By Theodore Boronkay
Queer romance is a compelling example of social progress’ circularity. Instead of an incline, a hill where we become more enlightened with every step, human development is a merry-go-round where we return to a previous era after a full revolution. As Catherine, River McIntryre’s friend in the New Adult novel, Man o’ War points out, “If we could culturally lose the concept of indoor plumbing, who’s to say we won’t return to a sex-based binary with gender roles in commercial lockdown?” However, when reading Nancy Garden’s YA book, Annie on My Mind (1982) where a cisgender lesbian romance shies away from sexuality, and then reading Cory McCarthy’s Man o’ War (2023), where a transgender couple’s romance is portrayed sensually, one could perceive a historical incline with queer NA/YA books becoming more liberated. However, queer teen novels are just “meeting the moment” in each generation by challenging expectations, the historical merry-go-round ever-rotating.
Some queer commentators view modern queer YA as more “enlightened” than what came before. For example, transgender book critic, James Frankie Thomas’s Paris Review article, “Ya of Yore: Annie on My Mind,” tackles queer representation in the lesbian YA novel. Though he “cannot discount the possibility that the book turns you gay,” Thomas criticizes Garden’s portrayal of lesbianism. He specifically criticizes the book for neutering the orientation and arguing that “as a vindication against sexual shame, Annie on My Mind sets the bar rather high.”
Granted, Annie on My Mind downplays sexual intimacy between the romantic leads, Liza and Annie. For example, in Chapter 7: “… our arms were around each other and Annie’s soft and gentle mouth was kissing mine. / When we did realize what was happening, we pulled away from each other.…”
Many sexual references use innuendos like “experiment,” and Annie and Liza’s affectionate moments treat the two as if they lack libido. Even in the novel’s intercourse scene, Thomas highlights that the “scene is written in the prose equivalent of soft focus,” with vague sexual descriptions, like a PG-13 sex scene where the most scandalous shot is someone’s navel.
Comparatively, the intercourse between Man o’ War’s romantic leads, River and Indy, is “Midwest High School Book Ban” pornographic (ironic, given that Annie on My Mind was the subject of a controversial book ban according to BookRiot’s article, “The Burning and Banning of an ANNIE ON MY MIND.”):
My hands brushed every inch of her, palms open on her nipples that were so sensitive her sounds grew wild and her knees clamped on my hips… I tugged away her unders, kissed her wide-open until her body rippled and arched… She came… unabashed and unbound.
Man o’ War’s sexual material isn’t “soft-focus” with references to orgasms, vaginal lubrication, and phalluses AKA “pork swords,” despite being aimed at YA readers. This could be the “vindication” that Thomas refers to in his Annie on My Mind review and exactly what Garden failed to accomplish. In other words, McCarthy has to look to the bottom of the metaphorical hill of YA progression to see Garden taking the first few steps. However, Thomas’s oversight is why Nancy Garden chose not to highlight the teenage lesbians’ sex lives.
Thomas specifically rejects Liza’s “Queerness Defense,” where Liza notes how “everyone [was] assuming that love had nothing to do with any of this….” Thomas concludes Garden thinks queer sexuality is obscene except as spiritually romantic, asking, “What if you don’t have an Annie in your life but still desire… to know what two girls do in bed?”
Though a good question, Nancy Garden wasn’t surrendering to heteronormativity, she was sabotaging it from within. Ms. Baxter, Liza’s school secretary, makes an important quote when learning of Annie and Liza’s intercourse in Liza’s teachers’ home, describing the house as a “place in which to indulge… in unnatural lusts.” Why is lesbianism an “unnatural lust?” Because the novel’s 20th-century America viewed homosexuality as aberrant to the “true” orientation, heterosexuality, and thus, pure queer teenage romance was impossible. Homosexuality was a flawed “carnal indulgence,” only existing at the margins of the sphere of heterosexuality.
As Liza’s ex-friend, Sally, declares, lesbianism “isn’t love, it’s immature, like a crush, or a sort of mental problem.” Homosexuality, in this novel, isn’t unnatural because it’s aromantic but aromantic because it’s supposedly unnatural. Thus, Liza isn’t placating homophobes by insisting she’s in love, she’s pulling her sexuality to the sphere’s center. Through Liza, Garden is asserting romance isn’t impossible between lesbians, challenging the pre-supposition that homosexuality is an aberration of heterosexuality, the “source” of intimacy. Liza puts it best by proclaiming to herself that she “‘love[s] Annie in ways [she] wouldn’t if [she] weren’t gay.’”
