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doing mm romance discourse 🔞 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-01 12:00:07
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2026-06
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Content

It’s discourse I swore I’d never touch it with a ten foot pole, but that was before I had a Patreon! 😃 Anyway I think this discourse throws trans men and transmascs under the bus, and I talk about that here, among other things. Also there's a lot of sex talk, so be prepared for that! Uh
 enjoy? I’ll try to do something less serious next month, lol.

Videos/articles mentioned:

Don’s video: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoCEw5j/

“Who Gets to Write About Gay Men?” by Eli Cugini in Dazed: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/60684/1/who-gets-to-write-about-gay-men-heartstopper-red-white-royal-blue-alice-osemann-

Aaron’s original video: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoXJXp9/

Aaron’s follow-up video with recs: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoXAQaR/

Bayley’s response to Jules: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoXJ7tW/

R.F. Kuang interview snippet: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoXso28/

Emma’s Substack "Restorative Romance": https://restorativeromance.substack.com/

Sanjana
 just generally, lol. She’s great, and talks about romance in really smart ways: https://www.tiktok.com/@baskinsuns

Books mentioned:

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callendar

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski

The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

The Sorcerer’s Alpha by Corey Kerr

Comments

Christian Santiago

i feel like self understanding of identity and gender often clash with each other because identity is deeply personal and gender tends to be a social generalization

Betsy Myers

I always feel deeply uncomfortable as a transmasc person when the mm romance discourse comes up. Reading male/male stories helped me suss out my own identity, and I always feel like this discourse lumps me into the category of “fetishizing straight woman” with how it defines men as being specifically cis gay men. Which is to say, I really appreciate your thoughts on it. Allowing queerness, queer stories, and queer people to be expansive is my dream for this genre. Very glad I decided to join your patreon :)

Umber

Phenomenal work as always! I have a quick request, would you be able to include either links or specific usernames in your video description for the people/videos you recommended supplementing with? You mentioned both a Bayley and Emma in this video and it can be hard to find the username in just the small screenshot. I'd love to look into the people and articles you often recommend but it can be hard to track them down. Thanks as always for your incredible analysis

Emmett Altsman

Thanks for this! I always love hearing your thoughts; they frequently help me contextualize and verbalize my own and as a fellow trans masc, this brought some clarity to a lot of what I was feeling about this round of discourse. Much appreciated!

pagemelt
>>145294951

Ahh, amazing idea, I wish I'd thought of it, lol! Just updated the description to include them all. (And thank you for the kind words!)

Rachel McGuire

Have you read Imogen, Obviously? It talks about the danger of demanding that only queer people make queer art / tell queer stories. It was good. We can't assume those artists are cishet women. We don't know their inner lives.

Rachel McGuire

I also love the question (how'd you put it?) is this work interested in the shared project of queer liberation? That's a much better way to wrestle with the art we consume.

pagemelt
>>145297537

I haven't , but it's on the list! And just generally I've got nothin' but love and light for Becky Albertalli

Jennybug

Wow, what a thoughtful contribution to the discourse. I was moved by your personal stories, and your comments at the end about the role of art in the project of queer liberation were deeply compelling. I'm eager for more art and more criticism that makes space for as many genders and orientations as there are people, so thank you for this!

