Three Letters on the Subject of Homosexuality in the Sime/Gen Universe

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Title:	Three Letters on the Subject of Homosexuality in the Sime/Gen Universe
Creator:	Linda Frankel and Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Date(s):	1979
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Sime~Gen
Topic:	Sime~Gen, Starsky & Hutch, homosexuality, fiction writing
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Three Letters on the Subject of Homosexuality in the Sime/Gen Universe were three letters printed in Ambrov Zeor #8 in 1979.

The first letter was a letter of comment by Linda Frankel. The second letter was Jacqueline Lichtenberg's response. Linda is the author of the third letter.

At the time of this letter exchange, "Unto Zeor, Forever" had not been published.

The Starsky & Hutch story mentioned is probably Orhuen Obbligato or Fighting for Duo.

Also see the discussion/meta The Great Gay Channel Controversy.

The First Letter (Linda Frankel)

I've hesitated before writing you this letter, what decided me was my respect for you as an SF writer and as an ST-Darkover fan extraordinaire. I don't want to think negatively of you if I can possibly avoid it. I recently read HOUSE OF ZEOR. I had not done so until now because the blurb led me to believe that it was the conventional after-the-bomb saga. Then I discovered that many Darkover fans were also Sime enthusiasts. I felt that I had made an error that required redress.

Your novel was both excellent and disappointing at once. This is an entirely personal reaction. The concept of transfer was exciting to me, as it involves a symbiosis that could be a model for a new type of human relationship. I felt this was something that must be explored fully and that it was a very important discovery.

On the other hand, I am a menhiedrin (to use the Darkovan term). As a gay individual, the fact that your characters were homophobic didn't bother me (Homophobia will always exist) so much as your own consistent refusal to allow any legitimate role for alternative sexuality in your universe. The statement by Klyd that it's biologically impossible for a channel to be homosexual is dubious to say the least. While some gays exhibit hormone imbalance, this doesn't explain the vast majority who don't display any physical abnormalities. The basis for sexual preference is not biological. The cause is unknown. In addition, your detailed explanation of why there is no sexual element in the relationship between channel and Companion reads like a defense against the enemy. I don't question the substance of your explanation, I only wonder why it had to be included. What if there were a homosexual channel or Companion? Would that be so terrible?

Despite the fact that I find the general concept of the Sime series intriguing, it is more than disconcerting to see one's sexuality condemned as worse than murder! I understand how a lone homosexual among the Simes might become psychologically marked by such an experience—the way Dyan Ardais of Darkover becomes marked by his experiences (see my story on Dyan, "Betrayer and Betrayed" in STARSTONE 2) but your homosexual character was a grotesque caricature for which one could have no sympathy.

You "convinced" MZB that THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR "should be written". For that I can only thank you. I don't expect your universe to be identical to MZB's. That would be ludicrous. I would never presume to dictate to a writer no matter how much I might disagree with either the concept or presentation of a work. I merely thought I ought to relay my views to you even though I may not be the first to express them. Please believe that I'm very sorry that I can't in conscience be a Sime fan. I would like to be one.

The Second Letter (Jacqueline Lichtenberg)

Thank you for your letter — it is the first of its type I've received...I ask you to consider that HoZ was written about 6 years ago on premises I conceived in my teens over twenty years ago! It does not' represent my current thinking, and in fact doesn't even represent my thinking as of the time I wrote it. As a result of my first pre-publication showing of HoZ to MZB, I was led to investigate the phenomenon of homosexuality in human psychology.

Until I wrote HoZ the word had only a dictionary definition for me. It honestly never occurred to me as a teenager that people could be sexually attracted to others of the same sex — and this attitude is still deeper in my thinking than I really like to admit considering the world as it is today. It rather horrifies me, but it is still there. Witness: this last weekend Carol Lynn and Debbie Goldstein, the eds/publishers of Kraith Collected, were here. The first advance copy of UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER was also here, and they read it. First thing they spotted was an error I had passed over no less than 10 times during the course of putting that book through publication — in the glossary I define Lortuen:

Lortuen: a condition of profound and virtually unbreakable transfer dependency reinforced by both psychological and physical sexual love relationship between a male Sime and a female Gen who are matchmates. [Between a female Sime and a male Gen, the relationship is called torluen. Between the same sex, it is called orhuen.)

