The Female Obsession with Gay Men

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There's been a lot of questions in book discourse lately.

Questions about period inaccuracy and casting inaccuracy in the new "Wuthering Heights" adaptation.

- Healthcliff is not white.

Healthcliff is not a white character.

- [Mina] The new Jeanette McCurdy book just got released.

- At his age is out right now. It's a big deal.

- [Mina] Bridgerton Season 4.

- I think Bridgerton might actually be great again.

- Cool stuff is happening in the book world, but I'm still at the restaurant.

I am still stuck on "Heated Rivalry" and specifically the cultural phenomenon it's created.

- Has "Heated Rivalry," made everybody insane.

(upbeat music) - I love "Heated Rivalry." What can I say?

- Gay men love it, women love it.

- This show changed me as a human.

- Take me to the cottage.

- "Heated Rivalry."

- [Mina] Dozens of fans vibe for the title of top lookalike.

- Okay, how do you say I'm coming to the cottage in Russian?

- No, it's interesting. It's these girls, these women are very interested in the gay romance.

- Where is Team Ilya?

(audience shouting) Where's team Shane?

(audience shouting) (upbeat music) - I am more overwhelmed like about how many emails I have to get through.

- I mean, transparently, I'm not a huge fan of the show itself.

I gave it a good college try.

I watched the first three episodes.

It's just really not for me.

But everyone else seems to love this show and I'm just finding the phenomenon so fascinating.

Like I actually have a friend who told me that their friend uprooted their whole life after marathoning it.

They quit their job, they broke up with their partner.

There were just some powerful potent forces behind "Heated Rivalry" and in all its relevance, one of the common questions I kept seeing get debated was why are women, particularly straight women, so obsessed with this series?

Is it because women love romance in general?

Is it a fetish towards gay men specifically?

Is it because they're attracted to the actors?

What's going on?

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(transition crackling) Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, the two stars of the show actually tried to answer the question when it was posed to them.

- Yeah, we've talked about this a lot.

- And they actually came up with really great answers.

First thing is, Hudson mentioned that you get two men for the price of one, which is hot for a straight woman.

- I think there's both a chances element or like a statistic element of like in a straight relationship, if you're a straight woman, you don't fancy the gent in the story or maybe you're not attracted to 'em.

I think in our relationship if I'm like, or like, oh, the the Shane guy's not doing it for me, but that Russian goddam, or vice versa.

There just might be, you know, a double chance that, you know, there's an attraction there.

- [Mina] Storrie also talks about the emotional element, the yearning, the desire that women tend to love in romance media.

- I was talking to Hannah, our costume designer, I was like, "Wow, it's predominantly women from the book."

And she was like, well I think that there's something about this type of story and this type of love and this type of sex that has a lot to do with this almost like prolonged foreplay and yearning, which kind of differs from this more pornographic idea of sex.

She was like, I think it's more so geared towards a feminine gaze because it's true.

I mean that's why we like romance, you know?

It's not just the sex or whatever.

It's the moments in between where you see desire and this pull towards vulnerability and connection.

- [Mina] And then Williams add that in straight romances, men are stereotypically bad at communicating and so it can be sexy to see men do the emotional labor of facilitating good communication - In a straight hetero normal romance, you know, it's usually you fall into tropes and stereotypes where the women, the woman is, you know, the communicator

and the guy's, you know the closed off.

You know that. That's usually the archetype we see.

So I think that it's two men, it's well someone has to do the talk like communication needs to happen.

So like which one of your mother (audio beeps) is gonna do it is is sort of enticing 'cause they're like, "Ah so men are capable of having communication."

They can get somewhere, they're not completely- - Right, right, right, right. - Incompetent.

- [Mina] And the last theory they present relates to what Storrie saw an influencer say online.

- She was like, the reason why women are so into stories that involve gay men is because they are so exhausted by the idea of straight men that like this is the only way that they get to see a form of masculinity that feels accessible and interesting to them.

Which I think is a cool point, 'cause it does turn the normal idea of masculinity on its head in a lot of different ways.

- Love that he's reading and listening to the fandom.

I always think it's lame when actors pretend they're above their fans and it's nice to see these guys leaning in, at least for now.

We'll check back in a year after Storrie works with, I don't know, Luca Guadagnino.

Maybe after that he'll forget where he came from and refuse to read the little women monologue.

- Do you remember that? - I'm not doing this thing.

(audience laughing) - So none of their theories are actually wrong because the fact of the matter is according to academic research, there is no single reason why women enjoy slash, which is a term that means gay fiction.

Another thing on terminology, I will be using gay to mean strictly gay men.

I know a lot of people use it as a catchall for queerness, but this is just to make it easier since saying men who sleep with men all the time is a mouthful.

I'll also be using the acronyms MLM which stands for men loving men, not multi-level marketing scheme in this context.

And SEM which stands for a sexually explicit media as short hands.

