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Reader Feedback on "Drawn to It"
Oh, Ms Ng, you should have mentioned what YAOI stands for: yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi!*
* No plot, no punchline, no point
--FS
12/12 |
In response to W's comment...maybe rather than being the 'leftover' audience, women are the audience for yaoi because women started it?
--km
12/06 |
I have my own theory: staright men are turned on
most by viewing straight sex, least by gay sex. Women
seem to be turned on by any sort of visual sex.
The Yaio form is an alternate to other gay porn
but doesn't resonate with the gay audience.
That leaves one possible audience: women.
--vv
12/02 |
The response to this article by yaoi fans (I'm one myself) leads me to believe yaoi will never be accepted by the mainstream simply because yaoi fans are possessive of the genre to the point of hostility. Yaoi will never grow or improve in quality if you insist on keeping it hidden and worthy only of those who do their yaoi research. This is small-minded thinking and not very inclusive in a community that touts itself on its tolerance.
If you want yaoi to be something you can discuss in public, allow it to *exist* in public. It's a fun, entertaining genre, and yet the feedback to this article makes us all sound like angry elitists. Why would mainstream readers want to learn more when they're given the impression that their interest isn't wanted unless they've done a ton of research and they're now educated enough to not insult the present yaoi fans?
In order for yaoi to prosper in the West, it needs to be exposed to the West. This means some media coverage will get it wrong and some will get it right. But at least it'll be out there as a topic of conversation.
--TpO
12/01 |
As (so far) the only gay male reader of yaoi and june, (which are so close to the same thing as to not really bother distinguishing, the genre is still the same) I think that the article did a good, if slightly outdated and underresearched job of introducing those not familiar with the yaoi scene to what yaoi is. Sure some more research would have been good, for that matter so would a longer article. I own a book on anime that devotes a 12 page chapter to the subject.
First off, she does get her roots right, saying it started as a kind of fan artwork, though from there the research falters. In the beginning of the artform and still very frequently, the genitalia is often depicted in a vague manner or is censored, this has to do with Japanese culture and law as it does with anything else. Though now the censorship is lifting some even in Japan concerning the sight of an erect penis, and many youi manga and doujinshi are featuring full-glory penises with forskin folds and detail (much to my delight). And maybe it's just my experience, but even when the genitalia are vague or censored, the boys involved typically produce many, many times the juice of any man I've ever been with. Very sloppy sex scenes abound on the Japanese side of the artform.
One thing she gets dead-on right about the genre as a whole is the presence of a definite, very apparent top vs. bottom relationship of power and submission. Angst is a yaoi staple, any yaoi fangirl will tell you. Many say that that is part of what makes them interesting. Conflict and struggle is sexy. Who isn't more attracted to the one whose hard to get? Foreplay is often a struggle and sometimes violent, even between two men who arent by necesity homosexual. Are there exceptions to this rule? Many. There is a sub-genre of yaoi that focuses on the romance far more than the sex, if at all. Some call it Shonen Ai, though some have sex and its still boy on boy which makes it yaoi. The author was definitely focusing on the more hardcore pornographic side of yaoi which is very tp vs. bottom, somtimes even good vs. evil.
I don't pretend to know why women are attracted to yaoi, I would think it might have something to do with th reason straight men fantasize about and read lesbian pornography. But I do know why I read it: to get turned on. The characters are all drawn to be absolutely perfect. They can be perfect since they're nothing more than line drawings. The fact that they're drawn vaguely, to be honest, makes the experience more arousing rather than less, as it leaves it to your imagination to fill in the details. I love it, Almost more than photographic porn, for that reason. Are the stories bad? Sometimes. Is that why I read it? Sometimes. But they are almnost without fail cute stories and innicence is upheld in the art somehow. The art is more pure than hentai (the heterosexual equivalent to yaoi), which I like as a (hopeless at times) romantic.
Before yaoi can florish here, America needs to get rid of the foolish and antiquated sexual taboos handed down to us by our puritan forefathers. If a woman, or even more so a man, has discovered yaoi, they probably like it, and they probably don't have any trouble with it. It is a particularly unknown genre of manga, which its self is only starting to gain widespread popularity in the states. Woemen must fess up and own their own kinks? Give me a break. Not to say the world wouldn't be a better place if everyone did that, but seriously, can't a person indulge themselves in their secret kink reading in private? Fessing up to kinks isn't going to sell any more yaoi than it already is. People who are interested in yaoi or even shota (even more kinky, depicting young like 10-13 young, boys having sex with eachother and with older men) like me, you're going to be interested in it regardless of if you think it's kinky or not. Breaching rules makes conflict, conflict has always been sexy.
