Cannabis Induced Thoughts on a Saturday Night
So, its PRIDE MONTH y'all and I just have a few thoughts about fujoshi presence in shounen manga/anime and how they are actually NOT helping the LGBTQ community and how it is in fact dangerous in terms of male vulnerability and their capacity to maintain meaningful platonic friendships.
So, according to a study done by a researcher in the University of Memphis in 2021 - she claims that BL/Shounen-Ai/Yaoi was originally created by women for women, and that this form of media/literature had now evolved as a way to have queer representation in forms of media that would otherwise not have featured gender diversity. I agreed with most of her points because its true - BL/Shounen-Ai/Yaoi did provide a platform that explores the relationships that would otherwise be set aside by popular media.
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3610&context=etd
HOWEVER! She failed to address the same phenomena that's happening in literature that doesn't fall within the BL/Shounen-Ai/Yaoi category. Yes, I am specifically talking about SHOUNEN MANGA/ANIME with prime examples in Naruto, Boku no Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, etc.
BL/Shounen-Ai/Yaoi IS a huge market for consumers. That, is without a doubt, a fact. Although most of its avid consumers are located in the eastern part of the world, it still resonates with a lot people who are yearning for media representation all over the globe. It is a means for them to see themselves, their struggles, their experiences, and their dreams in a relatable character.
However, this largely unexplored market with the potential to be as big as Hollywood itself falls prey to marketing schemes. People want to be rich and they want to be 'right' so they utilize a tool the checks the status quo's need for representation and their need to expand market consumers. Yes - I am talking about QUEERBAITING!
The term queerbaiting has been around since the 1950s when Americans hoping to identify queer colleagues would ‘bait’ them into revealing themselves by posing as allies. Its modern definition is as follows:
1: A marketing technique used to attract queer viewers that involves creating romantic or sexual tension between two same-sex characters but never making it canon or evolving on it
2: When straight men or women pretend to be gay and flirt with people of the same sex as a joke
Many of us have experienced the tantalising build-up of characters on tv falling in love. The build from friendship to flirting to shipping
Free!, Haikyuu, and Kuroko no Baske are great examples of manga/anime that take advantage of this. The infamous kiss scene between Naruto and Sasuke in the manga's earlier chapters can also be categorized a queerbait.
Now, before you triggered fujos say anything like i hate the gays or whatever, lemme make myself clear. I may be a married woman but I consider myself a bisexual or pansexual. I am aware of my attraction to both sexes but I never experienced stigma because, even now, I am still trying to figure out my sexuality. I never had the opportunity to fully explore this because I fell in-love and married early. I DO NOT HAVE TO JUSTIFY ANYTHING ELSE to have this opinion.
I wish there was more media that discuss the struggles of being someone who doesn't confirm to the binary expectations of the status quo. Books like Heartstopper; The Song of Achilles; Blue Flag; and many others are some of my favorites; and movies like God's Own Country, Happy Together, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, and Markova: Comfort Gay (the last two are specific favorites of mine and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. If you don't speak Filipino - read the subtitles or find an english dub. FIND A WAY TO WATCH THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE GREAT.), are some media that I would FOR SURE want you to explore. They have great commentary about the struggles of being someone who does not conform to the heteronormative expectation of society.
Now, what does this have to do with fujos minding their own business shipping their faves from that popular shounen manga/anime?
First, let us define what SHOUNEN manga/anime is.
Shounen - as most of you would know - is manga/anime targeted to BOYS. They mostly have a lot of fantasy, action scenes, and highlights the importance of friendship, loyalty, and perseverance. In western media, think of it as an equivalent to Marvel and DC comics. Most shounen manga/anime would have a rivalry dynamic to it (Naruto and Sasuke) and/or a very close friendship that stems from either wanting that person's approval (Deku and Bakugo - what the hell, lets add Todoroki to the mix since y'all ship this throuple anyway.) or seeing that person as a relatable equal (Gojo and Geto). Majority of the mangaka in this genre are middle-aged CIS men, yes before you say anything I know women and queer people can make shounen manga/anime too - there are probably great examples out there that I cant think of at the top of my head.
