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burning-sol · 3 months

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Too much of a pussy to interact the post directly but um. Re: genderbends and feminism

I think you’re entirely right to bring up how easy that passive hostility can become transphobia but I also think the idea that most genderbends are trans hcs is a bit of a spiders George moment. We (you and I) have cultivated a space we feel safe in that is predominantly populated by trans people who will talk about trans things- in the wider fandomspace there are still a lot of cis people who completely misunderstand what a genderbend has the potential to be. Obviously the years have brought good things and a lot has changed for the better, but there are still a lot of people who do in fact genderbend a dude character they like into a cis girl and you can tell by the way they write her they have no idea what they’re doing and generally little understanding of girls or girlhood. But attacking all genderbends and making the assumption that they’re all that is certainly not the way to go about it; like you said, a lot of people actually have trans hcs and sort of reclaim the r63 trend. But it is important to recognize there’s a larger problem of media not having girl characters with depth, or having those characters but they’re massively set aside for a dude. There’s no shame in enjoying the guy character more, speaking from experience, like you said let ppl on the internet do what they want. But also indulge taking a deeper look at the women, and recognize the bigger issue. I will defend every badly written woman with everything I have but I will also defend every fandom-decided transwoman with everything I have as well. They’re sisters. Super Sorry if this is a weird ask I felt like adding my perspective, bc ur right but I see. More

No need to belittle yourself, I know how anxiety inducing it can be to reply to something off anon, what matters is that you were polite and thoughtful. So lemme address your point. Post being talked about for context.

I think I did misword my post, you're absolutely right, but what I was trying to get across is that I suppose I hypothesise a lot of "genderbends" may only be perceived like that from the outside without the neccessary context. This is based on how I reflected on my own headcanons and how they can be outwardly percieved, and also my experience in fandom. For example, my interpretation of an AU character (William Wight) could easily be viewed as a genderbend without the context of personal thoughts and the fact I headcanon William Wisp (the og character) as PRE-transition, especially since another character from that AU I have genderbent. So it wasn't strictly about genderbending actually being trans headcanons, it's about how if you're without context, genderbending can be a misinterpretation of a trans headcanon.

But you're right, I too closely conflated them, giving overall the wrong message about genderbending and invalidating the feelings of people who just enjoy the trope without the trans aspect. There's a lot of people out there who genderbend not knowing anything about transness, that could easily be a misinterpretation, it was based on my experiences and not any hard data. I also projected onto the people reblogging that post that they wouldn't have the eye to make a disceration between the two.. Which, I have no clue either way, who knows. But thankfully, I don't think any of this takes away from the point being made or hurts anyone too severely. I hope that anyone who feels misrepresented can still understand the post regardless of how I may have offended them, because the underlying transphobia is the bigger issue. And also, to reinforce it again, I AGREE with OP in the right context, I think it's a real phenomena, but I try to be critical of posts if they start to widely circulate without anyone pointing out what can be a potentially harmful idea.

Also to consider as a note though: genderbending can be a precursor to being trans as a form of experimentation. So yes, it is still worth taking into the consideration what you're saying about people who genderbend characters, you have no idea what they're going through even if they claim not to be trans, things can change. But even further beyond that, I focused on trans people for obvious reasons, it's shitty to be targeting a minorty.. But if you're nodding along with my post like, "oh yeah, it's okay if TRANS people genderbend characters, but ANYONE ELSE isn't allowed to" umg. Well. That can still be transphobia, or just generally a dick thing to do. Again, I just think we shouldn't assume that misogyny is involved when there are other incredibly viable reasons for genderbending.

I didn't even bring it up because I didn't want to tbh, but, also a lot of people who genderbend are just.. Into that. That's also a notable reason but again, that wasn't the point.

Btw, this is all coming from the fandom where people rampantly post abt an mlm ship and overlook the other lead that is girl. So. I first hand have experienced the EXACT issue being discussed, but I still wouldn't wanna go and make the wide assertions OP was making. In the end, we are all people on the internet in our niches making assumptions about wider groups even if we don't actually know jack shit about each other. Hence I preach love and tolerate, and to generally not judge people.

I hope this was a decent response and maybe even added something to my previous post. Or maybe this was a jumbled schlock of nothing that went off the rails, I'm sorry if that's the case.

