Entry tags:

let's get literate! 2009

Well, nothing like coming back to reviewing like a storm cloud, raining on everyone's parade! This book, guys. This. Book.

I have been struggling with how to find words for this book. I read it three times. I wrote four different reviews. Nothing could stick. The author is a patient, friendly guy. He offered me his book, knowing I was a critic. He decided to risk the chance of bad publicity, and I've made him wait a really long time because I can't find the right combination of words to string together that really carries how I feel about this story. I decided after the third failed attempt at writing this review, another 3000 words down the drain where previously 5000 flowed, that I am not even going to sugarcoat it.

This book skeeved me out.

I cannot express how much this book skeeved me out. I have tried with words upon words upon words, but in the end I think this book needs to be experienced for people to understand the magnitude of my problems. Then again, they might not understand because they don't spend their time immersed in rape culture, in teaching themselves about sexual shaming or trying to understand how complicated gender is. It's not the story itself, it's not even the writing, but it's the characters. It's the lack of awareness in the text, things that are said or thought by characters I am supposed to like that aren't dealt with at all, the context giving me no clue as to whether the character has enough self-awareness to realize that well, he's skeevy and might want to look into that—or if the author meant to write him that way.

I was reading along in my RSS reader yesterday and came across an entry, titled A Book Reviewer's Apologies. Two sections caught my eye:

I was so overwhelmed with not-liking-it that I did not give his books their due. Instead, I should have acknowledged that they accomplish the thing they set out to accomplish, although I still believe that thing is not worth accomplishing.

Sometimes, you react negatively to something for stupid personal reasons that you don't have enough self-awareness to recognize.

In all the words I have tried to write for this book and this story and for this author who took a risk, what will be 10,000 words by the time I am done, I couldn't figure out what I kept failing until I read those passages. I am not the audience for this book and I can only ever recommend this book as a object lesson for Things That Are Hard To Write About And Shouldn't Be Jammed Into Tiny Tiny Spaces and not an Awesome Book That Is Happy Fun Reading Times. This book was practically triggering and you know, I am not for labeling everything ever to protect people from the world, either. I thought going in I would connect this this story. This book was trying tell a story about a time and place where being gay wasn't as easy as so many people seem to think. This place could exist now. I could be familiar with it; I grew up in rural Arkansas in the mid-80's and the entire 1990s, and there were no gay bookstores where I lived, there were no gay hotlines, there was just a big, yawning void of insecurity and sometimes it would chomp me.

So when I read these passages, I stopped and thought. Did this book accomplish something? Yes. It told a story I love to see, a teenager who decides that he's better than a dirty secret, who finds his voice, even though it's terrifying and it hurts, that makes stupid mistakes at the risk of other people's feelings and has to learn to deal with them. Are my reasons for reacting negatively personal? Oh hell, yes. None of the reviews or summaries I read of this title suggested this book would do what it did. Here's one, pulled from Google:

David Dahlgren, a high-school senior, finds solace in running with the track team; he's a fast runner, and he enjoys the camaraderie. But team events become a source of tension when he develops a crush on one of his teammates, Sean. Scared to admit his feelings, David does everything he can to suppress them: he dates a girl, keeps his distance from his best friend who has become openly gay, and snaps a rubber band on his wrist every time he has "inappropriate" urges. Before long, Sean expresses the thoughts David has been trying to hide, and everything changes for the better. Or so it seems.

When I was offered this book, I almost turned it down from summaries like this alone. Aversion therapy! Things become cliche for a reason (and this rubber band thing is part of GLBTQ YA canon now) and I'm sure this was popular back in the day, but I can't decide if this makes the story feel more real to me—a desperate kid trying anything he can think of, even if what he's thinking of has been discredited since, well, the 1990s. Otherwise known as: don't try aversion therapy to fix who you want to have sex with, kids! On the plus side, this book deals with it a bit; but I worry that it doesn't just stomp on it, the entire idea, with more force, instead framing it like David just failed. I can't be like, "Book, you did not make enough social-psychological commentary!", though. There are a lot of things in this book that bother me: the aversion therapy as mentioned, the fact that David calls himself a "girly boy" and doesn't even want to be associated with the feminine unless he's using it to his advantage and anything else is negative enough to leave him a sobbing mess.

Okay, male authors writing gay teenage boys! We are now in 2009. Having the characters use femininity as an insult, a Oh Gosh I Am Like A GIRL!? Not Okay. Jettison that shit out of the canon, because gay men and women face a lot of the same problems, and promoting the idea that being a girly boy—as if boys with feminine traits are less than, as if the female is inherently negative—is harmful. It's a dangerous fucking idea that should die a horrible death at the hands of all men writing books. There doesn't have to be moralizing: just discredit it in the text actively or leave it out completely. It cannot just sit there, like a bomb, waiting to explode, just to reinforce the idea that being female is the END OF THE WORLD. This book doesn't do a good job with that. I was annoyed the entire time, because even at the end David is still like "Don't call me a girl!" as if that is the absolute worst name a boy can be called. I can think of something worse: everyone can. Why are girls used like this? If I never read about a teenage boy having a freak out over having feminine traits or prefering cock like a girl it will be too soon. I know this distinction is invisible to a lot of male authors because hi, they have male privilege, but these freakouts are just done. I am no longer impressed. It is a lazy shortcut made popular by the patriarchy, and I don't have to take it sitting down! I shake my fists at this!

