Monday, January 23, 2012

sometimes its hard to be a man....

..at least when you are a man who works in the field of literature...but..thats not the right beginning to this post..well..i dont know if its right anyway to write about this since its kinda..personal...which also sounds wrong..since everything i wrote ever about here was personal...actually i wnated to write about ketchup..80ies ketchup..that is....but now its a day later....i had a great day..had a small dinner party tonight and it was great..lovely friends...lots of wine and talk and laughter...and after they left i went to bed..switched my laptop on and logged in to msn to search for the one i usually talk to before i go to bed...a good friend...sometimes a partner in crime...someone i feel close to..just to end up in a uncomfortable..situation....

that person is someone really important in my life and mind...so today we spoke about my dinnerparty...then about poetry and somehow tangled up in a conversation about selfpublishing...which isnt my fav subject since..i dunno...it just isnt...but my friend had a wonderful great and contemporary idea...for a book..an idea that totally inflamed me..and made me so proud that the friend had come up with that idea..and i encouraged that said friend...and when she asked how she would pay the others who would work in it i said that she would pay them in kind..by giving them a room for their voice ...and she said that it sucks not to gte payd...which of course is true...every writer should be payd for his or her work..but reality is that a lot editors and companies pay not much or even nothing at all..thats just how it is...but we allways can choose if we accept ...and i told her that i totally would submid something to her project..for free....she answered...about how it would be easy for me (which it isnt not right now since i missed out on a lot work lately) and reminded me that...i m not a woman..and from there it just went downwards...into an argument about how i dislike and feel outnumbered by all the "woman only-calls for submission"..because i am...a thing the friend an di had talked about already so often..and we both agreed that it shouldnt be about gender but about talent bla bla bla...but not this time...and this anoys me on so many levels...1) this coming from her...2) the subject in generall...i hate to be outnumbered by my gender..especially becaus emost of my work is written for a female readership..and 3)...it annoys me beeing cross with someone who i really love lots...someone who is close to my mind and soul...and its not right...the whole thing:-(

i havent been in this kind of state for years...this kind of..i dont know..sillysadness..that kind of sadness that makes you feel both angry but also small and fragile and...unimportant...its a feeling i got from my mom a lot when i still was a teenager..and...ah maybe i shouldnt say that...but.if it feels like that ..what else should i write then?

i wish i had written about 80ies ketchup instead:-(

i just hate to be outnumbered because of my gender...it makes me sad and feel angry and neglected...as if my words and my works isnt equally worth just because i happen to have a penis...and if it takes not talent but a vagina to be writer worth beeing published in certain projects/anthologies...

cut me and you ll see...i´ll bleed...just as red as you do...

goodness me..how dramatic that sounds..i really shouldnt get caught up in arguments after i had lots of wine and limoncello...but i guess you cant choose those...

the thing is...it annoys me..like i said already several times..writing erotica is a total domane for women...go to your local bookshop...check the "naughty bookshelf" and you ll finde that its mainly books written by female writers....i was once called the most succsessfull male sex-columnist of germany...which made me cringe (if that is a word) because i guess i m not only the most successfull one..but also the only male sex-columnist in germany..as far as i know at least...and when i speak about that it always ends with: the men had THE ONLY VOICE for so long and now its time for the women bla bla bla...excuse me sister...but..thats..bullshit..i m tired of that..usually i m rather on the womens side but this is silly...there always have been famous, intellectual and important females who had a voice....ach...its so silly to rant about that...usually i wouldnt load all this on your shoulders...but unfortunatelly i dont have male writer friends who i couldnt annoy with this subject...so..i guess there is nothing more to say...aside: i really hate..to be cross with people that i love...

6 comments:

Scarlett Knight said...

That's too bad that your friend felt that way, especially since men dominated the field of writing for many, many years. Women had to adopt a male pseudonym just to get published. Here's a list of some, and some of these are even contemporary:http://www.webdesignschoolsguide.com/library/10-famous-females-who-used-male-pen-names.html

All that said, as a female erotica writer, I would love for more men to write within the genre. I've been trying to get a male friend of mine to do it, but he feels uncomfortable. I say, if it's where your passion lies, write it! I'm sure there is a publisher out there who would be happy to showcase your work. One pretty popular erotic writer I can think of right now is Jeremy Edwards. So you can do it! <3

Ms. Moon said...

Ah- a difficult subject. I think that this may be a situation not unlike the one here in the USA where the "playing field" as we so love to say, was SO uneven for so many years as it related to race, had to be tipped up the other way for awhile to make things even begin to be fair.
And I'm not sure it ever will be.
BUT, I am not going to try and figure out who is right here and who is wrong. I am not sure there is a wrong or right. We must all write what we feel is right for us. Right?

And everyone, every friend, every lover, has disagreements with those they love. This is part of life.

It's okay, Danielle.

Love from Florida...Mary

Jo said...

I just wanted to make something for me. It happens that I'm a woman and I wanted to make something that related to my female experience. It wasn't even that thought out - I just responded with an idea to something I felt and recognised.

This isn't about erotica, it's purely about a life experience and whether or not the male/female one is so common that there's something wrong with dividing it. As for Danielle, he doesn't need encouragement to go for it, as far as I can see, he's gone for it as successfully as anyone else has, possibly more so.

I'm thinking about it a lot - maybe that's not ok anymore. No men's space/women's space. Maybe it's sexist to allow that.

So far my idea was just my thing, my... feeling. I don't know how to explain it better. When it's still one personal little bubble, it's hard to politicize it and move it away from what you needed it to be, for the sake of an ideal. I have no issue with men and women writing erotica together, or writing anything together, I just had an idea that spoke to me, about me, out of my female experience, and it occurred to me to develop it.

I feel sad too - that while something is gestating, to be told, no, you can't do that. You have to make it something more than you saw it as because that is Right.

I see that men have a parallel experience of the kind of thing I want to talk about. I see my husband is as aged,broken, lonely and disappointed by it all as I am and it's tragic and I feel guilty and responsible and hurt by his experience too. I didn't mean to demean that or dismiss it, and if I did, I'm sorry - it was out of defensiveness and not having time to process properly, not a belief that men's experience is somehow less.

I just didn't plan to be host to that.

Maybe I was totally wrong, and in planning something personal to me I made it excluding. I'm trying really hard to think about it unemotionally and impersonally and take apart what I really feel about it, and whether I'm right or wrong to want it, in this one instance.

You're not the only one feeling sad.

Petit fleur said...

Yes, it does suck when you feel cut off somehow from someone you love. Like there is a disconnect in the circuitry.

Maybe she can make you an honorary "female" contributor since you are the only male sex columnist in Germany! I have a friend whose husband was so empathetic and so far from a sexist that we affectionately referred to him as one of the us... one of the girls. He was allowed to go where no other male was trusted. He got into hot tubs with all of us, he problem solved with us on how to deal with other men, he cooked with us and for us, and was generally of like mind. You strike me as that kind of guy in your way.

I hope you guys find your way through your rough patch quickly. I find humor to be a great bridge.

xo pf ps Limoncello... what is it? Sounds good.

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