Just jumping in real quick about the yaoi/slash and feminism thing.
When yaoi first came into being, it was written by women for the intention of giving themselves a more proactive role in a male dominant society. Because women were not supposed to go on the same exciting adventures as the men and because any female manga-ka who TRIED to give her heroines more action were pretty much given the no-go, they designed yaoi as a way of doing just that. The manga-ka basically use one of the male characters as a self-insert so that the female readers can identify and have SOME kind of representation in the action story. That's why in series that are specifically meant to be yaoi, you have the uke personality type. Uke doesn't mean submissive. It just refers to the one who is representing the female persona.
And while I don't like or agree with women essentially being forced to write as men just to get their ideas out, I do understand that at the time yaoi was made.. that was their ONLY choice. It was a subtle sort of rebellion against the male dominance in their culture, something that a LOT of yaoi fans and writers tend to forget nowadays.
So while it may feature m/m as the pairing... yaoi is, at its heart, a feminist movement.
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When yaoi first came into being, it was written by women for the intention of giving themselves a more proactive role in a male dominant society. Because women were not supposed to go on the same exciting adventures as the men and because any female manga-ka who TRIED to give her heroines more action were pretty much given the no-go, they designed yaoi as a way of doing just that. The manga-ka basically use one of the male characters as a self-insert so that the female readers can identify and have SOME kind of representation in the action story. That's why in series that are specifically meant to be yaoi, you have the uke personality type. Uke doesn't mean submissive. It just refers to the one who is representing the female persona.
And while I don't like or agree with women essentially being forced to write as men just to get their ideas out, I do understand that at the time yaoi was made.. that was their ONLY choice. It was a subtle sort of rebellion against the male dominance in their culture, something that a LOT of yaoi fans and writers tend to forget nowadays.
So while it may feature m/m as the pairing... yaoi is, at its heart, a feminist movement.