I want to talk about what “fetishization” means and why it isn’t the catch-all arch label of Problemanticness some people treat it as.

“Fetishization” can be stretched to mean any depiction of gay men that doesn’t 100% fit a given (usually cis & white) person’s lived experiences. This label often gets slapped on any queer mlm book with an element of fantasy

After all, it’s Not Realistic that a prince would fall for the president’s son or that a hot immortal warlock would throw queer raves in his magic loft. But representation does not need to 100% mirror lived reality to make you feel seen. Good rep /= reproducing reality

Sometimes people DO want representation mirroring their exact lived experiences. But a contemporary novel by a cis gay man rooted firmly in his high school experiences is not “better queer rep” than RWRB all because it’s more “realistic”

This line of thought lead to an author getting harassed, misgendered, and forced to out themself. And other authors encouraged it.

The line “this fetishizes gay men!” is often used to describe any book the reader found too sexy, too fantastic, and—crucially—not catering to his gaze.

Sexism, racism, biphobia, transphobia—these are all present in the gay community. White cis gay men are accustomed to their queer experience being centered in media—just look at the Stonewall movie!

Queer content created by non-cis-men de-centers them—but by calling this content “fetishizing,” they can shame, other, and stigmatize fellow members of the queer community into giving them back the spotlight

And frankly? Even real examples of fetishization, over in the erotic romance category, are a lot more complicated than people think

Because there is, in fact, nothing morally wrong about being attracted to reading about two hot guys hooking up!

If you take that into the real world with non-consenting folks, that’s a problem. If you express homophobia to gay men writing erotic romance, that’s a problem

I hate that the main argument to express a queer work being “problematic” is so deeply linked to sex & sexuality. Sex isn’t evil, fantasizing isn’t evil, exploring your identity through reading and writing about queer men isn’t evil.

To sum up: this whole “fetishizing” discussion has been weaponized to center highly privileged people and to sexually shame people of marginalized genders

Anyway, I worked lots of *feelings* about this dynamic and how it effects young queer people into my novel MAY THE BEST MAN WIN

If you're interested, you can add it on Goodreads ( https://bit.ly/2QhX2aR ) and then pre-order here! ( https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250625120)