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Fandom gives me deep thoughts?
Jun. 4th, 2012 05:12 pmAnybody who still claims that women are not aroused by visuals the way men are is not paying attention to the right parts of the internet. When women (and a few gay men) are given a space in which they are not seen as strange freaks for being turned on by ogling (*cough* tumblr and livejournal *cough*), they ogle plenty, and have long discussions about said ogling, and which parts of which people provide for the best ogling, and share the images they enjoy ogling for other people to ogle.
It doesn't seem quite as objectifying as when men do it, but whether that's socialization/peer pressure, and/or just my own biases, is hard to say. It does seem as though women have a higher variety of body parts about which they show appreciation (example: "Oh god, his neck, I wanna lick it" followed by a dozen women agreeing) whereas stereotypically, men are reduced to appreciating boobs/butt/legs. I mean, you don't see a lot of straight men saying, "Oh man, her hair, I just wanna get my hands in it." Or do you? I know of guys who prefer certain hair lengths and enjoy brushing a woman's hair. I suppose what individual men like is different than what they tend to say to each other in groups of just men. Is it seen as un-masculine to admit you really like a woman's eyes?
Women do seem less likely to just bluntly say "I really want to fuck him/her." Now, they'll allude to it. For instance, someone quoted a character saying, "I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice," and a bunch of women replying saying they agreed. But even in a thread that was just women discussing how attractive a particular character was, people would say "I want to lick his ear" or "I'd like to be in a sandwich between those two" or "I'll be in my bunk" (Firefly references, woot) but nobody said, "I want to suck his cock," even thought it's clear some of them do. There's no denying that one of the reasons erotic fanfiction/slash exists is because some of us would like to be doing those things with those characters, or at the very least visualizing the characters doing those things.
One of the more fascinating things is this .gif, which is often posted on tumblr in response to images and .gifs:
--and related phrases, like "Oh god, my ovaries just exploded." Not to get overly clinical or pedantic here, but while I can understand that the explosion is meant to reference the idea of having an orgasm, ovaries have nothing to do with orgasms. I've also seen things like, "This gives me a ladyboner," which makes a little more sense. But there's all this euphemistic dancing around the idea that we might find images etc. of a favorite actor/character sexually arousing. I've heard the suggestion that we should use the term "wettie," as in "Unf, that photo gives me such a wettie," but I haven't seen it get much use. I suppose because it's a tad more, well, graphic? Since it actually describes female arousal?
What is it about women getting turned on that makes us all so uncomfortable? Yeah, yeah, I know, whole books and Ph.D theses have been written on the subject, and I know some of the general ideas. But watching it happen in online fandom is so interesting.
In other (but totally related) news, this comment has some excellent photos of Sherlock.
ETA: Almost as if to intentionally disprove my point, several pages into the original thread from which came the comment I posted, people are making references to their vaginas and fapping.
But a comm full of people who theoretically know each other is not the same thing as tumblr posts. I guess women do indeed get more graphic when they are, in theory, in a space that is at least perceived as semi-private? Which is just common sense.
Oh well.
It doesn't seem quite as objectifying as when men do it, but whether that's socialization/peer pressure, and/or just my own biases, is hard to say. It does seem as though women have a higher variety of body parts about which they show appreciation (example: "Oh god, his neck, I wanna lick it" followed by a dozen women agreeing) whereas stereotypically, men are reduced to appreciating boobs/butt/legs. I mean, you don't see a lot of straight men saying, "Oh man, her hair, I just wanna get my hands in it." Or do you? I know of guys who prefer certain hair lengths and enjoy brushing a woman's hair. I suppose what individual men like is different than what they tend to say to each other in groups of just men. Is it seen as un-masculine to admit you really like a woman's eyes?
Women do seem less likely to just bluntly say "I really want to fuck him/her." Now, they'll allude to it. For instance, someone quoted a character saying, "I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice," and a bunch of women replying saying they agreed. But even in a thread that was just women discussing how attractive a particular character was, people would say "I want to lick his ear" or "I'd like to be in a sandwich between those two" or "I'll be in my bunk" (Firefly references, woot) but nobody said, "I want to suck his cock," even thought it's clear some of them do. There's no denying that one of the reasons erotic fanfiction/slash exists is because some of us would like to be doing those things with those characters, or at the very least visualizing the characters doing those things.
One of the more fascinating things is this .gif, which is often posted on tumblr in response to images and .gifs:
--and related phrases, like "Oh god, my ovaries just exploded." Not to get overly clinical or pedantic here, but while I can understand that the explosion is meant to reference the idea of having an orgasm, ovaries have nothing to do with orgasms. I've also seen things like, "This gives me a ladyboner," which makes a little more sense. But there's all this euphemistic dancing around the idea that we might find images etc. of a favorite actor/character sexually arousing. I've heard the suggestion that we should use the term "wettie," as in "Unf, that photo gives me such a wettie," but I haven't seen it get much use. I suppose because it's a tad more, well, graphic? Since it actually describes female arousal?
What is it about women getting turned on that makes us all so uncomfortable? Yeah, yeah, I know, whole books and Ph.D theses have been written on the subject, and I know some of the general ideas. But watching it happen in online fandom is so interesting.
In other (but totally related) news, this comment has some excellent photos of Sherlock.
ETA: Almost as if to intentionally disprove my point, several pages into the original thread from which came the comment I posted, people are making references to their vaginas and fapping.
But a comm full of people who theoretically know each other is not the same thing as tumblr posts. I guess women do indeed get more graphic when they are, in theory, in a space that is at least perceived as semi-private? Which is just common sense.
Oh well.
