Females as males? (Objectifying "males")

I guess to be more clear. I just mean the influence and desire to do dress/feminize a boy is sometimes to get attention. I wanted to mention that I was a fan of just those things because I do not hate yaoi, and didnt want to come across as a yaoi hater. I Liked Loveless because the yaoi aspect wasnt something they did for attention or out of lust. I dont mind it if it seems geniune either, or iit fits the charectors because they are incubus's, vampires,ect. since being sensual makes since then. I realize that on the other end of the spectrum Ouran twins do Do it for attention, but its part of the story, and I find it funny how they make money off exploiting themselves. If the yaoi is in a joking way or a genuine way I dont mind it so much.

I know this will probly offend and I do not mean to. and this is a bit off topic, The Yaoi fans that tend to annoy me are the ones who run through convention centers screaming at two girls who are dress up like boys and posing in yoai ways. Im talking about the really really over done aspect of things, like a joke thats overdone, it gets annoying to me after a while. Like the first post says, a doll posing with ones legs open in skimpy clothing, or s/m stuff. dare I mention on the human side- Man-Faye, who does it to further his acting career. Im talking about OVER-doing things. Im not a shrink, I dont know why they do it.

I just feel that its sometimes for attention when they do it, Mostly when its not tastelful. Ive had people tell me they do it for that reason. Again though, its just my opinion. it maybe true in a few cases, but it could be far from it in the next. If you dont like it, please disreguard. ^__^



Hope that answers any questions- and sorry for the off topicness

 

To this line of exploration, I would like to add the question: What is wrong with wanting/seeking attention, in the first place?

Often in debate topics in this forum, I've heard the reasoning "I don't like X [gore, effeminacy, nudity, crossdressing, extreme mods, expensive brands, limited editions, minimees] because everybody who does it only does it for attention."

That's fine per se; distancing oneself from a trend is one's own prerogative. But what I want to get to the root of is... where is the sin in doing something for the attention? Why would it upset others to see somebody else get the attention that they wanted?

Could it be, rather, that a knee-jerk accusation of "oh, you're just doing that for attention" keeps the viewer from having to address what's really making him/her uncomfortable? Cornstarch's categorizations of Bad Girlyboys (done for lust or attention) vs. Good Girlyboys (done for.. uhh, done because they're vampires? I think that's the only exception written above) points to a personal threshold between "doing" something and "overdoing" something, which is fine... But it's not clear where the discomfort is coming from. Why is it OK, for example, to see girlish 12-year-old kitty-boy Ritsuka in the arms of a college man, but not OK to have a pair of hypersexualized Chiwoos in dresses?


(Trying to fathom others' thought processes & reasonings makes me feel like an alien anthropologist, trying to find out what makes you Earth-creatures tick. ^^ But I actually am curious too.)

 

If you going to categorize them - dont use my opinions as where to draw the line. I dont say that they are "bad" I simply said I didnt like dis-tastful things.

Im simply sharing. You can take what you like, but Im definatly not the line between wrong and right.

 

Ah, I understand. I suppose it's just a personal taste where you don't like people to act out in attention-seeking ways. To be honest, I'm fine with a bit of attention-seeking, especially at cons. Most of everyone cosplays, dress up and carry stuff around in some sense of attention-seeking as well.

I would have to say that people crossdressing their dolls doesn't seem like it's attention-seeking to me. For one thing, crossdressing dolls are not exactly a unique and exciting phenomenon with so many people doing it. For another, sometimes the male doll simply looks like a female doll, and that doesn't make it that much different from a female doll all dressed up, which doesn't really further the attention-seeking anymore than any other doll owner taking pictures of their non-crossdressing dolls. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

 

*edited this post cause I hadn't read the response above*

Sorry if you read the post before I edited. I hadn't seen this response. I don't know why my browser took me to the previous page when I clicked last... But uhh, yeah. I generally tend to agree with you on this.

Seriously though, I don't think this is really about yaoi. It's just that obnoxious people are obnoxious. Personally, I'm annoyed with the attention seekers for ruining it for the rest of us by making everyone just assume all yaoi fangirls are like that even though the people who act like that are in the minority. *mutter*

Anyway, I had something of intelligence to say in response so I decided to keep that part in. Apologies for making you put up with my long anthropology-studies inspired arguments.

As I am doing my thesis on doll collectors and doll collecting culture, I would really appreciate if you could point me in the direction of the people who are calling their dolls whore and sluts for the sake of attention. It would be particularly helpful if you could point to the ones who explicitly state that they are doing it for attention. I haven't noticed this attention yet at conventions, probably because I don't go to enough of them, but I need examples for my paper.

