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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

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I have to say, one of the oddest things about western fans who “hate” (idk how much you can dispose someone while actively engaging with all of their works) MXTX is this assertion that she’s just a fetishizing straight woman (a thought that trickled over from white—ha!—ppl in fujoshi discourse). Because even though I’m not Chinese or Japanese, I have friends who are, and they’ve said the reason why ppl who consume BL keep it under wraps is not only because they’re consuming gay content but also because it’s assumed they won’t be straight themselves. The Actual stereotype is that MXTX as a BL writer, within the context of China, probably wouldn’t be regarded as straight. So this whole anti agenda just reeks of western cultural hegemony and racism to me.

Hi anon,

I am no expert on these topics which are quite complex and multifaceted, and certainly do not have possess the cultural context to comment on the everyday perceptions of people who engage in BL in Japan and danmei in China. But let me say that I do find a certain irony that the same people who will label BL/danmei as “heteronormative” to argue it is homophobic will absolutely ignore the tensions that arise out of the fact that as a genre mainly produced and targeted at women, BL/danmei disrupts heteronormative schemes of desire and norms. It is from there that the sense of “abnormality” or of disruption originates, the one that explains the existence of the term “fujoshi”.

Originated in the 1970s, this now fully matured BL subgenre has been viewed as a way to express repressed female desire and create alternative narratives for women under patriarchal society by its bold utilization of the female gaze and its subversion of heterosexual conventions (Aoyama 1988, McLelland 2000, Nagaike 2003,Wood 2006).” (Wang 2019:47)

In her groundbreaking research on danmei fiction, Feng Jin demonstrated that danmei fans sought excitement in transgressing the boundaries of conventional heterosexual romance and undermining established gender and sexual norms. (Ni 2018:10)

So it is not really surprising that I, like you, have heard some Chinese diasporic people discuss that they do not feel like they can let their parents or family know of their interest in MDZS/CQL without risking bringing attention to their sexual orientation. That being said, and while I cannot talk to the everyday perceptions of BL/danmei fans in their cultural context, all the media studies works I’ve read on the topic tended to emphasise that the majority of BL or danmei fans are heterosexual. Of course, it is difficult to take these things as absolutely conclusive, because a lot of factors (such as stigma and discrimination) may influence this perception that straight women represent the majority of fans.

The thing I think that is often forgotten is that depictions of homosexual love or even same-sex experiences are not necessarily always received as a real or at least threatening disruption heteronormative order. Lesbian porn, for instance, does not displace women as objects of male desire and of the male gaze: it is thus not transgressive and there is nothing that is felt to be abnormal about a straight male consuming these works. In another line of thought, sexologists in early modern Japan framed some same-sex romances between the then-new shoolgirls as a completely normal part of their development, as a “kind of rehearsal for entry into adulthood, that is, heterosexuality and motherhood” (Suzuki 2010:27). However, at the same time, “postadolescent ome relationships, in which masculine and feminine roles were visibly defined [between female partners], were considered ‘abnormal same-sex love’ (hentai douseiai)” (idem). Perhaps mind-boggling for the tumblr university of queer studies but sometimes, due to spatiotemporally-specific contexts, a relationship between two people of the same gender that reproduces the gender presentation and roles of heterosexual relationships can actually be felt to be more of a threat to heteronormativity (in this case because it showed a sense of gender ambivalence that precluded one of the women from entering into normal married heterosexuality and because it offered a plausible alternative to heteronormative institutions like the reproductive heterosexual family). So even depictions of homosexual relationships between men, generally made for and by women, may actually be received as a disruption to heteronormative norms in some contexts--partly because of how female desires are made normal or abnormal in that iteration of heteronormativity. Things are complex, specific and shifting. Nothing about the social perception of sexuality, desires or same-sex love is static or global. Neither are heteronormative institutions.

To me it does not mean that BL or danmei are genres above criticisms, or that the fact that they can represent subversive and empowering genres for women, some of whom are queer, means that they do not have the potential of being at times homophobic or even transphobic. At the end of the day, my take on this is simply that considering the complexity of the context surrounding BL and danmei (a context that can be difficult to access or understand for Western fans) is necessary for critiques to hold any weight, and that we are poorly served by an all-or-nothing mentality. Dismissing from the start a work of fiction because of its association with a genre, without actually looking at what is in the text, is just lazy and dogmatic? And yes, may reek sometimes of the entitled white attitude that they, unlike the backward Other, know a thing or two about queer representation.

And those are my two cents to take, as always, with a grain of salt.

