Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Guys In Yaoi Claim To Be Straight?
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Renasviel
Posts: 143 |
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The hell? Has twitter not given you enough things to cry about today or something? Good article. Read well and was interesting to see how it is "generally" received over there. |
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Clyde_Cash
Posts: 376 |
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Why does Japan have to be so slow to change? LBGT rights do not work one way in one part of the world and another way elsewhere! They are absolute EVERYWHERE! No exceptions! What part of this do other countries and cultures refuse to understand and why? All this inconsistency needs to stop NOW.
We need rapid, instant change. Nobody ever has the right to oppose LBGT folk for ANY reason! Slow change is NEVER an option. It's too inefficient and gets nothing done. Social progress is not to be opposed. Our Western values trump the so-called "laws" of all other nations whether they want them or not. #uniformitarianism |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Yes! Our Rising Sun of the West will conquer the primitive notions of other barbarian countries across the sea, and...er, wait a second. 
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WashuTakahashi
 Posts: 415 Location: Chicago, IL |
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I can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic or not. But not everything "Western values" is good or desirable. Yes, LBGT rights should be widespread. NO, they should not be forced into an overnight change. The harder you push, the harder people fight back, and if your supporters are too few, you will fail (As I'm assuming is how things would turn out in Japan as they don't have as many gays or at least aren't as outspoken about being gay) The reason America is making so many advances in LBGT rights now is because the younger generation (say, mid 20s and younger) are WAY more accepting of gays than any generation before them. We were the first to be brought up in a world where being gay wasn't completely hush-hush. Good or bad, it was talked about, which made it more familiar. And that's why the younger generation's opinions on gays tend to lean towards "Well, they love each other. What's wrong with that?" If the current progress was rioted for 20 years ago (it probably was, I haven't researched the topic too deeply) it would have failed. Drastic change cannot happen quickly, not unless you're knocking down people's doors with guns and forcing them to think a certain way, and those methods are never useful. People that have been raised to hate or fear gays will likely always hate or fear them, even if it's to a much lesser degree as being gay becomes more "normal". But with each new generation, that irrational fear and hate will lessen, until it's no big deal and gays have the same rights as everyone else. While it'd be nice to wake up in a world where gays, blacks, etc, weren't discriminated in tomorrow morning, it's simply not going to happen. It'll take years, probably decades. |
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Usagi-kun
 Posts: 877 Location: Nashville, TN |
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I am personally not offended if anime sex entails guy on guy, girl on girl, girl on guy, or whatever other human or inhuman combination(s). But when it does, only as long as the relationships fit into the plot without becoming the sole focus of the plot, and the relationships do not condition abuse with physical and mental degradation. I too went to college and a yaoi phase, but once I started pursuing romance in my real life, these experiences gave me a little more insight into the process of how a passionate, loving, and supportive relationship can realistically occur.
This is my argument, then: to give real-life love a chance before formulating your own expectations when it comes to watching how these scenarios play out. Get your kicks, but keep an external source of gratification beyond these "forbidden" rewards. I can also speak as someone who may not adhere to the traditional sense of gende and identity, but knowing the difference between a relationship built on love and a relationship built on lust is an important rung in a very long ladder. |
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Stuart Smith
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Poe's Law rings true as always, it seems. You can't really apply western values to Japan so easily because it's not a real direct comparison, though. America's anti-homosexuality views were mainly established from a religious viewpoint of morality, one Japan doesn't subscribe to at all so if you try to combat them the same way, it won't really work. It's why you don't have to worry anywhere near as much about being beat up on the street for being gay in Japan like you do here. It doesn't produce extreme groups like WBC. Though it might help to establish what people mean by gay acceptance. You can find plenty of establishments that cater specifically to queer folk in Japan like bath houses and bars, but if we're talking media then I'm not sure how much that will change. Straight people will always be the majority in a society, and anime is about catering to a specific demographic. If there's ever enough gay men to justify anime written from that viewpoint, then great, but until then it's hard to really expect companies to make things that don't have heavy appeal to straight women since they're the main consumer base. For more esoteric works like doujin works you could find some no doubt, but anime is more commercial so it'll go where the money is. -Stuart Smith |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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I hate how this generalization is always phrased. BL is written for women, but no part of its definition requires that it be written by women, any more than shoujo/josei has to be written by women. Yes, the majority of authors are female, but there are male authors, including occasionally gay authors who usually write for gay men's magazines. It's the audience, not the author.
This is a feature, not a bug. Conventional masculinity is overrated; it's nice to see men acting differently from what they're "supposed" to be like. I'd suggest comparing the men in BL to the men in shoujo/josei romances; they also "do not realistically act like men", because the way "real" men act isn't necessarily maximally appealing to women.
Another bugbear of mine; I hope you explain that the shounen-ai/yaoi distinction is something that English-speaking fans came up with, and is incomprehensible to Japanese readers, for whom the terms have completely different meanings.
