I always found it irritating how some people in here sometimes sounded quite condescending towards those who read or watch BL stuff
This.
And I'm sick of this "double standard" accusation being thrown around anytime there isn't a perfect symmetry between the genders, and how it's always interpreted as the oppression of women by men and never the other way around. (Now there's a double standard for you!)
I voiced my support of yuri in that other thread without voicing my support for BL in this thread for one simple reason: as a heterosexual male, I have no personal interest in BL. Sorry if that makes me a hypocrite in your eyes.
I think there's a very common stereotype that all men are dirty perverts while women are above all that. All porn, especially lesbian porn, is seen as the misogynistic exploitation of women by men. Even non-sexual yuri is seen as exploitation. Male-on-male porn breaks that stereotype, especially when it's viewed by women. In the eyes of the pseudo-feminist puritanical anti-porn brigade, women who enjoy it are therefore traitors to their gender who lower themselves to the level of men.
And that is why women who enjoy BL are seen as weird while men who enjoy yuri are seen as normal.
(Also, the idea that yuri is for men and yaoi is for women is in itself offensive. It's like pretending that real homosexuals don't exist, even while exploiting homosexuality for a heterosexual audience. WTF?)
First of all, I will address your last point. Now, you're conflating yaoi with the portrayal of homosexuality in fiction in general. I think that people of all genders and all sexual orientations can read and enjoy both yaoi and yuri regardless (I personally enjoy reading both yaoi and yuri and het - for me it all depends on how well the relationship is written), but the general trend is that females like yaoi and males like yuri (of course, yuri has a lot more girl fans than yaoi has boy fans since due to the nature of our society yuri seems to be slightly more acceptable). Let me clarify here what I mean by "yaoi" - a subgenre of fiction in Japanese anime/manga where there is a distinct seme/uke dynamic where the uke is highly feminized. Those are stories that, in all other respects, follow typical heterosexual romance tropes, only with boys. It is not meant to be a realistic depiction of homosexuals in real life.
On the other extreme, there are genres like
this (warning: NSFW) and gay porn that are tailored for a gay audience. Not to say that gay audiences can't enjoy heterosexual romance stories or heterosexual porn or GL or BL or anything like that (in the same way that straight audiences can enjoy watching homosexual romances and gay porn as well), but the point is, those are very different genres with very different character archetypes and dynamics, and with very different target demographics. I think that the yaoi genre, in itself, might be offensive to real gay men because of the portrayal of the stereotypically feminine, weak uke (typically - not all yaoi stories are like that - it's just a general trend that is not always true). And the yuri genre might be offensive to real lesbians because it does not address the true hardships and homophobia that homosexuals have to face in real life (same goes for yaoi, which typically ignores or glosses over the fact that homosexuality is not considered socially acceptable).
I voiced my support of yuri in that other thread without voicing my support for BL in this thread for one simple reason: as a heterosexual male, I have no personal interest in BL. Sorry if that makes me a hypocrite in your eyes.
I don't think that makes you a hypocrite at all. In fact I think it's reasonable that heterosexual males would have no interest in BL (though of course there nothing wrong with you if you do, the same way there's nothing wrong with heterosexual females liking GL). It's when females are seen as weird for liking BL and not GL, while it's completely normal for males to like GL and have no interest in BL whatsoever, that I think there is a double standard in place, and that is what I'm criticizing. Please don't take it personally; you seem really defensive and really, you don't need to be. It's not your fault that the world is like this, that the (typically) heterosexual male perspective (liking GL, have no interest in BL) is seen as the norm while the (typically) heterosexual female perspective (liking BL, have no interest in GL) is seen as weird. It's the legacy of a long history of patriarchal human societies where the male perspective is the norm. I don't think that individual men are responsible for perpetuating this double standard; it is simply something that has emerged naturally from the way our society is constructed. Everyone has the right to voice their own likes and dislikes; what I see as contemptible is when some females are looked down upon for their likes and dislikes simply because those deviate from the (typical) masculine perspective. Again, my complaint can probably be summed up in the following sentence:
I always found it irritating how some people in here sometimes sounded quite condescending towards those who read or watch BL stuff
But there's not the same attitude towards boys and girls who read or watch GL stuff. I don't think this is a result of men deliberately trying to oppress women. I think that everyone is being oppressed by an androcentric worldview; both people who are condescending towards those who read BL and think they weird, and those who are the victims of such contempt.
