yaoi
So it's been awhile now that I've become obsessed about this genre, with a selection of my favorite mangakas, male and female. (But by far mostly the latter.) Checking for updates now means I have to check back over what I do have, to avoid downloading scanlations twice... Thank you to everyone who does it, for all your hard work... I love you all - each and everyone of you!
During this time, I've been watching the effects of reading so muh yaoi/shonen-ai on my life. I have reached new heights of procrastination for sure, and am less driven to succeed and make art make art make art, in favour of read/collect/read/collect/ read/read/jerk off (!)read,read... I still wish I was a young gay asian guy, or at least young and gay, but I'm also glad I'm not anybody other than who I am, though I do wish my life was different at times... I have caught myself staring at guys alot more than usual, and sometimes I SWEAR all the guy pairs I see are gay couples. I sure like buttsex in fantasy but not so much in reality, really. I mean it takes so much effort and care, which usually gets left out of the mangas. I know it's about love when I'm reading it, but sometimes I just think about pain, shit and AIDS, really. Sometimes when reading the sex bits, I wonder about the effects on teenage girls's gender identity, not to mention sexuality. I mean that identity stuff is so malleable when you're young, and girls have enough negative messages/ pressures to disconnect from and reject their own bodies. I know I spent alot of my youth afraid of sex, while being pretty active, because I was more afraid of not being wanted. When I read BL that kind of gets forgotten, and I just get into this sex/love fog, and I enjoy most all of it. Even some of that sex/pain/torture etc, gets pretty raunchy. However, it's still hawt, and within that the qualities and range of fantasy are interesting to me, which is probably why I really only like porn by women anyways.
Sever
al months ago I read Saito Tamaki's essay on Otaku Sexuality in the anthology Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams, and it's made me think about female fantasy quite a bit. In it she describes the male otaku (which is japanese for home? btw) as feeling moe (which I will hereafter describe as gushing(!)), for particular characteristics of the desired object. The princess fighter's tits, for example. In contrast to this, female otakus tend to gush over situations, or 'phase moe' to quote Enomoto Nariko. The moment when the students realize they like each other, the moment when two men finally say 'I love you,' the time when they realize that they don't ever want to be with anyone else.
Saito goes on to talk in Lacanian terms, contrasting the male and female's attraction to a text. Males, she says, need to position themselves toward the desired object to feel attraction. (Aim the cock at...) Females, lacking the, ahem, signifier, take a more relative position to the characters and imagine themselves as both the uke and seme in turn, at the same time, etc. Because of this more diffuse positioning, women are more attuned to the subtle dynamics of interaction and feeling in fantasy relationships, and thus experience a much deeper attraction to the text.
My boyfriend takes issue with this, saying that it is because it is pure escapism, not penis envy. However, I think she has a point. I cannot deny the intensity of feeling that I get from reading yaoi, a warmth and heartbreak as well as being turned on that I never felt with erotica, (but did with certain english novels...) And it is not only the one or the other character that I gush over, but their feelings for each other.
Lately I've been thinking as well about power. It's obvious when it's a question of who's the uke, but in more general terms, sex when it's about power can be friken hawt, too. StarFighter by hamlet_machine is making me think about this. It is so FRIKEN HAWT, and it is about power but so not like Love Prism, which was a total turn-off. It seems like our understanding of power between two people is limited to power-over , rather than an entire galaxy of nuances in power-play. I'm sure that's what the BDSM communities are well aware of, and of the importance of trust and respect to ground it, but I have not had much experience there. Most of this has come vicariously through manga. It has become a way for me to explore this push-pull rather than in my own sex life, which is admittedly pretty conservative. I am not sure that this is a good thing. It sure makes SF smolder, though.
Perhaps being female in Japan doesn't allow for much free play of power between partners; perhaps women there are more attuned to it because of gender stereotyping. I can't comment on that one, really. My feminist upbringing gets confused with the infantalizing and rigidity of gender roles that seems to be a major part of being female in Japan. And yet there are amazing and strong female artists and writers that come from that country. (I don't know of many engineers or mathematicians, though.)
I do think it's a bit odd whenever there are female characters in a manga that they tend to be kind of extreme - hags, bitches, angels, or mamas, that the stereotypes tend to be kind of narrow, alongside the tragic abusers and the abandoners - female characters seem to be whatever it takes to get out of the way and get the boys together. Of course, that's not the only rule.
Saika Kunieda's women are a nice exception. Though her male characters still respond to them with a mix of fear and suspicion and exploit them for their own purposes, the women have some dimensionality and are following their own lives, which are not always threatening to the guys' relationships.
Whether or not it's a disruption, I do like having some female characters in yaoi. I prefer, however, that they be supportive and accepting of the male protagonists, though that may not make for much plot. It helps to balance out the disjuncture I feel when returning to my own life after reading a bunch. Like a bridge to carry the warm feelings and sexiness back into my body and life. Rather than wishing it was gay sex I was having. Or rough/humiliating sex, taking or being taken. It's a total turn off to think about that when a woman is involved - WAAY too close to many female's experience throughout history and around the globe. But it's damn sexy to think about it between men. I can be one or the other or both at once, and am implicated in neither. When it gets right down to it, it's just sexy to take control with pleasure and it's sexy to submit to it totally. And it's way more sexy to be doing it while young, male, gay, and asian. And in love. If this is the closest I get to that, so be it.