As a BL fangirl, who talks BL with other fangirls, I personally have never come across this attitude; we want to see the guys with each other, not with us (or at least, not with us as women, but that's another discussion). I'm sure somebody out there feels this way, but I'd say the opposite fantasy is more common: any guy, no matter how straight he thinks he is, could end up in the arms of another guy. {evil laugh} I personally think that a major contributor to the "I'm not gay" thing is the confusion / cognitive dissonance / emotional turmoil that the character goes through because of it; watching people be flustered and/or freak out about their feelings can be fun. |
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Engineering Nerd
 Posts: 898 Location: Southern California |
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Wow...what have I just read?! Please, that is NOT how you promote changes, let along in Asian countries such as China and Japan, where I spend most of my childhood and teenage time (I move to USA at age 14, by the way I am 21 now). If you are trying to spread LBGT awareness in such radical manner, you will most likely get knee-jerk reactions and even more social discriminations and isolations for LBGT. Patience, understanding and communications, those are key factors contributing to increasing social acceptance and equality for LBGT people in Western world. So why going to the extreme for East? Plus, Western values trumping laws of eastern world?!!! What?! Please, that kind of attitude is downright unacceptable. Promoting social equality and tolerance is absolutely necessary and should be encouraged, but please get rid of that superiority complex first. Discriminations and prejudices will never stop if people fail to understand if you do not want anything bad happen to you or near you, then don't do it or force it on others. I am so glad LBGT folks in China and Japan behaving so diginified and composed, without relying on extreme like you suggested. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Yeah, right.
In other words, real men are hopelessly outmatched by the feminine ideal of masculinity. Next thing I'll be hearing yaoi/BL is feminist! |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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I don't know what you are expressing sarcasm at, but if it's at men writing BL, there are interviews both on the web and in the English-translated gei comi anthology Massive in which the (gay, male) authors discuss their experiences working for BL magazines and how the expected audience influences the content they create.
Yes, at least in terms of being appealing to women, which is a tautology (women's fantasies of men are appealing to women) so I don't see why you're surprised.
It is. In several different ways. And there is considerable academic writing on the topic; a quick spin through Google Scholar will point you to some examples. |
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Savion
Posts: 40 |
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Bara getting called realistic is one of the funniest things I've read in awhile. It's made by and preferred by gay men but most of it is explicitly pornographic and like most porn isn't deeply plot centered.
I read a lot of yaoi/BL, bara/ML and try to get into yuri/GL (more in that in a sec) and I can say there are pretty realistic as well as sweet, comedic and/or melodramatic stories in all of them. For example: here's also prevalence of themes like "uke"/"seme" in BL and ML but in bara the equivalent lines are just as often blurred or ignored as they are played straight - more so than in yaoi. I guess that's one realistic element bara holds over yaoi? It's fine to prefer one over the other for any reason but realism is an odd one IMO. I just wish there was an "equivalent" to GL as bara (men's love) is to BL. As in gay comics targeted at gay women. Sweet naive school girl romances that probably targeted at straight dudes are the most prevalent & unbelievable boring. |
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fuuma_monou
Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Academic writing is moot, like research operating systems. Like, there was a scholar who wrote a dissertation on the female anus in literature. What's the point? Also: It's hilarious that a genre that exclusively focuses on male characters is posing as feminist. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2944 Location: Email for assistance only |
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I was pretty sure Massive was in the business of translating bara, not yaoi.
As a personal aside, I see yaoi as a double edged sword. I think there are legitimate arguments of it's usefulness re: female sexuality, although I find much of it to be gender-role sustaining corset rippers with the woman replaced with a masculine presenting character to relate to and possibly engaging in stereotypes about gay relationships. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Well, that's the problem of parody, when it sounds so dangerously close to the real thing: The whole question of yaoi isn't supposed to be about "Japan's acceptance of gays", it's about why girls like titles about guys who don't act like guys, in a country where they're too afraid to get together. But bring in the idea of same-sex couplings showing up in a manga, and half the particular demographic on the board leaps at the chance to post "Yes! Finally! Japan is changing its mind and becoming a free and tolerant country! We should help them in our quest to create a more tolerant world for all people of all interests and letters!" Uh, no, calm down there--It's not a World Pride March, it's just Japanese schoolgirls who dream about the more angular-jawed guys with roses and languid expressions. Which made it funny that some of the wishful thinking crowd who read Clyde's post thought that there was nothing parodic whatsoever about "Cultural conquest"--as if it was something completely natural to them, and wanted to get to the good work right away--and those against it didn't notice anything different from the same sentiments not expressed as sarcastic parody. (Me, I just helped out the sarcasm, in case it went either way.) |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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There are, they're just more small-press and/or doujinshi and thus harder to find. There's one in translation called Ricca 'te Kanji (might not have spelled that correctly) that you might want to take a look at.
Feminism is not just about women, it's about society and culture and, yes, men. Stories about men have just as much potential to be feminist as stories about women.
It is. But several of the authors in the Massive anthology have done some BL, and in the interviews in the book they talk about that a bit.
I'm extremely tired of this line of argumentation, since it's predicated on the unquestioned assumption that the female reader will identify with the more traditionally feminine character and desire the more traditionally masculine character. One of the big draws of BL is that it allows you the choice to occupy either role, and the choice to desire a man who occupies either role. BL puts a lot of effort into presenting the uke as romantically and erotically appealing; it's bizzare that so many people cannot suspend their preconceptions of female sexuality long enough to look at what the works are actually doing. |
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would choose her. 
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