Now to me that does not imply that there is any sexual component to the orhuen relationship. However, my fans immediately point out that most people take to mean that there is. They brought me a Starsky & Hutch story in which Starsky goes through changeover and Hutch establishes creating an orhuen, and the essence of the story revolves around Hutch loathing himself for being sexually raped by Starsky (or seducing him, he can't decide which).

I pointed to the definition and declaimed that it is clearly stated there is no sexual component to orhuen — and they said there was. My error was semantic. To me, the statement "between members of the same sex" deletes all connotations of sexual love and/or passion between the two! It was completely subconscious and though I had thought I had weeded that out of me, there it was again! And in print! Oy veh!

That you can't have a homosexual channel doesn't imply that there aren't perfectl fine renSimes who are gay. That they can't survive in Klyd's time does not mean that methods of survival can't be found later. Narvoon was put into HoZ when M2B read a draft and pointed out that I was implying a sexual relationship between Klyd and Valleroy when I had no such intentions, and I merely wanted to state that sexuality had nothing whatever to do with their emotional dynamics. That is a basic premise of the Sime universe—that there can be total emotional intimacy between two people who do not find themselves sexually attracted to one another—and it will be a recurring theme of my work. I just can't swallow Freud's attitude that every motivation leads back into sexual motivations, and they are basically sick. I see sex—and emotional intimacy—as essentially healthy manifestations of human psychology. In fact, I just today drafted a premise for a whole new series of novels using a new form of emotional intimacy without any sexual overtones. It's not that I don't want to deal with sexual overtones — it's just that they are irrelevant to certain situations. As an sf writer, the point I'm trying to make is that it is POSSIBLE to have emotional intimacy without sex. The people who have gotten this point find it thrilling and refreshing. Most readers, however, just can't see the point at all. Well — you can't please everyone. At any rate, since writing HoZ, I have done the equivalent of a master's degree in psychology, and I hope in the course of that I've become a better writer. I think I've come to understand homosexuality better — but though I was certain of that last week, this week I am very dubious because of that error in the phrasing of the definition of lortuen. In UNTO, I deal with a lortuen between a male Farris channel, Digen Farris, and a female Gen who is a super donor and end up with an orhuen between Digen and another character illustrating how while the lortuen attracts the pair after a transfer, the orhuen actively repells them from one another {if it is two males or two females.) Having read this in draft, Jean Lorrah has been trying to convince me to delete it from the book so that they do not repel each other electrostatically after a transfer. She keeps asking hairy questions, probing for the reasons why you can't have a gay channel—I think she's going to make me write a book about a gay channel' I suspect I'll have to invent a new category of locked-dependency between Sime and Donor of same sex, which is sexually consummated. In order to do that convincingly, I'll have to work a lot on my stubborn subconscious that insists there just can't be sexual attraction between two people of the same sex. Just because it's outside my experience doesn't mean it can't happen. MZB has suggested that my huge blankness in and around this subject might be due to psychological repressions. Certainly, I have some whoppers lurking down there somewhere. I have decided, consciously at least, that it just isn't normal to be unaware of the sex appeal of one's own sex. how long it will take for that decision to work its way down to where it will make a real difference in my thought processes I don't know. But I suspect that if you'll take the trouble to read more of my work, over the years, you will find that the basic premises of the Sime universe don't really conflict with your own emotional response patterns — it's just Klyd and Valleroy you don't care for. HoZ, as a first novel, wasn't intended to display every nook and cranny, every wrinkle and complexity of the Sime universe premises. Take Darkover, for example — and compare LANDFALL to HERITAGE! You can't do it all in one book.

az has been publishing some running commentary from the readers on homosexuality and feminism in the Sime series and the concepts are beginning to find a place for themselves in the universe. Drop in again in a few years, and perhaps you *ill find some changes to your liking. Or stick with us and help build a universe. I never mean anything I write to be offensive to anyone — frightening, revolting, yes, but not offensive. Perhaps you can prevent future errors if you have the patience and the inclination.

