Those of you who know me or follow my daily ramblings on Facebook etc. will know me to be the most positive and optimistic of men. For some months however, there has been a disturbance in the force which troubles me. I can feel the school teacher in me rising up and warming up my teacher voice to deliver a scolding.

Many of us have been disturbed by the most recent of global events. Ludicrous politicians don’t scare me but the society that elects them does. Nationally things are no better and as a society I fear that we’ve dumbed down our expectations, our aspirations and even our common sense. Am I here to discuss politics? No, not this time. What I do want to address is the same mentality in our precious m/m writing community.

We are losing our way in a fog of rights and freedoms. We follow fashions and whims blindly and to put it bluntly, we’re in danger of going the way of the Roman Empire, rushing headlong into a critical mass of whimsical irresponsible behaviour. We are going to implode in our own decadence.

Now that I’ve pushed your blood pressure up a few notches, let me explain. As authors, hopefully our first need is to write the best stories that we can. The second need is to have those stories read by as many others as possible. Since finding this amazing community I’ve met some awesome people. I love our ability to raise each other up. We support blossoming talent and encourage each other without any bad taste of jealously or competition.

More and more however, we are giving space to the old vices. Recent dramas in our little world are all varieties of avarice, gluttony or lust. We need to defend ourselves against reckless or even avaricious publishers. We must support our peers when they fall victim to plagiarists, serial grumpy reviewers and catfishers.

If we are to be taken seriously then we must behave professionally.

As authors we all play at least two roles. We write, edit and publish the story but then we become promoters. These days the author needs to engage with his or her readers and we do that mostly through social media. We use this vehicle in two ways. Easiest is the direct advertising of each new title. Secondly and perhaps more important is the need to develop and promote the brand. That brand is you! Many of us buy books within the genre because we know the authors. We buy into that brand because KNOW them, we LIKE them and we FOLLOW them.

This brings me to a very important observation. Some of you will nod sagely at this while others will be reaching for the blood pressure medication.

For our community of writers, social media and perhaps Facebook in particular is our workplace. In this open, shared work space, we interact with each other,  and with our readers. There are times when it appears as if behaviour on social media is more akin to the school playground than it is to the workplace. Dramas, bullying, petty squabbles and bad manners have become the staple of daily life online. This is our workplace and yet our behaviour in it is often irresponsible, even shameful. Another similarity with the school playground is the denial of responsibility when things go wrong. “It wasn’t me sir it was him sir!”

Whether in our homes or in our workplaces we create rules which we hope will apply to all members and protect each of them through any difficulty. Do we always get it right? No, of course we don’t! Now imagine that you have an organisation with 1.8 million members? They upload 300 million pictures per day. Every 60 seconds of every day they post 510,000 comments, update 293,000 statuses and add 136,000 photos. That is the reality of Facebook. They try to manage all that relying upon a set of rules plus a high level of personal responsibility. They have created a vast opportunity which allows us to interact in a way that as children we could never have imagined. It is their space which we get free use of and yet we take it completely for granted. We post stuff which we would never post in a real workplace but then we complain when they slap us on the wrist for it. Get real people. We are adults and we need to start behaving like adults or the community will be destroyed.

While I am on a roll here, I need to get one more social media issue off my chest.

We choose to write m/m fiction. some of it is romantic, some is sexy and some is deeply erotic. I love it all! Hopefully you all know what a fine ass looks like? I am also sure that everyone has a pretty good idea what a hard cock looks like? You are all intelligent enough to work out how they might fit together. Do you really need hundreds of graphic images to show how it works?

As a gay man in this amazing community I am very much in a minority. I sometimes however, feel as though I’ve spent 40 years fighting for equality and inclusion, only to find myself in a group who sexualise and even fetishise gay men by leering over images of us having sex! If I were to post images of women being penetrated by men there would be uproar. The same people who complain about the use of scantily clad women draped over flashy cars in commercials, seem to have no qualms about posting images of naked, even rampant gay men, every day.

If Facebook really is our workplace then we need to need to start thinking about what is NSFW! That you might be posting on a private page is irrelevant. You are still sexualising gay men. Does it sell books? Probably, but then scantily clad women sell new cars too. We were all incensed by Trumps misogynist behaviour. Did you know that there is an antonym of that word which is misandry?

Let me be very clear. I am no prude and I am against all forms of imposed censorship. I have never and will never report anyone for posting inappropriate images. I firmly believe that freedom and responsibility are inseparable bedfellows and we need to educate for both.

There are enough people outside of our precious community who would celebrate our demise. We need to resist that by appearing strong, united and professional. Lets start tidying up the workplace and at least give the outward appearance of being responsible adults. Of course we know that we are all as mad as a box of frogs but lets just keep that between us.

T.J. Masters is a UK based author whose books are all available from Dreamspinner Press