I've actually started finding yaoi kind of offensive in recent years. Not fan-yaoi (where fans take two male characters who are not canonically together and make them have mad, mad sex), which I generally find okay, but the yaoi that gets printed in things like BBoy etc. It just seems so. . . ugh, I don't even know how to explain it. It's misogynistic, is what it is, and often inherently homophobic.
Anyway, I'm just trying to say that I agree! Yaoi is not cutting-edge or subversive. It's basically gay porn for women, and not even very good gay porn at that, considering how one or both of the males is often overtly feminized, how the artists often ignore anatomical correctness, and. . . yeah. Which isn't to say that there aren't exceptions to this (and very good exceptions that I still reread and enjoy), but these days I don't really run out to Kino and buy random yaoi manga anymore.
see, what really boggles the Meg-brain is when people claim they read yaoi because it is deep and subversive and a way to kick the patriarchy in the balls.
o________________oa
Oddly enough, these are the SAME people who wouldn't go within fifty feet of a romance novel if you paid them cash money.
Well, the argument could be made that, on face, yaoi might be subversive because of its elevation of homosexuality. I don't particularly believe that myself, though. What a person sees in yaoi isn't representative of real life or gay relationships.
It's even arguable that the majority of yaoi reinforces heteronormative standards of a relationship: You have a top and bottom, there is almost never switching and on the rare case of switching it's depicted as an experiment. The bottom is always smaller in stature and more feminine in appearance. "No" means Yes when it comes to sex, something I suspect is tied to the taboo of 'women' desiring sex. Most yaoi stories revolve around finding one's soulmate, a person to spend the rest of their lives with (marriage in mostly all but name, hell, some series even call it marriage).
There, see, that was what I was trying to say but couldn't figure out how to put. D:
It's basically romantic (sometimes) erotica for women and it confuses the hell out of me when people try to make it more or less than that. I have deep respect for the romance genre because that's where I started out in fandom but deep? Subversive? Well, no.
What tanzy said! Man, that summed it up so nicely. beeblebabe also wrote some very nice papers on the subject (college: where you can write academic papers on gay porn for credit).
I once read this radically offensive romance novel where this woman's husband was going to leave her because she paid too much attention to her career and not enough attention to her family and then she somehow got transported back into Viking times where she met, like, the Viking version of her husband and learned from Viking women that she was basically emasculating her husband by having an independent career.
. . . it was Rome and there was nothing else to read because everything else was in Italian, okay?
's funny, my mom ended up reading one that was like that; she picked it up because she thought it was straight fantasy and was disappointed when the plot kept getting interrupted by sex. ...though apparently the woman got to be a Strong Woman In Another Time Period, even if she was screwing wossname every two pages and people constantly tried to rape her.
...as long as we're on the subject, what drives ME insane is those romance novels where you get to the point that it's really, really disturbing that these two people get together. Like...I think there was one someone mentioned to me once where a guy meets a girl who he thinks is a whore and, upon finding that she's not, accepts the word of someone who says, "No really, she is" and then forces her to have sex with him when she says "no, I'm not a whore and I don't even know that person" and things go on from there.
...the reason I mention this is because I realize that Love Mode does NOT bother me as much.
I think a lot of the perceived subversion factor is extratextual rather than textual - IOW it's the fact of women reading t3h ghei pr0n that's subversive (because women are not supposed to have sexual demands/indulge kinks/objectify men), not the actual content/dynamic of said ghei pr0n. People have actually written pretty good papers connecting slash and romance novels, and also decoding said romance novels as female-empowerment rather than masochistic fantasies on the part of the reader, so. XD
OTOH you can argue that the simple fact of sticking a male character in a "stereotypically feminine" role is subversive vis a vis the patriarchy. That goes a certain distance but only a certain distance.
Viewfinder is kind of interesting in that I don't think you're intended to perceive Takaba's goals/actions as being in the wrong (to the frustration of a segment of the audience who'd like him to exhibit better sense... ironically by "staying in his place"). There's no textual judgment that's he's being punished for refusing to "be the
( ... )
I don't know why people feel like they have to defend their hobbies or whatever by labelling them as "subversive." Whatever happened to doing something just because you enjoy it? I don't read/write gay porn/relationships because it's edgy and subversive. I do it because it's hot/interesting/fun. It's not to, I don't know, BRING DOWN THE SYSTEM FROM THE INSIDE, because let's face it, a handful of giggly women writing Gundam Wing fanfiction is not going to pull down the patriarchy.
I'd read yuri much more often if there was more good yuri. I feel like a lot of yuri writers are men with no grasp of female anatomy or mind writing male wet dreams.
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Anyway, I'm just trying to say that I agree! Yaoi is not cutting-edge or subversive. It's basically gay porn for women, and not even very good gay porn at that, considering how one or both of the males is often overtly feminized, how the artists often ignore anatomical correctness, and. . . yeah. Which isn't to say that there aren't exceptions to this (and very good exceptions that I still reread and enjoy), but these days I don't really run out to Kino and buy random yaoi manga anymore.
Reply
o________________oa
Oddly enough, these are the SAME people who wouldn't go within fifty feet of a romance novel if you paid them cash money.
Reply
It's even arguable that the majority of yaoi reinforces heteronormative standards of a relationship: You have a top and bottom, there is almost never switching and on the rare case of switching it's depicted as an experiment. The bottom is always smaller in stature and more feminine in appearance. "No" means Yes when it comes to sex, something I suspect is tied to the taboo of 'women' desiring sex. Most yaoi stories revolve around finding one's soulmate, a person to spend the rest of their lives with (marriage in mostly all but name, hell, some series even call it marriage).
Reply
It's basically romantic (sometimes) erotica for women and it confuses the hell out of me when people try to make it more or less than that. I have deep respect for the romance genre because that's where I started out in fandom but deep? Subversive? Well, no.
Reply
I once read this radically offensive romance novel where this woman's husband was going to leave her because she paid too much attention to her career and not enough attention to her family and then she somehow got transported back into Viking times where she met, like, the Viking version of her husband and learned from Viking women that she was basically emasculating her husband by having an independent career.
. . . it was Rome and there was nothing else to read because everything else was in Italian, okay?
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You know, I think I remember one like that! D: <-- *this person has read too many romance novels to even count ( ... )
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...as long as we're on the subject, what drives ME insane is those romance novels where you get to the point that it's really, really disturbing that these two people get together. Like...I think there was one someone mentioned to me once where a guy meets a girl who he thinks is a whore and, upon finding that she's not, accepts the word of someone who says, "No really, she is" and then forces her to have sex with him when she says "no, I'm not a whore and I don't even know that person" and things go on from there.
...the reason I mention this is because I realize that Love Mode does NOT bother me as much.
Reply
OTOH you can argue that the simple fact of sticking a male character in a "stereotypically feminine" role is subversive vis a vis the patriarchy. That goes a certain distance but only a certain distance.
Viewfinder is kind of interesting in that I don't think you're intended to perceive Takaba's goals/actions as being in the wrong (to the frustration of a segment of the audience who'd like him to exhibit better sense... ironically by "staying in his place"). There's no textual judgment that's he's being punished for refusing to "be the ( ... )
Reply
I'd read yuri much more often if there was more good yuri. I feel like a lot of yuri writers are men with no grasp of female anatomy or mind writing male wet dreams.
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