I am a font of yaoi?

A couple of months ago, I wrote up a little entry to discuss what I don’t like about yaoi, which turned out to be a great thing for me, bringing forth a whole slew of very nice folks with recommendations. I’ve found some titles I can enjoy in the genre, and made a few new friends, too! One odd side-effect, however, is that people have somehow gotten the idea that I’m a yaoi fan. Just this week, in fact, I’ve received two yaoi-related requests from readers passing through.

The first was a request from an author to review her yaoi e-book. Since I read a very small amount of yaoi, and rarely write proper reviews of anything, I have recommended that she may want to seek out a more suitable voice, though if she really wants me to do it, I’ll try. The second, was a request from a woman who is working on her Master’s thesis, asking me to link to a survey on yaoi, and to quote the following text:

My name is Mara Blair and I am a graduate student in Japanese Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I am currently conducting a research study for my Master’s thesis. This research study is about reading habits and personal reactions to characters in manga, books and fanfiction by readers of yaoi/BL/boy’s love/shounen ai manga.

The results of this study will be published in my Master’s Thesis for the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. In addition, it is possible that a paper based on this research will be published in Girls Doing Boys Doing Boys: Japanese Boys’ Love Anime and Manga in a Globalized World, edited by Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, & Dru Pagliassotti, to be published by McFarland & Co. in 2009.

Should you wish to participate in this survey it is located at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=puoorQo7sbuuy0cZYtOcnGg&hl=en

I have now done so. :) I took a look at the survey, and the last portion of it reminds me of something I’ve always had a problem with in slash fandom, which is a general sense that slash readers/writers dislike female characters, not just in fanfiction, but in the source material as well. I can understand why she’s focusing on that in the survey, because unfortunately, I think it is too often true. It is one of the things that has kept me on the fringes of slash fandom, generally. I can’t think of many things more disturbing than misogyny in a community of women. And no, “misogyny” is not too strong a term. Some of the things I’ve seen written by some members of slash fandom could not be described any other way. Since I’m not really involved in yaoi fandom, I hadn’t noticed that sentiment among readers, but the content of this survey makes me wonder. Anyone have thoughts on that they’d like to share with me?

Speaking of yaoi, I followed Brigid Alverson’s link to Isaac Hale’s post about his experiences at Yaoi-Con, and I was pretty disturbed by some of the responses he received in comments. While I can understand why women who attended and enjoyed the convention might feel defensive, it seems to me that when someone (anyone) has come out of a con feeling “dehumanized and objectified” the right thing to do is to apologize for their experience and take a hard, thoughtful look at the event to determine how that might have happened, and whether changes might be warranted. It isn’t especially uncommon for something that seems harmless or even liberating to some, to feel degrading or alienating to others (Open Source Boob Project anyone?) regardless of intention. I don’t see how berating the person who felt degraded is ever an appropriate response. That said, there is some interesting discussion later on in comments, with quite a bit of food for thought.