Pen-Names: Discretion or Cowardice?

Quick post today, as I'm wanting to write a certain amount of words before Monday, and blog posts don't count, unfortunately.

So, I've just been participating in a discussion on an m/m writer's forum about pen-names. I'd say, at a rough guess, that about 75% of the people posting there write their m/m fiction under a pen-name of some kind. Including me. Various reasons were given.

For example, I'm already a fairly well-known novelist of books for young adults and children. I write under a pen-name to separate my m/m work from my YA work, otherwise there would be nothing to stop my YA readers (many of whom are ten or under) from assuming that the stories published by DSP or Torquere (easily found in a Google search) were written for them. The implications there are sticky in more ways than one. I'd rather not read an email from a puzzled ten year old asking me to explain gay sex. I'd rather not read one from an homophobic parent of a ten year old (and it's stunning how many parents reveal heretofore unnoticed homophobic tendencies when it comes to their kids) asking me to drop dead. I'd definitely rather not get one from a large group of librarians who've decided to ban my YA work based on my lack of moral fibre, an all too real possibility in the US.

Other writers were teachers who knew that, despite discrimination laws, their jobs would be under threat if it was discovered that they wrote about sex at all, let alone gay sex. Still others had family members who feared for their jobs or businesses, and swore them to secrecy. One lady has a church group that she and her family love, and whom they rely on for many different kinds of support, but which they knew would eject them if they found out about her m/m writing.

It was when I got to the last example that I felt my mental gears grind to a halt. Because, although the author in question described her church group as being genuinely nice people, and used language like 'conservative' to describe them, it's clear that what that group must actually be is bigoted. Very bigoted. Anti-gay. Homophobic.

So this lady is someone who presumably believes in gay rights and abhors prejudice and bigotry, and yet she's happy for her family to associate and take comfort from a group of people who are teaching them that hating gay people and displaying hatred and rejection to those who believe in equal rights for gay people, is just A-Okay.

Huh?

The problem is that once you question this last example, you find yourself going back through all the other reasons - like the ones from people who fear that their jobs would be under threat, and my own excuse about not wanting kids to accidentally read work not meant for them...and suddenly it all seems a bit feeble. You start to wonder how the Hell society is ever going to evolve if people don't stand up and take that risk one day? Why anyone bothered to write discrimination laws if none of us trust them? If kids go ahead and read stories that depict gay sex despite all the warnings posted on them then it's not like the world will end, is it?

You find yourself thinking: we've got a Hell of a nerve writing m/m fiction with an attitude like that. Gay people who want to live anything approaching a real life don't get to come up with a pen-name and a bunch of excuses. They either come out and face all the hatred or they live a life of lies and repression. And I should know, because I'm bisexual, and I'm out in real life. So just what the Hell am I thinking with this pen-name stuff?

And the answer is...I don't know. But maybe I - and all the m/m authors out there - should think about this a little more.