Or, Why Respectability Won’t Save You I think we can all agree we’ve entered a rather conservative era. It’s been a while coming, the first rumblings of it emerging fifteen years ago now. It gained momentum after the 2016 US election and snowballed from there. The pandemic threw fuel on the fire, and, well, here we are. Neo-fascists and alt-right parties are gaining support across the globe. We...
Some recent discussions got me thinking about something I’ve known to be true for quite some time. A lot of the m/m romance readers out there are … pretty problematic people, when it comes down to it. Don’t mind me, just reading this m/m fic and posting homophobic takes on social media, like you do. (Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels.com) That got me to thinking: how is it that there is so much...
We’re clearly in a hyper-conservative backlash against what has been billed progressive politics. In the US, we’ve seen attacks against trans people and queer people more broadly, against mixed-race couples, against women’s rights—and it’s getting worse. We’re seeing people pushing to get rid of not only abortion but access to birth control. We’re seeing the curtailing of internet access to not...
Pride often brings up plenty of arguments about who “counts” as queer. Every year, we debate whether kink communities “belong” at Pride. People argue that folks in heterosexual-presenting relationships don’t belong in queer spaces. (Ronê Ferreira / Pexels.com) Another argument often emerges alongside discussions about who “belongs” or “doesn’t” belong in the queer community. Every so often—and...
By now, almost everyone and their mother has heard about the omegaverse. If you didn’t discover “wolf-kink porn” through the copyright debacle a few years ago, you might have heard of it when AIs seemed to devolve into writing a/b/o fics. That loaned support to the idea that AI had been trained on stolen fanfic—among other stories. (Ron Lach / Pexels.com) Whether you’re brand new to omegaverse or...
I’ve argued before that omegaverse tends to play fast and loose with our notions of gender. Mpreg, generally, does the same thing. One of the curiousities of the genre is that characters who can get pregnant maintain a cisgender identity. Because sex and gender is always so very clear cut. That can cause some consternation when it comes to terminology—particularly when Baby arrives. Should we...
For International Women’s Day in the past, I’ve looked at topics like “what makes a woman” and other such topics. This year, I wanted to return to a topic I’ve written about before: mpreg and transphobia. Specifically, though, I wanted to look at how transmisogyny plays out in our mpreg stories. What Is Transmisogyny? Transmisogyny is the intersection between transphobia and misogyny. Transphobia...
The age gap romance gets more play than anyone gives it credit for. What does it look like when we put supernatural creatures into play too?
When everyone demands authenticity in fiction, we fall all over ourselves to "prove" our identities. Maybe we're asking the wrong questions.
Is polyamory really queer? I think we should probably consider it to be queer praxis, at least in some sense.
Coming January 28! Get set for more intergalactic hijinks when a monk inherits a HOST CLUB ON THE PLEASURE PLANET!