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]

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.