My Last Word On The Lammies

My Very, Very, Very Last Word
Victor J. Banis

On the Lammies, of course. My recently posted blog (MLR Press, Blog Site) on the Lambda Foundation's Awards seems to have stirred up quite a hornet's nest. I have been praised and vilified for what I wrote, and sometimes both in the same post. And sometimes the remarks have come from what seems to me unlikely sources. You'd think women would have liked what I had to say, wouldn't you, but not all of them did. And if, as some posts insisted, the women writing and publishing M/M fiction are showing disrespect for gay men and gay writers and their traditions (which I have yet to encounter), you'd expect those gay men to be after my hide – but, no, much of the support I got was from those very gay men. Of course there were some gay men who were unhappy too.

For anyone who, like Rip Van Winkle, has been asleep for a while, here is the gist of the story: A hue and cry went up a little while back that the Lambda Literary Foundation had changed their submission guidelines to bar straight writers from submitting for the awards. But were the guidelines actually changed? The Lambda Foundation says not, that their guidelines have always stressed glbt writERS not glbt writING. Be that as it may, it does seem to me as if they have placed a new emphasis on that distinction.

The logical question, of course, is how the Foundation could hope to distinguish between men and women writers in a genre which sees, just as an example, so many writers using ambiguous names: J.P. Bowie, Pat Brown, even V.J. Banis (okay, that one's not really fair, since that is a byline that I use on my heterosexually oriented writing, so not likely to pop up on a Lambda submission.) And, even supposing that gender could be determined, who is to say whether the writer – let us suppose they have determined that she is a female – is straight, bisexual, transgendered, or even celibate (Sister Mary Mercy might not want her nun-status known when she's penning M/M fiction.)

The answer to that, according to the Foundation, is that the writers will "self identify." By which is meant, apparently, that by submitting, the writers are identifying themselves as queer. Which I likened to a kind of literary "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. It's okay to be what you are so long as you're willing to pretend to be what we want.

Now, for the record, I think it is entirely up to the Lambda Literary Foundation to define their guidelines as they wish. It's their award, after all, and submitting is not required of anyone, it's entirely a voluntary matter. If you don't like their policy, don't support it. Don't submit. Don't pay their fees. Simple as that. No one really and truly needs a Lammie. I've gotten along very nicely for nearly a half century of writing without one. You can too.

But, it is also a matter of personal sadness to me, because much of that half century has been devoted to supporting our glbt genre of literature, sometimes at great personal risk, frankly. I have taken every opportunity to support writers and enterprises connected with it. I critique, review and write blurbs for writers. In the last few years, and notwithstanding limitation of finances or age or health, I have traveled to any number of events to promote our literature and our culture. I've addressed college students, historical societies, gay libraries – anywhere that it seemed my name might make a difference or a contribution. I have contributed books, essays and money and most especially my name. Whatever slight currency my name has in our community, I have spent it without reservation.

So, yes it grieves me to see the Lambda Foundation, in my opinion, shrinking that community rather than expanding it. The field of glbt literature has declined precipitously over the last several years, and has grown decidedly moribund. I was delighted to see the rise of so called M/M fiction. The women writing and reading these books have brought much needed fresh blood to the field. I think they can only continue to do so over the next several years. And this, in my opinion, is a good thing for all of us. Running Press recently launched their own line of M/M titles, all but one written by women and all of them directed expressly to women and marketed in mainstream bookstores. The line has since folded, but the presence of those few books in major outlets cannot have failed to have an impact. MLR Press has managed to get books in Borders and Barnes and Noble, among others. I attended the latest Book Expo in New York City last Spring, and it was encouraging to me to see women – I suppose they were straight, though I did not question them on this point – pick up not only the M/M books on offer, but the more traditional gay fiction as well. Men too, though this was generally "for my girlfriend." I can personally attest that there are straight men who have, presumably out of curiosity, dipped their toes into the stream of M/M fiction (maybe it's easier for them knowing the book was written by a woman) and have gone on to plunge into the gay fiction pool. I won't say that the numbers are enormous, but getting the door open even an inch or two has to be a plus.

And here is one of the mysteries of this situation for me: I have been out in the gay world for the better part of sixty years. I have never known a gay male who didn't adore his straight women friends. Maybe it's the mother thing. Maybe it's sublimating or latent heterosexual desires. Don't know, but the boys do love the ladies. Even the gay men who objected to my original blog invariably added that they adored such-and-such or so-and-so. Their unhappiness apparently was not with M/M fiction or the straight women writers in general, but with certain specific individuals. Well, people do get bees in their bonnet.

On the other hand, this was more like an infestation of sour bugs than bees. How on earth did the entire LLF Board of Trustees, some of whom I feel sure are gay men, decide here that they weren't going to mingle? It surely strikes me as peculiar.

Well, okay, whatever, it's still their privilege. As I said up the page a bit, the LLF, men and women alike, has every right to take the stance they have taken. I can also say, however, that I continue to believe that I have every right to be dismayed by this decision. As I am. And there's no reason, either, why they should care about me or my opinion. As they surely don't.

And that really is my last word on the subject.

Victor J. Banis, October 2009