#📚 my posts #📌 thoughts

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pitseleh333 · 2 years

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your posts are really interesting to read and also reminded me of how i find it odd, the way some people spend more time hating on terfs than actually uplifting trans ppl in any concrete way. like personally, i barely even think about terfs other than the occasional "i don't really want to be interacting with them or have them in my social circles" but that's it. more of my attention is used on appreciating trans ppl and acknowledging the hardships and hurdles that still need to be dismantled. i believe the focus on hatred does sadly make sense though, considering social media as a general landscape thrives on stirring up reactionary behavior

ty anon ❤️

i think you hit the nail on the head with the reactionary behavior that social media breeds. a lot of the times we’re posting these things in frustration without having any time to think them through on a larger scale than our internet bubble. because of this, the internet is not a great place for any level of nuance. & the way i see it, people posting constantly about how much they hate terfs have an easier time seeing terfs as The Bad Guy, end of the conversation. the same way that terfs find it easier to see men and trans women as The Bad Guys. which is clearly not a line of thinking thats going to incite any level of compassion or nuance. there are certainly ways to critique terf rhetoric in a nuanced way, but essentially it boils down to some pretty basic things like: lets not do gender essentialism & lets respect & love trans women.

also, i think a lot of it could stem from cis guilt, so they’re getting angry on behalf of trans people. but the way i think of it, that is not my job. the same way it is not my job to yell at a police offer during a BLM protest. think of the violence that could cause, largely aimed at black individuals. as a cis ally, all i can do is attempt to live my life according to my values which oppose terf/transphobic rhetoric and uplift trans women’s voices.

#thanks again ❤️ its nice to know these things dont just go into the void

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idletransgenderfication · 3 years

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ppl rlly said “I can forgive organ harvesting but I draw the line at bullied women being 0.5% rude to ppl” and it’s like damn....y’all can forgive organ harvesting?

i mean like i've said before, shidou's video was heavily symbolic so it'll probably take some time for theories (like the popular organ harvesting one) to disperse. his voting has already been steadily tipping closer and closer to guilty for some time now, so i'm confident that this trend will continue as more people put two and two together. i'm pretty sure he'll be deemed guilty when all is said and done, as there is still a lot of time left before his voting closes and i can only see people's opinion of him getting harsher over time.

mu's voting is incredibly close still! innocent initially had a strong lead, but as more and more people began to suspect she was intentionally manipulating the narrative, guilty gradually overtook it. however, innocent seems to have been on a slight rise again lately. personally, i'm voting her innocent even though i do suspect her to be emotionally manipulative. this is because she's still a child as well as one who's been under a lot of stress, so i don't hold her fully accountable for her actions. i don't think she consciously intends to manipulate people, either, certainly not in a malicious way. it just strikes me as the only method of interaction she really knows. and i don't blame her for not having learned better yet, because again, she's only 16. she shouldn't be expected to have the emotional maturity of an adult.

so yeah, if it's rubbing you the wrong way that mu might get voted guilty, there's still time to try to sway her voting otherwise! remember that this is only the first trial, though. it's only the third trial's ruling that determines whether a character is ultimately deemed forgiven—the first two just affect how the story develops over the next trial's mvs. so characters voted innocent in the first trial may end up guilty in the end, and vice versa.

#honestly i'll probably vote all the minors innocent as a matter of principle #anyone who votes mu guilty & shidou innocent baffles me lmao i don't get it at all #MILGRAM #Shidou Kirisaki #Mu Kusunoki #ask #anon

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diminuel · 5 years

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Listen, I've never understood (or quite agreed) with the idea of Bottom!only Cas, but, if people think this is a problem, they've never ventured into the kink memes. There are people out here shipping well, look up marvel & the HTP if you really want a shock, but point is, those ppl are happy to ship & let ship. If you were out here telling people it was your way or the highway, I can see why feelings would be hurt but you're just expressing a personal preference, for FICTIONAL characters. FFS.

