Update 8/9/11:
A little while ago, Noah asked me to put a few words together on my perspective as a gay male reading yaoi. I didn’t have any particular thesis pulled together on the subject but I was thrilled to be given a soapbox. What ended up happening was that in an attempt to pull together my unsorted notions into a cogent article, I talked waaaaaaaay out of school. What’s more, the glib tone I picked ended up fruitlessly teasing people for no reason and for some reason felt it was necessary to define women’s experience with something that they had done a good enough job defining for themselves.
It isn’t that I’m merely embarrassed to have my name attached to the thing because it makes me look like an idiot, but that I genuinely repent of the impulse for writing it in the first place. I’m reading more yaoi. It still isn’t my thing, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s hardly for me to be miffed about an air of exploitation with all of the BBC period costume dramas I consume. I mean, seriously.
I’ve asked Noah to remove the article but left the ultimate decision up to him, since the discussion in the comments is well worth preserving. If the text remains below this, keep in mind to disregard it, as I’ve changed my opinion about pretty much every point I brought up. I’m listening and learning people. Thanks for calling me out, and next time I write for HU, it’ll be about something I damned well know a little more about.
Thanks for reading. Hugs and kisses. Comics are awesome.
Michael
Yeah, I have real problems with this. I respect that, as a gay man, you take exception to the portrayals of gay men as drawn/written by the yaoi manga artists, but you step beyond that. Finding no audience in your own group, you seek to find and use another group, which includes me. You want to take my money and at the same time, dictate to me, in a particularly condescending fashion, what’s Wrong With Me and tell me why I like what I like and how I’m Doing It Wrong, and no, just no.
That’s not for you to say, dude. First of all, and how can I put this? You’ve got a view of how and why yaoi fans like the way that same sex relationships are portrayed and you’ve got a theory of why the main relationship is often portrayed as an exception, that it’s about gender roles blah blah, completely ignoring the reality that women are often interested in the shifting dynamics of attraction, and how gender is not the only reason to fall in love. There are reasons for that, and I’m too tired to explain further than: yeah, this is why I don’t hang out in all gay spaces anymore. Bisexuality erasure! Nice.
But what gets me is your mansplanation of buttsex. Honey, everyone has a butt. EVERYONE. Buttsex is the great leveller. You don’t have to like the way the buttsex is portrayed, but your condescending explanations of You’re Doing It Wrong is….classic. Classic male appropriation of female experience. You think women have no experience of buttsex, especially as bottoms? Are you kidding me?!? Everyone can have buttsex. All the genders, all the orientations, EVERYONE. Again, you don’t have to like the way it’s way portrayed, but to assume that female comic artists aren’t portraying it “properly” out of ignorance is to again place a primacy on the male gaze, the male depiction, the male experience, to say that the male is Right. Which, yeah, thanks, I’ll pass.
Again, I respect that you don’t care for the way yaoi presents gay male men. That’s completely your right. But to tell me why I like yaoi, to tell me why I like certain depictions, to dictate to me what certain experiences are… No.
Thanks for the interesting perspective. Not to presume too much, but I found myself thinking about my reaction to virtually any fictional entertainment that involves musicians- and how ludicrous such things generally are from the perspective of a working musician. I always wonder why it has to be that way- from where the glorification comes, and is it necessary for people’s easy enjoyment of the music/sex? In the case of music movies, however, it could be that people would have no patience for long, repetitive scenes of practicing, in-fighting, lugging gear, commercial failure and/or indifference etc. (the only movie I’ve ever seen that accurately portrays the experience of being in a band is “Linda Linda Linda”.)
Have you ever read any Fumi Yoshinaga? From a straight male perspective, I find most of her work fun and readable, with a lot less of the problematic issues you discuss above. (Although she’s not immune either- Solfege comes to mind).
Interesting article!
I know you mentioned that one CLAMP title, but I’m curious what other comics you think represent gay feelings/relationships in a realistic way? I’d really like to read more…
It might be worth mentioning that just from his comments on this blog (as well as from what he’s said in the article) Michael seems to have read and enjoyed a number of yaoi titles.
What you’ve described, is exactly why I’ve never been able to get into yaoi. I’ve enjoyed some bara stuff however. To me, it’s not just a yaoi thing, its a Japanese thing. A lot of relationships in comics and cartoons from Japan have these seme/uke relationships regardless of gender. I’ve never found that to be a very healthy perspective. Perhaps it’s a matter of taste, but I’d rather read love stories where the characters are equals.
In regards to the first commenter: if everyone has experience with anal sex, then why do so many people (regardless of gender) think its SUPPOSED to hurt? That notion is present in heterosexual contexts as well, must people are pretty clueless about it. I don’t think it was wrong for the article’s author to point out the silliness of sex depicted in yaoi work.
She doesn’t say everyone has anal intercourse…just that everyone has a butt (and therefore CAN have it…making it not an exclusively gay male purview). Hard to argue with the “everyone has a butt” argument—Perhaps the opening volley necessary for peace and understanding in the universe.
In Japan I know there’s been some discussion by gay men of their discomfort with yaoi. This article discusses some of the conflict (and provides a rebuttal on the basis of a non-gender specific queer identity.)
It might be worth mentioning that just from his comments on this blog (as well as from what he’s said in the article) Michael seems to have read and enjoyed a number of yaoi titles. So? This means he understands how my sexuality works because he likes a certain kind of comic? Or what?
Drew: You’re arguing that female fantasies are silly and/or unhealthy. Gosh, I’ve NEVER heard that before! Wow. How insightful and progressive.
I rather like this article, it touches on a lot of points about the Yaoi genre that have bothered me as well. I have to admit though, part of me is kind of bothered that people (at least from what I have seen, and I admit I have a limited view of this) are more willing to discuss the issues of gender roles and stereotypes in yaoi then the issue of what involvement they have in Yuri and lesbian porn in general. While I admit that it’s important to question when a comic crosses between a romance with a focus on sex scenes and a purposely pornographic piece with terrible writing, part of me wonders if the fact that yaoi is stereotypically written from a female gaze is why people are more willing to question it than lesbian porn directed at straight men. Although this of course links back into the idea of defined gender roles, as if a female creator has the “feminine” man in a relationship the one who is abused and dominated, it’s worth questioning how they see themselves as a woman in a sexual relationship.
Sorry for my ramble, but it’s something that came to mind as I read and wanted a chance to bring it up. I hope you write more articles in the future, this one was lovely and I now have your comic in my bookmarks for later reading. I look forward to enjoying it!
Vommarlowe seems to see this article and everything attached to this article as an attack on himself/herself. It is a shame. If (s)he would actually TRY to understand this article, (s)he may have had more understanding on the subject of and feelings of homosexual males (and possibly homosexual females as well).
This was a very interesting read and well worth the time I spent not doing my homework! (much more educational, in my opinion). And it helps me understand my own feelings towards yaoi and BL. I remember watching Gravitation a while back. It was nice to have something revolving around homosexuals, but at the same time it felt…I want to say ‘wrong’. There was something off about it, and while I felt happy that my sexual orientation was not being simply hidden in the closet, I couldn’t feel any kind of familiarization or connection with the homosexuality presented.
Now it makes sense why. Thank you for writing this! Very worth while read.
…Also, damn, now I want to read your comic.
VM, I think it’s legitimate for a gay man to question depictions of gay male sexuality, especially when it’s tailored to the gaze of non-gay men– in the case of yaoi, to that of women– and it’s also legitimate to question that gaze. Your reaction is way over the top.
Kai: it is simply untrue that BL for women has been criticised less than fake-lesbianism for men. The exact opposite is true. Yaoi lovers have pretty much gotten a free pass so far.
Oh, and Drew is a crackerjack cartroonist.
VM, it just means that he’s not necessarily rejecting the genre wholesale.
I mean, your point that men (straight or gay) often denigrate women’s fantasies is well taken. And the point about the universality of butts is interesting as well (though surely gay men are in general more familiar with anal sex than the general population.)
But…I think Michael’s right to suggest that bisexuality is actually not universal among gay men; in fact, at least anecdotally, I think (for cultural or biological reasons or whatever) bisexuality is less common among men than among women. So using images of gay men and representing them as bisexual, and having that be part of the expression of your sexuality — is it entirely off base for him to feel that that’s possibly exploitive? Not that that makes the people who like it wrong or evil (I don’t think he’s saying that) but that it’s worth occasionally thinking about how those images affect and are perceived by actual gay men, who surely have some stake in them. (And of course I’m sure that gay men have lots of different reactions to lots of different yaoi.)
Alex, it’s not really true that these issues have never come up. Lesbian porn for men is just ubiquitous; it’s everywhere, because, you know, het men’s desires kind of control the world. So it’s natural that those images are more discussed.
Still, as I said, there’s been lots of discussion around these issues for yaoi in Japan, and my impression is that they’ve been pretty thoroughly discussed among the BL community in the US as well. This isn’t all that surprising, since a really sizable percentage of yaoi readers are queer women. I think it’s wrong to say that yaoi lovers have gotten a free pass too; yaoi’s pretty thoroughly denigrated by everyone. It’s a genre for woman, it’s romance — there’s not a lot of critical cache there.
Dave D., VM’s reaction is fairly hostile…but I think she understands the article well enough. She just disagrees with it.
Noah– I know this sounds anally-retentive-prissy — but please don’t join the legions who misspell “cachet” as “cache”.
Where the Hell this came from I don’t know, but I’ve only seen it spread in the last two years.
vommarlowe:
I don’t think Mike is arguing that Yaoi is Categorically Evil. Compared to how brutally Straight American Males comic artists portray their gay characters, the female Yaoi artist at least has the virtue of exoticizing/fetishizing her gay subjects lovingly. He acknowledges this in his last sentences.
That said, whenever a more powerful mainstream group holds the power to Speak On Behalf of The Other, we have a problem. I take it that you find disgusting how male directors portray women in their movies (as everyone should)? How completely degrading to, and inaccurate of, the actual experience of real women? This is not dissimilar. Gay comic artists have to face a market where the Gay Experience is primarily spoken for by a non-gay authorship/readership.
Let’s not even begin to parse what you’re espousing via “You want to take my money and at the same time, dictate to me, in a particularly condescending fashion, what’s Wrong With Me” — The Consumer is always right? Well, at one point, American TV audiences loved minstrel shows and Fu Manchu — white artists depicting/speaking on behalf of racial minorities, perpetrating harmful stereotypes, etc. I suppose we have no right to lecture them on their failings.
I hope this contradiction has been respectful :) lord, I do try…
“In terms of demographics, I’m realistically going to have to seek out more readers from this market than the mainstream gay community.”
You know, I don’t think this is such a hot idea. If you don’t like BL as a genre, marketing your work to the BL community simply because it’s larger is probably a mistake. BL readers like BL largely because of the tropes you despise, and they’re likely to reject works that don’t meet their needs, while the people who don’t like BL tend to stay away from work presented as BL. If you want to write about “realistic gay men in realistic gay situations”, market your work as such. There is definitely an audience for that type of material, even if it’s not as concentrated and easy-to-reach as the BL audience.
“Even attempts at subversion or exploration of these roles through characters with similarities in age and secondary sexual characteristics are playing around with a phony paradigm of a masculine pursuit of femininity, even through a mask of androgyny.”
Actually, as a female reader, I’d say that the dominant “paradigm” of BL (and a major trope in Japanese girl’s culture generally) is that male androgyny / femininity is desirable and attractive; everybody, male or female, wants to get with the doe-eyed bishounen because doe-eyed bishounen are hot.
I understand that real-life gay men overwhelmingly want to dissociate themselves from stereotypes of femininity and be seen as gender-normative, masculine men, but the motivation behind this is, in large part, femiphobia: in contemporary American (and mainstream Japanese) culture male femininity is an abject state, even more contemptible than homosexuality as such. This attitude is rooted in the attitude that femininity is contemptible, inferior and unbecoming to the dominant sex, and I personally think it’s infuriating and needs to get swept into the garbage can along with all the other sexist rubbish. So pretty makes you puke, fine; but that’s your problem, not mine and not the BL community’s.
Clup, what’s tricky about yaoi, though, is it’s not clear which group is more powerful, necessarily. Gay men are still men; on the other hand, like I said, a lot of yaoi readers are queer women.
“That said, whenever a more powerful mainstream group holds the power to Speak On Behalf of The Other, we have a problem. I take it that you find disgusting how male directors portray women in their movies (as everyone should)? How completely degrading to, and inaccurate of, the actual experience of real women? This is not dissimilar. Gay comic artists have to face a market where the Gay Experience is primarily spoken for by a non-gay authorship/readership.”
