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May. 16th, 2020 10:09 pm
Mapcourse & fujocourse
This is a repost from my WordPress, because I feel like more people will care about this topic here.
I’m periodically active on Tumblr, although not with anything map after 2018, and I often see discourse around the term “fujoshi”. This word, literally meaning “rotten woman”, appeared as a derogatory term in Japan, targeting women who like yaoi or male/male pairings in general. “Rotten” because the homophobic men who made it up didn’t want to have relationships with women who have a positive view on male homosexuality. As it often happens, the term was reclaimed and turned into an empowering label. Years after it spawned male and gender neutral variants, “fudanshi” and “fujin” accordingly. Western yaoi fans and m/m shippers (a shipper is a person who imagines fictional characters as a couple) picked up on it. Some people identifying with this term, mostly preteen and young teen girls back in 00s, created a bit of a bad reputation for it, by extending shipping onto real life gay men and making insensitive comments about them. That trend ended quickly, these girls grew up, and the new generation already knew better. However, up to this date antis on Tumblr hate fujoshi and accuse them of inappropriate behavior. Here are some examples:
“mlm happiness and saftey > fujoshi’s feelings” via mlmsouji
“fujoshis are terrible. all gay people hate fujoshis. fictional gay people hate them too. even the characters they ship hate them. marvelous.” via lesbiananti (not a troll, mind you, but a known blogger who’s also antimap)
“(op was a transmed so im stealing the post) if you support fujoshi culture and sexualize gay/bi men then unfollow me because i do not respect or care for you.” via yamchass
via kissesofaprincess
Do you see the same thing I see? Quite similar, only watered down, pettyposting that antis also engage in on map topics. Just swap “gay men” for “kids” and you get it. While it’s an established fact that the overwhelming majority of modern day fujoshi don’t act inappropriately with gay men, don’t sexually harass anyone, and keep their fantasies appropriately tagged. The similarities between anti fujoshi and anti map behavior don’t end here. In both cases you can discreetly descibe a respectful fujoshi (a woman who has m/m pairings) or an anti contact map (a person who’s attracted to children, but won’t act on it because they don’t want to traumatize them), the anti’s attitude might be more favorable. I’ve seen both situations myself. But it’s the “sin” of identifying with the label of a fujoshi or a map that makes them go wild. On a side note, no, dropping either of these labels won’t lessen the harassment, siding with other fujoshi or maps produces the same effect. Both cases are a quite radical case of what I call “war on words” – attaching as much stigmatizing meanings to important labels of someone you dislike. Most maps don’t act sexually with kids, that’s a fact. Map advocates of social media co work with CSA preventing organizations and aid research. Most fujoshi don’t approach gay men inappropriately either. Many of them are not straight themselves and are well aware of how homophobia and dehumanization in media works. Yet both groups are stereotyped as sexual predators with zero sympathy for their victims. A bonus fact: as a part of posing every single m/m shipper as a fetishizing straight girl, antis erase the terms “fudanshi” and “fujin”, which is basically misgendering of male and nonbinary shippers.
Yet many fujoshi refuse to recognize the similarity. They speak up against misinformation and stigma that targets them, but believe the same things hurting maps are justified. For many of them it’s fear. There were many pro map shippers in 2017, but antis increased harassment, and by 2018 most simply dropped out. The blog called block-report-program, dedicated to documenting and reporting abuse from antis, is a good example of that. Initially they accepted the receipts of antimaps’ abuse that I provided, but ended up deleting the posts and blocking maps – not because maps did something wrong, but because antis made a scene. Some fujoshi, however, are sincerely mislead about maps and don’t seek to check their beliefs due to lack of critical thinking. I became convinced long ago that looking for unity with shippers is a dead end, they might be hurt by the same people, but the temptation to deflect that abuse and direct it towards us is too strong. Many freedom and civil rights movements end up finding someone more oppressed to toss to their abusers in attempts to uplift themselves (e.g., white women demanding voting rights and excluding black women, some gays and lesbians trying to deplatform trans people). As a strategy it doesn’t work, it’s basically “divide and conquer” by the divided’s own hands. But people walk into this trap over and over again, because they don’t learn from history.