I'm also gonna lean on the work of Lucy Neville for a lot of this video, but I highly recommend reading her 2018 book "Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys," if you're interested in this topic and want to go more in depth, she does a fabulous job.

But let's zoom out of "Heated Rivalry" for a second.

Because women have loved gay SEM for a long time.

Most scholars will point to the Kirk and Spock ship in "Star Trek" as being the first major MLM ship in the media.

For my generation, I think the first major MLM ship that comes to mind is Larry Stylinson, a ship named for Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson from One Direction.

Styles and Tomlinson are obviously real people.

So that's where it gets like ethically sticky and I don't wanna discuss that too much in this video, like the politics of shipping real people.

I'm just trying to make a point that you know, "Heated Rivalry" was not the first gay pop cultural fixation and it surely won't be the last.

This fixation among women is also not limited to romance media, but even extends to stuff that's more hardcore.

According to PornHub statistics from 2015, women made up 37% of its gay porn viewers.

George Alvin, a performer in the Cocky Boys, which is the name for a troop of gay male porn stars, even credits his female fans for their success.

He claims the women make up at least 80% of the fan base and as quoted to have said in 2016, "If it Wasn't for our women fans, I don't think we would have the level of exposure that we've had.

They are the ones that create the conversation and support the work."

All of this is to say that ""Heated Rivalry"" has really exploded in the zeitgeist as a show for women, and while the audience is majority women, it's actually a smaller majority than advertised.

HBO Max's statistics say that its viewer base pre finale was about 53% women rising to 66% women later, as the show's word of mouth popularity grew.

So there's a good number of men watching as well.

We'll talk more about "Heated Rivalry" specifically later, but I wanna first dive into reasons for why women like gay SEM in general because it's a really nuanced and complex topic and valuable to discuss because as I said, women make up such a potent like marketing demographic.

I think women have the power to shape a lot of media.

(upbeat music) So in that interview, Hudson Williams mentioned this idea right?

Straight and bi women find boys hot and they want to look at them as objects of desire.

- That Russian goddamn.

(transition crackling) - This is a valid reason.

I'm sure it's the reason for many people, but it can go deeper if we want to.

Traditionally in romance fiction and in pornography, women's bodies are the ones often on display.

As John Berger once said, men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at.

Even when men do put their bodies on display in straight context, it's usually to assert some form of dominance.

Lucy Neville uses the example of male strippers who often exude a certain machismo.

Therefore women look to gay SEM for a type of male vulnerability that they don't regularly see in straight SEM, they're looking for men who are willing to be gazed at.

As radical feminist Joanna Russ writes "The Kirk and Spock stories ritualized as they are, are the only literature I've ever seen in which women do describe male beauty.

Not masculinity mind you, but the passive acted upon glories of male flesh."

- Fascinating.

- I think in general though, our culture is shifting to allow for more passive male beauty.

We've been seeing it in Bridgerton for one, and my theory for why it feels like every HBO show is so fixated on shots of male butts is to offset the amount of female nudity we have in the media archives and also because they're probably catching on that women make up such a big fan base.

- I came down to see the naked men.

- Neville conducted a study where she interviewed 508 women of different ages, nationalities, and sexualities on why they watch gay SEM.

I thought it was really interesting to hear their varying perspectives.

Some women feel alienated from their bodies due to painful past experiences and trauma and are reminded of that when they see straight SEM and other women just don't like to see other female bodies because we're taught to compare our bodies to each other and or we're taught to find female sexuality and genitalia to be gross.

One respondent, a straight Canadian woman in her late thirties explained, "I hate my body because I have body issues and low self-esteem, it's far too easy to self insert into the fantasy if it features women and that just mucks the whole thing up once I see myself in the scene."

I think it's unfortunate, but very understandable to feel alienated from your body, especially as a woman because of the unrealistic depictions of women's bodies in the media.

Nowadays with everyone in Hollywood also getting mini facelifts, Botox, Liposuctions, ab sculpting, Ozempic.

I learned about Neckband Botox the other day, so they're just like making new ones every day.

So it makes sense to me why so many women would feel put off and why SEM, which is often a form of escapist media no longer feels escapist.

Also, there was a lot of misrepresentation of female sexuality in the media.

I remember when "Blue is the Warmest Color" first came out in 2013, it was under fire for being exploitative and male gazy.

In an early review of the film, Manohla Dargis wrote for the New York Times "As the camera hovers over Adele's open mouth and splayed body, even while she sleeps with her derriere prettily framed, the movie feels far more about director Abdellatif Kechiche's desire than anything else.

Mr. Kechiche registers as oblivious to real women."

Those claims were then bolstered by the lead actresses later coming out to talk about the abusive atmosphere behind the scenes.

Actress Léa Seydoux told The Independent, when asked if she was ever worried about playing out a male fantasy, "Of course it was kind of humiliating sometimes, I was feeling like a prostitute.

