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whose smut
Jan. 28th, 2004 01:08 pmVery good article on yaoi. Lots of good, solid research, both historical and present-day.
One thing I find curious, though, is that the author doesn’t think there has been a debate in the West yet between straight women writing this stuff and gay men protesting the inaccurate appropriation of their sexuality. Admittedly, the more vocal rounds of it have taken place in slash rather than yaoi, but there’s enough overlap of authors that the effects have spread to both.
One specific effect: the trend of “realism” in the way women write m/m. Gay men protested that real gay sex is not all sweetness and roses, that real men really are completely fixated on their dicks, and that this slash/yaoi stuff should reflect that.
One solid response, of course, was that yaoi isn’t about real men, gay or otherwise. It’s about at least one, possibly both, characters who are, in terms of psychology, sensuality, reactivity, and occasionally physiology women who just happen to look like men.
But another response was to start writing yaoi in a more hardcore style, in which the characters are obsessed with sex, bodies and cocks. I am hugely entertained by the fact that this still doesn’t make the stories about realistic gay sex. Instead it seems to feed very strongly into both the revenge motive and the possession by women for themselves of undiluted sexuality.
My personal reaction to that debate was pretty much: Too bad, boys, deal with it. I’m not writing porn for gay men. Gay men can write their own damn porn. I write porn for women. While I try for physiological accuracy, because that’s one of my personal quirks, what I write is designed to cater to the libido of women like me. Sorry, gentlemen, but if you want porn that’s accurate to your own experiences you’ll have to do it for yourselves, just like I did.
One thing I find curious, though, is that the author doesn’t think there has been a debate in the West yet between straight women writing this stuff and gay men protesting the inaccurate appropriation of their sexuality. Admittedly, the more vocal rounds of it have taken place in slash rather than yaoi, but there’s enough overlap of authors that the effects have spread to both.
One specific effect: the trend of “realism” in the way women write m/m. Gay men protested that real gay sex is not all sweetness and roses, that real men really are completely fixated on their dicks, and that this slash/yaoi stuff should reflect that.
One solid response, of course, was that yaoi isn’t about real men, gay or otherwise. It’s about at least one, possibly both, characters who are, in terms of psychology, sensuality, reactivity, and occasionally physiology women who just happen to look like men.
But another response was to start writing yaoi in a more hardcore style, in which the characters are obsessed with sex, bodies and cocks. I am hugely entertained by the fact that this still doesn’t make the stories about realistic gay sex. Instead it seems to feed very strongly into both the revenge motive and the possession by women for themselves of undiluted sexuality.
My personal reaction to that debate was pretty much: Too bad, boys, deal with it. I’m not writing porn for gay men. Gay men can write their own damn porn. I write porn for women. While I try for physiological accuracy, because that’s one of my personal quirks, what I write is designed to cater to the libido of women like me. Sorry, gentlemen, but if you want porn that’s accurate to your own experiences you’ll have to do it for yourselves, just like I did.
