| Well, bear in mind most of this is opinionated. And I'm not saying all yaoi fangirls are like this. But, if you truly want to know my opinion I believe that most of them are ignorant and respectless.
Now, I am a gay guy. I do enjoy yaoi myself, and I'm not against it by any means. However, most of it's fandom gives it a horrible name. What bothers me the most is the seme/uke stereotype.
The idea that one man must play the "man", and the other must play the "woman". Dominant and submissive, essentially. In most actual yaoi manga and nearly all fanfiction, this stereotype takes action. One man is hyper-masculine, and the other is feminized to the point where he may as well BE a woman. What really gets me about this, is that yaoi fangirls claim to hate stereotypes, for example the flamboyantly gay male. But unlike the concept of a cute, innocent, child-like girly male-ish thing being paired up with a body-builder three times his size, the flamboyant male actually HAPPENS.
They also only enjoy yaoi because they think it's hot. I have known yaoi fangirls that believe homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle in real life. I have had two boyfriends, and many straight female friends. I won't deny it- I hung around the anime crowd, and with it comes the inevitable yaoi fangirl. Gay men are not objects for female otaku to gawk at. Had any of my current female friends squealed "KAWAII" at seeing me kiss another guy, they would likely be dismissed. Nothing bothers me more than being objectified or generalized.
I just died a little inside at typing the ever-dreaded word, "Kawaii." Oh, god. I did it again. Another fun fact...
They will make the dumbest pairings EVER. It doesn't matter if they're entirely different characters, or hell, from entirely different SERIES. If they're both male, and both hot, it was meant to me. For example, although this is within one series, the ever-popular Link and Dark Link pairing. No, I am not joking. This idea makes me "WTF" just as much as you. Not just anime, too. Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. Jack Skellington and Victor-whats-his-name from the Corpse Bride (not joking). Spongebob and Patrick. I actually knew a girl that insisted they were lovers.
They speak Japanglish, they write god-awful fanfiction such as "WHAT IF CLOUD WENT ON "GAY STRAIGHT OR TAKEN"", they write Mpreg, they slaughter all the characters you love and mold them into stereotypes that they ignorantly follow, and so on. I am NOT saying they are ALL like this. I know decent yaoi fans, fangirls and the like. I'm just sad to say, the yaoi fandom has gone completely downhill ever since the anime craze began in America, and these fangirls give guys like me a bad name.
Wow, that was shorter than I could have done but longer than I wanted it to be. Oh well. |