That last bit reminds me of a thesis/essay I found online (no idea where now, sadly!) that I scanned before moving on because it wasn't in the area I was focusing on for research. But it was basically arguing that the recent trends in Japanese popular literature (towards women being more interested in reading M/M stories) was a function of women seeking stories in which they could set themselves in one of the romantic roles (a common approach for pretty much all readers), but that in this case the lack of gender-based roles between two men meant that the woman-reader was able to read a romantic story without all the over-heavy layerings of her society's expectations. Like, having a job (or not), getting married, having children, the ticky-boxes, I guess.
Which is completely different from the US/Western world, where romance does not necessarily equate with "whole lotta social expectations coming down hard on the woman". Makes me suspect the Western-reader's interest in M/M romance is very different from the Japanese-reader's interest, which makes me wonder about the storytelling paths taken in each culture's respective written-for-female-audience M/M romance sub-genres.
Although that's mostly an academic musing in the back of my head, because there's a lot about the gender-issues in Japan that, well, bore me to death. Really. Or maybe it's not that so much as that I just find the strong gender-roles so... stullifying, perhaps? If not suffocating. Sometimes I wonder how anyone can put up with it.
Someone on my flist was passing along a news article, a few days ago, about a Japanese company that's hired a local stray cat as its stationmaster/mascot at one of its unmanned stations. One of the higher-ups was quoted as saying, "this cat is the only female in a managerial position."
Yeah, my jaw dropped. If I were a woman working for that company, I would not be pleased to read that. I'd be pretty offended, possibly, as well.
Which means I can get storytelling cross-cultural, because a lot of it's universal. It's aspects of the culture behind the story that leave me boggled. I just don't grok it, really, and I may never.
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Date: 4 Dec 2008 12:21 am (UTC)Which is completely different from the US/Western world, where romance does not necessarily equate with "whole lotta social expectations coming down hard on the woman". Makes me suspect the Western-reader's interest in M/M romance is very different from the Japanese-reader's interest, which makes me wonder about the storytelling paths taken in each culture's respective written-for-female-audience M/M romance sub-genres.
Although that's mostly an academic musing in the back of my head, because there's a lot about the gender-issues in Japan that, well, bore me to death. Really. Or maybe it's not that so much as that I just find the strong gender-roles so... stullifying, perhaps? If not suffocating. Sometimes I wonder how anyone can put up with it.
Someone on my flist was passing along a news article, a few days ago, about a Japanese company that's hired a local stray cat as its stationmaster/mascot at one of its unmanned stations. One of the higher-ups was quoted as saying, "this cat is the only female in a managerial position."
Yeah, my jaw dropped. If I were a woman working for that company, I would not be pleased to read that. I'd be pretty offended, possibly, as well.
Which means I can get storytelling cross-cultural, because a lot of it's universal. It's aspects of the culture behind the story that leave me boggled. I just don't grok it, really, and I may never.
Eh, well!