As a feminist, a guilty pleasure I have is yaoi. For those of you who don't know what that is, yaoi is a genre which originated from Japan, the word yaoi is a acronym for yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi . Which means, no climax, no point, no mean. To understand yaoi fully, it's important to understand aspects of Japanese culture. Yaoi also deals with male/male relationships, what's interesting about yaoi is while it is basically two men having sex, their sexual orientation may or may not be an issue. Another interesting thing about yaoi is that it's written by heterosexual women and for the most part, the target audience is also heterosexual women.
As yaoi made its way to the North America, it has developed into a subculture. There's even conventions that are dedicated to yaoi, as well as several publishers to translating and publishing yaoi. Not surprsingly, people have begun to take notice of the yaoi subculture. In my opnion, part of the reason why is due to the fact that it's mostly made up straight women and teenage girls.
Now why would a straight women be interested in two guys having sex? This question comes up whenever there's discussion of yaoi, I was even asked this question several times. The thing is, the idea of a woman liking yaoi is very confusing to many. But why is it confusing? Is it because women aren't supposed to enjoy guy on guy sex?
As a yaoi fangirl, I have to explain and even defend why I like yaoi. There has been analysis from academics who are devoted to studying this subculture, who are also trying to understand why it appeals to many women. There are theories of course, some say it's because women who read yaoi don't feel "threatened" by the women they read in heteroseuxal romance ( I don't agree with this theory). Others say it's idealism, the men in yaoi are always attractive, and of course, the reason why some women like it, because *gasp* they like idea of two guys having sex. This reason seems to shock people the most. However, I never seen this much devotion to analyzing why some men enjoy yuri (which is essentially the opposite of yaoi). I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but not to the degree of yaoi.
But I suppose my question is, does enjoying reveal something about women's sexuality or sexuality in general? To me, it only reveals that sexuality can be complex. The characters are portrayed as being, bisexual, gay, or sometimes even straight, yaoi is one of those genres can that show this complexity. Which is one of the main reasons why I enjoy it.
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I would not call myself a yaoi fangirl, but I do dig me some pictures that can get pretty hot. I mostly like doujinshi, fanart yaoi. I like a couple Death Note Pairings, and I used to look at them a lot when I was single.
I hate it when people get grossed out or question yaoi fans, but either like yuri or don't seem to think it's odd anyone would. I personally like either, I just get sick of looking at the huge breasts on skinny bodies with yuri.
I don't think liking yaoi says anything about anybody's sexuality. I personally have a theory that seeing an image of sex (that could mean ANY sexual activity) just gets people horny. Once I got my SO warmed up to calling other men attractive, he admitted to liking certain yaoi pictures himself that I showed him, and he's straight. With straight sex (hentai), I usually have to put up with the woman always being submissive or sexy hot, usually raped (though this happens in yaoi and yuri as well), which gets annoying and often hard to handle. With yuri, they are both sexy hot huge busted women, and that gets annoying. In yaoi, it's two dudes, and I usually find images of pretty egalitarian sex cause it's so much easier to do with yaoi, at least from my experience. I also usually go for romantic story lines in comics, though. But like I said, I'm not a fangirl, so I don't look at much, especially not anymore. Oh, I've only seen like, 3 videos too. I didn't particularly like any of them. Mostly because I was too busy laughing or being creeped out by the plot.
The reason I always understood for the "yaoi fangirl" subculture (not calling you a fangirl, you can claim that title if you like though) is the squeeing over pretty men, and pretty men getting it on, and a sort of "Yeah, now we get to be the objectifiers," proud defiance. Some women/girls just like the idea of beautiful, sensitive men having tender, emotional, or angsty relationships that they can vicariously enjoy. And the only thing that puzzles me more than the squeeing (and I'm a comic book geek, and I've been to conventions, and I've seen a lot of squeeing) is the unmitigated hatred that a lot of these women have for the women characters in yaoi, or in implicitly yaoi themed work. I always LOVED when there was a cool female character in a comic, but these characters are, like, universally hated. Gundam Wing and Relena Peacecraft, anyone?
"Some women/girls just like the idea of beautiful, sensitive men having tender, emotional, or angsty relationships that they can vicariously enjoy."
I think you made a good point here. In a lot of Western media, you don't see the kind of tenderness and sensitivity from men that you do in media like yaoi. Even the gay men in our media can be very aggressive and mostly hide their feelings, and mostly all of the hetero men do.
The way I heard that explained by a yaoi/slash-pairing fan, was that unfortunately it boils down to old-fashioned competitiveness. They'd rather see the boys with each other than with her...(sigh) I hope this is incorrect.
Also, women are brought up to be judgemental of other women, even fictional women. Maybe they're unsure of themselves but see a strong female character and feel resentful?
I've always thought the "we get to be objectifiers" theory is an interesting one. I can't think of any other context where I can think of a "female gaze" like the traditional concept of the male gaze.
You're right there. The female characters in Gravitation are hated amoung fans. I can personally see why they wouldn't like Ayaka as she's a pretty flat character but Mika and Noriko just kick ass.
I remember stumbling across yaoi titles in my online wanderings and desperately wanting to read them-- unfortunately, they weren't popular enough to be translated into English even if I could order them online. I contented myself with ogling the few scans people were kind enough to upload.
The thing is, I was probably 12 or 13. I was certainly not looking at them from the standpoint of adult sexuality, I just liked the romanticized idea of those beautiful, poetic men loving each other.
