Cheating could be a sign of something wrong in the BDSM relationship.

Sarah said this up above. My question is do gay males view cheating the same way that hetrosexual females tend to?

Getting things wrong or how history is viewed
Whenever this topic comes up I start thinking of the Pilgrams, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Puritans, virginity, historical female power, American middle class life, Salome and the dance of the seven veils, etc.

There’s many things I don’t like but I’m not sure where my line in the sand should be.

Seriously, if you want well-done, unscary (short) BDSM, you can’t go wrong with Vicky Dahl’s “The Wicked West” and Matthew Haldeman-Time’s “An Affair in Paradise.” Both are fabulous and cute and hot and just a lot of fun. But they both show how…slightly skewed things are in BDSM.

But for example, Joey Hill’s physical reality is sometimes a little fantastical. But her mental space is perfect and her writing is exquisite. FWIW, she self-identifies as a submissive. Claire Thompson’s physical and mental realities are wonderful, but her writing is…adequate, not brilliant.

As for Bad Brad, which I have not and will not read, it depends on their relationship, on how much the BDSM spilled into vanilla life, on how 24/7 they were. It depended on the personal dynamic of the characters. Cheating could be a sign of something wrong in the BDSM relationship. In another broad sweeping generalization that could get me into heaps of trouble (Yes, I KNOW that it’s not true for everyone!), both gay men–in general–and kinky people–in general–are more accepting of open and/or poly relationships. So a focus on monogamy seems to me to smack of white, middle-class, hetero-centered “values” without an understanding of (or without doing the research into) how being part of a minority culture might change one’s views of what “normal” people see as the “normal,” obvious, unspoken way to be.

Ideally, EVERY writer should do research, no matter how s/he identifies, research driven by the story.

I think what I’m most trying to say with my DA reviews is that kinky sex is not just normal sex with some cool toys, not physically and most especially not mentally. The acutal act AND the mental space are both just different. In addition, the community *values* are as different from white, middle-class, hetero values as WMCH values are from that of the Yanomamo Indians in Brazil.

But what I’m getting from responses to my reviews and from further reading with (an attempt at) more objectivity is that the core audience for BDSM romance (white, middle-class, heterosexual females) doesn’t care about an authentic depiction of a “real” or “true” BDSM relationship (whatever that might mean). What they care about, most of all, is getting their rocks off AND having their own values reinforced while feeling edgy. And I say that with all good-humor and not a little schadenfreude, because I’m doing it too with my own m/m reading. I guess, though, I just want people to admit that that’s what they’re doing. To own it.

Hmm. This was longer than I thought it would be.

When writing about a lifestyle one does not practice, how important is it to get that *right (assuming that there is a *right* way to depict)?

Those questions can be applied to authors who choose to include settings, cultures and people they aren’t familiar with in their stories, surely?

I have an ages-old grudge against some authors who used (or rather, misused) Scotland as the setting of their stories. The result of their F.U. gesture at our actual history and culture is quite a few readers nurse a huge number of misconceptions about Scotland and its history.

The idea that the majority of readers recognising the difference between fantasy and reality? Bull. I mean, how many readers have said they learnt history from historical romances? Quite a few. I think some even said it here at this blog not long ago.

And does good writing give you a get out jail free card if you get it wrong?

IMO, no. It’s actually harder to shake some readers’ belief that what they read is wrong when the writing is good or rather, feel authentic. Especially if the author heavily bragged how much research she did for her book, e.g. Diana Gabaldon when Cross Stitch/Outlander was first released (in fairness, she’s since back-pedalled and admitted she got “some” details wrong).

It’s easy to understand why readers – including me – believe the factual side of a story. We trust authors to take great care with the details or a portrayal of something unfamiliar to us.

So it’s easy to see why some would feel uncomfortable with the idea of authors not taking BDSM seriously. I used to believe BDSM meant nothing but humiliation, torture and pain because of what I read. It’d put me off so much that I wouldn’t touch anything that has an BDSM element for years. Even now, I still feel apprehensive. It took me ages to get myself to watch that film, Secretary.