Words that have really strong connotations such as racial slurs or words like "whore" and "slut" tend to have a lot of power. They're powerful enough to affect the way that people act. People will choose to participate or not participate in certain activities simply to avoid having that word attached to them. Alternately, by having that word applied to them, people might also acquire the power associated with the word. I don't think I've ever seen the latter happen in real life except within the context of communities re-appropriating negative terms (like gay men and lesbians appropriating the word queer.)

However, taking words that have negative connotations and denigrate women and female sexuality such as "whore" and "slut" and applying them to male bodies in a positive context (because I think it is commonly understood by doll fans, based on my studies, that calling your male doll a whore or slut is a positive thing. You're the first person I've heard who took it to have a negative connotation.) acts to change not only the meaning of the word but also the way that people conceive of themselves, their bodies, gendered bodies in general, sexuality, and so many other things. It's not a huge dramatic obvious effect, but there definitely seems to be a correlation from what I've seen between flexibility about gender role and identity and being able to conceive of doll bodies in a more flexible way.

At least as far as I can tell, it's not that people who like feminine males or turning male dolls into females (or vice versa) are interested in attention, it's more that they just have a different view about gender than mainstream society and it sounds like you do too, just maybe not to the same extent. This isn't necessarily hypocrisy. There's probably as many different ways of conceiving of what is appropriate for bodies and gender as there are people.

But yeah, the flexibility about gender and bodies has to do with a number of factors, but they seem to be much more personal and have more to do with the way one sees oneself and others rather than the way one thinks about how other people see oneself. Does that make any sense?


--Nadia

 

I'd like to give my honest opinion on why, based on what I've studied so far of the doll community, you see so many gay dolls and so much cross-dressing and why male dolls are so sexualized.

Just to give some background for my thoughts, if you live in the magical land of academia, people are always talking about the "male gaze" and how about everything in mainstream society is framed from an assumed male perspective. Thinking about this in terms of subjects and objects (the subject being the one who has power and does stuff and the object being the one who is powerless and has stuff done to it), man is traditionally the subject and woman is the object. There's also all this discussion about how woman is used in opposition to man in order to describe what man is by being the opposite. Woman is supposedly this unknowable, mysterious, Other.

If you think about doll culture or yaoi, both of which are primarily female activities and tend to be involve a lot more input by the female participants (either through how they modify/cloth their dolls or creation of doujinshi etc.), it actually tends to be the opposite. The subject is an assumed female. Therefore, it's the male body that becomes the sexualized, mysterious, unknowable other. The things that we consider feminine (like lingerie or dresses) are not inherently feminine. They're things that societies arbitrarily decided at some point in history were feminine. However, since we've all been conditioned to associate things that have been made feminine with things that are sexual and/or beautiful, it's easy to make a male doll sexual and/or beautiful by making it feminine. Add to this the fact that you're transgressing by putting the male body in female clothes and I think that gives it greater sexual and/or aesthetic charge. I stress the fact that this could either be done for sexual or aesthetic purposes because from what I've gathered, not everyone derives sexual pleasure from cross dressing their dolls. Some people just see it as pretty. What's really interesting is that some of these same people who cross dress their dolls and like feminine boys ALSO seem to want more companies to make more masculine looking dolls as well. So I wonder if this isn't just part of a desire to create a wider range of images of male beauty than exist in mainstream culture?

 

how do I delete this?

 

But we're asking! Actually asking! I thought your post meant you wanted to talk about the topic. Please pardon my presumption. -_-

Nadiaff, you're spot-on about the Male Gaze thing. 'Beauty' is so often considered a female-only trait. When somebody presents a male in a way that focuses on his beauty, with or without eroticizing him, it makes people perceive him as feminine, even when he isn't. (Females are beautiful; this man here is beautiful; therefore, he must be feminine.) In a man, too much beauty can be a source of derision, and an obstacle to being taken seriously 'as a man'. Like those half-naked-musclemuffin Abercrombie models. Presented as objects of desire, right? But not terribly effeminate, right? It's no wonder so many men don't know quite how to react to those models. (The easy way, of course, is 'oh, must be gay'.)

I'm just really into male beauty, sexual or nonsexual, butchy or femmie, gay or straight or solo, whatever. A woman who uses a Gaze of her own in this way, we're often seen as deviants, because it's the male who's supposed to be doing the beholding. I don't really mind wearing another Deviant label, but it does mean that I take part in a lot debates like this one, because people always want explanations. ^^

 

This is an interesting tread, I like reading it and forming an opinion. Most or maybe all posters look at ik on a psychological piontr of view. I like to add a simple piont. When I unwrapped my boy last month I covered his private bits right away. Then I took the pictures. Also I dressed him up almost immediatly. (I did have clothing for him) When my girl came 2 weeks later, I did not have dresses for her. And she was sitting in the living room with only her boots on quite happely, for 1 hole day and I did not bother me one bit. In the and I dressed her up in my boy's three piece suit, but that is an other story.