This review might also be titled: GIRLS: NOT JUST FAG HAGS ANYMORE, BUT CONVENIENT SEXUAL OBJECTS FOR BOTH HETERO AND HOMOSEXUAL MEN. I'm not knocking the sexual awakening going down in this book. I am aware that kids make dumb mistakes, and horny kids make even worse. I am spoiled: I am used to all my boys kissing fun/woe times being written by women and all the GLBTQ YA books with male/male romances are written by men and there is such a marked difference in the scope, in the message, the amount of sexism! The longer I read GLBTQ YA the more I worry this is just going to continue being the norm until I stroke out from all the screaming I'm doing into the void? I know it boggles people—male/male fiction by women! What do you mean there's romance? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE'S CUDDLING AND EMOTIONAL INTIMACY? WHAT'S THAT ABOUT? Maybe male authors could try not Othering girls and make these books accessible to female teenagers, too, because they can be framed as a way to learn something except for all the girl-hate and objectification in them. Out there, out beyond the people who identify as "normal" there are people like me who want GLBTQ YA to start being about, well, romantic makeouts or coming out with angst and woe or struggles with sexuality and the unknown without the gender issues! Gender slurs aren't cool slang. A mind-boggling side plot with a female character created for the purpose of being a running gag, ha ha, this women is a sexual predator and preys on young, strapping lads isn't cool. I would like GLBTQ YA written without women and girls being the goddamn punchline of some sexist, misogynistic joke—and if that's judging a book too harshly, too bad. Welcome to YA Fabulous! What do I expect from books? More than this.

I am about the spoil part of this book! Here we go, beware of triggering content!

In the middle of the story there is a party and people get drunk, and David takes his Totally Secret and Very Drunk Boyfriend home, takes care of him and puts him to bed! This is sweet and nice and boy, you're reading and you just wish Totally Secret Boyfriend would wise up, stop having secret gay sex with David but disowning him in public and start having a Real Public Relationship, stop the sexual shaming he puts David through (faggy lifestyle, ha ha, oh Very Secret Boyfriend, you were such a douche), because David is a nice guy. Or maybe I should write Nice Guy™—because this scene ends with David groping his Very Secret Boyfriend while he is drunk and unconscious then masturbating beside him while he sleeps. There is no remorse—it just "felt good to cop a feel". Nice! Congratulations, David, you're right on track to become the skeevy guy no one dates because you molest your partners while they sleep without their consent! Classy!

If that happened to me, you know what I would call it? I would call it sexual assault. Very Secret Boyfriend gets revenge on David by outing him to his mother, but only for the skeevy "you touched yourself to MY porn" part. Who cares about all that groping! Whatever! The important part is the jacking off and not even the jacking off after the groping, much less the sexual assault. I am sure this is because Very Secret Boyfriend wasn't aware and oh my gosh did I have to put this book down for a few days when I realized that probably, he would never have a clue what David did to him while drunk and unconscious. Oh my gosh, internets! I do not know what to say about this. I honestly cannot decide if I am being fair, because I am a woman, and this happens to women all over the world and we have a word for it and sometimes there are police involved and I do not think it is cool but David does because he never express any remorse except about getting caught with some other guy's gay porn, and the author does not dismantle this scene at any point. David thinks it's romantic or something, and don't let people who want to frame gays and lesbians as molesters near this book because holy fucking shit they would have a grand time with this scene. There's just no commentary anywhere in the scene that this was wrong, wrong, wrong in so many ways. Remorse? What's that, David asks.

I even asked The Boyfriend, gave him hypothetical with us as the stand-in's, and this is a six year relationship (albeit it a heterosexual one) and even he was like, "No, if you groped me for your benefit while I was sleeping I would be creeped out!"

David is surprised when Very Secret Boyfriend becomes Running Away Fast As He Can Secret Ex-Boyfriend, and we're supposed to feel sorry for David, or something? That he got outed to another adult, that it was Very Secret Boyfriend that did so to protect himself, as if David didn't deserve worse to maybe teach him that consent isn't optional except under very specific conditions and a very specific type of sexual relationship?

