Last year, I wrote a long post in the surge of some animosity in the Saezuru fandom. It was mainly centered on interpretation and fandom behaviour; now I am writing one on BL media and gender.
After @samxmanga's post, it was possible to notice how giving the pronoun 'she' to Yashiro shakes the fandom, but I would like to go further on this instead of summarising responses as discrimination or bigotry, as some have done.
SA and abandonment shapes Yashiro's story and his behaviour prone to more abuse and pain. This is the key of the plot and I know that this doesn't mean gender is not surfacing with it, but the approach to this is not central. The context we effectively have in the story is patriarchal, with women not having a positive outcome. Women in the story are narrative tools to mirror how Yashiro is treated as a woman in that masculine environment, not to reflect how Yashiro sees himself.
The incredible @domeyashiro has a post mentioning how Yoneda-sensei's idea for Saezuru also came from a trope of basically bringing BL to a shounen/seinen universe, as if it was a doujinshi, and this is pretty much what the story does. In other words, Saezuru was created as a male audience targeted universe, on which the relationship of characters would be based on a fantasy point of view a fujoshi. It's fiction. The story was not written to portray gender realism, when this was not even in discussion in Japan around 2011. There's no contextual indication that Yashiro effectively sees himself as a woman in this respect, because from an environmental point of view of characters who are abusive towards him, he already is.
Japanese | Scanlation | Official
In his dialogue with Ryuuzaki, what comes after is the core that resonates with an imposed self-image, not the suggested gender label.
Japanese | Scanlation | Official
Distinction between himself as male vs women in relation to SA. Also symbolic on why he says that to Kageyama and why Kageyama disagrees.
In this sense, @samxmanga is right to say that Yashiro absorbed the words and definitions of his abuser into his self-image. It's not that Yashiro embeded misogyny, but that a degrading male view of women ended up defining his being (dirty, impure, whore, slut, mistress). This perception is no news for some SA survivors, although the event and outcome is not the same for everyone. I disclosed myself of being a child abuse survivor already, but I am aware that plenty of readers who follow Saezuru went through the same thing. It is possibly because of this that some are not pleased with Yashiro primarily being used as a tool for gender affirmation, when this is weaponised by several abusive characters in the story. In my opinion, with all that is presented in the plot, Yashiro's self-image about gender should not be the focus of his character development.
Now, considering that, yes, Yashiro is just a character and people are free to disagree with this and interpret the story as they please. Ok. But then why the reactions when people disagree with the idea of a trans Yashiro? Why is the fandom accused of being discriminatory, dumb and incapable of interpreting text because of it? That specific blog and a few people sustain ideas and character relations that don't even exist in the story, but then everyone needs to agree on this view for representativity, otherwise it's a fake ally?
I used to follow that blog, and I personally did agree with a few points raised there, but a lot of the legitimacy of the arguments gets lost when justified as: this is the take, and I know the fandom will not agree because they are transphobic, misogynistic, etc.
On the last, I recently came across a reblog from that person accusing the fandom of being misogynistic for calling Izumi 'mama' (ママ) instead of using her name. This is such a pretentious Western biased view that disregards the whole Japanese audience, who uses the word with no pejorative tone because this is, in fact, a reappropriation. One of them on Discord even used the term to compliment the character in chapter 63 ("Izumi-san is kind and caring like a real mama-san"). Our very translator, Georgie, addressed Izumi like that a couple of times too, but then (thankfully) there were no fingers pointed in this case, because these people still want to keep the peace to read the story, right? The hypocrisy of it. Or, rephrasing someone online: "Fighting misogyny in the webcomic comments again. I do so much for women!"
Having a chat with some people, I realised that the main issue with that blog is not only the way content and views are presented as an attack, it's the tone. It's the fact that some anonymous questions seem self-made for pretentious and arrogant responses. The fact that the writing style replicates right-wing tactics of uttering negative and accusatory stuff to lure an audience with reactions. The person has a self-assessment of being inflammatory, and I agree that this suits well the description.
But back to BL media, having the audience expanded from fujoshis to other demographies doesn't necessarily mean the representation accompanied changes. It also doesn't mean all changes make sense for what it means to be queer in a culturally distinctive scenario, for that matter. Western views about BL & gender can be quite invasive.
Takashii recently released a video about Shinjuku Ni-chome, that I think it's worth sharing not only to get the point of view of a cis man completely unaware about the LGBTQIA+ community in his own country, but also to understand that the perceptions of gender and sexuality we discuss as Westerns is not universal. Westerns actually disrupted a bit of the organic changes that were happening in Ni-chome to their own liking of what it means to be a queer person. I had the opportunity to visit this place and, yes, you can see traces of a touristy approach replacing the space of the community.
I mentioned Boy Meets Maria in @samxmanga's post, but I would like to mention Therapy Game series too, where gender is contextually and positively addressed in diverse ways. The series was recently dramatised, as a show and on theatres. The manga has a deeper approach to gender while the drama has it on the surface, which still means a lot.
'Madam', by the way, was the translation given in the official to 'mama' (ママ), who is the drag queen club owner.
Anyway, I did extend myself, but I just want to close this post saying that the most important thing to be taken from this is: being part of a minority does not give any of us the right to be nonchalant or hostile towards those who disagree on the use of a pronoun for a fictional character who did not have a gender officially disclosed. This is not an attack or disrespect towards the use of pronouns for real world people.
By the way, in the Zelda fandom we celebrate views on a trans Link, who is (confirmed by the game developer Aonuma himself) meant to be a gender neutral character. There's no animosity, even from people who only read m/f content in the fandom.
If you are one of those who go to BL media exclusively to point fingers on how the fandom is composed by "rotten women" who support the worst world views instead of enjoying it: maybe stop consuming this media? Why are you still reading it? Or why can't you not read it without approaching a fandom you're so judgemental and annoyed about? Ideally, start to redirect your fury to concrete real world advocacy towards all types of minorities outside a small and threatened niche such as BL. Mills and other important academics would be rolling their eyes realising that their theories are being weaponised for this.