And I'm sick of this "double standard" accusation being thrown around anytime there isn't a perfect symmetry between the genders, and how it's always interpreted as the oppression of women by men and never the other way around. (Now there's a double standard for you!)
I certainly don't think that the absence of perfect symmetry between the genders necessarily means that there is a double standard in place. But in this case, there is, as I have argued above.
I think there's a very common stereotype that all men are dirty perverts while women are above all that. All porn, especially lesbian porn, is seen as the misogynistic exploitation of women by men. Even non-sexual yuri is seen as exploitation. Male-on-male porn breaks that stereotype, especially when it's viewed by women. In the eyes of the pseudo-feminist puritanical anti-porn brigade, women who enjoy it are therefore traitors to their gender who lower themselves to the level of men.
And that is why women who enjoy BL are seen as weird while men who enjoy yuri are seen as normal.
But if your argument is correct, that only explains why the "pseudo-feminist puritanical anti-porn brigade" think women who enjoy BL is weird. What about all the other people? What about the people who are posting here? I don't think I see any puritanical pseudo-feminists running around here.
As for the porn argument, I think that both genders tend to fantasize about sex in slightly different ways, and the way we get our sexual entertainment reflects that. You're probably aware of the argument that romance novels are just porn for women. Apparently women get turned on more by words and involved relationships and men get turned on more by visuals and are more amenable to the idea of casual sex (there are experiments that support this). So there is this view of romance novels as shallow and silly and the view of het/lesbian porn as equally shallow and dirty. I don't really think there's a double standard involved here, and as long as it involves consenting adults, I don't think that the porn industry can be seen as exploitative of women, more than any other area of work out there.
In the eyes of the pseudo-feminist puritanical anti-porn brigade, women who enjoy it are therefore traitors to their gender who lower themselves to the level of men.
I... really don't understand this reasoning. I don't know of any feminist writers who espouse this view. And in any case, it seems to me that girls who like yaoi in general don't enjoy watching real gay porn. (I enjoy it personally - sometimes - but I don't think that I'm representative of most yaoi fans in this case.) And most heterosexual men (yourself as an example) probably don't enjoy watching gay porn either. So... how are women who watch gay porn lowered to the level of (heterosexual) men who don't, as a rule, enjoy gay porn...?
While BL doesn't personally interest me, I actually do take issue with yaoi, because I believe that it objectifies homosexual men in the same way that most fanservice anime objectifies women. That's not cool with me, especially since I have a lot of homosexual friends.
@sake-bento: In the same way that porn objectifies women? If it's for simple sexual release, I don't see what's wrong with that. I mean, if you have the urge to fap, and you need something to fap to, why not? I say.
But let's take fanservice as an example and see how objectification works.
Example: Mahou Sensei Negima. Lots and lots and lots of over-the-top fanservice. Objectification of women? If you read on past the first couple volumes, you'll see that the the depth of characterization and character development of the numerous female characters are actually extremely good, especially compared to other manga, fanservice-y or no. In that sense, I don't think that you can say that Negima, even though it has fanservice, is objectifying women.
In the same way, I think that whether or not BL objectifies men depends on the particular work. For me, if the characterization and storyline is good enough, and the men are portrayed as three-dimensional individuals, I don't think that objectification is the case.
Then again, I'll be honest: If I need an emotional fap, I'll read fluff no matter how objectified the characters are; if I need a physical fap, I'll watch porn even though it objectifies all the participants involved, male or female. I'm not saying objectification is a good thing; I'm just saying that just like it's understandable for men to watch porn because of their physical desires (not saying that all men do that, of course), it's understandable for women to read romance novels/BL/slash because of their emotional desires (not saying that all women do that, of course). We need to treat porn-watching men or slash-reading women as normal all the same.