#pp discourse //

[frankie-bell]

An Essay Exploring Psycho-Pass's Most Controversial Character

I know I’m opening a huge, slimy can of worms and potentially incurring the wrath of half the Psycho-Pass fandom, but I feel compelled to share my feelings on Mika Shimotsuki and how I believe she serves as a lightning rod for fan culture misogyny. Now, before I start, let me just say that this essay isn’t targeted at any one individual, and it’s just my personal opinion, which you are more than welcome to disagree with. I’d also like to stress that, despite my love for Mika’s character, I’m going to try my very best to approach this topic from an academic standpoint rather than an emotional one. I recently picked Parasocial Relationships and their effect on female celebrities and fictional characters as a thesis for my Gender and Media course, and it really got me thinking about this anime in particular, so here we go…

Let’s tackle the female side of things first, because it’s the one that shocks and disappoints me the most. Don’t get me wrong -- I think fandoms with a strong female presence are awesome, complex, uplifting, and oftentimes incredibly positive and inclusive spaces. I love being a female genre fan and interacting with other female genre fans. That said, I’ve noticed female fandom can sometimes fall prey to online bullying and misogynistic groupthink when it comes to (a) female characters they find arrogant, bossy, mean, etc. and (b) female characters who are positioned as potential love interests for their collective male "blorbos," "husbandos," "faves," whatever the term may be. These two things very often overlap, which I’ll touch on later, but for now, let’s talk about the first point.

There was a big movement online several years ago urging creators to “let women be mean. Let them be angry. Let them be petty and complex and difficult. Let them be messy.” I fully support this idea in both theory and practice and wish it were that simple, but unfortunately, it’s not, because uncomfortably large swaths of fandom don’t like/appreciate unapologetically mean female characters the way they do male characters. Men in fiction are allowed to be cutthroat, selfish, cruel, narcissistic, arrogant, and even evil without garnering even a fraction of the judgement that female characters receive for simply being “difficult” or “unlikable.”

Take, for instance, Shougo Makishima. The Psycho-Pass fandom at large adores this character (myself included), despite the fact that he’s a remorseless sociopath who touts the importance of free will as a wholesale excuse for murder. He is a bad person, full-stop, and yet he garners love -- even sympathy -- in abundance. He’s the subject of fawning fan fiction, chibi art, thirst tweets, and endless Reddit analysis. Fans are capable of seeing him, murderous warts and all, as a product of the warped dystopian society Sibyl has created. But Mika? Nope. Just “a bitch, a whiner, an arrogant little girl who deserves to get slapped in the mouth.” (I am not making this up. These are the type of comments I see *female* fans making left and right about her character). She receives far more hate for giving up the location of Akane’s grandmother as a blackmailed, frightened teenager than Makishima does for slashing Yuki’s throat or blowing up Masaoka. Hell, she catches more heat for Akane’s grandmother than Sakuya Togane, the woman’s actual murderer and -- I can’t stress this enough -- a 41-year-old adult man.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking -- Makishima and Togane are villains, so their personality flaws (putting it lightly) and horrible actions are essential to the narrative and indicative of good storytelling. We’re meant to “love to hate them.” All correct, and yet this doesn’t change or excuse the fact that their standing in the fandom, when compared to the equally complex and emotionally fractured Mika, is textbook pernicious misogyny. But, for the sake of argument, let’s compare Mika to another character ostensibly on the side of good -- Nobuchika Ginoza. [Note: Ginoza is my favorite character in Psycho-Pass, and any commentary regarding his PP1 shittiness is made with pure love and appreciation for him and nuanced character growth in general.]

When we first meet Ginoza, he is rude, terse, unyielding, intellectually smug, and totally unforgiving of those closest to him. He’s a brilliant character, and his behavior, no matter how insufferable and seemingly cruel, is the result of compounded trauma -- the trauma of having his father ripped away when he was only nine, the trauma of being unfairly judged for the “sins” of said latent criminal father, the trauma of his mother numbing her pain with medication and eventually becoming something akin to a human corpse, the trauma of finding a new support system and best friend in Kougami only to once again be “abandoned” for the other side of the law. In many ways, he’s still a hurt child lashing out at the world, unwilling to see it for the complicated, morally gray place that it is, because being mad is easier. Telling himself that Enforcers are nothing more than dogs for him to guide and use as shields is easier. Blindly trusting the judgements handed down by Sibyl is easier.

In this way, he and Mika are remarkably similar. When she first joins the MWPSB, she’s a 17-year-old minor whose best friend (and probably first love) was dismembered by a latent criminal under the direction of a serial killer disguising himself as a teacher -- a trusted authority figure. She’s filled with guilt and self-loathing over her failure to act, and the easiest way for her to sort out her feelings and ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again is to harden herself to all latent criminals. Distrusting them, treating them as “other,” is her form of self-preservation. Yes, it makes her come across as mean, as closed-minded, as unlikable, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s good storytelling, and it presents her with plenty of potential for growth, which she is certainly given.

[Upon discovering that her best friend, fellow Oso Academy student Kagami Kawarazaki, has been murdered by Rikako Oryo, Mika breaks down in tears, blaming herself for the tragedy. This is the moment her distrust of latent criminals is solidified.]

But, unlike Ginoza (a 28-year-old adult man), over half the fandom decided that Mika was so awful, so totally unforgivable, such a “heinous cunt,” that they were unwilling to allow her the time and space to grow beyond her trauma and immaturity. But why? Is it because we’ve been taught to judge women, even fictional ones, based on a different set of criteria than men? I think the answer is obvious, and I urge fans who dislike Mika’s character with such intensity to seriously examine their reasoning. I don’t mean to say that she’s infallible (hardly) or that it’s wrong to dislike her. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and no one person’s take is more valid than another’s, but it’s definitely something to think about in the larger conversation that is media analysis.

Which brings me to Akane Tsunemori, someone who fits all the abovementioned criteria for a “likeable” female character. [Another note: I love Akane, and none of this is meant to disparage her. I am simply trying to point out that she’s a more easily digestible female when viewed through the patriarchal lens of pop culture.] She’s smart but not arrogant about it, strong-willed but never disagreeable, empathetic but not easily led by her emotions, and most importantly, she’s always kind to the fandom’s male faves. She is, in almost every way, trademark "Best Girl" material, and Mika is her foil (at least in PP2). She’s set up to be the anti-Akane, both in personality and narrative function. If Akane trusts someone, Mika doesn’t. If Akane wants to bend the rules, Mika is rigid in upholding them. If Akane isn’t afraid of clouding her Hue, Mika is downright terrified.

Though it’s never stated outright, she probably hoped her senior Inspector would serve as a mentor figure, yet we see none of that from Akane, who often abandons Mika to chase down seemingly wild leads and appears to be stuck in the past, yearning for the original Division 01. (Mika even says as much to Ginoza in a novelization of the first film.) On top of that, I think it’s important to remember that we’re predisposed to side with Akane, as she is both our POV protagonist *and* the hero of the narrative. We have unprecedented access to her private moments, motivations, and methodology. We know she means well and trust that her unconventional strategy will pay off in the end. Mika does not. All she knows is that her direct superior is habitually breaking the rules, overloading her team with what feels like excessive busywork, and ignoring the more bureaucratic side of the job in favor of unconventional/unsanctioned detective work. If I’m being perfectly honest, I would also be submitting concerned reports to my boss.

[When Akane blatantly disregards Sibyl's judgement of bomber Akira Kitazawa, talking him down from a Crime Coefficient of 302 to 299, Mika confronts her for putting both their colleagues and nearby civilians in danger. This later proves to be the right call, as Kitazawa attacks Inspector Risa Aoyanagi and escapes police custody.]

[While investigating Kirito Kamui, Akane keeps her suspicions/theories close to the chest, leaving Mika and the rest of Division 01 in the dark as to her game plan.]

[Although Akane's decision to entrust Hinakawa with all 185 Halos proves to be the right one, it's understandable why Mika is taken aback by her placing so much responsibility on a single subordinate -- especially one with Hinakawa's history.]