What most of you forget is that Manga/Anime is a thriving 12 Billion dollar industry that has the capacity to expand up till 40 Billion within the decade. They didn't manage to do this with just earnest, honest to Kami, storytelling and art. Their darker methods aren't limited to just queerbaiting but for now, lets' just focus on that.
Shipping is a huge part of how fandom creates a community filled with discourse and idea exchange. Fanfiction and fanart have exposed and developed talents that gave birth to published authors (looking at Senlinyu right now - shout out to the Potterheads who disowned She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.) and successful animators and mangaka/comic artists. Most of my friends are borne from shipping discourse. This activity (phenomena, maybe?) is mainly where we see the fujos lurking in shounen manga/anime.
Lets drive this home, shall we? Its no longer a Saturday night and I have munchied and bonged my way through my first days off. How are fujoshis doing more harm than good when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation? And I am talking about CIS FEMALE FUJOSHI.
Fujos focus on the relationship - not the individual. They are so focused on the relationship that they ignore or twist the intentions of the author and sometimes, the actual storyline itself. Their insistence that these two particular characters HAVE to be together is what makes them dangerous and that saying otherwise should be labelled as homophobia.
Their focus is not about the how two queer characters navigate the world wherein they are judged for who they love or how they navigate around the stigma they received. The fujoshi focus is how circumstantial plotlines and queerbaiting fanservice somehow lead to these two same-sex characters having a romantic relationship - despite either the story itself not having any romance at all or the same two characters having heterosexual romantic relationships.
A prime example of this is the ship between Sasuke and Naruto.
It is a known fact that the rivalry between Sasuke and Naruto is based off of Masashi Kishimoto's own relationship with his twin brother, Seishi. It was supposed to be a story that tells the conflicts and the joys of brotherly love. We see this when Sasuke was realizing about how Naruto was very much like a brother to him, like Itachi had been.
If my experience of reading through tumblr, reddit, twitter, etc can be taken into account, if two male characters in a shounen manga/anime have compatible aesthetics and they have a close relationship as part of the main plot - there will, for sure, be a cishet female out there screaming at the top of her lungs how much they belong to each other and that saying otherwise is homophobic.
The prolific presence of this insistence within a male-targeted media creates an environment that tells its male consumers that women will ship them with their close personal male friends. Condoning this behavior somehow extends this phenomenon to real life situations. Any affection they show, any kindness they give, fuck - even just sitting with them in a cafe where its just the two of them will lead to others thinking they're gay, even if they're not.
Its like theyre forcing a sexuality on someone despite evidence saying otherwise simply because you want them to be within a certain spectrum of sexuality.
Doesn't that sound familiar? Like say for example... a conservative father insisting his son is not gay because 'he's in the military, of course he's not gay' despite same son having a boyfriend?
The fujo-focus removes the importance of discussing ACTUAL issues being experienced by the LGBTQ+ community and minimizes their struggles as simply relationship issues. The gluttonous consummation of tailor-made queerbaits that align with the fujoshi's ship has created a marketing checklist that reduces real representation to a social commodity. 'Oh, these two have just enough sexual tension that we can market them to that audience and then we can leave them hanging, yearning for more. Then we do this cycle again and again until its time to end the series.' It greatly diminishes a queer person's identity from a complex tapestry of self-discovery to a simple bonk-bonk with another same-sex person.
And if you start yapping about 'so am I not allowed to ship fictional people now? is that it?' No, you dumb-dumb. Ship who you want to ship but don't let your delulu brain forget about reality, about canon. Don't send death threats to actors, artists, and authors who don't conform to the ship you want. Don't insist that the author was blackmailed or they didn't do the gay thing because hEtErOnOrmAtiVity. Don't talk as if the author doesn't have a mind of their own - their story, their rules. And for fuck's sake, stop treating pixels and ink lines as if they're real people with a subconscious that the author somehow restricts. Its fucking annoying.
If you want ACTUAL LGBTQ+ representation - boost work that focuses on the individual - not the relationship. The relationship is only second, at least in my opinion, when it comes to literature/media that wishes to highlight a queer character - unless its a romance.
Anyways, I need to go to bed now. I'm starting to see black-eyed children outside my house.
