fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3771 ]

[ SECRET POST #3771 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3771 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #540.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm a lesbian who almost exclusively reads/writes m/m slash. I can't stand the vast majority of femmeslash, or even het with a focus on the woman's pov, because it is so antithetical to how I experience touch and pleasure, it rips me right out of the story. At least with m/m slash, I have no physical frame of reference, so I can just fall fully into the fantasy.

I find this interesting. A lot of lesbians seem to like (and be really good at writing~!) m/m, while perhaps avoiding the more personal and awkward f/f. I as an ace woman really enjoy m/m, and don't generally get very into f/f. Maybe it really is the distance-from-me ability to enjoy it? After all I don't have male sexual organs, but reading about things happening to female sexual organs (and supposedly being enjoyed????) really weirds me out 99 percent of the time. M/M is happily divorced from my body, from the weird political landscape that is female sexuality in general, and it can become all about feelings and stuff, an empathy sort of sexual enjoyment I can get into. Or, tbh, I often skim/skip the sex and enjoy the emotions. (But why, then, do I not skim/skip the sex and enjoy more m/f, etc?)

I will say one thing: I get really, really upset if I read something that feels non-consensual to me. Sex is a weird enough subject for me personally. I want to throw up reading or watching anything that seems forced or coerced or rapey. And at least in my limited experience, there is a L O T more of that in m/f. (Not f/f though. And I still prefer m/m. Huh.)

I as an ace woman really enjoy m/m, and don't generally get very into f/f.

I often skim/skip the sex and enjoy the emotions. (But why, then, do I not skim/skip the sex and enjoy more m/f, etc?)

Are you secretly me?

That's how I am. I mean, I'll read F/F or M/F (I usually skip the sex scenes no matter the genders) but in general I much prefer the emotional aspects of M/M and I have no idea why.

Yes, I am secretly you. Naturally. ;)

Um, OK, I have some theories about this? You know how the accepted wisdom for children is that "everyone will read about boys but only girls will read about icky girls with their girl parts doing GIRL things?" Yeah. :/ I hope that "wisdom" is finally thrown away someday. Boys need to learn empathy too.

But basically most of us females who learned to love reading grew up reading a lot of books about male people. And we got really freaking good at empathizing with men despite having different parts. In fact in many ways the toxic masculinity culture accepts as the norm that male is the default, that female is special interest. That female is "lesser." So those of us who grew up putting our empathy hats on to understand and see the world from a male perspective...while the boys were happily oblivious to any other perspective...got a lot of practice. We have no problem putting ourselves into someone else's shoes and enjoying a story from their POV...alien, male, different race, animal, anyone, pretty much. We are just damned good at it.

And now we're adults and when we read romance, it's really not difficult at all to put ourselves in the empathy position for a man who loves/wants another man. There are complicated feelings, interesting things going on, and...it's just not hard for us AT ALL. Heck, we grew up reading about and trying to empathize with characters who were a lot harder to like than most of the people in romance novels. This shit is *easy.*

We've had decades of practice. It's not some weird secret. It's how we were socialized. But a lot of people still seem to reel from the fact that those "weird women" could enjoy stories about...gasp...men falling in love!!!1

(And tbh for me the body thing is a real big deal. I don't want to read about someone who looks "perfect" and loves being dirty-talked to during sex because for some reason I do have trouble empathizing with that...it's in that uncanny valley of too close and too far. I'm never going to be that perfect-looking body; I'm never going to be OK with rough sex or dirty talk or someone giving me the once-over with their rough-sexy-billionaire bedroom eyes or whatever. Yes I'm generalizing, but I think you know what I mean! But with men it's total fantasy, while still being easy to empathize with...because of all my practice reading about men from the first time I could read.)

Eh. This is long. Not gonna proofread

ayrt

This is actually a really interesting theory, so thanks for giving me something to think about! :)

We have no problem putting ourselves into someone else's shoes and enjoying a story from their POV...alien, male, different race, animal, anyone, pretty much. We are just damned good at it.

You know, I've never really thought about it like that, but that's totally true. I've never really felt like it was all that difficult to empathize with other species even so it makes sense that it wouldn't really be too hard to empathize with male characters, either.

