I think about this way more than may be reasonable, but I'm one of those people, I guess. I fancy myself a philosopher, and a good person, but both of those labels are hard to live up to.


Race, Sexuality, and Gender in Hot Gay Werewolf Ass-Fucking.

I'm a bisexual, gender-queer, largely white woman, writing a complex porn series about an all-male cast of gay and bisexual characters, and though some of my important characters (Joe, Angus, Cadoc) are anthropomorphic non-humans, and thus inherently outside real world race-issues, not a single one of my other main characters is white (though Takeo and Emeric do both have some European genetic heritage, Takeo favors his Japanese ancestry, and Emeric's internationally diverse racial heritage would be labeled “black” by most Americans. Jelani is of pure African descent).

I think about this a lot, and whether or not I'm handling the tale appropriately.

I know there are people who would argue that only women can write women, only gays can write gays, and only blacks can write blacks without being somehow sexist, bigoted, or racist. I think that's bullshit, and I stand by my right to explore whatever sensitive topics take my fancy. If you don't like my free porn, don't read it.

However, I don't want to be an asshole. I do want to be sensitive to the genuine oppression that people face. I know what I've faced as a woman, and I have no doubt that what other people face (with their various individual ways of not being a conformist, wealthy, straight, white, male Christian with perfect health and at least average looks) is comparable, and sometimes much worse.

I guess this journal is, more than anything, me discussing a bit of the thought process I entertain regarding these sensitive topics.

Race

I write a lot of non-white characters in all my stories. I have two reasons for this.

1) Not enough non-white characters make it into fiction. TV and movies are remarkably white-centric, and even novels are hard to publish with non-white characters on the cover. I have a problem with this. I know, as a white person (effectively), that I don't know what it's like to grow up as a racial minority. Thus, I may write it wrong, but that's a chance I'm willing to take, to push for greater racial equality in fiction. I do research to understand people as best I can without living their lives, and I hope I'm a good enough writer to pull it off.

2) I like colors. I like variety in the way my characters look. I think blond with blue eyes is hot, as is dark skin with black dreadlocks. I don't want to limit my palate when I envision a character. All skin, hair, and eye colors are beautiful, and I want to use them. When dealing with humans, I stick to realistic combinations (unless something is dyed, etc), but if I'm writing about the right sorts of fantasy creatures, I get wilder still. I just really like colors.

All that said, I do worry about writing non-white characters. It's important to me, for example, to avoid racial stereotypes. Emeric I feel confident about. He's a complex individual, unlikely to fit anyone's racial stereotypes. With Takeo and Jelani, I worry a bit more. Takeo is half Japanese, and he's a generally-inscrutable martial arts expert. Jelani is African, and he's a brutal tribal warrior.

I hope it helps that they were born sometime between Jesus and Muhammed, and into cultures where everyone was a warrior. They're not meant to perpetuate or fall into modern racial stereotypes. After all, the culture to which they both adhere most strongly is that of Faerie (my own fictional version of it). Jelani was raised by a tribe, yes, but of werewolves, with a greater education than most of the human peoples he encounters, and technological advancement (including true steel) to rival any culture of his time. As for Takeo, he was raised as first a Chinese vagabond and later a prostitute in India. His mannerisms as an Asian scholar-aristocrat are wholly affected, to cover for a past that shames him. Neither man is the warrior-mask he wears, and both are complex, unique people.

I didn't write them to be “that Asian guy” or “that Black guy”. They're people, not props. I hope that comes across in my writing. If it doesn't, please know that I'm always looking to improve my skills as a writer, and this, in my mind, most assuredly includes writing believable and respectful portrayals of people from all races. I will get better with time, I promise. If you have advice in that regard, please feel free to send it to me in a note.

Gender

Gender is complicated for me. I believe staunchly in feminism, masculism, and gender equality in general. I like characters who bend, break, and defy gender stereotypes, and I believe that gender roles and physical sex are almost wholly unrelated. I believe that as a woman I have a right to fill any gender role that takes my fancy, or any combination thereof. Whatever I want to be, I can do it as a woman.