Which is to say, you’ve finally run into the DESTIHELL part of fandom. The part that the bronlies and wincest ppl despise so much. The loud screaming part that insists destiel be canon OR ELSE. I miss when fandom was on LJ and everybody knew how shipping worked and how to treat each other with respect. :( (I did hop on twitter real quick and YIKES. those ppl need to take a chill pill. Maybe watch some ru paul)

Well… Bottom!Cas only is relative…? I only read or write or draw it, I don’t think only bottom!Cas is acceptable, imaginable, possible, good ;3 Just to clear that up.

Oh, I know the kink memes. *Elrond voice* I was there, Gandalf. But I also think many people who were involved in the discussion know of kinks. And there seems to be a bit of a tension between saying that kinks are acceptable to have and enjoy and saying that some kinks are rooted in harmful stereotypes. And sometimes people said the same things. Kinks are good, kinks are bad. So I guess there’s still an ongoing grappling with own kinks and others kinks and “Your Kink is not my Kink” approach of fandom sometimes gets lost.

I think there’s a bit of a mash up of several topics that might have made discussions even more charged? Perpetuating stereotypes in queer couples, the position of women enjoying slash ships, kink and kink shaming/ policing, the impact of fanfic and fanart on real life, freedom of creative engagement with topics VS criticism, plenty of interpersonal tension, heaps of yikes shared all around and probably even more things I didn’t see ALL mixed together into this little storm… It was too big to unravel and I feel people argued on different fronts, depending on your background and attitude… Lots of things probably don’t have anything to do with me, but it’s easier to have someone specific to make an example of…

I tought Destihellers was a mocking term people used to mean everyone shipping Destiel? I’ve been called a Destiheller too for doing nothing but shipping Destiel and I’m not Destiel be canon or else. ;3 (Though I’d like them to be canon. But my shipping exist independently of what happens in canon. I don’t need permission from canon or from actors or fellow fans to ship. I feel there was a shift in shippers interacting with canon where shippers now expect their ship to be canon and have people endorse it. There’s an intersection between canon/ people invovled in making the show and fans that hasn’t existed in that way when I got into fandom) In any case, I don’t know if the people who were invovled in the debate were part of a certain group within people shipping Destiel or anything like that. But I generally wouldn’t give anyone the title Destiheller. I still think we should be a bit more supportive of each other (no matter the ship we sail on).

I’m torn about missing LJ. Because spn_gossip and LJ rants (I don’t remember if that was actually the name) weren’t particularly inviting environments. I miss a time in fandom where people weren’t so eager to prove how up to date on latest issues they were by calling out people. Sometimes obsessively. I understand wanting to correct a narrative by proving what has actually been said instead of falsly following claims and misreported things by keeping track of receipts or whatever. But fact checking was certainly not a luxury that was granted to me in this whole fiasco *lol*

I think I drifted off topic…

#Anon #Diminuel replies

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freedom-of-fanfic · 6 years

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I'm curious for your thoughts on this subject. I dislike the way antis use the term "yaoi" and "fujoshi" since I feel like these terms were created to mean specific things (in Japanese culture) and antis often apply it without considering differences between slash and yaoi. Also, I dislike the way they use yaoi to pretty much mean fetishizing mlm/content, and fujoshi as fetishizing women since both terms are from Japan and I feel weird seeing these terms associated with fetishizing.

I also am really bothered by the way English fandom has adopted genre words from Japan to mean ‘the worst version of [x]/fans of [x]’. it feels like a form of looking down anything coming from Japan/Japanese culture and treating Japanese culture as the source of these ‘worst versions’.

(a lot of what follows is from light research I’ve done over the years and personal experience. It’s my opinion and experiences rather than a closely researched and heavily sourced essay.)

I think the reason for this weird English-speaking take is two-fold:

Americans/western culture interprets the Japanese subgenre ‘yaoi’ and its Japanese creators & fans through the lens of American/western culture and finds them wanting

the reinterpretation of the concept of ‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ in American/western culture and the unfortunate associations created as a result

Without going into historical depth, any western - particularly American - interaction with Japanese culture is an unequal one. Besides the ignominious end of WWII, the American army was the means of forcing Japan to reopen their borders in the 1850′s. And frankly: western culture has been obsessed with Japanese culture (and other East Asian cultures) for literal centuries. and we’ve been taking their cool shit and appropriating and bastardizing it for just as long.[$]

the way that the words ‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ are being treated now is, in my opinion, an extension of this.

