#bookthreads

When I say the online book community has problems, I’m actually including the queer creators that get all up in arms about the most inane things—like dogpiling on that one woman who said Heated Rivalry was made with a sapphic gaze as it was written by a bisexual woman (yet again kicking off a debate about what women are allowed to read/write), or when a bisexual author dared to voice her disappointment that her (queer) MF books didn’t do as well as her WLW books (because surely she should hope for half her books to flop for the sake of a political statement, that’s how lesbian liberation will be achieved), or when another sapphic book by a bi author featured a fairly prominent (queer) MF side-pairing (because apparantly there can only be one kind of politically correct narrative format in sapphic romance novels). There are ways to say “This book wasn’t for me because it’s not written to my particular taste,” without moralizing it. I can’t believe an actively hostile environment is being created towards bisexuals (starting with bimisogyny, because of course, and involving plenty of misgendering towards nonbinary authors) and everyone—including bisexuals themselves—is not only allowing it to happen, but fully participating in it because otherwise they will get thrown out of the tiny sapphic reader community. It’s sad, but I’m glad I don’t participate and I only lurk in these spaces. I am learning very quickly to stop thinking of leftist/liberal content creators as normal people, and that’s been helping me take their “hot takes” less seriously. With this level of exposure, they’re more like TV personas. And the purity testing can only exist when you spend a lot of time in bubbles such as online spaces—real life is too complex for all that. Normal people are just reading and enjoying all these queer books, and hopefully learning and thinking about queer people more because of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love romance, but why do book readers romanticize the mafia, stalking, kidnapping, possessiveness, controlling and all the red flags?