Why do women write m/m fiction? Answers for the men.

First of all, I ought to make it clear that this is titled 'answers for the men' not because these answers are somehow less true than the answers for the women.  That isn't the case.  There is just a difference in emphasis, depending on who is asking the question.

Why do women write m/m fiction? Part one - Answers for the women can be found here on the Macaronis blog.  That post was written as an answer to a piece written by a feminist writer who felt that women who write m/m fiction are bowing to the pressures of patriarchal society.  Women should want to write about women, she felt.  Writing about men, and particularly in a format that excludes a woman from the central pairing, is just a case of reinforcing society's belief that only men are interesting and worthy to be written about.  It's a kind of gender betrayal.

Obviously, coming at the question from that sort of direction deserves an answer written to take into account the biases and subtext of the question. 

And the subtexts and biases are quite different when a gay man asks the question.  So the two answers are equally true, but slightly differently slanted depending on what really concerns the questioner.

When a gay man asks 'why do women write m/m fiction', it's my impression that the question is often coming from a different place of discomfort:

Exploitation

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