MY ARTICLE 'The influence of transphobia, homonationalism and anti-Asian prejudice: Anti-BL attitudes in English-speaking fandoms' IS LIVE!!!
‼️[ PLEASE READ MY THREAD IN FULL ‼️ ]🧵
Article link:
[ An excerpt from my paper is in the thread below👇🏽]
It's been 21 years and I'm still waiting for a Children's animated film to go as unapologetically historically hard as Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron
This movie was very directly and specifically like '📢BOO AMERICAN COLONIALISM AND IT'S ABUSIVE SYSTEM BOO📢'
I'll never forget one time someone came to debate about the ethics of sexuality in fiction on one of my posts. I brought up Game of Thrones and they responded "My mom won't let me watch it yet but-" and I just sat with my face in my hands for a good 5 minutes.
I remember when teenagers used to hide their age and were afraid to look like a stupid kid online, now they're all nearly bragging that they're a minors and confidently saying the dumbest shit about serious topics as if they're enlightening the world
Same-sex marriage in the US has only been in place 6.5 years and there are way too many young queer people acting like: "What is a closet and why would anyone ever want to be in one? If you are not out you simply do not exist."
And projecting that whole harmful attitude GLOBALLY.
Made this for all the Western Anglophone bitches mad about 'My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness' ("A Report on Being So Lonely That I Went to a Lesbian Brothel") & pretty much EVERY other piece of media with LGBTQIA+ characters
You're all miserable people & I don't like you✌️🏽
I will say it 1 million times: Only allowing visibly out LGBTQ+ people to engage with queer media isn't the woke take people think it is, it's just gatekeeping.
This may come as a shock, but not everyone realizes they're queer immediately.
I think one reason for the recent spike in "puriteen" discourse is while Queer representation is making waves in kids' media, there's still no LGBTQ+ history taught in schools & anti-trans groups are spreading misinfo. So teens are taking mass marketable LGBTQ+ content to heart🧵
Sheltered gays need to stop framing every piece of gay media that doesn't have a happy ending as bad representation. Yall forgetting that some queer people's lives can suck, and judging media from other countries or eras while totally ignoring the political & legal contexts is 🤡
The entitlement people have over small LGBT creators has /got/ to stop. Other queer people don't exist solely to create depictions only you like. None of the discourse around "Good" Representation focuses on what OTHER LGBT people actually enjoy reading.
I'm losing it from the people saying a book with the title 'Killing Stalking' wrapped in plastic & a WARNING PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT label is 'misleading' because it's in the vicinity of other PG-13 comics w/ romantic themes
WITH THIS COVER HOW COULD IT BE ANY CLEARER
The way people in Eng-speaking fandom freak out about BL/Yaoi as a whole has me like; what if Asian audiences just took 'Interview with a Vampire', 'Hannibal', & the library of Chuck Tingle and were like 'I can't believe all Western queer media is so freaky & toxic like this😭'
New fans need to get stronger.
You know you can just ignore canon, right? You don't have to harass a creator, you don't have to lament your ship. You can just not give a fuck and do what you want in your toybox.
How do you think we gays thrived pre-2014 LMAO
On the topic of racism in fandom, way too many people are not addressing the consistent Anti-Asian racism, and the horrible xenophobic ways people behave towards Asian fans because of translation errors or what fiction they create and consume. It's been bad & keeps getting worse.
'Marry My Dead Body' is a Taiwanese heartfelt Queer comedy film on Netflix and it's SO GOOD. 10/10 please watch.
"After finding an odd envelope, Policeman Ming-han's life takes a spooky turn: He's now wed to a ghost husband, and they must solve a crime"
Has anyone else had certain LGBTQ series ruined for them because they keep getting pushed as 'Good Representation' which has often become synonymous with family-friendly. No mention of the plot or characters, or anything that actually makes me excited to read it, just 'Good Rep!'
IT'S LIVE!!! 📖
‼️[PLEASE READ MY THREAD IN FULL] 🧵
The official link to my article is: !
It is not Open Access at this time, but you can request a (free) PDF copy directly from me
here:
or here:
[1/4]
I need a lot of people to realize a strong contribution to the purity discourse in media we see among young people is due to radfems & gender criticals poisoning the water supply on sites like Tumblr since 2014. It's been 10 years. 10 years of disinformation culminated.🧵(cont..)