Later in the book Very Secret Ex-Boyfriend returns and tries to force David to perform sexual favors and runs away. This is framed in a This Shit is Unacceptable way. There are no parallels drawn between this scene and the scene between David and Drunk! and Unconscious! Very Secret Boyfriend. There is no self-awareness about these acts, in a book about self-awareness! I admit I spend a lot of time thinking about this subject. I cannot put this into words, so I am borrowing some from Tiger Beatdown. I admit freely that sexual relationships between men and women and men and men and women and women and women operate on different levels, and if there are no women present the dynamic changes and there are not many feminist bloggers who discuss these topics in the context of male relationships or men that do it with any finesse at all, see: sexism! So much of the time I feel I am flailing around clueless-like when I am faced with these scenarios in books. This section of a post Tiger Beatdown did on rape stuck with me, and I think it can apply to call genders, because as much as I feel that girls shouldn't have to fear the boys they like or hope to like engaging them sexually without their consent, I believe that boys shouldn't have to fear the boys they like or hope to like engaging them sexually without their consent. I believe we should not propagate this vile, disgusting concept that gay men will take advantage when your back is turned! That's so ingrained in popular culture there are jokes about it (that I find so lacking in humor! Surprise!). I kept coming back to this idea popularized...somewhere that men can't control themselves and that's why this scene creeped me out—because they can. They are not their cocks, if you will. Very Secret Boyfriend was confused and guilty and struggling and his parents were not supportive considering the actions they take because their son might be gay (and I wanted to punch them in their stupid faces). He didn't have the support structure David did! Oh my gosh!

No one deserves it. No one. This is a good example of why at this scene the book lost me:

I said the obvious: yes, it's rape, because wanting to have sex with a guy at some point, or having had sex with a guy at some point, does not mean that he has the right to just stick it in without your explicit consent whenever he pleases, because consent means "yes," not the absence of "no," and because when a guy does that to your unconscious body what he is saying is that your consent fundamentally does not matter, that he is fine with fucking you when you are incapable of consenting or enjoying yourself, that maybe your lack of consent or enjoyment is what he prefers. [source]

Do I think any of this is in this book is purposeful? No. I think it is invisible because when it's invisible it flies under the radar, it sits in books like an innocent bystander of a teenager's sexual awakening, oh ha ha, sexual assault! It's just teenage experimentation! What's the line between an author telling a story pieced together from personal anecdotes, personal history and including real details and making sure the book deals with those real details in a way that respects the fact that sexual assault under these conditions is absolutely real? That "confusion" isn't a good excuse for David's actions at all?

I hate to drag the writing into it, but I'm going to because I think that was half the problem. This book dumped some Heavy Shit all over me every time I read it. It's a short book—it's not a long read. It was too damn short for the content if that content is some sexual hijinks. This story could have afforded a Big Mac, and maybe some chili cheese fries? So much skimming happened here, 16x speed forward. Here's something I have trouble putting into words: sometimes books do not let you in for whatever reason. They're too busy rushing along to notice you would like to sink into the story but can't because it keeps being ripped out from under you. This is a pacing issue, a heavy-issue book trying to disguise itself as a angsty, bad-guy-gets-shafted, happy-ending love fest entry into the coming out genre. David and Very Secret Boyfriend become more and more unlikable because of how they treat each other. How they hurt each other is realistic—how David never faces how they hurt each other isn't.

I have looked for reviews of this book, seeing if anyone else had these problems. Publishers Weekly yapped about unauthentic characterizations (point, but I blame the book's length and hyperactive nature for it). Kirkus thinks there is some wisdom, but I only see it in the context of David's mother and Eddie. Oh, these two characters—I loved them when they showed up, where David wasn't dismissing them. They were smart and funny and made David seem like a nice person, but they couldn't save this book for me. Actually, I'm not sure anything could have, looking back on my reading of it. I am sorry for it, because I am not a fan of Very Secret Boyfriends having had plenty myself. Not a confidence booster, let's say! I approve when books debunk and crush it like this book did.

What else do you say when a book punches you in the pancreas? I'm a feminist and a woman and I don't care how different gay relationships are—this book failed for me because of its consent issues. It did accomplish what it wanted to, going back to John's quote, but I don't think what it accomplished was worth what it took to get there if what it took to get there means sexual assault was treated like a device and framed as romantic—if the sexual encounter in the last half of the book is considered "forcing someone into a sex act" but the scene I have described isn't.

I have spent many weeks caught up in the visceral reaction I've had to this story. It has been a very long time since this has happened. The strong parts of this novel don't outweigh the caveats: the pacing that makes the book fly by with barely a chance to breathe, leaving it no chance to make an impression except in shock value if you are the type to be shocked by the things that shocked me, like consent issues! These are the books strengths: David's friendship with Eddie, the mother-son relationship, the ill-advised heterosexual side plot, the things in this story that seemed like real mistakes, where the characters seemed to realize what they were doing was just so so wrong, but they did them, anyway, where the characters realized that mending emotional bonds couldn't be done with just words—trust and love were required, too. These almost hidden from me until I just forced my initial reaction down to focus on the relationships, both successful and failed.

If anyone else has read (or wants to read so you can come and discuss it with me why no that's not a blatant hint) this book, I would like to know your thoughts about what I've discussed here. Not even The Vast Fields of Ordinary or Freak Show shook me like this story did. I am alarmed over this book, so much so I have hopefully nagged Ira into reading so she can come talk through it with me! Woe is my habit of sucking my friends into books that tear me in two different directions!