He was using three cameras and when you have to fake your orgasm for six hours, I can't say that it was nothing."

So it's understandable why women feel unsafe looking at female sexuality on screen.

Not only are we seeing SEM through a straight male gaze, but also it might have been unsafe for the female actresses to film the scenes in the first place.

There's also alienation in the sense that if the scenes in the show mirror your experiences too closely, you can be pulled out of the fantasy more easily because you're thinking like about the logistics and whatnot.

As one married, bisexual woman said in the survey, "If someone is performing cunnilingus, I get caught up in wondering when the last time she showered was, and I hope it doesn't smell like mine when it gets whiffy and then I start getting all self-conscious."

I think the sort of reality check alienation is what I'll call it, can be present across genders and sexualities.

I mean, actor Jordan Firstman initially criticized he had a rivalry for not portraying gay intimacy in a realistic way.

He has since retracted his statement after catching some heat.

- And now back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press, Miley what's good.

- But to his point, there's like no lube in any of the scenes.

Maybe for women that lack of realism doesn't get in the way of our enjoyment because we're alienated from what it would actually be like.

As one middle aged straight respondent explained in Neville's survey, "A good gay male friend of mine started to burst my bubble about gay porn because he's saying, you know that these guys are all given Viagra and I thought, shut up, shut up, shut up.

I don't wanna know. I need some fantasies."

Another reason for why many women enjoy gay SEM is because they actually access it through the eyes of a man and that can be an appealing experience.

What I mean by that is that as women we're actually socialized to gaze as men, throwing it back to John Berger.

After all erotic male nudes were created not women to look at, but for men to look at each other.

Our critic, Sarah Kent, argued that for this reason women are used to living vicariously viewing their culture voyeuristically and translating its material as best they can to serve their own needs.

Neville brings up that 55% of her survey participants state that they "Imagine themselves as a man during the course of their sexual fantasies."

Again, I'm not saying that every woman who enjoys watching and reading gay SEM likes to engage with it for all these reasons or even the same reasons, but let me read out some more interesting statistics that convey how unique people's experiences can be.

Of the 55% who imagine themselves as men in Neville's survey, 96% imagine themselves with another man or multiple men, 57% imagine themselves with another woman or multiple women, 33% imagine themselves as a man self pleasuring, 36% imagine being with male and female partners at the same time.

7% imagine themselves with gender diverse slash trans people.

7% imagine themselves with mythical slash magical creatures and 9% imagine themselves watching others engage in intimacy from a male point of view.

For some people identifying with male characters does lead to trans or complex gender revelations.

Rachel Dispenza said on Instagram reels about "Heated Rivalry."

- I watch these men and I wanna get in there like a gay man, but then I also just like wanna be with them in a way that reminds me of a straight woman.

But then I also like really understand that sort of years long yearning for something you cannot have the way only a lesbian really knows about yearning.

And then I look at them again and I look at their bodies and I look at my body and it makes me wanna go to the gym in a way that has to be straight man coded.

- For others, the experience is less about naming a gender identity crisis, but a desire to explore masculine traits such as anger and ruthlessness and sexual intensity and the freedom to choose.

Of course, we can explore these things as women as well, but they are stereotypically masculine traits.

As Neville explains, when reading gay SEM women not only get to sexually admire a hero, they also get to be a hero.

This is an extension of how women tend to explore media in general, even in a non-sexual context, women actively welcome the male voice in fiction.

In Thurston's 1985 Survey of romance readers, over 70% wanted the hero's POV included in the novel.

It was the number one most liked story attribute.

They didn't just want the heroin's POV and as slash fan Barbara Tenison puts it, "Why do we read with relish about space pirates, neurotic rock stars or melancholy Danish princes?

Fiction isn't about reasonable wish fulfillment or simple identity matches."

Along those lines, scholars across disciplines have also argued that women's sexual arousability is more fluid than men's.

Essentially, they're able to be aroused by a wider variety of things.

Lisa Diamond conducted a study in 2008 of women in the general population and found that women tend to possess what she describes as an open gender schema, meaning that they disconnect gender from sexual desire.

She explains if a relationship between two or more people is compelling, then they will find sexual activity between these individuals arousing regardless of the gender combinations involved.

M-M F-F F-M, this is partially the strongest reason for why I am able to enjoy any kind of gender sexuality configuration and romance.

For me, I'm most compelled by tension and yearning, and this is actually why I didn't love "Heated Rivalry" hot take because I find it funny that audiences generally praise the show for doing this really well.

To me, they lost me when the guys started hooking up within 10 minutes of the first episode, I was like, I don't know these guys.

I'm not compelled by the relationship yet, so why do I wanna see them doing anything together?

This is just like my taste, like this is also why I didn't like Bridgerton Season 1 because I felt like they just went at it too quickly and there wasn't enough buildup for me to feel invested in the relationship.