(this post was heavily updated on August 2-3rd, 2018, to add a lot more about the word ‘fujoshi’: it originally focused more on ‘yaoi’. huge thanks to blogs like @rottenboysclub, @oh-suketora, and @satans-tiddies for all the information they’ve put out on tumblr about these words.[%] )

American understanding of yaoi in Japan & its Japanese fans

Americans don’t understand yaoi or fujoshi in their original Japanese context, but we belittle and denigrate it as if we do.

BL (Boy’s Love) and its subgenre ‘yaoi’ seem to have a similar relationship to Japanese fans as ‘slashfic’ and mlm fiction does to American fans. But that doesn’t mean we understand yaoi/BL in the context of Japanese culture or that we interact with yaoi/BL the same way Japanese fans do. Same for the word ‘fujoshi’ - a term that seems to have been coined in a derogatory context but was ‘reclaimed’ by the very female-aligned fans that it was meant to denigrate. (but more on ‘fujoshi’ later.)

In Japan, the word ‘yaoi’ is more equivalent to a Japanese acronym for the English ‘pwp’ (plot? what plot?) than a word referring to mlm. Like ‘pwp’ in its original usage, ‘yaoi’ indicates a fanwork or small-time/one-shot original work (doujinshi) that has little to no plot and/or focuses almost exclusively on the sex part of a fictional ship, though ‘yaoi’ is specifically applied to mlm-focused ‘plotless’ fanworks*.

(*it’s worth noting that - as mentioned in the wiki link above - the word ‘yaoi’ does not, on its own, have a meaning attached to BL. it has more to do with who adopted the acronym for common use: specifically, BL doujin writers.)

‘yaoi’ has fallen out of use in Japanese fan circles. ‘BL’ - ‘boy’s love’ - is the word which is more of an umbrella term for mlm in the way ‘slash’ is in English-speaking fandom, covering everything from explicit sex to soft pre-romance hand-holding. however, ‘yaoi’ was the word that became known as the Japanese-equivalent mlm fan genre to ‘slash’ in English-speaking circles, which had the unfortunate effect of leading English-speaking animanga fans to compare only the most tropey, explicit mlm content from Japanese fandom against all varieties of mlm ‘slash’ content from English-speaking fandom.

This was comparing apples to oranges; a more equivalent Western fandom comparison to Japanese ‘yaoi’ would probably be silly oneshot crackfic and kinkmeme fics. But the misapprehension was already in place and only got worse as some of the tropes of the explicit versions of yaoi genre doujinshi became increasingly known - the ‘seme’ (’top’) and ‘uke’ (’bottom’) and their supposedly male/female-like roles, the ‘rapey’ tendency to show the uke as crying and reluctant under an aggressive seme, etc.

These kinds of tropes don’t sit well with a modern American audience. And Japanese bl fans have had their own conversations about whether bl/yaoi is harmful to or supportive of Japanese gay culture (and long before Western / English-speaking fandom circles were having them, at least in a widespread way.)

But Americans are ill-equipped to judge the situation from the sidelines. To provide a few examples of things we generally don’t have cultural context on to truly understand yaoi (BL, tbh) and its Japanese fans:

LGBTQ+ culture in Japan

the Japanese flavor of gender essentialism

social and societal pressures on Japanese people, particularly women (trans, cis, and intersex) & nb ppl who identify as femme-aligned

what it means to be ‘feminine’ in Japan

strongly gendered roles in the bedroom (sex in Japan)

Without knowing all this, how can we understand why yaoi (or BL) is constructed the way it is? how can we understand what draws people to it, or how it sits with Japanese LGBTQ people?

But because many yaoi tropes don’t sit well with Americans in the context of our own culture and increasing openness to LGBT+/queer people, and because we’ve given yaoi a false equivalence with a western genre of fiction that has a much wider range of subject and form, we’re apt to look down on yaoi as ‘bad mlm’ and on its ‘fujoshi’ fans as genuinely ‘rotten women’.

The international reinterpretation of ‘yaoi’ & international yaoi fans

the other way the word ‘yaoi’ is used by many people in fandom-centric tumblr - anti and non-anti alike - is in reference to how Americans/Western fans ‘initially’ interacted with Japanese-sourced mlm (’initially’ being when yaoi became well-known enough for a noticeable interaction to appear in American/western geek subculture).