Now, that’s not to say Mika’s feelings about Akane are purely altruistic. She’s definitely jealous of her senior Inspector and resents her standing within the Bureau, which makes her behave in ways both petty and vindictive. But I’d argue that this, too, is understandable, if not wholly forgivable, when viewed through Mika’s eyes. Picture this: You’re the youngest-ever recruit to a highly coveted position. You follow protocol to a T, are deferential to your superiors, and show a genuine aptitude for the job. Even your callousness toward the Enforcers (again, your childhood best friend was butchered by a latent criminal) is in accordance with Sybil’s will. Shitty, yes, but standard for someone raised within the Orwellian hellscape of 2100s Japan. And yet, everyone around you prefers your senior Inspector. Your subordinates defer to her when you’re the officer in charge (Hinakawa) and even help her game the system (Ginoza). The Chief tells you you’re boring, but displays obvious favoritism toward her. This severely harms your self-esteem and colors the way you interact with everyone around you. After all, it’s hard to feel like a valued member of the team when you’re being undermined and lectured at every turn. This doesn’t excuse Mika’s behavior, and if she didn’t evolve, I might understand some of the hate, but she does evolve. Spectacularly. She’s just not Akane, and that’s okay.

[While dealing with the hostage situation in PP2, Mika notices Hinakawa working on something off to the side. When she confronts him about it, he admits that he's acting on Akane's orders, even though Mika is technically the officer in charge.]

[A similar incident occurs in Sinners of the System: Case. 1, when Ginoza shoots down Mika's (admittedly ridiculous) plan, which she interprets as him once again siding with Akane over her.]

Again, this is good storytelling at work, and you can acknowledge that these two women are diametrically opposed and still appreciate -- hell, even like -- both of them for the well-written characters they are. After all, most Psycho-Pass fans like both Kougami and Ginoza in PP1 despite their many differences, not to mention the fact that Ginoza is (and I say this with love) a giant asshole. Let’s not forget, he was *this close* to microwaving Kougami at Chief Kasei’s behest. You can tell yourself he wouldn’t have, but are you sure? Are you really sure? But we forgive him, because he’s a man. Anyway, back to Akane and Mika. For reasons I’ll never understand, many fans find it borderline impossible to love two women with beef, whether it’s one-sided or mutual. There can only be one Best Girl, and everyone better be on her team. It reminds me of the Sansa vs. Daenerys discourse that gripped the Game of Thrones fandom in its last few seasons. This is doubly ridiculous in Psycho-Pass’s case, because Akane and Mika come to trust, respect, and depend on each other. But people decided to hate this 19-year-old forever, so none of that matters.

[Notice how Ginoza's gaze narrows ominously in the last frame, suggesting he might actually have pulled the trigger, thereby killing his best friend, had Akane not intervened.]

Now, let’s return to my earlier point about certain fans irrationally hating any female character they deem unworthy of their blorbo, husbando, etc. This is where Parasocial Relationships become extremely interesting. As mentioned above, Ginoza is my favorite character in Psycho-Pass, which I think is pretty common. While I myself have never been one for self-insertion or creating OCs to pair with my favorite characters, I understand that it’s a popular trend, and if you enjoy it, more power to you. It becomes problematic, however, when those who engage in self-shipping/OC-shipping decide to collectively gang up on the female character creators have paired (or hinted at pairing) with the object of their affection. Enter GinoMika. Now, I know what you’re thinking -- “But Mika’s a lesbian!” I don’t necessarily agree. Do I think she was in love with her best friend at Oso Academy? Yes. Do I think she had a crush on Yayoi at the beginning of PP2? Yes. Do I also think it’s obvious she currently has feelings for Ginoza, which have been steadily growing since Sinners of the System? Absolutely. For this reason, I interpret her as being both bisexual and demisexual. But that’s beside the point --

The point is that many Ginoza fans who ship him with themselves, their OCs, or Akane (remember, she’s Best Girl) seem to enjoy trashing on Mika like it’s an Olympic sport. And when I say “trashing,” I don’t mean your normal yet still disappointing level of ship nonsense; I mean unhinged, violent rhetoric that makes me feel like the Internet is a place where women can never win. And why? Because she was mean to him when she first started working for the MWPSB? As if he was oh-so-kind to the Enforcers who worked under him. I seem to recall him screaming at his father and threatening to “make him pay” for visiting his sick wife without permission. Oh, and then there was the time he introduced Akane to her new colleagues by telling her, “Don’t think that the guys you’re about to meet are humans like us.” But yes, Mika once told him that she didn’t want his opinion as a latent criminal, which is so much worse. And before you can say that she’s still a bitch to him, let me point out that she is a textbook tsundere. That’s how she flirts, shows affection, etc. She can never come right out and say what she means, because that would make her vulnerable. But she can surreptitiously tell Ginoza he better come back alive by insisting he return her special Dominator. You know, because it would be a real hassle if she had to replace that thing.

[The language Ginoza uses when introducing Akane to the Enforcers, including his own best friend and father, is deeply dehumanizing.]

[When Aoyanagi takes Masaoka to visit his estranged wife, Ginoza reacts with explosive anger, reprimanding his father in front of their colleagues and threatening to retaliate should he do it again.]

Which brings us, at long last, to the male portion of the fandom. While many female fans like to call Mika out for her more negative character traits, completely ignoring any and all growth she’s experienced since PP2, male fans tend to direct their anger, dislike, etc. in a much more aggressive manner. I wish I was exaggerating when I say that I’ve seen multiple posts praying for Mika’s rape and subsequent murder. You can’t dive into a single “Season 4 Wish List” thread without finding at least one person wishing extreme ill on Mika Shimotsuki. It's pure misogyny, classic “I’ll fuck the bitch right out of her” rhetoric, and it has no place in this fandom or any other. You would never see a male character being talked about in these terms. Consider this: There’s more fan fiction featuring Mika being raped or coerced into sex by her tormentor, Sakuya Togane, than her having a positive, consensual experience with any other character. Love her or hate her, that is extremely fucked up. We as a fandom need to do better, because once this type of misogyny can be weaponized against fictional characters, it becomes much easier to use against real people. Fan culture, though it might seem trivial, says a lot about us and our values.

[This is just a sampling of the comments you'll find on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and other social media sites.]

That said, I’d like to end this essay on a more positive note, so let’s take a look at all the ways in which Mika has become a better, more compassionate human being over the course of the series...

By PP3, she shows obvious concern for her Enforcers, values their opinions, and treats them like integral members of her team. In an especially cute scene, she even fist-bumps Tenma Todoroki after they work seamlessly to defeat Koichi Azusawa’s henchmen. She also makes a point to attend the party thrown in the Enforcers’ quarters, as she now longs to be part of the gang -- a gang she would have actively shunned in PP2. 

[During First Inspector, Mika shows time and again that she's willing to work with and for her Enforcers.]

[As Chief, Mika realizes that Enforcers deserve respect and gratitude from their superiors. They are no longer dogs to her.]

[In PP2, Mika tells Ginoza she doesn't care what the Enforcers think of her. By PP3, however, we see her display concern that her team might find her dull. She wants to be liked and accepted by them.]

She becomes far more flexible with her co-workers, allowing Inspectors Arata Shindo and Kei Mikhail Ignatov plenty of freedom to conduct investigations as they see fit. Yes, she consistently scolds them (textbook tsundere behavior), but this is done in a manner far more humorous than anything else. We know she actually trusts them and has their best interests at heart; she just can’t bring herself to say it aloud. She also repeatedly takes heat from Chief Hosorogi on their behalf and is genuinely worried for Arata when it seems like Sibyl might “eliminate” him. The palpable relief on her face when she finds out he’s allowed to remain an Inspector speaks volumes.

[Throughout PP3, Mika allows Kei and Arata to play to their individual strengths, even if it means bending the rules -- something she would never have done in PP2 or the first film.]

[Just look at that excited face. No caption necessary.]

She goes out of her way to make sure the immigrant prostitutes saved by religious leader Joseph Auma are protected following his death. This is an especially big deal, since many of these individuals are latent criminals, and Mika is forced to ask her newfound nemesis, Frederica Hanashiro, for a favor in order to secure their safety. When she tries to pretend it’s no big deal, Frederica calls her bluff by pointing out that no one would stoop to asking someone they hate for help in order to protect people whose fates they don’t care about.