I also kind of wonder if there's a bit of a novelty factor almost? That's not quite the right phrasing, but as a female who's been in relationships, M/F and F/F are very much "been there, done that" kinds of things. M/M relationships are something that I've never experienced firsthand so I just find them more interesting.

I think there's also something to be said for the fact that it's the most subversive of the three. M/F is the status quo, F/F is always going to be more acceptable because straight guys think lesbians are hot, but M/M is kind of the odd one out. Guys don't like it because of their fragile egos can't stand the implication that they could be gay, as if that's some awful thing, or the idea that men could have emotions because of course feelings are only for women. And to mainstream audiences (although I think this is becoming less prevalent over time, thankfully), women who like M/M are "weirdos" while OF COURSE women would be interested in M/F romance, and well, lesbians are so awesome even straight women like them! M/M relationships are the least accepted of any gender combination so maybe it's sort of an "I'm gonna be a rebel" thing even if it's subconscious.

Also, there are just so many MORE male characters in general. When there are female characters it seems like they're rarely developed enough or well written enough to be able to empathize with them enough to care about their relationships. Whereas with men it seems like that's rarely an issue.

(For me, I don't think the body thing is really a big deal as far as sex scenes go. I mean, I don't have a perfect body either, and I'm also not into all the sexual stuff in most romance novels, but gender generally doesn't play too big a part in it for me. It's just like...Oh yay, Character A is doing X with Character B's genitals, yipee. It's not like I haven't read variations of this exact same thing a million times before, or even done (most of) these things myself. It's just...boring more than anything, I guess. I mean, I suppose M/M sex scenes are slightly less boring from an objective standpoint because they're not something I've ever been a part of so there's, again, the novelty factor I mentioned above. But at the same time, sex is basically the same regardless of the genders, there's not anything THAT drastically different going on no matter what body parts are involved. So...I don't really know what I'm trying to say here.)

Anyway...I guess you could say TL;DR: patriarchy/sexism?

ayrt

This was really interesting and I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner! You gave me a lot to think about as well, & I really enjoyed our discussion. <3

Not saying it is true for y'all but I did that before I worked through the internalized issues I had with being a woman and so very deeply resenting all the baggage that came with it. Reading about relationships that didn't remind me of the gender dynamics I experience daily were my escape.

(ace anon from above)

There's almost certainly some of this involved for me. It's better than it used to be, I've accepted being a woman, I wouldn't want to be a man, but I definitely had some of what would now be called body dysphoria when I was younger: really, really didn't like my female body parts, not comfortable with being female, felt weird/gross about a lot of things related to being a woman.

(For me, I suspect it was less about being on the trans spectrum and more of a complication of being ace when I didn't know what that was, and growing up in a culture that very much says women are "for" sex. Anyway I've overcome a lot of that and grown into an appreciation of my body on the level of "this is where I live, it's not for anyone else," but reading about women used FOR sex (and it's a fine line easily crossed for me), still makes me really unhappy and uncomfortable a lot of the time.

I suspect there are power dynamics at play I don't like, as well as just the reminder of what it feels like to be seen mostly as a sexual object because of my gender.

So like you, there's the escape from real life gender stresses for me.

(That said I really enjoyed Georgette Heyer's work. It wasn't explicit ever, and the characters had such fully-fleshed out personalities and interesting dynamics with each other. It was never just one power dynamic or type of personality, and I loved that.)

other ace anon from above

I don't think it's true for me really. I've never had any issues with being a woman and never wanted to not be one. Of course, mileage varies for everyone but I personally don't feel any sort of baggage or weird gender dynamics. I mean, obviously I'm not denying that sexism exists, but luckily I don't feel like I experience it too often (definitely not daily).

There are all sorts of potential reasons why I like M/M better than other gender combinations (and I do tend to like M/F better than F/F...I have nothing against it, it just usually doesn't interest me that much although there are of course exceptions). I am heteroromantic though so I think it's probably not too different than (sexual) straight girls liking slash, just that for me it's more of an emotional thing than a sexual one.

