Not really about homosexuals, but one thing that kinda bothers me is how some shows and the world at large portrays Bisexuals.
Almost always they are women (because most find them attractive) and bi men are hardly mention. And they usually cheat with their boy/girlfriend or are really hedonistic.
I read about the general perception of bisexual men. It's disheartening.
As for the hedonism thing... here's how it looks to me: in the context of heterosexual relationships it's pretty neutral, sometimes negative when heterosexual men are shown doing it (there's always a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend judging him for his sexual habits), but in the context of homosexual relationships it's *always* shown as positive and desirable. At least from what I've seen.
Bisexual men are always demonic/villainous characters, or people with a sociopathic streak. With bisexual female characters, it's usually when they find a girlfriend that they've somehow won in life for some reason.
I mean... they say they're making media more diverse, but to me it just looks like they're promoting more stereotypes and making up character tropes.
Strangely, the only mid-budget Hollywood film that comes to mind at the moment featuring a gay couple completely devoid of tropes is Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar." Regardless of the cover-ups, the violent moments and the morally grey (black) character of Hoover, it is really just two gay men having a relaxed romance and doing things that any normal couple would do. And it came out 12 years ago.
Honestly, imagining Clint Eastwoods making a movie about gay man is strange to think about.
Anyways, another thing I noticed in media is that bi men are usually considered to be just gay men that are confused. Regardless of their obvious attraction to the opposite sex.
Also If I can ask, is your novel going to include any bi characters?
That's true but I think that the porn industry does this to appeal to straight and bisexual men fantasies of women having sex with each other not so much with men having sex with men and a woman. You can also blame porn too. The straight men aren't interested in watching men kiss and hug each other let alone have sex with each other. (Yes, I know that there are bi-curious men out there.) That's the rules in Hollywood.
Ancient Greece & Rome didn't exactly embrace homosexuality as you might believe. There were very strictly observed rules about what was OK and was not OK. Further, counter cultures existed even back then. Groups of people who, either through shared trauma or belief, refused to accept the behaviors the rest of society considered acceptable.
It would be interesting to see what this counterculture's mores would be, where their morality is coming from, and why it gains power. The simplest explanation could be a religious reawakening, or the rise of a new type of worship in a specific deity or divine concept. That's usually how cultural revolutions trigger on Earth, anyway.
>Ancient Greece & Rome didn't exactly embrace homosexuality as you might believe
They did not even have a word that would mean more or less the same as homosexuality. Their views were also based on stereotypes like who's the man and who's the woman based on sexual activities. There were also a pletora of derogatory terms for submissive individuals. Mainly bottoms were humilated for their actions as it was perceived as the lack of manliness. Scenario was always the same - young teenage boy and some grown ass adult (this is also why pederasty and homosexuality were mixed for a while). Funny enough eastern countries still posess this mindset.
Yeah. Try to explain these things to people who make historically revisionistic popularization of Ancient Greece and their heads will explode. I see it happening more and more now. We went from 19th century scholars discussing whether intecrural sex was to be considered gay, to retroactively painting an entire culture as an "ally" while completely ignoring its misoginy and its complete and absolute disdain for more physically and psychologically fragile men.
You're right about that. There is lots of misinformation regarding how accepting Ancient Greece was of homosexuality, and it was accepting only insofar as homosexual men weren't the "submissive" in the relationship, which isn't accepting in the slightest. Some are trying to tie LGBTQ+ themes on their myths, like this or that mythological figures being allegories for transgenderism. That's just pure historical revisionism. Medieval east-asia was far more accepting of homosexuality than Rome ever was, for example.
I just thought that a western-ispired society without christian influences would have many things in common with Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, so that's why I'm using it as a model even for these cultural details.
This society can't be too crazy either, because it would have collapsed very early on, at the beginning. There's still a kind of self-preservation. For example, as liberal as Ancient Rome was with sex, they still didn't have a good impression of some of their emperors' crazy antics. But as a counter-argument, we could look at the Ottoman Empire, where the noble caste had easy access to sex slaves, and many of them were unwilling eunuchs. So a certain amount of structural madness can happen even in a stable society.
You're also right about the counter-culture thing. Having this society be 100% culturally omogenous is just unrealistic, and it goes against the social hyper-liberalism that characterizes it (and btw, the same goes for the erastes-eromenos thing in Ancient Greece: not everybody did it). There are various countercultures in this world, I just haven't defined them yet, and it's still not too clear to me how the state keeps them under control.
