Does being gay influence what we write about?
As a biographer specializing in the lives of women, I get asked this question often. As a gay man, do I have some special insight into the female psyche? I don't know that it is that (or why it should be that), but like gay George Cukor, whose fascination with strong, elegant actresses is said to have been inspired in childhood by seeing his mother in fancy dress for a costume party, I tend to attribute my fascination with women of character to having two superb grandmothers.
I watched them do the proper thing, taking a backseat to my grandfathers despite their gifts, and yet somehow managing to run the show and remain in control, and this performance intrigued me - as did the what ifs, because my maternal grandmother was a wonderful story-teller and a gifted writer, and my paternal grandmother a magnificent organizer who could have run a corporation, or taken her piano studies into some professional capacity.... but neither took that extra step, because it would have been being out of step with the men they had married.
The women I choose to write about were those who did take that step, enduring the consequences in what was still very much a man's world. And that's why I write about the women I've covered in my books.
This isn't to say I don't have a couple of men in mind, but that's for when I run out of women, and that doesn't look likely for a while yet.
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Charles Purdy says:
That's an interesting
That's an interesting question. I think that my being gay definitely influenced my interest in etiquette and manners; a particular interest in that area was always how subcultures and minorities interpreted and redefined the rules of a larger society. I'm also fascinated by how rules of "acceptable" behavior change as people's perceptions change.
My sensibilities and worldview are so influenced by my being gay, I think: that perception of myself has shaped so many of the choices I've made in my life, that I can't separate it from anything I write in my own voice, or any creative writing I do. If I hadn't been gay ... I'd be an entirely different person. I might not even be a writer--certainly, my being an "outcast" as a child and teenager led to my being alone with books a lot, and that nurtured my love of words.
Just another reason to be glad that I am gay, I guess.
Huntington W. Sharp says:
I haven't written enough...
...of substance to be able to say for myself. I will say that, if there is a theme to what little I have written, it's that human behavior can only be framed on a spectrum, rather than as binary; however, most labels tend to be black or white. I think being gay has definitely driven that perspective.
Thanks for starting this conversation, Grant.
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Brian Miller says:
DOES BEING GAY INFLUENCE WHAT WE WRITE ABOUT?
Well Duh, and No. Being Gay definitely does but being a homosexual does not. I choose to be Gay this idenity I wear a happy, stylish, polite, politically, poetiticly, and punnishly charming Gentleman. I was born homosexual but I found being gay in books, movies, and tv. I write Gay i.e. my writing tends to be fun or at least have a twist a queeresque sensibility to it.
Jeffrey A Ricker says:
It's a part of the mosaic
Without that aspect of me, the picture would be incomplete. It's not the whole picture--I can't even say whether it's the most important piece--but like every other aspect of me, it informs my perspective and plays a role in determining what I find interesting enough to write about. Even when it's something as seemingly disconnected with my experience, like science fiction, there's an element of escapism and world-building in that which appeals to the sense of exclusion that is part of how I experience being gay.