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Actually, I think it has something to do with our periods and moon cycles and blood and stuff. Can I write for Esquire now?

Jill

vampire-picture-hot

Uh… what?

“Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men,” Stephen Marche writes in Esquire. “Not all young straight women, of course, but many, if not most, of them.”

He says consider the subtext of the relationship between Bella, the young heroine of the “Twilight” series, and the boy vampire Edward, to whom she is attracted “because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her.” Marche explains:

““Twilight’s” fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that’s the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Sex that’s dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving. In the bedroom, we want to have one foot in the 21st century and another in the 19th.”

Just, no.

42 thoughts on Actually, I think it has something to do with our periods and moon cycles and blood and stuff. Can I write for Esquire now?

  1. wait…what? because Edward is sometimes identified with “feminine” descriptors, that makes him gay? i guess that’s why he is so attracted to Bella, huh. and sorry, no. straight women don’t want romantic relationships with gay men.

  4. I thought the vampire appeal was exactly the opposite, the thrill of dangerous sex. I tend to see this sort of vampire novel (Rice and the good old horror ones are quite different) as a way for young women to work out the threat of rape, particularly date rape in a way that is less threatening. The vampire is dangerous, he can harm you. But, not everyone who is more physically powerful than you will use that to abuse you. The nonconsensual vampire feeding is the metaphorical equivalent of rape. Young women want a way to work out the notion of fear of their partner (in reality from rape, in these novels bloodsucking) while also working out how they love men (or vampires) who behave as they should.

  6. Can I take a moment to ask why menstruation is not really talked about in vampire books? I mean, of course Twilight et al. doesn’t mention it, but I think I read it mentioned once in the Sookie Stackhouse books. Seems to me like that time of the month would be be the best time to have a vampire around as a lover. Did any of Rice’s books talk about it?

  7. Unsupported social-psychology-type articles like this reveal so much more about the people who write them than they do about the supposed trend in question… he might as well be saying, “I’ve been having these weird dreams for years and years, all about sexually-curious-yet-vulnerable young girls throwing themselves at tall, distant, pallid gay men in evening wear — and I never knew what to make of them, and everybody I ever told seemed really, really creeped out. Then I saw all these middle schoolers walking around the mall with those Twilight books, and I caught a couple of those oh-so-clever parallels in True Blood, and I knew I was onto something!”

    Sometimes we’re not thinking what you’re thinking, Stephen.

  8. @Beth
    S.P. Somtow’s book Vampire Junction from th 1980s does bring menstruation into it, as well as what happens with a thousand year old vampire trapped in the body of a pre-adolescent castrati. It’s kind of bizarre.

    Yeah, the dude from Esquire needs to pick up a few books on literary theory re: vampires. Gah.

  11. “Can I take a moment to ask why menstruation is not really talked about in vampire books? I mean, of course Twilight et al. doesn’t mention it […]”

    Probably because a lot of the books used to be written with a male audience in mind, if not by a male author? I’ve seen it pop up at least once or twice, though, in older (’80s, early ’90s) short stories. I half suspect Twilight doesn’t mention it because Meyers had to pick between giving the vampire a lot more self-control, exiling the vampire from the heroine’s side 25% of the time, or pretending that having periods is for losers.

  12. @Beth
    There was one Ann Rice book where Lestat went down on a nun (consensually) when she was on her period. It’s been years since I read it, so I don’t remember which, but the scene has stuck with me.

  15. Just… wow. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

    Personally, I read vampire novels because I want to have sex with men who have long hair and silly over-the-top outfits. Gay doesn’t come into it at all. Then again, I’m one of those ‘goth girls’ who are scary-weird and obviously I read horror novels because I want to kill someone, making me Not Esquire Reader Girlfriend Material.

    I’m not entirely sure this guy is even trying to make sense.

  16. “I don’t know about you guys, but if I was doing it with a vampire I’d definitely practice period suppression.”

    zomg unexpected breakthrough bleeds!

  17. From my perspective, if Mr. Marche wanted to talk about Yaoi, then he should talk about Yaoi. Even then, from what I have read in forum discussions about Yaoi fandom is that many women like to be invested more purely in the relationship in the story rather than be encouraged to identify personally with one of the characters~or so my guess goes.

    It’s certainly not that women like having romantic relationships with gay men?! I mean, at some point romance involves getting laid, right? So is rape involved? Coercive circumstances? What?