My favorite part about this tweet, the comments & QRTs is how now fujoshi have become recognized as elder gods. Forest spirits that come down from the mountain to give a small or dying series their blessing to renew it with life once more.
Over the past several years a toxic unspoken rule has become normalized in fandom where a victim is not allowed to retaliate if the harassers are younger than them no matter what horrible things they say or the privacy/safety laws they break and that needs to be discussed.
I told them not to engage with posts like that and told other people talking with them to block them and they were like 'i don't see how my age is relevant' and we
I think one of the funniest things about these takes is that fujos got their "bad" reputation by being unpalatable to men: taking media made for cishet men, homoeroticizng, sexualizing & "emasculating" Shonen male characters for their own ends. But that's upholding patriarchy?
Ima say it straight up, a lot of it is misogyny, dare i say internalized for some ppl..? Patriarchy is really the bane of all our existences and i wonder how long it will take until fujoshis learn to decenter their life from men
I want the James Somerton scandal to remind people that any researcher should be MORE THAN HAPPY to share their references & resources with their audience. Be wary of people who have a lot of heavy things to say while having seemingly no other sources than themselves saying it🧵-
You can consume all the wholesome LGBTQ+ media you want, BUT if you at all think not consuming NSFW, or "taboo" LGBTQ+ media makes you morally superior, newsflash: the outside world doesn't give a shit how "wholesome" your LGBTQ+ media is, it's not going to make them accept you.
The people who treat taboo sexual content like
"🚫IT'S A SLIPPERY SLOPE. SOON FICTION WON'T BE ENOUGH FOR YOU, AND YOU'LL SEEK IT OUT IN REAL LIFE.🚫"
But then turn around and consume media with people being murdered, tortured or dismembered going "Haha this is so fun!"
🤡
This kind of racist and xenophobic clown shit needs to straight up stop. I see shit like this at least once a week at this point.
I'm beyond tired of seeing takes like this weekly.
Maybe some people need to see it all in one place to realize how bad it is
/anti-Asian racism
1/21
Homophobia & transphobia especially are still rampant in the U.S. WITH those "protections." Queer people are still disproportionately homeless, harmed, and there's still a giant conservative presence in the US that make queer ppl of all ages not feel safe going public, and yet.
Ppl like: 'we have had marriage equality and a buff in LGBTQ+ rights for half a decade, why is it that you a person in this country which does not have those same measures present in a way I think is disingenuous and not parade your identity publicly for the world to see?'
Pro Tip Kids: If the adults you're jumping in to argue with with think you're some jackass anti-sex/anti-LGBTQ+ conservative adults come to argue on their post mayhaps stop stanning whatever discourse accounts got you acting that clownishly in the first place.
I am begging websites and legislators to focus on making kid-specific safe spaces online again instead of trying to make adult spaces kid safe. I see kids posting 'I FEEL SO UNSAFE HERE!' & talk about how upset they are ALL the time YET THEY STAY & DON'T LEAVE; THIS ISN'T HEALTHY
The fact that so many people in fandom right now are expecting Horror media,
Horror media,
of all things,
to present a clear life lessons for a good moral compass is unhinged to me and shows just how far purity culture goes. It never stops and just gets more and more absurd.
White fans of Asian pop culture positioning themselves as White Saviors by taking it upon themselves to decide what is racism or fetishization in fandoms needs to STOP 😀
Y'all never fail to speak over actual Asians and ALWAYS end up accusing THEM of fetishizing their OWN media
We knew we were weirdos. Our whole thing was knowing we had weird/unusual interests but weren't hurting anyone & we didn't expect random everyday people to understand. Now every day people are entering the weirdo zone & getting upset there are weirdos there.
This is why people are so concerned about 'pro/anti' discourse. Engaging with fiction like this is not normal or healthy & reads like classic religious guilt:
"I deserved to be mistreated because I gave into sin"
"I have given up that sin and thus changed for the better"
People shouldn't be encouraging children/teens to use themselves as live bait!
They don't need "Back Up", it's not "Brave" they shouldn't be involved in a process like this AT ALL!
Stop turning predator hunting into a fucking unserious clout game!
TEACH INTERNET SAFETY PLEASE!!!
This young brave kid sets up and exposes PEDOPHILES online. He should at least have some adults with him or a group of older teens for back-up/protection.