At the same time, however, I will admit that I have identified as a man since I was a small child. Thea/ologically, I'm not even certain I believe that souls have gender, but if they do, mine is male. This means that I have a strong propensity for writing male characters, playing them in role-playing games, and identifying with them in works of fiction.

True story: I am often Batman in my own dreams at night. Seriously. *sigh*

I have a friend who gets pissed at me for identifying as a man. She thinks it's un-feminist of me, that I think I can't take on all the traits of my own soul and still remain a woman in my own mind. The thing is, I agree that I could be all I wish to be, as a woman. Women have that right and that power. But I still identify as a man. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's no explanation. It's just reality. I'm a man.

I do not, however, identify as truly transgendered, and here's why: I happen to have huge breasts, wide hips, and a comparatively small waist for my size. I am short, with a rounded chin and a slight, attractively-feminine overbite. For my weight, I am an exceptionally beautiful woman, and if I were slimmer, I would command a great deal of desire for my age. As a bisexual, I am attracted to my own body, as well as to the bodies of the men who pursue me. I am content. Am I out of place in this form? Yes, and often awkward, or even disoriented. I should be shaped more like Emeric, and I'm really, really not. I'm so curvy, I can't even dress in drag without looking ridiculous.

But there we come to it. If I were to transition, I would be a short man, with huge scars where once there were breasts, a weak chin, freakishly wide hips, and a pathetically small penis. I would no longer attract even half the people I can currently tempt, and I would probably end up dating almost exclusively fellow f-to-m trannies and bisexual women. I would lose the straight men that love me, and all for what? I would still be in the wrong body. No amount of surgery and testosterone can make me look like Michael Clark Duncan or Andrew Bryniarski. Or Batman.

If I'm doomed to live this life in the wrong body, I might as well be as attractive as possible. I understand why slender, graceful men might surgically transition, or tall, broad-shouldered women, and maybe I envy them a little bit. But under the circumstances, I will remain a short, pretty, and absurdly curvaceous woman, thanks very much. It's better than any currently-available alternatives.


So that's my weird take on gender. It's been fun for me to write a story with “gay” in the title, since it gives me an excuse to make all the major characters men, and thus all easier for me to relate to and write about. That said, I have 2 gender-related fears regarding the HGWAF tale.

1) Just because I identify as a man, doesn't mean I think like one. I was raised as a girl, in a family where gender roles were deeply ingrained and much touted as “God-given”. I got a significantly different upbringing than a boy would. I was also wearing D-cup bras by age 13, so I've been treated very differently than a boy for all my life. Finally, I am aware than my brain-chemicals are feminine. I have emotional monthly cycles, etc. Male soul or not, sometimes I think like a girl.

Most of my friends are men, and even my female friends are almost invariably gender-fluid themselves (my most feminine friend is a lesbian, interestingly). I've also studied a reasonable amount of psychology, and I read a lot of books by and about men. I think I'm pretty good at getting inside a man's head and portraying a male character . . . but I don't want to make any assumptions. I do worry about portraying realistic and believable male characters.

I have, on occasion, read female characters plausibly and deeply portrayed by male writers (Richard Adams' Maia comes to mind, and S.M. Stirling has a gift for portraying the female mind, as does Joss Whedon). More often, though, I find that even truly excellent writers, such as David Brin and Steven R. Donaldson, are significantly better at portraying male characters than female. I'm not saying their women suck, or that men shouldn't try to write women. Men should absolutely try to write women, for the same reasons that I write non-white characters! Both Brin and Donaldson write strong, intelligent, feminist females, and their contributions in this area are good for the world. I just . . . don't get them as well as I get their male characters.

But I aspire to having men read my work and say, “wow, her male characters are well-written!” – as good as those of equally-talented male writers. As with writing non-white characters, I do my best, and I hope it's good.