I'm another ace woman who really loves reading m/m. I think the main reason I prefer reading m/m sex to reading m/f sex is because with m/m sex I'm not hung up on it being realistic. (Shout out to the OP who started this thread, because this is pretty much what she said as well.) In m/m I can read about things that would only feel a little good in reality, or just feel meh, or even be painful, but if the writing says it feels so good that the dude loses control and begs for it, it's really easy for me to suspend my disbelief and just go with it.

Whereas with m/f it's a lot harder to just go with it, because I have first-hand knowledge of how certain things feel on my own body. And they rarely feel like the fantasy would have them feel.

Though another reason I prefer m/m is because, as you say, it's "divorced from the weird political landscape of female sexuality." Which, for me, means I can enjoy stuff that's a bit dodgier than I could if I were reading m/f. Which is not to say that I enjoy noncon, because like you I find noncon really upsetting. But I can enjoy angry, mildly violent sex where they don't talk about it first, and spontaneous D/s without proper discussion, and sex where Character A is letting Character B use his body because Character A thinks that's the only way he'll ever get to be with Character B, when really they both love each other and Character B doesn't realize Character A's misconception. I can enjoy such scenarios, and so many other things that, if it were m/f, would in most cases make me worry about the woman and lose trust in the guy.

In my case, though, I think that emotionally, m/m and m/f are about neck and neck for me. I love my current m/m OTP very much, but there is a part of me that misses the particular combination of feelings I only ever feel for female characters, where I want to protect them, I feel the male character's love and desire for them, and I also want to be them, all at the same time. When it comes to male characters, I can feel the first two of those elements very strongly, but I've never felt the third. Because as much as there are shitty aspects to being a woman, I am a woman, I feel like a woman, and I would never want to not be a woman.

SA

I should also add that honestly, I think the reason I'm not into f/f is because on some very vestigial level, I'm vaguely straight?

I mean, it's hard to tell for me, and it's kind of irrelevant one way or the other, because I'm not interested in fucking men one iota more than I'm interested in fucking women. Which is why I call it vestigial heterosexuality. Because it's not an actual functioning sexuality, any more than a penguin can use its wings to fly. But on some level, maybe, dudes are still my default? That's how I explain my lack of interest in f/f to myself, anyway. I'm only about 65% on that theory though, lol.

For me, it's fairly simple: I'm an ace woman who exclusively reads m/m because I have zero interest in something resembling my own genitalia being featured in smut. Which also means I have zero interest in transfic, which someone already tried to turn into a great big transphobia issue for me but yeah, no, sorry pal, it's my sexuality (or lack thereof) and only I have a right to decide what is and isn't interesting for me to read in my free time.

I can understand this from a reading enjoyment perspective but why don't you write femmeslash then? Particularly if one of the problems you are having is that it's so different from your experiences, don't you think there would be other gay women who would appreciate your writing?

(not anon you replied to)

I'm just theorizing here, but it seems like there is a non-huge but happy readership for original fiction F/F. People who will actually pay for what they love to read. And they're gonna have their bullshit detectors on, too.

Maybe lesbians who actually want to write F/F tend to go towards original fiction? I know there are some fandoms where there is well-loved F/F (Xena, etc) but many fandoms seems to be dominated by male characters (there are a lot more male characters in most franchises, LBR), and people who prefer to read/write M/M would be more likely to be there?

IDK. Many people read and write original M/M as well. It's just a working theory.

I could've written this. In fact for a second, I thought I did! Another lesbian who almost exclusively reads m/m here. :D Femmeslash often gives me a really icky feeling, maybe because what I've read has clearly been written by guys and just feels fake. Even good f/f can feel a little odd - or maybe too real? I date and sleep with women irl, so either it's something I'd just rather experience in the real world rather than read, or it feels a little embarrassing. But as for m/m, since it isn't my reality, there's more fantasy to it, as you said. Plus, I think I just find homosexuality hot in general. Guys are hot to me when they are with other guys - I can even have sexual fantasies, if I imagine myself as a guy. I couldn't have a sexual fantasy about me in my female body with a guy, though. Het is just weird and a turn-off - I'm pretty sure if I were a guy I'd still be gay.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3771 ]

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making