--JP
12/01 |
I'm a straight woman. I'm pretty culturally aware. I've never heard of yaoi. After this article, I'm very curious. It sounds like I'm missing out! What I don't understand is the feedback here. Yaoi fans have their hobby exposed in a mainstream publication and they're pissed off... why? I don't get it at all. The article was clearly meant to introduce people to the subject, not to indulge die-hard fans.
--be
11/28 |
there were a lot of weird and confusing things said in this article (won't even touch the unlikely audience thing; made me laugh more then anything) but here's a main point that i've seen only one article written so far get right: Yaoi and June (said junay like ja ne) are two totally different things and 99% of the fans use it wrong. so was the article talking about yaoi? (taking already established and created characters and putting them together for fun and no profit) or June? (original characters in an original story that is about homosexual activities written by women [most of the time] for women [most of the time]) the world may never know...
--cd
11/28 |
so... is there a point to this article or did the writer just want to point out that women were reading stories where men were doing the mattress mambo with *gasp!* men? So what? So we like it. Some of us because there's no girls involved that we have to identify with. Some of us because there's something different about it because there's no women. Some of us because maybe we just like to see boys fucking boys because we just plain have no interest in men other wise.
With little research and a few hastily drawn conclusions, once again YAOI is left fully in the closet. Men have been lusting over lesbians for years, why can't we like our boys doing boys?
--JN
11/28 |
From the initial contradiction of the subtitle with the article itself (women unlikely audience for books written specifically for women?) to the strange non-conclusion, the point of this article was unclear and completely removed from the actual experiences of yaoi fans.
The sexual politics of yaoi might be mildly interesting, but the article was so full of preconceived ideas and biases that politics took precedent over experience.
Most of us do NOT feel shame about liking yaoi and the implication that we do was the most offensive and disgusting thing about this article. Blaming women who don't "own their own kinks" was also unfair considering how difficult yaoi is to find by accident and how unlikely it is that any woman who isn't an involved anime or manga fan would even know of its existance.
Yaoi fans are a diverse group and maybe the author should have paid more attention to what we had to say before she came to her conclusions.
--cs
11/28 |
Many in the YAOI community have read this article by Ng and found it to confusing and filled with seemingly-biased disinformation about the genre. Something yaoi enthusiasts encounter all the time in mainstream life.
Please feel free to read the following review of the article and the ensuing conversation in the following live journal.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/hidden_hero/
Kind regards. pira
--PLU
11/26 |
The yaoi scene in both Japan and America is far more diverse, sex-positive, and interesting than your too-brief article suggests. A simple search on Ebay will find plenty of yaoi *doujinshi*-- Japanese fan comics that are generally printed and sold in the cheap-- that embrace, reject, and subvert those heavy top/bottom stereotypes mentioned in the article, and that feature both glowing cones of light and real, honest-to-goodness penises.
I'm disappointed that a sex-positive publication such as Nerve decided to feature yaoi so shallowly, and in such a negative light. Do you really think only men read the gay fiction on your website?
--BT
11/24 |
Yaoi is just another example of American-influenced Japanese culture being exported back to us. It is a rather distasteful sideline to real Japanese culture. To proclaim this as more of a cultural significance than American porn is ridiculous. Just like low-grade Anime or Hentai, it's just another facet of Japanese culture that has gained a cult following here and really isn't anything special.
--BD
11/24 |
The factual inaccuracies and biases in this article are just amazing. Starting with the subtitle itself - since yaoi comics are specifically written for and marketed at women, women can hardly be described as unlikely audience for it.
'In Japanese yaoi, genitalia are indicated by a big white circle (per industry jargon, a "glowing cone of white light.")'
Perhaps the author should have examined some Japanese comics drawn within recent years, since the censorship laws in that country were relaxed. An appropriate amount of research would have also quickly debunked the comment about all Japanese yaoi males being androgynous.
There are a number of academics who make a deliberate study of the phenomenon of slash/yaoi and the women who like it, some of whom enjoy the material themselves. Maybe it would have been useful to approach one of them for quotes instead of two academics who clearly regard it as a distasteful minor sideline to their studies of 'Modern Japanese Literature and Film' or 'Film Studies'. My friends and I remain unimpressed by academics who opine that we enjoy yaoi because we are proponents of female chastity who feel threatened by heterosexual sex. Would that same logic be applied to the large numbers of men who enjoy lesbian fantasies?
--tm
11/24 |
You forgot to cite the artist! Shame on you!
http://kiriko-moth.com/
--amd
11/24 |
One thing the author of "Drawn to It" forgot to mention: there's an entire annual convention here in the US devoted to yaoi -- Yaoi-Con (http://www.yaoicon.com).
Lovely article, though. So proud to see friends' artwork and stories being highlighted.
--TP
11/24 |
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