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.
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Date: 3 Dec 2009 07:03 am (UTC)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.