Is it F/F or Lesbian romance?

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Is it F/F or Lesbian romance?

This is a post I did for Babbling About Books and KT/KB’s Lesbian Appreciation Week. Enjoy!

Hi, my name is Isabella and I write lesbian romance. Sounds like a recovery meeting for romance writers. When I contacted KB about being part of this two-week adventure called Lesbian Fiction Appreciation Event, my first question was: Is it open only to those that write F/F? She responded by saying that she wrote romance, and I responded by saying, I write romance too, but I am a lesbian who writes lesbian romance. “Is there a difference between F/F and lesbian romance?” I was asked. I wondered if this was similar to the fury over straight women writing gay romance or M/M. The subject of straight women writing lesbian romance is a hot topic even in lesbian circles. I think this is the elephant in the room and from each side comes some very different viewpoints, and neither is wrong, just different.

For my point of reference, the difference was pointed out to me about two years ago when I was in a lesbian romance chat with a few women. One of the women asked the group if they knew of any good F/F romance stories. I immediately offered up my favorite lesbian romance authors, a few of which have already been on this very blog tour. Almost immediately I was informed that she wasn’t looking for “lesbian” romance or polymorphism romance, because she wasn’t a lesbian. She was looking for “hot girl on girl romance.” When I asked her what the difference was, she took the opportunity to school me on the difference.

An example of F/F would be: two femme women who walk into a bar with their boyfriends. The women find out they like each other, but not “in that way, you know they aren’t lesbians”, and throughout the night they tease, flirt or come on to one another. They adjourn to the bathroom to freshen up their makeup and find themselves having hot, nasty sex in the bathroom or in the back of the bar, [insert location here] and then go back out into the straight world and back to their boyfriends. At least that was how this woman who, was not a lesbian, explained it to me.

After researching a few of the erotic websites that claim to have lesbian stories, I find the call for “hot F/F, or girl on girl,” stories and the hotter the better. I also start to look at the bios of some authors who out themselves as being straight women who love to write steamy F/F action. Some also talk about how they write gay or M/M, M/M/F stories, and some say they do write lesbian romance as well. Now the wheels start to turn. Why do straight women and some men want to venture in to the lesbian romance market? Is it all about money? How do my fellow lesbian feel about the phenomenon? So I asked. I know how I feel about it, but their responses were as varied as the acronyms used to describe women who have sex with other women.

When presented with the question about the gender of the writers some said that as lesbians, they wanted an authentic lesbian experience and felt “ripped off” if they found out a man wrote the story. Others wondered why straight women would want to write lesbian romance and didn’t know there was a difference between lesbian and F/F stories. Other authors and readers thought that there is enough room for everyone and that good lesbian stories would rise to the top, gender didn’t matter. Many lesbians gave me what I call the Stephen King response. He isn’t a murderer, but he writes about murder because he does his research. True. I can’t argue with that statement. Therefore, many will assume that most straight women who write lesbian fiction have done their research into what it feels like to pleasure a woman orally—the taste, the texture, and the spontaneous combustion that happens when pleasured correctly. I know, I know women know what they like sexually, so some of this is said tongue firmly in cheek.

After my “schooling” I read F/F stories. I knew right away that I probably wasn’t the intended audience. Perhaps a few might, but lesbians rarely use terms like “gushing”, “fuck you out of those heels,” or “you’re gonna find Jesus tonight, baby”. I’ve read all of these in F/F stories. Sure they’re hot and if I was a guy I’d be swooping up this little erotic pearls and string a necklace around my…well I’d read them over and over again.

You can go to the Lesbian Erotic section on Amazon, read the first chapter on many of these stories and know if they’re for you. Is there room for everyone? There’s room for good, storytelling. You as the reader have to decide what you like and don’t like and as for the gender or lifestyle of the author, again that is for you, the reader to decide. Having lived in the LGBT community and being a former President of a Pride organization, I can say that we are welcoming, almost to a fault. We encourage everyone to come, play, and have a good time, at least the majority of us. For some gender and lifestyle matter, but for others not so much. This article could go on with more anecdotal evidence to support either side of the coin. Should men teach women’s history, should someone other than an African American teach Black studies, and on and on. Ultimately, writers should do what they do best; write and readers will decide how they spend their money.

Happy Reading!