Read on Twitter
so I've been trying very hard not to tweet about the whole conversation that I've seen going on my timeline because I haven't been sure I had anything constructive to add to it
but I am continuing to see tweets along the lines of "we need to move away from publishing LGBTQA lit based on authors identity", "we should be having conversations about what kinds of queer books big publish not who is writing them" etc.
I will say that last year I did a lot of research into trans romance and one of the things that became very clear was that publishers in general and big publishers, in particular, were far more likely to buy trans romance novels from well established cis or cis presenting authors
And this is while also telling out trans authors that their trans romance novels are "too risky" or "won't sell" or "aren't what romance readers are looking for."
I do agree that very often conversations, particularly on SM, that should be about what types of queer books are getting published get conflated or boiled how the author may or may not identify and that's a problem.
I also agree that we shouldn't be creating a publishing industry where publishers pressure authors to reveal personal information so that publishers can cash in on that. Author identity shouldn't be another thing publishing gets to commodify.
but I think saying the identity of the author doesn't matter or has no place in conversations about LGBTQA lit is a problem until we get a point where trans authors are treated equally in the romance genre.
I say romance here because that's the genre I work in and can speak for but I very much doubt there is any genre were trans authors , particularly trans women and transfem authors, are treated the same as their cis or presumed cis counterparts even when writing very similar books
