quick question for those of you familiar

[kaigou]

...with yaoi-girls and/or (female) m/m fans. Of those you've known/met in the subculture who prefer the m/m and avoid the m/f, have any of them ever explained the reasoning behind their preference? Beyond just the younger version of "well, m/f is icky" or the lazier version of "I just don't like m/f". Anything more in-depth, more honest, more insightful?

Because the only explanations I've ever gotten amount to variations on those two, and that's not much substance when it comes to deconstructing what, exactly, is going on for readers with the preference.

Comments

[sharibet]

Coincidentally, I was just having a discussion about this with one of my best friends in RL. He's a recently-out gay man (we were actually dating for a while before he came out), and he was wondering about this as well.

He postulated that there was a strong vein of misogyny running through female fandom, which I couldn't entire deny. But specifically in relation to Japanese anime/manga, my feeling had to do with cultural stereotypes and portrayal of gender roles.

Basically, to North Americans, Australians, and Europeans (hereafter referred to as "us"), the stereotypical portrayals of male characters in Japanese pop culture are easier to understand and more sympathetic, since they track more closely to our ideals of masculinity and "heroic" male characters.

Many of the female characters in Japanese pop culture are more difficult for us to empathize with, since they're either conforming to the ideals of traditional Japanese womanhood--soft-spoken, deferential to men, self-sacrifing, and ever-cheerful, (ever notice that "good girls" immediately fall into the roles of serving food or tea to the male characters, even if the girls themselves are guests in the home of a male character?) or rebelling against the gender stereotype of the "good girl."

The rebel-female stereotypes most commonly-portrayed in anime/manga are:

1. The big-breasted, hard-drinking mature virago/cop/soldier (often, this character is supposed to be an American woman)
2. The loud, physically-violent hot-tempered adolescent girl
3. The sexy whore

(As a side-note, one of the reasons I love Seirei no Moribito so much is because Balsa's characterization is so refreshingly free of the usual offensive stereotypes applied to strong, capable women characters in a lot of anime & manga.)

As a reader, I'm willing to read almost any plot and any pairing, as long as it's well-done. I'm reading more m/m fanfiction right now because that's where the best writers in the fandom gravitate, it seems.

Anyhow, just my two cents' worth, based on what I've read and viewed. Your mileage may vary.

[kaigou]

Oh, I have a bundle of theories on what's going on under the surface -- I was just wondering if anyone who clearly marks a preference had ever expressed anything more articulate than the two incoherent replies I've gotten. Though I do agree that (for the most part) "that's where the best writers in the fandom gravitate", currently, but then, if they were gravitating to M/F or M/F/M or M/F/F or whatever, I'd follow right along. I'm not the kind to only stick to one type of pairing... and I'm just trying to get some kind of a coherent handle on those who do.

[ajnabi]

I don't know much/anything about it, so I can't really say -- but I am surprised to hear that one of the responses is that m/f is icky! because it seems like a lot of people find m/m to be the ickier thing. and i've gone through my own homophobic/internalized homophobia stages about this, too, and continue to in some ways (with my naivete, structured prejudice, and generally complicated feelings/reactions to and about sex).

[kaigou]

Yes, I'm sure my expression was something else while trying to process a young, self-identified straight girl telling me she preferred yaoi "because, y'know, M-F is just icky." I think all I managed was a, "no, I don't know." I'm still trying to process it, actually. Heh.

[morkeleb]

The "icky" thing is actually very common in younger yaoi fangirls -- those who haven't yet accepted their sexuality. They use M/M as a proxy to explore sex and relationships in a way that feels less immediate, because, well, they're not boys! So they have this screen of "it's not really about me, so it's safe to explore with" even though in fact it's very obvious it IS about them, seeing how so much yaoi has the uke so completely girlified that if he did have tits to go with his micro-cock everyone would scream misogyny.

But in M/F you have a real girl! who is all too often seen as competition for the desirable male character in which case HATE, or who sends an image the fangirl can't identify with therefore HATE, or to which she can identify too well and in ways she doesn't like! For example the relena hate in GW fandom and the sakura hate in naruto/sasuke fandom -- the girl gets with the hot guy! AND she is ordinary in a very immature-teenager way, and they don't like seeing their faults thrown back in their faces, no matter how realistic the character is, so they hate it on principle so they don't have to face what they could see of themselves in it.

