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

[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.

[starlady]

You've heard of the "love trap", right? It's the (oh so technical) term for exactly this sort of thing in shoujo manga--namely, the idea that heterosexual relationships are inherently power unequal, and that a girl getting the guy ultimately necessitates her relinquishing her own agency. The argument is that this is why shoujo manga turned to homosexual relationships (creating the entire BL/yaoi genre) of both genders, because the invidious power dynamics aren't there in non-heterosexual relationships, and female readers can project themselves into a relationship where love isn't bought at the price of independence.

The irony here is that in BL, at least, the most invidious gender stereotypes and power inequalities are reproduced in the seme/uke relationship. So the squared circle just turns out to be a square? But I buy the theory as sound, anyway, though I think 98% of manga has a long way to go before it truly represents homosexuality as people in any country truly live it.

It's my own personal opinion that there are some similar things going on in slash, but I wouldn't say it's quite the same. YMMV.

[kaigou]

Hunh, my understanding of the love-trap (though I may have it confused with something else) is that predominantly, in Asian countries (especially Japan) the woman is expected to do all the work of 'catching' (trapping) the boy: she's expected to confess, expected to be available, expected to go the extra distance to make him inclined to marry her, stops short of proposing but sure overworks herself to get to that point. Even after proposal the rest of it's all up to her as well: the wedding, the afterwards, the kids, the raising of, etc. The amount of weight on a woman, even in modern Japan, is phenomenal when it comes to the burden she bears to gain/achieve a relationship, compared to what men are expected to carry. (No wonder Japanese women don't mind the notion of playing the dead fish in bed: for once, they're not the ones doing all the work!)

Reminds me of something CP said the other day, that a recent survey had shown that the amount of time a Japanese man spends, weekly, doing any kind of work/chores around the house had gone up by 300% in the past ten years. I said, well, how much work was the average Japanese man doing ten years ago?

CP: Apparently about one minute.
Me: Wow. Up to a whopping three minutes.
CP: Yeah. Probably consists of emptying the ashtray.

female readers can project themselves into a relationship where love isn't bought at the price of independence

Which is to say: yaoi, like western m/m fiction, really isn't all about the ghey. It's really about women, even if they're never named in the story. As Casey observed, it's kind of sad that to experience such freedom, even in fiction, we have to deny our own gender to get it.

[starlady]

I've only heard the term used w/r/t to manga, but that very much does not mean it doesn't have a more sociological application, too.

The amount of weight on a woman, even in modern Japan, is phenomenal when it comes to the burden she bears to gain/achieve a relationship, compared to what men are expected to carry.

Pretty much, yeah. Which is part of where the joke about women in Japan wanting to find a knight in shining armor, and then trap him with an "accidental" pregnancy, comes from.


As Casey observed, it's kind of sad that to experience such freedom, even in fiction, we have to deny our own gender to get it.

Completely. I do think, though, that this is where fantasy fiction in particular has a potential role to play, and why I'm particularly disappointed when women fantasy authors admit to experiencing the same sort of mental blocks.

[kaigou]

the joke about women in Japan wanting to find a knight in shining armor, and then trap him with an "accidental" pregnancy, comes from.

I think that so-called 'joke' is pretty much universal -- both as an object of ridicule, and as a genuine ploy some women play to tie a man down to obligate a man.