[Even though Mika detests Frederica, she puts the well-being of the immigrants before her own pride.]

In Sinners of the System: Case. 1, her distrust of latent criminals is permanently altered after dealing with Izumi Yasaka, whom she works tirelessly to rescue and comes to view as brave, capable, and worthy of reintegration into society. She also displays genuine concern for and lack of discrimination toward Takeya Kukuri, the young son of a latent criminal, and is horrified to discover that the latent criminal inmates at Sanctuary are being used as disposable tools to move nuclear waste canisters.

[Sinners of the System: Case. 1 marks a decided shift in the way Mika views latent criminals. Instead of lumping them all together, she begins to see them as individuals who deserve basic human rights.]

[Even though Mika is unable to save all the latent criminals at Sanctuary, she does everything in her power to ensure Yasaka and Takeya walk away clean.]

When Enforcer Mao Kisaragi turns out to be the “fox within the CID,” Mika and the rest of Division 01 are united in supporting her claim of innocence. Mika trusts (without concrete proof, mind you) that she’s telling the truth about being an unwitting accomplice, something she never would have done in PP2 or even the first film.  

[While the old Mika would have been the first person to distrust Kisaragi, here we see her standing up for the beleaguered Enforcer.]

She comes to respect Division 01 (Akane, Ginoza, Sugo, Hinakawa, Kunizuka, and Shion), views them as a surrogate family, and misses them once their unit is disbanded. In Sinners of the System: Case. 3, Frederica Hanashiro, who temporarily worked as part of their unit, says, “CID Division 01… They’re not just capable; they have a rare teamwork that overcomes the barrier between Inspectors and Enforcers.” Yes, this is mostly due to Akane’s guiding influence, but it’s clear Frederica is talking about the whole team. It’s taken Mika years to get there, but she is now definitely part of the group, not a jealous outsider looking in. In fact, even Mika’s obvious dislike of Frederica in PP3 is a clear result of this affection. After finally finding a place to belong, she feels as though Frederica swooped in and stole her found family, leaving her right back where she started -- on the outside.

[Though she'll never admit it, Mika views Ginoza as both a mentor and a friend. When he leaves the PSB to join SAD/MOFA, she misses having him around.]

[During her lowest moment in PP2, a jealous Mika actually hopes that Akane's Hue will darken. In Sinners of the System: Case. 2, she pleads with her to take her own safety more seriously. It's clear a big change has occurred in the intervening years.]

[Instead of feeling constant competition with Akane, by PP3, Mika is finally able to give her her due. It's clear they trust and respect each other despite their many differences.]

She’s grown from an immature young woman who couldn’t bring herself to take responsibility for her failures -- most notably her involvement in Akane’s grandmother’s murder -- to a responsible PSB Chief who holds herself accountable for anything that goes wrong with her Inspectors and Enforcers. This is most evident in her reaction to Koichi Azusawa taking control of Nona Tower and subsequently endangering the lives of MWPSB faculty and agents. We first see inklings of this change near the end of PP2, when Kunizuka tells Mika she’ll never forgive the person who gave up Aoi Tsunemori’s location, and Mika responds in kind. It’s clear that she’s not merely parroting a response to save her own skin but is deeply troubled and filled with regret over her own actions.

[In PP2, Mika is constantly blaming others for her mistakes. By First Inspector, she's owning mistakes she didn't even make.]

[Mika trusts her team so much, she's willing to put her job on the line.]

[Although Mika doesn't come clean to Kunizuka about her role in Aoi Tsunemori's death, it's clear she’s haunted by it. Later, when she confesses the truth to Ginoza, he admits to feeling a similar guilt over the way he treated his late father, telling Mika they'll have to bear their respective shame silently for the rest of their lives.]

And lastly, I believe the biggest example of Mika's growth can be found in what is arguably her most important relationship -- the one she shares with Ginoza. Whether you view them as mentor/mentee, begrudging friends, potential love interests, or all three, you can't deny that they have one of the most interesting and entertaining dynamics in the series. As mentioned above, when Mika first meets Ginoza, she views him as a cautionary tale. His demotion from Inspector to Enforcer is her worst nightmare, something that could conceivably happen to her, though she'll never admit it. Because of this, she treats him with hostility, disregarding his opinions and shunning his advice. But the longer they work together, the more we realize that Ginoza brings out the best in Mika -- and vice-versa. His calm, cool demeanor tempers her fiery spirit, and her enthusiasm makes him feel like he still has a purpose. By the time PP3 rolls around, he's become her #1 confidant, the person she calls whenever she has intel to share, grievances to air, etc. And you can't deny that Mika is the one person who makes Ginoza funny. Their flirtatious banter is genuinely charming and shows the softer, more human side of both their characters.

[Given her history with latent criminals, Mika refuses to listen to Ginoza, even when he's coming from a place of experience and genuinely trying to help her.]

[After working together for several years, Mika learns to value Ginoza's opinion and even feels proud when he compliments her.]

[During the Sanctuary case, Ginoza admits to both Akane and himself that being an Enforcer isn't so bad, as long as Mika is the one calling the shots. He knows she has a good heart, and working for her reminds him why he joined the MWPSB in the first place.]

[Notice how Mika's body language changes from PP2 to Sinners of the System. She now looks at Ginoza with appreciation and, in certain instances, affection. The fact that he views her the same way speaks volumes about how far their relationship has come.]

If you made it to the end of this mammoth post, thank you for sticking with me. Hopefully, we can all treat Mika with a little more patience, kindness, and respect when PP4 arrives.

[alaskan-wallflower]

i miss the early days of the musical fandom. i miss when everyone just got along and there wasn’t daily tiktok’s or tumblr posts about what have you, and rumors about people, and what we else. i miss when the musical fandom would just talk about their favorite cast members in a respectful way. i miss just being able to ramble about my favorite actors without having to worry if im blending in with the creeps and the weirdos. i miss seeing positive stage door stories instead of hearing about the cast being sexually harassed. i miss when the musical fandom wasn’t crazy and obsessed with the attendance of actors.

i miss the early musical fandom.

[randomnameless]

Will Marianne's actual in-game characterization ever be represented again in Heroes, or is she doomed to be flanderized into "Momo suffered so much sad uwu" for the rest of the game's timespan?

Mean me wants to say she has no characterisation to give anything substantial to FEH to work around, but it's me being mean.

I guess that anything relating to her Relic, and Relics in general, will be flanderised and the truth will never be revealed because tea bags, and even if FEH tried, last year, with F!F!Billy (was it last year?) to give more meat to that subplot by saying Sothis from Nopes was pissed and wants revenge because her kin were slaughtered, even FEH can't craft stuff KT/IS left purposedly hanging in their games.

Sobbing about Momo though, give the impression that the devs care about the "lore" of Fodlan and give another, imo, more interesting angle to Marianne even if it comes as the cost of woobifying Momo but hey, since it's a given that no one gives a fuck about Nabateans, it's alright, poor Momo was a victim of his curse uwu, let's just not/never talk about what that curse is.

[whywoulditho]

has anyone ever written a no capes DC AU where Jason's pit rages are switched into OCD/intrusive thoughts?? because that's a concept i literally can't get out of my mind. i tried to write a pit rage once and i noticed the way i'm describing it is a literal projection of my intrusive thoughts back when my ocd was that awful. so i thought i might try to write something like an OCD!Jason fic but if anyone's read something like that before please let me know!!

[liauditore]

hey guys not to get too into it but would anyone be in favour of a weird tag specifically for scott stuff? I usually don't maintag my art of him anyway so if you've got that blocked it won't help. or do we simply not care enough lol

[todds-rwby-liveblog]

Anyone making fun of this shot either never took a 1st aid class or never paid attention in them and it fucking shows. Stfu please <3

[wolf-skins]

online leftists are some of the dumbest motherfuckers alive

[queermarzipan]

Genuine question that I'm sure you get a lot but how can someone be both pro Zionism and pro Palestine? Everything I have read and consumed would make it seem as if they are the antithesis of each other.