I’m periodically active on Tumblr, although not with anything map after 2018, and I often see discourse around the term “fujoshi”. This word, literally meaning “rotten woman”, appeared as a derogatory term in Japan, targeting women who like yaoi or male/male pairings in general. “Rotten” because the homophobic men who made it up didn’t want to have relationships with women who have a positive view on male homosexuality. As it often happens, the term was reclaimed and turned into an empowering label. Years after it spawned male and gender neutral variants, “fudanshi” and “fujin” accordingly. Western yaoi fans and m/m shippers (a shipper is a person who imagines fictional characters as a couple) picked up on it. Some people identifying with this term, mostly preteen and young teen girls back in 00s, created a bit of a bad reputation for it, by extending shipping onto real life gay men and making insensitive comments about them. That trend ended quickly, these girls grew up, and the new generation already knew better. However, up to this date antis on Tumblr hate fujoshi and accuse them of inappropriate behavior. Here are some examples:
“mlm happiness and saftey > fujoshi’s feelings” via mlmsouji
“fujoshis are terrible. all gay people hate fujoshis. fictional gay people hate them too. even the characters they ship hate them. marvelous.” via lesbiananti (not a troll, mind you, but a known blogger who’s also antimap)
“(op was a transmed so im stealing the post) if you support fujoshi culture and sexualize gay/bi men then unfollow me because i do not respect or care for you.” via yamchass
via kissesofaprincess
Do you see the same thing I see? Quite similar, only watered down, pettyposting that antis also engage in on map topics. Just swap “gay men” for “kids” and you get it. While it’s an established fact that the overwhelming majority of modern day fujoshi don’t act inappropriately with gay men, don’t sexually harass anyone, and keep their fantasies appropriately tagged. The similarities between anti fujoshi and anti map behavior don’t end here. In both cases you can discreetly descibe a respectful fujoshi (a woman who has m/m pairings) or an anti contact map (a person who’s attracted to children, but won’t act on it because they don’t want to traumatize them), the anti’s attitude might be more favorable. I’ve seen both situations myself. But it’s the “sin” of identifying with the label of a fujoshi or a map that makes them go wild. On a side note, no, dropping either of these labels won’t lessen the harassment, siding with other fujoshi or maps produces the same effect. Both cases are a quite radical case of what I call “war on words” – attaching as much stigmatizing meanings to important labels of someone you dislike. Most maps don’t act sexually with kids, that’s a fact. Map advocates of social media co work with CSA preventing organizations and aid research. Most fujoshi don’t approach gay men inappropriately either. Many of them are not straight themselves and are well aware of how homophobia and dehumanization in media works. Yet both groups are stereotyped as sexual predators with zero sympathy for their victims. A bonus fact: as a part of posing every single m/m shipper as a fetishizing straight girl, antis erase the terms “fudanshi” and “fujin”, which is basically misgendering of male and nonbinary shippers.
Yet many fujoshi refuse to recognize the similarity. They speak up against misinformation and stigma that targets them, but believe the same things hurting maps are justified. For many of them it’s fear. There were many pro map shippers in 2017, but antis increased harassment, and by 2018 most simply dropped out. The blog called block-report-program, dedicated to documenting and reporting abuse from antis, is a good example of that. Initially they accepted the receipts of antimaps’ abuse that I provided, but ended up deleting the posts and blocking maps – not because maps did something wrong, but because antis made a scene. Some fujoshi, however, are sincerely mislead about maps and don’t seek to check their beliefs due to lack of critical thinking. I became convinced long ago that looking for unity with shippers is a dead end, they might be hurt by the same people, but the temptation to deflect that abuse and direct it towards us is too strong. Many freedom and civil rights movements end up finding someone more oppressed to toss to their abusers in attempts to uplift themselves (e.g., white women demanding voting rights and excluding black women, some gays and lesbians trying to deplatform trans people). As a strategy it doesn’t work, it’s basically “divide and conquer” by the divided’s own hands. But people walk into this trap over and over again, because they don’t learn from history.
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