Sorry about the ramble.

The only thing that would have been more confusing is if Matt had unexpectedly slapped his own ass.

If that were the case, maybe Matt’s from a family of cowboys? Because isn’t that what all cowboys do?

*recalling memories of cowboys films where cowboys – including John Wayne – slapped their rears while shouting, “Let’s git them, boys!”*

Sarah addresses this a bit in a review she just posted at DA.

Here’s a summary of her view as it is evolving:

“I’m learning to try to separate my reading of a BDSM story into two distinct tracks (I say try, because I’m not close to being there yet): (1). how completely fucked up is the representation of the physical reality of BDSM? (AKA: how much of a fantasy is the BDSM play?; or, what percentage of people would be hurt if they attempted what the characters do?); (2). how completely fucked up is the emotional realism of the BDSM depicted? Getting either right indicates a familiarity with BDSM, either through experience or really good research, but I’m much more likely to forgive fuck-ups in the first track if the second track does a good job. In fact, in my opinion, fuck-ups in the second track are MUCH more dangerous.”

When I read “Bad Brad”, I felt unconvinced that Brad’s cheating could be fully explained by how Matt performed as a Dom. But I hesitated on it … what am I assuming that “Dom” covers? Only what they do when naked? Maybe “Dom” refers to how they eat breakfast, how they socialize, and what they wear. In that case, when Matt says “he was a bad Dom” he may indeed be referring to his whole way of being towards Brad, in which case it is more believable that “being a bad Dom” can tank a relationship.

To me, this is not that much different form having trouble with Judith Ivory’s Black Silk because it has the hero pilloried for porn 40 years after the practice — which never would have been applied to someone as highborn as the hero anyway — was abandoned.

Except …there is one signal difference to me, and it is that m/m is a genre largely written by women who are privileged with regard to their sexuality (it is the numerically dominant, widely accepted, legally protected, morally required, and socially approved sexuality) about men who are marginalized because of theirs. Add BDSM and you get double the marginalization. Personally, and I know others differ, I do think “getting it right” in some basic sense is important. And I think looking out for writing in ways that further shore up stereotypes of an already unequal minority is to be encouraged.

But this is my thing — I am always thinking about the connections between fiction and real life, and always a bit skeptical of the claim (which you are not making) that fantasy, which after all is spun from the exact same mental cloth as everything else we think about, is somehow in this asocial ahistorical and specially protected vacuum, rendering it meaningless and removing it entirely from the causal chain of human thought and action.

The author is apparently a female writing M/M and BDSM. Whether or not she has any personal experience of a BDSM lifestyle is unclear, but Sarah, who plainly knows of what she speaks, doesn’t seem to like the sound of the way BDSM is treated.

When writing about a lifestyle one does not practice, how important is it to get that *right (assuming that there is a *right* way to depict)? And does good writing give you a get out jail free card if you get it wrong?

I’ll be very interested to see what you make of The Palace of Varieties. I don’t see it as a romance myself – although it has a hint of romance in it that I appreciated – but it’s unashamedly sexually gratuitous with a very deliberate aim of being titillating. See this amusing article in which James Lear discusses the fact that women like his “cock-filled gay porn”.

Of course, Lear himself is gay and therefore *owns* the lifestyle of which he writes. I’d be very interested to discover, when you review this, if you’d have viewed it any differently if (a) it was written by a woman and/or (b) it was poorly written. Is there a difference between a good writer writing something with the aim of titillating and a bad writer doing the same thing? Not in terms of intent. Maybe it just makes the reader feel better about what they’re doing?

And what about appropriating lifestyle choices to write about? Sarah – I’ve noticed that your reviews on DA of BDSM novels tend to concentrate quite a lot on how well/ realistically the lifestyle is portrayed. I wonder whether that’s something the majority of readers of these books care about. Does that matter? Should it?

Fascinating stuff.

Now you make me want to write a BDSM story with the sub suffering from Alien Hand Syndrome