How about taking criticism from someone who is Japanese, speaks the language, and participates in both Western and Japanese fandom?
You say that fujoshi “refers specifically to cishet women who only consume and create m/m content because they view it as something sexual because it is taboo and don’t care about actual gay men, along with blatantly hating gay women”. This is demonstrably false.
Copy-pasting some points from earlier posts of mine:
Modern fans in Asia use 腐女子/腐女 (fujoshi/funui) and 腐男子/腐男 (fudanshi/funan) as neutral terms that simply means “fan of M/M content”.
Here is its definition by the Pixiv Dictionary, which documents the current usage of Japanese fandom terms (in Japanese, of course), plus two academic papers on the subject that deal with the history of BL and fujoshi in Japan.
Here is an FAQ that a friend made, with linked sources.
Fujoshi DIDN’T name themselves. They took a term that was being used against them in a derogatory manner by homophobic and misogynistic 2ch users and reclaimed it.
The current anti-fujoshi movement on tumblr and twitter was started and popularized by TERFs, with the explicit intention of turning “fujoshi” back into an insult and using it to misgender and delegitimize trans MLM.
The history of the word “fujoshi” directly reflects the misogyny and xenophobia that Japanese women, especially queer women, faced in fandom.
So many fujoshi (female BL fans) are queer that yurizoku/yuri, which used to be a synonym for “BL fan/creator” before the 腐 (fu) terms were popularized, became associated with lesbians and F/F media.
I haven’t found similar studies from Japan, but an estimated 53% of the anglophone female [BL] readership is NOT straight. They might identify as lesbian, bisexual, asexual, queer, etc.
Insiders of the gay manga and BL industry, including the master of gay manga himself, Gengoroh Tagame, say that a lot of BL mangaka who present as cishet women only do so for safety, but are actually WLW, trans, X-gender, etc.
Considering that the term was created by Japanese fandom as a sexist and homophobic insult to female fans, reclaimed by Japanese women to mean “fan of M/M media”, and is still used by East Asian fandom as a neutral or positive term for “fan of M/M media”… I don’t think it’s the place of Westerners to try to twist the meaning of a word from a foreign culture back into an insult. Many Asian and Asian-diaspora fans have asked foreign fans to stop trying to redefine their friendly fandom terms. Please respect our wishes.
Yes, the misuse of the word fujoshi and its regional equivalents IS affecting Asian fans, because people who don’t speak their language are flocking to their social media and harrassing them for using a word that, in their culture, simply means “fan of M/M content”.
TL;DR: The term “fujoshi” is inextricable from Japanese women and Japanese LGBTQ+/セクマイ communities and history.
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