Gengoroh Tagame now being aware of what Western anti-shippers are because of that proship post about that Japanese artist being harassed is a timeline I didn't expect to see this year
We need to talk about how the chronically online fandom age-gap discourse has a whole subset of young adults maneuvering the world through a fear-based lens of "everyone is a sexual predator until proven otherwise & the only reason older & younger adults interact would be sexual"
//self-harm
The fact that there are teenagers on here who think engaging in self-harm, cutting, eating disorders & physically abusing yourself are healthier than engaging with or escaping through taboo fictional art and literature shows the current state of things pretty clearly
The lack of media literacy in the QRTs and comments is abysmal.
- Person is attracted to/has a crush on someone slightly older than themselves -
QRTs: "Is this Grooming?" "I have never had a crush on someone older than myself that's unnatural freak behavior"
There are way too many miserable people on here like "I HATE Women, they're a SCOURGE on the Queer writing world and RUIN gay media with their NASTY WOMAN HANDS"
[The next day:]
"I have been informed that OP is nonbinary / a trans man and would like to apologize🥺.
However-"
Yeah they use fascist rhetoric, call people 'Degenerates' for their art & say they need to be exterminated, & tortured & joke about publicly executing them. They say Japan should be nuked again & also label Japanese & Chinese fans Pedophiles-
Oh wait that was y'all all along?🤔
Online debates about sexuality & morality are wild because you cite sexologists & psychologists going "this is actually normal" & randos will jump in like "YOU'RE DANGEROUS & KNOW NOTHING" while unironically using bizarre niche terms only found on 4Chan & alt-right message boards
We have a new reach in the fictional ship realm, fellas:
'Wanting to hook up as an adult with someone who at one time babysat you is incest'
and 'having a crush on anyone older than yourself is in fact unnatural and means you were groomed even if u never spoke to each other'
One of the reasons hate speech is important to study in fan spaces is that it's one of the few places people can "get away with" threats. Saying certain fans should be round up & shot, mutilated, or their children assaulted because of the fiction they consume is not normal.
Also for people coming to the thread out of context, this is especially about queer people in online spaces harassing closeted queer people for making queer content because they assume they're cisgender and/or heterosexual. The gatekeeping and harassment is rampant and imbedded.
The way lesbian separatists act like bi women belong to them and are disposable if they're not dating only women all the time, like wow that sure is interesting and not in any way a fucked up way to objectify other women.
"Do not interact if you date men"
Fuck off completely
I think queer Western fandom could heal a lot if people in fandom stopped claiming that any media with LGBTQIA+ themes that doesn't personally resonate with them is "made for straight people."
Especially when that media contains sexuality of any kind.
People on Twitter posting defamatory false statements with no proof targeting a specific individual that go viral: "No guys you don't understand I'm not harassing anyone I literally did nothing wrong stop bullying me for spreading defamatory rumors and driving OP offline"
I'm never letting Twitter forget that Gengoroh Tagame & the creator of Trigun know about the pro-ship/anti-shipper discourse because a Japanese artist was harassed so badly by anti-shippers that they put out a PSA telling Japanese artists to block people with 'Proship DNI' 😂
Gengoroh Tagame now being aware of what Western anti-shippers are because of that proship post about that Japanese artist being harassed is a timeline I didn't expect to see this year
Conservatism in Queer fandom is everywhere:
"If you like __ you're a fetishist."
"If you have or tolerate kinks you're an IRL abuser"
"If you behave like __ you're making the community look bad"
"No real __ likes __ and if they do they've been brainwashed or they're harmful"
I had to document this specific anti TikTok thread because it was so large scale (18k likes / over 862+ comments) and displays a lot of the fears/concerns antis have that I've addressed in both of my published articles: Mainly fears of aging & being perceived as predators, etc.🧵
For people growing up before this kid-friendly media, ALL Queer content was geared towards adults and this media WHOLLY focused on us being true to ourselves despite society treating us like freaks. I grew up with The Bird Cage, To Wong Foo, But I'm a Cheerleader and Pricilla -
TLDR; When we were younger we were exposed to adult narratives & content reflecting the beauties & dangers of Queer struggle in the real world because LGBTQ+ kids' media was banned. Kids have LGBTQ+ media now but no context for that struggle and thus reject unsanitized versions.