Muireann McGlynn

When I started dating my partner they identified as a cis male, now they identify as non-binary. We're both bisexual but we look "straight passing" day to day. When they came out as non-binary I had to reckon with all the ways our relationship was gendered and how we deconstruct that, when having those set defined roles was very comfortable for me. It's made me think a lot about how gender essentialist "progressive" feminist and queer communities can be and how much more comfortable we are with rigid fixed boxes. A family member confessed to me that if they had been born a few years later, they would have transitioned, but they're now satisfied with the life and family they've built. My dad, who's 78, casually said that he felt more like a girl when he was growing up and that he's always felt more comfortable with women doing feminine things. Yet my dad doesn't identify as transgender at all. The lines between "man, woman," "not man, not woman" blur so much beyond people's presentation or their pronouns. I really agree that there are as many genders and sexualities as there are people, two people a generation apart can have very similar feelings of dysphoria and process them an entirely different way. I just hope the queer community interrogates our need to "flush out fakes" which you think we'd learn after actors like Kit O'Connor were forced to come out. One of the strengths of non cis-men is that we are much more used to empathising with and adopting the perspective of men who are seen as "default." Contra's latest video really touched on that aspect of romance, that for many women reading m/f, they see themselves as both the woman and the man. I also think your point about "thought crimes" is so so important. Sometimes I read fiction and I'm very bothered by a moment of misogyny or racism. Other times I'm reading "problematic" fiction where awful things are happening and I don't mind at all. I think the distinction for me is whether or not the text seems aware in what its trying to portray and the purpose of it for the reader. For example, I can enjoy Angel and Spike in Buffy for what they are. Everyone understands that they're fictional vampires designed to be problematic and sexy. Xander makes me physically recoil from the screen because of his sexual entitlement and misogyny, but he's supposed to be an aspirational character we empathise with in that moment. I am much more critical of "nice guy" characters in a text that their dark romance counterparts. But that criticism has to be rooted in the messages of the text and not "stupid women are easily influenced away from virtue." I really loved this video so thank you for posting. If you have some good romance recs I read Think of England after listening to the podcast you were on and loved it. Have you watched Verily Bitchie at all? She has a lot on why she prefers "bad" queer representation and Heartstopper. One of my favourite YouTube channels

Joey Shilling

your description of the “price” of going to prom with the boy you wanted to, and holding hands with the boy you wanted to, hit just right. its something ive never been able to really articulate quite right and thats just perfect and devastating

Joey Shilling
>>145323775

had to pause in the middle and come back but the closing points, especially around how there are as many genders and orientations, is so nice to hear, i feel very similarly. thanks as always for all your words and thoughts

Michael

This was my morning listen and it made my day!! Thank you for all you create!

Emma Kearney

I laughed at least six times, cried once and did "yes go mel" fist pumps once.

Maya Justine

So many smart and profound points in this vid but also as someone who found you on TikTok and is not on TikTok anymore I appreciate getting peeks into the #discourse thru this critical lens — it removes a lot of what is stressful abt the sometimes petty back and forth and distills it into the really fascinating cultural tension at the center! And now I get to feel like an intellectual for watching a Patreon video essay instead of accidentally getting stuck in an hours long scroll lol. But bummed to miss out on ur Tiktok recs!

Tesla

This Patreon is, with out a doubt, the best thing I spend money on.

Eli

As a queer man who’s gotten really immersed in the female dominated mm romance community online as of late it was pretty clear most men chiming in either don’t read much Adult Romance and have never spoken to a woman who reads mm lol (trans and bi ppl also don’t exist in these conversations most of the time lmao) great analysis!

Christian Santiago

there is this somewhat unknown wlw romance book called Charon Docks at Daylight. it’s a zombie/apocalyptic, enemies to lovers, slow-burn story that was published chapterized in a fanfic style (it was uploaded to FictionPress). the author, Z.R Reed, is a trans man. i mention it, in part as a recommendation since it could be the best enemies to lovers romance ever lol, and also because it’s somewhat the opposite scenario. a man writing a woman loving woman book. what i find the most interesting is how he is able to explore (almost imperceptibly to the casual reader) themes of transness within the narrative of a cis lesbian relationship. at no pint he explicitly mentions transness but he constructs a redemption arc over a very subtle trans subtext. all of this to show that you don’t need to explicitly write about your own experience to explore your own identity within the literature you write.

Jen

Mel I can't believe I have to follow you to Instagram now lolsob

Maia Kobabe

wonderful, thoughtful video! thanks for bringing some nuance to what is often a frustratingly black and white (and constantly rehashed) topic

JJ

Hearing you speak on anything is always a delight, and this video is particularly great. Very well put and with some really interesting angles I hadn’t considered before, in what was slowly becoming some of my least favourite bookish discourse. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights!

