Anti-Reylo Thoughts (7/23/20)
One of the things that has always bugged me about Reylos is their view that they represent not only female Star Wars fans, but also women in general, because they think Reylo=the female gaze.
I’ve said before that the activity of shipping in general is very amatonormative, but the Reylos inject steroids into that by using the “sexual awakening” theme (I believe it came from something called the Virgin’s Promise, which is suppose to be the “feminine” Hero’s Journey) to insist that it is canon, to the point of only looking at canon through that lens.
The reason that they think they represent all women is because of the common belief, not just by them, that Romance genre=the female gaze, and the Romance genre has always had oppositional sexism and problematic male behavior, just like the Reylo ship.
As alloromantic, heterosexual white women, they are the default when it comes to the Romance genre, that’s why they easily identify with Jane Austen works (likewise the hetero white male is treated as the default in every other genre). So to them, Romance genre=romance=white hetero couple/amatonormativity/sexunormativity/oppositional sexism/problematic male behavior=all-female gaze.
When someone is too much in the default bubble, they think that their gaze is the everyone-gaze.
This idea that romance is tied to womanhood feels annoying if you’re an arospec woman who’s in an aromantic mood.