people can wax poetic about how m/m fandom bias is actually just lgbt women who are suffering and not deep rooted fandom misogyny but tell me why, then, m/f ships are still WILDLY more popular than f/f. like if there’s No Misogyny in fandom why pray tell is there so much fucking het fic to the point where it’s impossible to filter out in any god damn fandom on ao3. i can’t even get karkat/terezi out of my view when looking for vriska/terezi fic – the latter being the actual canon fucking pairing
i could let the overwhelming m/m bias slide a lot more if the statistics didn’t show how miserable the state of these things really are. i mean jesus beyond the fact that m/f is still leagues ahead of f/f in most fandoms femslash makes up less than 5% of all fic. there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fics that feature literally no women, much less gay women. statistically the vast majority of fanfic and fanart involving women will involve them being in love with men.
sure, there’s demographic discrepancy there (many m/m writers and consumers will be lgbt women whereas m/f will feature more straight men and women) but with statistics that show an entire category of gay relationships involving women so underrepresented they make up less than 10% eventually we’re gonna have to say “hm. maybe this is fucked up and sucks”
and yes i know many lgbt women PREFER m/m… but that’s not all of us. and for those of us that don’t the state of things is so depressing. i’m 10 years older than many of the lgbt girls interacting with fandom these days – and the precedent i (and others my age) grew up with and doesn’t NEED to be the standard. “relate to men or just die i guess” doesn’t NEED to continue to be the way in which lgbt women & girls interact w fandom. we could stand to make a fucking effort to change it instead of obstinately insisting it isn’t an issue lol
like it’s ok to move past that mindset and admit it sucks! it sure did for me when i was Growing Up Gay and it will for other girls too!
i can only speak for myself, but I think that one thing to consider might be that as a wlw*, I DONT WANT TO SEE MYSELF IN A LOT OF THE SITUATIONS I PUT MY CHARACTERS THROUGH.
I like a lot of badkink, so I want to have my characters exposed to trauma and violence, but I don’t want to consume more depictions of violence against women. I like to read a/b/o because I want fic that deals with issues like sexism in the workplace and reproductive rights and patriarchal family structures….without the level of discomfort and personal trauma I feel when watching women be put through these situations.
having both characters be male mean that I can create enough distance from my lived reality for me to feel catharsis without having to really hurt myself getting there
(another unrelated point i saw in another post: F/F ships are more common in fandoms that have more speaking time for female characters[see: swanqueen in OAT, or rosemary in homestuck]. there are more m/m ships because most media makes male characters more well rounded and complex, so fans are more interested and relate to them more than the T&A love interest that fans would have to rely almost exclusively on headcanons to make a compelling story for)
*i mean..im nonbinary but you get the point
ugh 