IK 'Puriteen' is a contentious term but I think a really good example of what that behavior /actually/ entails is seeing a 15 y/o tell an autistic adult who made a meme about being sexy to "stop sexualizing autism" when in reality autistic adults are already treated like infants-
'The Cult Structure of the American Anti'
is now live on Transformative Works and Cultures online academic journal!
Word limits required me to greatly focus the conversation, but I will definitely be publishing more on this topic in the future
People who unironically believe the outdated gender essentialist idea that all female BL readers relate to the male subs in BL because he's a "stand-in" for the 'women's' role' are weak and won't survive the winter.😂
Unless you have a PhD in psychology/therapy and the person you're talking to is your patient, you are in no way qualified to be giving people unsolicited advice on how sexual content in fictional media will supposedly affect their behavior & destroy their minds. You ain't special
Once again like clockwork there are teens interacting w this going "this clown does research on Asian queer lit I think is a joke! They can't be serious!😭" while freaking out at the website link in my bio made specifically to rectify the misinformation surrounding 'fujoshi'.
Yuri vs. Yaoi discourse in fandom REALLY needs to evolve beyond 'Women who like BL hate all women are anti-sapphic & support the patriarchy' and frame solving the problem as 'stop liking the stuff you like' (BL/slash) Can we get some nuance here, please I'm fucking BEGGING?🧵...
So you get these young people coming into Queer adult spaces like "what is this freak shit😭?"
And it's like 'Honey, we've always been here, you just couldn't see us.'
Then you get youth telling Queer adults they're cringe for behaving "stereotypically" (often femme men), and calling adult media with sexuality a fetish and bad representation because parts of it make them feel uncomfortable.
And now you have conservatism in a fun gay hat.🌈🎩
Please check out @/akikomiz's newest video "Intro to 'BL with AKIKO'"!
She is a Queer Visual Culture Theorist and one of the leading Japanese voices deconstructing BL since the early 2000's and is in the process of making her research available in English!
Remember when people treating fictional characters like they were living, breathing entities with real feelings was just universally understood as a fan just taking things Too Far, but now a whole group of fans who do this are trying to argue that it's what 'Normal' people do🧵
All of those films focused on queer people dodging the dangers of passing, very real safety issues, and social stigmas all while still trying to live their truths and take pride in their 'freak-ness' and who they are. We grew up knowing those narratives and understanding them.
Compared to now, while it's excellent kids are getting LGBTQ+ media, these series don't discuss prejudice. It simply doesn't exist or is a non-issue. And a lot of new teen/adult series (save for maybe POSE?) aspects of what the reality has been for queer people deemed 'freaks'
And TLDR; by extension, kids are growing up with positive depictions of LGBTQ+ people but learning their "History" from conservative groups that cater to childish narratives of "Yes why of course why should you have to be exposed to these nasty groomers at PRIDE? KIDS are there!"
Heartstopper fans who agree with him while at the same time bashing joyful queer media from Asian countries where content like HS has been released for ages now need to uplift those narratives instead of using HS to put them down. We're all on the same side.
joe on the positivity of heartstopper:
"i've seen some people use heartstopper's positivity as a negative, and it baffles me. [...] you can't create a world of joy without pumping some joy into it."
People need to stop with the braindead take of "Sex crimes are worse than murder because dead ppl don't have to live with trauma" How absolutely FUCKED do you have to be to think "The best thing for someone is to have the most traumatic moments of their life be their last"
I like how the "nun" discourse made everyone collectively forget the worldwide level of sexual abuse & missionary crimes perpetuated and excused by the church. Nuns have ALSO perpetuated abuse & being women doesn't absolve them of the harm they have caused children (esp Native!)
We have plenty of metaphorical films that touch on this topic all the time but this one was specifically 'Look at the dehumanization of Native people and exploitation nature' despite it not getting too graphic in terms of how Natives were treated, the sentiment was BIG there.
Yuri on Ice news I want to know about is how Mitsurou Kubo is doing because YOI was HER baby. She gave life to this show for us, & put up with MAPPA's shit for nearly a decade, she worked on IA in COVID lockdown (below img). What MAPPA did to her is every creator's greatest fear!
