wait in your tag you said "dont use fujoshi as an insult"... could u elaborate a bit on that..? like do u mean 'dont call random ppl fujos' or did u mean 'fujoshi isnt a bad thing' ?? genuine question like im not trying to start Disk Horse i just. wanna know :0
yes of course!! thank u for asking!!
here’s two threads from two japanese people in both japanese and western fandom speaking about the history of the word and how it’s been primarily a homophobic/sexist insult that has been reclaimed lately as the LGBT movement in japan progresses: [post 1] [post 2] (plus one more from a western fan: [post 3])
In a quick summary, men in Japan used “fujoshi” (rotten woman) as a misogynistic and homophobic insult against Japanese women who enjoy/support any type of mlm content. The women reclaimed the word fujoshi to be a positive identifier rather than a misogynistic insult.
Then western fandom started using fujoshi in a negative way to refer to people who they believe fetishize gay men, despite the fact that that was never it’s meaning. To use fujoshi to mean fetishist is to dismiss Japanese culture by applying an incorrect western definition to a Japanese word, and also return to it the misogynistic power of its original meaning by making a reclaimed insult back into a regular insult.
there’s a few more ive seen around but i cannot find them rn!! if i find them again i will let u know.
i would like to say for the record that there are definitely some really creepy people in fandom who definitely do fetishize mlm ships and mlm people, and a few in particular have also been extremely fetishy around men of color for Double Yikes. i’ve met them and they are just as terrible and predatory as tumblr accuses them of being.
but ironically, despite tumblr’s forewarnings of the cishet white woman who fetishizes mlm relationships, none of the predatory mlm-fetishizers i’ve met have been cishet white women. they tended to be LGBTQ community members themselves, who were just, yknow, predatory and abusive.
i’ve never seen an actually predatory fandom member be called a fujoshi. the only contexts i’ve ever seen “fujoshi” been used in the persona fandom have been from fans spitting on LGBT female/enby goro-fans, calling them delusional for seeing romantic underpinnings in shuake. (or in any other mlm ship in p5, for that matter.) the argument goes that “fujoshis” are seeing subtext that isn’t there because for the sake of creating mlm pornographic content, but literally everyone’s actually doing that is never slammed with the term “fujoshi.” i’ve only ever seen “fujoshi” used as a homophobic denial of same-sex desire and an attempt to gaslight female fans simultaneously.
anyway, the joke is on everyone who’s ever accused me of being a fujoshi because i want to fuck akechi. i promise that literally every single complex i own is being stored in the akechi except my sex drive because i am an asexual lesbian.