This is in fact the first time someone has asked me this!! I'm so happy to be answering this tbh it's gonna be a nice note to end on (i'm going to sleep after this).

(I fell asleep before I finished lol, good morning)

So when people call themselves "Pro-Palestine", they overwhelmingly consider themselves to be acting on behalf of the civilians of Palestine, rather than in support of any particular military efforts (though pro-Palestine protests have horrendous track records concerning pro-Hamas demonstrations/speakers). When I call myself "Pro-Palestine", I am aligning myself with the civilians of Palestine and wishing for their suffering to end.

When people (generally Zionists) align themselves in opposition to self-described "pro-Palestine" people, they overwhelmingly consider themselves to be acting in opposition to a pro-Hamas group. This is because, as mentioned previously, the pro-Palestine movement has a horrendous problem with keeping pro-Hamas sentiments seperate from it.

When self-described "pro-Palestinian" people align themselves in oppsition to Zionism, they overwhelmingly consider themselves to be acting in opposition to an expansionist force that seeks to subjugate the Palestinian people; Revisionist Zionism and Kahanism, two offshoots of Zionism, are both anti-Palestinian in this sense, but the reduction of Zionism to these frankly fringe (though regrettably prominent in the current Israeli government) beliefs is incorrect and, in a lot of cases, disingenuous and/or actively malicious.

The generally accepted definitions of Zionism among Zionists are "the right of the Jewish people to return to, and form communities in, their ancestral homeland" and "the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland". When I call myself "pro-Zionism", I am aligning myself with the belief that these rights are as inalienable from Jews as they are from any other indigenous group the world over; I do not believe they can expire, or be rescinded, or otherwise become invalid, for any reason.

As you can see, my beliefs that:

Palestinian civilians are experiencing a hardship that should by all rights stop immediately

Jewish people have the right to home, community, and self-determination in their ancestral homeland

are not at all in conflict with each other!

NB: This analysis applies only to people who are acting in good faith. There are self-described Zionists who subscribe to Kahanism/Revisionist Zionism, and many ostensibly "pro-Palestine" people who support Hamas. The world at large is very susceptible to propaganda spread by Hamas, because the world is antisemitic.

The two most common dogwhistles to watch out for are pro-Hamas dogwhistles:

Positive reference to "resistance" or "the resistance" — these are euphemisms for "terrorism" and "Hamas" or, more recently, "Hezbollah".

Negative reference to "the occupation", "the Zionist occupation", or "Zionist settlers" — there are illegal settlers in the West Bank, and I'd bet my life they overwhelmingly identify as Zionists, but these dogwhistles are code for Israel as a whole and the desire for it to cease to exist. When the illegal West Bank settlers are being discussed, specifying "the West Bank settlers" and/or "the West Bank occupation" is best practice.

I hope this helped!! I didn't want to just give you my definitions of the terms in question because that wouldn't really address why the stances of "Zionist" and "pro-Palestine" have become essentially diametrically opposed in popular discourse. As I said, this is not in fact a question I've recieved before & I really appreciate being asked <3

ALSO PPS: The reason I don't call myself a "Zionist" is because I am not a Jew. The conversation of Zionism was always meant to be an internal discussion between Jews, and I'm only aligning myself with it in order to show solidarity with a movement that is having its name forcefully and effectively blackened.

(Yes, this does in fact mean that non-Jews who call themselves "anti-Zionist" are essentially co-opting a Jewish word. Idk how to fix this either.)

Thank you so much for asking, have a great day!!

[devotion-disorder]

AUGHHHAKAAKDHH

*Choking on water*

NOEL AND KUUYA DICK HCS???

AUAUAGHH AHAAHUAUA

i think we've already had some noel/kuuya penis discourse at some point (had noel battling small pp allegations for a hot minute) , and while its still ultimately up to everyones interpretation, i think the semi-conclusion that we came to is that noel is thicker and kuuya is longer ^^_b

[nqueso-emergency]

I wrote this because I needed to get it off my chest. But then I didn't want to put it on my own blog because I didn't want to deal with the discourse. So, I decided to send it to you in the hope you'd put it up.

I've been in many different fandoms, and I think the only fandom where I ever very actively shipped a canon couple was Torchwood. (If there are people not shipping Jack and Ianto, please never tell me.) That means, of course, there were always other LI of my ships to deal with. And somehow, no matter the fandom (NICS, Hawaii 5-0, Sherlock (mostly), Stargate, etc pp) it's always the same: If the fic takes place at a point in canon where one or more people in the desired ship are currently in a relationship usually one of two things happens: 1. The canon LI just doesn't seem to exist in the fic. 2. There is somewhere one line about "Oh, what about Character A?" "Ah, we broke up. No big deal." (And writing this, I'm kinda laughing now about the Buck/Natalia break-up between seasons 6 and 7.)

So, it's very strange and confusing to watch this part of the Buddie fandom that's so enraged about Tommy and has made hating him their whole fandom personality, who instead of doing what's always been done with LIs that were in the way of a ship created this whole subgenre on 9-1-1 fics now whose whole focus is "How do we overcome the obstacle of the unwanted LI to get our ship". (As I write this, there are 800 fics on ao3 tagged with both ships!) Where did the mentality of "ignore the LI in the way of our ship" vanish to? It was there for other LIs of Buck and Eddie in the past, why isn't it there for Tommy? Why can't a multishipper go into the Buddie tag in peace without being slapped in the face with Tommy bashing everywhere? (And why do you have to bash Buck and Eddie, too, while doing so? I know you don't recognize it, but that's what you're doing with many of those takes about the cheating. That's what you are doing every time you make Eddie into a violent caricature just so you have someone who can beat Tommy up.)

The hate against Tommy has a very different quality and edge to it than the hate for other LIs in the past, and this new genre you all created is a huge part of that.

And before anyone starts, yes there are a lot of bashing fics about the other LI. I've read a lot of them. The vast majority of those are not about finding a way to get the LI out of the way for Buddie (especially not by glorifying Buddie cheating on their LIs) They are about exploring little things of the characters people find jarring or exaggerating those things to use as a plot or plot device. (e.g. Ana's ableist take after the whole skateboard incident. Or her unprofessional behavior of flirting with a parent during parent-teacher-conference.)

As for the very worn-out mantra/whine of "Why could I peacefully hate on the female LIs in the past but aren't allowed to do the same with Tommy?" No one would bother you if you stopped pushing your hate on everyone else.

But you're trying to infiltrate every single nook with your hatred because somehow you don't understand while you're entitled to your hate about Tommy, other people are just as equally entitled to their love and appreciation of the character and the representation he provides. It's not just the Buddie tag people are bombarded with your hate in. No matter what tag — Bathena, Henren, Madney, every single character tag — you'll stumble over Tommy hate pretty fast. Because you tag them all if they matter for your post or not. (I mean, you've done that with Buddie in general for years, which also was never okay!) Or find cheap excuses to include them in your post.

People would let you wallow in your hate peacefully if you wouldn't attack anyone who didn't agree with you. Especially those gay and bi men in this fandom who are full of gratefulness and praise for the representation of their lived experiences 9-1-1 has given them through Tommy and Bucktommy. Who've been calling you out for your hateful and phobic behavior because there is no avoiding being confronted with it.

No one would bother you if you wouldn't post public lists of people you plan to bully in the future!

I guess the point of this long-ass rant is: Get in your fucking lane and let everyone else enjoy the fandom, too. Keep your hate where others can avoid it. It's not that difficult. And believing everyone has to agree with you about your hate is a huge red flag.

Perfectly said, anon 👏

"You" = bestie boos btw

[communistkenobi]

If, as Isaac West observes, use of the public bathroom is “one of the most, if not the most, quotidian practices of citizenship,” then this chapter argues that surveillance criminalizing public bathroom use is one element of a larger effort to secure citizenship and spatial belonging through the apprehension of physical difference. [...]