    Lastly, there are really three types of vampires in fiction–straight up monster, urban fantasy protagonist, and romantic antagonist. Obviously these categories all overlap some, but I do want to ask this:

    Is Edward a vampire? Is Twilight a vampire novel/movie? Does Mr. Marche *really* want to use Twilight as the basis for discussion about vampires?

  20. On one hand, I think he has some of it right, with the non-threatening-sexuality. Edward gets to be sexy /and/ non-threatening, because of the whole celibacy kink thing, and that’s very attractive to thirteen year old girls who get freaked because they don’t feel that they’re ready for sex and boys/friends/culture/whatever are trying to push them into it. I’d argue that’s also why the girls who are going googly eyed over Orlando Bloom in sixth grade graduate to Johnny Depp by eighth grade: Bloom is a nice, safe, almost androgynous form of sexy (and who, me, personal experience? What do you mean, personal experience? *slinks away*).

    On the other hand: WTF????????

  22. “Even then, from what I have read in forum discussions about Yaoi fandom is that many women like to be invested more purely in the relationship in the story rather than be encouraged to identify personally with one of the characters~or so my guess goes.”

    Not really, no. Yaoi is yoyeuristic sadism. You’ll notice that rape is the core of yaoi; the eros that fuels it, and that eros only gets more intense as the uke capitulates: its a power fantasy. However, since women dominating men is laughably unrealistic, in Japan at least, it uses two men to maintain verisimilitude so that the reader can form an emotional attachment, necessary for the schadenfreude that is the raison d’être. Indeed, the fact that a man is suffering enhances it through justified ressentiment.

    In this regard, it’s easy to see what the article writer was trying (and failing) to get at: Twilight is mostly the same as yaoi, except she has the audacity to use a woman, transforming sadism into sadomasochism (since Bella is both, by the nature of a reader stand-in, self and other without any interplay between the two). Seriously, read Breaking Dawn and try to deny that this is misery tourism.

    Just like all romance, pain is the point.

  23. “straight women don’t want romantic relationships with gay men.”

    I’m not exactly hetero, but I am a woman who does find many gay men attractive. I tend to find them attractive because they tend to not be behave like overly entitled, sexist arseholes like so many hetero. men. That being said: I haven’t got a fucking clue what my attraction to gay men has to do with Edward Cullen, or vampires in general.

  24. I don’t think there are enough drugs in the world that can make that make sense.
    Though, I am a huge,huge,huge Anita Blake fan so having a cadre of mostly long-haired,bi-sexual/hetero-flexible/queer vampires/shape shifters at my beck and call does seem quite nice. I want them cause they are hot,hot,hot, capable of being dangerous (unless you’re Anita Blake who could take out most of them at once), sensitive and deep. I’m pretty sure them being gay would take away most of my fun. So no, I don’t read Anita Blake b/c I am frustrated I can not have a relationship with a gay man. Also, I’m gonna need sources for his assertion that most women want to and like vampire stories for that reason.

  25. Also, did he just imply that most gay men are strange, beautiful and repulsed by women? Wow, throw in a couple of racial and ethnic stereotypes and some shots at disabled people and he might have had bingo.

  26. Umm, actually, I was really creeped out by Edward. I wasn’t attracted to him at all. I also had a ton of trouble relating to Bella.

    How does that fit into Mr. Marche’s world view? Oh that’s right, he says “some, if not most straight women,” before going on to wildly generalize.

  27. “Young girls want to have sex with gay men! and I proved it by reading this here book and interpreting Edward as gay! Prove me wrong, yo!”

  28. Pingback: Um « Y Shush?

  30. What Tracey said at #25.

    I just like beautiful men who are cultured and have a fantastic dress sense. (Lurid waistcoats included! 🙂 Or black leather — hello Angel and Spike!) The sense of danger that comes from “I could break you in two without half trying AND without realizing it (throes of passion, people, not veiled abuse) but I have the self control/presence of mind NOT to”. The depth of experience that comes with age coupled with the never aging bit. The whole sensuality of *biting*.

    Uhm….I’ll be in my bunk. 😉

    Tell me — does this guy even KNOW any women? That he could have, like, asked? ‘Cause I think his analysis is a teeny little bit off….

  31. @Sadinota:

    I would argue with the statement that female domination is “laughably unrealistic” to Japanese audiences. Femdom hentai exists, but it’s generally not consumed by women, probably because women prefer not to feel pressured to identify with the female character, especially when the female character is in a non-societally approved role. Also, yaoi allows sexual fantasies to women without violating cultural taboos against idependent female sexual agency.

