If you’re a fujoshi, I hope you

have a wonderful day and continue to enjoy whatever fiction you want :D

OP you owe me and every other gay man €50 and also your bones

Why? My taste in fiction is none of your concern.

It IS my motherfucking concern because your ‘fiction’ is fetishising me and has a real life impact on MLM

But of course you don’t give two shits about gay men

Yeah, because me reading manga in the comfort of my own home has such an impact on your life. I don’t even know you. I’m not ‘fetishizing’ you or anything else. You don’t even cross my mind when I’m reading BL. So no, you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t read. That’s just ridiculous.

@chuckle-voodooz Yep, that’s the tea.

You’re literally not even MLM so don’t try speak for us

I’ve seen firsthand how fujoshi’s affect MLM IRL, i’ve been fetishised myself as a ‘hot yaoi OTP’ 

And?? Just say you read BL, don’t call yourself a fujoshi because fujoshis have their reputation for a reason, they’re fucking trash. 

I’m not speaking for you, I’m speaking for myself. This is my opinion. If you want an opinion from mlm, I suggest you try @himedanshi @satans-tiddies or @rottenboysclub . Sorry to bug you guys so often, but some people seem to think you don’t exist. In fact, try looking up the term fudanshi. It means a male BL fan.

Sounds like you’ve met some homophobes. Call them what they are. Homophobes. You don’t get to take a Japanese word and redefine it as you want. The Japanese BL fandom has kindly allowed Western fans to use the term and be a part of their community. You don’t treat gifts like that.

Fujoshi means a woman who enjoys mxm slash content of any kind. It has nothing to do with a homophobic woman. Homophobic women and fujoshi are not synonymous with one another, and if a mxm fan happens to be homophobic, then that’s what they are…homophobic.

The term for male fans who like mxm content is fudanshi. I am a fudanshi, and more of us exist. You can refer to yourself as these terms with as much freedom as you like, and is greatly encouraged to do so.

As a queer man, I am really tired of these redundant, heavily Westernized arguments. I’m sorry that you have had the misfortune of encountering annoying fans, but trust me when I say that the term fujoshi isn’t homophobic. Its roots come from misogyny but has since been reclaimed. Many LGBT+ people, including those who are native to Japan, identify with these terms (there is also fujin, which is less used but available for non-binary folk and the like). It is actually easier to call yourself a slash fan rather than coming out as LGBT+ in some places; Japan especially. You can check through Rottenboysclub to find sources, or check my master post linked on my blog.

Additionally, as long as any kind of fan leaves real people alone and respect boundaries, then there is literally no issue to be had here.

“Protect gay men!” “Don’t speak for MLM”, but what if…what if we don’t agree with you? What do you do with people like me?

I’m tired of these arguments because I swear, most of you don’t seem to listen, or actually care about protecting queer individuals.

@chuckle-voodooz

When you say “you can be a fan of BL but don’t call yourself a fujoshi” what you’re essentially saying is “you can be a fan of BL but don’t call yourself this Japanese word which means a fan of BL.”

We, as gay men, already have words in English for women who objectify us. You can call them “fag hags” or “homophobes” or “objectifiers”… (and yes, there are Japanese equivilents of these terms too! Fujoshi isn’t, and has never ever been one of them!)

So there’s absolutely no need to take a fandom term from a language you don’t speak and apply a negative meaning and stereotype to it, and then, when native, heritage and JSL speakers use the word in its original context with its original meaning, you attack us, claiming that it means what YOU decide. That isn’t okay.

I still hate Fujoshi’s and will never ever support them, they have their stigma for a reason, the word Fujoshi is the way it is FOR A REASON.

I don’t give a motherfuck what language its from, English, Japanese, fucking Klingon its the connotation of the word and what its came to mean. Words have weight whether you like it or not. And fujoshi has a heavy weight in homophobia and fetishisation.

If you call yourself a fujoshi i will never interact or trust you.