Writing about the concept of civilization in the late nineteenth-century United States, Gail Bederman describes it as an “explicitly racial concept” that “denoted a precise stage in human racial evolution”: one that had evolved past primitive or barbaric characteristics. Drawing on Darwinism, this logic rationalized white supremacy through claims that people of color simply had not developed in the same ways or at the same rate as white people, situating civilization itself as a racial characteristic and producing and solidifying distinct racial categories. Bederman notes that gender was crucial in distinguishing civilized societies from the less advanced, with the former identified in part by clear binary gender divisions. [...] Moreover, in the era of formal Jim Crow, while bathrooms marked for white people were typically separated into men’s and women’s spaces, those labeled “colored” were often unmarked by gender at all, a practice that aligns with civilizational discourse. [...]

Yet citizenship status and gender status cannot be pulled apart [...]: just as the previous two chapters of this book traced specific aspects of the Department of Homeland Security that produce and rely on a gendered citizenship, we might consider how campaigns for neighborhood safety and family values regularly invoke a kind of good citizenship that is determined in part through gender attributes. [...]

We need only consider the emphasis on birth certificates to understand the extent to which anxieties about citizenship undergird these bathroom scenes, since those documents mark not only state-approved sex designation, but also legal citizen status. In the most formal sense, birth certificates purportedly confirm citizenship and thus one’s legal belonging to the nation-state. At the same time, they can serve as evidence of citizenship in a more informal or cultural sense: if producing appropriate paperwork is one way of complying with state regulations and requests, then doing so performs good citizenship. [...]

Discourses of bathroom contagion merge fears of “real germs” with “the fear of the other”; hence, public toilets provoke more anxiety than other germ-riddled public objects like computer terminals and doorknobs. Concerns about bathroom cleanliness are as much about bodily interactions and the difficulty of regulating public space as they are about actual dirt or waste. The racial integration of some U.S. workplaces during World War II, for example, prompted tremendous white anxiety about shared bathrooms, even as Black people had long cleaned toilets and beds, prepared food, and cared for children as part of their domestic work in white households. But this “private service work reinforced racialized gender hierarchies in ways that public intimacy undermined them.”

— Toby Beauchamp (2019), Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices, pp. 81 - 101

In his book, Beauchamp argues that anti-trans bathroom bills should be understood as a form of state surveillance that is inextricable from anti-immigration and border security practices: these bills deputize members of the public to conduct bodily assessments of other people to determine whether they meet the criteria of a 'good citizen,' giving them the power to report 'fraudsters' to the authorities if a transgender person is found inhabiting a public bathroom. The criteria by which these assessments are conducted are explicitly white supremacist ones; not only because the imagined body of the 'good citizen' is one that reflects the ideals of white, bourgeois, cissexual bodies* (as clearly demarcated, binary gender roles is a sign of advanced white civilization, and perversion of these demarcations is a perversion of white civil life), but also because one of the primary forms of evidence that you belong in a gender-segregated public space (such as a bathroom) is a birth certificate, one issued by the state - as he says: "if producing appropriate paperwork is one way of complying with state regulations and requests, then doing so performs good citizenship." (p 93). Beauchamp criticizes the framing that trans people are treated like "second class citizens," as it accepts the white racial imaginary of (white) trans people being unfairly denied the benefits of full white citizenship; we should therefore understand gender segregated spaces not as a "remix" of "old" "historic" forms of racial segregation, but as a contemporary enforcement mechanism of it. Binaohan emphasizes this in their 2014 book Decolonizing Trans/Gender 101, arguing that non-white trans people are always "in public," denied any sort of private realm; they are always visible and marked as potential threats to white citizenship. (p. 39)

This is likewise reflected in Jenny Evang's 2022 work Is Gender Ideology Western Colonialism?, where she argues that anti-trans discourse situates the presumed natural state of 'sex' as being corrupted by an overly decadent form of Western cultural advancement, which is both degenerating the Western world and 'duping' the Global South into forsaking their relationship with nature, an argument that "[frames] “non-Western societies” as “more traditional” when it comes to gender, sexuality, and the family, since “gender ideology” has not yet gone as far there as in the West. Thus their argument relies on essentializing the very same conceptualization of “cultural difference” that structures femonationalist arguments in the first place, namely, that racialized, imagined elsewheres are stuck in a more traditional gender pattern, unable to keep up with the rampant development of the West." (p. 370). Locating the origin of transgenderism in the West reproduces notions of civilizational development, where the West is secure in its supreme cultural position but has merely gone "too far," "in the wrong direction," creating the circumstances of its own downfall - a downfall which is attributed both to mass immigration (particularly immigration of Muslims) and Marxism. (p. 372)

Fears of 'gender ideology' engulfing the Western world are inextricable from concerns about the maintenance of white social hygiene, as 'gender ideology' has been called "Ebola from Brussels" (p. 371), linking the corruption of binary, hierarchical, cissexual gender to a disease afflicting the body-politic of the white nation-state. The last paragraph of the quoted passage above from Beauchamp further demonstrates the fundamental interconnectedness between race, gender, and hygiene: The racial integration of some U.S. workplaces during World War II, for example, prompted tremendous white anxiety about shared bathrooms, even as Black people had long cleaned toilets and beds, prepared food, and cared for children as part of their domestic work in white households. But this private service work reinforced racialized gender hierarchies in ways that public intimacy undermined them." (p. 101) Discourses regarding public hygiene are civilizational discourses, as a clean world is a civilized world, and a civilized world can only be a white world.

*Beauchamp explicitly brings up that one of the 'problems' of using biometric data to scan the public for potential terrorists or 'fraudulent citizens' is the white inability to tell the difference between people belonging to different racial groups, i.e., the idea that all non-white people look too much alike and therefore must undergo even more intense scrutiny (p. 95).

[bubblegum-bros-sys]

Intro post :33

Hello !! We’re the bubblegum bros system.

We’re a large and introject heavy system.

We’re audhd, queer, and trans.

We’re extremely multifandom and inclusive !! So if you actively participate in discourse, are an “anti” of pretty much anything, generally spread hate, etc. you probably shouldn’t interact lol

We’re not super accustomed to tumblr as TikTok has been our main platform for years.

However we now heavily prefer tumblr to TikTok, as TikTok is basically Twitter 2 now and the system community on there is TERRIBLE 💔💔💔

We’ll probably post whatever on here, idk lol :PP

Current frequent fronters!

-🦩, Jamie, he/they/it, frontbound host

-🚭, Cody, he/it/they/bat/monster

-🚫, Tommy, he/him

-🍓, Tabitha/Clementine/Strawberry, she/they/moo/berry/he/moth

[metamatar]

In the age of Hindu identity politics (Hindutva) inaugurated in the 1990s by the ascendancy of the Indian People's Party (Bharatiya Janata Party) and its ideological auxiliary, the World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), Indian cultural and religious nationalism has been promulgating ever more distorted images of India's past.

Few things are as central to this revisionism as Sanskrit, the dominant culture language of precolonial southern Asia outside the Persianate order. Hindutva propagandists have sought to show, for example, that Sanskrit was indigenous to India, and they purport to decipher Indus Valley seals to prove its presence two millennia before it actually came into existence. In a farcical repetition of Romanic myths of primevality, Sanskrit is considered—according to the characteristic hyperbole of the VHP—the source and sole preserver of world culture.

This anxiety has a longer and rather melancholy history in independent India, far antedating the rise of the BJP. [...] Some might argue that as a learned language of intellectual discourse and belles lettres, Sanskrit had never been exactly alive in the first place [...] the assumption that Sanskrit was never alive has discouraged the attempt to grasp its later history; after all, what is born dead has no later history. As a result, there exist no good accounts or theorizations of the end of the cultural order that for two millennia exerted a transregional influence across Asia-South, Southeast, Inner, and even East Asia that was unparalleled until the rise of Americanism and global English. We have no clear understanding of whether, and if so, when, Sanskrit culture ceased to make history; whether, and if so, why, it proved incapable of preserving into the present the creative vitality it displayed in earlier epochs, and what this loss of effectivity might reveal about those factors within the wider world of society and polity that had kept it vital.

