Rolling Stone magazine

Has anyone seen Rolling Stone magazine this month?  They interviewed me a couple of weeks ago.  I told them in no uncertain terms that I didn’t write porn, that (from what I could tell from my fan mail) more than half of my readers were gay men, that I didn’t write for straight women only and wouldn’t know how, that there were gay men and women of all sexualities in m/m romance, and that of the four authors of Running Press’ m/m romance line, I was the only straight woman.  They seemed interested and surprised about this last fact, so I thought for sure that bit of information might make it into the article.  I asked them to assure me that they would not put the article out under a title that suggested m/m romance was gay porn for straight women, and they said that no, of course they wouldn’t.

I haven’t seen the resulting article, so I can’t tell whether any of that got through or not, or whether I might as well have saved my breath.  Despite asking if I could see the article before it went out, that never happened.  I can’t subscribe to the online magazine in order to read the article because it insists I need an American address and post code.  But the title of the article appears to be “Man-on-man porn for straight women” so I don’t hold out a lot of hope.  Is it as bad as it sounds?

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Aha, I have seen it and I eat (some of) my words.

A couple of people have now sent me a copy of what was written in Rolling Stone magazine and I feel I owe the reporter an apology.  It turned out not to be an article so much as just a mention, and it went like this:

Hot Broken Paperbacks
M/M Romances

Around 2007, amateur online scribbler and UK housewife Alex Beecroft discovered a burgeoning small-press genre called “M/M Romance” – books in which men fall in love, get it on and get it on some more in assorted historical settings. Today, Beecroft (alongside writers Erastes, Laura Baumbach and Donald Hardy) is one of M/M’s premier authors, and women just like her abound in her audience. Says Beecroft, “There are straight women who just don’t connect with society’s construction of what it means to be a woman.”

And apparently was illustrated by a picture of  the cover of Tangled Web by Lee Rowan.

The line that I objected to so strongly, in the Hot List 2010 about m/m romance being “Man on man porn for straight women,” was not actually the title of the article.  The reporter, therefore, was telling me the truth when he said he wouldn’t use that as a title, and I apologize unreservedly for thinking otherwise.  Furthermore, he says “women just like her abound in her audience,” and this is entirely true, and does not imply that there are no other sorts of people who read m/m romance. Donald was mentioned too (and his name spelled right!)  So it seems I went off half cocked in being insulted that GBLT readers and writers were being deliberately excluded.

I can’t say I like the description of the genre, which appears to have been lifted entirely from the Out magazine interview and ignores the many different heat levels and different sub genres (it really isn’t all historical!) of m/m romance, but I can’t expect too much of a single paragraph. And I did actually say what I’m reported as saying, so that’s good too.

I stand by my annoyance at the “Man on man porn for straight women,” thing, but I’m a lot happier now that I’ve seen that the article itself was not guilty of that. I feel I was listened to after all, and that’s something for which I’m grateful.  I’m also grateful to see the genre get a mention in such a huge thing as Rolling Stone magazine, and I can only assume that whoever wrote the introduction on the Table of Contents was not the same person I talked to at all.

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