Eh, I think describing the BL community as a “powerful mainstream group” is utterly laughable; it’s a tiny niche and no-one in the big outside wold has so much as heard of the stuff. I also disagree that BL is presented as “the Gay Experience”; BL is pretty clearly labelled as pink sparkly girl stuff for silly romance-addled females. No-one’s putting it up alongside Stuck Rubber Baby or Fun Home.
No doubt the ubiquity of “cache” comes from the “cache” of bytes our internet browsers keep. A different word altogether, but in more frequent usage in recent words. Can you tell I’m avoiding grading papers…?
Should probably delete my cache.
recent years…
vommarlowe: Reading comprehension is an important skill, try to improve yours, then respond to my comment.
Eric b: VM said “You think women have no experience of buttsex, especially as bottoms?”, thus my point that many women don’t have any experience with it either. Having a butt doesn’t mean you’ve used it for that, (same goes for a brain as well). I do like the idea of a world peace campaign based on the shared experience of having a butt. Lets make some ads!
Alex Buchet: Thanks, not sure how you know which “Drew” I am, or if I know you online or from school, but thanks regardless.
“This attitude is rooted in the attitude that femininity is contemptible, inferior and unbecoming to the dominant sex, and I personally think it’s infuriating and needs to get swept into the garbage can along with all the other sexist rubbish.”
Wrong: the reason most gay men don’t like yaoi is because it’s dehumanizing to be the subject of willfully ignorant portrayals simply for the pleasure of women (or any other audience.)
I think the vitriol and defensiveness of the comments from vommarlowe and JRBRown say a lot about the nature of their motivation, especially compared to how mild the tone of the article in question is. Here’s an analogous situation: are there many straight women who are fans of the movie Showgirls? Probably not– it’s an exploitative, demeaning male fantasy taken to an extreme. It’s also highly derivative of a genre of similar movies that came before it, though, in which the women characters were not necessarily immoral bimbos but were still caricatures written by men. All of these movies are justifiably the ire of a lot of women, and at the very least women are disinterested because they’re not the intended audience. When this sexism is pointed out as a flaw, the response by these men often isn’t a quiet disagreement, but that these feminazis should just FUCK OFF, who are they to decide what men can and can’t watch?! The strength of this reaction is the push-back of a culture whose dominance is being threatened.
Your accusation of femiphobia in this case is off-base, because whether those portrayals are negative or not doesn’t really matter. Like, being smart is a good thing, right? So why do Asian-Americans get so worked up about the nerd stereotype?
I can’t help but feel that being told to keep my mouth shut is an expression of a similar heteronormativity. Well actually, that’s putting it mildly; I am pretty offended by this, but for the sake of civility I won’t discuss how I feel any further. At the very least, I want it to be realized that no one is saying yaoi or whatever is EVIL and should be STOPPED, but pointing out that it’s simply not representative of the lives of gay men, which is a much meeker observation.
Andy: I don’t know about the article’s author, but I did appreciate JRBrown’s observation that he should not try to market his work to the BL/Yaoi market. I think she was spot on with: “BL readers like BL largely because of the tropes you despise, and they’re likely to reject works that don’t meet their needs, while the people who don’t like BL tend to stay away from work presented as BL.”
Andy:
The passage of mine that you quote is specifically in response to Michael’s characterization of BL’s “prettiness”, which he obviously dislikes (as do many gay men, and straight men for that matter). Michael has a perfect right not to like pretty, in general or as it applies to men, but I don’t see where I have to be beholden to his aesthetic preferences.
And I’d say that much of the “vitriol and defensiveness” in the comments has to do with the fact that, contra Alex, this is not a new argument. If you hang out in any remotely BL-centric community, the exact issues Michael complains about, and in pretty much the same terms, are aired on a regular basis, almost always without any reference to the prior discussions. No-one is saying that you or Michael should “keep your mouth shut”, but we’ve heard this all before, ad nauseam; Michael’s opinions in this post, however heartfelt they may be, are old, old news to BL fans, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to be aware of that is probably the biggest strike against him.
Trust me on this: the BL community, including the most rabid of fans, already agrees that BL is “not representative of the lives of gay men”. If you want to talk about that issue it helps enormously to have something more to say on the topic, rather than just saying “you’re doing it wrong!” for the 1000th time. A novel, substantive article could be written on, say, BL and the differences in what women are socialized to want out of men versus what men are socialized to want in themselves, or on the construction of masculinity in BL versus gay fiction. This wasn’t that post.
And finally, I disagree intensely with your assessment that “The strength of this reaction is the push-back of a culture whose dominance is being threatened.” BL is not in any way a dominant culture. It’s possibly the most marginalized part of anime/manga fandom without getting into, say, explicit lolicon, and every female BL fan has been told, repeatedly, that BL is icky and she’s bad for liking it and that she must be fat or frigid or a closet lesbian to be interested in such abnormal stuff. And that comes overwhelmingly from men, mostly straight, but including some gay men. So yes, BL fans tend to be touchy about having men tell them what they’re not supposed to like.
Okay, first things first before I read all of the comments.
VOM:
I expected a lot of criticism and yours is valid. When I started writing, I was worried that the piece would turn into a litany of what I found “wrong” with yaoi. I tried to be diplomatic, and I thought I was clear that it’s not my place to judge a woman’s experience with Yaoi, and this is absolutely NOT an indictment of anyone’s sexual experience. I’m upset and sorry that I’ve offended you in a personal way. I’m not interested in belittling any woman’s experience or picking any fights. I certainly hadn’t thought that my glib little remark about anal sex would be so upsetting. I tried not to cross that line and I’m disappointed that evidently I have.
Trust me on this: the BL community, including the most rabid of fans, already agrees that BL is “not representative of the lives of gay men”.
JRB speaks the truth. Even those of us who go around looking for every scrap of queer identity we can find from the few mangaka who take a stab at it realize that this is not (and never was) what BL is about.
The thrust of this article was a critique of depictions of gay men from a gay male perspective. It is ABSOLUTELY NOT meant to be a criticism of the experience women have with it and the reasons they create and consume it.
Where I think I made a mistake was thinking that I could write about the subject in a vacuum.
Also, I didn’t mean to make any statements about bisexuality being opposed to gay identity. I myself am bisexual but choose to identify as gay for many reasons.
re: “powerful mainstream” — obvious not implying niche yaoi readers have majority sway in broader America’s views on “queer fiction,” but it does seem to have one in the comics industry? Seems to be what Mike’s fearing. Though, good point, it’s almost very exclusively “for women, by women” — the publishing industry has the equivalent in romance fiction. Did you know 1/4 of all novels sold in America are romance novels? Do these romance novels ever have sway in the literary debates raging within the pages of N+1 and Harper’s, or American views on masculinity?
(does anything in any publishing — be it comics or textual novels — have any sway in the general American power structure?)
To suggest a misrepresentative gay lit is pardonable because it’s consumed within a powerless readership though, is… well, not entirely comfortable. I’m sure many yaoi readers are reflexive enough to realize that the contents are entirely disassociated with real bi/bi-curious/gay men.
Most importantly, to a budding young queer comic writer to realize that The Market is much more interested in queer-exoticizing yaoi than anything an actual gay man would pour blood/sweat/tears into… is certainly disheartening. I understand this to be a pretty uncontroversial sentiment.
cisgendered aversion to femboi lit — i can see how that can stifle the voices of even less-heard men who aren’t particularly masculine. (sorta like how andrew sullivan’s “bears” essay ushered in macho queers as the new ideal and p much told bubblebutts to fuck off). idk, that gets tricky. macho queer resents mainstream impression that queer men are all sissies, perceives self as unheard victim. swishes resent cisgendered prejudice in macho queer movement, perceive self as unheard victim… the in-fighting among noble minority causes go on. not very productive, i agree.
Hi Michael;
There’s some hostility in the comments, and I just want to make it clear that you’re totally welcome to talk about BL and how you experience it, what you like or dislike, what you’d want out of it and what it’s not giving you, or whatever else you want to talk about.
I hope that you don’t feel, as Andy apparently did, that I want anybody to “shut up”. I personally disagree with some of the assumptions that I think you are starting with, and I’m not sure you’re aware of the well-worn history these topics have in the BL community, but more conversation is always better than less. I hope we don’t scare you away!
Three things:
It’s not my intention to actively market my comic to the BL community. I was unclear about that.
My paragraph on prettiness was too glib and probably way off base. Everyone is entitled to their personal aesthetics. There’s nothing wrong with pretty androgyny.
On the subject of these arguments being old hat to the BL community. Well, that’s my bad. I was not privy to that, or else I wouldn’t have organized my thoughts into the article. Counting that as a “strike” is up to y’all.
I’m on the defensive because of the personal way that what I wrote has affected people. I stand by the impulse that read me to write the post, but the implication that I’m hostile to women really really really hurts my feelings and I want to be as clear as possible that I don’t feel that way.
“Most importantly, to a budding young queer comic writer to realize that The Market is much more interested in queer-exoticizing yaoi than anything an actual gay man would pour blood/sweat/tears into… is certainly disheartening. I understand this to be a pretty uncontroversial sentiment.”
This, more or less, sums up what I was trying to say. Thanks, Cluppy.
No one is saying you have to like anything. I don’t particularly know about or care how accurately BL represents gay men or what BL is about, that’s not what I was taking issue with here. If you think that Michael Arthur and others are arbitrarily dictating what BL artists should and should not do based exclusively on their perspectives, it means that you’re fundamentally misunderstanding what’s being said.
What I should make clear is that my comment wasn’t directed towards BL comics, but solely to the angry comments being made. I’ll repeat: no one is saying you can’t do anything. Writing and reading stories with gay characters is totally fine. However, when gay people point out that those stories don’t represent their experiences, responding with angry denial says that you are explicitly uninterested in learning about gay culture, and would rather objectify it for your own sake. It means that you don’t respect gay people enough for their perspective to matter to you.
When I said “dominant culture”, what I meant was heterosexual culture at large. I understand you probably do have some connections to gay culture and such, which is great. But if that’s the case, you should understand why throwing such a fit in opposition to what gay men think about representations of gay men in media sounds a lot like putting gays in their place.
P.S. I started writing that like a few hours ago before the above comments, and now it seems inappropriately fiery overreaction. Just wanted to let it be known that I’m not angry with anyone on this thread either, it’s just kind of a personal thing than makes me feel bad inside and that’s where any venom comes from..
“To suggest a misrepresentative gay lit is pardonable because it’s consumed within a powerless readership though, is… well, not entirely comfortable. I’m sure many yaoi readers are reflexive enough to realize that the contents are entirely disassociated with real bi/bi-curious/gay men.”
Well, yeah, but girl’s heterosexual romance manga is entirely dissociated from the desires/preferences/self-image of real straight men, too. The point of both genres is to sell idealized images of men which have been shaped exclusively for the preferences of their female readers. And part of this is the compartmentalization of girl’s media, especially in Japan; men aren’t expected to notice or care because they wouldn’t lower themselves to read that stuff anyway.
Adding to the problem, I think, is that no-one’s stepped up to the plate and published any gay men’s manga in translation, so no-one’s selling the idealized images of men designed for men. From internet scuttlebutt I hear that some small publishers have tried, but the Japanese rights-holders have inflated ideas about how much money the licenses are likely to bring in.
“Most importantly, to a budding young queer comic writer to realize that The Market is much more interested in queer-exoticizing yaoi than anything an actual gay man would pour blood/sweat/tears into… is certainly disheartening. I understand this to be a pretty uncontroversial sentiment.”
I certainly see where this is an issue, but frankly, I don’t think it’s BL’s fault; the comics market just isn’t much interested in realism in general, unless it can be sold as memoir/nonfiction. Realism is for lit-comics; the average buyer is looking for escapism.
Hi Andy;
“However, when gay people point out that those stories don’t represent their experiences, responding with angry denial says that you are explicitly uninterested in learning about gay culture, and would rather objectify it for your own sake.”
Um, one more try: I’m not denying that BL does not reflect real gay men’s experience. In fact, as I said above, I agree 100% that BL doesn’t reflect real gay men’s experience, and I think the vast majority of BL fans also agree on that.
There’s a bare handful of BL authors who have ever claimed any relevance whatsoever to real gay experiences (Fumi Yoshinaga and Miyamoto Kano come to mind), and those authors are generally the ones who are well-regarded by gay readers. Most BL authors are 100% upfront about the fact that BL is in the market of providing idealized fantasy romances for women, starring idealized fantasy men who are pretty and like to cook and never spit on the sidewalk and have next to no relation to actual men of any orientation.
Just to note, I kind of am aware that these issues have been discussed in other venues. I thought Michael’s perspective was interesting as a gay comics creator who is interested in yaoi but has reservations about it, which is why I wanted to publish it.
