Seme/Uke Dichotomy = Girly Uke?

Arigatomina suggested I start my own topic, and hey, any forum for my opinions is a good forum. (laugh)

Basically, the idea is something like this:

In my opinion, the real issue is sexual equality. And as the seme/uke dichotomy EXISTS, that in itself is never truly possible in this world. If one partner has to be the "girl," I assume the thought process is "well, why not girl 'em up a bit?"

Thoughts? Comments? Angry rebuttals? I can take it. X3

First: When I say "fans/people/girls/etc" I mean "most" fans/people/girls. Okay? It's a generalization. Don't remind me that there is a rare exception to everything I say. I know there are rare exceptions to everything I say. I'm talking about the majority here. I'll get to the exceptions later. I have to multi-post to get this entire rant out, so bear with me. ^^;

Female yaoi fans relate better to ukes. They lust after semes the way they wish that boy in class would notice them, or that hot movie star would throw them down and ravish them. Semes are their ideal of masculinity or boyfriend material. Ukes are the convenient shell they use to get vicarious masturbation and fantasy action. If the uke is too manly the girls can't see themselves "as him." He's much too strong and they're weak little girly girls, darling damsels, fragile and needing pampered or fiery and needing to be tamed. Whatever the girl fantasizes as her "perfect princess" in a romance book, that's the sort of uke she'll want in her yaoi.

The girls who like the stubborn ukes who have to be taken forcefully by their 'masters' are the ones who used to identify with the redheaded green eyed damsels in old romance novels. They have fire, but of course they're still women, still eternal bottoms lacking the body part necessary to top. So their "vicarious uke" must be just as unable to top - but still fiery enough to appeal to the girls' need to be "tamed." If you look at the "NaruSasu must End" group here, you'll see great examples of this type of girl. "He's fiesty and plays hard to get before giving in". In other words, he's that vivacious red-headed green-eyed texas woman in the old western-set romance novels.

With the vulnerable girls, they're the ones who used to identify with the blonde haired violent eyed victims in old romance novels. The ukes they like are eternally weak, eternally young, always as victimized and in need of rescue as the old Disney princesses. These are the ones that lean the hardest toward shota and extreme 'doe-eyed' ukes.

These two types are the ones who'll fight the hardest if you try to give a dick to their uke of choice. They'll never have dicks, they don't want dicks, so the very idea of their uke having one - and using one - is inherently wrong. He's a girl, just like them. The dick is only there for show, so they can pretend they're not just using him for vicarious kicks, so they can disassociate themselves from the sex/romance scenes. "Oh, no, he's a boy, he has a dick, so of course I don't think he's me. How silly." Yeah, right. Whatever you say. >.>

Then there are the tomboy girls, the feminists, the ones who wish they were male and identify more with strong characters. I fall here, of course. These girls fall into two main categories. There's the "I'm so exhausted of always being the strong one that I want someone to make me vulnerable," and the "I'm so sick of being stepped on that I'm going to do the stepping from now on." Both types tend to have a chip on their shoulders, both pushing against girly/feminine stereotyping. Yet outside of getting a sex change, both will always be female and (in their minds) biologically relegated to the receiving position. The semes they lust after reflect all they want in a man, or the man they'd like to be (because these girls may be semes at heart). Their ukes also reflect how they fantasize themselves to be.

The girls who want to be forced into a vulnerable position are different from the 'victims' I mentioned before. They tend to have carefully defined rules to that vulnerability. Like safewords in S&M games. The uke can be made weak, but never broken. He can be portrayed as young and doe-eyed and soft, but he has to be steel inside. Usually he's only vulnerable with his seme of choice. Again, this is where I usually fall. The ukes I love could top any time but choose not to. (Because while the idea of topping appeals to me, I like being on the receiving end. If I had a dick and knew how topping feels, I might change my mind.)

The second type may be extremely against any pairing that doesn't switch constantly. Often they find bishounen characters too girly looking to even bother with. The point is to subjugate strong men, so unless they want a slightly feminine seme to be their "avatar," they go for the butch guys. The ones who simply feel like guys and want to be in an entirely equal relationshiop will identify with the character they consider weaker and use their own strength to bring him up until he matches (and often tops) his partner. The idea is to have a perfect balance. If one is too strong, bring him down, if one is too weak, lift him up.

Now for the exceptions...

Not all girls let biology determine their views of sexual interaction. Some consider bottoming to be the powerful position because (as women) they call all the shots. Without them there is no penetration, no joining, just hands and toys that could be used alone by either party. On the other hand, if the guy isn't interested enough he can't get it up and there's no sex at all. If the woman has to prepare him by getting him excited, she (in yaoi terms) is prepping him the same way semes do to their ukes. In that case the seme is just the person who gets his partner ready for sex (hard or wet) and the uke is the one who needs to be worked into it.

Another exception is the male yaoi fans. I'm convinced only someone with a dick can know what it's like (emotionally and physically) to be in an equal relationship. Switching for girls is just prepping one or the other - she still is receiving in the end. I've heard guys who view topping or bottoming as the same thing - no emotional diference, no "weaker or stronger" inherent in the position itself. It's just sex. If you like to bottom more, then you just do. Some prefer handjobs over blowjobs. That doesn't make the guy who dislikes blowjobs an "uke" because he doesn't enjoy sticking it into his partner.