Manga and anime had a popularity boom in the US around 2003/2004 thanks to improving internet speeds and the 24-hour cartoon channel Cartoon Network looking for fresh animated content to air. Media companies caught on and a glut of manga and anime were officially licensed, translated, and sold overseas.

As the popularity of Japanese media grew, the word ‘yaoi’ became more popular and widely used in fandom circles, usually as a substitute for ‘slash’ or ‘gay’ (fictional mlm) when the source material for the fannish subject was Japanese in origin. I think this hit its peak around 2006-2007; at that time many teenage and young adult anime fans (primarily female/femme) who enjoyed slashfic/mlm fic called themselves ‘yaoi fans’.

Why was ‘yaoi’ so popular in America/western culture? and why did its fans get such an awful reputation over time?

as for popularity, here’s a few aspects:

Just another word for ‘slash’ - it wasn’t so much that yaoi as a publishing genre was popular as that there were a lot anime fans in fandom using the word ‘yaoi’ for their mlm fan content instead of the word ‘slash’. (and it still is used this way in some circles.)

male-attracted teen’s first fanservice - because of the size of the boom and the comparative diffidence of American marketers to young (male-attracted) people, a young anime fan’s first published media experience with the sexual ‘female gaze’ directed towards men was more likely to be sourced in Japanese BL content.

American gaze on Japanese male companionship - manga geared towards young men / perceived men in Japan (such as Shonen Jump titles) features a lot of male companionship and tight bonds of friendship. So does American media, but American male culture rarely allows men to touch one another in friendly ways (any gentle touch from a cis man is treated as expressing sexual interest). Japanese male friendship culture lacks this physical distance. Guess how it was interpreted, and guess what kind of effect it had on American anime/manga fandom.

relatedly, this LGBT/queer read on Japanese-sourced masc-centric content, plus the willingness of works aimed towards femme audiences to present all-but-canon mlm relationships, probably functioned as a poor man’s substitute for the lack of LGBT representation in American media in some cases.

and some reasons for the terrible reputation ‘yaoi fans’ garnered:

American ‘yaoi fans’ in the mid-2000′s were mostly teenage girls/femme-aligned young people, and it is an American pastime to shit on teenage girls for being teenagers and girls at the same time.

10 years on, those teenage girls are young adults in their 20′s looking back on their younger selves with embarrassed disgust. That is: the word ‘yaoi’ started to garner its sour taste in the 2010′s because that’s when most of the teenagers of the 2000′s outgrew that particular flavor of immaturity.

a lack of LGBT/queer culture awareness and education in America. Yaoi or slash fanworks may have been Baby’s First Gay Content. It also might have been the entire extent of their knowledge about non-straight anything because America had by no means the same level of LGBT/queer visibility that it does now and certainly didn’t (doesn’t) educate about it. people said and did some awful stuff out of sheer ignorance and lack of thought.

fandom got better about it because resources improved and visibility increased, which was itself in some measure because of the popularity of mlm fiction in fandom circles leading to people doing more research and queer fans educating those who knew less. BL wasn’t necessarily intended as queer rep, but it did act as a gateway to queer culture for people who discovered things about themselves through BL.

socially inappropriate behavior of many, many kinds - including those who refused to separate fiction and reality and treated real mlm like live fanservice (‘omg real life yaoi!’). But as an icon of ‘yaoi fan in the 2000′s cringe culture’, perhaps nothing is so prominent and well-known as the ‘yaoi paddle’.

why is the yaoi paddle so illustrative and iconic? Well - the paddles were sold at anime conventions as a silly novelty item. Anime convention attendees tended (and still tend) to skew young, particularly compared to other nerdy social gatherings. And as you would expect of a bunch of (a) overexcited young people (b) relatively lacking in supervision and (c ) surrounded by things liable to raise their excitement levels even more, they did a lot of foolish things when handed wooden oars that were easy to swing around and hit people with.

At about the same time that anime fandom was truly exploding in size and the yaoi paddle craze was hitting its peak, the internet was juuust about bandwidth friendly enough to allow people to take videos and upload them to this awesome new site ‘youtube’.