Also, in M/F lemons the girl has... like... a *pussy* -- *like they do*. And they don't really know how it works yet, and it's kinda scary to explore that, and good girls don't want sex anyway so if they/the girl character does she must be a whore! So, using one of the male characters as tongs to handle the sexual vibes without touching them directly. (this also explains the often glaring lack of understanding of male anatomy and sexuality in so many stories, but there they care less since it's not about representing male sexuality well, it's about exploring female sexuality. Being inexact with the male stuff isn't as immediately problematic.)

I'm sure some young fans must find M/F icky because they're lesbians, but when a straight girl finds het icky that's often for a reason like that. Het feels too immediate. (maybe in some cases it's because they can't identify with any of the girls, but ... huh.) I don't know about the older fans; when I got older I turned toward bisexual polyamory so obviously I'm not a good example. XD;

[casey_valhalla]

Oh dear. You had to ask. I hope you don't mind that it's in first person, although I've had this conversation with fangirl friends who agreed that this was an underlying reason for their preference for m/m.

It stems from a rejection of heteronormativity by straight women who are not heteronormative. Basically, I dig guys, but I'm not interested in getting married and having babies. In a m/f romance, it's given that love leads to marriage leads to family, and that females naturally want this, and that 'suitable' males want it, too. If a woman doesn't, she's a slut; if a man doesn't, he's a hopeless bachelor case who only wants sex that the female will summarily reject. If you're a real-life female and you don't hold the love-->marriage-->family value set, it's really hard to identify with the women in these stories, or even the men.

In a m/m romance, however, there is no pressure from family, peers or society in general to get married and have children--partially because doing so is logistically and/or legally impossible, and partially because the societal norms and expectations of a m/m couple are vastly different and in some cases the complete reverse. Which isn't a good thing, but it serves to prove my point. In reading m/m romance, I can read my own romantic fantasy of having a healthy, loving, sexual relationship, in which both partners are equals, without the pressure or obligation of it being any more than that.

Of course this raises a lot of questions about why there can't be m/f pairings that accomplish the same thing; but as far as the mainstream media goes, the value set I outlined above is so deeply indoctrinated in books and movies and advertising that even in a story that attempted a non-heteronormative m/f pairing would be dismissed as the characters being in denial, and/or the heteronormative overtones would still be present even if only in my own mind, reading it. It's a sad thing, really, when the only way for a woman to escape the expectations of her gender is to remove it entirely from her romantic fantasies.

This is why I have a problem with 1) Mpreg, 2) any fics in which the m/m pairing gets married or otherwise goes domestic, and 3) ukes that are way too effeminate in looks and/or behavior.

The whole argument comes across as unfortunately self-misogynistic; but honestly, when I'm sitting here being bombarded with the materialistic twit females on reality shows and commercials where the girl talks about how she doesn't know when she's supposed to change the oil in her car--you can't really blame me for running full-tilt in the opposite direction.

[billie]

That makes an amazing lot of sense. I've ever been able to say what exactly it is that has me growing bored of/ annoyed with even the more well-written m/f pairings in many cases, but this is definitely one aspect.

I'll think on it during class, maybe I'll have some input of my own later. :)

[kaigou]

Oh dear. You had to ask.

Oh, but you know I love it when you answer!

It's a sad thing, really, when the only way for a woman to escape the expectations of her gender is to remove it entirely from her romantic fantasies.

Absolutely. I don't think most readers realize it consciously, and I think a fair number of authors don't realize it, either -- which is why so many of them are insistent that they're "allies to gay men" and/or "helping the gay cause" -- because they don't realize it's not really about gay men at all. (And it's also the reason I get somewhat frustrated with gay men who get irritated with M/M fiction on the grounds that it's not realistic; a few times I've wanted to snap, "maybe it's not all about you, buddy," though I wasn't entirely certain where that instinct originated, only that I knew it, somehow, to be undeniably true.

If you're a real-life female and you don't hold the love-->marriage-->family value set, it's really hard to identify with the women in these stories, or even the men.