The historical merry-go-round has rotated considerably since Garden’s time, so McCarthy faces an America with different, but equally bigoted, beliefs about queer identity. Presently, queerness may be romantic if that romance is removed from queer libido, making queer love “symbolically straight.” Heteronormative sexuality, therefore, remains the source of “true” intimacy.
For example, when Indy joins River’s swim team, River dreads their horniness around Indy (oh, the not-at-all-awkward stage of life to be endu… enjoyed):
If Indy showed up, this… cohort was going to have a front row seat to my… affection… With Taylor [River’s former girlfriend], it had been such an escape. Mostly, we made a home on her bed and tangled in a way we couldn’t have possibly enjoyed at school…
River’s queerness and sexual passion go together, as Indy and River do, and both are essential to River’s self-discovery. Their town’s prejudice isn’t directed only at River’s trans identity but also at that identity’s effects on sexuality; thus, River’s sexuality fuels the queerphobia they face, and ignoring it reinforces that bigotry.
In a Los Angeles Review of Books article titled “Saying Something: Trans Characters in YA Fiction,” English professor Clarence Harlan Orsi highlights the biases of early YA transgender books from twenty years ago: “Nowhere is the culturally imposed pressure to be good more visible than in these characters’ neutered sexualities. They are allowed to have chaste romances, of course….”
River’s swim coach, Kerrig represents the neutering of queerness. Kerrig informs River they cannot join female swimmers in the locker room, claiming “there were complaints from the other girls about you flirting in there.” When pressed for information, Kerrig simply responds that River “can’t be like this.” Even flirting is forbidden, since it implies attraction, upsetting the status quo. River is expected to only be a queer person “deep down” at the spiritual level, so deep that uncomfortable questions about sex and transgenderism can’t reach it.
Orsi laments how, similarly, earlier transgender YA books “deny any connection between gendered embodiment and sexual pleasure.” The wall between the two, however, crumbles during Indy and River’s sex scene: “I left… this planet without losing sensation in… my own skin. / Euphoria. / And that’s why dysphoria was so aptly named. They were similar experiences, both a flight to a different realm of being… Indigo Waits made me feel euphoric.”
Sensuality and spirituality are co-dependent within the teens’ transgender bodies and their orgasms are just as much a religious experience for them as praying. River’s love exists through sexuality, not despite it; Liza and Annie weren’t allowed to be in love, while River and Indy aren’t allowed to be sexually attracted to one another while in love. This indicates a shift in queer YA with queer youths asserting their sexuality in loving relationships; rather than insisting upon their romantic feelings to counter stereotypes about “mere carnal lust,” Man o’ War’s queer teens must insist they’re sexual beings.
One rebuttal to this train of thought is that some sources on transgender YA indicate progress between the genre’s first novels and this decade’s literature, from chaste to unabashed. However, while the merry-go-round’s progress is a cycle, it is progress. By under-emphasizing transgender sexuality and highlighting gender identity instead, early transgender YA authors forced transphobic culture to focus more on undermining queer libido than on undermining trans identity alone. Thus, queer YA romance is revolutionary even when not going against the grain, working within its means to represent those who deserve representation.
Nevertheless, while future queer NA/YA fiction might become more explicit in the future, it will only do so as long as mainstream culture calls for queer teens to act like they’re in a PG-rated film. If the historical merry-go-round returns full circle to Nancy Garden’s 20th-century America, where “PG-love” is denied to queer youngsters, then queer NA/YA literature will respond with implicitly romantic couples. Queer activism doesn’t evolve, but adapts to the circumstances, and McCarthy isn’t more “open-minded” than Garden. Rather, both challenged ignorant beliefs about queerness with respective types of queer subversion. It’s not queers, but queerphobes who must get off the ride and enter the future queers already inhabit. As River says in response to Catherine, “And no matter what hat progress is wearing for the day, I will still be non-binary.”
Author Bio
T. R. Boronkay is an Emerson graduate student from Lawrenceville, NJ who’s working toward his MFA in Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing. He currently works as a Feature Writer for Page Turner Magazine, producing articles related to observations on the nuanced world of fiction writing. He plans on getting his epic YA science fantasy title, Ki: The Noble Lords published after graduating in May 2025 while keeping a sharp eye on job prospects from the publishing industry. In his spare time, he researches everything he can related to physics, chemistry, history, and mathematics. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Substack @trboronkay.
