Hello! I just joined SH and want in on the fun. I was originally on RR, but SH seems a lot BL-friendlier. And there's even a newsletter! You all rock. It's sad to hear it's the least-liked genre, but I can't say I'm surprised? There's obviously a lot of overlap between the anime/manga and webnovel communities, and it's not unusual for BL to catch some flack from people who have strong negative associations to the genre or simply have long-standing misconceptions.
1 - Yup! Bring it all on.
2 - I started down the BL rabbit hole with the Naruto fandom. Then came Gravitation—which wow, looking back, BL sure has evolved. And for the better. There's plenty to still criticize, though.
I'm looking at you, non-con. At this point, this is a trope that has been played out to exhaustion in manga, and I'd really love for the Japanese market to expand beyond that.
Speaking of Japanese!
So, we should unpack this a little. Let's be careful about looking at non-Western labels from a Western lens. I know there's been a movement to be more socially-conscious in online spaces, and that's great, but we need to consider the nuance in things, as well as the reality that "XYZ thing makes me personally uncomfortable" is not a fair or accurate way to determine how harmful something is for the rest of society. I took a look at the Twitter thread that
@bafflinghaze linked, and while OP's feelings are valid—aka fujos gross me out because they ship toxic dynamics—their experiences, assumptions, and generalizations don't speak for or represent the community they are criticizing.
Futekiya has a great little article about the terms Fujoshi/Fudanshi. I stand with
@Silverty in that it's a reclaimed term, and I don't find it offensive. (But that's just me.) It's simply a way to identify people who consume male/male romance. That's it.
Fetishization isn't reading a super lewd Teacher X Student BL manga in the privacy of your bedroom. Or even the tried-and-true overbearing Seme X extremely effeminate Uke. At the end of the day, all forms of media and genres across the board are guilty of problematic, unrealistic, or repetitive tropes. And that's OKAY. Fiction is a safe space. For many, it's a form of escapism. It's a controlled way of navigating situations and dynamics that would be dangerous, impossible, or inappropriate to explore in real life. In a BL-context, fetishizing might have the look of someone approaching an IRL mlm couple and asking who is the top and bottom. This is a violation of privacy, dignity, and a failure to distinguish between fiction and reality. Projecting fictional tropes onto actual people is obviously not acceptable, and it can be incredibly hurtful for those involved seeing as they are being reduced to a single character trait plucked from a book, instead of being viewed as a fully-dimensional being.
To recap: don't demonize already vulnerable and misunderstood communities; take issue with the individual doing the problematic behavior, not the label they use; and develop healthy boundaries with your fiction. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
