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15 Jan 2006 01:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiWhilst playing Typing Terror on Neopets, the word yuri suddenly popped up on one of the robots.
And I thought, "wow, here's a site boasting of having banned 1000 different mutations of the word 'fuck' having the word 'yuri' in the dictionary." (By the way, I have discovered you can freely say "shimatta", "kuso" and "yarou" to your petpets and they'll chirp happily...even when you type the word in Japanese).
But I digress. What's wrong with the word yuri, you ask. Don't be such a stiff-necked conservatist homophobic, you say.
Because the word yuri, and indeed, yaoi isn't about respecting homosexual relationships. It isn't heterosexuals finally embracing the existence of homosexuality.
Quite the contrary, they are an expression of art and form that demeans homosexuals and further delineates the separation between sexual preferences.
It is because yaoi and its less explicit synonym shounen-ai are often grouped under shoujo, it is because yaoi has a fanbase that is clearly female - and heterosexual. The reverse is true for yuri, which possesses an almost exclusive fan population of sexually frustrated males.
Thus homoeroticism becomes a spectacle for heterosexuals, who for whatever reason cannot find the same satisfaction in reading about or watching a heterosexual relationship. It places homosexuals in the spotlight and entices its audience with their interactions but never fully identifying with them, and as a result never encourages social acceptance. Homosexuality in the opposite sex becomes eyecandy, not a serious romance.
This is further highlighted by the exclusively divided audiences and instinctive rejection of yuri by girls and yaoi by guys. Clearly, these two subgenres have not encouraged acceptance of homosexuality amongst their own peers.
The reason for that lies largely in the construction of material. Yuri I am unfamiliar with, but in yaoi unrealistic situations are very distinctive. At no point does yaoi or shounen-ai set out to express the true circumstances - and I would imagine, the many difficulties - encountered in a real homosexual relationship. Instead, it builds upon stereotypes of a dominant male, who is often the exemplar alpha male, and the submissive male who in many works possesses unbelievably feminine physique and psychology. The argument for the replacement of the girl in a heterosexual relationship with a beautiful feminine boy is long and psychologically complicated, but it recognises just that - it is merely a heterosexual relationship with the girl in a male body. It neither addresses nor explores real issues in a homosexual relationship, serving instead the purpose of soft porn - exploitative and disdainful about the interactions it details.
It is a word that adolescents will eventually stumble upon and an enormous world they will probably come to explore out of curiosity, but yuri and its brother yaoi are not words I would like to see on a self-proclaimed children's site: because the expressions are not complimentary - of their audience and of their characters.
--------------------------------------------------------
yaoi: also known as "slash" to address fanfiction based on western works, "shounen-ai" often being recognised as the milder description, details the relationship between two males often with their characters constructed in a stereotypical way and serves little purpose but as eyecandy.
yuri: same as above, but "shoujo-ai" and refers to the relationship between two girls.
--------------------------------------------------------
Whew, there was a lot of sweeping generalisations in that, so you'll have to realise that there is a difference between simple "yaoi" and a work that really addresses homosexual relationships. Also, this isn't supposed to be outright anti-yaoi, but I do think it's necessary to realise that mainstream shounen-ai and yaoi often aren't about homosexuals, they're just perverse fantasies of a heterosexual female. It mustn't be held up as an example for real homosexual relationships. It is a gratuitous genre just like shoujo smut (constituting of legions of girls who fall in love with the guy who raped her), and while there may be gems, it does not deserve any praise as a genre that embraces homosexuality.
By the way, while stuff in CLAMP (and a bunch of other shounen-ai stuff out there) are moving and touching and endearing, it's hard to argue that they are more realistic than your average lemon doujin, and in the end it is unfortunately just gratuitous emotional wangst-age (or as Ms B Jones would have it, emotional fuckwittage), no matter how much you love it.
Though I still have to admit they're yonks better than all that hawt gay s3x you get in a lot of those cheap pulp yaoi and sloppy gratuitous slashfics. Oh, and all that mpreg...get over it girls, your man ain't getting pregnant with no functional ovary, even if his androgynous looks did result from a seriously screwed up life-in-the-womb (because it'll still be non-functional, you see, if he has a penis).
And there ain't no way Seishirou's sperm is gonna get to Subaru's non-existent non-functional uterus through his anus unless Subaru had a gigantic gaping hole in his intestines, but that could cause serious problems for his lifespan. Let alone having a baby.
Though there are, theoretically, ways in which a normal XY man could get pregnant, but I really, really don't want to go there, because it would just be giving stupid young females ideas. Suffice to say that plain butt sex ain't enough.
And God or evolution, whichever you prefer, decided there are many severe disadvantages when a man tries to bear a child and give birth.
If you're going to now run off and rewrite your sucky fic so that they fall pregnant by magic it better make sense.
Oh yeah, even when a woman falls pregnant, miscarriage rate is high in the first few months. And for rationality's sake (rationality? Mpreg? Immediate incompatibility!) gestation period is 40 weeks? Your baby will not survive at 2 months. It won't even survive at 8 months short of medical (or magical) invention.
...That's all for now.
--------------------------------------------------------
That was utterly random. Just...struck me, like...a bolt of very high naturally occuring voltage. The urge, I mean, in a metaphorical way. I am trying to write rants without using "I think" too much, but I can't seem to manage without sounding arrogant and narrow-minded. Oh well.