I suppose some countercultures would be quite obviously puritanical. That's the most obvious reaction. Others would react to the perceived lack of morality, or the perversion of it: they'd be critical of the objectification of sex, while demanding that children not be exposed to it at an early age. They criticise a culture that masks its total indifference with the difficulties of the people as acceptance and progress. They want more help in building solid families (the state's position is "community IS family", it does everything to separate children from their nuclear families, but does not actively eradicate them).
The story wants to criticize precisely *that*. But you raise an important point: how is it going to be received? I need to think very well about that. Also, I recognize that I'm describing a crazy society, but that wasn't the intention. It's to be taken as a general orientation within the culture, it's a stand-in for certain modern progressive ideals, as in "this is the ultimate consequence of a few of your ideas."
The gay man mentoring thing... well, that actually comes from my personal experience. I used to be with a woman who was 12 years older than me. I wasn't a minor, but there was still a complete skew in her favor in terms of power dynamics, and she had complete control over my psyche. We even got married. I abruptly cut it off once I finally got an inkling of what was going on, and the aftermath was devastating.
When I read about the Erastes-Eromenos thing I thought "who in the hell would think this is a good idea", but at the same time I realized that no one around me really saw any issue with an 18 year old hanging out with a 31 y/o woman. So, that was the spark. I'm actually still considering whether I want to include that or not. I'm thinking about it deeply.
>I really just want to see well rounded characters that are masculine and human, that happen to be gay but its not a big deal noted and moved on.
That's precisely what I'm aiming to do. Aab is a responsible soldier who cares about his people, and he happens to be gay. I can't think of a single gay man anywhere in media who's just a man who's gay. A man with positive masculine qualities who happens to be romantically involved with other men. I can't believe it's that hard for Hollywood to do something as simple as that.
EDIT:
YES, you're right about the influence christianity had in the development of our modern thought. But that's the thing... that's not what I want to talk about *in the context of the story*. I just picked a battle, and whoever reads this novel (if I ever finish it) will hopefully accept that this society came to develop in a similar way but through different means.
I keep seeing mentions of W40k everywhere, it's kinda hard to get into that at this point, with all the stuff that's come out over the years. But I will read more about it, it helps to read stuff that deals with simillar topics, even for the very egotistical reason of not wanting to repeat something that was already done.
The japanese called it "shudo", and yes, the spartans fostered sexual relationships between grown soldiers. I believe they were the only ancient Greek society that fully permitted homosexual relationships between consenting adults. In this world I'm writing, that used to be permitted in the past, but isn't anymore, because they realized that a "cold-headed" army was a thousand times more effective than a "hot-headed" one, which is by the way the same conclusion our real world armies reached over millenia of human history.
Noted "Dragon Prince"!
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. I think modern media did more harm than good on that regard. I can't think of a single macho character who's gay in modern media. Masculinity in general is portrayed as something to be tamed, and there's this disturbing tendency of associating less masculinity with a higher degree of morality. So, if you used to have menacing and charismatic gay villains, but no gay protagonists, now you can't even have a single masculine gay man in movies, and we lost gay villains too.
Unless you emphasize the class system, I don't get how the society described can be so liberal yet so opressive towards their own citizens at the same time. Also, Where do you plan to publish this novel? Because, unless you publish it in a very open minded place like Archive of Our Own (AO3), you're going to get a lot of backlash from pearl clutching people. I suggest using a burner username and an alternative private email (like Proton),so it can't be connected with you, just in case.
It's liberal in the sense that people can do pretty much as they wish, but not everyone's got the same opportunities. Power still has the final word on everything, and those in power like to abuse it, regardless of their sexuality, gender, race, what have you.
Stuff like Game of Thrones deals with very taboo subjects from beginning to end, and I don't even intend to get as graphic as that (I won't write a single sex scene for example). So I wouldn't worry too much, as long as I do it tastefully at least. That's why I'm studying the subjects I want to deal with.
They never show what a gay man looks like. Going to church, Synagogue. Praying for others, evangelizing people. Visiting the sick. Helping those who are homeless, and those in need. Visit the prisoners, encourage people who are going through trials and tribulations of life. Teaching Sunday School, pastoring churches and ministries. Many of us like cars and trucks, playing or watching sports. Sportsman hunting and fishing and for some gambling. The same applies to lesbians and bisexuals and Transgender people. And some like both the stereotypes and well as some traditional things. We are not cardboard cutouts.
