This was posted here before; a ton of replies saw nothing strange about it & disagreed fervently with anons who found it goofy. I wonder if I'm missing something, since I looked at it from every angle I could find:>"Well, you can enjoy a story without being sexually attracted to the characters, and it's also possible to only find stylized men attractive but not real-world men"Yes but there's a difference between a gay woman or straight man liking Banana Fish, or someone whose brain is affected differently by anime stylization, and the context of this scene: "a dedicated fujoshi who identifies as a lesbian, goes to BL events but never touches yuri".>Well a lot of yuri IS based around male fantasies that women find stupid or grossYet a ton of it isn't, and the specific brand of supposed "male fantasy" this page focuses on ("cheap/exaggerated/unrealistic" eroticism or "simplified, easy" romance) is common in a lot of yuri by female authors with big or even majority female fanbases. In fact, it doesn't even make sense for fujoshi; when I see female BL artists branch out from yaoi to yuri (whether it be genderbent BL pairs or straight-up lesbian ships), to an audience overwhelmingly made up of other women, these elements that supposedly drive "lesbian fujoshi" away from yuri can be just as, if not more "shameless" than yuri by & for men. "Stupid overly malebrained yuri" exists, but what truly makes it that isn't even well-represented here; and if it's not about gender (even though the page specifically makes the connection) and simply a matter of "I want more down-to-earth stuff"... that exists too.I guess it could make sense for an extremely rare type of person who fits a variety of hyper-specific criteria, from unusual taste to ignorance of yuri, but it's unlikely to apply to the vast majority of self-identified "lesbian fujoshi" vs the simpler explanation of "they're actually bisexual" or "they are repressed on some level". Am I close-minded for thinking this?
>>4501297I think the explanation itself is a bit odd, but it's really not that big of a deal to like something versus not.There's definitely some interesting space for discussion, specifically for the band of lesbian woman who enjoy yaoi but not men, and straight women that enjoy yuri, but for the most part, outside of that, this just falls into "There's damn near almost as many reasons for a particular kink as there are people that have it". What one person gets out of yuri isn't the same as what another gets, what that person gets out of yaoi isn't going to the the same as what the first person gets. I can agree with the claim of a lot of yuri made by men has a bit of an off taste to it, but the same thing can be said of a lot of yaoi made by women, from the perspective of gay men. And don't even get me started on fucking omegaverse shit. But, there's people for whom that specific taste is what they're after, whether or not it intersects with their more grounded expectations of reality.
>>4501300>I can agree with the claim of a lot of yuri made by men has a bit of an off taste to it, but the same thing can be said of a lot of yaoi made by women, from the perspective of gay menWell, that's part of the point being made in that page: "I'm fine with unrealistic shit if it's not my orientation". But to that, I'm gonna quote one of the anons who thought the page was silly:>Do heteros read BL because they can't relate to the fakeness or how it would never be that easy or romantic irl as it is in every single harem anime or Shoujo manga? No, of course not. It is FICTION. It doesnt need to be realistic. This has never and never will be an argument.>The idea that you cant enjoy something because it is actually relevant to your sexuality is contradictory. It's just an excuse.>I understand that you can read anything as long as it's entertaining. I agree. Even I read het stories sometimes. But being a FUJO implies an investment that goes beyond normal and saying you dont read stuff that is actually relevant to your sexuality at all... that is just batshit insane. That reeks of either self-repression, being in the closet or being not as gay as they say.As for>this just falls into "There's damn near almost as many reasons for a particular kink as there are people that have it"The way I see it, a reasonable explanation would be something like this...>actual lesbian>into yaoi for non-sexual reasons OR only attracted to anime men>manga reader invested enough in otaku culture to be a fujoshi and attend BL panels at conventions in person, yet ignorant of the variety of yuri>completely satisfied with yaoi, uninterested in researching yuri beyond the most surface levelIs it possible? Sure, but as I see it, it's an Occam's Razor thing. Certainly can't be common enough to represent a "type of lesbian" or "type of fujoshi" - and in fact I see this specific identity immensely more from the west than I see it from Japan.
>>4501303I also wonder if the female author of the OP comic sees *herself* as having "unusual, male-brained taste" given a quick glance at her Pixiv bookmarks revealed Ayane's Makikomi. You know, the completely unrealistic, exaggerated, porn-for-porn's-sake giant-boobed woman and fox-loli yuri one.And to elaborate on my point about the page's flawed idea of "male perspectives vs fujo perspectives" in the OP: it's not uncommon for fujoshi to draw stuff that loos like this, and for other fujoshi to enjoy it. This is immensely more "ridiculous" (and by the standards of what constitutes "male gaze eroticism" in the OP manga page, much more "male gaze" than) most of what dedicated male yuri fans are into. Homura Subaru is pretty much THE "male boob porn yuri artist" and has never drawn anything as exaggerated as what you often find when fujos genderbend their yaoi pairings or branch out into more "legit" yuri pairings.
>>4501306Genuinely there's boatloads of these. Without the shoujo/josei aesthetics and the fact that it's genderbent yaoi ships, anything that looks like this would be unquestionably labeled as "male gaze" by the overwhelming majority of fujoshi who criticize yuri for being that - especially if they're going by the standards of the OP comic.
>>4501297If this is from where I think it is, then this is the only part of the Manga I absolutely do not care for. Yaoi doesn't need more defending in a book that chose to spend as much time with female homosexuality as much as it did with women's sexual education. Also it would have been nice to see her actually try yuri and go "wow my preconceived notions about the genre have been broken now that I know some of its history" >Well a lot of yuri IS based around male fantasies that women find stupid or gross The thing is Yuri is historically founded with lesbians so even when men try to enter the space, they have to work with the foundations that were made by the lesbian authors before them. While yaoi was made by straight women, so when gay men try to write it, it is tied to the foundations that straight women laid out
>>4501329>The thing is Yuri is historically founded with lesbians so even when men try to enter the space, they have to work with the foundations that were made by the lesbian authors before them. While yaoi was made by straight women, so when gay men try to write it, it is tied to the foundations that straight women laid outWhich is exactly why I think it's weird for someone like the author, or for /u/, to uncritically accept generalizations like that. Yuri Hime's lighter & more erotically-focused stuff had plenty of "nonsense, stupid, unrealistic" material in it when the readership was 70% female and when a ton of the authors also did yaoi.>Also it would have been nice to see her actually try yuri and go "wow my preconceived notions about the genre have been broken now that I know some of its history"I mean, personally I still suspect it's this >>4501306>I also wonder if the female author of the OP comic sees *herself* as having "unusual, male-brained taste"I mean, again, she had THIS Ayane manga in her Pixiv bookmarks. Given she seems decently invested in certain forms of social analysis & discourse, I think she might just have a strange ideological blind spot where it's uncouth to question someone as long as they invoke certain gripes. But in this case, IMO this popular use of the term "male gaze" came from a genuinely heteronormative place within academic feminism and was never really reconsidered. People are so often told, and accept, that "women who like women want realistic, down-to-earth eroticism, and all these other things are 'male gaze' and total no-nos when it comes to appealing to them", but as someone who's been into yuri since age 12, simply observing reality told me a different story.What do you make of fujoshi who want to like more yuri, but complain about it being too soft and not sexually graphic enough? That's the polar opposite of the "female gaze, male gaze" ideas so many will espouse.