2) Women don't get enough play in fiction – not even close to comprising half of all fictional characters, despite making up half the population of earth. I always found it annoying that Anne Rice, who during her Lestat stories self-identified as a gay man in a woman's body, felt no need to champion feminism, because she thought women sucked, and she wasn't one of them.

That's not me. I'm loving writing an all-gay male cast, but it chafes me to have no women in the story. I add in little references to women here and there: the fae Queen, the occasional female who hits on Emeric, etc, but there's no room for female characters in a tale about gay porn, and I feel a bit like a betrayer about it.

I mean, yes, I have a male soul, if such a thing is possible, but I do have a female body, and I've grown up subjected to all the stupid shit that females go through. I want to be a positive part of ending such behavior, for everyone. That means writing strong women.

I can't put women in the Hot Gay Werewolf stories. Not as major characters (not major enough to require a non-gay sex scene anyway). I have to save my powerful female characters for other works, and I accept that. I chose my silly title/theme, and I will stick to it, but one thing I will not do is pretend that women don't exist.

I always worry, when I mention women, that my readers who came for the “gay” will be annoyed my world has women in it, but, well, *shrug* I guess they have to deal. I'm not going to stop writing about them.

And future porn works from me will tend toward the bisexual, (and probably include various kinds of intersexed beings too). Women may be difficult for me to understand. Sometimes I resent that I was born one. But I will do my best as a writer to lead us toward a world without gender prejudice, and to do that, I must write about women.

Sexual Preference

Finally, queers. As a bisexual, I self-identify as queer. However, I'm aware that as a woman (physically) in sexual relationships with straight men (as most of my many lovers have been – I have a hard time meeting girls, who make me nervous, but the boobs attract straight men like bees to honey), I'm largely sheltered from a heterosexist culture.

I experienced some heterosexism as a child. I was a tomboy (no shit!), and the people around me made sure I understood that I was “doing it wrong.” I developed crushes on pretty actresses, and even though I was too naive and sheltered to realize my own obvious bisexuality (until high school), I can see in retrospect how terrified my parents were that I would grow up to be lesbian. They were constantly at work to turn my attentions away from the pretty, pretty boobies (Dolly Parton was one of my childhood female crushes).

(so interesting that the parents never minded my crushes on feral characters like Tramp or Simba – as long as it's not gay!)

So, in some ways, because I HAVE known some prejudice, I feel like a have a decent handle on writing gay characters. In others (like my general lack of direct involvement with the queer community in my area), I think I have about as much context as I do for writing racial minorities. We're all human, we have certain basic things in common, but our cultures treat us differently and subject us to different early and day-to-day injustices. As with everything else, I do the best I can not to fall prey to stereotyping. In the case of HGWAF, I feel pretty confident that not a single one of my characters is a gay stereotype, and I'm proud of that. (if you're gay, and you think I'm wrong about my own skills in this area, feel free to note me with advice)

I do have 2 additional concerns with my gay characters though.

1) Most of them are at least a little bit bi. Jelani is totally gay, and I haven't decided about Cadoc, but while Angus and Takeo prefer men, they've enjoyed sex with women in their lives, and even found a small number attractive. Emeric has seen himself as almost 50/50 bi for most of his largely romance-free life, though he's feeling pretty homosexual lately, between Takeo and Joe. Joe is omnisexual. He currently prefers men, but he's been nearly straight at other times in his long life, and he certainly doesn't limit his preferences to 2 genders, or to humanoid forms.

I don't actually know if gay men would find this offensive in a tale with “gay” in the title. The truth is, while I've had a LOT of bisexual friends in my life, of both genders, I've never been close friends with a single pure lesbian, and I've known very few purely gay men (one of whom hit on me during a dry spell, so . . .). Most of the queer people I've known have made a solid go of being “normal”, and had significant relationships with members of the opposite sex and/or learned to appreciate at least small percentages of the opposite sex's population. The pressure to attempt heterosexual romance is strong in our culture.