This is one reason I adore Shelly Laurenston's later works, especially Pack Challenge, in which the female lead tells her lover, "no kids, no way, I'm not doing that white-picket fence crap," and he doesn't even fuss, just accepts it and is perfectly fine with that (especially having been somewhat ambivalent about it himself). More often than not, though, romantic plotlines assume that kids are the penultimate of the relationship dance, and after awhile... that really does get tiresome. I don't mind in M/M where the characters want kids, and I don't mind it overall, really. I mind it definitely when those last two steps are simply taken for granted.

[berrie]

I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Because when it's a m/m pairing, I don't have to be on guard.

M/m and f/f pairings don't come with the history of power imbalance that m/f pairings always have, for me. While I don't particularly enjoy reading incarnations where one of the m/m pairing has been 'feminized' into adopting a traditionally female role in a m/f partnership, even if that's the case, it's still not really a woman and thus I'm not invested in their gender treatment.

[kaigou]

I should've just sent an email right to you, Asuka & Casey, to get the most coherent responses, eh?

M/m and f/f pairings don't come with the history of power imbalance that m/f pairings always have, for me.

I actually didn't pinpoint that until I began fiddling with a plotline for an original piece, and CP asked why it had to be M/M. At first, all I could say was, "because it works better," and then started thinking about what I meant by that. It came down to the fact that if I had a woman as one-half of the pairing, then suddenly the relationship had a crapload of baggage tugging along with it, no matter how much I might try to unhook it. Even simple things like having the female character be stuck in a position where she had to stay at the home of the male character suddenly became fraught with all sorts of issues about dependence, and assumptions of how she'd be expected to 'pay' for it, and so on. With a male character, those might come into play but they're not automatic, and they're not even necessarily tied to sex -- while in contrast sometimes it seems as though every male-female interaction is grounded, somehow, in sexual relations -- real or potential.

[branchandroot]

*wry* All of the above. I've tracked this informally myself, for a while. When I find thoughtful answers they tend to cluster around "the male characters are better/more fun/more intresting" (which has it's problems as a generalization preconditioned by institutional misogyny, but is certainly statistically accurate and once that expectation is set even running into, let us say, Lisa and Lust won't change it; but consider the Roy/Ed v RoiAi, in FMA--when a strong and interesting woman does show up she does often get action); "distanced/less threatening/easier to experiment" (to be honest, this is a big element for me personally); and "less power imbalance" (which also has a lot of problems considering how the m/m pairs are actually written, which is often direly heteronormative and role-bound, but it's also true that having two characters who are culturally granted the power-positive charge to start with is part of what attracts readers and writers in the first place).

The less thoughtful responses do usually stop at "m/f is icky", which you will also very often see unthinkingly paired with "real gay people are icky" in the exact same fangirl, and sometimes even the same breath. I do suspect this is a sterling example of inculturation at work, wherein girls are not supposed to like/want sex and also gay people are bad.

[kaigou]

The less thoughtful responses do usually stop at "m/f is icky", which you will also very often see unthinkingly paired with "real gay people are icky" in the exact same fangirl, and sometimes even the same breath. I do suspect this is a sterling example of inculturation at work, wherein girls are not supposed to like/want sex and also gay people are bad.

I can't help but draw a line between this kind of bizarre seeming contradiction and the kind of romanticization I see going on in historical fiction, especially the kind with particularly problematic (for a modern minds) elements, like female-subjugation, slavery, paternalistic colonialism, and so on. Some of the fans of historical fiction/romance set in those times, from what I've seen in blog-discussions, will decline anything contemporary on the grounds that it's "not as much fun" or "not as interesting" or too-something (maybe too gritty, or too conflicted, I'm guessing, not sure), but are also steadfast on the point that reading about a historical time period in which the main characters own slaves doesn't mean that the reader likes/wants slavery, because slavery is BAD, mmkay.

It's a wish to romanticize but with a specific compartmentalization, to admit attraction for the dynamics created by the not-wanted element, but that you can't get that dynamic so easily if you don't include the unwanted element. Erm, if that doesn't make sense, it's because I'm getting grad-student reminder stuff in the other ear. Gah, I can't do this multi-tasking crap!