” I don’t think it’s BL’s fault; the comics market just isn’t much interested in realism in general, unless it can be sold as memoir/nonfiction. Realism is for lit-comics; the average buyer is looking for escapism.”
I think that’s indisputable. However, it’s not clear that this necessarily gives middle-aged straight men a pass when their chosen escapism is filled with ridiculously proportioned women falling out of wisps of nothing. And it doesn’t give them a pass (necessarily) because fantasies touch and influence reality — not always for the bad, not always in obvious ways, but still. There are ethics involved in one’s escapism. How you represent someone else matters, and just saying “this isn’t real” doesn’t stop it from mattering.
Michael isn’t just saying, “this isn’t real.” He’s saying (among other things) “this denies the existence of gay identity (as opposed to a more fluid bisexuality) and that has political implications which are problematic.” And he’s saying too (re the prettiness) that it represents potentially normative ways in which gay men should look and behave, and that that’s also potentially problematic.
How it’s problematic, or whether it really is, are I think open questions. Superhero women fit into all sorts of heterosexual representations of women, so it’s easier to see what that means and why it might not be ideal. Yaoi and BL aren’t very mainstream, they’re consumed by groups that have their own history of marginalization — and the portrayal of gay men is clearly positive, and involves identification as well as objectification. It seems much less exploitive than straight men’s interest in lesbianism (though I’ve written extensively on that subject, actually, and it can be fairly complicated as well.)
Hoo boy, when I started reading the article I was planning on writing a pleasant little comment about how, in my own experience as a gay comics creator, lots of women who like BL also seem to enjoy realistic depictions of gay men in comics and that while you probably shouldn’t market your work AS BL that you also shouldn’t be shy about reaching out to these fans.
But now after reading through these comments and your own comment about how you actually have no plans to “actively market to the BL community”, that perspective is feeling a little off-topic. :/
But what the hell. I think it’s still worth saying.
One reason that I, myself, “actively” market to the BL community (as well as to other gay men), is that, well, I really find women to be pretty awesome and I get a lot of pleasure out of sharing my stories with them and hearing their reactions. And based on the comments I’ve been getting, it’s been my experience that a significant number of BL fans find realistic depictions of gay men (and various male body types) to actually be refreshing and appealing. Out of the 14,000 subscribers who follow my comics, over half are women. I know it’s not a huge sample size, but from your comments (and your pain at being misunderstood) you seem to me to be someone who values the perspective of women. Maybe I’m being presumptuous, but part of me wonders if you might actually *want* to share your work “across the aisle” as it were.
I guess I just want to say that if you would like to build a readership of more guy-on-guy loving women, then you should jump right in. The water’s fine. Maybe be cautious about offering critique until you’ve swam around for a bit, but in my experience, there’s no need to try to fit in with traditional yaoi conventions if that’s not your thing. Speaking from my own experience, well done guy-on-guy stories often seem to appeal to women who like more traditionally Japanese guy-on-guy stories. Go figure. :)
FWIW and IMHO, BL fans tend to give some of the most thoughtful and interesting reactions to my work. Sharing your own work with them is an experience that I think a lot of gay and bisexual comics creators would enjoy and benefit from.
“Michael isn’t just saying, “this isn’t real.” He’s saying (among other things) “this denies the existence of gay identity (as opposed to a more fluid bisexuality) and that has political implications which are problematic.” And he’s saying too (re the prettiness) that it represents potentially normative ways in which gay men should look and behave, and that that’s also potentially problematic.”
Well, while I agree with this on some level, I’m not sure how problematic the problems really are.
Firstly, straight men as a group have a significant amount of control over both media depictions of women and actual real-life women, whereas BL authors/readers have zero control over gay culture, or gay media, or even the representations of gay men in mainstream culture. Frankly, I don’t think your average gay man has ever heard of BL; Howard Cruse and Ralf König probably have manyfold better market penetration than BL among whatever percentage of gay men reads comics.
When press kits for the Wonder Woman movie show Adrianne Palicki hiking up her dress, that’s something that everyone in the US is going to see and the average woman on the street has no ability to counter. When DMP releases something with “love” in the title and a couple of bishies looking sparkly on the cover, does it have anything of the same cultural effect on gay men? A few thousand people will buy it, a few thousand more will see it and pass it over, 99.9% of the world will never even know it existed.
Secondly, BL guys come in all kinds of orientations. There are out gay characters, closeted gay characters, bisexual characters, and confused/curious characters, as well as straight characters who “just happen to fall in love with a guy”, and some of those are pretty obviously in denial. There are few characters with a Western-style gay identity, and even fewer who are political about it, and I have my speculations as to why that is so, but to argue that BL as a genre denies the existence of homosexuality as an orientation is patently untrue. (And to be clear, I don’t think Michael is saying this.)
Thirdly, BL expectations on how gay men should look and behave are only “normative” within BL. They strongly mimic shoujo conventions of desirable (straight) men, and how much has shoujo affected real-life American men, even among men who read manga?
If BL was actually blocking the publication of gay men’s comics in some way, then there would certainly be cause for concern. But, aside from the “BL sells better” aspect, if any publisher is rejecting gay men’s work because it’s not BL, I don’t think that publisher would be interested in gay men’s stories even if BL didn’t exist.
As a quick follow-up to Alex’s comments: there is definitely a market for non-BL representations of gay men in comics (and fiction generally), and a not insignificant chunk of that market is female. I said above that I didn’t think it would be a good idea for Michael to market his work to BL fans, but that’s not at all the same as saying that he wouldn’t find female readers and/or buyers for his work.
JR, those are all reasonable points.
On the other hand…BL intersects with slash fiction, of which there is a lot…and there’s some movement of those kind of tropes into more mainstream venues (Torchwood being the big example — though that’s created by a gay man, of course.) I think there’s certainly potential for BL, in various forms, to get much bigger.
That may or may not happen. But as a boring het guy, I just feel like commodifying and fetishizing a marginalized group is worth thinking about critically, as well as other ways. And it seems like that holds true whether the commodifying/fetishizing is affecting lots of people or only some. With the caveat that “thinking about critically” really doesn’t have to mean repudiating or feeling guilty about.
PS JRBrown, your critiques have been SUPER helpful. Thank you.
“But as a boring het guy, I just feel like commodifying and fetishizing a marginalized group is worth thinking about critically, as well as other ways.”
Here’s the thing: I don’t think BL is “commodifying and fetishizing” gay men. It’s “commodifying and fetishizing” BL men, in the same way shoujo commodifies and fetishizes shoujo men (and women, for that matter). I have my own Grand Unifying Theory of BL, which I’ll spare you, but I think the main selling point isn’t that they’re gay men as such, it’s that they’re perfect, beautiful, romantic, idealized fantasy men; if they’re in a het relationship, they go in the shoujo/josei/ladies’ comic bucket, if they’re in a gay relationship, they go in the BL bucket. The market for both is largely the same.
On slash fiction… not all M/M is BL, not even all M/M for women. Slash overlaps with BL to some degree, but it’s is a separate development with its own tropes, and is less likely to involve the tropes that Michael is talking about. Torchwood isn’t BL in any way, shape or form, and I’m not sure to what extent it’s catering deliberately to female fans, although it certainly has them.
I agree that M/M romances certainly have much more market potential than they have current exposure, but most of that is potential is people, male or female, who probably wouldn’t be BL fans even if they knew of the stuff.
Michael: I am gratified that you have found my comments helpful. Please feel completely free to disagree with me, though. :)
“Speaking from my own experience, well done guy-on-guy stories often seem to appeal to women who like more traditionally Japanese guy-on-guy stories.”
Speaking as a straight female, I’d say that’s not far off-base. Although I know a fair number of yaoi/BL fans, I never really saw the appeal- it always struck me as being somewhat unrealistic and a little off, partially because a lot of my friends are bisexual or homosexual, none of whom fit into those stereotypes. Personally I’m not much interested in the sex aspect, but I would definitely be interested in a more realistic portrayal of homosexual relationships.
And Mike, I certainly don’t think you were being insulting- you were putting forth your honest opinion, which I found to be quite interesting.
Gravitation. Dude. I love yaoi like I love the sun, but Gravitation freaks me the hell out.
I completely understand why a gay man would be disturbed by the way gay men are portrayed in yaoi. I fall into a couple of groups that get fetishized with some frequency (I do not mean sex comics — and thank god for that, by the way). For instance, whenever I see wise, mystical Native Americans, discerning deeply held truths, despite their drunkenness and poverty, it sets my teeth on edge a little. It isn’t something I obsess about, but it’s there. I’ve often thought gay men would have to feel the same way about yaoi.
At the same time, I generally feel like porn is good. Your porn, my porn, whatever — the more porn, the merrier. There’s a bit of a contradiction there, of course. Some kinds of porn are obviously problematic, and some are more subtly so. But in general, porn = good. That’s my party platform.
JR…it doesn’t matter whether it’s not about “real” gay men though. It’s still commodifying and fetishizing gay men, who aren’t just paper tropes, but are actual real people. Just like the fact that het fantasies of lesbian women aren’t about “real” lesbians doesn’t, etc. etc.
But! If you want to write about your grand unifying theory of BL, I would love to publish it!
“At the same time, I generally feel like porn is good. Your porn, my porn, whatever — the more porn, the merrier. There’s a bit of a contradiction there, of course. Some kinds of porn are obviously problematic, and some are more subtly so. But in general, porn = good. That’s my party platform.”
Oh by all means, I agree. And Yaoi is not as damaging by any stretch of the imagination to gay men as chauvanistic faux-lesbo porn is to women in general.
The terms Yaoi and boys love, in use since the mid-1970s now serve as umbrella terms that only bluntly describe a dizzying warren of overlapping sub-genres
Yaoi is an umbrella term FOR WESTERN PUBLISHERS and many (but not all) Western readers — current Japanese usage is quite different, with BL/boys’ love as the primary umbrella term in use since the 90s covering both amateur and professional, explicit and nonexplicit works, while “yaoi” is a more restrictive term that grew out of the 1980s dojinshi scene and applies only to sexually explicit material. Only a subset of what gets published as “yaoi” in the states is plot-what-plot raunch in the true yaoi mold; American publishers slap the label on everything from sweet shojo BL schoolboy romances to realistic slice-of-life josei dramas that merely include a few bi/gay male characters to explicit, near-plotless yaoi porn.
If I don’t have a say in how Yaoi authors represent gay men, I’d like at least to respectfully bug them with my concerns for future consideration.
No offense meant to our host here, but I really suspect this isn’t even a particularly good venue to bug more than a small and nonrepresentative handful of BL readers with your concerns, let alone actual Japanese mangaka…
But most popular Yaoi made in Japan and in America utilize character archetypes that I feel the need to work against. First, there is this obsession with roles.
While I suspect we actually share a deep personal distaste for some common BL tropes and cliches — fixed seme/uke roles, stereotypically feminized ukes, glamorization of dubious consent or rape, etc., fetishization of youth and innocence — it’s important to remember that manga is coming from a very different cultural and historical context regarding gender roles, relationship dynamics, and sexual identity, etc. than Western countries; I so do not have the time or spoons to even try to scratch the surface on that here, but suffice it to say that even some of the material I find distasteful or offensive on a personal level is nonetheless of considerable academic interest as an expression of cultural ideals and shifting trends. And of course, these denigrated tropes may be common in BL but they’re not de rigueur, and they can also be seen playing out in different ways in other manga genres.
Yaoi authors often avoid portraying same-sex love as an expression of an exclusively gay identity in lieu of a transformative affection for a person regardless of gender.
This is indeed a popular, though far from omnipresent, BL trope — but there are also some titles that present characters with true gay or bisexual identities (Yoshinaga Fumi, for instance, has some particularly interesting examples). For myself, as a bisexual reader with a rather complicated sense of gender identity, I find the trope itself to be a relatively neutral thing. When it’s used in the most hackneyed “I always liked only women but now I’m gay for $SEME!” fashion, it provokes me into the same sort of eye-rolling contemptuous snark as many cliched het romances (manga or otherwise) or male-audience-targeted yuri/lesbian stories do; but when it manages to hit just the right notes about discovering that one’s sexuality is more fluid than societal convention has always told you, well, those stories resonate very deeply with me in a way that comics or other media grounded in “exclusively gay” (or lesbian, or heterosexual) identities do not. This is a huge part of why I read BL (and slash) — it may feel like a needle-in-haystack search at times to find the stories that speak to me in the midst of the more tiresome cliches about gendered roles, consent issues, etc., but it’s a bigger haystack with more and shinier needles to be found for my particular tastes than the other options I’ve tried in the decades since I’ve started to figure out my own sense of identity in terms of sexuality and gender. Mainstream fiction and comics are of course predominantly het, and LGBT works in my experience are dominated by the L and G side, with a lot less that’s targeted for those of us who fall into the tacked-on token letters. Which isn’t to say that I never read and enjoy het/gay/lesbian material, of course, far from it; but those works always carry their own baggage of identity and attraction being tied to gender and static, exclusive sexual identities in a way that I can’t completely relate to and often find alienating to a certain degree. But stories of sexual identities in flux, traits/behaviors/interests that are commonly stereotyped as gender-specific being validated even in characters who are the “wrong” biological sex for them, etc. speak to me in a way that I crave. I may not be the primary audience the BL mangaka are aiming for, but I know from years of discussions elsewhere that I am far from the only reader approaching this genre from a similar perspective.