What I wanted to illustrate, is that boys are appealing, but the body altough very beautyfull can be very confrontational.

 

This is a really interesting topic. I couldn't read all because it's too much for me to read but I want to give my opinion. I think that this have a lot to do with Asian culture. I never notice this until I started to watch Korean dramas and read manga. What I notice is that women tend to be more attracted to men than have some women features. They found it beautiful so they project that beauty in the dolls. I need to be honest. I love Kyle of Dollmore (how many times I had said this in the week? LOL) but he has some features that can be considered feminine. I asked my husband “Is he pretty?”. He looked at me like with a face of “How I am supposed to know?”. Then when I asked him if Kyle looks like a woman he told me “Yes” and waited for me to hit him LOL. I’m used to see the beauty that way too because the too many dramas I have seen so I can understand it. In my culture is the same in some ways. Maybe nobody say it openly but if somebody see a blond guy with long hair and blue eyes or green that guy is a heartbreaker. Believe me, I study with one and until we graduate from high school he was the most popular because his face and his hair!!!. Well… you just need to see Ricky Martin to know what I mean. So, yes, I believe that its part of the Asian concept of beauty and that is why the faces have feminine features sometimes.

 

Thanks, I didn't really know if anyone would get it or not. I mean I while I enjoy how people respond to my work I do it because I like it...

p.s. and as far as the art it's self. If you're on DA then you can see some of my work.

 

I agree with that. I think it's funny how I never knew so many people liked this too and understand it and yet tons more don't get it. But then again I don't need them to understand or like it. I mean I'd hate to live in a world were everyone was the same. So I welcome the changes in to be found person-to person. For the most part.

 

My god, I think you hit the nail on the head. I agree 100%. And a point I may have missed is that non of my males are 'gay at all' They just dress is a girlie way. Because I like guys that dress that way and that dose not make them gay at all.' being gay is a state of mind' not dress. And I a also disagree with the the way todays world places males in a box called 'macho' saying what that can and can't do.(Women seem to have more freedom in dress code that man do) As far what makes someone boyish or girlie nothing really. It's all a state of mind.

 

This seems to be coming down did they do it for attention thing. I don't see anything wrong with it. If that what the person wants. Before anyway say oh she's only saying that cuz she want's some too. Let me clear up my bad use of words in a pass post. I haven't/ am not doing this for attention like I said I'm an artist I do this for myself and myself alone. However I enjoy the way people's reaction to that one work of art. be it good or bad. on paper on one of my hand made dolls. And I take ever comment with care. That helps me become a better artist.

I think the bottom line is no matter what you do it's always going to be someone that wont agree with you and find what ever it is offending be it a male in a dress or the blue sky. I learned that as an artist. You can't please everyone so why try? I don't I don't see a point in. As long as your a good person why should the other stuff really matter. It doesn't make them bad people to dress the doll that way, right? And it's not killing you is it? So let it be.

 

I have a few things to say on the subject. I do partake of the occaisional Yaoi reading and fangirling. But, I think that objectifying men, is nothing new. Women have always done it, I just think that the newer generations of women are just a little more open about it, instead of acting demure.. women are owning their sexuality a little more and aren't being shy about it.. I have to say, the moment my brother saw my narin, he said "queer doll" or something to that extent.. and yet, Mitsu is actually just a normal looking guy.. I don't know. I dont have a problem with cross dressing a guy doll, or having butchie girl dolls.. I think that gender can be a very fluid thing and have very little to do with love and attraction.. if you like something, go for it. I know that my boys are definitley an extention of things I think but can't nessicarily say in my day to day life.. highly sexualised.. no. adult dolls who want love and have desires? yes.

 

I think this is a real oversimplification of psychology. I've never understood why people, when trying to understand someone who thinks in a way they don't understand, will come up with the most facile direct one-to-one explanations for things. It is never ever that simple.

Speaking as a researcher who has met and talked with hundreds of yaoi fangirls, not only in America, but in other parts of the world, the ones who are making the dirtiest, grittiest stories do not seem to have been in abusive relationships with male figures to any degree that is more noticeable than the rest of the female population. If anything, they seem to be more self-assured and assertive within heterosexual relationships and better able to relate to men in social settings (at least the ones who aren't sociopaths, and they're just not able to relate to people well in general.)

