‘fujoshi’ when used by westerners.
The term, its use, nor its name is ‘cultural appropriation.’ For starters, it’s yaoi fangirls that started calling themselves that. And it was more succinct, more telling, more specific than just saying, ‘yaoi fangirl.’ It was a box these people put themselves in.
And 99% of said yaoi fans were, indeed, cis women. You can be mad about that all you want, but it was a title the girls gave themselves, a reputation that they made for themselves.
Just the same way that every unwashed, smelly male fan that lives with his family/in his mother’s basement “earned” that title, just the same way every “chivalrous” dork with a trilby, porkpie or fedora hat earned the recognizable label of “fedoralord”, just the way every gym rat jock that smells of axe bodyspray and gets lumped in with the misogynists gets disregarded as a Dudebro,
every obnoxious and unhealthily obsessed chick that tries to talk your ear off about gay men sex or gay men relationships or gay men gay men gay men, is a fucking western fujoshi.
1.) It’s not cultural appropriation.
This is the desperate hill that they want to die on. The idea that if they can make it taboo or unacceptable to use the word, that recognition of the pattern will either go away, or become taboo to even recognize. That they’ll be invisible. That what they are will be the 800 pound gorilla in the room you’re not allowed to call out or recognize. They don’t want the bad reputation, the stigma, to be disregarded for the bad behaviors, actions, patterns or habits of the girls before them. And so, they’ve chosen to try and get it made foul and against the “rules” to use it, because it’s a foreign word. And it deviates in use from how Japan uses it.
Loan words are not ‘cultural appropriation.’ And if you insist, we can simply dub them “Western Fujoshi.” Because unless you’re willing to accept that Japanese Fujoshi are the same obnoxious tarts, then you acknowledge that the fucking dispicable behaviors, entitlement, attitudes and creepy voyeuristic treatment of gay men, their relationships and the very concept and idea of being a gay men are characteristic of Western Fujoshi. Whom are more aggressive about it, by far, than their Japanese counterparts.
Again, the western Yaoi Fangirls in their weeb phase named themselves. Everybody else thought that was just fine, since the distinction between, “a girl that just likes man/man sex” and a Fujoshi is several layers of entitlement, obsession and creepy infatuation with someone for their sex and sexuality. They were spoiled princesses with very little access to the actual LGBT community, and existed in their little bubbles as spoiled princesses who did what they wanted. Something referring to the behavior most common in girls does not make something sexist.
Unless you are willing to admit that Fedoralords, Dudebros, Manbabies, and Neckbeards “do not exist,” because those are all “dog whistles” for kinds of men, often based on wild exaggerations and stereotypes that are only apparent in the most extreme of circumstances, don’t even try and discount the validity of Western Fujoshi as a term. You want to eat the Fujoshi word and make people stop acting like it’s real, those people exist? Then you’re going to have to never use the above terms, or any term that refers to a particular group of annoying people by the association to men and masculinity, ever again.
The same characteristics that you argue allow you to be on the look out for patterns of behavior, thought, dress or expression also exist among women. Subject to the same group and patterns of actions enabling people to associate them with negative shit. Don’t like it? Too bad. I upload a pictue of myself in a trilby, anything I say will get disregarded as “from a fedoralord,” because you bitches trained yourselves into thinking any dude in a stupid hat is gonna tip it and say, “M’lady!”
This leap, that calling out a bunch of women for being assholes, is misogyny, is hilarious. The next step after this is calling a teacher a misogynist for putting a girl that misbehaves in class in a time out chair, because “punishing a girl is sexist.”
You weren’t so worried about sexism when you lumped all those ass-crack showing, unwashed men that still live with mommy into the recognizable category and title of “manbaby.” You weren’t worried about the negative connotations unfairly stigmatizing a persons viewpoint when some sadsack dudes started hawing about chivalry, posting photographs of themselves with swords and wearing stupid hats. You went right on and made that a Thing, despite the fact it was at maximum, like, 50 guys across the US. The rest were just guys fond of silly/stupid hats. But Fedoralord became the, “nice guy” stereotype, and anyone wearing a hat became subject to being treated like shit because other men wore a goofy hat AND said some dumb shit. You didn’t similarly do this to women. You made examples out of the men and created a negative stigma made up of the worst, most toxic presumptions.
And now you think a label and title that accurately lumps a bunch of annoying bitches into the same barrel is somehow anti-woman because it accurately labels them. Every yaoi paddle swinging one of you. Every one of you that has at some point thought, “I know more about being a gay MAN than many of my gay male friends do!”
So. Here’s what we’re gonna do.
We’re going to differentiate the obnoxious culture of glomping, stalking, gay fanfic shipping, projecting, mpreg obsessed, “give Edward and Al Elric’s voice actors yaoi fanfic to autograph” as “Western Fujoshi.”
Since fujoshi is no more ‘culturally appropriating’ than OTAKU, and OTAKU was never contested (but was known about) as wrong in Japan, you have no leg to stand on when we differentiate WESTERN Fujoshi from JAPANESE Fujoshi, whom allegedly do not engage in the same obnoxious behaviors and level of entitlement. We now validate the difference between you crazy bitches and the otherwise normal, original version the term was meant to embody.
What we’re not going to do is act like the toxic culture that spawned them does not exist, never existed, and doesn’t continue to exist, without a name. You shit in your bed and now you sleep in it.