By Western standards, the ideal male of either persuasion, seme (attacker) or uke (receiver) are in one way or another androgynous…Queer men of all shades have subverted the imposition of bilateral masculine and feminine beauty for personal empowerment as long as there have been queer men
OK, if you think *all* BL characters are androgynous and fall neatly into faux-het bilateral manly-seme/girly-uke pigeonholes, I really have to wonder just how much you’ve read in the genre. While there’s certainly no shortage of androgynously willowy bishonen and big-eyed jailbait innocents, they’re hardly the only game in town — I wouldn’t be reading very much if they were as I do not find the big-eyed boyishly-underaged-looking sorts remotely appealing. There are artists who draw almost all their guys butch, there are artists who draw almost all their guys super-androgynous, there are artists with a pronounced taste for older men, there are titles with lithe femmey semes and muscle-bound ukes… For that matter, you seem to be so stuck in privileging the lens of what you see as Western aesthetics as to be neatly waving away the original context of contemporary Japanese male beauty standards, where dress and grooming standards that some Americans might consider suspiciously metrosexual are increasingly popular with straight men and women. For that matter, much as I agree that it’s deeply important to point out that same-sex relationships do not automatically fall into faux-het “one plays the man and one plays the woman” fixed roles, in the bedroom or out, I think it’s important to do so without dismissing real life butch/femme queer identities as being equivalent to het gender roles.
The androgyny as presented in Yaoi, while meaningful in its own way to its readers, is not my personal experience of attraction.
Fair enough, but your experience of attraction is also not the universal gay male experience of attraction. Denigration of men who are seen as insufficiently masculine in appearance, behavior, and/or interests is hardly exclusive to straights, and what you find “obnoxiously pretty” may be perfectly to the tastes of someone else who finds your preferred type equally repulsive. De gustibus non est disputandum! (And for that matter, for those of us who are attracted to some form of androgyny in real life, or who are androgynous in identity or appearance, genderqueer, into butch/femme identities and/or dynamics, etc., there is no shortage of everyday nastiness from both straights and queers saying that our identities, bodies, and/or desires are already ugly and abnormal and wrong; it’s really neither helpful nor kind to fling around that sort of judgemental aside about fantasy androgyny for yucks. It’s not your cup of tea, got it, that’s fine and I certainly am not going to try to convince you that your preferred type is wrong and you’re bad for not enjoying the androgynously pretty — but you really don’t need to insult those who do like it to make sure your message gets across.)
Gachi Muchi titles, with chubby, muscular or hairy “bear” types with more of a gay male crossover in artists and audience are cordoned off in their own separate sub-genre known as bara in the US after Barazoku, an early publisher featuring the subject matter.
As your own link notes briefly, Barazoku was a magazine, not a publisher in the Marvel/DC/Dark Horse/etc. sense of the word; its contents included a mix of comics, short fiction, photography, and non-fiction articles and interviews. The association of the term bara with male homosexuality was reinforced by the visibility and popularity of the magazine, but according to Barazoku‘s own founder and chief editor the term actually predates the magazine by a decade. While there is some degree of creator and reader overlap between “Men’s Love”/gei comi and gachi muchi that’s greater than usual for most other BL subgenres, and Western fans do tend to sloppily lump them all together as “bara”, beyond the surface similarity of featuring more heavily-built leads they’re still fairly distinct subgenres, with differently targeted marketing and some distinct artistic and story-telling conventions. Most of the female-targeted gachi muchi I’ve seen has storylines that fit seamlessly into the BL continuum, but while there are some lovely ML comics featuring more realistic stories of contemporary gay life that could appeal to fans of more mature josei BL titles, there are also plenty of oldschool gei comi hardcore fetish/raunch titles that don’t fit in very well with the average BL publications, outside of the very small specialized niche of hardcore explicit BDSM yaoi.
Yaoi’s popularity is beginning to bleed over into mainstream genres, with adventure comics aimed at straight boys like the mega-popular Naruto and Shaman King series playing with same-sex gags
Beginning? More like “has been influencing shonen cross-demographic marketing for decades”. It ultimately goes back to the 80s yaoi dojinshi scene; as former yaoi DJ-ka who slashed popular shonen titles started going pro, and other artists (and the publishers) started to figure out that there was money to be made throwing in a bit of fanservice for the fujoshi readers.
I noticed that Yaoi titles have been getting a LOT better.
Once again I am left wondering just how broadly you’ve read in BL, or manga in general. (I mean, almost all the titles you namecheck are mega-popular shojo series from the last 15 years — how much have you read in josei, or titles first published before the mid-90s? How much have you read in non-BL genres outside the shojo demographic? How about dojinshi versus professional publications? The broad generalizations you’ve been making look like you’ve missed a lot of context.) From my perspective, BL as an overall genre is not particularly getting better or worse — however, the *American publishers* are possibly getting marginally more open-minded about putting out a slightly wider variety of the works that can fall under that umbrella — Fumi Yoshinaga’s done well enough that more of her josei titles (BL and non-BL alike) are getting licensed, I’m still a little shocked that Sadahiro Mika’s gritty prison-sex Under Grand Hotel got licensed, influential older series that have been out of print for years like Kizuna and Viewfinder are being reprinted, etc. — but that’s still just a drop in the bucket; there’s maybe a little more toe-dipping into niche titles, but still no gachi muchi (or real gei comi, for that matter), little to no of the hardcore fetish stuff like Tori Maia, almost nothing in the way of the trailblazing 70s/80s titles…and I’m really not holding my breath for any of those, either; I’ve seen far too many cases where the quirkier or older titles I’m most interested in have gone on endless hiatus, been dropped by the publisher, had the publisher go out of business mid-series, etc. to expect huge changes for the better any time soon. *sighs*
All very fair points, JRBrown. Bottom (ha) line: Yaoi overrepresenting queer sex in comix industry is more the symptom than the cause of the absence of actual queer male voices in comix. Someone else’s yums were yucked unfairly, provoking overreaction from VM. Yaoi portrays tiresome mainstream stereotype of queer sex as perverted second-rate imitation of masculine/feminine gender roles practiced among “damaged goods,” peeving this article’s author (as well as myself). VM girl alleges needless pissing party on Harmless Fun Enjoyed in Obscure Enclave of Women, and aren’t women’s genres always getting derided so brutally anyway (See: JK Rowling’s editor’s notes to her, urging her to make Harry Potter less frivolous/laughable, more “cool” to attract Coveted Boy Readership). Needless shouting/mutual contempt ensues. Feelings were bruised, but good discussions were had.
Miss Smilla — good lord. I think that’s in the running for longest comment ever on this site.
I just wanted to say…it’s great to have folks with a lot of expertise like you and JRBrown comment. And I’m sure it’s correct that you’re far more familiar with the genre than Michael is. However…as I’ve said in other contexts, I think it’s actually quite useful to hear from people who aren’t necessarily experts, but who have a stake in the genre for whatever reason (and whatever the genre is; not just yaoi.) Different perspectives are good.
“JR…it doesn’t matter whether it’s not about “real” gay men though. It’s still commodifying and fetishizing gay men, who aren’t just paper tropes, but are actual real people. Just like the fact that het fantasies of lesbian women aren’t about “real” lesbians doesn’t, etc. etc.”
Noah, I get your point, I do, but most BL is shoujo and shoujo commodifies and fetishizes everything; men, women, kids, animals, food… it all comes out pretty and sparkly and ready to be slapped into a picture frame. Het shoujo commodifies and fetishizes straight men and women and M/F relationships, GL shoujo commodifies and fetishizes lesbians and F/F relationships, BL shoujo commodifies and fetishizes gay men and M/M relationships. Realism is not the category’s strong point.
And it’s not like gay men’s manga doesn’t commodify and fetishize gay men, it just does so for a gay male audience. I recently read an essay comparing gay men’s manga to shoujo, which at the time I thought was odd but makes a certain amount sense upon reflection; shoujo sells girls’ idealized images of girls to girls, gay men’s manga sells gay men’s idealized images of gay men to gay men.
The problem is that shoujo is also in the business of selling girls’ idealized images of men to girls, and men don’t necessarily like girls’ idealized images of them. This is more of a problem for gay male readers, because the shortage of authentically gay material makes them more likely to be rummaging around in the girl stuff for whatever they can scrape up. Solution: it’s time for somebody to license some actual gay manga. Now all we need is $50K and a printing press…
Chup, I’m not speaking strictly as a girl. One of the reasons this argument flares up so viciously is that BL is one of the areas frequented by people whose gender identity is not strictly binary and whose sexuality is derided by practically everybody, straight and homosexual. BL is not great 24/7, but if you’re looking for options outside the endless cisgender framework, it is one of the few places those stories even happen.
Again, his reactions as a gay man to the tropes is fine. His explanation of why other people read them and how they read them is… not informed. Shall we say. I don’t read yaoi in a gender neutral way, period. I just don’t. It’s been mentioned already, but this is a long standing, huge argument that’s been going on for a long time. The last big (fairly public) blowup was about the lambda awards and that context is going to impact people’s reactions. Having had one’s foot stomped on 897 times means that the reaction to the 898th is going to be stronger than the first. Fact o life.
Further, while I respect that this artist wants his work to reach a broader audience, he is factually incorrect in arguing that BL readers don’t read gay male produced works. Many of them do. The last review I did here was for a radical gay male writer’s novel about sexual identity and masculinity. I read gay comics and trans* comics and lesbian comics and literature as well as criticism written by pan and bi and fluid and asexuals, too. (All of whom read BL by the way, often in different ways and for different reasons. And before anyone starts that argument, yes, asexuals sometimes read porn.)
I won’t go into details, because it’s not my place to say and a lot of the discussions take place in safer spaces, but this particular argument has caused a fairly huge rift in much of the non-cis communities, as well as between queer women and the gay community.
“Again, his reactions as a gay man to the tropes is fine. His explanation of why other people read them and how they read them is… not informed. Shall we say. I don’t read yaoi in a gender neutral way, period.”
Thanks for explaining that. Again, my tone was glib and blunt, but I don’t mean it as an attempt to marginalize anyone. The whole process was a little off the cuff. Noah asked me to write something about a) and I strayed a little too far into b) territory in trying to flesh out my thoughts. This was not my unified theory of Yaoi and I’ve had a good learning experience from everyone’s reaction. It was my failing for not staying on point, not being clear and by inadvertently turning an explanation of my personal taste into a litany against anyone else’s in particular.
I think women’s ownership of yaoi is a good thing.
“Further, while I respect that this artist wants his work to reach a broader audience, he is factually incorrect in arguing that BL readers don’t read gay male produced works. Many of them do.”
On reflection, you are right. I’m a young, inexperienced creator and somewhat inept at marketing myself. This wasn’t the best way to externalize my frustration.
Again, I hope you understand my apology as sincere. At least don’t think of me as a gay male chauvanist pig, because I know there are plenty of those. The “male gaze” business cut me really, really deeply. Please chalk my remarks up to ignorance and insensitivity in generalizing a very very complicated subject. But I don’t feel any hostility to women.
“I won’t go into details, because it’s not my place to say and a lot of the discussions take place in safer spaces, but this particular argument has caused a fairly huge rift in much of the non-cis communities, as well as between queer women and the gay community.”
I respect that, but…it’s a little unfair to ding him for not being aware of the arguments if those arguments aren’t taking place in public, isn’t it? Similarly…safer spaces are good, but they are in part safer because they’re more exclusive, which means that there may not be the opportunity for some people to talk. Surely that can have some downsides, as well as benefits, in terms of trying to negotiate issues that divide communities.
Just to speak up a little in terms of “safer spaces”… I don’t want to speak for Vom, but in my experience, most of those spaces actually *are* public. They just happen to be public spaces mainly utilized by women (and largely ignored by men). So it’s not that the arguments aren’t out there… it’s just that nobody else is paying attention. This has the advantage, yes, of making those spaces feel safer for those who use them, but they aren’t actually exclusive, as you suggest, Noah.
