I want to mini-rant about the drastic difference in how much yuri/yaoi is written. I'm a lesbian in fandom spaces and its actually kind of wild how drastically different the quantities of fanworks are and these are my working theories:
The first one that's pretty simple is that there just are fewer female characters in media. Obviously fan fiction is an extension of pre-existing canon. If there is no pre-existing canon then there is no fan fiction. It's really rare for a woman to be a leading character, and even LESS common for two women to lead and have their own individual dynamic. That's why when it does happen, the yuri is actually popular!! I think of Supergirl (CW), Wicked, even MLP. When the bechdel test is even a thing, I think it's pretty clear that there are fewer options for yuri that isn't a rarepair or a background ship.
The other one kind of connects to the first and it's that, frequently, male characters are written with a much higher degree of complexity than female characters. Male characters are allowed to be frustrated or flawed without receiving vitriolic hate from fans. They also get much more consistent characterization over interpretations. For example, I can think of three completely separated depictions of Spock and Kirk from Star Trek and they always have relatively same/same characterization. Now think about the female characters like Chappell and Uhura. Also how Superman and Batman have much more defined personalities where Wonder Woman's personality has been retconned almost every time she's rebooted. It's hard to write fan fiction for a character that's almost inimitable.
The next one pertains to smut (viewer discretion advised.)
When it comes to writing NSFW works -- which, like em or hate em they are absolutely the lighter fuel of fan fiction popularity -- we know SO much more about male orgasm. Male orgasm is common knowledge. Again, I'm a lesbian and if my life depended on it, I'm sure I could get a dude off. (tmi but there ya go) The same can not be said for the other way around. Knowledge of female pleasure is like only known by lesbians themselves and, idk, ancient texts in faraway lands. It's a failure of things like sex education and speculative pornography. So when you put two women in the same sexual situation, the lack of knowledge multiplies and becomes more obvious. F/F smut is usually written with a far lower degrees of sexual tension and detail, thus perpetuation the idea that lesbian sex is disappointing and a means to an end.
But of course, most people who write fan fiction, statistically speaking, are not cis gay men. So how do they write cis gay characters? Precedent. Yaoi CREATED fan fiction (see above -- Spirk) and has been refined and mulled over for literal decades. Most people who write smut and fan fics in general aren't actually imitated sex ed or real life experience. They're imitating other fan fiction. It does lead to misinformation and hyper-exaggeration because it makes a bit of an echo chamber but nonetheless it does make for engaging fan fiction.
Then of course, you can't have this conversation without talking about homophobia, lesbophobia, and misogyny. But obviously those are huge topics so for now I will abbreviate. Truthfully, there are more women in fan fiction than men. There are more straight people (or straight-leaning) than gay people. I'm not being homophobic, obviously, it's just statistical fact. We are the minority. So that means that most of the people who write queer couples are actually straight people of the opposite gender. The good news for yaoi is that they get to primarily be written by straight women. The bad news for yuri is that they have to be primarily written by straight men. Hence why going to almost any F/F relationship, especially if you want anything above a T rating, and you're going to see a disgusting amount of non-con, extreme degradation, and general nastiness at worst and a whole lot of misconceptions about female pleasure at best. If you stick with G or T rated and it's written by straight women, there's typically very little passion behind it. Obviously when it comes to anonymous fan fic websites it's hard to exactly know what demographic is writing it, but it's typically not impossible to deduce.
So what do we do about this?
IMO it's not a lost cause. The main, primary issue is that there isn't enough precedent for people to have something to imitate that they see as sexy. If you want me to give yuri writing advice I'm happy to talk about that as well. Mostly: take your time, do your research, don't phone it in. Be the change you wish to see in the world and all that stuff.
Thank u for coming to my ted talk.
