Aspiration Versus Authenticity in Fiction: Patriarchy and MM Romance

When Heartstopper came out, I had a few conversations with gay men who felt the series was inauthentic – that how the main characters approached their emotions was more akin to how someone in their mid-twenties or older who has engaged with psychotherapy might behave.

I could see their point, and it’s a tendency I’ve noticed through reading in that genre more widely. But it didn’t stop me from enjoying the series.​Now, in recent years, publishers and authors have increasingly hired authenticity readers to pay careful attention to tropes and language that could cause harm to people (often, but not always to marginalized groups).​There is much to like about this shift. Especially the act of listening carefully to what people in marginalized or undervalued groups have to say about how they are represented in fiction.

Sometimes they are called sensitivity reads, and while no name is perfect, a sensitivity read captures more closely the goal of these reads – to avoid doing harm.

Authenticity, meanwhile, makes a deeper claim: that unrealistic depictions of the world are inauthentic, with the implication that inauthentic = bad.

Authenticity in fiction: Not all unrealistic depictions cause harm

But the thing is, not all unrealistic depictions do harm. Some unrealistic depictions might be a form of social critique (e.g., depicting all owners of corporations as evil in a work of fiction). Relatedly, unrealistic depictions might be a form of wish fulfilment, describing what a better world could look like, instead of what is.

The key here is to look at the power relations. But sometimes there’s a rough horizontality to those power relations. This, I believe, is why the debates over MM romance and patriarchy have been so hot.

Gay men can and often do mobilize patriarchal privilege. Cishet women have no experience of being Othered as queer and of the stigma attached to that.

In a world where men subject women and other genders to violence every day, does it not make sense that other genders would fantasize about a category of men who aren’t plugged into patriarchy like cishet men, and project ways of men coming into contact with their emotions and making choices with their heart and their head?

​I like this quote by bell hooks:​

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

​Just maybe – fantasies about a category of men who haven’t been emotionally crippled by patriarchy may be one reason why this genre has become popular.

So I would drop the term “authentic” completely. Looking for authenticity in novels is a route that can ending reinforcing cultural conservatism and spokespeople for a certain identity who get to define what that identity looks like.

Aspirational fiction

As for fiction describing how the world “might be”, one colleague suggested the term “aspirational fiction” instead of “authentic fiction”. I believe YA fiction often leads in this department because of its social responsibility to model healthy relationships and tackle important themes.

The main characters in Heartstopper may behave like adults who have had therapy, but they are sometimes (not always!) modelling healthy ways of behaving and responding to emotions and situations.

Sensitivity and the frame of avoiding harm remains important, and this work needs to continue.

Representations that aren’t true to life can be healing and, if cultural anthropologists are wary of “authenticity” – and their job is to create true-to-life representations of settings and human experience, then it seems silly that fiction, whose role involves illuminating life and human experience, is promoting the concept.​​

Any thoughts? The discussion kicked off on Threads.