Meanwhile, another sports story that I was really compelled by despite it being less overtly gay was Challengers because they did build up this story between the three characters and the tension doesn't even get released via physical intimacy on screen, but I don't know, it was way sexier to me than "Heated Rivalry."

I know that's a hot take, but to wrap up this point, as one of Neville's survey participants said, notably a bisexual young adult, "What I enjoy about slash is what I love about any nice love story with characters I like.

I love Kirk and Spock for the same reason.

I love Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy together."

- Interesting.

- Fascinating.

- To "Heated Rivalry's" credit, I get how it can generate wide appeal as a story.

If you've been in or are currently in which in that case my condolences, but if you know what it's like to be in a situationship that you wish would turn into a whirlwind committed romance, then yes, "Heated Rivalry" will appeal like regardless of gender or sexuality.

"Heated Rivalry" also explores like the forbidden relationship trope that is common and beloved in romance fiction.

I mean I'd say the reason why the ship Kanthony from Bridgeton Season 2 triumphed over the other relationships in the show was because of their forbidden love story.

They had these social barriers that inhibited their romance and also the actors had amazing chemistry.

The other part of the appeal is that the men are figuratively and literally written by women.

As characters, they're the kind of heroes we would like to see in any romance, whether that be straight or gay.

Storrie and Williams mentioned that the show appeals to women because they get to see men being communicative and when a clip of them saying this was shared on Instagram, the reel got over 159,000 likes.

A 22-year-old named Phoebe put it in more explicit words for Cosmopolitan.

"In a way, Shane and Ilya both appeal to women's desire for a more idealized man.

They're handsome, they invest in their physical fitness, they're successful, they're also sensitive and vulnerable.

In order to confront their feelings for each other, they're forced to confront the constructs of masculinity and realize how confining they are in a way straight men don't have to.

Seeing that on screen fulfills some sort of dream for women who want more emotional depth and maturity from the men in their lives."

Also, when Storrie and Williams were talking about communication, another thought I kept having was like, they do play characters with relatively equal roles in society.

I mean, Williams' character Shane is I think supposed to be a quarter Asian in the story 'cause mom is half, Ilya is a Russian immigrant, so not totally the same in terms of you know, social standing, but along gender lines for sure they're equal.

In a straight relationship at least traditionally, women are expected to caretake, they're expected to be the communicators, have the most emotional maturity, et cetera.

Of course, same sex relationships can still have power imbalances and that's made obvious to me with the other relationship in the show, Kip and Scott, in which Scott is wealthier and the closeted one.

So he holds more power over the terms of the relationship, at least until episode four.

As I said, I've not finished the show so I'm not sure if that shifts.

Bottom line, I think that gay and queer men deserve more nuance and shouldn't be treated as a monolith.

So I don't agree with this oversimplification of gay relationships, but I think for a number of straight women, they know this inherently, but when they're engaging with this media, they fixate so heavily on that lack of gendered power imbalance as a fantasy because that is like a more personal thing that they experience and this is in line with how many women in general try

to escape their political realities through fiction.

Constance Penley notes in relation to Kirk and Spock fan fiction, it is far from incidental that women have chosen to write their erotic stories about a couple living in a fully automated world in which there will never be fights over who has to scrub the tub, take care of the kids, cook or do the laundry.

Julia Carrie Wong notes a similar appeal for "Heated Rivalry."

"It doesn't hurt that Shane and Ilya are wealthy enough that almost all domestic labor is taken care of, offscreen presumably by well compensated housekeepers, interior designers and stylists.

When these characters cook for each other, the implications are strictly emotional."

- You looked in the mail?

- You wanna make me a tuna meal?

- That Russian goddamn.

(transition beeps and hisses) - When it comes to the actual acts of intimacy, the explicit ones, I think to go back to the this alienation idea, women are able to enjoy the kinkier power play in "Heated Rivalry" without thinking of what kind of implications they have outside the bedroom.

This reminds me of the Sabrina Carpenter album cover controversy last year in which she was depicted with this like out of frame man's hand holding onto her hair.

I think a lot of the women who rallied against that, they know instinctively that there can be a primal pleasure from someone grabbing your hair.

That's not an abnormal thing to like as a woman, but they can't divorce the image from like the out of bedroom context of someone, a man, asserting their physical strength over a woman.

- You're just kind of using this satire in a way that's still putting women down.

- At the same time, this kind of politically correct tiptoeing in modern straight erotica means that a lot of the sexual acts are pretty vanilla and that can be boring for women who have kinkier appetites to watch.

As one late twenties bisexual woman complained to Neville, straight SEM has "Too many floral metaphors and soulful gazes, not enough raunchy stuff."

In contrast, Suzanne Jung has pointed out that gay male SEM allows for exploring scenes of dominance and submission and even violence in a safe environment over equal male bodies, which have "Never been constructed as sites of subordination in the way that female bodies have."

This obviously relies on a lot of assumptions and it raises the fact that non-consensual violence exists in the gay community as well.