[ivoryandhorn]

In addition to all the reasons everyone else has been giving, I would argue that part of why so many people prefer m/m is because the relationships between male characters get so much more development and screentime. Even in fandoms with many female characters, they often exist in vacuums and are only important insofar as they relate to the men around them. Whereas the relationships between male characters are both much more common and also a lot more textured and have greater variety. I mean, look at Naruto and Sasuke -- he pledges to do anything in the world to save Sasuke from himself. There's just no real m/f equivalent to that, I think. Even though Sakura professes the same aim we expect that of her because pre-timeskip her most outstanding bit of characterization was that she had a crush on Sasuke. Naruto's motivation we know are his desire for family, desire to prove himself as Hokage, etc. The canon usually offers a lot more raw material to play with for m/m relationships than it does for m/f and definitely more than f/f.

[white_aster]

+1 to this. My thought exactly. I mean, yaoi and manga are Japanese-based, so all the canon female characters are drawn from that culture...and females fall into so few stereotypes there that it's just BORING to see the same character over and over and over. The guy characters have more freedom, more screentime, more actual plot and decisions to make, and thus are more interesting to me as characters who might like to interact with other characters in a sexual fashion. :shrugs:

[dogemperor]

The only thing I ever got resembling an explanation was, essentially, "Het is icky". That, or they didn't like the particular *female* who was being paired as much as the male (usually under grounds that the female was essentially too much of a pushover, or the female was "too annoying").

As an aside, this is something I've never quite understood. Especially in the GWing fandom, everyone gets paired with just about everyone else (yes, I've even seen 6xOtto and the rare 6xWalker; I tend to like the more unusual pairings) and I've never quite gotten the hatedom around the female characters in general. (I actually LIKED Noin, Relena did mature in time, and Sally was good folk. The only ones who gave me creeps were Une and Dorothy, and that was less because of their femininity and more over the fact they were bugfuck nuts in their own way.)

Then again, out of the three fandoms I really follow that are heavy on pairings, the primary m/m pairing tends to be selfcest (Mo No No Ke with Kusuriuri x Hyper, Breath of Fire IV with Ryu x Fou-lu), at least the BOF IV fandom doesn't get into holy wars over it (there, it really IS a matter of "het is icky" versus "yaoi is icky" versus "I don't like Mami because *I'D* rather be sleeping with Fou-lu, damnit"), and the three women that tend to be in the main het pairings have tended to be strong women (Noin, Mami, and Kayo respectively--and yes, Kayo does count, especially if you consider the strictures women in Edo-era Japan lived under who weren't nobles).

And for the record, I also tend to like both the het *and* yaoi pairings. I'm more of a fan of whom the person fits with, gender be damned :D (Probably why I tend to like selfcestuous ones too.)

[dogemperor]

And to continue the thought:

Honestly, I think Gundam Wing is the one fandom I've actually seen any sort of true "holy warring" about this in (and other Gundam fandoms to an extent as well).

With the BOF IV fandom, people who don't like FouMami usually don't have a thing against het pairings, but for some reason just don't like the pairing with Mami. (Probably the most vociferous opponent I've seen of that pairing is NOT a yaoi fan--actually despises yaoi; she essentially writes fanfic involving herself as a Relationship Sue with Fou-lu, and doesn't like *any* competition. She is honest about this, though.) The few I've seen opposed tend to oppose the relationship on the grounds of "Country girl and god-emperor would never work" or essentially thinking Mami is being a fangirl (and showing unrequited love).

Interestingly, I've also seen that identical argument against FouMami (the "Mami is being unrequited in love and Fou-lu doesn't care) used against 6x9 (usually far more strongly, and with implications that Noin is actually stalking Zechs). The main difference is that in the BOF fandom, typically those opposed to FouMami generally think Fou-lu doesn't care about emotional relationships with anyone.

(Admittedly, in the BOF fandom this is coloured by the knowledge that Mami does canonically die in an especially tragic manner--and one that does imply, IMHO, that they did have a relationship together. Specifically, Mami gets captured, tortured to the breaking point, and is used in a human sacrifice to power a "hex cannon" in an attempt to kill Fou-lu--because hex cannon "ammo" works better the closer the relationship between the "warhead" and the hexed (he ends up going insane and deciding to wipe out humanity on the grounds we're all bastards). In the manga version of it, in fact, it was such a tearjerker that a lot of Japanese FouRyu shippers stated they almost converted to FouMami through that arc alone.)