I am a gay man that speaks Japanese. I also have a special interest in linguistics. Where that’s relevant, I’ll come back to a bit later.

The word fujoshi has the stigma it does on tumbr is because the current wave of anti-fujoshi ideology on tumblr comes from the blogs fujoshi-bullshit and ftmfujoshi, which are run by TERFs. They specifically chose the word fujoshi because it wasn’t English, so they could lie to English-speakers about what the word meant. According to them, it means “a female (afab person) who fetishizes gay male relationships” - which, in TERF speak actually means “a gay trans man”. So they took this word from Japanese specifically to be transphobic, and to call gay trans men “females that fetishize gay male relationships”.  So by using THIS definition is rather transphobic, and I’d recommend to not play into TERFs hands.

While it’s true that the connotation of words and what they come to mean is important, that DOESN’T mean that they lose their other meanings, NOR does it mean that a word is simply reduced to its stereotypes. For example, if it WERE true, I wouldn’t be able to call myself gay because I don’t speak with a lisp or have a limp wrist or hate women (as those are common stereotypes of what it means to be a gay man where I’m from).

In addition, clearly the connotation of fujoshi used in the OP refers to the definition that defines fujoshi by the Japanese definition (woman who is a fan of slash), and not the western TERF definition, as they have stated as much themselves. By arguing otherwise is a linguistic fallacy. It’s a type of equivocation. It’s a similar thing that happens when anti-fujos argue that “fujoshi means rotten girl” and apply other english definitions of the word ‘rotten’ to it, which is an etymological fallacy.

@chuckle-voodooz it does matter where the word comes from, because American and European anglophones are forcing negative stereotypes onto words from a foreign language that are still used positively or neutrally in their culture of origin, and speakers of that language have asked others not to do that.

Even if you somehow ignore the horrible transphobia behind tumblr and twitter’s anti-fujoshi campaign, don’t you think it’s a little fucked up for westerners to take a Japanese word that’s used by many maginalized people in Japan, and tack onto it a negative meaning to demonize the (mostly Asian, mostly AFAB) people who use it?

This isn’t the first time this happens. English-speakers taking a Japanese word, twisting its meaning and then using it to fuel a “Japan is so weird/backwards/messed up” narrative is a well-established pattern:

Anime - JPN meaning: animation, animated movie or series.

Western stereotyped meaning: “animated series from Japan, which are invariably bad, weird and/or perverted”.

Otaku* - JPN meaning: geek, nerd, someone obsessed with a particular subject (mostly, but not necessarily, anime, manga and games).

Western stereotyped meaning: “antisocial, cringy, obnoxious anime fan“.

Geisha - JPN meaning: a woman who’s a professional entertainer and trained in traditional Japanese arts.

Western stereotyped meaning: “a Japanese prostitute”.

Hentai - JPN meaning: abnormal, weird, especially something or someone sexually deviant.

Western stereotyped meaning: “pornographic anime, which is always weirder and more disturbing than western porn”.

and now:

Fujoshi - JPN meaning: female fan of M/M fiction and pairings.

Western stereotyped meaning: “homophobic woman who objectifies MLM (i.e. TERF dog-whistle for trans MLM)”.

Perhaps you’re not bothered by this, because it doesn’t affect you, but this does bother many Asian fans, especially Asian LGBTQ+ fans who engage in “fu” communities because they’re welcoming environments, compared to the relatively conservative, sexist and homophobic societies of their home countries.

(You told who-gives-a-ship to not speak for MLM, so I’ll also ask you to not speak for all MLM either. Many Asian gay men, including myself, do not agree with what you’ve said.)

* Otaku, like the phrase “obsessed with [smth]” in English, doesn’t have a positive connotation, since it’s implied that the person is interested in something to an unhealthy degree, but its use is becoming less and less negative over the years. There were episodes of moral panic over otaku in Japan during the late 80’s-early 90’s (especially over the infamous Otaku Killer), but this was not a significant factor in the negative connotation of the word in the West.