Let me pretend, for the sake of illustration, that I am an androgynous being. I am neither female nor male and I have neither reproductive organs nor secondary sexual characteristics. From such a position I decide to write an erotic or romance novel and present it to a publisher. What path would I be lead down? Let me draw on my experiences to tell you a story. We shall call this hypothetical androgen 'Andy.'

So Andy writes its book and somehow manages to create something relatable and entertaining. Andy decides to publish. Going to writing blogs Andy finds that a male email address is best so it decides to be a he when submitting. He sends his book out and gets a reply from a business minded publisher who wishes to work with him. This publisher does a lot of market research and really tailors work to their audience. This publisher suggests a female pen name for Andy because female pen names sell better in this genre than male pen names. So now Andy is a she.

Her book is published and she is now encouraged to market it as much as possible on social media. Here she finds that a male talking about erotica and romance is seen as a gross pervert while a woman is seen as a sex maniac or porn star. If Andy presents as a male Andy will lose female fans and if Andy presents as a female Andy will receive countless flirty messages from those who think that a woman who writes about sex must want it all the time from anyone.

So Andy decides on female. Better a lot of spam than no messages at all right? Yet as Andy's popularity grows so do the number of messages and the amount of time it takes to filter through them. Advice gets missed and real fans/colleagues feel ignored. Then Andy finds a sneaky little trick. If Andy writes as a lesbian woman the "how you doing?" messages start to die down. They still come in but less frequently as many are put off by the unavailability of a lesbian. This seems great, even if the messages that still come in are increasingly offensive and disrespectful.

Unfortunately publishing opportunities start to diminish. There being a smaller market for lesbian erotica than for general erotica. So now Andy has to go back to the male email to present their work but this turns off lesbian publishers.

Next Andy finds that dominant women are intimidating to those PM senders and that the flirty messages a dominant woman does get are more respectful. It also opens up a new avenue of BDSM erotica which is a growing field. Except that BDSM erotica is preferred from the submissive pov than the dominants. So now Andy has to be a dominant woman and a submissive woman at the same time.

So Andy, in its attempt to follow the current of the market to sell the books it crafted originally out of its own interests has now become a dominant lesbian hermaphrodite with a penis for business and boobs for promotion. A sort of mashed together chimera of male and female, sub and dom, savvy sex positive marketer and cold, flirt ignoring business mogul.

Yet all hope is not lost for Andy. Our androgen is now a layered onion of personas and presentations that can be peeled, segment by segment into new characters for the next work to drag Andy through the cycle all over again.