Those who don't like yaoi in the BOF fandom tend not to like yaoi pairings at all, and at the same time there are folks who do both FouMami *and* FouRyu (especially in Japan); I've even seen cases where FouMami and FouRyu ended up being combined (where Fou-lu is angsting over his relationship with Mami and feeling guilty over her death, and Ryu essentially takes him in for a comfort relationship--why yes, most FouRyu IS incredibly fluffy, why do you ask? :D) There also tends to be an emphasis on avoiding holy warring in that fandom, especially as (compared to Gundam fandom or even Mo No No Ke fandom in Japan) the fandom tends to be Small But Dedicated. :D

From what little debate I've ever seen in the Mo No No Ke fandom on who Kusuriuri is sleeping with, most arguments I've seen against KxK are on the same grounds against FouMami--Kusuriuri isn't going to be getting into a relationship with anyone. (Of course, a lot of those shippers are also KxH. Your mileage may vary.)

[kaigou]

I'll reply more later -- in the middle of bricklaying right now -- but I find it amusing that nearly all replies here have assumed I mean m/m within the context of fandom... and in fact I meant in general -- as in, including pseudo-gay-romance. "Pseudo" for the fact that it's gay romance written by (mostly) straight women, that is. So the particular quibbles of fandom, such as the fact that in both western and eastern media-based stories it's men who get the really fleshed-out character arcs and development, thus rendering those characters the most intriguing and potential-filled, doesn't really apply -- unless we're to argue that women writing m/m stories within original fic are just so acclimated/acculturated to "the most interesting stories have men at the center" that it renders, even for the author, all m/f pairings to be of less interest in contrast.

[kaigou]

There is absolutely no contest that Dorothy was bugfuck nuts, but when I rewatched, I realized just how much fun she is being bugfuck nuts. It really makes her last few episodes -- where she breaks down and you get a sudden total retconning of her entire motivation -- such a freaking cop-out. What's wrong with being bugfuck nuts for the sake of? We didn't get any of the male antagonists giving us the same crap... *cough* But anyway!

Okay, I thought I'd heard them all, but somehow 'selfcest' had gotten past me. *makes a note* I'm sure I'll be tested on that one.

I think the only reason you saw holy warring in GW was because the fandom really was that massive -- and was also coming into its own right as the internet itself really started to take off at least as a communication platform -- so you have what seems to be a dangerous combination of a lot of new-to-this-medium mixed with newly-entranced-by-story and add sun, atmosphere, and water, and you have weather! In this case, really bad weather. Other fandoms come close to pairing wars, but they're more like wars in the sense that the Greco-Turkish War was technically a war, if only thirty days long -- while the GW pairing wars were the freaking Hundred Years' War of the goddamn fandom world: lots more land to cover, lots more people involved, lots more noise being made, lots more attention paid.

But then, one of the reason (I surmise) the later wars in other fandoms haven't always burned so hot is because many GW fans have moved onto those other fandoms -- and remain disinclined and disinterested in ever having to go through that again. Although that's based mostly on the fact that anytime I've seen a pairing battle start to flare up, you can pretty much bet pizza money the first person to speak up and ask folks to calm the fuck down is going to close out their demand with, "I lived through the GW pairing wars, and believe me, I have NO INTEREST in going back, so cut it the hell out right NOW don't MAKE me come OVER THERE."

...and then the newbies get all hushed at the thought of facing down a True Veteran of Pairing Wars. Because everyone knows, those in the GW Pairing Wars took no names and took no prisoners, and let's not re-awaken the berserkers, shall we?

[mongrelheart]

Well, I'm hardly a member of the subculture; I can only speak about my own experience with being briefly fascinated by reading m/m stories. I think it had to do with the fact that, in my own life, I had personal knowledge and experience of what m/f and f/f interactions were like, whereas m/m was something exotic and mysterious and unknowable, and would always remain that way, me being an f.

As for females writing m/m, I think it's a way of escaping the limitations of the second-fiddle, always-centered-around-a-man roles that female characters are corralled into in so many stories. I think this leads to female authors who instead of remaking the female role so that she can be at the center, disavow femaleness, and make themselves over as male in their own stories. Which, the more I think about it, is actually very sad.

