#and i haven't felt genuine attraction to a real life man since high school | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lente-ment · 1 year

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Sorry if this is too personal, but I read on your AO3 that you went from being a fujo to a lesbian. I've heard of that happening before, and I just don't get how someone goes from being into media all about the attractiveness of males and males alone to realizing they are only attracted to females and females alone. Would you mind offering any insight into that process?

See, I'm a cis bi guy who started off straight, but women have remained just as attractive to me as I became more interested in men. I can't imagine being no longer attracted to women because they're hot for different reasons than men and vice versa.

I hope this doesn't come off weird! I just find gender/orientation stuff like this really interesting.

Oh hey, this isn't weird at all! Thank you for asking about a genuinely interesting topic, at least for me. (And sorry for the late reply, what little time I had last week I focused on editing ch13 and getting it ready for publishing... almost there...)

Relating to your question, I'm not even sure where to start, except by acknowledging that, yes, it probably is weird to go from being super into m/m and the whole culture that focuses on men, to being a lesbian who cares little for men (as objects of romantic or sexual desire, I didn't turn into a misandrist, just to clarify). It didn't happen over night, of course. And I do have to say that I had always been a little bit queer to begin with.

Fujoshi, or perhaps simply "readers of yaoi" (since fujoshi is a really derogatory term from what I gathered), are usually women. It is safe to assume that most of those women are straight, or at least attracted to real men in some way. However, men portrayed in yaoi works are rarely reflections of how real men look and behave. That's further supported by the fact that very little gay men read regular yaoi. Some read bara. In regular yaoi, male characters are very "sanitized" versions of men, made for women who only want the emotional side of the whole affair. They want to see the men show their feelings and be vulnerable. But not with them (they want strong men IRL), or other women (jealousy). But with other men? That's okay. Because those stories are always under their control (unlike real life is, for a lot of women). Most of these women also like real men (actors, guys in their school/workplace), and end up dating them/married. I'd like to point out that I haven't read any scientific research, or psychology papers. These are my personal observations and things I discussed with friends in the past regarding this topic.

Anyhow, to get back to my experience, I got into yaoi because these stories were fun. I gotta admit, I'm not sure how I found out about yaoi to begin with. I don't remember anyone around me being particularly vocal about it. I dug that stuff out from the depths of the late 2000s/early 2010s internet all by myself. Anyway, IRL, I was never particularly interested in men. Or anyone, until high school. Shows like Junjou Romantica or Ai no Kusabi were just interesting stories to me. And when I think back on yaoi anime and doujinshis that I consumed religiously in my teenage years, I mostly remember liking the themes they worked with, such as non-con sex, power play, bondage, humiliation etc. I cared little for the physical side of things. What little arousal I felt I connected with my own physiology, not with male genitalia. Meanwhile, yuri never had the same appeal. Those girls were always soft and gentle and shy. I think you know by now that that's not how I roll with my (vamp) lesbians.

After high school, during college, my love for m/m stuff waned. I guess my worldview expanded, and I mulled over being bi so I started considering women as well. The fact that I also never managed to have a relationship with a man longer than a week should've spoken louder volumes to me. As I grew as a person, I realized a lot of yaoi that I was reading was really immature, too. There are still a few works I'd recommend, but everything else doesn't do it for me anymore. Unfortunately, the same thing could be said about f/f stuff. Not just yuri (that is to say, works coming from Japan), but fanfics as well. There aren't really any f/f ships, even today, that I'd root for as hard as I did for some m/m ships. Because of that, I didn't know where I stood for the longest time.

At the end of college/beginning of my adult life, I finally started accepting some things about myself. One of them was that calling myself a lesbian was a completely valid thing to do. It felt a bit weird at the beginning. I come from a somewhat traditional surrounding so I didn't know too many queer people during that process. There was nobody to validate my feelings externally. That extended the self-realization process. Yet, slowly, I understood that I was finally doing myself a proper service by focusing on women.

To be honest, I still find some men attractive, but that's more of an exception than a rule. And it's pretty random. And I never act on it because I'm not interested in them sexually, and only like... 5% romantically. So, uh, maybe that's just like seeing someone outside on the street and thinking "huh, this guy looks cool, hope he has a nice day".

Uhh, okay, that's a wall of text. Hope it illuminates some things for you, anon? If you're comfortable sharing, I wouldn't mind hearing about your own self-discovery process. Thank you for checking out my fic and hopping into this inbox. Have a nice day! 💙

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