i don't understand the concept of 'defending' people's right to ship m/f or trying to make m/f ships devoid of patriarchy. especially in competition with gay ships, whose social victimization is inherently rooted in the heteropatriarchal ideas that affirm m/f as the norm. there's often this attempt to add progressive coating to m/f in terms of gender relations ("it has a woman in it, unlike mlm"), but you inherently cannot do that, as a fundamental principle of many major feminist movements. sitting with the inherent oppressor x oppressed dynamic is what makes heterosexuality, in my opinion, interesting to explore in fiction.
misogyny is often called "the first oppression". a founding principle of marxism, a leading leftist ideology, is that capitalism seeks to make women and children the property of men to perpetuate itself. engels and marx wrote the book Origin of the Family under this observation. heterosexual monogamy and the "family" are positioned as the fundamental blow which subjugated women as second class. as sharon shane wrote, in her reflection on the work in a more modern lens, "The family no longer served anything but a reproductive function – as such, it became an economic unit of consumption. Women became trapped within their individual families, as the reproducers of society – cut off from production. These changes took place first among the property-owning families, the first ruling class. But eventually, the nuclear family became an economic unit of society as a whole." in marxist ideology, monogamous heterosexual relationships, as we currently conceptualize them in capitalistic society, are a societal invention aiming to turn women into the property of men so that they may produce more workers for him to own. and as the feminist critique goes, fictional "true love" is an extremely modern idea that has been used as a tool of endearing women to their expected position as the wife and mother.
we are emotional creatures who generally like companionship, whether real or fictional. i don't think it's contradictory to say that. the contradiction only comes when m/f relations are treated as neutral. biologically, yes, they are as neutral as homosexually. but socially, heterosexuality has been politicized by capitalism as a primary tool of gendered oppression. depictions of heterosexuality are not politically neutral. heterosexuality that does not fundamentally question its own existence, structures, and expectations is like making your protagonist a "good landlord" a "good cop" a "good billionaire". "pure heterosexuality" is so often the desire of freedom within the confines of the cage. as audre lorde stated, "For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support."
the heterosexual/homosexual divide was a major conflict within the american second wave feminist movement, which audre lorde, a black lesbian, was all too aware of. many of that eras most "progressive" people still normalized heterosexuality as the natural state with lesbianism/gayness as an off-shoot to tokenize (which, as you read, is what that speech partially about. with blackness also being off-shoot of normalized whiteness). one cannot simply be gay. there must be a reason, a logic, a fetish to it. similarly, one cannot simply be transgender, thus the transphobic theory of autogynephilia self-fetishization. when heterosexuality is accepted as neutral, gayness is something that requires logic to it. you cannot simply "like" a gay relationship. you must be fetishizing it. you must dislike women or men. you must have something against straight people or m/f dynamics. you're stereotyping. these are, of course, the master’s tools aiming to radicalized gayness and neutralize heterosexuality. and the worst part is by the very nature of being propagandized into pro-heterosexual ideals, you may not ever realize it. "but dearinglovebot!" you might say, "what do you mean the masters tools?." i mean: experiencing homosexual attraction used to be institutionally considered a fetish, or paraphilia within the first world. in the third world, there are places where it still is. man hating lesbians was a homophobic rhetorical tool used by misogynists to dismiss even polite critique of patriarchy/heterosexual domination. heterophobia is a rhetorical tool used only in service of 1) gay people existing or 2) as a way of rejecting accusations of homophobia. lastly, there is positioning queer styles as problematic "stereotypes". in attempting to "combat" the "stigma" around feminine men and masculine women, heterosexuality is forced upon them. rather than acknowledging it is more common for gnc presenting people to be forced out of homosexuality and into heterosexuality. it also, as a by product, assumes heterosexuality as more legitimate and pure because it aims to "protect" the innocent heterosexual from the infective homosexual.
there are some kernels of truth in the reactivity, particularly from lesbians. people are more interested in gay men's stories on the basis of male domination and gay men can use male privilege against lesbians. however. every structure that enables gay men to dominate gay women is in place because of heteropatriarchy. the true oppression is always rooted in heterosexuality, which establishes men as the owners of women. in the context i'm discussing, all truth in the arguments against "fujoshis" are, likewise, actually critiques of heterosexual culture rather than true defense of gay women. like capitalism seeks to divide people based on race to prevent damage to the status quo, heteropatriarchy seeks to divide people based on queerness. let me elaborate: one critique of mlm ships is that they attack the canonical female love interest. when this is true, it's because monogamous heterosexuality conditions us to think that way. as smith also states, "without strict monogamy, a man cannot be certain that his wife’s children are also his own". heterosexuality builds a culture where we are socially conditioned to attack "enemy mates" to affirm pure blood lines that will clearly inherit property. the desire to monogamously defend a ship from "threats" is inherently heterosexual, not homosexual. likewise, erasure of women is inherently heterosexual in that it's rooted in the notion that women are unimportant outside their male ownership.
m/f ships never need defending, especially from homosexual ones. while m/f ships can have progressive qualities, such as including bipoc or bi/trans characters, the heterosexuality isn't. most depictions will be presented through the most acceptable lens first; the heterosexual one. the number of existent black, latino, asian, trans, disabled, etc. characters in homosexual relationships is practically non-existent when compared to heterosexual counterparts. when we acknowledge this simple fact, we understand that all defense of m/f is extremely shallow. appeals to progressiveness are little more than striking at an easy victim (openly gay people) or discomfort with acknowledging the reality of patriarchy. which is understandable. we don't want to acknowledge that our world is more flawed than we thought or that reality is far worse than what we already thought. but it's also necessary
and as an ending note: wlw shippers are, of course, subjected to similar ridiculous rhetoric to downplay us. but generally, more people see through the absurd claim that we're all "fetishists" of our own experiences. and we cannot be hit with the "erasing women" cudgel because all we do is love women. and so, the rhetoric becomes plain. the anti-mlm m/f factions simply attack us homophobically rather than appropriating progressive ideas. we aren't worth it. we are delusional man-haters who victimize poor straight characters. and i can say with certainty, i have faced no hostility from mlm or mlm shippers in my shipping spaces. they have been allies, in fact, against m/f harassment. i have, however, weathered many harassment campaigns by "progressive" m/f shippers who hate when you prefer to ship their described "bisexual-coded" woman with another woman. in the same breath they call you "biphobic" for "erasing" a characters straightness (of course, this is not in reference to canonical multi-gender attraction), they will ignore your bisexual hc for her female love interest. a gay headcanon is never independent of canonical heterosexuality under this rhetoric. there is no imagination of bisexuality not involving the canon heterosexual dynamics, such as bi4les and gay4bi ships or even same-gender bi4bi. as stated, there always has to be an ulterior motive for being gay. you cannot simply like it, even as someone sharing that identity.