[...] What follows here is a first attempt to understand something of the death of Sanskrit literary culture as a historical process. Four cases are especially instructive: The disappearance of Sanskrit literature in Kashmir, a premier center of literary creativity, after the thirteenth century; its diminished power in sixteenth century Vijayanagara, the last great imperial formation of southern India; its short-lived moment of modernity at the Mughal court in mid-seventeenth century Delhi; and its ghostly existence in Bengal on the eve of colonialism. Each case raises a different question: first, about the kind of political institutions and civic ethos required to sustain Sanskrit literary culture; second, whether and to what degree competition with vernacular cultures eventually affected it; third, what factors besides newness of style or even subjectivity would have been necessary for consolidating a Sanskrit modernity, and last, whether the social and spiritual nutrients that once gave life to this literary culture could have mutated into the toxins that killed it. [...]

One causal account, however, for all the currency it enjoys in the contemporary climate, can be dismissed at once: that which traces the decline of Sanskrit culture to the coming of Muslim power. The evidence adduced here shows this to be historically untenable. It was not "alien rule un sympathetic to kavya" and a "desperate struggle with barbarous invaders" that sapped the strength of Sanskrit literature. In fact, it was often the barbarous invader who sought to revive Sanskrit. [...]

One of these was the internal debilitation of the political institutions that had previously underwritten Sanskrit, pre-eminently the court. Another was heightened competition among a new range of languages seeking literary-cultural dignity. These factors did not work everywhere with the same force. A precipitous decline in Sanskrit creativity occurred in Kashmir, where vernacular literary production in Kashmiri-the popularity of mystical poets like Lalladevi (fl. 1400) notwithstanding-never produced the intense competition with the literary vernacular that Sanskrit encountered elsewhere (in Kannada country, for instance, and later, in the Hindi heartland). Instead, what had eroded dramatically was what I called the civic ethos embodied in the court. This ethos, while periodically assaulted in earlier periods (with concomitant interruptions in literary production), had more or less fully succumbed by the thirteenth century, long before the consolidation of Turkish power in the Valley. In Vijayanagara, by contrast, while the courtly structure of Sanskrit literary culture remained fully intact, its content became increasingly subservient to imperial projects, and so predictable and hollow. Those at court who had anything literarily important to say said it in Telugu or (outside the court) in Kannada or Tamil; those who did not, continued to write in Sanskrit, and remain unread. In the north, too, where political change had been most pronounced, competence in Sanskrit remained undiminished during the late-medieval/early modern period. There, scholarly families reproduced themselves without discontinuity-until, that is, writers made the decision to abandon Sanskrit in favor of the increasingly attractive vernacular. Among the latter were writers such as Kesavdas, who, unlike his father and brother, self-consciously chose to become a vernacular poet. And it is Kesavdas, Biharilal, and others like them whom we recall from this place and time, and not a single Sanskrit writer. [...]

The project and significance of the self-described "new intellectuals" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [...] what these scholars produced was a newness of style without a newness of substance. The former is not meaningless and needs careful assessment and appreciation. But, remarkably, the new and widespread sense of discontinuity never stimulated its own self-analysis. No idiom was developed in which to articulate a new relationship to the past, let alone a critique; no new forms of knowledge-no new theory of religious identity, for example, let alone of the political-were produced in which the changed conditions of political and religious life could be conceptualized. And with very few exceptions (which suggest what was in fact possible), there was no sustained creation of new literature-no Sanskrit novels, personal poetry, essays-giving voice to the new subjectivity. Instead, what the data from early nineteenth-century Bengal-which are paralleled every where-demonstrate is that the mental and social spheres of Sanskrit literary production grew ever more constricted, and the personal and this-worldly, and eventually even the presentist-political, evaporated, until only the dry sediment of religious hymnology remained. [...]

In terms of both the subjects considered acceptable and the audience it was prepared to address, Sanskrit had chosen to make itself irrelevant to the new world. This was true even in the extra-literary domain. The struggles against Christian missionizing, for example, that preoccupied pamphleteers in early nineteenth-century Calcutta, took place almost exclusively in Bengali. Sanskrit intellectuals seemed able to respond, or were interested in responding, only to a challenge made on their own terrain-that is, in Sanskrit. The case of the professor of Sanskrit at the recently-founded Calcutta Sanskrit College (1825), Ishwarachandra Vidyasagar, is emblematic: When he had something satirical, con temporary, critical to say, as in his anti-colonial pamphlets, he said it, not in Sanskrit, but in Bengali. [...]

No doubt, additional factors conditioned this profound transformation, something more difficult to characterize having to do with the peculiar status of Sanskrit intellectuals in a world growing increasingly unfamiliar to them. As I have argued elsewhere, they may have been led to reaffirm the old cosmopolitanism, by way of ever more sophisticated refinements in ever smaller domains of knowledge, in a much-changed cultural order where no other option made sense: neither that of the vernacular intellectual, which was a possible choice (as Kabir and others had earlier shown), nor that of the national intellectual, which as of yet was not. At all events, the fact remains that well before the consolidation of colonialism, before even the establishment of the Islamicate political order, the mastery of tradition had become an end in itself for Sanskrit literary culture, and reproduction, rather than revitalization, the overriding concern. As the realm of the literary narrowed to the smallest compass of life-concerns, so Sanskrit literature seemed to seek the smallest possible audience. However complex the social processes at work may have been, the field of Sanskrit literary production increasingly seemed to belong to those who had an "interest in disinterestedness," as Bourdieu might put it; the moves they made seem the familiar moves in the game of elite distinction that inverts the normal principles of cultural economies and social orders: the game where to lose is to win. In the field of power of the time, the production of Sanskrit literature had become a paradoxical form of life where prestige and exclusivity were both vital and terminal.

The Death of Sanskrit, Sheldon Pollock, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 392-426 (35 pages)

[ineffable-opinions]

Ah meant scholarly sources, I have read your posts (well written!) but not watched the videos (it is hard for me to focus on sound). :) thank you

Hey anon, based on your previous ask and this one, here are some scholarly sources that I have saved on the computer I am currently using. [I have more on another computer which I will be able to share those in a week or so. Done!]

How to access these sources?

[For context: 'Problematizing the Problem' section of my post Seme/uke - long response is being discussed and scholarly sources are for the questions (given below) I raised.]

Why would ‘het people’ or any people for that matter think in terms of male-female / masculine-feminine binaries? Do they think in those binaries only and not other binaries such as wen(文)-wu(武)? Why think in binaries and dichotomies at all? Don’t they not think in terms of multiplicity of genders/gender expressions such as various kinds of masculinities and femininities) based off on their local contexts? 

Do queer people not make such/similar conflations? (Hint: they do.)

Is it a problem? While this seems to be the popular notion, plenty of scholars from across the globe has dismantled it.

I must admit that this was written following The Right Way to Be Gay - Who Can Tell? in a manner in which these questions would be treated as already answered. When read as a stand-alone, these questions would remain as food for thought at best.

seme uke - Japan

Cartographies of Desire: Male-male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 - Gregory M. Pflugfelder

Reimagining male-male sexuality: representations in Japanesemodern literature and gay manga by Nicholas James Hall

The Great Mirror of Male Love - Saikaku Ihara, Paul Gordon Schalow (translator)

Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan - Gary Leupp

In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality In Meiji Literature by Jim Reichert (199-208)

different takes on queerness from across the globe - LGBTQ+ and others:

Between Men, part of the ‘Key Population Series’, 2003 [link]

Hames, Raymond B.; Garfield, Zachary H.; and Garfield, Melissa J., “Is Male Androphilia a Context-Dependent Cross-Cultural Universal?” (2017). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 132.

Lambevski, S.A., 1999. Suck my nation - masculinity, ethnicity and the politics of (Homo) sex. Sexualities, 2(4), pp.397-419.

Interpretation and Orientalism: Outing Japan’s Sexual Minorities to the English-Speaking World by Mark McLelland

Aneka, B. (2014). Jogappa: Gender, Identity and the Politics of Exclusion.

Stief, M. (2017). The sexual orientation and gender presentation of hijra, kothi, and panthi in Mumbai, India. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46, 73-85.

Gill, H. (2016). Kothi. The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of gender and sexuality studies, 1-2.