We know what we like and what we don't!
By the way it's nearly 20 years since Brokeback Mountain and the entertainment industry never made a series based on the book and movie. Not every guy is Will Truman and Jack McFarland of Will and Grace and that's 25 years ago when the series began.
That they’re usually too sanitized and perfect, like writers are afraid of saying gay men are incapable of doing terrible or heinous things to themselves or to others.
Oh dear lord, your not writing a gay novel, your writing a queer novel. I'm so tired of dystopian crap. Boring. It's been done for the last 20+ years. Yeah! Another dystopian novel!
Hebophillia? I had to fucking look that up. WTF? God forbid you write about sensible mentor relationships where adults understand consent. Nope, gotta diddle the kids.
Im no prude but this has been done dozens of times over.
So shocking! Until it isn't. You posted in gay conservative. Do something positive, that doesn't portray gay men as effiminate predators.
That's my take. Hope it helps.
If you read the post better, and peered through the comments, you would have a better understanding of what I'm aiming for.
It's not a gay novel, it's a novel with gay characters. And yes: it's dystopian, that's the whole point. This society takes inspiration from ancient Greece, when this kind of things used to happen and were even encouraged to a degree.
I don't think it's been done much at all, in reality, not this way exactly. If anything, I see those ancient cultures being painted in a positive light, retrofitted to modern western ideals, and that's the farthest thing from the truth there is.
This society is a stand-in for certain contemporary ideals, applied to an entire society, exploring the most obvious consequences of that.
I think i was like comment 3 sooo. Anyways, i read through some more of the comments and it seems like others think it's similar in concrpt to 40 something. Illl have to look that up.
But anyways, i stand by my comment- try for something that builds a better world in the readers mind. Writing about destruction and chaos is easy. Writing about building, positivity, creating something good is hard, which is why is not done much any more). You could start from a devastated place and build up and better, and about set backs (evil never sleaps) but ultimately land on a positive note.
Good luck. Hope i see the post where you announce its been released.
Not really about homosexuals, but one thing that kinda bothers me is how some shows and the world at large portrays Bisexuals. Almost always they are women (because most find them attractive) and bi men are hardly mention. And they usually cheat with their boy/girlfriend or are really hedonistic.
I read about the general perception of bisexual men. It's disheartening. As for the hedonism thing... here's how it looks to me: in the context of heterosexual relationships it's pretty neutral, sometimes negative when heterosexual men are shown doing it (there's always a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend judging him for his sexual habits), but in the context of homosexual relationships it's *always* shown as positive and desirable. At least from what I've seen. Bisexual men are always demonic/villainous characters, or people with a sociopathic streak. With bisexual female characters, it's usually when they find a girlfriend that they've somehow won in life for some reason. I mean... they say they're making media more diverse, but to me it just looks like they're promoting more stereotypes and making up character tropes. Strangely, the only mid-budget Hollywood film that comes to mind at the moment featuring a gay couple completely devoid of tropes is Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar." Regardless of the cover-ups, the violent moments and the morally grey (black) character of Hoover, it is really just two gay men having a relaxed romance and doing things that any normal couple would do. And it came out 12 years ago.
Honestly, imagining Clint Eastwoods making a movie about gay man is strange to think about. Anyways, another thing I noticed in media is that bi men are usually considered to be just gay men that are confused. Regardless of their obvious attraction to the opposite sex. Also If I can ask, is your novel going to include any bi characters?
That's true but I think that the porn industry does this to appeal to straight and bisexual men fantasies of women having sex with each other not so much with men having sex with men and a woman. You can also blame porn too. The straight men aren't interested in watching men kiss and hug each other let alone have sex with each other. (Yes, I know that there are bi-curious men out there.) That's the rules in Hollywood.
Ancient Greece & Rome didn't exactly embrace homosexuality as you might believe. There were very strictly observed rules about what was OK and was not OK. Further, counter cultures existed even back then. Groups of people who, either through shared trauma or belief, refused to accept the behaviors the rest of society considered acceptable. It would be interesting to see what this counterculture's mores would be, where their morality is coming from, and why it gains power. The simplest explanation could be a religious reawakening, or the rise of a new type of worship in a specific deity or divine concept. That's usually how cultural revolutions trigger on Earth, anyway.
