#bc it's like 7am and i still havent slept yet lol

[stars-in-our-skies]

So I read your post about fujoshis and I agree with most of it. the thing I didn't really understand though was what you said about how despite the fact that women who fetishise gay men do exist, the Fujoshi doesn't exist, and is a TERF invention? I'm gonna assume by "fujoshi" people mean a very specific kind of gay fetishiser. So not an "omg I've always wanted a gay best friend" kind of person, but more of a .. "The dreaded fujoshi reads way too many BL mangas and manhwas and is obsessed with gay men" kind of thing. In my experience, and also based on hearsay from the queers in my country, these types of people do exist- though to be completely fair I've never met nor heard of a grown woman who fits this description. Mostly it's teenagers and kids who are- presumably- girls, though heck if I know lol. To be frank, as a transmasc queer guy, I don't give two shits what people get off to in private. I could not care less if the fujoshi "fetishises" me in that sense. In fact I really, really do not want to know.

Which ties in neatly with my next point- whilst I don't care about what people do in their private time, I do care about how they treat real life queer people. Both offline and online. Overstepping boundaries with real life queer men, harassing them online and offline, stuff like that, I've seen it and heard of it, and it's really gross. Even that "smol bean" stuff, honestly, whilst not a full on hate crime, it does count as a microaggression. It can trigger dysphoria, at the very least.

What's worse is that the local fujoshi population is homophobic as fuck in real life. Like they'll say things about how it's a "sin" and they don't think real queer people should have marriage equality, that sort of thing. Even if most the offenders are kids and teens it's still really frustrating.

so I guess my question is.. I'm not really sure how you've come to the conclusion that the "creepy, harasser of gay men" fetishiser is purely a TERF invention and even if she were to exist she's perfectly harmless and simply a misguided ally? I'm pro-fujin, btw. I have strong opinions on the TERFy SWERFy appropriation of the Japanese word fujoshi, and I don't think the answer is to gatekeep all queer media from perceived "women"- I just think that there's some nuance to be had in the Fetishiser Discourse.

i've had this ask in my inbox for quite some time. however, i haven't been in the right headspace to discuss politics in-depth, so i put this on the backburner to return to later. having thought it over a bit, i think i'm ready to continue the conversation. i'm sorry for taking so long, but i hope this response is satisfactory.

first, an amendment to my initial post-- reading back through it, i'm not as proud of my tone. in parts i sound preachy, and in others it just straight up doesn't make sense. i'm chalking this up to my neurodivergence and difficulties with portraying what i mean. i'm not going to rewrite the whole thing, but in summary, the points i made were two-fold:

1) that the archetype of "cishet woman who fetishizes gay men," --aka, the 'western fujoshi' -- was most certainly fed into, if not coined by, TERFs; and

2) that this had a lasting impact on the transmasculine community (and, on a broader scale, the queer community as a whole.)

having said that, i'll move on. to address the meat of your statement:

as you stated, you've never actually encountered this "dreaded fujoshi." neither have i! for the most part, i do not believe they exist, as i've already mentioned and will come back to in a moment.

but also as i've mentioned, i do believe there are people out there who, in one way or another, reduce gay men to nothing more than a fetish or pornography while doing nothing to prove themselves as allies to those same gay men outside of sex. what i mean to say is that these people do not exist in massive numbers. i've certainly never seen them in my almost-decade of being in queer spaces, and i've never spoken to someone who has. you have mentioned as much. i am not referring to them when i refer to "misguided allies" as you've put it -- they're fetishizers. this happens to every queer and/or marginalized identity in some shape or form, not unique to gay men. i'll touch on this later.

rather, the women i'm referring to are those i believe to be closer to misguided allies than a genuine threat -- in my (and your) experience, tend to be teenagers and young girls. in most cases, they aren't straight. and in a large number of cases, they are trans themselves, whether they're aware of it or not.

what i see as likely happening is these teens and kids are just discovering what being queer is after being sheltered their entire life. mind you, i'm referring to western society. i can't comment on, say, asian queer spaces. i'm not asian! but for the most part, it seems like they are genuinely misguided children who are just learning about being gay or trans and politics and their views on the world.

i'm not sure how old you are, anon, but the younger generations were raised on technology. a lot of us have been surrounded by politics and news at our fingertips for our entire lives. the most likely scenario here is that these young teens realize they're queer (&/or find queer media interesting) and, not knowing much better, they become fascinated with this "taboo" subject that has been inaccessible to them up until now.

