I’ve been seeing a bunch of posts condemning yaoi fans and so called ‘fujoshis’ for fetishizing gay men or liking the kind of unrealistic relationships found in yaoi etd. It’s the same way I’ve seen TERFs condemned, as if Yaoi was about a belief system. I’m not sure if people really understand what Yaoi is. It sure as hell isn’t a unifying philosophy that gay men should be treated like zoo exhibits. (read more for some rambly discourse)
Yaoi is full of unrealistic, idealized men having unrealistic sex and that’s kind of the point. It’s a fandom about p()rn, created by a subset of people who aren’t supposed to like p()rn. It does extended to BL (which is more romance focused.), but I think what creeps people out is the sex aspect. P()rn is, at it’s core, about sexual fantasies, and sexual fantasies aren’t rational, kosher or universally shared.
It’s perfectly fine to find yaoi disgusting, or the idea of women fantasizing about gay sex gross or alien. Many find the fucked up power dynamics in yaoi to be repulsive. You can totally opt out of seeing any of it. Block them, blacklist, tell them to knock it off if they are harassing you or pressuring you into a roleplay. Assholery is in every fandom and should be dealt with accordingly.
Fujoshi does mean “dirty girl” in japanese. The term is probably outdated and should be replaced because society has changed in the last 10 years since the term appeared. I would argue that the ‘dirty’ part is not about liking a particular type of gay p()rn, it’s that liking/creating p()rn is a transgressive act for women(especially in the still ultra-conservative japan). In America, there’s still an idea that young women should only be interested in having sex if they are in love, or at least should care more about romance. Yaoi is by no means something to be championed as some feminist issue. It just exists for a reason, and that reason is completely about the people who create and consume it, not about the group it..very loosely depicts.
I was a major anime and yaoi fan for most of the 2000s. I was just starting to get out of it when the term ‘Fujoshi’ appeared on the web. I spent a lot of time hunting for scanlations in the bowels of the internet and saving artwork from japanese sites. I’d run across straight guys ranting about Fujoshi from time to time in 4chan, or forum threads. According to them, Fujoshi were obnoxious self-obsessed, fat, ugly girls who were either sexually repressed or couldn’t get laid. I remember seeing some webcomics or stand alone panels depicting them invading conventions. I would find this stuff mostly on hentai sites, or +18 comics with a hentai aesthetic. They just couldn’t understand why yaoi existed, why it was encroaching on their anime p()rn space. This new tumblr mini crusade against fujoshi reminds me of that, depicting a group by the worst qualities of some of their members to shame the whole group into vanishing.
I’ve been poking around in the fujoshi tag and lots of people seem to be ashamed that they were yaoi fans in the past. I’m not one of them. To me, it's just another fandom that I was in, like Homestuck or anime. I did some dumb things when I was a teenager because of my interest, but I think every person in fandom could say that. It was a good, solid fandom with some amazing people. When I was active (about 8-10 years ago), there were tons of content creators, translators, several large archive sites dedicated to hosting material, elaborate forums and a decent sense of community. There’s nothing for me to be ashamed of, unless I want to start being ashamed of liking illustrated p()rn, which I don’t.
tl:dr; Yaoi isn’t about dehumanizing a certain group of people, unlike TERFs, there’s no shared philosophy. Yaoi is p()rn, and p()rn is about fantastical sex. If a person is treating you like shit or harassing people because they view them as objects, talk to them about their bad behavior or send a message. Teens especially have trouble with the distinction between fantasy and reality, it’ll be a good learning experience for them on the path to adulthood. Assholery is assholery no matter where it comes from and shouldn’t be overlooked.
EDIT: I had to edit so many words to get this to show up in searches. We need to get a better sight, tumblr is awful.