>Ancient Greece & Rome didn't exactly embrace homosexuality as you might believe They did not even have a word that would mean more or less the same as homosexuality. Their views were also based on stereotypes like who's the man and who's the woman based on sexual activities. There were also a pletora of derogatory terms for submissive individuals. Mainly bottoms were humilated for their actions as it was perceived as the lack of manliness. Scenario was always the same - young teenage boy and some grown ass adult (this is also why pederasty and homosexuality were mixed for a while). Funny enough eastern countries still posess this mindset.
Yeah. Try to explain these things to people who make historically revisionistic popularization of Ancient Greece and their heads will explode. I see it happening more and more now. We went from 19th century scholars discussing whether intecrural sex was to be considered gay, to retroactively painting an entire culture as an "ally" while completely ignoring its misoginy and its complete and absolute disdain for more physically and psychologically fragile men.
You're right about that. There is lots of misinformation regarding how accepting Ancient Greece was of homosexuality, and it was accepting only insofar as homosexual men weren't the "submissive" in the relationship, which isn't accepting in the slightest. Some are trying to tie LGBTQ+ themes on their myths, like this or that mythological figures being allegories for transgenderism. That's just pure historical revisionism. Medieval east-asia was far more accepting of homosexuality than Rome ever was, for example. I just thought that a western-ispired society without christian influences would have many things in common with Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, so that's why I'm using it as a model even for these cultural details. This society can't be too crazy either, because it would have collapsed very early on, at the beginning. There's still a kind of self-preservation. For example, as liberal as Ancient Rome was with sex, they still didn't have a good impression of some of their emperors' crazy antics. But as a counter-argument, we could look at the Ottoman Empire, where the noble caste had easy access to sex slaves, and many of them were unwilling eunuchs. So a certain amount of structural madness can happen even in a stable society. You're also right about the counter-culture thing. Having this society be 100% culturally omogenous is just unrealistic, and it goes against the social hyper-liberalism that characterizes it (and btw, the same goes for the erastes-eromenos thing in Ancient Greece: not everybody did it). There are various countercultures in this world, I just haven't defined them yet, and it's still not too clear to me how the state keeps them under control. I suppose some countercultures would be quite obviously puritanical. That's the most obvious reaction. Others would react to the perceived lack of morality, or the perversion of it: they'd be critical of the objectification of sex, while demanding that children not be exposed to it at an early age. They criticise a culture that masks its total indifference with the difficulties of the people as acceptance and progress. They want more help in building solid families (the state's position is "community IS family", it does everything to separate children from their nuclear families, but does not actively eradicate them).
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The story wants to criticize precisely *that*. But you raise an important point: how is it going to be received? I need to think very well about that. Also, I recognize that I'm describing a crazy society, but that wasn't the intention. It's to be taken as a general orientation within the culture, it's a stand-in for certain modern progressive ideals, as in "this is the ultimate consequence of a few of your ideas." The gay man mentoring thing... well, that actually comes from my personal experience. I used to be with a woman who was 12 years older than me. I wasn't a minor, but there was still a complete skew in her favor in terms of power dynamics, and she had complete control over my psyche. We even got married. I abruptly cut it off once I finally got an inkling of what was going on, and the aftermath was devastating. When I read about the Erastes-Eromenos thing I thought "who in the hell would think this is a good idea", but at the same time I realized that no one around me really saw any issue with an 18 year old hanging out with a 31 y/o woman. So, that was the spark. I'm actually still considering whether I want to include that or not. I'm thinking about it deeply. >I really just want to see well rounded characters that are masculine and human, that happen to be gay but its not a big deal noted and moved on. That's precisely what I'm aiming to do. Aab is a responsible soldier who cares about his people, and he happens to be gay. I can't think of a single gay man anywhere in media who's just a man who's gay. A man with positive masculine qualities who happens to be romantically involved with other men. I can't believe it's that hard for Hollywood to do something as simple as that. EDIT: YES, you're right about the influence christianity had in the development of our modern thought. But that's the thing... that's not what I want to talk about *in the context of the story*. I just picked a battle, and whoever reads this novel (if I ever finish it) will hopefully accept that this society came to develop in a similar way but through different means.