Once again, not trying to condone anything, just explaining the myriad of reasons why women enjoy gay SEM.

There's also just the very simple reason that taboos are erotic and it can be a taboo to watch something you're not supposed to in this case, to watch men getting it on as a woman.

Lucy Neville sums it up.

"It is the sex we don't get to see.

It is the sex we never get to have.

Georges Bataille argues that eroticism is wedded to this idea of transgression, claiming that what we find erotic is inherently disruptive and disorderly and this is what brings about the feeling of excitement.

We like to look at the things we are not meant to see."

Over the last like 10 minutes or so, I kept bringing up that there's a lot of assumptions being made, right?

There's a lot of nuance that's collapsing in some female audience members understanding of gay male relationships, and I think it's this reason that has led to certain people criticizing women's obsession with "Heated Rivalry" overall.

(upbeat music) I mean, is it problematic?

Whether or not it's a bad thing for women to watch gay SEM?

In my opinion, as I always say on this channel or have been starting to say lately, (text clacking) I think it really depends on the individual person and how they're engaging with it.

I mean, the fact that women are exploring their sexuality and branching out of heteronormativity, those are probably good things.

According to Neville's research, a lot of women experience gay SEM as their first spark of arousal.

This kind of sexual awakening can be important for women and in a world where women are policed so much all the time, a lot of our problems with sexuality do stem from the patriarchy.

So I totally understand the argument that women should have agency to explore their tastes and interests as long as it's, you know, legal and not hurting anyone.

But at the same time, I think we should all be aware of how we're externalizing those interests.

Are we crossing any boundaries in the process?

The way that a lot of fans speak of Williams and Storrie is pretty infantalizing, and it kind of feeds back into the babygirlification phenomenon we witnessed a few years ago, where fans will refer to grown men as baby girls and protect them in this maternal way.

- Renee, you were so right. He is so baby girl.

- I know, that's what I said.

He is so baby girl.

- Me, I'm I'm a baby girl.

- Which I don't have a real problem with this, but I think that the mindset that a man is a baby bird that we must protect is partially how a lot of male predators end up getting away with committing misogynistic crimes and why women continue to be held to higher standards in comparison.

Essentially it reinforces this dynamic that a woman is a mother and a man is a baby.

I also think it's bad when it leads to harassing actors and overstepping into their private lives.

Last month, François Arnaud, the only openly queer actor on the show, by the way, he's bisexual, was facing online harassment because he and Connor Storrie were photographed at the airport together, which spurred dating rumors and upset a bunch of fans, who ship Storrie and Williams in real life.

I saw on Twitter that a bunch of these fans were referring to Arnaud as a pedo because he's 40 and Storrie is 25.

Like it gets to a point, you know, and it's painfully ironic that once again, Arnaud is the only openly queer actor on this gay hockey show, and he was getting groomer allegations, which is the type of narrative that's been pitched by homophobes against queer men for centuries.

There's a cognitive dissonance there, right?

How can you claim to support gayness but only through this really narrow minded fictional lens?

Granted, I mostly see this behavior from young people.

I think as you get older you understand more the boundaries between a character and an actor.

Also to say, I think it's fine to support a fictional gay couple, but we also have to make sure that support transcends fiction, especially as I think we'll be getting more gay media in the future, as I'm sure studios are now viewing it as a very profitable market.

Speaking of if anyone with money is listening, I've been waiting for a Song of Achilles adaptation for like over 10 years, so let's get to that please.

- Please, please.

- I think Eli Cugini made a great point for Dazed Magazine.

"As for whether women like the show too much allow me to pull rank as a bisexual man for a minute.

I don't care, I'm not concerned about women finding a deliberately erotic drama erotic.

Congratulations to both me and women. The sex is fun.

I fundamentally do not fear women's desire, whether it be for gay men, specifically, for male vulnerability or just for eroticism.

It's how people act that matters, not what they want.

I do have concerns about the treatment of the show's actors and how that emboldens the routine sexual harassment of queer men and the homophobic cruelty directed towards queer men who don't fit shiny sanitized ideals of gayness.

But while some of this stems from majority female fan culture, it's a convenient fiction to target the straight woman fan as a homophobic fetishist, not least because many of the shows female fans are queer.

Multiple New York City lesbian venues have marathoned the show.

Last week, Janelle James, Storrie's co-presenter at the Actors Awards was asked an uncomfortable invasive question on the red carpet about 'What goes through her head when she looks at Storrie now that she's seen those scenes in Heated Rivalry.'

That question wasn't asked by a female journalist.

It was asked by Marc Malkin, a Variety senior editor and openly gay man."

- I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about his excellent Russian accent that he does.

I'm thinking about his characterization.

I'm thinking that he is adorable and he looks like a leading man and I'm excited to see where he goes next.

- Yeah, the media tends to sensationalize things all the time, and what Cugini brings up is true.

