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Discussionhow far back does women obsessing over gay men go?
There's been a lot of discussion here, about TIFs who obsess over gay men, and more recently over women in slash fandom, or those who become involved with boys' love/yaoi manga. Slash fandom (women writing about pairing two male characters together) goes back at least to Kirk and Spock stories, traded in the 1970s. Yaoi also dates back to this period.
I was surprised to learn, years ago, that at least some women had obsessions like this, back even further, when I learned about Dora Carrington, an associate of members of the Bloomsbury Group. She became obsessed with the gay writer Lytton Strachey and ended up marrying the man he was obsessed with, to get favor with him, and so they could all live together in a pining polycule. On the day she married her husband, she wrote to Strachey, ""I cried last night Lytton, whilst he slept by my side sleeping happily—I cried to think of a savage cynical fate which had made it impossible for my love ever to be used by you..." Strachey died young (in his 50s) from cancer, Carrington killed herself shortly afterwards, apparently while wearing his clothes. They both died in 1932.
Her letters were edited and republished in 2017, I think they were first released in the 70s. She wrote obsessively to Strachey about her love to him, which he tried to rebuff by talking about their friendship. She also apparently wrote about disliking being female, hating menstruation, and being able to give birth.This Guardian review talks about her letters: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/17/carringtons-letters-anne-chisholm-review-dora-carrington-lytton-strachey-bloomsbury-group
While she isnt a modern TIF, or "fujoshi", a lot of the pieces are there. Of course Im sure random women, have fallen in love with homosexual men throughout time, just as it happens today, but this was truly extra... Have you heard of any other women prior to the birth of male/male fandom, were seriously stuck on gay men, or a particular man like this? What's the earliest woman you know of, who thought of herself as like homosexual men, or pined to be one?
I've heard--so I don't know that I believe it--that there are 2 separate motivations. a) Fall in love with gay guy--the crush stays theoretical, unattainable, idealized, and he never actually would ever put his grubby hands on her or has halitosis and smelly underwear. b) Become a man--be loved by a man in that higher, more equal way that men love their bros (in contrast to their hos); for the first time, to feel equality instead of subordination/submission in a love relationship with a man. I haven't actually pondered any of this deeply, so I don't know what I think about those hypotheses.
a) Fall in love with gay guy--the crush stays theoretical, unattainable, idealized, and he never actually would ever put his grubby hands on her
Ah okay, this makes sense to me. Kinda like those women who marry men who are in prison for life without the possibility of parole
Aren't both of those motivated by the same thing, though? The fear of being treated horribly by a man in a hetero relationship?
(One can also fall in love with unattainable hetero guys, though I guess that is mostly the case with movie star crushes, as with hetero men who are just married, or uninterested, one can never be sure that they remain so.)
A long way back, my grandmother who's born in 1944 mentioned to me a few weeks ago that in her time there was a group of girls in her high school who would ship two male characters in fiction, albeit with a less outwardly LGBT+ positive manner.
Definitely surprised me with that. Although it's funny how that mirrored my high school as well (I'll be 19 this year and graduated at the end of 2023), although nowadays these girls are trying to be the "gay boys" they like to ship and have become unfortunately misogynistic towards other women.
Women obsessed with male/male relationships are a mystery to me. I think they are extremely rare especially compared to the huge population of men obsessed with female/female relationships. I think it's a mixture of "these guys won't hurt me" + "forbidden interest" and a good amount of mental issues.
Larry Kramer’s book with a title that I’m not allowed to say here briefly mentions a female character who likes to cosplay as a gay man, and this was back in the 1970s.
I was curious about this so I looked it up and there's a character named Randy Dildough lmao
I think it's a combination of things. One thing is that if they're drawn to a man who doesn't desire them, it's "safe." I think because women are so sexually harassed and targeted as girls, it creates sometimes a desire for something but also wanting that thing to never come to fruition because that would be too scary.
Another factor is that a lot of gay men just have that "something." For one thing, they're more likely to take care of their appearance. And bathe regularly. Some gay men are quite handsome. The same is true for heterosexual men, but I find there's a kind of "heaviness" in straight men. Almost like sometimes I'm looking at greasy, heavy neanderthals. Some straight men I find very attractive, but others I'm just like... no. They have that "dumb jock" thing that isn't attractive to me. And gay men can also be dumb jocks and look like greasy, heavy neanderthals, but somehow they often seem to look a tad better. Maybe it's the lack of sexual lust and objectification from gay men that makes women drawn to them. Just a couple of ideas.
I think some women find a hopeless, one-sided romance with a gay man appealing because it's relatively safe. She'll never have to commit to marriage, get cheated on, risk pregnancy, or suffer sexual abuse.
I don't think it's ever been as common as it is today, given how much acceptance of homosexuality has increased, and how the media romanticizes gay men. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many historical examples of this phenomenon in fringey, artsy social groups where gender nonconformity was more tolerated.
There's been a lot of discussion here, about TIFs who obsess over gay men, and more recently over women in slash fandom, or those who become involved with boys' love/yaoi manga. Slash fandom (women writing about pairing two male characters together) goes back at least to Kirk and Spock stories, traded in the 1970s. Yaoi also dates back to this period.
