[ SECRET POST #3771 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3771 ⌋

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

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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.

Comments

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

[(Anonymous)]

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

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

[(Anonymous)]

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?

Re: Secrets you don't feel like making

[(Anonymous)]

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