Yeah...well, there are some shojo mangas there the girl is kind of...well....NOT weak and a crybaby and needs to be protected and stuff...
but in the end they still cannot live without the boy...
but...that's not different with BL...right?
Some people didn't like this post...I wonder why... :D
Yes, yes, I agree! Totally!
...there are not enough bl and shojo mangas there the characters' personalities are in a kind of grey zone...they both have weaknesses but also strong points...they are not white and black...
I think we could open a completely new field of gender studies here! I think not many have written about gender suppression and stereotypes in queer literature - or have they? (I dunno)
...I should confront one of my lecturers at university with that topic in the future :D
huh? erase homosexual representation? no way :D I would read so much BL if I wanted to...haha^^ funny :)
but really...the tendency of societies to press every sterotype they can find into genders is really mysterious...who came up with that...?
to bad...you can't edit your post after you send it...I discovered some write errors... :P
I actually think yaoi can be the most gender role prone heternormative genre there is which makes no sense because it's about same sex couples. Some yaoi go outside the box but an overwhelming amount is super uke=girl seme=boy now that's ok if that's your kink but when the characters always have those personalities it's so annoying it's the only thing I hate about yaoi tbh I prefer their personalities to be grey area and their top bottom thing as a preference. Then again yaoi is mostly written by straight women I'm not really surprised (no offense to straight women)
i see where op is coming from however gender is a social construct meaning it was something created by humans idk how this came from yaoi but you're on to something XD
Sorry I wasn't reading clearly either XD I see that you were making the same statement it's nice to see other yaoi fans who think the way you do cause I've seen youngers ones who think yaoi is an accurate representation of real gay men like bruh. But yes sorry if I sounded brash that was not my intention! I agree Tanaka is a very good mangaka Yoneda Kou is also pretty out of the box! anyways imma go hide in shame >_>
Yeah, I get the feeling. The reason I have a problem with most normal romances if the fact that it's always the same. It's always the boy doing that and the girl doing this, while in the yaoi/ shounen-ai I like the most they're both the same. (i prefer having established seme/uke positions but that's something else) I don't really see the point in reading yaoi (personally, ofc, other people may like it exactly that way) if the only difference from normal shojo is that they both have a dick.. (and hopefully gorgeous abs am i right, that's way too rare on girls)
I've never been big on the whole gender thing, it's always been just a way to know whether you were born with this or that.
the problem is...misrepresentation is a common thing...not only in literature, and comics, but also in art..I write a term paper about Native American Art this semester and I just don't know where the stereotypes begin and where they end...it's horrible really...You can't see straight through. And I kinda fear that whatever I write...it might be stereotypical of me to think like that - which is totally.....don't know...creepy?
Anyway...it's not just that, it's that stereotypes in literature and such harm the people in the real world. So they say. But I guess it depends on the type of image you have of yourself and your group - like if you have low self-esteem it might hurt a lot to read about gender stereotypes in queer manga...but if not...
So basically...the mangaka can draw what they want, it's their freedom...therefore the publisher decides what gets printed...but on the other side they shouldn't restrict the genre too much...because that would be the same as telling the mangaka what they should NOT draw...man...that's so complicated.
maybe we should begin with telling society not to destroy self-esteem of all kinds of people so they don'T get hurt by stereotypes...but then again that would be only a justification to reproduce stereotypes witout a bad concsious...
you get...what I said about stereotypes being complicated? xD
yeah. that's right. Our brain likes to think in categories - that's how it works. We would probably all go crazy if we didn't like...even simple things like plants - animals - humans - mushrooms...
those things are categories - sterotypes if you want to. :D it's like seeing a flower and saying "this is a typical plant" ...well yes. if there wasn't this category "plant" we wouldn't know what it is - would we? Or at least it would be really hard to describe ...and by decribing actually you're just trying to sort it into a category...your brain tries to make it "easier" for you. Because you're a baka! xD
so...yeah.
But what is it about Tanaka again? I didn't really get that....I dunno if I read all of her works...hmmm...
...oh you mean Neon Sign Amber for example? I think that was her best work so far...at least from the ones I read. I dunno what's happening Escape Journey though...I#m not really into megane...sadly
But I also liked the partly critical approach of Jackass.
We need more of this kind! ^-^
Oh yeah. Of course, the social part plays a big role in sterotypes.
Thanks for the great discussion! It was awesome! ^-^ I wasn't even sure if someone would reply to this! haha^^
Oh really? Maybe I should give Escape Journey a try then :)
I have the feeling I've read so many shounen ai and yaoi and whatever type of manga, that I think "gender" is just an illusion. There is no gender. Anybody in the same boat? ^_^'' I feel a bit weird.