As a hater… no, I don’t think men should enjoy things. They only do it for female attention. I can assure you no man can name at least 10 of Lebron’s best plays in his career or tell you what colour undies he was wearing on his first game for the Lakers.
To be completely serious… it’s kind of entitled to expect a genre targeted towards women to cater to another demographic, don’t you think? One big point that they kept bringing up insistently is that “men should be allowed to like these things” and at a surface level, I don’t see a problem with a man liking dress-up or otome games. Anyone can like or do anything, we all have free will and our own tastes. The issue comes from entitlement, expecting these games to cater to men by insisting they add a male protagonist or fanservice… usually of a sexual nature. “Cozy Games” like Infinity Nikki among others are dominated by women due to the fact that men don’t really engage in the circles as much. As a result, men (and their misogyny, blatant or otherwise) are a lot easier to dodge. My point is, women are allowed to take issue with the fact that men who play Infinity Nikki are doing everything in their power to make Nikki goonable by trying to upskirt her or dress her up in schoolgirl costumes for lewd purposes. It’s weird! Really, really weird! It’s an all-ages franchise, and one about pretty clothes and exploration at that. The fact that people are willing to try and even defend this kind of thing in favour of saying that men should be allowed to enjoy things just makes me frustrated. My rebuttals in this argument were just met with the worst case of poor reading comprehension I'd ever encountered, so I said my final piece about how I don't give a fuck about "misandry" when women are abused on gaming in the regular and left it at that. The channel was pretty quiet for a while after that.
Frankly, I don’t know why I bothered with these two. They’re just cowards who hide behind their identities as gay transgender men to complain about women while dodging the misogynist allegations. Men, no matter what demographic they are a part of, always find some way or another to continue hating on women… nowadays, it tends to be by tacking on some other adjective in order to make it sound more socially-acceptable. Not to say that women are above criticism or anything, but I don’t trust a lot of things that come out of men’s mouths about women unless they’re backing it up with some kind of tangible evidence. In this day and age, women are scarcely believed if they’re perceived as unlikable in some way– remember Amber Heard, and nowadays, Blake Lively? Yeah, I’d rather support a woman and risk being wrong than trust a man and feed into vicious misogynistic narratives, thanks.
Speaking of men hating women, one group that comes to mind in particular is fujoshi. I’ve had a lot of thoughts on the way men of varying demographics talk about fujoshi and the culture surrounding BL media, and this part was spurred on due to a semi-popular essay that was written by another indie web warrior. I won’t link directly due to the fact I don’t wish to direct any more backlash towards that individual since it wasn’t particularly well received as a personal piece of writing, but… if you know, you know. Y’know?
In direct response to that essay: I didn’t like it and found it was rife with misinformation that was treated with the same eloquence as the war in Ba Sing Se (am I cool enough to make an ATLA reference here?). Granted, it’s not new misinformation… just the same stuff that’s cycled around the filters of internet discourse for several years now despite efforts to clear it up. Despite my dislike, though, I did sympathise with the complex feelings surrounding the genre as a bisexual girl who avoided GL for many years due to thinking it was all male-gazey slop with a hefty dose of incest like Citrus. As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve come to understand it’s not representative of the genre as a whole, and that kind of content is easy to avoid with enough research… much like non-consensual content is when it comes to BL (seriously, google pointed me in the right direction with one search, it’s not that hard to dodge). But it really did get me thinking– no matter who tries to clear up misinformation about fujoshi and what is done to combat it, people really do just want a reason to hate on women for any old reason.
Now, I’m not about to rebut every single anti-fujo warrior talking point about why fujoshi are evil gay man-fetishising scum of the Earth who need to be scraped off like old gum. I’m too old, I don’t have the patience. It’s been done a hundred times over by fujoshi and fudanshi alike. Most importantly, I don’t care about what some fifteen year old named after a Genshin character has to say about yaoi sex comics on manga sharing sites. If you want to read any kind of argument against anti-fujo takes, check out rottenboysclub over on tumblr/dreamwidth– it’s a small personal blog which was previously cultivated by a fudanshi who was sick of the discourse. Though, it doesn’t surprise me that anti-fujo discourse continues to make waves in fandom nowadays given the ways in which social media algorithms make rage-inciting posts thrive. Posts about the history of the term fujoshi aren’t going to garner as many clicks as some teenager talking like a fujoshi personally burnt their house down using BL manga clippings and their seme’s favourite lighter. That’s just how it is, I’m afraid.
But yes, if you think about it long enough… anti-fujoshi discourse is just a way for people to be misogynistic in a socially acceptable manner. Aside from the fact that it comes from men sticking their nose in women’s business when it comes to what kind of media they consume, it also proceeds to insinuate that every fujoshi reading BL is heterosexual and using it as a means to get off in the same way straight men treat lesbians. In reality, at least on the western side, many fujoshi are lesbians or bisexual themselves and consider themselves himejoshi (yuri fans) as well. The majority of BL readers are in favour of same-sex marriage– even privately, particularly if they run the risk of having their online identity exposed in a country where gay rights are a contentious topic. Personally though, I fail to see how this gives them a position of power above the gay men they’re allegedly treating as a fetish. I fail to see why women reading BL is reason enough for men to start getting hateful to the point of wishing death upon women, particularly when many of these anti-fujo warriors read BL manga written by eastern fujoshi or take an interest in GL media themselves. Lesbian and bi women already run the risk of facing misogyny within the community from their male counterparts… not to mention, there isn’t this level of backlash towards himedanshi and telling men they can’t like GL. It’s just misogyny at this point, but they don’t want to admit it and try to paint it as homophobia above anything else.
Is this to say there aren’t bad fujoshi? Well, no… if you know anything about the banning of yaoi paddles, that was because of bad fujoshi who didn’t care for the boundaries of other con-goers and kept smacking people with them at random. Bad fujoshi are just as real as bad yaoi is. But there are bad apples in every community, and they are usually a vocal minority that the majority disagree and distance themselves from. At its core, the term “fujoshi” just refers to a woman that likes BL– that’s how it was used by 2channers when it was coined, and how many fujoshi in fandom identify themselves. To insinuate that every woman who reads BL is a paddle-slinging menace to gay men who asks about their sex lives and treats them like a fetish while not supporting the idea of gay marriage is insane levels of straw-womanning that I don’t even know where to begin with untangling that argument beyond acknowledging it stinks of misogyny.
I’m not quite sure where to leave this all off. I generally think it’s disgusting that men will opt to wish harm on women they disagree with, usually by using a term like fujoshi or slapping an adjective in front of “woman” to make it seem less like outright misogyny or some vendetta they have against a woman they hate. At the end of the day, BL is just media about two dudes who fancy each other. It doesn’t necessarily exist to be some kind of ground-breaking representation of relationships between gay men, it’s just a sub-genre of romance, which is already heavily enjoyed by women in and of itself. It’s fine to have critiques of it, and it’s fine to not like it. But it’s not fine the way women who like it are treated and talked about, and it’s not fine that misinformation continues to spread about the term and its origins. After all, yaoi is revenge for all the times men prevented women from voting and having their own bank accounts.