While I haven't read yaoi, per se, I have read a lot of "slash" fanfiction - male characters in a homosexual relationship. I don't think this is really a guilty pleasure for a feminist, you're just embracing a non-heterocentric sexuality. There's a lot of reasons behind this - it's sexually appealing to imagine two attractive men being physically intimate; as a feminist, I love the idea of two men being emotionally intimate with each other when so much of society insists that men can't be open about their feelings (so I guess there's a little of the exotic about it as well, since our culture is so inundated with heterosexual romance); and the characters don't wind up conforming to strict gender roles, it's just two people connecting. So, own your passion, don't feel guilty about it!
Thanks
Yeah, I guess the reason why as a feminist it seems like a guilty pleasure for me is because at times yaoi relationships usually aren't egalitarian. In yaoi, there's what one would call the seme/uke dynamic. The seme is the dominant one of the relationship and the and the uke is the more submissive one.
But as you point out, I do like yaoi because I like how it's not heterocentric. Hell, men in yaoi can be straight, yet they can enjoy having sex with each other and be emotionally intimate.
"I never seen this much devotion to analyzing why some men enjoy yuri (which is essentially the opposite of yaoi)"
Because it's already well-known and accepted that most of us straight men like seeing two women together...
how is this any different from the male attraction to lesbian or faux lesbians engaged in sex or sex play?
i get the impression that sort of view of girl on girl sex is condemned here and deemed a hetero/privilege thing.
The issue is, if a woman is attracted to two guys having sex, people have to figure out why, and it's generally not accepted for a woman to be attracted to something like yaoi. I never really heard of men having to defend why they like girl/girl sex, so I don't know where you got that impression.
yeah, I'm with you in the just being confused. though, truthfully, at least amongst my friends, the same theories do kind of go both ways-men like two naked women together, why shouldn't women like two naked men together?
What it looks like jaja is trying to say is that many of the commenters on sites such as this would probably register their disgust with men being turned by girl/girl sex. You've honestly never seen such things criticized here?
because comments on a feminist website are totally what's going to change the mind of a man who thinks like this /sarcasm. I mean, I have seen comments about straight girls kissing girls for mens pleasure, but honestly, no I haven't seen much actively criticizing the guy.
I dunno, I kinda just want to reuse an argument I've heard explaining the appeal of lesbians to straight men: "1+1=2". At least, that's basically what the appeal of two guys together is for me. Although I do think it's interesting that people would do scholarly research on why women would be turned on by two men together, whereas men being turned on by two women is considered a given.
I am totally a yaoi girl too. Read it, draw it, the whole thing. And honestly, I don't think it's unfeminist at all. I think in some ways yaoi IS feminist, even though it revolves are men. Men are rarely ever sexualized in our culture in a way other than the aggressor. It allowed me-and probably other straight/bi women-to see men as sexy and beautiful too.
But I don't really think it's like an "muahaha, we get to objectify too!" kind of thing, either. The thing I love most about yaoi is that generally it revolves around anime/manga which develop and give depth to the characters yaoi's made of. So that even if something is just sex, there's still emotion and personality involved.
I like yaoi, but I'm more into the non-canon yaoi. To be clear, the guys aren't a couple in the actual series but fan put them together in fan fics. I don't really feel a need to justify my taste for it, neither to myself or others. I simply find these fan fics hot. But I have a lesbian friend who also likes yaoi, I find that wierd but I have never asked her to explain why she likes it.
I think yaoi fills the niche of "pretty boy fantasy". Guy 1 is pretty; guy 2 is pretty; guy 1 and guy 2 would be pretty together, so let's make them have sex. So long as the fangirls remember that yaoi is not representative of real men's homosexual relationships (something I've encountered personally), then it's all fine and dandy. It's when that line gets crossed -- when people forget that real relationships are not always sparkle stars and floating hearts -- that problems arise.
Yaoi and slash all the way, baby! Hotness! Hear me *squee* ^_^
And I totally don't think being interested in yaoi is unfeminist, any more than being interested in bottoming or being a heterosexual female submissive is unfeminist. Whatever floats your boat...or waters your garden...or whatever. ^_~
And from the otaku/fangirl/geek side, sure it's true that there's some het girl bashing in strong yaoi fandoms, (Sakura in Naruto, Relena in Gundam Wing, again) but I feel that all those teen fan-girls can develop later on. Just like they will maybe move on from Naruto/Gundam Wing to watching Princess Mononoke or Revolutionary Girl Utena, maybe they will take a second glance at Inner Sakura or the way Relena re-organized the world at sixteen.
In the meantime, I'm willing to let fantasies be fantasies, and enjoy them!
I love yaoi and slash and was actually thinking about why the other day. I think for me, personally, part of the reason I like it is because when I have read traditional het romance novels I always found myself annoyed that no matter how strong the female main character was supposed to be, she always deferred to the guy to spark a relationship. With yaoi the author isn't able to worry about gender dynamics and can really create characters that are multi-dimensional.
I also just think that slash and yaoi is super-hot!
I do have to say though, that I mostly dislike seme/uke dynamics in the stories I read because I feel like I am reading a story about a stereotypical guy falling in love with a stereotypical girl, only the girl has a penis.
I don't know anything about Yaoi except my sister hates it!! I told her it can't be worse than Dragonball Z.