I’d say ‘you can imagine what kinds of videos people uploaded’ but you don’t have to imagine. you can see for yourself. The human interest news articles practically wrote themselves. And while yaoi paddles were quickly banned from conventions and their popularity dropped almost as fast, it was an impression to linger. particularly, IMO, combined with other invasive social behaviors that were somewhat more tolerated at anime conventions back then: ‘glomping’, ‘free hugs!’ signs, awkwardly following relative strangers around conventions as nominal ‘friends’, cosplayers publicly ‘making out’ as ‘fanservice’, etc.*

so this is the image of the ‘yaoi fan’ today - a young, white American cis girl at an anime convention in 2007, lacking self-restraint, social grace, and the ability to distinguish fiction from reality. and though this image has little to do with the original Japanese concept, we use the Japanese word to conjure it.

*these behaviors weren’t limited to young female / perceived female ‘yaoi fans’ by any means, but partially because of yaoi paddles, ‘cringe culture’ and ‘yaoi fangirls’ were inexorably linked to one another.

International (mis)use of ‘Fujoshi’: a Brief History

In contrast with ‘yaoi’, the word ‘fujoshi’ has a comparatively short history in American culture. It had a brief rise to popularity in the early- to mid- 2010′s, but for the past year or two it has been heavily invoked by the (so to speak) ‘fandom police’ as an invective against (perceived) women who ship fictional mlm and/or create explicit fictional mlm fanworks.

‘fujoshi’ ( 腐女子 ) is a compound word composed of the kanji/hanzi for ‘rotten’/’fermented’ (腐) and ‘woman’ (女子 ) and is a homonym with an old Japanese word for ‘respectable woman’ (婦女子 ). It was coined on 2ch (a Japanese text board popular with men) to insult (perceived) female fans who ‘queered’ media content written for & centered around men: re-imagining (canon straight) male characters as queer/gay/bi, shipping them with one another, and discussing/creating explicit, sexual work around those ships. (sound familiar?)

In its original insulting context, a ‘fujoshi’ was woman who was no longer a desirable marriage partner because of her interest in BL. She had ruined herself by marinating in sexual fantasies - and not even normal sexual fantasies about having sex with a man herself. Instead, she had fantasies about men having sex with men! Not only had a fujoshi woman lost her cute naivete and innocence: she’d also turned into a sexual deviant. She was fermented, overripe, disgusting, undesirable.

I don’t know how long this meaning had any clout, because Japanese BL fans - BL fans from all over Asia, in fact - embraced the ‘fujoshi’ label. to me, the implication of the ‘fujoshi’ reclamation reads like a giant, queer ‘fuck you’ to the kind of dudebros who hated them: ‘you find me undesirable because i like gay/queer content? That’s hilarious, because I never wanted you in the first place.’

And to this day (mid-2018), 'fu’/ 腐, ’fujo’/ 腐女, and its varieties (腐男子, 腐人, etc) have positive connotations in kanji/hanzi-using fandom circles.

The word ‘fujoshi’ reached English-speaking Western fandom eventually (I want to say in the late 2000′s/early 2010′s). It came to us already reclaimed and was picked up as a positive self-label. In those earlier days, Western fandom called themselves ‘fujoshi’ in a way much more similar to how Eastern fandom still uses it:

It’s not my job to please you.

I’m allowed to enjoy taboo things like queer fanworks, headcanoning canon straight male characters as gay, and sexually explicit content.

If you think that makes me gross, then fine: i’m gross. your opinion doesn’t hurt me. in fact, I embrace it.

(now go away and let me ship.)

this connotation of ‘fujoshi’ enjoyed a brief period of popularity. There was a fandom ‘sweet spot’ for slash in 2011-2012: shifts in public opinion meant shipping gay ships wasn’t utterly taboo anymore and AO3 was a safe space for sharing slashfic. ‘Fujoshi’ came to semi-replace ‘yaoi fan’ in the English lexicon, at this time, becoming synonymous with ‘ships gay ships in animanga fandoms’, with the added bonus of partially shedding the connotation of loving old yaoi doujin tropes in one’s slashfic.