---

Ni, Zhange (2018) Steampunk, Zombie Apocalypse, and Homoerotic Romance: Rewriting Revolution Plus Love in Contemporary China(working paper)

Suzuki, Michiko (2008) Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Wang, Cathy Yue (2019) Officially sanctioned adaptation and affective fan resistance: The transmedia convergence of the online drama Guardian in China. International Journal of TV Serial Narratives (V:2): 45-58.

#anon ask #fandom discussions

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flamediel · 3 years

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yo dont know yashua you cant say he's racist how woulf you feel if someone judged you based on your religion and called you racist and sexist for it? its his right ot believe what he wants and you are being like a nazi attacking him

ok, look. I was just gonna delete this or respond to this w a meme and laugh it off (and the girlies on my snap KNOW this made me cackle) but we’re talking about a particularly insidious brand of racism and misogyny and I feel the need to elaborate. for those who didn’t see this is the post we are discussing.

Let’s start by discussing the tradwife movement. this post was tagged as tradwife, so you can’t tell me it’s not associated with the movement. the hashtag is at the top of the pic and tagged in the description, so it’s hard to miss. Yashua commented on a post with those hashtags being VERY visible saying he liked that, so he v obviously subscribes to those ideas.

What is the tradwife movement? it means “traditional wife” and it originated in alt-right spaces as a means of getting women to subscribe to right-wing ideals. This NYT Opinion piece by Annie Kelly, a Ph.D. student researching the impact of digital cultures on anti-feminism and the far right, describes this phenomenon in incredible depth. Here is a short explanation of where the movement started, pulled from Ms. Kelly’s article

“Some members of the alt-right have been weighing whether the absence of women from their movement is a problem. In 2016, the Swedish nationalist Marcus Follin, who calls himself The Golden One on YouTube, made a video titled “The Women Question.” In it, he urged his followers to dial down the open misogyny and consider new strategies to win over more women to the white nationalist cause. Mr. Follin was responding to statistics from the Austrian presidential election that year, in which female voters helped swing the election away from the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party. “You might not like that women have the right to vote, you might not like that anyone has the right to vote,” Mr. Follin conceded, “but it’s about winning a long-term political victory.

Enter the tradwives.

Over the past few years, dozens of YouTube and social media accounts have sprung up showcasing soft-spoken young white women who extol the virtues of staying at home, submitting to male leadership and bearing lots of children — being “traditional wives.”

If you read through that tiny snippet of the article, what are some keywords that stand out? for me, it’s “alt-right,” and “white nationalist.” The racism there is unmistakable, and while Yashua may not be white he has previously expressed some incredibly racist viewpoints, like how him kissing a Russian woman ended racism and his saying the n-word despite doing the most to separate himself from the black community when it’s even slightly inconvenient for him. If he’s following and participating in tradwife circles, then he’s also v much a part of white supremacist and anti-black movements (yes, POC can be parts of those movements, no it does not make it ok).

The article also makes it incredibly clear how misogynistic the tradwife movement is:

Female fears of objectification and sexual violence remain as potent as ever; the tradwife subculture exploits them by blaming modernity for such phenomena, and then offers chastity, marriage and motherhood as an escape. As one such YouTube commentator, a teenager, told her audience, traditionalism does “what feminism is supposed to do” in preventing women from being made into “sexual objects” and treated “like a whore.”

It’s a lie, of course. Modesty has never been a safeguard against degradation or rape, and we know that a rapist is no less likely to hurt a woman simply because he’s married to her. But it’s not difficult to see how it could be a seductive lie; the continuous headlines made by the #MeToo movement, paradoxically, were eagerly shared among tradwife networks, as supposed proof that sexual liberation had made life unacceptably dangerous for women.

if you read this and aren’t completely appalled by how this movement preys on women’s fears to push them into pursuing subservient roles in relationships with abusive men, then idk how to better explain it for you. White female victimhood has always been weaponized by right-wing movements to tempt them into joining their ranks, but for a man of color with a predominantly brown, Latin American fanbase to be advocating for this shit? He is exposing mostly young, impressionable women of color to a culture that wants them dead, and that will happily manipulate them in order to achieve their ends. he has a platform, and he’s using it to explicitly harm his fans. This has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with the explicit rhetoric of the movement that he showed support for. he isn’t racist and sexist for being Christian (although, Christianity in and of itself is heavily tied to racism and misogyny and, like most organized religions, its members need to evaluate these stances to make sure they don't perpetuate them) he is racist and sexist for supporting ang giving a platform to the tradwife movement.