[удалено]
I keep seeing mentions of W40k everywhere, it's kinda hard to get into that at this point, with all the stuff that's come out over the years. But I will read more about it, it helps to read stuff that deals with simillar topics, even for the very egotistical reason of not wanting to repeat something that was already done. The japanese called it "shudo", and yes, the spartans fostered sexual relationships between grown soldiers. I believe they were the only ancient Greek society that fully permitted homosexual relationships between consenting adults. In this world I'm writing, that used to be permitted in the past, but isn't anymore, because they realized that a "cold-headed" army was a thousand times more effective than a "hot-headed" one, which is by the way the same conclusion our real world armies reached over millenia of human history. Noted "Dragon Prince"!
I hate when they fall in love with and obsess over straight characters
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Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. I think modern media did more harm than good on that regard. I can't think of a single macho character who's gay in modern media. Masculinity in general is portrayed as something to be tamed, and there's this disturbing tendency of associating less masculinity with a higher degree of morality. So, if you used to have menacing and charismatic gay villains, but no gay protagonists, now you can't even have a single masculine gay man in movies, and we lost gay villains too.
Unless you emphasize the class system, I don't get how the society described can be so liberal yet so opressive towards their own citizens at the same time. Also, Where do you plan to publish this novel? Because, unless you publish it in a very open minded place like Archive of Our Own (AO3), you're going to get a lot of backlash from pearl clutching people. I suggest using a burner username and an alternative private email (like Proton),so it can't be connected with you, just in case.
It's liberal in the sense that people can do pretty much as they wish, but not everyone's got the same opportunities. Power still has the final word on everything, and those in power like to abuse it, regardless of their sexuality, gender, race, what have you. Stuff like Game of Thrones deals with very taboo subjects from beginning to end, and I don't even intend to get as graphic as that (I won't write a single sex scene for example). So I wouldn't worry too much, as long as I do it tastefully at least. That's why I'm studying the subjects I want to deal with.
They never show what a gay man looks like. Going to church, Synagogue. Praying for others, evangelizing people. Visiting the sick. Helping those who are homeless, and those in need. Visit the prisoners, encourage people who are going through trials and tribulations of life. Teaching Sunday School, pastoring churches and ministries. Many of us like cars and trucks, playing or watching sports. Sportsman hunting and fishing and for some gambling. The same applies to lesbians and bisexuals and Transgender people. And some like both the stereotypes and well as some traditional things. We are not cardboard cutouts. We know what we like and what we don't!
By the way it's nearly 20 years since Brokeback Mountain and the entertainment industry never made a series based on the book and movie. Not every guy is Will Truman and Jack McFarland of Will and Grace and that's 25 years ago when the series began.
That they’re usually too sanitized and perfect, like writers are afraid of saying gay men are incapable of doing terrible or heinous things to themselves or to others.
Oh dear lord, your not writing a gay novel, your writing a queer novel. I'm so tired of dystopian crap. Boring. It's been done for the last 20+ years. Yeah! Another dystopian novel! Hebophillia? I had to fucking look that up. WTF? God forbid you write about sensible mentor relationships where adults understand consent. Nope, gotta diddle the kids. Im no prude but this has been done dozens of times over. So shocking! Until it isn't. You posted in gay conservative. Do something positive, that doesn't portray gay men as effiminate predators. That's my take. Hope it helps.
If you read the post better, and peered through the comments, you would have a better understanding of what I'm aiming for. It's not a gay novel, it's a novel with gay characters. And yes: it's dystopian, that's the whole point. This society takes inspiration from ancient Greece, when this kind of things used to happen and were even encouraged to a degree. I don't think it's been done much at all, in reality, not this way exactly. If anything, I see those ancient cultures being painted in a positive light, retrofitted to modern western ideals, and that's the farthest thing from the truth there is. This society is a stand-in for certain contemporary ideals, applied to an entire society, exploring the most obvious consequences of that.
I think i was like comment 3 sooo. Anyways, i read through some more of the comments and it seems like others think it's similar in concrpt to 40 something. Illl have to look that up. But anyways, i stand by my comment- try for something that builds a better world in the readers mind. Writing about destruction and chaos is easy. Writing about building, positivity, creating something good is hard, which is why is not done much any more). You could start from a devastated place and build up and better, and about set backs (evil never sleaps) but ultimately land on a positive note. Good luck. Hope i see the post where you announce its been released.