And I thought, "wow, here's a site boasting of having banned 1000 different mutations of the word 'fuck' having the word 'yuri' in the dictionary." (By the way, I have discovered you can freely say "shimatta", "kuso" and "yarou" to your petpets and they'll chirp happily...even when you type the word in Japanese).
But I digress. What's wrong with the word yuri, you ask. Don't be such a stiff-necked conservatist homophobic, you say.
Because the word yuri, and indeed, yaoi isn't about respecting homosexual relationships. It isn't heterosexuals finally embracing the existence of homosexuality.
Quite the contrary, they are an expression of art and form that demeans homosexuals and further delineates the separation between sexual preferences.
It is because yaoi and its less explicit synonym shounen-ai are often grouped under shoujo, it is because yaoi has a fanbase that is clearly female - and heterosexual. The reverse is true for yuri, which possesses an almost exclusive fan population of sexually frustrated males.
Thus homoeroticism becomes a spectacle for heterosexuals, who for whatever reason cannot find the same satisfaction in reading about or watching a heterosexual relationship. It places homosexuals in the spotlight and entices its audience with their interactions but never fully identifying with them, and as a result never encourages social acceptance. Homosexuality in the opposite sex becomes eyecandy, not a serious romance.
This is further highlighted by the exclusively divided audiences and instinctive rejection of yuri by girls and yaoi by guys. Clearly, these two subgenres have not encouraged acceptance of homosexuality amongst their own peers.
The reason for that lies largely in the construction of material. Yuri I am unfamiliar with, but in yaoi unrealistic situations are very distinctive. At no point does yaoi or shounen-ai set out to express the true circumstances - and I would imagine, the many difficulties - encountered in a real homosexual relationship. Instead, it builds upon stereotypes of a dominant male, who is often the exemplar alpha male, and the submissive male who in many works possesses unbelievably feminine physique and psychology. The argument for the replacement of the girl in a heterosexual relationship with a beautiful feminine boy is long and psychologically complicated, but it recognises just that - it is merely a heterosexual relationship with the girl in a male body. It neither addresses nor explores real issues in a homosexual relationship, serving instead the purpose of soft porn - exploitative and disdainful about the interactions it details.
It is a word that adolescents will eventually stumble upon and an enormous world they will probably come to explore out of curiosity, but yuri and its brother yaoi are not words I would like to see on a self-proclaimed children's site: because the expressions are not complimentary - of their audience and of their characters.
--------------------------------------------------------
yaoi: also known as "slash" to address fanfiction based on western works, "shounen-ai" often being recognised as the milder description, details the relationship between two males often with their characters constructed in a stereotypical way and serves little purpose but as eyecandy.
yuri: same as above, but "shoujo-ai" and refers to the relationship between two girls.
--------------------------------------------------------
Whew, there was a lot of sweeping generalisations in that, so you'll have to realise that there is a difference between simple "yaoi" and a work that really addresses homosexual relationships. Also, this isn't supposed to be outright anti-yaoi, but I do think it's necessary to realise that mainstream shounen-ai and yaoi often aren't about homosexuals, they're just perverse fantasies of a heterosexual female. It mustn't be held up as an example for real homosexual relationships. It is a gratuitous genre just like shoujo smut (constituting of legions of girls who fall in love with the guy who raped her), and while there may be gems, it does not deserve any praise as a genre that embraces homosexuality.
By the way, while stuff in CLAMP (and a bunch of other shounen-ai stuff out there) are moving and touching and endearing, it's hard to argue that they are more realistic than your average lemon doujin, and in the end it is unfortunately just gratuitous emotional wangst-age (or as Ms B Jones would have it, emotional fuckwittage), no matter how much you love it.
Though I still have to admit they're yonks better than all that hawt gay s3x you get in a lot of those cheap pulp yaoi and sloppy gratuitous slashfics. Oh, and all that mpreg...get over it girls, your man ain't getting pregnant with no functional ovary, even if his androgynous looks did result from a seriously screwed up life-in-the-womb (because it'll still be non-functional, you see, if he has a penis).
And there ain't no way Seishirou's sperm is gonna get to Subaru's non-existent non-functional uterus through his anus unless Subaru had a gigantic gaping hole in his intestines, but that could cause serious problems for his lifespan. Let alone having a baby.
Though there are, theoretically, ways in which a normal XY man could get pregnant, but I really, really don't want to go there, because it would just be giving stupid young females ideas. Suffice to say that plain butt sex ain't enough.
And God or evolution, whichever you prefer, decided there are many severe disadvantages when a man tries to bear a child and give birth.
If you're going to now run off and rewrite your sucky fic so that they fall pregnant by magic it better make sense.
Oh yeah, even when a woman falls pregnant, miscarriage rate is high in the first few months. And for rationality's sake (rationality? Mpreg? Immediate incompatibility!) gestation period is 40 weeks? Your baby will not survive at 2 months. It won't even survive at 8 months short of medical (or magical) invention.
...That's all for now.
--------------------------------------------------------
That was utterly random. Just...struck me, like...a bolt of very high naturally occuring voltage. The urge, I mean, in a metaphorical way. I am trying to write rants without using "I think" too much, but I can't seem to manage without sounding arrogant and narrow-minded. Oh well.
