I enjoy manga etc with reverse harems even if the fl does do it with all of the males in it

Do people think this because reverse harems are useally romance but harems are most times action

Haven't seen much of any discussion in regards to that lately (Or the past several years for that matter), but I can offer some perspective from what I've seen.

First of all, there's the biological and historical aspect of it. Women can produce offspring meanwhile men cannot. If a man were to amass a harem, it's seen (Not only as acceptable but) as a triumph because he is able to pass his lineage on through such a successful group of wives, mistresses, and concubines. Having a reverse harem, however, is not acceptable because there's only one woman in the enter affair who can pass on any lineage. So, amassing a group of studs really accomplishes nothing except to provide the lucky girl with a wonderful erotic night in bed. In addition to that, traditional harems were also used as agreements between families, kingdoms, and empires as ways to preserve themselves without losing their right to exist. Meanwhile, a reverse harem would accomplish none of this resulting in the males (And everything they own/rule) who are unsuccessful in impregnating the girl becoming irrelevant and losing their footprint in history.

Second of all, it has to do with jealously. Believe it or not, women are far crueler to other women than anything men are capable of. Realistically, if a girl were to surround herself with a group of guys, and it happens without any intention for the girl to fuck any one of them, other girls would see THAT girl as competition (Regardless of absolutely EVERYTHING that prooves otherwise). She's "hogging" all the real estate. So, they start doing everything they can to sabotage the girl's image in order to distance all the men away from her. And, there are innumerable historical examples of this actually happening. Hell, my grandmother was recently (As in, within the past year) chased out of the town she lived in because, at the church she went to, one of the in the women in the congregation thought that my grandmother was getting "too close" to the pastor (And, let's not leave out the little detail that this women was married to someone else as well).

Third, it boils down to the story generally being "unbelievable" for the people reading it. Despite however much the protagonists of harem-type series are Gary/Mary Stus, there's a general key difference in how they are handled. Even when a Gary Stu is rather pathetic in his harem series, there still comes several points where they bunker down, man up, and actually have to fend for themselves or use the littlest bit of gray matter within that skull of theirs to justify why all the girls are surrounding the guy. Meanwhile, traditionally with Mary Stus and reverse harems, the girl doesn't...have to do much of anything. The guys are going to clash over her because they find her "so charming". The protagonist exists as nothing more than a trophy. And she can continually "trade up" if a better man comes along and none of the other men are ever going to argue about it (Or, she'll pathetically justify it if she even acknowledges that her actions may be seen as morally corrupt). Ironically, it turns into the exact type of story that feminists criticize men for writing (Traditionally referred to as the "Disney fairytale" ), but it's "acceptable" because all the men fighting over the girl are studs and it's written from the female character's perspective. In addition, there's also the fact that traditional harem stories generally have characters that eventually leave because they tire of the protagonist continually egging them on, meanwhile this doesn't happen in reverse harems as all the guys still fight over the girl despite how unfaithful she proves herself to be.

Fourth, just to end this, men are willing to fuck ANYTHING. As long as companionship and a healthy personality is guaranteed, it doesn't matter whether the girls are young, old, tall, short, beautiful, ugly, normal, or an unholy eldritch being from beyond the stars that will drive them to insanity. Meanwhile, girls will settle on only three types of people (Baras, shotas, or androgynous) with only two types of personalities (Dominant or vulnerable).

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Funnily, I actually remember an old American novel that addressed this matter. It's called A Brother's Price and sets up a world where maybe one in ten children born are boys, and most of those boys don't live more than a few days. Men are often straight-up sold and at best they may have some say in it to be able to select a group of "sisters" (not necessarily related though usually). At one point the guy speculates with the first girl to fall for him about the inversion, and she quickly concludes that it wouldn't work out, largely because of the reproductive angle. A man can father any number of children with any number of women at the same time, and every one of those women will know that her baby is indeed hers, that she is looking at her bond with her husband/love made into a new life. A woman on the other hand can only have one baby per year generally, and it's not near as easy to tell who the father is. So a man who's part of a reverse harem would have to wait a long time to be the one to father a child with his love, and unless tests are done he'd never know if this time around the child produced is indeed his. Thus, indeed, a standard harem produces more children, and at the least has certain forms of satisfaction more readily shared amongst all the members with clear certainty in that satisfaction, whereas all that comes out of a reverse harem is a standard number of children, a good bit of fun for the woman, and a whole lot of uncertainty and waiting in hope of maybe becoming a father this year, with few years to try.

Of course, that's just for stories where the girl actually goes all the way to the "Marry Them All" trope. If it's just a woman surrounded by men who are interested in her, I'd say it depends on how the girl takes it. People often say that a man surrounded by women is popular but a woman surrounded by men is a slut, but from what I've seen it depends on the overall behavior. Often (not always, but often), the fictional man who's treated as popular only acts friendly to the girls, or makes it clear that he truly cares about all of them. The women who are often called sluts on the other hand behave in a much more flirty, casual way without as much commitment. Men who act that way exist in anime and manga too, usually as villains that everyone hates as they throw around shallow words and have women convinced they're kind gentlemen when it's obvious to the guys that they just want in the girls' pants. I don't know about general but in manga reverse harems, it doesn't feel like I've seen that many people calling the girls sluts, largely because the girls behave like the guys: either treating the boys like dear friends or showing real concern in each and every one of them, getting to know them and care about their feelings and worrying about the situation.

All of this said, I'd have to disagree about most harem protagonists being Mary Sues. Some of them are, to be sure, but there are series that are rather well put together, with the men fitting well into the story, and with their characters being far more than the bland, personality-less blank slate people say. Especially if one goes back to the original. Manga and anime adaptations of novels will often cut out the personality in order to leave more time for the moe, but the personalities do exist, with clear motivations and interests and strengths and weaknesses. Not to say that it's not a stretch to one's suspension of disbelief to have so many stories where a guy who's not all that cool ends up with five super-hot girls trying to get his pants off.