So, I make my characters realistic, as I see it. For Jelani, being gay was accepted from the time he was born. His simply is what he is, without compromise. For Takeo and Emeric, societal pressures (from their otherwise vastly disparate cultures) led them to believe that they had to pursue women in order to be real men, so they learned.

Now, I don't think men should ever be pressured as both Takeo and Emeric were. I don't think anyone should be forced to learn bisexuality in an attempt to fit in. In my perfect world it would never happen, and when writing fantasy cultures, I tend to be a bit more progressive, or to at least turn expectations on their ear (Joe, as a healer, was pressured to be bi/omnisexual as a child in the fae realm. Lucky for him, it came easily). But Emeric was born in contemporary North America. Takeo was born in something like 4th century Japan, and raised in China and India. Historically, realistically, these guys were simply not encouraged to be gay. To pretend otherwise would carry a different kind of heterosexism, IMO. We as humans should be facing what we've done to one another over the centuries.

Also, there's my whole “women exist” crusade. Making the characters at least marginally bi gives me an excuse to mention that women do inhabit the world in which my stories take place. In a porn story, after all, sex is the single easiest way to make a character relevant.

So, I hope any gay readers understand where I'm coming from on making so many of the characters at least open to the concept of sex with women. I'm not trying to marginalize the gay experience, or play into the hands of creepy groups that think gayness can be cured or is always a choice. I know it's nothing like that, and that's one of the reasons I'm determined to never do a non-gay sex scene in the course of Hot Gay Werewolf Ass-Fucking.

I would also be interested to know if any gay readers find the frequency of bisexuality in my “gay” characters to be offensive. I know there's a tendency among us bisexuals to disbelieve in monosexual people (many bisexuals believe that everyone is secretly bisexual – anything else seems alien). I don't indulge in that particular pretension, and I don't want to come across as if I do. People are wired as they're wired, and I honor their self-identifications. I hope that comes through in my stories.

2) Exploitation. Lesbian porn by/for lesbians is hot. Lesbian porn by/for men is often boring and implausible (mostly because the actresses are obviously straight). It's not about the women's pleasure – it's about entertaining men. This is also true of black porn made for white people, and any porn that is not intended for one or more of the participants creating it.

I have no desire to be exploitive. I'm totally pro porn. Yay porn! I just think all participants of any porn-creation endeavor (and audiences like them) should be catered to in the porn creation. If porn has women in it, said porn should cater to women. I'm totally cool if it also caters to men (and if there are men in it, it should).

So! I'm a woman writing gay porn. I'm not ashamed to admit that I think men are hot, and I LOVE to watch men suck cock. I write gay porn because guy-on-guy action makes me wet.

But I have no desire to be exploitive of gay men in this. Now, I'm just an author, so certainly no real gay men have been exploited in the writing of my story, but I take my characters seriously, and I would like my work to be something that said characters might read, if erotica was their thing. Ideally, I would like to write my work such that gay men, or at least gay male furries who also enjoy fantasy fiction and erotica with a plot, would find it sexy and worth the read.

I would be interested to know a) if I'm succeeding, and b) if anyone other than me thinks it could possibly matter.


I am aware, after all, that my series is called Hot Gay Werewolf Ass-Fucking. It's not a title that commands serious consideration. It is my lot in life to contemplate everything deeply, from children's books, to rock lyrics, and from bathroom graffiti to insurance commercials. It's like a compulsion. If I take my own work way too seriously, know at least that I take everything this seriously, and I laugh at myself for doing so.



And there you have it: the many issues of Race, Sexuality, and Gender over which I concern myself each month, while working on new episodes of werewolf porn. I hope my lengthy introspection has proved entertaining, at least. If you've read this far into the journal, please comment! I would be most grateful to hear from you, and your opinions on any of the matters above.


-A. A. Samuel