21
So, I read a lot of gay (m/m) romance, and have for about a decade.
I prefer it to het romance as it bypasses a lot of the misogynistic tropes that are in that genre (the dominant male/submissive female, every woman wanting to have babies etc). Yes, there are still many books with alpha males and similar issues, but I try to avoid those.
I obviously steer WELL clear of mpreg (shudder).
In the last year or two I've noticed a sharp increase in the number of trans characters. It feels like every author includes a trans or enby side character these days. I have also seen a lot of sissy fetish/trans woman books popping up in the gay romance section, which... umm... seems inaccurate according to TRA's own logic, but obviously makes a lot of sense from our perspective.
I started a book the other day and in the first 2 pages, there was a pregnant 'they' and one character asked the MC about a person they were interested in and actually asked 'what are their pronouns'. To a gay MC. I stopped reading at that point. The characters were in mid-20s. I mean, is this actually how anyone in the real world talks?
Has anyone else noticed this?