[ SECRET POST #4912 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4912 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 17 secrets from Secret Submission Post #703.
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 am literally just sitting here head tilting because I am not sure what they mean by 'remove the misogyny by removing the women'. Am I dumb?

[(Anonymous)]

I believe they mean that you can't have misogynistic depictions of women if you don't have any women in the first place.

[silverr]

... which is just utterly ridiculous to me.

Why not remove misogyny by, oh, I dunno, celebrating women instead? By writing them well?

(In femslash ships...)

[(Anonymous)]

Presumably the people involved aren't attracted to women. And I know that some people enjoy ships even if they're not attracted to any of the characters involved but it doesn't work that way for a lot of people.

It would be better to have good non-misogynistic M/F relationships that weren't full of annoying shitty stuff but those are quite rare. And I do get the impulse to just not deal with or think about any of it. I don't think it's really that absurd. I don't think it's actually a solution to misogyny but I get the appeal.

[silverr]

Fair enough.

(I was mostly joking about the femslash ships; I know not many are into f/f romance.)

[(Anonymous)]

I've always found the idea of wanting a story to only have main characters that I'm attracted to weird. Why would I want to be into everyone I watch? how about the character I see myself in or like to imagine myself as? How about characters I just like? Just having hot characters and no one else is boring to me.

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking for myself, I don't think that every story needs to be like that, but I do find that shippy tropey fic, stuff that's romantic or smutty, works a lot better for me if it has at least one character that I'm attracted to. And that's mostly what I read fic for.

[(Anonymous)]

lmao

that sounds like "there can't be poverty if we remove the poverty line"

Right. That's how you do it...that's...NO.

[(Anonymous)]

I've literally never seen anyone argue that writing only about men is a way to combat misogyny. What people are saying is that shipping m/m allows them to enjoy the fantasy without having the fantasy muddled by all the baggage that, for many women, comes with het relationships and/or simply being a woman in society.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Huh. I was responding to what the OP put in quotes. Personally, I have never heard that either. Sometimes a story about a man is merely that, and misogyny doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

I see what you're saying about shipping m/m. But I also think that's just a preference -- to ship m/m, or f/f/, or m/f. That the fantasy can exclude the misogyny can be applied to any of these cases. I write/read m/f mostly, and read m/m and f/f/ on occasion, and it's really just a question how the world is structured by the writer. But that's just my two cents.

However, I definitely see where you're coming from. (Please note that none of this was written in a combative tone!)

[(Anonymous)]

That the fantasy can exclude the misogyny can be applied to any of these cases. I write/read m/f mostly, and read m/m and f/f/ on occasion, and it's really just a question how the world is structured by the writer.

I read exclusively m/f for a long time, but once I got into m/m I found it hard to switch back, specifically because I feel so much freer to just enjoy stuff with m/m. My brain wasn't constantly like, "Oh yikes, does she really want that? Or is he just pressuring her into it? And even if she does really want it, he can't know that, so clearly he doesn't really care about what she wants." Or like, "wow I know the things he said when they were fighting were said out of anger, but they were also kind of sexist and now I don't trust him," or any of a thousand other thoughts that might intrude. I can't just choose to filter that out. It's cool that some people can, but I can't.

Whereas there are so many more fantasies I can enjoy when I have a certain innate distance from them, which is something m/m allows me. It's something I've seen expressed by a lot of women who are primarily into m/m.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

for me, my brain does a weird thing where when I'm reading many het romance stories where I compare myself to the characters and think about how I don't measure up to them. it doesn't really make sense but it's just this little niggling voice that doesn't go away.

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't one of the ways my psyche reacts, but you are far, far from alone in feeling this way. There's a post that's linked down thread which addresses this feeling a lot of women have of feeling like they don't measure up to the female characters in the story and their enjoyment suffering for it.

https://authoressofdarkness.tumblr.com/post/620959335030341632/the-knights-who-say-book-crowleysangel

[(Anonymous)]

DA See, I'm a woman think that kind of thing as a woman reading m/m too, though, so I guess I just don't see what's so different. I can relate myself to either character regardless of gender, so if something seems off in an m/m pairing, it'll bother me just as much as in a m/f pairing.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - I get that some people are as sensitive to this stuff regardless of gender or sex or any other form of identity.

I'm still squicked by injustices towards men in fanfic, but the sensitivity is dialed down a bit because I'm less self-identified with the characters than I am with a female character. And because I, as a woman, have dealt with a lot of sexist shit directed at me due to my sex/gender, whereas I've never been a man (gay or otherwise) and dealt with the specific stuff that gets directed at them.

Everybody's different about this stuff. But IMO the tens of thousands of women who like and reblog posts talking about how they enjoy m/m because it frees them to enjoy fantasies without a lot of the baggage that comes with m/f for them, are expressing their honest experience. They're not saying it because they don't want to admit that they just like dicks touching (in fact most of them will freely admit they like dicks touching). They're saying it because it's true for them.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, this.
Basically, if there's a M/M romance and things get warped, I close and downvote the book. If it's a M/F there's probably a big chance I am going to waste my time writing discourse and being really angry at the world at the large when maybe I should ... just close, instead. But I can't.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

That's interesting! I guess I am just one of those people who filters it out or just doesn't pay enough attention? The stories I read tend to rely on the understanding/pretense that both characters want the other (even if they are reluctant at first, and that is, understandably, a trope not everyone likes for various reasons), and any arguing has rarely, if ever been sexist(at least not outright, but now that I think about it, I've likely written some patronizing arguments, but that was part of the point/character - and that is a whole other can of worms) and focuses on the actions of the character.

But if I were to have some of those questions, much like the poster above me (DA), they would apply across the board, as I too tend to fully inhabit the character in question. I read fic and react out loud, call bullshit, etc. I quite often place myself in the story via the character.

[(Anonymous)]

Well then people are saying bull. What about female characters not part of the ship?

[(Anonymous)]

Believe it or don't, but telling people their feelings, preferences, and motivations are made up is an asshole thing to do. People who do that are broadcasting loud and clear that they're not worth one's time.

Female characters who aren't the part of ship get roughly as much focus in the fics I read as male characters who aren't part of the ship.