[ SECRET POST #3517 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3517 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 58 secrets from Secret Submission Post #503.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I can appreciate this secret. I'm a bi-fella who has had significantly more boyfriends than girlfriends. Which is just how the cookie crumbled and is neither here nor there. I'm also someone who ONLY tops, because I do not enjoy being fucked. And this has actually created friction (and not the good kind) in past relationships, because it is unusual. Not unheard of, but unusual.

That said, I'm not really up in arms about the slash fandom following a rule set, because it is primarily written by straight women. And even if they are writing gay men, they're writing gay men doing what they think is hot and moreso what their brains register as normal. And by normal I mean familiar, not normal versus abnormal. I think when it comes to sexual fiction it is hard for a lot of women to not have a kind of... gentle repulsion to the idea of switching it up. Unless their guy is into getting pegged or what have you, swapping roles comes up against a wall of expectation. Straight men don't write as much (if any) gay fiction, but the uninformed tend to assume that one man in the relationship is in the 'girl' role. Because that is what they are used to.

I don't think this is like.. genetically burned into anyone's brains. A friend of mind writes a lot of slash, and it took her a long time to break out of the seme/uke bull. But she did. It just took a lot of standing on her head to see it from a different POV.

I don't know where I was going with this and I'm sure I offended someone with my wild assumptions about the female mindset. But it's my best guess as to why the top/bottom set dynamic is so consistent and enduring. That it's not necessarily parroting outdated tropes, but an understandable assigning of roles based on their own preference and expectation.

That said, yes. It would be nice to see some more variety and realism. I don't expect or prefer my own proclivities to be reflected in slash fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

Fellow bi-fella with more boyfriends than girlfriends here too, but I would point out that a lot of the top/bottom yaoi dynamic is also mixed in with the dom/sub BDSM dynamic which is surprisingly prevalent in slash fic.

I don't think it's "women" so much as that BDSM tropes even when not explicitly marked as such have somehow become a given in slash tropes and topping and bottoming have become almost synonymous with domming and subbing in the slash genre. When I see "top" referenced in a slash context, I'm going to assume he's the dominant/"alpha" and I would bet lots of money I'd be right most of the time.

So while I think what you say might be true of younger female fans, but I'm sure the older fans know what they're doing and many of them are openly into D/s themes in their ships, if not outright portrayed as such. See: A/B/O, et cetera.

[tabaqui]

Yeah, no. There is no 'repulsion' to the idea, as a rule, unless it's a general repulsion of anal sex (which is weird in slash fans, imo). Women, by my experience, have been a lot more open to stuff in a sexual relationship than men, particularly if it has even the slightest shade of 'gay' sex or 'butt stuff' - a lot of straight guys just freak out and won't even consider it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know, I'm a woman and the reason I liked slash when I was younger was because I didn't like having to identify with the "bottom" (and almost all heterosexual romance has the woman in that role the whole time). Somehow if neither one was a woman, I didn't have to put myself in anyone's shoes while I was reading it. I probably would have been okay with people switching roles, since it was something I wished I could do myself.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly the way I felt too. As a cis woman I've always kind of resented the fact that I have no choice but to "bottom" and be penetrated (and pegging doesn't cut it for me, because that wouldn't be my flesh that was doing the penetrating) when having sex with a man, whereas gay men get the option of choosing. Slash fic was my way of immersing myself in a world where the main characters "topped" or "bottomed" due to their personal preference or personality or the kind of relationship they had with each other, not because their anatomy and global sexual politics demanded they do one or the other.

(I understand that for some men it doesn't feel like much of a choice, because their anatomy makes one or the other difficult for them to enjoy, or their preference is so strong for one that they would never choose the other. But work with me here, people!)

Hence why I am aligned with the OP in wishing fic featured more versatility in the roles their ship pairings take. (And also why I identify in my own life as a switch.) It's so awesome to see characters taking full advantage of their ability to have that option.

[(Anonymous)]

even if they are writing gay men, they're writing gay men doing what they think is hot and moreso what their brains register as normal. And by normal I mean familiar, not normal versus abnormal. I think when it comes to sexual fiction it is hard for a lot of women to not have a kind of... gentle repulsion to the idea of switching it up. Unless their guy is into getting pegged or what have you, swapping roles comes up against a wall of expectation.

I'm a straight (though not far off from ace) woman, and this is definitely a part of it for me. I don't dig gender essentialism in the least, and I definitely enjoy challenging and subverting gender roles in a lot of ways. And yet somehow, when it comes to sexy times, my brain just says, "Nope, you want one character to be more dominant in the bedroom, and that will be the character who most often does the penetrating, and you want the other character to be at least a little bit submissive, and completely blown away by how good their partner is at fucking them. They can switch, but it's less hot so hopefully the switch scenes don't go on too long." It's not something I feel particularly bad about, but it is a bit strange to me that I appear to have kinda heteronormative taste in smut, despite the fact that I tend to read more slash than het.