Sorry if this is a bit incoherent. I'm only recently figuring out what it is I think about all this.

[starlady]

I think this leads to female authors who instead of remaking the female role so that she can be at the center, disavow femaleness, and make themselves over as male in their own stories.

Sarah Monette has talked on her blog about essentially doing that exact same thing.

[white_aster]

I second a few of the reasons given above: guy characters being more interesting/complex in anime/manga settings, some of the young girl hangups about sex and distancing one's self while one experiments, lack of cultural gender role baggage allowing the characters more freedom, etc.

Also, as someone who likes the m/m and reads more of that than m/f, I find it kind of amusing that no one suggested what I consider the simplest answer: "because they find it hot(ter than the m/f)". Oh, it can be fed in by elements of mystery, the forbidden, safe space to explore sexuality, etc, but not always. Sometimes, on a physiological level, folks just find reading about m/m sex hotter than reading about m/f sex. Why? Hell if I know. Why do guys like lesbian porn? We've been trying to figure out what makes something sexually stimulating for millenia. :shrug:

[kaigou]

I don't deny that there's an element of the hawt in any romantic plotline -- else we wouldn't waste time on the sex scenes (to read or write) because that's where any hawtness is going to be concentrated to a greater degree, in the sense of distillation, that is. The problem is that to quantify, even qualify, personal estimations of 'hot' is almost impossible, and way beyond the scope of what I'm trying to figure out -- so I guess I'm taking "because I find it hot" as a fundamental default position, and then asking what else is in the mix.

Where the "I find it hot" fails, on some levels, is when the speaker is a straight woman: that's someone, I'd think, is pretty much hard-wired to find a man+woman sex-mix to be A Good Thing. I could understand a lesbian being uninterested in m/f, and seeing m/m as a curious fascination with the truly Other, but a het-woman declaring she doesn't like m/f at all, and only reads m/m... I think my brain kinda blinks on that, because it says to me that there must be something else going on in there.

We've been trying to figure out what makes something sexually stimulating for millenia. :shrug:

All the more reason to keep trying. Because it's like jump-rope for my brain, but without the annoying need for advil the next day while the muscles recover!

[nnayram.livejournal.com]

This whole thread was awesome to read. ^^ Thanks!

I became a yaoi fangirl in college, because I had a crush on a girl who wrote GW slash. *laugh* That aside, I like yuri/hentai/ecchi work as well. (May I recommend Claudine by Ikeda Riyoko? Different from the rest of the yuri out there and worth a re-read as well.)

So, to the point, on the reasoning behind the m/m stuff: 1)it was something out of the ordinary at the time, 2)there is a LOT of it available, so one never runs out of reading material, 3)it became amusing to see the lengths to which yaoi could get (have you seen the Micky Mouse/Tom doujinshi? anything by Sakurai Shushushu is a good laugh, too), 4)I happen to have a thing for long-haired males making love. Either with a female with a boys-cut or another male, or heck, several people, I don't really care. ^^ 5)The only decent SM work I have read happens to be m/m.

If that was more details than you were looking for or off-tangent, my apologies. *bows*

[kaigou]

the Micky Mouse/Tom doujinshi

Wow, and here I thought I'd seen it all with the Muppet Movie doujinshi. Hold on, I'll reply to the rest of your post once my brain has finished processing Mickey Mouse and... Tom. Uhm. Processing. Processing.

*explodes*

THANK YOU I DIDN'T NEED THAT PART OF MY CHILDHOOD ANYWAY OMFG.

*ded*

[(Anonymous)]

Any idea why I can't post to your journal? It just keeps telling me bad unicode.

[kaigou]

I have no idea. How about we start with who you are, which might help me at least narrow down where you're coming from.

[maire]

I've certainly very much enjoyed a reasonable amount of m/f and f/f writing, but I do tend to read a lot more m/m.

I've always vaguely assumed it goes along with my standard discomfort with being female -- one that a lot of women have.

I don't actually want to be a man (and I don't think I am a man) but I also don't feel entirely comfortable with being a woman, because so many of the stereotypes about that don't work for me or hurt me.

I know a lot less about the downsides of male stereotypes, because they don't hurt me personally, so if a piece of fiction doesn't include a woman, I don't have to confront my issues when I'm trying to relax.