Hossain, A., & Rahman, M. (2024). Beyond homocolonialism: working towards queer decoloniality in Bangladesh. International Politics, 1-16.

different types of masculinities and femininities and queer people (conflations, adaptations, etc.):

Wijngaarden JW de L van. Male Homosexuality in 21st-Century Thailand: A Longitudinal Study of Young, Rural, Same-Sex-Attracted Men Coming of Age. Anthem Press; 2021. [link] [link]

Polmuk, C. (2023). Provincialising Thai Boys Love: Queer Desire and the Aesthetics of Rural Cosmopolitanism. [link]

Vasudevan, A. (2024). From Deficient Masculinity to Relational Plenitude: Language and Ethics among Thirunangai s in Southern India. Men and Masculinities, 27(4), 392-409.

Bakshi, K. (2022). Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla: emergence of queer epistemologies in Kolkata in the early days of queer political mobilizations. South Asian History and Culture, 13(2), 231–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2067636

Halkitis, Perry N., '(Hyper) Masculinity', Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation (New York, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190686604.003.0007

Kong, T.S.K. (2010). Chinese Male Homosexualities: Memba, Tongzhi and Golden Boy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203849200

Wang, S. (2020). Chinese gay men pursuing online fame: erotic reputation and internet celebrity economies. Feminist Media Studies, 20(4), 548–564. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1754633

in relation to yaoi and BL:

Nagaike, K. (2012). Perverse sexualities, perverse desires: representations of female fantasies and Yaoi manga as pornography directed at women. In Fantasies of Cross-dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica (pp. 103-134). Brill.

Yaoi Ronsō: Discussing Depictions of Male Homosexuality in Japanese Girls' Comics, Gay Comics and Gay Pornography Wim Lunsing

Williams, A. (2015). Rethinking yaoi on the regional and global scale. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 37.

Pužar, A. (2023). " BL"(Boy Love)," GL"(Girl Love) and Female Communities of Practice and Affect in South Korea. Družboslovne razprave, 39(102), 63-84.

Mizoguchi, A. (2008). Reading and living Yaoi: Male-male fantasy narratives as women's sexual subculture in Japan. University of Rochester.

Kristine Michelle L. Santos (2020) The bitches of Boys Love comics: the pornographic response of Japan’s rotten women, Porn Studies, 7:3, 279-290, DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2020.1726204

-

In a recent post @dragonsandphoenix mentioned ‘Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China’ by Wu Cuncun. I haven't read it but, it sure looks interesting.

-

Update! Sorry, it is unsorted.

Kazumi Nagaike - Perverse Sexualities, Perversive Desires: Representations of Female Fantasies and "Yaoi Manga" as Pornography Directed at Women [https://www.jstor.org/stable/42771904]

Akiko Mizoguchi - Male-Male Romance by and for Women in Japan: A History and the Subgenres of "Yaoi" Fictions [https://www.jstor.org/stable/42771903]

Mark J. McLelland - Japan’s Original Gay Boom [https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/145]

McLelland, Mark J., Salarymen Doing Queer: Gay Men and the Heterosexual Public Sphere in Japan 2005. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/156

McLelland, Mark J., Salarymen Doing Queer: Gay Men and the Heterosexual Public Sphere in Japan 2005. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/156

McLelland, Mark J., Interpretation and Orientalism: Outing Japan's Sexual Minorities to the English-Speaking World 2003. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/152

Himanshi Singh and Pradeep Kumar - Hijra : An Understanding https://doi.org/10.32381/JPR.2020.15.01.6

Bithika Mondal , Sudeshna Das , Deepshikha Ray , and Debanjan Banerjee - “Their Untold Stories…”: Lived Experiences of Being a Transgender (Hijra), A Qualitative Study From India [DOI: 10.1177/2631831820936924]

Edited by Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker - Boys Love Manga and Beyond

Thomas Baudinette - Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ and the problem of genre - doi: 10.1386/eapc.3.1. 59_1

Jungmin Kwon – Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies

Narupon Duangwises and Peter A. Jackson - Effeminacy and Masculinity in Thai Gay Culture: Language, Contextuality and the Enactment of Gender Plurality - https://so06.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/wjss

Kristine Michelle L. Santos (2020): The bitches of Boys Love comics: the pornographic response of Japan’s rotten women, https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2020.1726204

Yanrui Xu & Ling Yang (2013) Forbidden love: incest, generational conflict, and the erotics of power in Chinese BL fiction - https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2013.771378

Divya Garg & Xiaofei Yang (14 Feb 2024): Beyond a queer utopia: interrogating misogyny in transnational boys love media https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2024.2314186

Bret Hinsch – Passions of the Cut Sleeve

Kristine Michelle L. Santos (2020): Queer Affective Literacies: Examining “Rotten” Women’s Literacies in Japan - https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2020.1825506

Tomoko Aoyama - BL (Boys’ Love) Literacy: Subversion, Resuscitation, and Transformation of the (Father’s) Text - DOI: 10.1353/jwj.2013.0001

Jungmin Kwon - The past, present, and future of Boys Love (BL) cultures in East Asia [Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture - Edited by Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin]

Sulaiman TK 2017 - Sexuality Landscape of Modern Kerala: A Discourse on Male Social Gathering among Malabar Muslim Men

Filippo Osella - Malabar Secrets: South Indian Muslim Men's (Homo)sociality across the Indian Ocean - http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/casr20

Caroline and Filippo Osella - Men and Masculinities in South India

Lothar Filip Rudorfer (2023) - Homosexuality and Bara Manga in Japan – Representation of the Psychological State of Mind of the Contemporary LGBT+ Plus Size Men in Japan

Chapter 5 (Exploring Yaoi Fans’ Online Practices in an Online Community by Simon Turner) and Chapter 6 (An Evaluation of Physicality in the Bara Manga of Bádi Magazine by Thomas Baudinette) of Manga Vision – edited by Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou and Cathy Sell

Celia Rose Langford (2019) - Queered Time on the Page: The Micro-level Revolution of the Bishōnen in 21st Century Yaoi Manga

Febriani Sihombing - On The Iconic Difference between Couple Characters in Boys Love Manga – 2011

William S. Armour (2010) Representations of the Masculine in Tagame Gengoroh's Ero SM Manga - https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2010.527922

Zhang Yiyuan - Repressed Sexuality — Disguised Masculinity in Chinese Danmei Adapted Series – 2023

Poramate Parnpiamkiat - Expectation of Fans Towards Thai Boys’ Love Celebrity Couples (2019)

Poowin Bunyavejchewin, Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt, Porntep Kamonpetch, Ketsarin Sirichuanjun & Natthanont Sukthungthong (2024) Socio-demographics, lifestyles, and consumption frequency of Thai ‘Boys Love’ series content: Initial evidence from Thailand https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2024.2307697

Charlie Yi Zhang & Adam K. Dedman (2021) Hyperreal homoerotic love in a monarchized military conjuncture: a situated view of the Thai Boys’ Love industry https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1959370

Xi Tian - Homosexualizing “Boys Love” in China DOI 10.1215/25783491-8163817

Aiqing Wang - Nonnormative Masculinity In Danmei Literature: ‘Maiden Seme’ And Sajiao https://doi.org/10.17572/mj2021.1.106123

Travis S. K. Kong - Sexuality and the rise of China : the post-1990s gay generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China (2023)

Junqi Zhang - The Reception of Thai Boys Love Series in China: Consumption, Imagination, and Friction (2021)

Joanna Elfving-Hwang - Not So Soft After All: Kkonminam Masculinities in Contemporary South Korean Popular Culture (2011)

Dredge Byung’chu Kang-Nguyen - The Softening of Butches The Adoption of Korean "Soft" Masculinity among Thai Toms http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctv7r429w.7

Ying-Chao Ka - The coloniality of queer theory: The effects of “homonormativity” on transnational Taiwan’s path to equality https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607211047518

Sandeep Bakshi. On Decolonising Queerness with Dr Sandeep Bakshi. 2023 https://hal.science/hal-04183158

Adam Chen-Dedman - Tongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan’s lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism [ doi: 10.1163/24688800-20221267 ]

[antiradqueer]

Hey tumblr.

It's Luna, or more, someone of us who has no clue who they are right now. We feel like the embodiment of being sick and tired and just so done.

