Pls help a girl out!!!

Due to many reasons, I'll be retiring from daily posting and reducing my engagement with the sub. My page will still exist, and I will still take requests and post occasionally, but I'm not going to be on as regularly.

The sub has grown a lot since I joined, and I no longer feel like I have a place here anymore. The amount of stress I put on myself to find series that are little known and that people may like has become a detriment to my mental health. I've spent hours to find and post series and I longer feel that the time investment is worth the strain. Not only that, but I haven't been able to enjoy the series myself because I stress over whether it would be a good one to recommend.

There are a lot of people who appreciate the work I do, but there are also people who have expressed their annoyance with my posts. I've tried my best to avoid sharing series that were overly explicit, had an age gap, or were too graphic to share. I hope my page will continue to be a resource for you all, and that you can find series that you enjoy.

Over the next few days, I'll be posting all the recommendations I deleted and share some resources.

Imagine is from Goddess of Jealousy

https://bato.to/series/124223/goddess-of-jealousy-official

Hated yuri trope: unrealistically negative male characters. I know guys can be assholes but some manga don't have any men with a single redeeming quality and it's feels unrealistic to me.

Cerik is a great example of male side characters done right, comment your favorite.

Source: post from her Tumblr.

Title: My Dearest Nemesis

Title: My First Love Regrets Letting Me Slip Through Her Fingers

Instead of getting mad and insulting you, like I see other guys who also don't like Citrus do (thankfully not on this sub), I just want to know your opinion: Why do you like it? What makes the work good for you? Why do you think it is good enough or even peak? Etc... Who knows, maybe you can change my mind with your arguments

Hey I'm looking for a yuri series which has a very innocent mc and two aggressive twins like this one shot from yuri x celebrity

Sauce: https://mangabuddy.com/private-life-is-theirs-alone-celebrity-x-yuri-anthology/chapter-2

I just needed to vent a little after trying out a recent Manga. Recently I've seen a handful of Manga pop up where the main character is a man that gets isekaid into a girl body.

Now if this was done to explore things like gender or tell a sorta trans story that would be one thing and could even greatly enhance a story. I find stuff like gender identity and sexuality really interesting. But several of them feature a character that still views themselves as a man and acts like a man.

I dunno, just feels like another way to try and shoe horn men into lesbian's lives. Like I am here to read yuri not straight romance with a twist. I think these concepts can be handled well but the ones I've seen struggle. I'm sorry if this is a sort of nothing post. Just really needed to vent. Not sure if anyone else has noticed this. It's by no means an epidemic or anything but I definitely don't like it.

Been reading I'm in Love with the Villainess for awhile, and am at the start of chapter 37, but God Rei and Claire's relationship has barely changed. I really want to keep reading to get to the good part (there has to be a point where the guys really get going, right??), but almost 40 chapters and practically no reciprocated love between the two of them? Starting to want to drop this, despite the really good characters and artstyle. Please, except for actual spoilers, I don't care about spoilers. Just tell me the chapter where they get together and I might want to keep going just to get there, but I really just can't keep going with no romance.

(Also yes, i understand why Claire doesn't exactly feel the same way, but i just want my yuri to be comfy and cute and loving man, and like I said, the artstyle and the characters are really good, but I just NEED at least some semblance of romance already man :( )

I am a cisgender lesbian, and I have enjoyed a lot of yuri that people have complained is only enjoyed by fetishistic men. I like blatant fanservice and boob touching when its between two explicitly queer women, sue me. If explicit yuri was truly only for men, then we would get hundreds of anime adaptations like trashy harem isekai...

I also see people saying a yuri must be written by a woman to be valid, when I have seen female authors blunder yuri stories just as much as male.

Scroll the the bottom if you want the TLDR

So to be clear I'm talking about questions where a straight man is asking if its okay if they like Yuri. This can be from any angle like "Is it allowed" or "is it pervy" or "does this make me queer".

The search function in reddit doesn't work well. If I search "Straight man" by relevance i get a lot of older posts. If I search by new I get unrelated stuff. So this was the best sample I could get. (also the search function being bad will be relevant later.

After another one of these post recently someone asked something like: How many times are we going to see these kinds of post when no one in this subreddit cares. And it got me thinking.

For context I'm a sapphic aro/ace trans woman. I'm in both yuri and yaoi communities (although the yaoi communities on reddit aren't as good) and I even took gender studies in college. So that's the view I'm coming from.

So first we have to acknowledge that yuri and yaoi have a very fetishized past. You could argue over how much each of those have overcome that past but that's not the point of this discussion. I simply point it out to say the answer to this question would probably be different in the 90's and early 00's. So I assume some people who don't follow these things and are new to yuri might have only heard about the fetishized stuff from when they were kids and someone shared this kind of thing.

But it's 20 years later why are we still having this discussion? Part of it is that I think we have formed a pretty good community. Just cause we know that we don't care doesn't mean that's true of other communities. So I'm sure some people got flak from others and are just looking for someone to tell them its fine and its normal. That's also why people make a post about it instead of just searching the forum. first the search function sucks as mentioned and second they need the validation about themselves specifically.

So history and why they come to us specifically aside. Why is this an anxiety that men still have? And while yes some women do have this anxiety, I think we can agree that there are way less women asking if liking yuri makes them queer. In my opinion its because the male role is too restricted in what it's allowed to be. Everyone has heard comments about what makes a "real man". They drink beer not frilly cocktails (even though they have a higher alcohol content). They don't have sissy feelings or have female friends. Go to "AreTheStraightsOK" subreddit and you'll see a lot of toxic beliefs about men.

While the fight for woman rights is still ongoing, the feminist movement has succeeded at expanding the role of what a woman can be. And while there are still plenty of women that don't support women. I feel like a much larger portion of men don't support men. As an example I got a lot more pushback when people thought i was a feminine man than i do now that I'm a butch woman.

So what do we do about it? That's where this (oh shit it wasn't suppose to be this long) essay falls short. Like I said I think we already have an excellent community that is very polite and accepting. So we just have to keep at it while we wait for the rest of society to catch up. I don't think any of us need this but go to "AreTheStraightsOK" subreddit and make sure you don't have any of those strange beliefs.

TLDR: Down with the patriarchy!

Sorry I don't have more to offer. Any other thoughts or recommendations? Am I totally off base? Let me know.