Al of this.
M/M romance is the cross between Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel and Sean Cody.
Most of the time it is benign.
However, m/m has some serious fucking issues which have nothing to do with gender.
It has everything to do with people who push into realms they don’t understand in a subject matter they’re not 100 percent sure of.
“Well, people write about wizards…”
Stop. Stop right there.
Wizards aren’t real.
Gay people are. Conversion camps are. PTSD and child abuse and neurological disorders due to overexposure to toxic levels of the stress hormones Cortisol and Adrenaline are. Suicide, lung cancer, and ischemic heart disease due to this exposure are real.
Rape,
Panic Disorders,
Eating disorders
are all real
If you can’t treat your subject matter’s race, religion, sexual orientation, etc with reverence and do your due diligence when it comes to that AND the environment you put them in – you shouldn’t be writing. At least not this.
If you can’t fully grasp what is happening then perhaps you’re simply not qualified to write it.
LGBT people and survivors of child abuse and / or religious abuse have been put through a certain kind of hell you will NEVER EVER understand unless you’ve been there. Don’t touch it unless you’re willing to go all the way.
Don’t do these people a disservice because you’re trying to turn a buck.
It’s ignored by the world at large because, according to Fox News, only Muslims do that kind of crazy shit to people. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there are scores of conversion camps and attitude adjustment camps all over the United States as well as fundamentalist churches. And they’re in your own backyard. And the old saying is true, “never is a man so joyfully committed to heinous acts against his fellow man than he is when it’s done in the name of God.”
It’s all over your country.