it reminds me of the twilight era -- wherein young girls were enamored with the plot (or maybe, the pretty boys) because it was made for women. fanfic and media that centers queer people are largely made by minorities. it's easy for these teens to see themselves in it; or, in the case of women, to consume it without having to worry about misogyny. this is a similar topic that i won't dive too deeply into, but the appeal of boylove to women because of the lack of women is something that has been brought up in discourse surrounding the term fujoshi, and i'm sure you're familiar with it. so having said that, i'm sure we can both see why it might be appealing to this demographic.

i think, for the most part, what's described here --the fascination of gay men, the 'smol beans', the referring to it as 'sinful'-- is a misguided reaction from young queer people who don't know better. a lot of the current discourse in the community is being perpetrated by that same demographic (see: anything happening on twitter) so it isn't too far off to believe that those same people could hold misguided views. i think if we're going to talk about problems surrounding the younger queers perpetrating queerphobic rhetoric, it's a much bigger conversation than the fujoshi one, and it certainly doesn't end here.

it's more likely these girls are going through internalized issues than externalized. and that is certainly a problem -- but one that needs to be handled differently than it currently is.

side note, i'm not sure what 'local fujoshi population' you're referring to. we've established that adult women (or, really, anyone over the age of 16 in my experience) do not typically fall under this archetype nor exist on any massive scale. the examples you've given are just textbook homophobia -- they have nothing to do with the Myth of The Fujoshi, so to speak. anyone can be homophobic, not just this specific genre of women or whatever.

so I guess my question is.. I'm not really sure how you've come to the conclusion that the "creepy, harasser of gay men" fetishiser is purely a TERF invention and even if she were to exist she's perfectly harmless and simply a misguided ally?

we're referring to two different things here. "creepy, harasser of gay men" is not a common type of person, not in the fujoshi sense. i've said as much.

i specifically brought up the transmedicalist example in my initial post because it mirrors the same issue. essentially, transmedicalists claim that being transgender is becoming trendy and not taken as a serious issue. they have this idea that there's this terrible AFAB 'woman' who binds because it's 'trendy' and uses neopronouns because she is disrespectful to "real trans people" or even delusional. they point to xenogenders, neopronouns, nonbinary people, and anyone they don't believe to be "trans enough" as an example of this.

this "transtrender crowd" does not actually exist. it is an exaggeration of what they think is happening in order to fearmonger and push their point. there MIGHT be cis people pretending to be transgender because they think it's trendy. but the thing is, if we treat everyone like they're 'pretending', we're going to divide our community, and we won't get to the bottom of the actual issue (that, again, does not exist.) if we're so afraid of this hypothetical scenario, we'll only cause more infighting. we need to believe people in good faith -- this same argument applies to the 'misguided ally' thing above.

THIS is what i meant when i said that this 'fujoshi' you have described does not exist. she is an exaggeration of what people think is happening. and it is that exaggeration that TERFs specifically have created and fed into. they created the idea of a 'woman who fetishizes gay men so much she wants to be one', and then it got repeated -- so far that the transmasculine community has fallen for it, and that the word 'fujoshi' no longer just means 'a woman who reads BL' to most queer people.

this fetishization we have described might occur occasionally, yes. there MIGHT be cishet women who only see gay men as her Smol Yaoi Beans. but it does not exist on a widespread scale -- not to the degree where it warrants this much fearmongering, and the people who are mostly affected by this fear are transmasculine individuals.

the 'fujoshi' being referred to directly stems from TERFs' misogyny and transphobia. they want us to fight each other, and they have succeeded. that was my point.

and, before i go, there's one more thing i forgot to mention initially. you didn't bring this up, but it occurred to me that we haven't discussed how this issue affects asian gay men. in the west, of course -- again, i'm not from asia.

i think if anyone was going to be hurt most by the Fujoshi Trope, it's queer asian men. except, i am white. i cannot tell you how discrimination against queer asian men looks or how it is perpetrated. i cannot give you my personal experiences with it because i do not have them. it exists, for sure -- and i think that it's a part of a larger issue, namely anti-asian racism and queerphobia as a whole. that is something i want to leave to queer asian men -- if any would like to comment on it, i am always eager to listen and adjust my views as such.

taking this into account, that is the only point i could see towards 'women fetishizing gay men' (aka the bastardized western form of a "fujoshi"). i believe my points still stand, namely of this being a TERF-created issue. of course, if anyone wants to discuss it more, my inbox is open.