Now that we’ve discussed the movement as a whole, let’s talk about the meme itself. Of course, the biggest umbrella is Jesus Christ, alluding to how Christian faith protects followers from the “rain” or any harmful things. that’s fine, that’s just Christianity. the problem is what comes next, the husband's umbrella labeled with “protecting” and “providing for the family.” UNDER that, and thus presumably less importantly, is the wife’s umbrella labeled with “managing the home” and “having children.” The meme very clearly positions the wife’s role as subservient to the husband’s. Look, it’s perfectly okay to want to be a housewife and devote yourself to kids, but this responsibility is not less than that of the breadwinner. Housework is literally a necessity in maintaining livable conditions, and the reality is in traditional family setups it’s considered menial. if a wife wants to stay home and take care of the kids that’s fine, and if you want to marry a woman that’s into that then that’s also fine, but that woman is not lesser than you. Her role is equal to yours, and just as necessary to sustaining your life as yours is to sustaining hers. Putting a woman’s role under yours, no matter your ideal family dynamic, is sexist. That is a very basic misogynistic ideal, and we cannot ignore that.

Now, onto your comment specifically.

“how woulf [sic] you feel if someone judged you based on your religion and called you racist and sexist for it”

I am not judging Yashua based on his religion. He is a Christian, and I don’t judge him based solely on that fact. I judge him based on specific problematic things he’s said to support his Christianity. Calling Buddha an “old fat man” is racist, regardless if you’re a Christian or not. Implying that women are subservient to men is sexist, regardless if you’re a Christian or not. These are not isolated incidents with him, and they point to deeper-rooted beliefs that are frankly concerning. It’s not about the fact he’s Christian, it’s about his specific beliefs.

I’m not going to pretend that there are no problematic sects and beliefs in Islam, but I am comfortable in the fact that I don’t support them, and in fact actively advocate against many of them. I’m literally going into Human Rights to help fight the racism and misogyny ingrained in my country’s religious laws. this is by no means comparable to Yashua, and if you’re implying that I’m racist or sexist on the very basis of my being Muslim you are not only wrong but also islamophobic as fuck.

“its [sic] his right ot [sic] believe what he wants”

Yes, it is. So long as those beliefs don’t actively harm other people, especially marginalized groups like these do. and guess what anon? if he has the right to believe what he wants, so do I. and I believe he’s a racist, misogynistic asshole who is in desperate need of self-reflection. The difference between mine and his beliefs is that mine don’t actually harm anyone and are well-founded. his are actively hurting his fans, and he needs to fix up because he is spreading incredibly fucked up beliefs.

“you are being like a nazi attacking him”

um. yeah, NO. it is not like nazism to call someone out for perpetuating alt-right ideas. if anything, calling out pro-nazi propaganda is uhh. probably one of the least nazi-like thing someone can do. also equating me calling out a problematic meme to a literal genocide is anti-Semitic and tone-deaf as fuck. Don’t pull that shit here.

well then, I think this is a good enough response. I am very passionate about these issues, and if someone else wants to discuss them I am happy to, but just an FYI, I expect you to be coming in with proper manners. the only reason I answered this ask is because it was an important conversation starter, but if anyone brings this energy into my ask box again it’s a straight block. I hope that’s clear, and that this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to adjust the tags on this post, I did my best but I know this can be a triggering topic, so if you need anything specific tagged just shoot me an ask or a dm. Stay safe!

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dear-penelope · 4 years

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January 18, 2020 - Age 23

Hi. There never seems to be the perfect time to do this, so I think I’m just going to bite the bullet and do the first one, that way the other ones flow easier.

Hi. Today is Saturday, January 23, 2020. I am currently drinking a rip-off White Claw from Aldi, because that’s the kind of life I currently live. Last year’s me would kick my ass for ever /vaping/. It looks SO stupid. But here we are. But don’t be so sad! I got home from Portland this morning (I currently live in Southern California). Portland is, so far, my favorite place to travel. Let me tell you why I did it, Penelope.

Let’s name names. We have nothing to hide. We did some not-so-good things in the past, but no one is perfect. What matters is you recognize your problems, target them, and figure out how to change your toxic self in the future. Okay. Disclaimer done.

So, let’s first start off with if I was still with Alyssa, your name wouldn't be Penelope. This isn’t a post about Alyssa, this post is about you. And if by the time you’re here you aren’t called Penelope, I’ll know that choice was mine, and everything I’ll have written to you still holds absolutely true despite your name.

Penelope is a weird name. But I like it. If you have a twin sister, I like Scarlet. But at this point I’ve very happy with just you. It’s what I’ve dreamt about for a long time. My therapist thinks you will help heal a lot of parts of me that were not properly put together during my own childhood (I had this thought first... she agreed with me!). I need something to pour my love into without judgment. Facial love. Something I never really had.

