Kind of get it. . . Kind of.

[zerl]

I said I moved because I didn't want to subject my fellow slashers to all my agitated ramblings. Er, looks like I lied. This post is pretty cranky and I think I'm being something of a man-hater and a heterosexist and. . . well. All in all. Not nice

Comments

[zerl]

Ah, I hadn't read this one. Thanks for the link!

And see, I had seen your post way back when, only, at the time I balked at the amount of text and quickly ran away.*g* Now I what you're saying's finally sinking in. Look what seven months of academic writing does to you... ^^;

And re the fetishizing of the Other and whether or not it's ethical--

Yeah, I think most of us have had a heart-to-heart with self at one point or other, and I'm at a place where I've decided I should feel as guilty about what I do as men who enjoy "lesbo" porn. *Exactly* that much, and no more.

I don't know, maybe it's a lame excuse.

At any rate, I still wonder, though, what it feels like to fetishize fixed sexual roles between two men, as most of my favorite yaoists seem to do. I think it's a totally valid fetish as fetishes go -- to repeat what you've said, it doesn't *have to* reflect anything of the fetishee (or the fetishizer, I guess, not really) in a "real" way -- but I still don't get it viscerally. Even now when I've sorta, kinda, understood how some men, sometimes, can "look" seme-ish or uke-ish.

[homasse]

One thing I was thinking about, reading what you said, was the idea of it being "fair" to have people switch off. I guess, too me, it doesn't seem too terribly odd an idea, so I started trying to think of why it's like that. The thing I can best come up with is that in some ways, it's an aspect of Western culture, going back to Ancient Greece--in Ancient Greece, men were expected to have a younger male lover...but adult men were always seme; uke was a sign of weakness and not being a complete male--being, in other words, female. And in some ways, that idea still persists, as well as the idea that you're not *really* gay unless you're the one getting done.

Also, it could some from the idea that men's main source of pleasure derives from penetration. By switching off, both people get a shot at getting off equally good 'real' orgasms.

I think, though, that assigning someone "seme" and "uke" fixedly has something to do with the idea of using them to create a womanless space to define women's sexuality. There has to be a character to make into the feminine to take the place of the female. It's more, I think, creating a new gender role than it is assigning position. The character is made into the de facto female, and thus, he is the penetrated. And once a gender role has been defined, it is hard to break out of. So it's interesting, now that I think of it--the idea of the uke having a doubled gender, male and yet not; "female" and yet not. And the seme is still the male; still the one seen as who penetrates.

It kind of explains all the horrifying mpreg fics out there.--it's taking the new gender-indentification, um, WAAAAAAY too far.

And it's 1:30 and my brain is fried, so I apologize in advance for any incoherencies. ^^;

[zerl]

in Ancient Greece, men were expected to have a younger male lover...but adult men were always seme; uke was a sign of weakness and not being a complete male--being, in other words, female.

Oh, hey, that's exactly what happened in the Japanese tradition of 衆道 (しゅどう: ancient tradition of homosexuality), too. I didn't know the same thing went on in Greece.

Actually, I had thoght *that* may be the reason why Japanese people tend to write fixed uke/semes. But now that you tell me European tradition is not much different, hmm...

I wonder how the insertion of "females" as ukes fits into your idea of womanless space? Do you figure it still works as "womanless" so long as the ukes have male instead of female organs? Part of me agrees with you about the uke=token female thing (hence my unease with the whole idea, as I said in the post), but then again part of me doesn't... For instance, they say the favorite character of a yaoist tends to take on the uke role. If ukes *are* our way of gendering the yaoi world into a parallel dimention of super-reality that's nonetheless gendered as strongly as this one we live in, then I'd be more inclined to believe we're inserting ourselves in the *seme's* position, so that we can fuck the objects of our desire (as het/bi females; sorry, I'm still leaving everybody else out of the equation) to our heart's content.

But then again, yeah, actually I have read some yaoi fen argue that they superimpose themselves on the uke.

I don't know, my mind is in the two-o-clock must-go-to-bed place as well ^^;

[homasse]

Oh, hey, that's exactly what happened in the Japanese tradition of 衆道 (しゅどう: ancient tradition of homosexuality), too. I didn't know the same thing went on in Greece.

Actually, I had thoght *that* may be the reason why Japanese people tend to write fixed uke/semes. But now that you tell me European tradition is not much different, hmm...

Only the European tradition has the addition of Christianity and sin added to the fray, and that makes quite a bit of difference--with that, homosexuality became not just some anomoly but as a cardinal sin and one that could damn your soul to eternal hellfire because it violated God's command to "Go forth and multiply." (That's also why masturbation was considered a sin, too. And still is by the hyper-Christian.)

There's also the feeling--and I can't say exactly what its roots are; I'll have to think about it for a bit--the idea that being on the receiving end means having something unpleasant done *to* you. There's the idea that no one really wants to be sodomoized and so you're doing it as a favor of sorts--the idea that it's pleasurable is, well, not the first idea, and is in fact the opposite of the first impression which is "Ow." So the idea of switching is a way of saying, "You let me do this to you, so I'll let you do it to me." (And lord, I'm losing my mind; I halfway put that last bit in Japanese because Japanese lets you use -kureru and -ageru which helps add nuance. Yeah, I can still speak English. Takes too many words, dammit). Kind of like reciprocating a favor, as well as a way of creating equality in a relationship. Just look at English slang for sex, and it is rich in the idea of conquest--"I had *person*" "I did *person*." "I banged *person*." "I took *person*."--and surrender "*person* gave it up." The one penetrating is the winner; the one being penetrated has to submit and give in to the other's desires.

Whee, I'm babbling.

And the idea of a womanless space is one that, because of the abscence of the female, is more fully able to explore the idea of the feminine because it's then not as bound to gender identity. It's a womanless space, yes, but not a feminine-less space. The uke is identified with precisely because of this--it's the character most similiar to ourselves, but sufficiently "other" that it can be fetishized. The uke's sexuality is similiar to a woman's, but different because of, well, biology. But there is still the base sexual sameness in the case of being the one penetrated even if the route of penetration is different. The uke is still the one taking, and thus, the feminine, and thus, is imbued with the traits of the feminine even though being physcially gendered as male (and wow, I am in full-on academic speak. o.O;).