Bibi

Thank you so much for your thoughts - always fascinating and nuanced, and coming from a place of real love & generosity - for genres, books, even people you are disagreeing with. I hope you also get some rest in between all your work!

h

I have never been able to articulate why or what in what capacity i have always *hated* when my guy friends have confessed to me. But as someone who has more recently come to terms with their transness, this is hitting some nails on some heads 🙃 Also, you might’ve seen the rec/source in the recent Contrapoints video (or just already know about it), but the book “Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys” by Lucy Neville, is such a nuanced look into why many cis women (queer or not) could possibly be into mm slash content. Genuinely one of my favourite non-fiction books I’ve ever read, and such a careful, understanding perspective on fanfiction and women’s desires

Prerna Abbi

Thank you for this video essay! I really appreciated hearing your thoughts, especially how you were connecting ideas across the dots of other people’s thoughts while including your own insights and experiences. My biggest takeaway from this video is actually appreciating the “cyclical” nature of this conversation. It ebbs and flows, and every time that wave swells it feels like many people only express frustration that we’re talking about it again. (I recognize that a lot of that ire is legitimate, especially around transphobic and misogynistic ideas that just won’t go away!) But I think every time that cycles, we give people the space to share new and/or deeper insights. With this video, I thought about several things differently than I have before, and it just really reinforced the value of approaching this more as conversation and less as discourse, and really desiring the trusting spaces that are required for it to actually be that way.

pagemelt
>>145693369

yes I feel that same frustration! rolling your eyes at the cyclical discourse and posting about it publicly is STILL participating in the discourse! (and thank you for your kind words)

pagemelt
>>145562845

yes this is helpful because I'd forgotten the name of that book and I def want to check it out! thank you!!

pagemelt
>>145368506

ahhh that book's been on my radar for a while but it just rocketed up the priority list, thank you!!

pagemelt
>>145358718

thank you!! it's such a sanity check to know i'm not the only one observing these things!!

pagemelt
>>145305336

thank you so much for the thoughtful words! re: romance recs, I def recommend continuing with KJ Charles—all her stuff is great, and the Will Darling series is my favorite. and if you like sport and/or contemporary, KD Casey's Unwritten Rules series is the BEST. and i LOVEEE verilybitchie!!!

Stephanie H

I really appreciate the level of nuance you address here and find myself agreeing with or relating to a lot of it in turn. I have so many thoughts but I think it would turn into something longer than I'd want to write or subject others to. I did want to say, though, that I find your comments about the vast individuality of how people experience gender and sexuality particularly astute. Part of what always bothers me about the m/m discourse is that it never seems to account for the fact that many women (whether cis or trans, straight or queer in either instance) may feel disconnected from many/most/all portrayals of womanhood or femininity in the m/f and f/f sides of the genre to a point of disinterest or even invalidation. An interest in seeing a wider range of portrayals of what masculinity can be also shouldn't be discounted but often is by so many.

stummyhort

As a lesbian who grew up on m/m, I think a really important variable at play that often gets left out of m/m discourse is the shame many people socialized as women experience towards sex+desire. When you have a lot of internalized shame about your woman identity (whether that's due to confusion about your gender, sexuality, or both), it can be really uncomfortable and unenjoyable to have to confront those feelings while reading pairings containing women. Personally, even though I knew I was a lesbian from a pretty young age, I only started enjoying and seeking out f/f and m/f pairings when I finally felt fully comfortable in myself/my relationship with womanhood. The clearest example is to consider the yaoi subculture within the broader context of Japanese culture. In a society where women experiencing sex+desire is deeply stigmatized, it's much more comfortable for women to sidestep the controversy entirely by focusing on Yaoi Boysℱ. Importantly, the masculinity in yaoi is less so male as it is neutral, since in a patriarchal binary, masculinity is the neutral as opposed to the feminine "other" (rip simone de beauvoir, you would've loved yaoi). Hopefully this makes sense? I wish I could speak more elegantly but I'm still working through it myself tbh, I have only just begun to unpack. You tackled this topic very poignantly and I am grateful to have this essay to chew on! Specifically, I really appreciate hearing your perspective as a transmasculine person. This conversation so often only considers cis gay men and cis straight women, which is frustrating. Another banger, as always!!

Ruby wagoner

I really appreciate all your content. I think I say this on every video you make haha I grew up in deeply conservative Mormon community that did not allow for any conversation of gender expression or sexuality. It is taking me so long to even begin to figure out my identities and your thoughtful content has continued to help me along the way. Thank you again

Lauren Jorges

The aspect of expecting “reality” in a genre where that is not necessarily part of the conventions of those stories is a fantastic point I haven’t seen explored before. Really love this nuanced take!