Many female fans are queer themselves, so the way they interact with the show is going to be different from the way a straight person interacts with the show and even then straight women are going to be engaging at different levels, but it's a convenient and click-baity headline to be like women are fetishizing gay men.

But in the end, that media framing ends up actually being harmful to gay liberation as well by trying to pit women and gay men against each other.

And honestly, while there are definitely problems, these are generally like two groups of marginalized people that normally get along.

I mean, here's an uplifting research finding.

Lucy Neville found that, "While it may be the taboo element of MLM SEM that initially draws some women to it, what we then see is often a conscious decision to act to remove these taboos going forward."

One respondent told her, "I started out with this thought that there were tops and bottoms and they were totally concrete and I pretty much fetishized homosexuality, but as I learned more and understood the reality of relationships, sexuality, and the issues of gender, that all changed.

This community is very open in talking about current issues regarding sexuality and gender, as well as the potential pitfalls with misunderstandings."

with misunderstandings." Some of you might be like, Mina, aren't you participating in this sensationalism a bit by creating a video about it?

And I'm biased towards my own agenda, right?

But I think that these conversations are still great to have because there's a lot to say about gay representation and women's desire, and it's exciting that these conversations are entering the mainstream public sphere at all, especially in such a conservative time, but I just don't like to see both gay men and women get berated in the process.

Meanwhile, the "Heated Rivalry" coverage of straight male audiences is actually very positive.

Kathryn VanArendonk celebrates the show for teaching straight men vulnerability and introducing them to queer issues.

She writes for Vulture, "TikTok has multiple straight men react options and they all follow the same formula.

The dudes begin the viewing with a sense of skepticism, or at the very least some uncertainty.

They're not entirely sure how to talk about what they're seeing, but instead of remaining in squeamish discomfort, these dudes go on a journey parallel to the one Shane and Ilya experience.

After initial jokes, their demeanor shifts, they start to clutch things and celebrate."

- Hey, kiss them. Yeah, yeah!

National TV you talking about.

- Like of course straight men watching the show are celebrated, but straight women are chastised, of fucking course.

I mean, I get there's a difference because we're under the assumption that straight women are always fetishizing these men by nature of being attracted to men and straight men can never fetishize because they're not attracted to men.

So I understand why people think that way, but I'm hoping that through this video we can start to recognize that there's so many reasons to like gay romance media regardless of your gender or orientation.

(upbeat music) Another argument I've seen is whether women should even be allowed to write gay stories because women can never really understand what it's like to be a gay man.

So how can they accurately write that experience?

Well, "Heated Rivalry" is based on a book written by Rachel Reid and when the show first came out, people were investigating her sexuality to see if she had the right to write stories, and I did like her response to all the commentary because she seems to be pretty self-aware.

She told Out magazine, "I don't think that the people that I'm attracted to at this stage in my life gives me like any kind of credibility to write about gay men or bisexual men.

I would not ever like try to use my sexuality as a way of being like, 'See, I have the right to write these books' because I don't think that's how it works.

It's like you have to just be sensitive and thoughtful when you approach these books or whatever you're writing."

I have no skin in this discourse personally.

I mean, I haven't read the "Heated Rivalry" book series, so I can't say whether or not Rachel Reid's books are respectful to the community.

I'm also not a gay man, so I don't think I'm in the position to judge her work along those lines anyway, but in Lucy Neville's sample research interviewing men who sleep with men, she found that 73% are aware of slash written by women in general and very few actually find it problematic or appropriating.

She notes that while many find it amusing and or badly written, chick flicky, cliched and cheesy are all words that they used.

Some of them also do enjoy it, noting that, "Women appear to take the time on the characterization and offer more rounded characters."

Most of her interviewees also felt that this could have a positive impact on wider society because it helps break down overrepresentation of straightness in the media.

I think there's something to be said though that a lot of women writers insert heteronormative values into gay stories.

For example, there tends to be a lot of emphasis on monogamy, penetrative sex, losing your virginity and marriage as this happy fairytale now that these can't be important for gay men, but the literature skews to favor these plot points, which also coincidentally happen to be very relevant in straight romance literature.

Neville concludes this mainstreaming dilutes much of the initial gay politics that called for sexual liberation and the eradication of traditional constructions of gender.

In terms of gay fiction, Flegal and Roth argue that such substitutions literalize the "I'm just like you" argument, simply replacing heterosexual narratives with a homosexual version while simultaneously erasing both women and gayness in a seemingly queer text.

Oof mic drop.

As I said, these themes are prevalent in romance fiction in general though most straight romances do end up with marriage being the happily ever after, and often in them the men are depicted as these strong masculine guys who are so chivalrous while the women are depicted as like quite feminine.

So this can be alienating for some straight women readers as well.

It may just be a genre problem more than anything else, but I think also the frustration with women writing queer stories comes from the fact that there are so many gay writers out there who don't get deserved credit, similar to how there are gay actors, who don't get the same opportunities as straight actors.