We have been thinking long and hard about what to write in this post or if we even want to make a post like this, but now that we're typing out these words, we don't know why we put it off so long.

We are permanently fucking off from the radqueer discourse. We can't take it anymore and we don't care anymore. We've lost all empathy and sympathy for everyone and everything involved in this shitshow, no matter which side they're on. The reason for this is not that we suddenly are neutral, we are still anti-radqueer, but we are so burned out and just start to dissociate the second we open the tags or see a radqueer post in the wild. We're naturally low empathy to begin with, but now every last ounce of that is completely gone when it comes to this topic, plus we just... don't care anymore. There's the 100th transnazi popping up? I don't care. Another "cisabuser" in the tags? doesn't matter. whatever. We're not a bad person, we are just done. We can't keep on doing this or this will eventually throw us into depression again and that might literally kill us. and I'm not going to let that happen.

when I think about radqueers, I feel so much anger, frustration and sadness - or more, that's what I felt. now all of that is just drowned by a dark cloud of tiredness and nothingness.

so, this is our goodbye. Knowing us, we will probably still roam the tags sometimes and depending who is fronting, some of us might even interact with discourse still, but like, officially, we are gone. (@ mod mew: if you could let us still have access to this account that would be dope af tho!)

I will also use this post to to encourage every anti-radqueer who's fighting tooth and nail to get blogs taken down and people banned, to step back for a minute, take a deep breath and think about if you really want to keep on doing this. we thought this would never take a mental toll on us, yet here we are. I'm not saying what you're doing is wrong, but I'm saying that maybe you could use your energy and will to fight for something else.

let's face it, radqueers will never be an actual threat to society. they are pathetic, sad people, hiding behind their screens, screaming "the future is radqueer!" over and over, but in reality this "movement" will burn to the ground eventually and they will go down with it.

do people get hurt in radqueer spaces? yes, they do and that's horrible (just a note as to how bad it's gotten with us: I write this and logically know that yes, it IS horrible - but I feel absolutely nothing. In all honesty, I currently don't care if people get hurt or not, because I can't care. it's like our brain shut off all emotions regarding this topic to protect ourselves). and I'm not saying you should stop offering them help, but I think you can stop worrying about the radqueers taking over society or whatever. if you feel this taking a toll on your mental health, please put yourself first. protecting your health and your life is always, ALWAYS more important that fighting strangers on the internet.

okay, in case you don't think of us as a total asshole with a heart of stone now and are interested in our plurality- and alterhumanity-focused tumblr life, here's out brand new system blog: @the-exodus-fleet And also our hosts blog: @talks-with-the-void

Take care of yourselves and thanks for every kind word and all the support we've got along the way /gen

PS: if any radqueer reads this and wants to celebrate this as a win or whatever, go ahead. if you need this to feel some joy in your sad, miserable little life, I'm not stopping you.

PPS: I still genuiely hope all radqueers eventually come to their sense and leave this bullshit ideology behind

PPPS: and to all radqueers who hide behind this label to abuse and groom other, I hope you lose all your friends and your family over this. you deserve no happiness.

[crippleprophet]

Hey Mac! Do you have any crip books or resource recs for crip sex/sexuality?

Feel free to delete if you're uncomfortable answering :]

do i ever! i actually did an essay for my master’s in disability studies on the topic of disabled people’s access to sex so a lot of these are sources from that (feel free to dm me for my paper!) & others are things i’ve collected for leisure (hah)

i’m bolding my favorites and italicizing ones i haven’t read but have been recommended / have on my list; as with everything, having read a piece + recommending it is not an uncritical endorsement, & i have various contentions with all of these pieces ranging from minor nitpicking to outright disagreement.

feel free to send an ask or dm if you want my thoughts on a particular work or need help obtaining a pdf!

books

Sex and Disability ed. Robert McRuer & Anna Mollow

The Sexual Politics of Disability: Untold Desires by Tom Shakespeare, Kath Gillespie-Sells and Dominic Davies

Unbreaking Our Hearts: Cultures of Un/Desirability and the Transformative Potential of Queercrip Porn by Loree Erickson. York University, dissertation submitted 2015.

McRuer, R. 2006. Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press.

Kinked and Crippled: Disabled BDSM Practitioners’ Experiences and Embodiments of Pain. Emma Sheppard. Edge Hill University, dissertation submitted 2017.

Love, Sex, and Disability: The Pleasures of Care by Sarah Smith Rainey

intellectually disabled people / people with learning difficulties’ right to sex

Hamilton, C. A. 2009. ‘Now I’d like to sleep with Rachael’ – researching sexuality support in a service agency group home. Disability & Society. 24(3), pp.303-315.

Hollomotz, A. 2008. ‘May we please have sex tonight?’ – people with learning difficulties pursuing privacy in residential group settings. British Journal of Learning Disabilities. 37, pp.91–97.

Vehmas, S. 2019. Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex. Disability & Society. 34(4), pp.519-539.

Significance of the attitudes of police and care staff toward sex and people who have a learning disability by A. Bailey & D. Sines. Journal of Learning Disabilities for Nursing Health and Social Care (1998), 2(3), pp.168-174.

sexual facilitation & making sex accessible

Bahner, J. 2016. Risky business? Organizing sexual facilitation in Swedish personal assistance services. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research. 18(2), pp.164-175.

Linda R. Mona (2003) Sexual Options for People with Disabilities, Women & Therapy, 26:3-4, pp.211-221.

No Pity Fucks Please: A critique of Scarlet Road’s campaign to improve disabled people’s access to paid sex services by Tova Rozengarten and Heather Brook. Outskirts vol. 34, 2016, pp.1-21.

Julia Bahner (2013) The power of discretion and the discretion of power: personal assistants and sexual facilitation in disability services, Vulnerable Groups & Inclusion, 4:1, 20673.

BDSM, paraphilias, & alternative sex

Goldberg, C. E. 2018. Fucking with Notions of Disability (In)Justice: Exploring BDSM, Sexuality, Consent, and Canadian Law

Hollomotz, A. 2013. Exploiting the Fifty Shades of Grey craze for the disability and sexual rights agenda. Disability & Society. 28(3), pp.418-422.

Reynolds, D. 2007. Disability and BDSM: Bob Flanagan and the case for sexual rights. Sexuality Research & Social Policy. 4(1), pp.40-52.

Tellier, S. 2017. Advancing the discourse: Disability and BDSM. Sex & Disability. 35, pp.485-493.

Sheppard, E. 2018. Using pain, living with pain. Feminist Review. 120, pp.54-69.

Tyburczy, J. 2014. Leather anatomy: Cripping homonormativity at International Mr. Leather. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 8(3), pp.275-293.

Sheppard, E 2019, 'Chronic Pain as Fluid, BDSM as Control' Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2.

other articles

Finger, A. 1992. Forbidden Fruit

Fritsch, K., Heynen, R., Ross, A. N., and van der Meulen, E. 2016. Disability and sex work: developing affinities through decriminalization. Disability & Society. 31(1), pp.84-99.

McKenzie, J. 2012. Disabled people in rural South Africa talk about sexuality. Culture Health & Sexuality. pp.1-15.

Shakespeare, T. 2000. Disabled sexuality: Toward rights and recognition. Sexuality and Disability. 18(3), pp.159-166.

Shildrick, M. 2007. Contested pleasures: The sociopolitical economy of disability and sexuality. Sexuality Research & Social Policy. 4(1), pp.53-66.

Wentzell, E. 2006. Bad bedfellows: Disability sex rights and Viagra. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 26(5), pp.370-377.

“‘Like, pissing yourself is not a particularly attractive quality, let’s be honest’: Learning to contain through youth, adulthood, disability and sexuality” by Kirsty Liddiard and Jenny Slater. Sexualities 2018, Vol. 21(3), pp.319–333.

non-academic texts

Andrew Gurza’s blog - andrewgurza dot com / blog

Disability After Dark podcast

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability by A. Andrews

Cripping Up Sex with Eva

my cripsex tag, which i’ll add to this post, has other relevant content, & i welcome any additions from folks! all the best to you 💓