I suspect this is because a lot of them have adopted a non-normative female identity that incorporates some stereotypically "masculine" characteristics. I don't know that this has anything to do with yaoi in the sense of yaoi causes this to happen, but I do think it's connected in the sense that they're creating non-normative female fantasies. I don't know if people on this board realize how much we are in the minority. Because we're socializing on the internet and among other doll fans, it's easy to fall under the illusion that there are so many people like us since that's all we see.

But it depends where you are. I would say, for example, that among female fandom populations on the internet, yaoi is normative whereas it isn't in mainstream American society.

But getting back to why some women might create these very sexual stories involving boy x boy love that involve extreme variance in power relationships (like slave fantasies, for instance) it's just a way of playing around with power relationships. If you take the time to really examine the way that these power relationships play out, you might start to notice something interesting. I admittedly have very little experience with photo-stories so I'm not sure if this applies, but I do have a lot of experience with reading yaoi. I have yet to read the yaoi narrative in which the person who is in an apparent position of power manages to retain complete control and mastery over the person who appears to be subjugated. What's interesting about these stories is that often the person in the subjugated position has a great deal of power, even if it's only over the emotions, of the person who seems to be enslaving or torturing them. (He tortures him because he's tortured by him.) By playing around with concepts of power in relationships, I think people have the potential (although it doesn't always play out this way in real life) to figure out new ways of negotiating power in their relationships in real life, although not just in ones that are directly similar to the kinds that appear in photo stories.

Power relationships don't exist just between two people in a relationship. They exist between different groups and between different countries. They exist between different identities within ourselves. They exist in any sort of hierarchical institution, such as school or the workplace. Just because it's being played out in the context of a romantic relationship does not mean that what people are actually exploring is romantic relationships. It could just be a way of playing around with power relationships in general. I think that everyone, at some point in their lives, feels abject and enslaved. By presenting narratives in which the abject and enslaved can negotiate ways of gaining power in a situation where they're feeling humiliated or powerless, people might be dealing with the fact that they often find themselves in that position in real life and even if it's just in a fantasy, they want to be able to have control over how it plays out. I think that's perfectly normal and takes different forms for different people.

As for why you tend to see boy x boy relationships or predominantly male dolls, I suspect this is because it's easier to re-configure your identity on a body that you have no association with at all. I don't know if it's possible for a girl to escape some kind of comparison or identification with another girl body, even if it's in doll form. From what I've seen of doll fandom, girls are a lot more critical of the female bodies than the male ones, even both are equally idealized forms. Although this is partly because we already have a dialogue going on in the West about female bodies and how they're objectified (and people have a tendency to see only what they're told is there), a lot of people also comment that people who are not within the fandom (particularly men) are very uncomfortable with the "girliness" of the male dolls. I could be wrong about this, of course, but it seems from my experience that men are more judgmental of the appearance of other men (in the sense of, are they appropriately manly or not) than they are of the appearance of women and vice versa (although, of course, people are also judgmental of the appearance of the opposite gender, but there seems to be less venom in it than when they're talking about their own. A lot of girls in the fandom can get really virulent about the female doll bodies, especially the breasts and hips, i.e. the parts of the body that are most closely associated with femininity in our culture nowadays.) So yeah, basically, I think it might be easier to play out power fantasies (or any kind of fantasy) on a body that has fewer personal associations attached to it. Not that the male body is an entirely blank slate or anything, but I feel like it has less written on it for women than the female body.

Of course, this isn't necessarily going to be true for everyone. It might just be a segment of the people involved in portraying these hierarchical power relationships. There might be people who are working through rape or abuse trauma as well. There might also be people who have the kind of personality where they want to assert dominance and abuse other people. I just haven't met them yet or if I have, they haven't demonstrated any signs of it or aren't willing to own up to it. However, with the evidence that I currently have available to me, this is what I think. I believe that's better than making assumptions based on a small group of people, which I see a lot of people do, or just making things up out of thin air based on what you've been taught to think by something you've heard or read or seen somewhere rather than actually engaging with other people who think or feel differently than you do, which is what you're doing. Even though you claim to be against objectification, ultimately, you yourself are objectifying people in the sense that without consideration for how they think or feel, you're deciding their motivations for them. In essence, you are robbing them of their personhood because you're taking away their ability to speak for themselves. Objects are mute. They can only be defined by how we perceive them or how we're told to perceive them. If you're against objectification of people, then don't treat them like objects. If you want to understand them, don't make up stories about why they act the way they do. Let them speak for themselves and try to listen with an open mind and be compassionate and understanding.