I'm reminded of Andrea Long Chu's criticism of Hanya Yanagihara's famous novel, "A Little Life," which I've never read because it's like an 800 page book chronicling gay male trauma.

- Girl, I'm fighting for my (audio beeps) life.

I need another break. I need another break.

- I don't know, I just haven't really been in the mood to hunker down for that one.

But Long Chu accuses Yanagihara of romanticizing gay suffering in her works and mining it for pathos.

In her critique, she also addresses the authorship issue.

She writes, "When A Little Life was first published, the novelist, Garth Greenwell declared it the most ambitious chronicle of the social and emotional lives of gay men to have emerged for many years, praising a Yanagihara for writing a novel about queer suffering that was about AIDS only in spirit.

This was a curious claim for several reasons.

First, many of the novel's characters, including Willem and Jude, fail to identify as gay in the conventional sense.

Second, Yanagihara herself is not gay, though she says she perfunctorily slept with women at Smith College.

Now, perhaps the great gay novel should move beyond the strictures of identity politics.

Yanagihara has stubbornly defended her 'right to write about whatever I want, God forbid, that only gay men should write gay men let a hundred flowers bloom.

But if a white author were to write a novel with Asian American protagonists who, while resistant to identifying as Asian American, nonetheless inhabited in unmistakably Asian American milieu, it might occur to us to ask why.'"

I think what Long Chu is saying in her piece is that it's not so much that people shouldn't be allowed to write another perspective, but that it would just be better if more people with that lived experience shaped the mainstream dialogue.

And it is a weird common trope in particularly gay fan fiction where the characters won't declare queerness outright.

Instead, you know, Brad and Paul will fall in love, but Brad is not gay.

He's just attracted to Paul and Paul is the only one for him.

And I think that's a weird thing in these stories.

It may serve some of them, but in a lot of cases it feels like exploiting gay love through erasure of gay identity.

But at the same time, you know, Garth Greenwell is a queer male writer, and if he or any gay man was positively affected by, or saw themselves through Yanagihara's novel, then who might deny that?

Just from what I've read and my own personal philosophies, to me it really matters more how and why you're doing something instead of what it is being done.

Director of "Heated Rivalry," Jacob Tierney made the same point.

Women are allowed to write about men, they're allowed to write about gay men.

The question should be how are they writing about us?

Is it with empathy? Is it with allyship?

Is it with kindness?

Why are we looking for enemies here instead of looking for allies?

TV critic, Michelle Ganim noted in the NPR show, it's been a minute that while he personally found "A Little Life" fetishizing, he didn't feel the same way about "Heated Rivalry" - [Michel] With "Heated Rivalry," I feel like the bar you know, has shifted because this is a positive story.

Bury your gays is a trope, where characters on television that are queer end up dying and the bury your gays trope is still alive and well, as we saw with shows like, you know, even "Killing Eve" that had a very passionate queer fan base.

So it's refreshing to me to see this story.

I also just want to mention that the creator and the director of this show, Jacob Tierney is a gay man and I feel like he was the perfect person to adapt this material from his sort of point of view, and he was able to do that while still being super faithful to the book, which the fans obviously really appreciate.

- I think the difficult element of authenticity and representation discourse is that people have different tastes and they want different things out of their media, even if they're part of the same community.

I remember I actually was a "Crazy Rich Asians" hater when it first came out.

I'd only seen it once and I forgot why it specifically didn't resonate with me.

But I think if I watch it again now, I would like it more.

I think maybe I just had like very specific expectations of how the Asian American experience should be portrayed and part of that frustration I had leaving the theater was that I knew this was literally the only Hollywood Asian romcom.

If there were a hundred others, then maybe I wouldn't be looking to be seen by this film in this specific way, but this was the only one we were getting.

And also to note, I went to the theater with my Singaporean and Chinese Indonesian friends and they were like full on crying.

They loved it so much and they found that it really spoke to them.

My opinion was valid, but theirs was also.

And so I think the problem with making these sweeping generalizations and trying to figure out what's problematic and who's right and who's wrong, it just gets so messy.

One show is not going to capture the universal gay experience and that's okay, but it's also okay to be frustrated that this is the gay show of the decade and it's not at all close to your own experience.

And it was written by a woman.

I mean, Jordan Firstman went viral for criticizing the show as being non-representative of his experience.

And as I said, he walked it back after getting cyber bullied, which I don't think is fair that he got cyber bullied.

Just like how, I don't think it's fair that François Arnaud was harassed for hanging out with Connor Storrie.

If you love the show, then I think it's also the viewer's responsibility to show up for actual queer men in real life, or at least hear them out in good faith.

But François Arnaud responded to Firstman's initial comments, and I liked what he had to say.

"I don't believe in a monolithic experience.

I don't think there's anything wrong with Firstman's show being about scene-y LA guys.