But in the last few years - starting in around 2014/2015, I want to say - there was a shift in the attitude towards shipping mlm here on tumblr.

mlm fans who are seen as women - whether they are or not - are increasingly told that shipping fictional slash ships or creating fictional content about men in love with/having sex with men is terrible. mlm shippers/fanwork creators who aren’t mlm themselves - especially perceived-female mlm shippers/fanwork creators - are apparent no different from the ‘yaoi fangirl’ stereotype above: the 2007 cis white socially awkward fangirl, holding a yaoi paddle and screaming with excitement about real life yaoi!!! whenever two real gay men kiss.

the word ‘fujoshi’ - still tied to the English-speaking concept of ‘yaoi’ by both words being Japanese in origin and related to mlm fan content - was about to get unreclaimed with a vengeance … by American/Western fans with hardly a drop of knowledge about Japanese culture, fandom, or language.

And it’s been every bit as ugly as you can imagine.

‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ on tumblr today (mid-2018)

fandom on tumblr, deeply into policing everyone’s fannish interests in the name of social awareness, invokes ‘yaoi’ in a two-fold way:

‘yaoi’ as a doujinshi subgenre in Japan: featuring fictional mlm in sexual situations for titillation written by Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people) for Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people), and the distasteful feelings American/western culture bears towards its tropes as being unacceptably unrealistic and ‘backwards’ by modern progressive American standards.

‘yaoi’ as ‘cringe culture’: an imperialistic American/western read on Japanese media content + exposure to Japanese BL, blending unfavorably with a lack of education on real LGBT/queer culture, a lack of alternative LGBT/queer media representation, and teenagers being teenagers

Tumblr fandom police, feeling that ‘fujoshi’ was equally bad as ‘yaoi’ by dint of being adopted as a label by animanga slashfic fans & as another Japanese word relating to mlm shipping, proceeded to co-opt, redefine, and ‘un-claim’ the word ‘fujoshi’:

‘fujoshi’, but literally. having gotten wind of the literal meaning of the word ‘fujoshi’, but completely lacking the context under which the word was created, invoked, and reclaimed, fandom policers designated their own negative meaning for ‘rotten girl’. ‘fujoshi’ means ‘straight girl that’s rotten because she fetishizes gay men!’ fandom policers say - even though that has literally nothing to do with ‘fujoshi’ in its proper context.

telling East Asian fujoshi they can’t call themselves fujoshi. having decided the word ‘fujoshi’ is tied to being homophobic (by ‘fetishizing’ gay romance), and that its derogatory of women because they rely on their own re-take on the literal, negative meaning, American fandom policers start attacking East Asian fans that proudly call themselves fujoshi. (I wish I was joking.)

In summary, English-speaking fans are using their own twisted, ill-informed, and imperialistic treatment and understanding of Japanese concepts to turn those words into pejoratives for use in petty ship wars.

(And when you put it like that it kind of starts to look a little … well … racist.)

[%] This post was never intended as an exhaustive resource - as noted at the beginning of the post, it was based on my absorbed knowledge from being in animanga fandom as an American for many years - but thanks to the blogs I listed, who have a much more thorough knowledge of kanji / hanzi-using fan spaces such as Japan/China/Taiwan, Korea (in part), etc, I learned a lot about the current usage of ‘yaoi’ (or lack thereof) in Japan & how fujoshi was adopted as a popular label over the last 9 months.

If you’re ever looking for more information on these topics, I would especially point you to @rottenboysclub, as their blog is focused on educating English-speaking fandom on Japanese queer/LGBT+ and fandom terminology.

[$] regarding western tendency to appropriate Japanese culture - Japan is eager to export the unique aspects of their culture. but how many times have you seen an English article with titles like ‘10 Reasons Why Japan is So Weird’ or ‘25 Weird Things About Japan that will make you say ‘buy why?’’ (the literacy rate in Japan being nearly 100% is #3 on this list). and okay - Japanese culture is remarkably different from American culture. But this ‘Japan is so weird’ talk is often accompanied by a tone of mild superiority.

consider how we treat Japanese cultural products such as movies. The recent Death Note debacle is only the latest in a long string of this kind of nonsense (though thank goodness it’s getting the reputation it deserves.) Remember The Ring? American remake of Ringu. And of course there’s dozens of other examples of Americans buying or taking things from its original Japanese context and trying to make it ‘better’ for a mainstream American audience, even though the American audience liked the original Japanese product just fine. (Dragonball Z comes to mind.)

