kaigou: organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. (3 fixing to get organized)
[personal profile] 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.

Date: 3 Dec 2009 04:50 pm (UTC)
branchandroot: oak against sky (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

whois

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