I just don't think that's what our show is about.

Our show is not about my experience either.

I can still relate to it.

Again, two things can be true.

This show can still be authentic and important for some people.

And also I think there's a fair desire to create shows that go beyond the coming out narrative and delve into out queer life, which does look different and is underrepresented in the media.

And I think that as straight women consumers, it's important to see value in both kinds of stories if you want to truly be an ally.

- And this is my best friend, Valentina, she's an ally.

Talk Valentina.

- Ally.

- The fact of the matter is that women are a really powerful consumer demographic.

As I said at the beginning, a 2024 study from UCLA has found that women are the most engaged audience with their viewership exceeding their population share for a nine of the top 10 shows ranked by both total minutes viewed and household ratings.

Women therefore have the potential to shape the media that we consume.

And if straight women are to be true allies, they should join the call for better representation instead of positioning themselves in opposition to gay critique of the show.

Firstman's comments don't mean that the show is bad and that you can't enjoy it.

Oh, he also did say some crazy things about how if the actors in the show were gay, they should come out and say it.

So I don't excuse that, but I think that he had valuable critiques in the spirit of wanting more for his community and that's commendable.

(upbeat music) The fact of the matter is that we are on a conservative backslide and just as another example, I have lesbian friends who are advised by their agents that their screenplay, which is about a lesbian romance, should be put on the back burner during this current administration.

It's just really disheartening.

And according to reports, 33% of all LGBTQ characters on TV in 2025 will not be returning due to series cancellations.

Deadline further has stated in a year that saw diversity, equity, and inclusion programs take hits at several major studios, shows like HBO Max's "And Just Like That" Prime Video's "Harlem," Hulu's Mid-Century Modern and Netflix's "Heartstopper" are all over or coming to an end.

Even the making of "Heated Rivalry" had some hiccups.

Jacob Tierney has said that Hollywood execs suggested he hold off on showing explicit scenes until Season 2.

I mean our no later said that initial Hollywood notes included no kissing until episode five, which would totally shift what the show is.

Also, I'm sorry, like no kissing, are we back in the haze code?

(water pattering) (train horn blaring) So the fact that "Heated Rivalry" was able to get made in the way that Tierney wanted, granted he got it done in Canada.

- We've heard how studios south of the border were interested in Jacob's vision, but wanted to, shall we say tone it down.

Yeah, what, what? Exactly.

What's the point of that?

I greenlit this thing, I stood up to the Americans.

- I think this whole narrative feeds into hopecore, right?

Sophia Wilson Pelton said on Instagram - "Heated Rivalry" is literally bringing people back to like Obama levels of hope.

"Heated Rivalry" is saying love by Malcolm Moore.

"Heated Rivalry" is, dare I say, a pink pussy hat, "Heated Rivalry" is legalized gay, "Heated Rivalry" is gay is okay.

And that's why it's uniting a nation.

It's hearkening back to ancient texts.

- I think this is a major part of why I am not anti "Heated Rivalry," despite not personally loving it.

Like I really think looking back about how I was so harsh on Bridgerton Season 1, and I stand by the problems that I had with that season, but I didn't acknowledge the cultural effects of that show enough and how ultimately it will go down in history as one of the first most racially inclusive period shows, which is worth celebrating even if the writing was questionable.

With that said, liberal vibes can be a wonderful coping mechanism in this political climate, but in the past it hasn't led to that much tangible change.

The Broadway show Hamilton, for instance, which is sort of like the poster child of liberal hope, was later criticized for not reckoning with the reality that these founding fathers that play the main characters were racist, colonialist slave owners, and therefore the show didn't really address the racism that still exists in America today.

And some people thought that was irresponsible.

Also, its prohibitive Broadway ticket prices meant that it was mostly only accessible to upper middle class white audiences.

The positive thing is that the show helped usher in a new era of race conscious casting on Broadway.

But you know, is that enough? I don't know.

But I think what we can learn in this new era at the very least, is that it's not enough to just have representation.

We also have to be having these tough conversations and challenging ourselves to show up off our screens as well.

For the context of "Heated Rivalry," it's like how can allies recognize their privilege and assist in the fight to address the queer community's material needs and the very real violence and discrimination they face from the state?

How can we create more opportunities for queer actors and writers in Hollywood?

How can we create more opportunities for Asian actors?

I mean like this was the first time I've seen an actor of Asian descent get like the white boy of the month treatment.

Congrats to Hudson, and these are also actors that came outta nowhere.

Like this show is considered a risky endeavor and yet it took off.

And what can that tell us about the value of taking artistic chances and uplifting new talent?

Anyways, let me know what your thoughts are on "Heated Rivalry."

If you want to challenge anything I've said, I'm open to hearing it, of course, but that's all I have to say.

This is the end of the video.

I hope you have a lovely rest of your day and I'll see you next time.

Bye. (Mina kisses)

(upbeat music)