Something that sticks in my head every day is when I told my mom, you grandmother, that I want a child because no matter what they’ll never hurt you or leave you. And she said the direct opposite. And she’s right. I hurt her feelings last year when I cut her off. But there are a lot of strains, a lot of factors. It takes two to tango. Penelope, I want us to have what me and my mom never had.

Holy shit. Major side track.

Portland.

Alyssa, my most recent exes, one of two of my most real heart breaks, and honey it was bad, had already visited Portland. She and her friends did not like Portland. While she was going to be away for work, I decided I wanted to go on a little vacation, too! So, I planned my first solo trip ever. Portland. Goal? Prove it isn't boring like she thinks!

Days before my trip, she broke up with me.

I almost canceled it. Pen, I cannot describe to you in words just how much I loved that trip. It was some of the happiest I have ever been. Sometimes when you visit a new place, you think, “Wow, I could maybe live here,” or you might think “So glad to be home! I love California!” But, for me, Portland was it. The energy wasn’t like California. It wasn’t dragging. It was light. Friendly. Everyone was stupid nice. There was always something to do. Not a gross feeling anywhere. I felt like myself. The most me I had felt in a long while. AND? NO SALES TAX! It’s more affordable, has public transit, much nicer people, and overall the quality of life seems much more high. Not boring in the least.

So, I took another trip. I had to. The past semester about killed me. I deserved a break. I have been working really hard and making decent money for what I do (currently nannying: through an agency and my own business. I started my own in March 2019). I loved Portland in the cold just as I did in the summer. I really think that might be where we’ll be, P.

I went to the OMSI and there was an exhibit that had displays regarding the human reproductive system and they had this sensitive area of embryos/fetus’ from like a week after conception all the way to 40 weeks. The biggest part is they were REAL SPECIMENS!!!! I have only seem them on medical Instagram. The samples were not aborted, they were lost by natural causes. It was insane. I think I spent an hour looking at them / reading about them. It really made me feel the pain for parents who experience miscarriages / even the mother dying during birth. I mean, some of those babies were SO developed (Fetuses, sorry). So developed they could’ve been born any second. So developed I could tell at least a little of their race. I saw them covering their eyes/heads, or sucking their thumbs. It’s so human. But not quite. And, well, guess it got me thinking about you again.

I sound as creepy as Joe from “You”. But I just imagine everything with you by my side will be better than I could imagine it ever to be in general (I’m sorry, I’m experiencing a lot of emotions RN: someone’s tryna argue with me on Twitter, Good Love - Aly & AJ just came on, and I’m high.

Ok. Anyway. I do want to take you everywhere with me. But being a parent is hard in all ways - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, maybe even developmentally I don't know. And I want to raise you to appreciate what you are given, because I didn’t until I was older. I was too spoiled and not taught correctly. I was given a lot. No, I’m not the most privileged child (/now adult), but I know I have a HELL of a lot more than a SHIT ton of people. And I don’t want your life to be average. I want to have a home where you can run and play, have a crib, a stupid changing table, a backyard, can take dance classes or play a sport and do Mommy & Me classes. I do want to spoil you. But I want to you know that I’m trying. Because no one really ever has.

I’m 23. Chances are, I will be seeing you within the next seven years. Meg said it’s Zack’s decision. Zack asked for advice from his dad about what he would do if he were in Zack’s spot. But he only said he’s not in Zack’s spot. In seven years, we will see if you are part of me and part of Zack. He really is a wonderful guy, so handsome, so thoughtful, and also? I already know you’re going to be so CUTE but a little me and Zack is going to be SOOOOOO CUTE (not in the straight way because like Meg and Zack are my parents). Penelope, as you grow up I will make sure you know all the truths and I will help you understand as much as I am able to teach you. I meant about the family situation, but now this is kind of applying to pretty much everything about your life.

I will be honest about who Megan and Zack are to you, who I am, and anything else you want to know. Kids are a hell of a lot smarter than adults give them credit for. I look forward to teaching you and raising you.

I love where life is now. I love focusing on me. Lord knows I need it. But I’m really really excited to see you. Sometimes I’m afraid motherhood will be too much for me but that’s something I can’t return at the store or give up on and return to next year. But then I know I have a record so far of making it out out alive of my most difficult or my most embarrassing days ever, so odds are I’ll make it through whatever obstacles come to me / us in the future.

Love you, Pen B!

Mom? I guess?

Idk this is getting weird now.

#millenial #white claw #Aldi #motherhood #daughter #portland #california #los angeles #oregon #college #lesbian #gay #single #mom #penelope

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