But from what I gather, the TIFs and other girls and women who are into slash fanfic and yaoi nowadays don't just obsess over gay men, they sexually fetishize gay men.
Moreover, these girls and young women don't fetishize gay men as they really exist, because most of them have little or no idea what gay men and men in general are really like. Rather, these girls and young women fetishize gay teenage boys and very young gay men in the idealized way they imagine them to be in their very "girlish" fantasies.
Whilst it might be true that girls and women writing stories about Kirk/Spock "shipping" and yaoi date back to the 1970s, I think it's important to note that then as now such female fantasies had much more to do with girls' and young women's fancies, longings and imaginings than the reality of gay men's lives. The images of gay males created for and by girls and young women in the yaoi of the 70s was nothing like the images of gay men that male artists back then like Tom of Finland and Ropert Mapplethorpe made to appeal to actual gay men themselves.
I also think it's a big leap to suggest that Dora Carrington's unsatisfied sexual desire for Lytton Strachey puts her in league with today's TIFs and "fujoshi." Strachey wasn't an imaginary character that Carrington cooked up in her fantasies. He wasn't a one-dimensional fictional character who existed only on the page in idealized cartoons and purple prose she and other women crafted. Strachey was a real man, a man Carrington personally knew in the flesh, face to face, and was very close to IRL. My impression of today's TIFs who are into yaoi, slash fanfic and the other girls and young women who are "fujoshi" is that by and large, none of them have close, intimate friendships with men IRL.
Sadly, the majority of the girls and young women who become TIFs today appear to have been sexually abused during childhood and/or early adolescence by men and boys much older than them - fathers, uncles, older brothers, friends of their families. But they don't seem to have much if any close friendships and other kinds of respectful, mutual peer bonds with RL boys and men their own own age.
She mostly just sounds like a fairly typical romantic obsessive stalker to me. The only unusual thing in this instance is the extent to which he leaned into it and seemed to do quite a bit to lead her on/encourage it, by seemingly having sex with her and agreeing to live with her, things like telling her he loved her more than a friend...to get closer to/ 'stalk' in turn her husband, the apparently straight man he was obsessed with.
I've always had a soft spot for gay men, (before I even knew what they were -- ???) and absolutely adored them in high school, because they dressed great, didn't do gross stuff like light their farts, didn't grab my boobs or crotch, smelled great, looked sharp, were clean, and DANCED! Boys/Men without the garbage. Not scary because they weren't interested and have nothing to prove (re: me), and pleasant and fun to be around. So STF up, incels, the bar's pretty freaking low.
Montgomery Clift. Cary Grant.
Absolutely! Of course back then women wouldn't have known these stars were gay. I found a whole album my mother had made in her teens of Dirk Bogarde when I'm quite sure she barely even knew what homosexuality was, let alone that Dirk had a male partner. My eternal idol is Neil Tennant (also not out back in the early days of the Pet Shop Boys when I first became a fan).
At no point, however, do most women fantasise about these simply-happen-to-be-gay idols in sexual situations with other men. The romantic fantasy is still strictly hetero. Let alone do they want to change sex to be with their heartthrob.
The whole slash fanfic thing and writing "HarryxDraco erotica" is an entirely different phenomenon.
This. Also worth noting that a number of famous gay actors were actively promoted as heartthrob leading men aimed at women, with their sexuality a closely-guarded studio secret. For being handsome, charming, well-groomed and well-dressed...and maybe also for being someone who wouldn't lose some of that draw of being a dreamy, eligible bachelor by getting married. And noting that in artistic fields more broadly, some of the powerful, shadowy men running 'casting couches' behind the scenes for access to opportunities were gay and so visibility in prestigious roles/circles/etc could have been actively selecting for men willing to give them what they want to get there. I have a lifelong family friend who is gay and a respected artist, for example, who's talked about his disillusionment when, as a young artist after being talent-scouted, prominent members of the art world (gallery owners, etc) still expected him to sleep with them to have his work shown. He wouldn't, and so they shut those doors on him. Men in power gonna men.
I do not understand how you can fall in love with someone who 100% will never, ever love you back. Someone who is literally unable to be sexually attracted to you.
I wouldn't think there's anything unusual for straight women to be attracted to men; and the other person's sexual interests aren't a barrier to that. As long as there have been stories told, i.e. all human history, there are stories of people who wish they were a tree, a bird, the moon etc. so that they could be with their lover. I don't think this is any different; or new as a concept.
What's changed is that we are now telling people that they can turn into whatever it is they think their love interest desires; when before we would've chalked it up to madness or tragedy.
I would also imagine, that there are people throughout history who may have hated their bodies due to trauma and other reasons. In the past, they just had to deal with it - and it could be destructive, as it can be now too.
So, bottom line, I don't think anything we're seeing in terms of human behaviour or cultural phenomena is completely new. It's how we respond to things that has changed, and how we approve and even encourage behaviours which previously would've been seen as damaging, which allows them to spread. We are a social species and we do copy each other in an effort to fit in.
In many, many ways, our openness to different experiences and perspectives has brought about good things: more people are freer to live the lives they want. But the flipside is that we've stopped discouraging behaviours that actually are deeply damaging to individuals and the society.