworthy:

Review by Shenwei, a non-binary/genderqueer/genderfluid reviewer

Review by C. T. Callahan, a non-binary author

Review by Anonymous, a non-binary reviewer

Review by Nicole Field, a multigender writer

Review by Polenth Blake, a non-binary writer

Tagged: bisexual characters, ciscentrism, cissexism, cross dressing, gay characters, gender, gender dysphoria, gender tropes, internalized oppression, queer, queer characters, queer oppression, queer tragedy, trans, trans readers