Melinda, fair enough — VM often mentions locked livejournal communities, but that doesn’t mean those are the only spaces.
Could you or someone link to a discussion of these issues, if such a discussion is public? I’d be interested to see differences/similarities in how it’s approached in different places….(as I said earlier, I knew it had been talked over in Japan, and have read at least summaries of some of those discussions….)
Well… honestly I have mixed feelings about that. Granted, it’s been years since I was active in those spaces myself (I’ve been playing in the scarier waters of mainstream manga blogging now for some time), but as much as I’m saying, “those things are out there for you to find if you care to,” I don’t know that I really want to just invite the whole of HU readership to barge into what is, to others, their safe space. This thread hasn’t been bad as things go, but you have to know, Noah, that you have a number of not very woman-friendly readers here who are more than happy to bring their smug condescension with them wherever they go. I’ve seen it happen before. Go look for things if you’re interested. Spend some time visiting Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Stuff is there to be found. But I don’t think I want to be responsible for pointing this entire readership directly to it. If Vom wants to, I’ll leave it to her. She’s more a part of that community now than I am anyway.
Ah, well. Fair enough.
“Could you or someone link to a discussion of these issues, if such a discussion is public?”
There is a history of this kind of discussion going back to the very first days of BL in English, but much of the older stuff is now vanished into the big electron field in the sky, whereas much of the recent discussion happens in public-but-personal spaces as Melinda indicated.
As an example of a public airing which is still extant but hopefully old enough to ruffle no feathers, there was one in 2006 that was sparked off in part by a Jason Thompson essay and in part by a Kazuma Kadoka interview (not online but excerpted below); see the Comics212 blog, in the August 9 and August 18 posts archived here (unfortunately the archive format does not seem to have preserved the comments, which were many and informative), and related posts at the olde-schoole PreCur site, MangaBlog, Yaoi911 (also see here), and a few places that seem to have disappeared.
You might also take a look at this essay by Lyle Masaki, and this recent panel discussion, and the associated comments.
For a sample of up-to-the-minute discussion, Google blog search, say, “yaoi exploits gay men” (you’ll have to wade through a lot of porn ads and content scrapers, though).
Thanks JR!
Noah,
I respect that, but…it’s a little unfair to ding him for not being aware of the arguments if those arguments aren’t taking place in public, isn’t it?
It’s really a little rich of you to complain that I won’t share these discussions with you. I’m sorry, but you have a long held pattern of ‘what female manga critics need is a guy to tell them they’re wrong!’ You just do. I really like you as a person and I really respect that there are times you make a genuine effort to include alternate voices, but you also have a real habit of attacking the hell out of female critics, especially manga critics, and non-guy readerships and approaches.
Some of those conversations did take place in public places, but I’m sure as hell not going to take responsibility for sending you and the other HU readers over there. Want to know why I don’t link to here very often? Because a lot of times, I just don’t want to subject my readership to the general fail over here.
–edited by request–
Melinda:
“Just to speak up a little in terms of “safer spaces”… I don’t want to speak for Vom, but in my experience, most of those spaces actually *are* public. They just happen to be public spaces mainly utilized by women (and largely ignored by men). So it’s not that the arguments aren’t out there… it’s just that nobody else is paying attention. This has the advantage, yes, of making those spaces feel safer for those who use them, but they aren’t actually exclusive, as you suggest, Noah.”
So Noah asks melinda to link to one of these ‘public’ spaces.
Her response:
“Well… honestly I have mixed feelings about that. Granted, it’s been years since I was active in those spaces myself (I’ve been playing in the scarier waters of mainstream manga blogging now for some time), but as much as I’m saying, “those things are out there for you to find if you care to,” I don’t know that I really want to just invite the whole of HU readership to barge into what is, to others, their safe space. This thread hasn’t been bad as things go, but you have to know, Noah, that you have a number of not very woman-friendly readers here who are more than happy to bring their smug condescension with them wherever they go. I’ve seen it happen before. Go look for things if you’re interested. Spend some time visiting Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Stuff is there to be found. But I don’t think I want to be responsible for pointing this entire readership directly to it. If Vom wants to, I’ll leave it to her. She’s more a part of that community now than I am anyway.”
About as hilarious a piece of cognitive dissonance I’ve seen in a long time.
Look, basically most of Yaoi is pimping to a niche for money. Nothing wrong with that, but it should be acknowledged.
And, Michael– grow a spine! Stand up straight, young man!
Alex, it’s one thing to say, “Hey, there’s stuff out there, go find it.” It’s quite another thing to say, “Here’s a link to a conversation that women think they’re having amongst themselves, right now. Attack!” That’s what it would feel like to me to leave a link like that here. If you’re really interested, take a few minutes to go find it for yourself. it’s really not that hard. But if you’re not interested enough to do even that, I’m not going to sick you all on those women. Because, honestly, some of you can’t be trusted. Sorry, it’s just the truth.
VM, attacking me doesn’t really get at the point, which is that you went after him for not having read this stuff, and a lot of it isn’t especially available. The first link I tried from JR is dead, as just one example. I didn’t complain that you wouldn’t link to them. I complained that you wouldn’t link to them…and then you get snarky when other people haven’t read them. I don’t mind being excluded. I don’t think it’s especially fair to exclude me and then ding me for not having been present, though.
Finally, if I didn’t attack female critics, I’d be guilty of a double standard. Because I go after male critics quite, quite hard, as you know.
In this case, I haven’t attacked anyone, I don’t think. I’ve disagreed with several people, but I don’t think acrimoniously. On the other hand, you’ve been extremely aggressive right out of the box; way moreso than the post, and significantly moreso than other women on the thread have felt the need to be. Which is your prerogative, and you’ve made many interesting points. But I don’t really think it dovetails with your suggestion that HU is an especially dangerous place that people need to be protected from. You’re perfectly capable of holding your own; I’m sure other folks are as well. (Which isn’t to say you should link anywhere you don’t want to, of course.)
–edited–
funnyanimalbooks, I really appreciate your apology and your willingness to reconsider and learn more about this topic. It’s very complicated and has a long (often painful history).
I do hope one of the things you take away is that the field for gay comics (of all sorts) is maybe more open than you’ve found to be the case so far. Persist! For instance, we held a roundtable some time ago on Ariel Shrag (a queer comics artist who was published in the mainstream, I mean, I bought my copy at the Borders in the comics section…) Not to say that they’re everywhere, necessarily, but I’ve also come across plenty of small press queer art/fiction/etc in various places, too, sometimes as e-books, sometimes as small press, etc. Best of luck.
(Note: if this comment duplicates, apologies. HU keeps autorefreshing. My technology has gone wonky lately.)
Uh, I don’t want to be paranoid here, but were my comments in mind when considering “woman-unfriendly” readership? I also recognize that chauvinism in gay men is a problem, so I would appreciate it if someone pointed out any indication that my comments were taken in this way. I mean, it would be pretty ironic if I wasn’t cognizant of that kind of attitude, so I’m totally open to criticism as well.
“The first link I tried from JR is dead, as just one example.”
Really? They all worked for me just now. Was it the very first one? It might be behind some kind of academic firewall I’m not seeing…
So, Melinda…women are these frail blossoms that must be shielded from wicked,brutal males.
Gotcha.
And yep, I have been pretty acrimonious on this thread. It’s possible that I should just not blog here anymore.
I mentioned the Lambda awards, and I’ll mention them again. This was a pretty huge public fight. It’s been discussed in lots of public forums.
–edited–
“Look, basically most of Yaoi is pimping to a niche for money. Nothing wrong with that, but it should be acknowledged.”
That’s 99% of everything, dude. Aside from the people who don’t care about being paid for their work. And frankly, I think most BL authors end up in BL because they’re fans of it. If they were just after cash, mainstream shoujo is a larger market and sells better. Even the big-name BL authors are out there doing doujins and blogging about the stuff they fangirl over; they’re people who came up through the ranks.
You know, Alex, they’re really not. But it’s really painful and exhausting to have to deal with some of the kind of sexism I see here in comments frequently, and I’m not personally going to subject other women to that just because you aren’t willing to spend 10 minutes on Google. I’m here talking in front of the HU readership by my own free will, at my own peril. They aren’t.
As I said, if you have the slightest actual interest in the topic, it will not be hard for you to find the conversations. But I’m not going to be responsible for making it easier for someone to troll the places women go to talk to each other.
I’ll try it again, JR: it could be my stupid browser.
VM, I hope it doesn’t come to not blogging here! I think everyone gets angry at various points…I’d hate to lose you.
And thanks for apologizing. I appreciate it.
Alex…as I’ve said before, sometimes people just want to talk to people they agree with. This is especially true for groups who have been historically marginalized for various reasons. It’s perfectly reasonable. And clearly from this thread female yaoi/BL fans don’t have any particular problem expressing their opinions in a more public forum on occasion!
Besides, JR gave us a bunch of links…if only my computer will follow them….
Melinda, why do you assume anyone would go there to troll?
I’m sorry, but there is no way to reconcile your statements.
Either it’s a private space, or a public one. Black or white.
Come on, Alex. There are lots of things that aren’t black and white. The web’s full of nooks and crannies. Some are public like this where you’re trying to reach a large audience; some are private by subscription; and some are technically public but aren’t looking for a large audience and essentially work as a collection of friends and like-minded folk.
And it’s not insane to think people would go troll such a space. Many guys have chips on their shoulder about these issues, and are perfectly capable of going off to make trouble.
And Michael’s got a spine; he just doesn’t agree with you on these issues. Give the guy a break; as introductions to blogging go, this has been pretty harsh. I think he’s acquitting himself nicely.
Alex, just because I’m not giving you directions, doesn’t mean the space isn’t public.
And to be clear (the first part of this is for Noah too), often we women disagree with each other in those spaces, too, and often the arguments get pretty heated. We have flame wars. We get angry. But even then, we don’t have to deal with the kind of comments we receive from men in male-dominated spaces. I know you can’t know what it is actually like to be a woman in male-dominated fandom, and I can’t blame you for that. But it would help if you recognized that as fact.
Yeah, I know there are arguments. I mean, I know some women! Even women who hang out on livejournal and the like. And like I said, it’s totally reasonable to have such spaces. Even not being a women I can see that.
Yeah, that last “you can’t understand” bit was more for Alex. Because I think he doesn’t quite get that, actually (and obviously I can only speak for myself here and not my whole gender) it takes a lot of nerve to come here, sometimes. And by “here” I mean western comics fandom in general.
My goal is for everyone who comes to HU — male or female, straight or gay, black or white or brown, cisgendered or otherwise — to be equally uncomfortable. Sort of a democracy of terror. Obviously that’s a utopian ideal, though….
However…as I’ve said in other contexts, I think it’s actually quite useful to hear from people who aren’t necessarily experts, but who have a stake in the genre for whatever reason (and whatever the genre is; not just yaoi.) Different perspectives are good.
Noah: I have zero problem with dramatically different perspectives and non-expert perspectives in and of themselves. I think they can be fascinating and enlightening for all sides and I have had some great ones in the past. I was really hopeful when I saw the text over the cut because I am very interested in hearing more gay/bi male perspectives on BL — yes, even highly-critical perspectives, or perspectives written from a non-expert, casual/new reader’s POV, so long as it’s presented as such.
This was not that article.
Michael himself acknowledges “not staying on point, not being clear”, and I fully agree that these are major faults with the article. It may have been intended as a Western gay man’s individual perspective on encountering Japanese m/m homoerotic comics written for the female gaze, but it came out rambling and rather unfocused, with very little in the way of the more individualized /THOUGHTS ON YAOI that I was looking forward to reading. Much of the overt personal content is about his own work and plans thereof, with yaoi coming up only as a tangent in asides about possible cross-marketing — not that I blame him for wanting to talk about his own stuff, of course, but that’s really not the angle I was expecting from the text above the cut, and a more in-depth discussion of the feasibility or lack thereof of trying to interest BL readers in what Michael wants to do with anthro comics, how much BL readers are or are not interested in Western comics, other specific sub-genres, real gay stories, etc. could have made for a perfectly interesting separate article in its own right. Most of his discussion of BL, OTOH, was presented not in terms of personal reader reactions and thoughts. Instead it wandered between second-hand theorizing of how the female audience reads it and presenting a series of broad-generalization factoids, many of them inaccurate, mostly phrased in a authoritative-sounding neutral voice that comes across to this reader as sounding more like statements of fact, rather than personal opinion/experience. This latter element is the primary objection I sought to address in my comment. Without any prefatory remarks or clauses explaining that these are impressions or generalizations formed by his limited reading in genre, flat statements in the vein of “this is what the characters are like, this is what the sex is like, here is the history of a piece of jargon” can come across sounding like an expert delivering inarguable facts; this is problematic when the writer is not actually an expert and the truthy-sounding statements are inaccurate. It should go without saying that even the most value-neutral sort of errors of fact like incorrect date citations often provoke an almost automatic reflex towards correction among many geeks with a strong interest in some particular subject; when those inaccuracies include more loaded material that’s frequently used as a negative stereotype of one’s pet hobbyhorse, the urge to set the record straight can be even stronger.