The Third Letter (Linda Frankel)

I was very glad to receive your reply. It raised a number of interesting points. Upon crotocos, of Freud's hyper-sexualization of human psychology is well taken. I have several close friends of the opposite sex myself. The constructions insensitive people (both gay and straight) put on such relationships never cease to amaze me. Without a label or category, they are totally lost. Relationships don't come prepackaged, any more than individuals can be standardized. Your new series sounds like it will stir a bit of healthy controversy.

As for HOUSE OF ZEOR, I never said I disliked Klyd and Hugh Valleroy. I have no objections whatsoever to them or their relationship. As a matter of fact, I recall mentioning in my letter that I was intrigued by the empathy involved in transfer as exemplified by Klyd and Valleroy. The fact that they were not sexually involved made the two men more complex and therefore more interesting.

Your admission of psychological ambiguity on the subject of homosexuality touched me. I appreciate your honesty. Since the publication of Dr. George Weinberg's SOCIETY AND THE HEALTHY HOMOSEXUAL, recognition of his thesis that homophobia is a neurotic disorder has been slow in coming to the general public. Please accept my congratulations for having made so much progress.

Other Responses

Marion Zimmer Bradley comments in a letter to Ambrov Zeor #9, and includes her comments on homosexuality and krilian photography:

I wonder perhaps if some difference in electromagnetic fields might cast light on homosexuality? I remember that we were discussing the "why" of homosexuality, the myth that homosexual men cannot function with women, etc., and it occurred to me that the normal reaction of a strongly conditioned heterosexual male to the approach of another male is revulsion; whether this is a cultural or biological pattern, physical or sociological, is moot even among psychiatrists, but I would really like to see kirlian photographs made of ordinary heterosexual men and women touched by the opposite sex and then their own, and then attempt to get similar photographs made of homosexuals reacting to their own and opposite sex. Who knows, perhaps what makes a homosexual is something in his personal electromagnetic field which is capable of attracting rather than repelling? Maybe some day we will test for sexual compatibility to see if the chemistry or electricity between two individuals works, instead of with psychological profiles and subjective ideas about what people THINK they want...

Jacqueline Lichtenberg writes another letter to Ambrov Zeor #9, and it is addressed to Jean Lorrah -- an excerpt:

I laughed hysterically over your speculations about gay Simes. No, I don't want to delete the static effect of the orhuen — honestly I don't. It does exist — what it implies, God alone knows and he ain't tellin'. Actually it's not a "static" effect (since that means a stationary charge). It's more of a magnetodynamic effect, something like the repulsion of two inductance coils wound in opposite directions. Walter Breen would probably know better than anyone how and why this repulsion in orhuen operates. I think he once asked if anyone had researched the ida/pingala directions in homosexuals — I never got an answer to that question, but when the time comes I suppose I will run across some book or other that will answer the question. If a homosexual (of either sex) does have reversed ida/pingala current directions, then obviously, the orhuen would not have the static-repulsion post effect and would include a sexual attraction effect (provided one partner were the reverse of the other)—in other words you would, by definition, have a LORTUEN between two people of the SAME SEX—not an orhuen at all. By definition!... Regarding homosexuals—it's a very complex issue. Homosexuality, I have decided for the present, is a SYMPTOM, not a cause. Like a stuffy nose-it can be anything from a mild allergy to pneumonia, or simply the result of crying, perfectly natural and not pathological at all. For the most part, I consider the existence of gay people as a paean to the human spirit — for despite crushing psychological conditions, they are still able to reach out for contact with another human being. But there are also gay people who are as sane or saner than anyone else, whose gayness is not an affliction — probably the result of taking incarnations of opposite sexuality too close together for the reversal to be complete — and the soul no doubt has good reasons for doing this. The ideal human state is the nonsexual balance — but of course that brings all dynamism to a halt. But there are many people around whose sexuality is dual, tipping as easily in one direction as the other. Question: do their ida/pingala currents reverse? Or what?