Much sexier than zombie MPRPG's. (What said boyfriend does while I'm on the couch moe-ing!)
art thanks to hamlet_machine
Saika Kuneida
Kiyota Ukiko
and hamlet_machine again
During this time, I've been watching the effects of reading so muh yaoi/shonen-ai on my life. I have reached new heights of procrastination for sure, and am less driven to succeed and make art make art make art, in favour of read/collect/read/collect/ read/read/jerk off (!)read,read... I still wish I was a young gay asian guy, or at least young and gay, but I'm also glad I'm not anybody other than who I am, though I do wish my life was different at times... I have caught myself staring at guys alot more than usual, and sometimes I SWEAR all the guy pairs I see are gay couples. I sure like buttsex in fantasy but not so much in reality, really. I mean it takes so much effort and care, which usually gets left out of the mangas. I know it's about love when I'm reading it, but sometimes I just think about pain, shit and AIDS, really. Sometimes when reading the sex bits, I wonder about the effects on teenage girls's gender identity, not to mention sexuality. I mean that identity stuff is so malleable when you're young, and girls have enough negative messages/ pressures to disconnect from and reject their own bodies. I know I spent alot of my youth afraid of sex, while being pretty active, because I was more afraid of not being wanted. When I read BL that kind of gets forgotten, and I just get into this sex/love fog, and I enjoy most all of it. Even some of that sex/pain/torture etc, gets pretty raunchy. However, it's still hawt, and within that the qualities and range of fantasy are interesting to me, which is probably why I really only like porn by women anyways.
Sever
al months ago I read Saito Tamaki's essay on Otaku Sexuality in the anthology Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams, and it's made me think about female fantasy quite a bit. In it she describes the male otaku (which is japanese for home? btw) as feeling moe (which I will hereafter describe as gushing(!)), for particular characteristics of the desired object. The princess fighter's tits, for example. In contrast to this, female otakus tend to gush over situations, or 'phase moe' to quote Enomoto Nariko. The moment when the students realize they like each other, the moment when two men finally say 'I love you,' the time when they realize that they don't ever want to be with anyone else.
Saito goes on to talk in Lacanian terms, contrasting the male and female's attraction to a text. Males, she says, need to position themselves toward the desired object to feel attraction. (Aim the cock at...) Females, lacking the, ahem, signifier, take a more relative position to the characters and imagine themselves as both the uke and seme in turn, at the same time, etc. Because of this more diffuse positioning, women are more attuned to the subtle dynamics of interaction and feeling in fantasy relationships, and thus experience a much deeper attraction to the text.
My boyfriend takes issue with this, saying that it is because it is pure escapism, not penis envy. However, I think she has a point. I cannot deny the intensity of feeling that I get from reading yaoi, a warmth and heartbreak as well as being turned on that I never felt with erotica, (but did with certain english novels...) And it is not only the one or the other character that I gush over, but their feelings for each other.
Lately I've been thinking as well about power. It's obvious when it's a question of who's the uke, but in more general terms, sex when it's about power can be friken hawt, too. StarFighter by hamlet_machine is making me think about this. It is so FRIKEN HAWT, and it is about power but so not like Love Prism, which was a total turn-off. It seems like our understanding of power between two people is limited to power-over , rather than an entire galaxy of nuances in power-play. I'm sure that's what the BDSM communities are well aware of, and of the importance of trust and respect to ground it, but I have not had much experience there. Most of this has come vicariously through manga. It has become a way for me to explore this push-pull rather than in my own sex life, which is admittedly pretty conservative. I am not sure that this is a good thing. It sure makes SF smolder, though.
Perhaps being female in Japan doesn't allow for much free play of power between partners; perhaps women there are more attuned to it because of gender stereotyping. I can't comment on that one, really. My feminist upbringing gets confused with the infantalizing and rigidity of gender roles that seems to be a major part of being female in Japan. And yet there are amazing and strong female artists and writers that come from that country. (I don't know of many engineers or mathematicians, though.)
I do think it's a bit odd whenever there are female characters in a manga that they tend to be kind of extreme - hags, bitches, angels, or mamas, that the stereotypes tend to be kind of narrow, alongside the tragic abusers and the abandoners - female characters seem to be whatever it takes to get out of the way and get the boys together. Of course, that's not the only rule.
Saika Kunieda's women are a nice exception. Though her male characters still respond to them with a mix of fear and suspicion and exploit them for their own purposes, the women have some dimensionality and are following their own lives, which are not always threatening to the guys' relationships.
Whether or not it's a disruption, I do like having some female characters in yaoi. I prefer, however, that they be supportive and accepting of the male protagonists, though that may not make for much plot. It helps to balance out the disjuncture I feel when returning to my own life after reading a bunch. Like a bridge to carry the warm feelings and sexiness back into my body and life. Rather than wishing it was gay sex I was having. Or rough/humiliating sex, taking or being taken. It's a total turn off to think about that when a woman is involved - WAAY too close to many female's experience throughout history and around the globe. But it's damn sexy to think about it between men. I can be one or the other or both at once, and am implicated in neither. When it gets right down to it, it's just sexy to take control with pleasure and it's sexy to submit to it totally. And it's way more sexy to be doing it while young, male, gay, and asian. And in love. If this is the closest I get to that, so be it.
Much sexier than zombie MPRPG's. (What said boyfriend does while I'm on the couch moe-ing!)
art thanks to hamlet_machine
Saika Kuneida
Kiyota Ukiko
and hamlet_machine again