Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2017-05-01 06:55 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2017-05-01 06:55 pm
[ 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.
Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-02 01:25 am (UTC)(link)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.
Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-02 02:04 am (UTC)(link)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
Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-02 03:04 am (UTC)(link)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?
Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-03 09:43 pm (UTC)(link)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
Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-02 02:22 am (UTC)(link)Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-02 03:33 pm (UTC)(link)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.)
Re: Secrets you don't feel like making
(Anonymous) 2017-05-02 06:24 pm (UTC)(link)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.