It's thoughts on yaoi time again, ladies and gentlemen!

[seiberwing]

A gay man posts a secret on fandomsecrets about how he hates that yaoi fangirls fetishize his sexuality, and understandably the entire thing starts wanking faster than a submarine engineer who's gotten on the internet for the first time in a year and a half. I get into it here and here for the most part, but pretty much everyone's sharing their thoughts on the matter.

(Warning: Image heavy. For the dialup-gifted, the secret in question is here.)

My thoughts, highly distilled, are that traditional yaoi isn't fetishizing a sexuality so much as a specific ideal and dynamic, and anyone who thinks that real gay men act like that has a few more problems than the doujinshi on her hard drive. Any thoughts from the audience?

Comments

[cindy-73.livejournal.com]

From what I have learned in my life time is that if you don't like what you're reading just stop where you are and put it down or what your listening or watching to just stop it (if you can) and change it and/or walk away. Not everything is going to be your cup of tea and not everything you like is going to be other's cup of tea either. I admit I'm not a big fan of slash or yaoi but if its available to me it is my decision whether or not to read it, and no one is forcing me to either. But if a scene in a slash or yaoi fic or fan comic that I like I will read it and enjoy it for what it really is an entertaining read. Don't get me wrong I love my porn in various ways from my back issues of Playgirl, a few XXX rated movies my husband and I share and few books ranging from classic erotica to women's erotica to the good old fashioned sleazy XXX one handed novels for strait men that one will find at a porn shop. And that's not counting the fan fics I have on my comp. So to me this guy has a personal problem that he needs to come to grips with and reevaluate. So I say as long as it's not hurting anybody, it's not illegal an it's enjoyable then there is nothing wrong with it.

Oh as a side note to what sporlight_noa said about there being a fetish for everything, I remember watching an episode of Real Sex on HBO where someone said that one time he found a fetish site were the fetish were doorknobs! XD That still cracks me up.

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

Except that, speaking for myself, the portrayals of lesbians and/or bisexual women in a lot of porn DO hurt me. Maybe not in the physical sense of causing me injury, but it gets very damned old having to hear guys who think they are the first person to ask me and my girlfriend if they can watch us have sex or if they could join us in a threesome -- with the assumption that we would either a) concent or b) be flattered that a MAN wants us!

As far as that goes, I'm not a fan of "Big Beautiful Woman" fetishizing either because I don't WANT to be a goddamn fetish. I want to be seen as a goddamn human being and when you hear people endlessly going on and on about how they think lesibans or big women are soooo wonderful and it's pretty goddamn clear that they are only thinking of their fetishized ideal and not of real people? It gets old and tired and insulting.

But of course, if you complain about this sort of thing to the sorts of people who make these comments, you don't get an apology. Ohhh no, you get whined at about how they were only kidding and it's just a joke and gee, lighten up...because to them, they didn't do anything wrong and you're some squee-harshing bitch who wrecked their little fantasy life by being a real person.

I don't have to watch any of this porn -- and I don't -- but that doesn't stop it from affecting me. And this guy? May not read slash but that doesn't stop him from being affected by the attitudes of slash fans within fandom.

[cindy-73.livejournal.com]

All of it perfectly understandable and I agree with you. What I can't stand is people thinking that what they see on TV, in mags and the like is what real life is about. It isn't. I can't stand guys who want to see two women get it on just because they're lesbians and think if he is there watching that he can get in on the fun. Sorry it ain't going to happen. The those women won't let him because he's not their sexual preference and their style of lovemaking is totally different from what he is told by the mainstream porn industry that lesbians do in strait men's porn. Just because it's lesbian porn or bisexual porn for the strait man doesn't mean it's lesbian porn for the lesbian woman or the bisexual woman/man or gay man either.

And I'm all with you on the "BBW" thing as well. Just because I'm overweight doesn't mean I'm an easy lay or a virgin with no sexual experience or that just because my boobs are a 48HH doesn't mean that their fake and I had a boob job. If I had a boob job they would be a 48D!

The core of the problem is when people who have the fetish start to believe that who reality works. They forget and sometime never were taught the difference between reality and fantasy and that is when it becomes a problem. So to me people who can't tell the difference between fantasy sex and real sex have a huge problem and need to be taught a huge lesson. I admit I have my kinks and all, but I don't purposely thrust my fantasies on other people because I know if I did my squee bubble would burst worse than Chernobyl, but that is way I keep my kinks to myself and only leak them out to people I trust with simaler tastes per say. I try not to rub my sexual preferences and kinks into everyone's face because it will end up offending people (and if I offended you, I'm sorry. *Hugs*) and that's the last thing I want to do. Because it will cause debates like these.

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

Not offended, but it seems to me that this is what the secret in question was about -- the guy is annoyed that slash fans do this with gay men. Maybe not all slash fans (*I* sure as hell try not to) but enough do play to the stereotypes that I can understand why the guy is sick of seeing it. Because in fandom, it's not always a question of "Don't like, don't read" or simply avoiding what's bothering you because in some fandoms it is ever present.