And the really big exception for girls = some are very versatile. One minute she's in the mood for a sweet blushing uke and his strong lovesick seme, the next she wants to see a wild boy get tamed by someone even wilder. In the space of a day she may go from seeing a strong (supposed seme) turned into a puddle of mush to having that same guy be a shy wooer of his cold partner. With these girls, none of the stereotypes apply. They may like cringe-worthy shota alongside bara, classic girly-boy students and macho teachers right next to fully reversable men. I like these fans the most. You can talk to them about anything because they don't have rigid and narrow views of yaoi (or sex and gender roles in general). There's bound to be some common ground you can both agree on as long as you don't try to force them to conform their ecclectic tastes to your own limited views. I've had the pleasure of meeting a few of these here on Aarin. They're great. And a very rare exception among fangirls.

Muwahaha I like to think I'm in the last category

EdoYuki, I'm not sure I understand the topic. What exactly is the question?

I'm proud to think that I inspired that lovely dissertation. I agree with most of it, really, although, as I haven't studied much in the way of gender issues, I always get a little confused on the fuzzy details... into which category, do you think, would the girls who say "no, he CAN'T top, he just can't, that would be gross" fall? I've met a few of these (unfortunately), and I've never really understood it; obviously, the self-insertion theory fits well, but is that the only idea? Can the "effemination" of ukes take place outside of that parameter? I only ask because these tend to be the girls that consider sex, in real life, to be "dirty" or something similar.

I think I fit in that last category... although I do admit we all would like to think that as it is the most flattering. I do, however, get alternate cravings, to be "dominated" or to "dominate"... and my manga collection varies from Haruka Minami to mangaka who draw men with leg-hair, so... Though I suppose just having few to no squicks doesn't put me in this category automatically. (laugh)

Ah, sorry, Artemis, I did kinda just continue on with a conversation Arigato and I were already having... I need to not do that. X3 I was asking something along the lines of whether or not the doe-eyed uke is the unavoidable end-result of a seme/uke dichotomy. That is, if a sexual "pairing" is never "switched," one of the men is clearly taking the submissive, or traditionally "feminine" role. Thus, it follows that he becomes weak and effeminate.

Arigatomina, it is a beautiful explanation! It nicely shows, how the characterization of the ukes in yaoi is filtered by the mindset and desires of the writer.

I think there is also another kind of ukes written by the specific set of yaoi writers, who technically does not write yaoi. They write about a very deep friendship or maybe even almost platonic relationship, when two men are so deeply involved with one another, that they always show as a pair, or their relationship is so intense, that one cannot explain character of one of them without talking about the other one. This relationship usually goes sour to induce even deeper emotional involvement between two characters. But there is no sex (not even the angry sex or rape - a great tool of the other yaoi writers in such situations). All the other components of a sexual realationship are there e.g emotional involvement, only the sex is lacking. The best examples are the Clamp guys (the canon of course) - everyone is recognizing it as a yaoi. We have there beautiful, tortured ukes like Subaru and Kamui, who are emotionally damaged, virgin but still very sexual, but only in the presence of their chosen semes and untouchable to all the others but to them. And even then, when they are touched by the seme, this touch is very sexual but mixed with pain (Kamui on the cross touched by Fuuma in the manga!). Like a punishment for the poor uke for his sexuality. For me it is a yaoi written by someone, who thinks that sex is a dirty, dirty thing.

I'm sure if there was a book on yaoi fangirl psychology, Arigatomina would have to be one of the writers.

However, I find all of this... kinda being heard before. Not to say that her/his information is well spoken and whatnot, but it's kinda obvious to me.

The main appeal to yaoi is the substitution of said girl to the 'submissive' male in whatever yaoi. What level of submissiveness and the attitude of submissive male is up to the writer of the yaoi and the audience of girls it wishes to pull in. There are girly girls, tom boys, and girls who just want to see two men without the vision of themselves in the mix (namely me).

I only use the term 'uke' and 'seme' for the simplicity of conversation, really. Most fangirls won't have the attention span for you to explain why you don't use 'uke' or 'seme' and will probably be alienated by it. Mind you, I don't use 'uke' and 'seme' to fit in either, but just for simplicity. It's easier to label than to full explain.

As long as there are females who wish to substitute themselves with a near equally feminine boy (instead of reading het, which I find rather ironic) in anime/manga, there will always be the label of uke and seme. So it's at times like this that I'm SO glad for people who take up to reversal pairing in yaoi mangas. It makes things much more interesting.

In fact! There should be a separate genre within the yaoi genre. Your typical "seme/uke" stories and you "reversal" stories. That would be wonderful so I don't have to sort through tons of femboy crap to get to a decent manga where both men look like men

@Toshiya_Neko: I take everything I wrote to be common sense. But many fangirls are in violent denial and refuse to accept that even *some* of it might be true, let alone all of it.

On a random note, one of my posts is now gone from this thread, along with one of Artemis' posts. That kinda sucks. o.O

For me I tend to write a lot of semes. Not that I think I'm overly aggressive, though I am very unable to let other people take care of me... I prefer to make sure I get things done myself. So I'm not sure if that makes me more of the personality that would write semes or not. But I do know, and have always thought that a big part of why I write the semes I do is because they are what I find alluring about men... or the men I find attractive. A lot of my favorite male characters in novels exhibit a lot of the same traits. Strong but not overbearing. Still sensitive but still very in command. So I don't know if that fits neatly into a category.

My ukes, and there are more of them lately, all seem troubled lol. They may not be completely vulnerable, they are gorgeous (beautiful yet still quite men) but they usually have something like they are yearning for someone they can't have or something that happened to them affected them somehow, or they are a bit of a rebel in their own way.

I think that I get frustrated mostly with the girls who really are writing male versions of themselves because I think how they are missing out on crafting the dream guy, the seme they'd want to woo their uke, you know? Semes are just such fun to write.