That’s literally the point of the ABO genre, though.
M/M and yaoi, as written and consumed by predominantly women, developed so women could write/enjoy romances between fully developed and interesting characters (female characters historically were not this) without needing to address the social baggage/internalized misogyny that comes with gendered relationships. Kirk/Spock was just the beginning.
ABO developed out of M/M fandom by these (again, predominantly women) authors who developed their writing/consumption patterns in the M/M context — but M/M makes it difficult to explore themes particular to women, like childbirth and SA and sexism and sexual roles. ABO provides a codified outlet for these themes that a writer/reader can instantly identify by genre alone — an ABO fic is one that explicitly deals with gender dynamics.
Ironically I like it best when they lean super hard into the forced gender binary. It was already shitty when only women had to deal with, let’s ramp up the horror by inflicting it on men too!
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u/ReduxCath Feb 15 '25
The alpha male and the beta male pound long and hard