(On the flip side you have ‘weaboos/weebs’, the contemporary word for ‘Japanophiles’, putting Japanese culture on a pedestal, which is not any better, and disgust with ‘weebs’ tends to be extended to the aspects of Japanese culture they worship.)

#racism in fandom #this is an americentric post #yaoi as a trope #in defense of fujoshi #in defense of freedom to fandom #animanga fandom #fandom history #TEH HOT YAOIZ

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energyanon · 3 years

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(Kinda long post ahead sorry)

Really hoping next year will be a better year for Henry, im tired of this non-personal-cold interaction he has going on. Yeah he fucked up and made a whole mess of a lot of things, but idk. Drama like this happens every time he gets a gf so this obv wont be the last time.

I wish the fans would stop setting themselves up for disappointment every freaking time he gets a new gf. Like cmon, most of u r grown women, yall should not be making hate pages on instagram about his gfs and making him the victim every time and perhaps use ur brains and start questioning his actions and intentions instead. (@ the fandom not u)

It makes us look like one of those obnoxious kpop fandoms that get wild over the smallest rumors. I wouldnt even be surprised if Henry thinks his fandom is a joke given that hes barely posted anything personal this year (dont blame him but still?, just shows the drama and everything has affected him mentally) and that his co-stars and ppl he knows irl probably thinks his fandom is immature too

All i ever want from him is more nerdy laid back stuff or just sharing his hobbies in general (though i think his only hobby is gaming & working out?, but like thats enough for me (i love gaming too). Fans would eat that shit up! No matter if they dont even like his hobbies, theyll take anything! Deadass

Hes shown he can do it with the PC build that caught a lot of attention. Man literally went viral. He should just relax and be himself more, but i feel like there is something stopping him, maybe not a person, but his mental state.

(Btw i enjoy ur acc, ur seem rly nice, tho i was kinda OOF by the aries post bc im an aries too 😂)

The HC fandom certainly has a trend from what i've seen of just straight up not liking his GF's, and that can be said for all of them, not even the problematic ones. It's just going to be the case from here on out, I don't think things will really change for the people that are apart of the continued cycle (and that isn't EVERYONE before people bite my face off, it's certain people who have a trend of hating every single one and still slagging them off, like on certain forum sites etc) but even if he dates mother theresa, there is going to be an issue cause it seems that with HC people create a more intense parasocial relationship probably because he does date relatively normal women and therefore is attainable? Idk, but I don't think it will change. Once again, that's not the entire fandom, but you can't deny there is a trend with quite alot of people within the HC fandom. I also would love to see more of his interests cause he was actually kinda fun and goofy when he was more himself. Even when he's near Sam Claflin he is really enjoying himself when he's usually just a bit dry tbh. I wonder why he has decided to stray from that. I know the MT thing is DG's influence, but that doesn't mean you need to hide the rest of yourself.. Also, Sorry Babe, My whole inbox is full of "an Aries has PERSONALLY ATTACKED ME" so maybe it's just the sun sign of some firey people heheh, but, I do have to say the rest of the aries that have contacted me have had methods of self reflection and seem like pretty good people, so I think that it's more that we're bringing afflicted aries' into our life in order to learn something. I read somewhere that we tend to draw certain signs into our life at times that we need to learn something that those signs specialise in, and I am currently in my Aries' phase of people. They're both the exact same people two and it's causing me alot of strife where one I finally broke off with and now the second is alot harder cause they're just always there and no matter how much I ignore they always will be, so I'm trying to find out what it is about them that I need to learn through the pain if that makes sense. So all signs are a blessing. That being said - also someone I thought was a Taurus (they're just on the cusp, and very much more Taurus traited than they are Aries) turns out that they actually are Aries, and although she does have some :\ traits, she is also Super loyal, and super fierce, and loving and giving. So there are good Aries out there for sure, I think it may just be a sign where, if you're drawing from the dark part of it, you're gonna burn the people around you, and if you're drawing from the good part of it, you're gonna be probably the best friend anyone has ever had. Which is where you can draw comfort from Anon cause you sound like you got the good parts :) That can be said for the rest of the signs btw. But it seems like hell hath no fury like an Aries scorned 😈

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