Allow me to demonstrate with a sample line from the article:
Most works operate with relationships broken down between an older, potent suitor and his innocent, feminized cypher whom he pursues.
Presented with no other qualifiers (most works in his local library? most works on the shelves at the Borders he just went shopping at? most works licensed in English? most works that he read in that class at SCAD? most works published in the last five years?), I don’t see how this sentence can be read as anything other than a blanket statement about BL as an umbrella category throughout its entire history. And in that context it simply is not true. “Many”, I’d even have been willing to go along with, this is a very popular trope, but “most”? I will spare you the laundry list of titles involving aggressive/seductive ukes, innocent semes, older ukes/younger semes, age-peer partners, hypermasculine ukes, feminized semes, topping from the bottom, both partners feminized, both partners hypermasculine, “reversible” pairings without fixed seme/uke rules, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam. Suffice it to say this is merely one trope among many, and I would not be reading much BL at all if this were almost all there is because I find this trope unappealing on many levels.
Aside from its inaccuracy, another problem with this sort of statement is that it really doesn’t leave much room to encourage any sort of interesting dialogue. “Most yaoi relationships fit this pattern.” “No, they don’t.” Sure, a more knowledgeable respondent could choose to go into excruciating detail with providing specific counterexamples, but when that statement is part of a longer list of similarly inaccurate statements, for me at least going to that level of effort for strangers starts to feel less like a conversation and more like volunteering oneself to correct somebody’s homework.
Now let’s try a slight rephrasing:
Most works that I have read operate with relationships broken down between an older, potent suitor and his innocent, feminized cypher whom he pursues.
Or to give even more personal context and fodder for conversation:
Most works that I have read, such as Gravitation and $OTHER EXAMPLES, operate with relationships broken down between an older, potent suitor and his innocent, feminized cypher whom he pursues.
This sort of alteration doesn’t even have to be done at the level of making every single sentence incorporate an explicit I-statement, of course; one could just as easily start that subsection of the article with an introductory remark noting the context of roughly how much BL one has read, noting some of the subgenres/titles/mangaka represented, and stating that the following material expresses one’s thoughts based upon those readings. Either way, that context clarification makes a huge difference, at least for this reader. This sentence is now a statement of fact about an area where the writer does speak as an expert — their own experiences and opinions. And without that lecturing faux-authority-figure voice, and with more background information to work with, some readers may find this presentation more fruitful ground for engaging in direct personal dialogue.
And clearly from this thread female yaoi/BL fans don’t have any particular problem expressing their opinions in a more public forum on occasion!
Speaking only for myself, my tendency to avoid getting involved in discussions on this sort of forum has nothing to do with lack of capability or fear and everything to do with lack of interest and numerous competing demands on my time and energy, many of which are vastly more pleasurable or of higher priority than getting into online arguments. I got my flame-warrior phase out of my system back in the days of local BBS forums and Usenet; debate as a combat sport no longer holds much amusement for me.
“I got my flame-warrior phase out of my system back in the days of local BBS forums and Usenet; debate as a combat sport no longer holds much amusement for me.”
But…good lord! Then why are you writing essays here in the comments section!
“Aside from its inaccuracy, another problem with this sort of statement is that it really doesn’t leave much room to encourage any sort of interesting dialogue.”
But…there’s been tons of interesting dialogue!
I do understand what you’re saying. I think Michael did present himself as an outsider and non-expert though — perhaps not as fully as might have been ideal, but enough for it to be fairly clear. And…part of different perspectives is that they’re often not really presented in absolutely the way one might like. I think Michael’s reaction to, not all yaoi, but the yaoi he’s read, as a gay man who has both sympathy and a certain degree of alienation from the genre is worthwhile. I don’t think his admission that there were weaknesses in the article means that it was worthless.
I mean, I’m happy enough to agree to disagree. I feel like it’s been a fairly valuable discussion of issues which, while familiar to some, don’t necessarily usually get aired in spaces like this. I’ve certainly been happy to have you contribute (as always!)
Noah: flame wars come and flame wars go, but OCD pedantry lasts forever. *shrug*
But…there’s been tons of interesting dialogue!
YMMV, and obviously does. This is perhaps newer and therefore more interesting to you, but as JRBrown and Vom Marlowe and Melinda Beasi all noted, the issues and arguments raised in the article and within some of the comments are not remotely new in manga fandom, BL-specific (or for that matter, slash fandom) or academic writing touching upon these fields. Does that make Michael’s opinions any less valid, or unworthy of being expressed? Of course not. But to those of us who have heard the arguments before, it’s really just not particularly interesting to see them trotted out yet again under different bylines, and the factual errors and issues of focus and writerly technique don’t really do them any favors.
I think Michael’s reaction to, not all yaoi, but the yaoi he’s read, as a gay man who has both sympathy and a certain degree of alienation from the genre is worthwhile.
Writing about his thoughts and reactions to whatever subset of yaoi he’s read would absolutely be worthwhile and interesting, which is why I was so disappointed that there was so very little of that sort of content in the actual article. Only one actual BL series is even specifically mentioned by name; the handful of other manga series he cites are shonen or non-BL shojo. Most of the talk specifically about BL is in the form of very broad generalizations, with no context provided as to what sort of sampling he’s basing these generalizations from — not that a smaller sample makes a personal opinion worthless, but providing some context here gives the reader valuable information to understand just how representative a sample he is working from, and better understand where his familiarity with the genre, with the critical sphere around it, etc. stands in relation to their own familiarity with these worlds. And what about those readers who may have little or no personal experience with reading manga in general or BL manga specifically — given that this is primarily a lit-comment hangout, I’m guessing that folks like Melinda, JRB, VM and myself with a long familiarity with those scenes are the exceptions rather than the norms? So how are those non-manga readers supposed to follow along with the assertions Michael makes, when for the most part he doesn’t even cite some specific examples so the reader can check them out for themselves, if so inclined?
Again, I’d like to reiterate that even if he is working from only a very small sample reading of actual BL, that does not mean I think he has no right to form and express an opinion on those particular texts; and I do think that it is possible to construct an interesting and worthwhile piece of criticism without having a deep familiarity with the genre that such a small sample reading is drawn from. But I must say I find it rather curious and deeply ironic that, given your numerous prior complaints about the lack of critical rigor from (predominantly female) manga bloggers and critics, you’re highlighting a piece that is rather deficiently written in terms of structure, focus, and citation; a piece which the author himself, to his great credit, freely admits was “a little off the cuff” and unfocused — yet you’re strenuously trying to defend it to me by citing the emotional validity of the author’s perspective being grounded in mixed feelings of sympathy and alienation.
“flame wars come and flame wars go, but OCD pedantry lasts forever.”
Hi, Miss Smilia? I don’t disagree that pedantry is irritating, clearly, but I do want to point you back up to my comments explaining why this criticism isn’t trivial, no matter how many times it gets brought up (and hence why it gets repeated so often in the first place). Women mangaka should be free to write comics how they choose. I only want to make clear that the impulse to correct representations of gay men comes doesn’t come from a patriarchal or controlling desire to beat on BL artists, but something that cuts a lot deeper than emotional validity.
I’ll take your word for it if you say you’re not prejudiced, because I think obviously no one here is. Also, JRBrigg’s points in the discussion since have been very explanatory, and settle the issue overall quite nicely. I just want to reiterate what the subtext of the exasperation in the other reactions is to those of us unfamiliar with the BL scene.
Hey Miss Smilla.
I never said that critical rigor was the only, or even the best, way to approach all work in every situation. I really didn’t. And I publish lots of off the cuff reviews here. Happy to do it! Write some myself.
I’m not merely highlighting the emotional validity. I’m saying that a gay man has a right to point out that he finds the portrayal of gay men in yaoi alienating and kind of creepy. Especially when he takes pains to say that he understands that the work is not for him, and that that’s okay. I also think it’s natural that that perspective would entail a lack of expertise — because, you know, he finds the work creepy and alienating, and doesn’t want to read a ton of it.
I mean, for what it’s worth, I don’t find yaoi creepy and alienating. Most of it I’m not super interested in, but there have been a couple of series I’ve enjoyed a lot.
Miss Smilla made this statement
and it got somewhat slid over, but I think it really gets at the crux of the issue here, and is really important.
I think there’s a lot of tenseness at our historical moment about this: fluid, non-normative identity — identity that doesn’t map onto normative bodies, bodies that don’t partake in normative identity, etc. — is easier to embrace from a marginalized position. Once you decide to resist the marginalization, group identity gives a position of increased power — but group identity, especially a validated group identity, is always at least a little bit normative.
It’s just a contradiction that we haven’t thought our way out of because group identity is still so powerful: the validation of any group identity (especially fairly specific ones) establishes a norm and can function as a marginalization of individuals who don’t fit that group, but the validation of the individual identity that doesn’t fit can also marginalize EVERYBODY who does fit the group. Validation and pluralism can be very uneasy bedfellows.
Caro, that’s a great point — and yeah, I think it is a good bit of what Michael was getting at…and why it’s been such a contentious discussion. Because those issues are really pretty intractable.
Sharon Marcus talked about it here.
I don’t disagree that pedantry is irritating
Eric: you seem to have rather widely misread my remark about flamewars vs. pedantry. That was a bit of self-mockery in direct response to Noah’s asking why I wrote such a lengthy response here despite a stated disinterest in argument as combat sport: I was drawn out initially by the compulsion to correct errors of fact, and have been focusing my response to Michael’s article on matters like factual errors and technical issues with the writing precisely because I do not wish to get involved in a vicious flamefest or look like I am somehow trying to attack Michael as being a bad person. I was not attempting to call Michael a pedant, as either criticism or praise, for presenting a gay man’s perspective on BL tropes that reflect . (And if you haven’t gathered as much from my earlier comments, I actually would have considered his article to be much more strongly written and interesting if it had included a bit more pedantic attention to citing specific details and a bit less off-the-cuff vague generalizing.) You’re of course totally entitled to consider my impulse towards pedantry irritating, of course.
I just want to reiterate what the subtext of the exasperation in the other reactions is to those of us unfamiliar with the BL scene.
FYI, in case you missed the brief personal aside in my original comment (I wouldn’t blame you, it was a TL;DR wall of text) I am queer myself. Much like VM, my reading and viewing includes a great deal of genuine GLBT material — fiction, history, memoir, criticism, and yes, even erotica and porn; and I’ve been drifting in and out of the fringes of various queer social circles IRL and online since the early 1990s. I’m not particularly in need of a Gay Culture 101 primer. That’s actually a big part of why I keep harping on my disappointment with the article being so vague and non-specific: I *wanted* it to be better written, even if it was more strongly negative, because I think it’s a good and important thing for more queer voices to be heard in non-queer spaces like these. I really, really, don’t have a problem with him not liking BL and showing how some of its tropes reflect negative stereotypes about gay men; I just wish he’d presented his arguments in a more carefully focused and thoughtfully written way!
That same context of personal experience with gay culture is also why the one thing where I attempted to chastise him on a personal level rather than critiquing his writing was on the same thing JRB called out, the whiff of femiphobia that I also thought came through in some of his remarks about androgyny and femininity. Again, I am quite aware that the mainstream stereotype of gay men as epicene or downright effeminate is widely reviled by gay men, and I am no way trying to criticize him if he does not find androgynous men attractive, in real life or on the printed page. If he finds Van Darkholme hotter than Johnny Weir, if he’d rather read Tagome Gengoroh than Tori Maia, hey, rock on, dude! It is so not my place or my intention to tell him what he should like. But at the same time, I have also seen firsthand the sort of ugly crap that some gay men direct towards nelly queens, and it disgusts me. And that’s in turn a small part of a whole ugly, painful continuum of gender policing that goes on in so many other spheres, something that’s affected me and many of my friends directly in various ways; it’s not just political for me, it’s personal. So in a space like this, where many of the readers have not had Gay Culture 101, or Gender Issues 101, let alone BL 101, I’m deeply concerned that discussion of masculinity/androgyny/effeminacy and homoerotic attraction, if not carefully thought out and presented, could all too easily invalidate the already-marginalized existence of folks like real-life femmier bois, and the real people who *do* find them attractive. Intersectionality, it’s complicated stuff.