Shipping discourse made it so people became obsessed with differentiating between 17 & 18 y/os with "problematic age gaps"
The weirdest part about the comments & QRTs is how many people think adults started this when for years I've seen young ppl calling THEMSELVES minors when-
A key thing people need to understand is that Radfems aren't JUST about being anti-trans.
They believe:
+Women don't know what's best for themselves including sexually
+Gender Essentialism = Woman ALWAYS Good👼, Man ALWAYS Bad👿
+Porn corrupts the mind
+Have no Intersectionality
This is about a 17-year-old & 18-year-old dating. You know, students who would both be in the same grade in high school. There are also people in the comments going "As long as there's no inappropriate contact it's okay! They have to wait until the 17-year-old is 18 or its bad"💀
Find it incredible that the 'We need media literacy!' fancop crowd has horseshoed back to the wildly outdated & regressive problematic take of:
"Evil Characters should be physically undesirable and lack charm if they are bad people so it's very clear who is Bad and who is Good!"
I find it hilarious when people who only consume Western PG13 queer media complain about 18+ BL becuz it comes across like: "Unlike gay men's pornography that's wholesome and doesn't have any of those weird kinks or fetishes☺️"
Like we get it you only watch children's cartoons😭
I have to laugh because there are people desperately grabbing at straws and lying trying to say this isn't peer-reviewed when it went through a three-tier vetting process & edits and was reviewed every step by college faculty & literary professors who work with & run the Journal
IT'S LIVE!!! 📖
‼️[PLEASE READ MY THREAD IN FULL] 🧵
The official link to my article is: !
It is not Open Access at this time, but you can request a (free) PDF copy directly from me
here:
or here:
[1/4]
Fandom shipping morality discourse feels like being approached by a fraudulent street-science man in a top hat and cane in the year 1887: "Do not be shy! I am a professional! Watch in amazement as I predict a man's criminal history based solely on his literary excursions alone!"
LGBTQIA+ fandom bashing, harassing, and outing fellow LGBTQIA+ creators, artists, writers, actors, and fans in an attempt to protect the community from Straight People
🤡Saying this and turning off replies, you don't realize that's what pro-ship people have wanted the whole time for YEARS. Pro-ship people don't go around saying 'we are without sin, pure and morally correct because of what we consume. It's an issue of censorship & media literacy
"Keep it at home! Keep it behind closed doors, no one needs to know about that, CHILDREN are here." And these kids just take it all in because these conservatives are painting it in a way that demonizes and shuns Queer adults for expressing sexuality publicly as crude villains.
The funniest Fujoshi discourse will always be anti-fujos who think women created the concept of tops and bottoms in the 1970s to objectify gay men in BL and fanfic.
I feel like fandom should really bring back 'Subtext'; It was the norm before 'Queer coding/baiting' and it feels like the most neutral way to describe chemistry between characters without making any type of claim by saying 'the creators deliberately did _.' It's more flexible.
This is why it's important for people to listen to women's voices in Japan because so many see Lolita or Kawaii fashion not as rebellion or agency but as infantilizing or something they do for men's attention, and shallow 1-dimensional assumptions like that REALLY need to stop
There is a belief that a women of a certain age should dress conservatively, femininely and prettily. That women shouldn't wear big ribbons. That mothers should dress in a more reserved manner, not in a flashy way. /2
I hate what abusive people have done to fandom. The drama, the genuine abuse, all over fiction. Someone is literally dying because this kind of bullshit ruined their life. I wish these changes never happened. It's so ridiculous but it's real, and It feels like I'm going insane.
The "Be critical of media you enjoy" discourse crowd needs to realize just because someone else isn't actively being critical of that media in that VERY moment doesn't mean they aren't consuming it critically. At that point, you're leaving out the 'enjoy' part key to the phrase💀
People keep going 'How did we re-invent Puritanism?' when the whole issue this entire time has been ppl ignoring conservative groups radicalizing young teens in spaces considered inconsequential i.e. fandom. It's literally OLD purity culture being vomited up in a progressive hat.
Jon Stewart lays into the "anti-woke" nonsense: "I’m a comedian. I’ve lost two words in 35 years. Honestly, are you that fucking unimaginative that you can’t figure it out?”
Here's that inherent anti-sex narrative once again
"How to ship LGBT couples without being toxic:
Step 1: No sexual content"
Their art example was literally YOI ship art where the "normal" art was the couple cuddling, and the "yaoi" art was erotically biting a character's neck