    I agree that vampire romance stories and yaoi are both something of a sanitized, non-threatening presentation of female sexual fantasies involving power, but in my opinion the essential nature of the fantasies presented are different. Yaoi is about both men dominating and men being dominated, so it can enable dominant or submissive fantasies to straight female readers, but male-vampire-female-human stories are about men dominating and women being dominated, so they lack the pathos of distance that allows straight female readers to take sadistic pleasure in the action; their content is solely submissive. In this respect, I would think Twilight is closer to female-targeted S&M erotica then it is to yaoi.

  32. @Beth: Meyer did address in an interview (on her website there are lots of notes & outtakes) the question of what Edward does and/or would react when Bella was on her period. Her answer was that b/c it’s blood that was pumping/being pumped through the heart it was considered “dead blood” and that he too much of a gentlemen to ask about it.

  34. Okay…

    lemme set this straight, even though it’s been a zillion years since my classes on fertility, but…

    Menstraul blood is not viable blood. It’s sloughed off flesh, and there is no reason to think any vampire would want it.

    Okay, had to get that off the chest–someone’s wrong on the internets syndrome–but I’m sure most people here knows this, if not Meyer…

  35. Sadinotna, “Just like all romance, pain is the point.”
    Then I’m missing the point entirely.

    When I write romance, the conflict comes from outside the couple (usually male). While my guys may have pain, it is not the point and something to be gotten through. The trangressively happy ending is the point. (transgressive, because, as I said, the couple is usually male)

    I thought the reason for sexy vampires was just to enjoy hot people with a neck fixation to rival my own. Long hair and out-of-date froufrou clothes are just the icing.

    There’s a very famous (in vamp lit circles) story called “Some of your blood” by Theodore Sturgeon. It was quite controversial when it came out.

  36. Of course, for those of you hopelessly caught up in the pathetic prose and plot of Twilight, there is…

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470507438/ref=nosim/theplanningsh-20

    Product Description
    Can you resist the allure of Edward’s myriad charms—his ocher eyes and tousled hair, the cadence of his speech, his chiseled alabaster skin, and his gratuitous charm? Will you hunt surreptitiously and tolerate the ceaseless deluge in Forks to evade the sun and uphold the facade? Join Edward and Bella as you learn more than 600 vocabulary words to improve your score on the *SAT, ACT®, GED®, and SSAT® exams!

    BWAH!!!!
    ha
    ha
    ha

    /me plots the murder of NCLB…

  39. @Angelia Sparrow:

    Indeed, the pain does not have to be inflicted on one part of the lovers by the second; that is particular to certain types of romance. Romance in general however is about pain: the sub-genres are defined by what causes the pain* and if the pain ends rather than if pain is present. (urban fantasy romance is about supernatural-inflicted pain; historical romance satisfies our desire for pain that can only occur in more “primitive” societies, etc.) Indeed, some of the best romance involves anomalous pain: that which has no reason to occur, but does anyway. The fact that the characters cannot even be argued by a devil’s advocate to deserve their suffering increases the capacity for sadism so that we can enjoy the book more; Tragedies (where a character has caused its fate, even without knowledge) always force us to feel sympathy along with vital empathy, a great flaw in romance!

    *physical pain, without the context of love so vital for human suffering is called “torture porn,” because it pisses the point.

  40. Menstrual blood is still blood, albeit with endometrial tissue in it. Whether vampires would be interested depends on why vampires drink blood–the nutrients in it (which should still be present) or some mystical life-force thing (that’s a toss-up). Since vampires are fictional anyway, they could certainly react in different ways.

    Edward, as a good traditional vampire, would probably be disgusted by Bella’s unclean time.

    (Of all the disturbing subtext in Twilight, Edward as unattainable gay boyfriend for straight girls is one of the most ridiculous possible interpretations I can imagine.)

  41. Err this sort of bizarre gross unfounded generalization is much more up Details’s alley than Esquire’s, I’m rather surprised since they are typically good on most things.

  42. He’s using Twilight as his source? Really? REALLY? The worst “vampire” story ever? (I say “vampire” because those things are not vampires. Vampires. Do. Not. Sparkle. Among other things they do not do are: go out into the sun, hang around high schools except to find prey, fall in love with prey except as an aberration, consider people as anything but food. It’d be like falling in love with a cow… not bestiality, but actual romance “she’s so beautiful, I love her so much, we’re going to have a life together” falling in love.)

    Anyway. Dude, you MIGHT want to pick up a couple more vampire books NOT written by Meyers and her ilk before making sweeping, gross generalizations. (Gross in both senses of the term… ahahaha, I’m so punny.)

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