yandere is most commonly used for women/girls/femenin presenting things/people.

and stalker is used usually for men/boys/masculine presenting things/people.

(I say things/people since you could likely find a nonbinary or non-human one, like mort from all hail king Julian is an animal you could find some sort of weird ailen one without a cannon gender, but you get the idea)

I think the mental image it can convey is an interesting one, when people say "yandere" most people think of a cute anime girl who is deaply in love with a boy and she's willing to do anything to be with him, including things like murder and kidnapping; you get the idea. but it's usually more romanticized and viewed less seriously.

stalker has the mental image of some creepy, usually ugly man (I say man since most people imagine some older male doing it and not usually an adolecent) following a girl around, having disturbing thoughts about her, and generally making the girl feel unsafe/uncomfortable. while the stalker trope doesn't usually carry themes of violent murder, it usually is viewed as disgusting, creepy, inappropriate and disturbing and doesn't usually have the romanticized undertones that yandere's have.

yandere and stalker are not tied to one gender, what I mean is people tend to use one over the other based off of gender, and no, just because no one gets murdered doesn't make the stalker somehow better or anything, I mean that the yandere trope tends to involve murder where as the stalker usually doesn't, and focuses more on the disturbing behavior and violations of privacy side of things.

the yandere trope is also uh.... how do I put this? used more as fanservice in most anime/media in general in recent times, (not every anime/piece of media, but a lot of it) instead of a horror trope, if you've ever listened to love taste for example, you'll likely understand what i'm getting at.
🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩸
whereas the stalker usually is used for horror, to create a sense of unease and discomfort, because well, having someone watching you without your knowledge or consent is hella uncomfortable and it works well as a horror trope for that reason.

I feel like the phrase "pretty privlege" could apply to this to be completely honest with you, and there's obviously outliers and not everything is based on looks/gender. for example, happy sugar life is an anime that does center around a yandere protagonist for the first half of the story, but her yandere behavior isn't intended to be viewed as attractive and she uses here beauty and men/boys assuming she's an idiot since she's a beautiful girl to her advantage.

I think to some degree sexisum could play a role in this as well, a woman might be viewed as "too dumb" to be held accountable for her actions since she's a woman and men are totally more intelligent and a woman couldn't possibly have the were with all to do something like that, and the (usually male) person she's obsessed with is "lucky" to have her and has nothing to complain about. this is an idea i've heard from both men and women, male victims are somehow "lucky" and should be greatful for their abuse if it's a pretty woman doing it, like this woman didn't just knock him out, tie him up in her basement and kill his girlfriend, mom, and little sister to eliminate the "competition" so to speak.

in conclusion and closing thoughts and opinions.

I don't think yanderes or stalkers are neccerally bad tropes or can't be used in media since they involve sensitive themes, i'm mature enough to understand and handle these tropes, the purpose of this topic was to discuss how each of these is usually explored and handled in media and what most people think about and what they talk about. if you enjoy fanservice yandere content I'm not here to judge you or to tell you that you're a bad person. this was almost like a short, in-a-nutshell comparison of the two.

yandere is just a word that describes an anime/manga character's love style, it's not neccerally a term for woman/girls exclusively.

and same thing goes for stalker.

I personally don't find the yandere fan service trope appealing, but that's me. I feel like both the stalker and yandere trope could be used as a great horror element to any story, but it all depends on the focus of the story and how the characters are handled.

but that's the end of this post. I'm tired and well, if you read this far, you probably have a better attention span than most do. have an amazing day.