[ SECRET POST #1840 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1840 ⌋


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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 123 secrets from Secret Submission Post #263.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[ariseishirou.livejournal.com]

Eh, seconding the "it depends on the fandom". I've met tons of them in the Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Wars, Star Trek, Sailor Moon, and Metal Gear Solid fandoms, and almost all of them shipped, or had a pairing they were heavily invested in.

Heck, almost all of the MLP fans I know are straight males, and all of them ship.

[(Anonymous)]

MLP is a tongue-in-cheek thing. I don't think it's at all a good exemplar for the "norm" of straight men in fandom. When I say "shipping fandom" I mean the segment of fandom that invests a lot emotionally in a pairing (often non-canon pairing) and produces relationship-centric fanworks and cultivates a fanon around that pairing. I'm not disputing that there are straight men who care about pairings or "ship" in the sense of liking a pairing in a canon (that's my husband), but I don't see the same sort of shipping fandom in those male-dominated fandoms, and what does exist is still largely female. I've come across some erotic fanfic written by men, certainly, but not much in the way of relationship focused, "OTP" long fics. There are men who participate in fandom this way, but it's hardly surprising that you don't see much of them given what a small percentage they are of dedicated shippers producing and commenting on fanfic, and men who enjoy ships but don't invest in the fanon aren't really visible in terms of being counted in ship fandom.

But either way, that's very tangential to the original secret. OP is complaining about a lack of male visibility in m/m shipping fandoms. That's not surprising, given that, again, they're a small part of shipping fandom overall, and arousal patterns in men and women are different w/r/t eroticism that doesn't align with the viewer's orientation. Women are more likely to get turned on by anything erotic, whereas men are more likely to require specific appeal to their orientation (so it must contain women for a straight man to be aroused by it). Fanfic isn't exclusively about sating the id, but a whole lot of it is.

[ariseishirou.livejournal.com]

Ehhh, MLP is far from the only fandom out there with a high visibility of male shipping fans, though, and it's certainly not a tongue-in-cheek thing for many of them. Even male MLP shipping fans do heavily invest in pairings and create canons - it's not fair or accurate to write them off broadly because you've seen a few jokes about it on the internet. They also write serious, massive multi-chapter fics about those pairings. There are jokes and memes in any fandom. See my comment below for my theories on that; I think it has far more to do with the representation of female characters in the media. If the vast majority of canons revolved around female characters I probably would have zero desire to ship, too. In fact I do have zero desire to ship those few canons that are.

Also I'd be extremely hesitant to draw any essentialist conclusions about gender differences in viewing pornography, since virtually all of those studies are conducted utilizing porn that is by men for men and with virtually no realism or diversity. There are a number of theories that what women are really picking up on there is eroticized male desire, and that men also pick up on eroticized female desire when present - unfortunately, live-action pornography made by women for a presumed female audience is slim to nill.

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

Anna Span? Candida Royalle?

It's not as rare as you would think. Porn by female directors tend to aim for an audience of both men and women, though. It doesn't give me the "girly zone" feeling that, (even pr0ny) fic tends to.

[ariseishirou.livejournal.com]

Good point, there are some out there, but I have yet to see it ever used it a psychological study. It's always as vanilla as possible.

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

The porn is, or the psychological studies are? Because some of the stuff by women directors is pretty hardcore (http://www.xcritic.com/columns/column.php?columnID=1179). That Erika Lust dreck just gives woman-directed porn a vanilla name.

I'd speculate the reason that good stuff's never been used in a psychological study is that the people doing those studies are not porn connoisseurs but people out to prove some kind of gender-essentialist or anti-porn feminist point. But I don't really know.

[ariseishirou.livejournal.com]

The psychological studies. One of my bffs is a psych grad student, she shows me a lot of interesting shit that people do indeed seem to use just to prove their point.

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

I'm rather curious. So do they just pick and chose their material? Because that doesn't seem like valid research.

[ariseishirou.livejournal.com]

The good ones? Following genuine scientific curiosity about human psychology? No.

The ones out to prove their political viewpoint, be it conservative or feminist or what have you? Yep they suuuuure do. As an example, my friend showed me a recent study about gender and intelligence. Most IQ tests show little correlation, or only slight correlations between gender and certain sections, like visual-spatial (slight advantage to men) and verbal (slight advantage to women). This psychologist had found a startling 6.3 point difference in favour of men in general intelligence across the board.

In order to get it? Discarded any and all tests that didn't advantage men, including the largest of its kind ever performed, in Mexico, with literally hundreds of thousands of data. There was a thorough rebuttal in Science about it, but in psychology journals? Not a peep.

Oh and the dude still defends his results as valid. And still has his job. It's straight up fucked. I don't know why psychologists get away with such lax standards compared to other scientists, but they suuuuuure do.

[(Anonymous)]

>Mass Effect
>Dragon Age

Shipping their character with Tali isn't shipping, it's wish-fulfillment. By that logic, all harem anime fans ship because they ship the self-insert protagonist with their favorite girl.

[ariseishirou.livejournal.com]

Eh, see below. Call it what you want, it's still having an emotional investment in and creating fanworks about fictional characters having a specific relationship.