I’m tired of women and non-mlm people pretending like they’ve somehow separated themselves from homophobic yaoi obsessions and the fact is that fandom is inherently rooted in fetishization and objectifying queer men by non-queer men.

Love Simon is the most blatant and egregious example of a story claiming to be about queer men being written by someone who has absolutely no fucking idea nor experience about queer men’s experiences making insane profits off of turning us into white neoliberal nonconfrontational and neutered bastardizations of our identities for the sake of yet another Netflix Original or bestselling book sold in paperback at Target for 17.99USD.

The problem is that even remotely trying to say “Hey maybe women in Fandom should stop fetishizing and objectifying gay men and writing porn of gay men for other women. Maybe this should be addressed” will get accusations of misogyny and queerphobia and at this point I’ve been at my fucking limit for a while and so someone trying to tell me fujoshi is a slur will just get the response “Good, I’m fine with calling women who turn gay men into sex objects and porn for their selfish pleasures slurs based on that”.

inneskeeper:

the-manwich-horror:

I can understand the concern, but I am not sure writing smut about two characters you think are hot having sex is turning anyone into a sex object or porn.

Even if someone has an actual fetish about same sex pairings (as opposed to a heterosexual wanting to find both people involved in a fantasy scenario attractive), what is so bad about that?

The harm of objectification comes when human beings are treated as objects for someone else’s gratification. No real gay or bisexual man is affected in any way by somebody writing nasty dude on other dude action for themself and their friends. It is possible those people might turn around and be gross to actual mlm, but that is a a separate problem and it is entirely possible to do one without doing the other.

I think there is a degree of misogyny is criticisms of fandom for fetishization, not because their isn’t fetishization there, but because the primarily femalse, self-expressive aspects of fandom (like fan art, fan fic, gif sets, etc.) are criticized and pathologized, whereas the massive straight male appetite for lesbian content, served by comics, cartoons, and pornography isn’t treated with remotely the same disdain.

I know it is more complex than can be done justice to in a tumblr post, but I really think we ought to relax about letting people do what they want with their sexuality as long as they aren’t hurting or pestering anybody who isn’t interested.

Part of me wants to thank you for proving my point like this by completely dismissing the harm yaoi and other forms of “bl” media has caused real bisexual and gay and trans men by its harmful queerphobic and fetishistic tropes and pearl-clutching about how it’s misogynist to state that women writing porn of gay men for other women is fetishizing and objectifying gay men (literally definitionally).

Most parts of me are just fucking exhausted by you and every time I’ve been forced to see someone try and look me in the eye and pretend this isn’t about fetishization, objectification, and entitlement within women-dominant spaces in fandom towards queer men’s sexuality and life experiences.