Now, I did watch anime as a kid. The usual: Candy Candy, interchangeable sentai shows, the antique French dub of the Three Musketeers anime that confused Aramis with the heroine of Rose of Versailles... none of which registered any higher readings in the scale of my consciousness than Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. Just 'toons with too many freeze-frames. In other words, I have to trace my real, honest-to-goodness-Irma-it's-not-just-Sailor-Moon initiation to that most stereotypically North American vector - the school club. A teeny-weeny school club I am still part of, socially if not literally speaking, since we have long since graduated from members to friends. They're still the people I watch anime with.
Which is a tad problematical.
For the yaoi fan, that is.
My club long ago split along gender lines into Yaoi-Shoujo Fans and - well - there are words for heterosexual males of my age who watch anime. Most of them have unkind connotations. If it weren't for the sneaking suspicion that the nerdy otaku fanboy of today can parlay his adolescent fervour for large robots into game-company stock offerings buoyant-er than the average Megumi Hayashibara character's boobs, they wouldn't get any respect at all. Which is unfair. They are quite reasonable boys individually, willing to discuss intricacies of plot and characterization and rank anime personages on a three-way scale of badassedness. It's only when taken collectively that they develop the attention span of gnats on speed. When they're assembled in one room Kenshin episodes get fast-forwarded because the speeches are too long.
Even so, there are anime clubs and anime clubs. One friend in California suffers a Council which most notedly Does Not Approve of Weiss Kreuz or Berserk - because said shows are "too gay". (To which one may reply that it takes - but that would be entirely too cheap a shot.) My club, thankfully, is about par for the lot. Due less to the gender split per se than to two major suppliers falling on the XX side of the fence, we get a consistent alternation between shoujo and shounen fare. There's some stuff they won't do - Card Captor Sakura is pretty much a lost cause - but catch the boys in an unguarded moment and they might admit that CLAMP pulls a mean fight scene. Heck, buy the next round of beer and you can start them analyzing the sword techniques in Utena. Won't finish watching Fushigi Yuugi, though. Unthinkingly careful about spoilers, we forgot to warn about Hotohori being a guy - and the boys got a little hostile after they realized their mistake. Them Mt. Leikaku bandits must have been damned secure in their sexuality.
Nuriko in episode five, they just plain refuse to discuss.
Which pretty much sums up the prevalent attitude toward bishounen. Or at least the bishounen of the bright-eyed long-tressed variety. All the old clichés apply. Can't tell if it's a chick or not; looks like a weak momma's-boy to me; I bet Wufei could beat him up in a fight. (Yes, I know it's tempting to say something about Treize's desk at this point. I pray for fortitude during every one of these meetings, and not because they make me watch Saber Marionette either.) Sure, we're enlightened enough to have enshrined in our constitution that "There's a gay guy in every anime" (above "Goku's not dead" but under "Never pick a fight with someone whose mech has a better paint job than yours"), but the terminology says it all, really...
In a sense, it makes the yaoi fan's life that much easier. If they're going to assume it anyway, then why not? In a pickier sense, though, it makes it harder. Fan-created yaoi is like fan-created anything else after all: it's indefensible in the loveliest of ways, and if you are like me you get agitated when presuppositions are made about the canon. Because it's not just the boys. You get it on the other end from the Yaoi-Shoujo Fans who assume that of course Hiro and Duo are destined for each other just look at them for cripes sakes how sweet. And as a fanfic writer, my aversion to the narrowing of what I perceive as the limitless possibilities for romping in my fave series (Kenshin as teary uke? Battousai as seductive seme? How about happily married to Kamiya Kaoru with 2.5 kids and a dog?) borders on the pathological. I don't want to take anything for granted interpreting the original, so I can do everything in my stories.
Which means honesty, alas.
No sitting by and taking it. No encouraging the whispering about Kurama but chickening out of telling Hiei fans about the bunny ears. I have to live with myself during those sleepless nights. But then, what happens when someone like me goes on the equality warpath after they show F3: Frantic, Frustrated and Female at a meet? (Yeah, I liked it too, but it's the principle of the thing.) What, when they want to know what I mean by "I read it at Aestheticism?"
Well, it's not hopeless. I know I've made it sound hopeless but it's not.
A few cases in point (no names and no permissions granted ^_^):
Status:
computer techie, club member
How the news was broken:
[to rabid, third-party Duo Maxwell fan]
"So what would you *do* if you actually saw someone like
that on the street?"
Rabid Duo Fan: "Find someone who
looks like Hiro and try to set them up!"
Reaction: puzzled
Quote:
A: "No, it's not that - I just
don't see how someone can be obsessed with a couple. Like with
two people together."
Yaoi Fan: "So a normal obsession
would be with a single person? Rei Ayanami, say?"
A: "There you go."
YF: "I see."
Status:
cinematography student, club prez
How the news was broken: after prolonged aggravation over remarks of
the momma's-boy variety, impromptu demonstration using online
material and Minami Ozaki tankoubon
Reaction:
surprisingly philosophical
Quote:
B: "Well, all guys like lezzie
porn, even the ones who won't admit it. You gotta figure it's
a two-way street."
YF [incredulous]: "So you're okay
with this?"
B: "You people are more perverted
than us anyway. You just hide it better."
Status:
lawyer wanna-be, sometime club associate
How the news was broken: easy-reading BeBoy furigana came up in the midst
of a holding-forth on the Little Sisters vs. Canadian customs
case
Reaction:
not an eyelash batted
Quote:
C: "Which just means the Japanese
are more advanced than us. I'm being serious. The current law
is a morass of circular definitions. They know meaning is lacking,
they knew from the start that they were embarking on a thankless
task in fact, they just devoted some expendable paper to it because
the situation demanded a solution to an unsolvable problem-"
YF: *nods brightly*
Status:
biology student, club member
How the news was broken: girlfriend decided to share her joy at receiving
shipment of yaoi tapes
Reaction:
skeptical
Quote:
[Upon mention of marathoning the vids
of AnK, Fujimi, etc.]
D: "For that long? How can you
sit through it? I mean, it's porn, right?"
YF [valiantly, having been roped into
the phone conversation by the girlfriend because "you explain
so much better"]: "Um, no it's not."
D: "What is it then? It sounds
like porn."
YF: "...An exploration of the
dichotomy between technology-induced societal constraints and
individual emotional freedom in a futuristic dystopia."
D: "Really?"
YF [dripping conviction]: "Yeah."
***
Hey, so it's not paradigm shift à la road to Damascus. But do it right - get them one on one - fudge a bit with big words - and even if you're as honest about your proclivities as the boys are about renting their 18+ simulation games (there's a yaoi one coming out end of June, pass it on), you won't be ostracized. Not even by the anime club hetboys. Surprise!
Maybe there's hope for the world after all...