And that last comment was meant to be directed to Andy, not Eric, apologies for the miscite! Scrolling back and forth through this wall-o-text is clearly making my brain blur, mea culpa.
“So in a space like this, where many of the readers have not had Gay Culture 101, or Gender Issues 101, let alone BL 101,”
There’s a lot of discussion of feminism and gender issues on this blog. I mean, there are various readers, and I can’t say what people have or have not read or want to talk about, but you seem to be coming from the assumption that this stuff doesn’t get talked about here. That’s really not the case. I mean, the last couple of posts are about Jenna Jameson and feminism, about Truffaut and feminism — skip down and there’s kinukitty’s BL review — not so long ago I had an 8000 word interview about queer issues with Sharon Marcus… I don’t know. Maybe you don’t like any of that, and of course that doesn’t mean anyone in particular is an expert on anything, but I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that these issues aren’t discussed here. (And…you’re also kind of mistaken to see this as a lit comics blog. We talk about lit comics occasionally, but not really more than about superheroes or film or gekiga or BL or fashion or visual art or a whole range of things.)
Oops, you’re right, I wasn’t reading your comments nearly close enough. Thank you for clarifying that.
There’s a lot of discussion of feminism and gender issues on this blog. I mean, there are various readers, and I can’t say what people have or have not read or want to talk about, but you seem to be coming from the assumption that this stuff doesn’t get talked about here.
OK, I’ll concede that I phrased that remark rather more broadly than I should have — it’s a fair cop, guv’nor! I am actually aware that there are posts here that discuss feminism and gender issues, and I have indeed read many of them, although of course you’d have no reason to know that since I so rarely comment here. And yes, I’m aware you have readers who will participate in discussion on those sorts of posts — and since I do not read every post here, let alone every comment thread on every post, I shouldn’t have spoken so broadly about your readership as a whole. But…I have never seen anything in which HU is presented as an explicitly feminist or queer space; in the various comment threads I have read, I’ve repeatedly noticed some regular commenters who routinely express attitudes that I consider toxically misogynist — and you’ll note that in just this discussion thread alone both Melinda and VM have also expressed strongly negative attitudes towards the sexism and condescencion that they also perceive in some HU commenters. Now, this is your house and you’re of course free to run it as you see fit — but given that the in-house rules so far as I have observed appear to be largely laissez-faire, I have to cast my vote in agreement with Melinda and VM: HU is not what I would consider a safe or welcoming environment for women. And I am speaking not as a delicate flower who needs to be sheltered from the big bad boys; my perspective is not so much one of wariness as weariness. I’ve spent large portions of my working life and online existence in overwhelmingly male-dominated spaces, and I’ve grown increasingly tired of that familiar thread of misogyny and dismissal after dealing with it for so many years. I’m not afraid to speak up, I just don’t particularly want to deal with the aggravation of even looking at some of the problematic commenters who might respond.
In the interest of fairness I will also admit that I have not to date noticed quite as much of a pervasive pattern of negative commenters expressing directly homophobic/transphobic remarks, but nonetheless I would still personally be deeply wary of considering this a safe space for discussion of issues relating to queerness or gender variance; in my experience, disdain towards women, towards queers, and to those who aren’t “properly” gendered is frequently very strongly linked. (I am in agreement with JRB’s earlier comment that a lot of the condemnation and negative stereotyping around these gender and sexuality issues can be boiled down to the the exaltation of masculinity and the denigration of femininity.)
As for my lit-comics remark, well, I will again concede that I phrased that somewhat badly — I do know from prior reading that HU contains posts about more than just comics, and I do know that even the comic reviews aren’t exclusively about lit comics. But the thing is, when I think of HU I don’t really think of HU as a collective; I think of it as your house, you’re the name off in the “CONTACT” sidebar, you’re the first name given on the list of bloggers, I keep seeing you speaking from what I would interpret as a position of management or ownership; so rightly or wrongly, I think of you as the definitive voice of HU, as it were, and the rest of the contributing writers and columnists as your guests. And I have to say that where comics are concerned, I do think of you as a lit-comics primarily, because when I look at you talking about manga — the manga roundtables, the Moto Hagio posts — I keep seeing you expressing your objections to individual stories, to styles of criticism, in terms that looked to me like the yardsticks you were using for good comics and good comic criticism was coming from the lit-comic side of things. And I seem to recall other commenters from the more manga side of things getting into it with you. So in my head, you are Lit-comics Guy, not Manga Guy, and HU by association with you is in the lit-comics zone too.
Anyway, backtracking slightly, for what it’s worth I did read the Sharon Marcus interview earlier this month and thought it was interesting, although I didn’t choose to comment there for numerous reasons, some of which I’ve noted here already. But in response to the bit you requoted earlier in this thread in response to Caro — for what it’s worth, I didn’t actually sit around torturing myself with questions of identity when I first realized I was attracted to a woman — it wasn’t sturm und drang for me, more sputtering-lightbulb, “oh, hey, ok. I guess that means I’m bi.”, shrug and move on with my life. There was reflection and reconsideration, sure, that context made me look at certain earlier female friendships in my life in a new light, but no longer thinking of myself as straight just didn’t feel like a big deal.
The process of realizing that my sense of gender identity was complicated in ways that aren’t really suited to a soundbyte description here was a more gradual thing, growing slowly out of readings from Kate Bornstein and other trans and intersex writers who helped me find a framework to start thinking about all the ways in which I’d never felt like I was quite the sort of girl everyone was telling me I should be, but again the process wasn’t torturous and I don’t much care that it hasn’t left me with a simple label that will be readily understood by others, but I’m OK with that. I don’t feel the need to have a label for myself, and if other people freak out because they can’t pigeonhole me neatly, that’s their problem, not mine.
I do still tend to use the old if somewhat incomplete bi label when speaking to mixed crowds like this, partly out of force of habit and partly because it works to get the “not straight, not gay” message across quickly and clearly, without having to explain terms like “pansexual” or “omnisexual” or defining what exactly I mean by “queer”. But the gender fluidity and the sexual orientation fluidity really aren’t two separate axes for me.
And finally, so long as I’m on a roll of backtracking and speaking more personally than is my usual wont here, fuck it, I’m gonna go back to the beginning and chip in my $.50 on the “everyone has a butt” matter. Yes, Michael, there’s a lot of really idealized and unrealistic buttsex to be found in BL, and even many BL readers themselves will criticize or mock the worst examples. There’s also a lot of really lousy unrealistic het and lesbian sex in other manga genres, and you’ll frequently find those same grimacing faces there too. But to be perfectly blunt, none of the prettified sex-grimaces I’ve ever seen in BL manga could hold a candle to some of the goofy-looking O-faces I’ve seen in real life from people who absolutely were enjoying themselves quite thoroughly at the time, thankyouverymuch. /kifujin_has_no_shame_kifujin_needs_no_shame
“I have never seen anything in which HU is presented as an explicitly feminist or queer space;”
It’s a space where feminism and queer issues get talked about with some regularity. I don’t think it does women or gay people any special favors to cordon those issues off from other discussions in all cases. My decision not to do so is in part about my own interests. It’s also a feminist decision. Some of the women who write here are interested in feminist and queer issues, but aren’t interested in writing or participating in the kind of exclusive communities you describe. Among other things, such exclusive communities can also be hard on individuals who don’t toe the party line, quite (as Caro mentioned, and as this post has perhaps demonstrated to some extent.)
The point is just that feminism and feminist spaces and/or queer friendly spaces can mean various things. I don’t believe your definition is the only one. I think it would be a bad thing if it were the only one (though I think your definition is important). And, for example, I believe that holding Moto Hagio to high aesthetic standards (which she often passes!) is entirely congruent with feminism.
I mean, I know it’s prolematic for a man to try to create a feminist space, and it’s certainly good to be challenged on it with some regularity. Maybe I should just say this is what I’m trying to do, or what II hope I’m trying to do, rather than that I think I’ve especially succeeded.
“I keep seeing you expressing your objections to individual stories, to styles of criticism, in terms that looked to me like the yardsticks you were using for good comics and good comic criticism was coming from the lit-comic side of things. And I seem to recall other commenters from the more manga side of things getting into it with you. So in my head, you are Lit-comics Guy, not Manga Guy, and HU by association with you is in the lit-comics zone too.”
Nobody who’s actually interested in lit-comics thinks of me as a lit-comics guy, just as nobody who’s actually into manga thinks of me as a manga-guy. I hate lit-comics. I’m way meaner to them than I was to Moto Hagio. Like, it’s not even close. Similarly, I write about my hatred of superhero comics with some frequency. If it comes to genre, feminist theory is closer to my heart than any of those.
Wonder Woman, for instance, isn’t lit-comics.
I know that Noah said earlier–in a semi-joking tone, but I think he means it–that he wants HU to be a place that is equally uncomfortable for everyone. I hadn’t really considered things in those terms before, but I thought that was an interesting statement. Obviously I can’t really know if he’s succeeded, because I’m only one person, so all I can say with complete certainty is that it certainly isn’t a place that feels “safe” or “comfortable” to me. I do think, though, that this conversation has helped me to identify why.
HU is a place where you must always have your guard up. Where any vulnerability you’re foolish enough to show will be identified immediately and pounced upon. It is a place where one must absolutely have a thick skin, or else suffer the consequences. Alex’s comments earlier, taunting me for thinking I need to protect fandom’s “delicate flowers” pretty accurately reflects the general attitude of the blog, at least in my experience.
This is not necessarily a horrible thing. Maybe we all need to be cut down to size from time-to-time. But as a women in our culture–and maybe especially so as a woman in geek culture–what can feel tiring at times and not especially useful about this is that… well, that’s everywhere for us. We don’t need to seek out a particular place in order to experience that sense of peril. That’s pretty much just walking-around-in-everyday-life of surfing-around-in-everyday-fan-spaces for us. So when we seek out conversation online, we’re often looking for something different. We’re looking for spaces where we can lower our guard. Where we can carry on conversations about the stuff we’re interested in without having someone constantly telling us that we’re doing it wrong. We’re not fragile little blossoms who need to be coddled. We’re just exhausted from having to maintain that impenetrable shield day after day after day.
So, no. This isn’t a woman-friendly space. And maybe it’s not a people-friendly space, and that’s what Noah is looking to accomplish. But for us, it feels no different than male-dominated fandom in general. The result is the same.
“Peril’ is a bit excessive, don’t you think?
Not from my perspective, Alex, no.
But thanks for coming along to make my point for me. Heh.
Hey Melinda. I understand what you’re saying. And I understand that the subjective experience is similar. But…surely there’s a difference if your interlocutors are on a footing of equality? That’s not the only feminist goal, of course, but it’s arguably one feminist goal? You obviously find it worthwhile to come here occasionally. When you make an argument, someone almost invariably has your back. I understand that it can get exhausting…but surely safe spaces can be exhausting too, in their own way? I mean nobody (except me, I guess) needs to hang out here all the time….
And Alex…I’ve been known to sneer at Wonder Woman. On one memorable occasion, this prompted someone to assume I was a fan of Flash or Superman…. When, of course, in reality, I don’t care about the Flash and kind of hate Superman. No one appreciates the purity of my animosity!
Hmm…I think we can all bear in mind that there’s a difference between critiquing a person’s assertions and attacking that person. That’s a line that Noah doesn’t allow to be crossed– as I found out yesterday when I posted something that did cross that line, and Noah rightly deleted it.
Of course, the one shades grayly into the other. If I say ‘that’s a stupid argument’, superficially I seem to be characterizing the argument, but in fact I’m calling the other person stupid.
You’re right of course, Noah–obviously I think this place is worthwhile or I wouldn’t spend time here. I absolutely give you credit for creating the space I most often choose when looking to tread into dangerous waters. (insert non-graphical smiley here) And yeah, the safe spaces can be difficult in their own way.
I should be clear, too, sometimes women create spaces that are woman-unfriendly, and those are invariably worse than the spaces created by men.
Melinda: You’re using the word “safe” to describe internet debate. The victimization some of the posters in this discussion are displaying is a bit much. I would say a space where people are equally allowed to say what they think is as “people friendly” as any place can get. Some of us don’t need protection from words we don’t like.
Drew, the thing is…women do still face discrimination, and the internet really can be nastily misogynist and unpleasant in ways that men don’t have to deal with. The same’s true for queer folk. Marginalized groups when faced with discrimination have always organized in places (virtual and otherwise) where they can build community. It’s both a reasonable and politically canny response. My point isn’t that those impulses are wrong or that people shouldn’t do that. It’s just that other venues can be valuable too in different ways.
Well, I think the harshest things said in this thread are in VM’s initial post, and again I think this is due to a basic confusion: she accused the writer of the article of attacking her sexuality, which he certainly didn’t do.