--Nadia

 

Sorry I didn't read all the long but I love Females in males clothes ...Like example Utena and Jury. I think is beautyful...I also like Frederic and La rose Versailles So I dont really mind them.
Is like Bella Auden on Special limited edition name Larme (God it was cute) Also Ipsae when she wear like man clothes is nice also...i mean really nice.

 

As has been said by some, argued by others, I believe that men are objectified in real life much more than many are willing to admit. When a female stares unabashedly at a man's assets it is generally considered bold of her and worthy of praise since she is showing confidence and asserting herself. But when a man does it, it is generally said to be sleazy and that he is being inappropriate and insensitive for making a woman feel like nothing more than a piece of art, or perhaps meat, like some like to say.

Truly though, in any doll photography they are being objectified since they are meant as objects to be viewed and enjoyed. What else is a photograph, or any art, for? Being for viewing is the most basic function of such things and deeper meanings come after. A suggestive or sexy demeanor isn't all that goes into making something objectifiable in my opinion since to objectify something, it needs only to be presented and displayed.

In fact, to say that objectification in general needs to involve adult themes simply shows that many people are uncomfortable with such things. You can objectify anything but displaying a pure looking doll in an innocent setting would likely not be considered “objectifying” it. So, why should showing a shirtless male doll, or a long haired male doll with a piercing gaze, be any different?

It will vary by race and culture, but overall this is a world where the male body isn't considered as innocent as the body of a female. Look at popular culture like television and film, women are shown naked much more often and the censorship laws that govern this treat the assets of men and women differently.

By those within the doll community “objectifying” the male it shows, in my opinion, that some of us have risen above old fashioned views of human sexuality and realized that a male body is capable of expressing the same emotion and commanding the same reactions, that a female body can. In response to males with long hair and decorative attire, why not? Such fashions have been common all throughout history, and are still common today even if in some circles they are still frowned upon.

Coveting anything is supposed to be in poor taste, but why should coveting the idea of “feminine” beauty, even if it appears in a male, be so much more negative?

 

When I read the thread title I thought you meant females dressed as or modded into males ("Females as Males")

Re girly outfits/hair for boys - I can understand it in several ways.

1. Anime males are often feminine or androgynous. Ditto for a lot of period and fantasy clothing and hairstyles for males, many of the elaborately costumed males in magazines and on BJD websites, and many of the male face molds. Personally I think long hair is not feminine or a male, and I find androgynous males mysterious and attractive.

2. Actually dressing a boy as a girl or as a transvestite - no idea. I am not attracted to that idea at all. It makes sense if someone thinks their doll looks better as a girl or likes to pretend it's a girl doll sometimes, But to persist that a doll is a male and dress him in modern girl's clothing seems is something I cannot explain. Maybe it is less threatening, more familiar for the owner and not intended to shock the viewer.

Carolyn

 

apologies if this is considered a little OT

ok, i realise my view is skewed a bit because of my past experiences. and im fully aware not everyone is seeking attention; it just makes me sad that people can take a subject that is meaningful to many people and just throw it in others faces for attention.

this example is not to do with dolls - but at a convention. we were waiting for the official photoshoot in the line. infront of me were a group of girls dressed as kingdom hearts characters. they were being fairly loud, and infront of the camera posed ontop of eacjh other, kissing, various sexual poses - it was quite funny at first and they were laughing. then it just went on...and on...until they were posing with sexual objects...hogging the camera for attenion...and then i didnt get my shoot because they'd taken so long the shoot ended.

this frustrates me. i think the only reason this topic becomes so sensitive is BECAUSE of people like that - who clearly just do yaoi-girlyness for attenion. and, i dont want to sound mean, but i honestly think it will wear off after a while. alot of people will get bored and drop it. the other more serious or thoughtful posters will continue because they actually like it rather than jumping on the bandwagon.

im sorry if you disagree but ive seen it happen various times it real life. for example, at cons people will stop talking to me when they ask if i like yaoi and i say no! quite frankly, i find that pathetic.

im perfectly fine when people clearly have more thought and passion for it. i think the same for EVERYTHING; whether is females dressing as males or..a chimp who likes fruit...so long as the person has clear thought and clear pathos i have no qualms. but when it begins to affect me, it gets annoying. sometimes this comes up in the doll community but its not as direct and i can choose to ignore such people; to be honest, this community is actually really nice, and its rare someone will push something in your face. i dont think generalisations can be made since its such a personal issue; i mean, we can pinpoint certain things but its just not going to work for everyone. like the reason i dont like yaoi doesnt apply at all to what some people posted above.