There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?
There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing. And like, I find men attractive, yes. But I also find women attractive. I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones. I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.
But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO. A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women. It removes a source of pressure and sexism. Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life. It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.
This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically. I read a recommendation for a het romance. And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended. The tropes at play were fun. Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss. I had a visceral negative reaction.
Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you. How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.
And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men. Now, there’s no logical reason for that. Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man. But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it. Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.
But I can’t when it’s a het relationship. There’s too much baggage there. Too much societal history of abuse. I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.
Now some people can. And that’s fine. And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender. That’s also fine. I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior. It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.
But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters. We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic. We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance. We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it. But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us. And maybe it shouldn’t? In an ideal world? But for many of us, that’s the truth.
So this post blew up in the last 24 hours, for whatever reason, and I was looking through people’s responses, as you do. I’m quite moved that so many found it relatable.
But I wanted to highlight one set of tags (via @reallifepotato )
Because I AM comfortable with my sexuality and fairly comfortable with my body, but still, this resonates so hard as someone who has always been overweight. The amount that our society teaches women to constantly compare ourselves, almost always negatively with every other woman out there, can utterly ruin our enjoyment of this kind of thing. Like how many times have you tried to watch a mainstream romantic comedy where some utterly gorgeous actress is bemoaning that she can’t get a date, or WORSE is made out to be less than attractive. And you look at her and go…but she’s fucking perfect? And you just want to puke.
But with m/m romance you can put yourself in the place of either character and…not compare yourself. You can enjoy a character being attractive without feeling bad about yourself, which is REALLY HARD to do for any woman in our fucked up culture.
oh my god someone put it into words!!!!!