Of course, the one shades grayly into the other. If I say ‘that’s a stupid argument’, superficially I seem to be characterizing the argument, but in fact I’m calling the other person stupid.
In that vein, Alex, let’s take your comment immediately above: ““Peril’ is a bit excessive, don’t you think?”
What you’re doing here, and you may not realize it, is that you’re telling me that my description of my own experience in life/fandom/whatever is wrong. You realize, don’t you, that this can’t actually be the case? I used the word “peril” purposefully, because it best describes my experience, and since you can’t possibly know what my experience is, you can’t possibly judge the accuracy of my statement.
I’m sure it seems like a small thing to you–certainly nothing to get worked up about. And as an isolated comment, it probably isn’t. But I think one thing you may not realize is that this is something men do all the time. Women are constantly being told by men that what we experience is wrong or doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t match a man’s experience. So while your single comment may seem innocuous to you, as a woman, it’s just one more instance of a man telling me that what I experience or feel is wrong. So in the end, your comment has a much greater impact than you probably imagine or intend.
‘Peril’ of what? Violence (physical or mental)? Damage to reputation? Other? It’s an inflammatory word in this context. I’m not telling you that what you feel is wrong, but that you are possibly using the wrong word to express that feeling.
Women are never at all backward in mischaracterising a man’s experience, feelings, or intent, either. Far, far from it.
Alex, you are continuing to make my point. Do you not believe that I am familiar with basic English vocabulary? If you want to ask me to elaborate on my use of that word, I’ll be happy to, but to suggest I don’t understand the meaning of the words I’m using is so insulting, it doesn’t encourage me to want to continue conversation with you.
I am not using the wrong words to express my own feelings. I understand and comprehend my own feelings very, very well. If you’d like to understand them, feel free to ask me why I feel that way. But it doesn’t seem like understanding is your goal here.
Hey y’all.
The frame of conversation that I’m attempting to criticize yaoi for not fitting my personal taste, or that I want to minimize the experience of the women and men who enjoy it is bumming me out. I’ll state clearly that any attempt to invalidate anyone’s experience of yaoi is imagined.
I understand wholeheartedly how one could come away with this kind of reading and I have apologized several times while attempting to clarify my position and make amends. I am grateful for the yaoi fans who have held me to a high standard of scholarship and have educated me a great deal about what makes them tick.
My intention was to write in a kind of critical vacuum about my experience of negative gay stereotypes, as well as my taste and my insecurities about finding a market for my work without denigrating anyone else’s taste. I listen to black and death metal, and most other people don’t. I’d be upset, too if anyone used their own barometer of musical taste to invalidate mine.
I state explicitly (if a little clumsily) that because of my outsider status, it is MY experience that is invalid for practical purposes. Yaoi fans and authors have ownership over the subject, and they shouldn’t change what they love to fit my taste. Yaoi fans, keep loving yaoi and don’t let me bug you.
I’d really like it if we all could maybe smoke a joint and have some kind of truce. I’m all for a rolicking discussion, but I’m not out to hurt anybody’s feelings.
Actually, Melinda, you are making my point. You are mischaracterising what I said.
Of course you know the meaning of the word ‘peril’. I never said or implied otherwise. I am saying that you’re using an excessive word as a rhetorical device. We all do that– I as well.
For those who want to know what horrible, oppressive thing I said to Melinda, here it is:
–‘Peril’ is a bit excessive, don’t you think?–
Wow. How sexist of me.
Melinda:
‘But it doesn’t seem like understanding is your goal here.’
Here you are presuming to judge my intent, and deliberately casting it in the worst light possible. How is that different from what you accuse me of doing? It isn’t, of course.
Language isn’t neutral. When you accused me of ‘taunting’ you, you chose the word deliberately there, too. ‘Taunt’ isn’t a neutral word. It was chosen to color me darkly.
That’s fair rhetoric, but after you can’t really claim to be on the side of the angels concerning the use of language as a tool of power.
Alex, seriously… do you not see that by insisting that my use of that word was excessive is telling me that I’m wrong about my own feelings? It is not an excessive word. That is my actual experience. For you to continue to deny that this could possibly be the case is one of the worst examples of “mansplaining” I’ve ever seen.
I officially give up on you.
I’m hesitant to weigh in because of the perception of invaldating experience — “unfriendliness” is legitimately very subjective and I agree there are specific instances of real, meaningful, serious misogyny in comments here just like everywhere else on the Internet. I just want to mention that HU has always been vastly more welcoming to me than most other comics sites — as well as, it’s worth saying, most fandom sites dominated by women. It is fandom period that I find unwelcoming, always unwelcoming, regardless of the gender bent of that fandom, because fandom has normative standards that are so rarely my standards.
I think it can be difficult — even for people with perfect intentions — to finesse the difference between supporting women and validating things women like. “Feminization as derogation” is still a huge problem, but not all women like the same things. I am a straight female, but Michael’s perspective in the original article honestly feels more natural to me than Melinda’s — although I feel sure both Michael and I would side with Melinda’s politics in general, and I appreciate and value and support her desires and needs for safe spaces (and I guess I’m squeezing Melinda here into a metonymy for all the commenters who have taken this position).
But that said, female fandom’s safe spaces have never felt comfortable to me. I’ve never been able to master their culture — perhaps my lit-crit bent, and specifically the psychoanalytic tint to my feminism, neither of which I want to give up, makes those spaces less safe for the people there. I like the argument here. I like to take the hits directly. It doesn’t tire me out. But I think a lot of that is that my aesthetics — not just my artistic aesthetics but my social ones as well — tend to align as much with typically male aesthetics far more than typically female aesthetics. It’s much more uncomfortable for me to hang out in female spaces — because in every experience I’ve had with them, they have made me feel inadequately “female” because my social preferences were different. I don’t experience that as safe at all; I absolutely do not experience it as prejudiced, but I do experience it as stifling. But that’s because we’re different, not because one of us is right and another wrong.
To be reductive, on the internet, I can choose to get beaten up for being a woman or I can choose to get beaten up for being an elitist academic. What makes HU “safe” for me is that Noah keeps the arguments from going ad hominem. He allows frustration and tries to curb anger. That works for me.
So I’m struggling with the broadness of this critique. I don’t want to imply that there are not comments and attitudes here that are misogynist. But I also don’t think disliking manga (or any subgenre of manga, or the manga subculture, or manga criticism) is immediately misogynist just because a lot of women like manga, just like I don’t think my strong preference for lit-comics (or whatever) should automatically put me at odds with my gender.
I think we have to be able to criticize something, even to critique it fairly harshly, without also invalidating the people who appreciate it. It’s so much more complicated than that, and I think we should be more attentive to the complexity…
Alex, honestly. You’ve been around enough to know the gender implications of claiming that emotional peril isn’t perilous. Think about the role of emotional abuse in domestic violence.
As far as I can tell, which isn’t far, you’re either saying it isn’t hard on her emotionally, in which case you’re invalidating her experience, or you’re saying that it doesn’t matter that it’s hard on her emotionally. Neither is helpful.
Hi Caro,
I completely understand why you might feel safer here at HU than in other spaces. One person’s comfort zone is not another’s, and certainly when I make generalizations about “women” what I really mean is “women or others who have experiences similar to mine,” and even then, who fits into that generalization varies depending on whatever I’m specifically talking about. You’re absolutely right, and though I made some vague stabs at acknowledging that, I probably didn’t do so clearly enough.
As a point of interest, I’ve actually been on Michael’s side of the BL discussion more than once, and I expect my own experience with the material is more similar to his than to Vom’s or JRB’s. I’ve actually even discussed this topic with JRB in my own blog. So while I agree with those who have said Michael wasn’t careful to be clear in terms of contextualizing his argument, I actually wrestle with the points he brought up as a BL fan all the time.
In fact, here, I’ll link to a post in which I express displeasure with a few of the same things Michael did. It’s a much lighter post, deliberately as non-political as I could make it, and I spent the first few paragraphs trying to be as clear as possible about the fact that my comments were about my personal taste only. I’ve been less careful in the past, and regretted it.
It’s not nearly as ambitious as what Michael was going for here, nor as serious, and I recognize that, so it’s not like I got it right and he got it wrong. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I wasn’t trying to go as deep as he was, because I realize that I’m not knowledgeable enough about BL to do so. But I really do understand some of his experience here. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. Lots of BL fans struggle with this stuff too, as we try to figure out why we like what we like and what the ramifications of that are.
Let me add mine to the voices asking Alex to chill out.
In terms of peril…it would be weird if I experienced HU quite that way since it’s my blog…but I definitely don’t experience it as safe either. I have a post next week which I think is going to cause a certain amount of static, and it’s kind of making my stomach hurt. Different people have different levels of tolerance for conflict for all sorts of reasons, but there definitely is a risk in talking in public, and as Caro says that risk is often higher for women.
Chill out?
Noah, Melinda, not I, has been the bad-faith bully from the start of this kerfuffle.
Here’s what she deliberately misinterpreted:
Alex:
’Peril’ is a bit excessive, don’t you think?’
Now, the LOGICAL response to that would be:
“No, Alex, I don’t think that’s excessive at all, because…”
But Melinda is so wrapped up in the power of her passive-agressive blitz that she chooses, instead, to launch a mendacious attack on me.
I asked her AGAIN to say why she considered herself in peril on this blog:
‘Peril’ of what? Violence (physical or mental)? Damage to reputation? Other? It’s an inflammatory word in this context. I’m not telling you that what you feel is wrong, but that you are possibly using the wrong word to express that feeling.
She responded AGAIN by a vicious ad hominem attack, saying that I was ‘insulting’ her. She apparently will go to any length to avoid answering the question, including smearing me.
This gives her insincere protestations of transparency a bitter irony:
Melinda:
” If you want to ask me to elaborate on my use of that word, I’ll be happy to (…)”
Melinda, I asked you to do so TWICE. And NEITHER time did you do so.
Noah: why are you going along with this? I’ve got a penis, so obviously I’m in the wrong?
I suggest you re-read the whole sub-exchange. Melinda really is a bully.
I, for one, think that it is contemptible to try to force every contributor to HU, whether in articles or comments, to walk on eggs and bow the head around any other contributor.
I have been circumspect and tactful beyond reason dealing with her, but that doesn’t seem to deter her power trip.
To sum up:
I am in the right; Melinda is in the wrong. Her idea of a “safe place” appears to be one in which she has absolute dominance, where contradicting her is a sin..
If that’s what you want, Noah…well, it’s your blog.
(And no, I can’t chill out when I’m being defamed. I am angry. I don’t accept being tarred and feathered for the ego-boost of Melinda and her chums.Noah, why do you allow this?)
I’ve enjoyed this discussion from the sidelines and found the original essay to be a good example of the way power works at various levels of cultural representation. And, contrary to what some here have claimed, I haven’t found anything quite like this through a Google search. So, hoorah for Noah’s blog.
I’ll be the chorus of 1 in thinking Alex (that delicate flower) has made some good points here, and that there’s not been anything particularly excessive in his rhetoric (I emphasize ‘here’). If a poster has claimed that an accommodating platform such as HU is somehow perilous to her subjectivity, then why, without any other evidence but hints of some other place (out there, but who knows where?) should we take that person’s interpretation at face value? I’m not denying anyone’s experience, or truth in hinting at that experience, only suggesting that it’s quite reasonable to be skeptical of such an interpretation, given the misrepresentation of the current essay and the overwhelmingly pro-feminist and pro-queer sentiments expressed on this blog that we have in front of us.
I think Caro is entirely correct to relate all of this to fandom, since the heated responses to anything critical said of something do with manga remind me of the reactions I used to regularly encounter from superhero fanboys.
The comparison with superhero fanstuff is actually illuminating, Charles…let me think on’t.
Agh; I had a giant comment and it got eaten. Short version I guess:
Alex…if you weren’t expressing skepticism about Melinda’s characterization of her feelings — you could just have said that you were misunderstood, perhaps expressed some regret for the confusion, and moved on. Misunderstanding could have been cleared up and moderate happiness prevailed. Instead you escalated.
Charles — I think the fandom is right. I think it’s even more charged because BL intersects with groups that really are marginalized…and some of the hostility to the genre really is tied into the marginalization. So I feel, at least, that they have more of a leg to stand on when they push back…though at the same time, I feel like BL is an art, not just a community, and so it has to be open to criticism — even from people who aren’t experts or who are not in the demographic, and even from people who don’t really like it or who find its tropes problematic.
And actually…I think probably everyone is now angry at me and the blog, so I think maybe it’s time to close the thread. Thanks for everybody who commented, and for Michael for posting. I wish it had been a little less contentious, but I learned a lot and hopefully others found some aspects of it worthwhile as well. Thanks again.
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