You Probably Just Hate Women

You probably just hate women and, in this case, have given up being subtle about your homophobia.

If you are one of those unfortunate people who have been following me on twitter and seen my endless venting about it lately, you will have seen that BL discourse is never ending. Since we are at the start of a new season of anime, where a show of this kind in any other genre would be considered prestige anime, and that the Anime Nazi Network that none of you are to mention this post to have, as always, stuck their foot in their mouth due to their awful editorial systems, lets try to make something of this.

The following post is a somewhat dry refutal of one of the more common arguments against the BL genre. It is a refutal that ultimately should apply to 99% of all common arguments against BL as a genre, as these arguments all tend to be the same argument dressed up in slightly different ways.

BL, short for Boys-Love, is a genre of work that more-or-less centres around Japanese works with romantic or erotic relationships between men or boys. You will often see people try to distinguish between it and other such genres like “bara”, “yaoi” and “shounen-ai”, but for the sake of clarity and because I am not the best person to ask about the history and usage of all these labels in the West I am just gonna state that none of those labels are in fact distinguishable from ‘BL’ – that BL covers them all.

BL has a somewhat bad reputation in, at the very least, English speaking Western anime fandoms. That is to say it is beyond trivial to find criticisms of the genre and in fact countless criticisms of the genre will turn up within the discourse and mainstream anime websites whenever a new BL or BL-related show gets an anime. However, as the title of this post suggests, most of these criticisms are simply thinly veiled misogyny and homophobia. Often they will be based in and around facts and experiences of BL that are not strictly false. However the arguments they form all still tend towards being disingenuous, at best.

Let us begin with a criticism that is exceedingly common within and around supposedly feminist rhetoric: “BL objectifies/fetishizes men for straight women”. This argument, which I will refer to as the ‘Objectification argument’, has endless forms, people will use ‘objectifies’ or ‘fetishizes’ or countless other words to mean the same thing here, but if I break down this argument into simple turns it is rather straight forward:

• BL is about men.
• BL’s target audience is straight women.
• Straight women are into men.
• Therefore BL is bad.

Quite trivially, this argument is awful. Yet the argument as written is quite persuasive, so clearly I have missed out some key features of it. Those features being the persuasive power of ‘objectifies’ and its related, common, and universally accepted argument, about how women are depicted in media.

Objectification occurs when a person is treated not as a person, but as an object. ‘As a means to an end’ is probably an academic way of putting it. When you objectify a person you are not taking into account their thoughts, feelings and desires they are simply something you use. This happens alot. Men being particularly into Asian women due to certain ideas about how ‘submissive’ or ‘traditional’ they are would be an example of this kind of objectification (Yes, I’m aware people would usually use the word ‘fetishization’ here, I am not making a distinction between them). Similarly, judging people based on the colour of their skin, their general body shape, in certain ways and solely in those ways would also come under objectification.

Objectification and sex are commonly linked. Some, would argue, that to be sexually attracted to someone or to have sex with someone is, in at least some respect, to objectify them. To use them to satiate your own desires. Sometimes this is given its own distinction as ‘sexual objectification’ and I accept there may be issues with conflating them in certain contexts. For the sake of this post though the key here is that this argument is running on the idea that to sexually desire something, you are in some fashion objectifying that object.

Some of you may have noticed that I used the word ‘person’ here and not ‘character’, yet this post is about fiction. This is where the second point I left out of my description of the argument from Objectification comes out comes into play. Fictional characters are, by their very nature, objects. The wrongness of objectifying people does not come into play when you objectify an object. However fictional characters and how we think about, talk about, and create them both reflects and refracts reality and also exist as a playground of sorts where we ‘test’ our moral faculties. When the vast majority of our prominent  women characters are portrayed in such-and-such a fashion it effects how we think about and treat actual women. If women who have sex, are consistently shown to be ‘evil’ in fiction that affects, in certain ways, what we think about actual women who have sex. These are not one-to-one relations, so we do have to be careful in how we analyse these, but it is trivial to accept that fiction affects us. Anyone who has felt anything about any piece of fiction has been affected by it after all.

Fiction and advertising in general likes to use women, or if I was to be more accurate women’s bodies, as objects in order to appeal, often sexually. towards straight men. This is an accepted truth of our societies. Women actors tend to be younger than the men who play their partners or counterparts. Straight men form the bulk of our history of film, irrespective of how true that is in various eras, and it is through how they like to depict women’s bodies that we have developed our visual languages – ‘male gaze‘ – and thus it is the desires of men we value and spread. Ads targeted towards women often sell women on something solely based on their desirability towards men (surely you’ve seen any sort of fashion or perfume ad before?).

This is a simplistic description I have given, so I apologise if I mislead anyone – please find better sources if you are going to take this post seriously -, but if we take these ideas and plug them into the Objectification argument, this is what we get:

• BL is about men.
• BL’s target audience is straight women.
• Straight women are into men.
• Being into a character is objectification.
• Men objectifying women is bad.
• BL, being for straight women and about men, is women objectifying men.
• Women objectifying men is bad.
• Therefore: BL is bad.

Now we have an argument, or in-fact, most arguments about BL that at least pretend to be in good faith. Yet, this argument – with these added premises – revolves around three faulty premises. I am not going to challenge the conflation of men!Fictional and men!Actual, you could use that to create a counterpoint but there is a relation between the two, and it is not necessary to wrestle with that barrel of fish. These three premises “Men objectifying women is bad”, “Women objectifying men is bad” and, rather subtly, “Straight women are into men” are already plenty fault enough on their own rights.

“Men objectifying women is bad” as I mentioned earlier this is, in most contexts, taken as trivially true. But right now we are not in a general ‘most’ contexts, we are in the context of BL. See, unless you were completely against works that sexually appeal to assumed-heterosexual men there are contexts where that objectification can be fine. If porn, advertising, and fiction in general was not so heavily dedicated to objectifying, or supporting objectifying women, for men then this honestly would not be a problem. If other kinds of depictions, other kinds of expectations were just as prominent, than the influence of objectifying media would not be the same. On that note, the existence of porn for men where women are objectified for their consumption is not a bad thing. Or, if we do take it as a bad thing, it is only a bad thing when it is to such an extent that it does have a profound influence on women being objectified in reality, or when it actively supports oppressive structures that exist in our societies.

“Women objectifying men is bad” the crux of this premise is the idea that if something is bad for men to do, it is also bad for women to do. This is misleading in two key ways. Firstly it completely ignores the power dynamics between genders that exist in Western societies. Secondly it only works within the context of BL by implying the objectification of women that happens in/due to mass and mainstream media is equal to the objectification of men that happens within the niche works that BL consists of it.

To the first, in general men have power over women in Western societies. Particular men, and particular women, shake this up, yes, and when you add in other minorities this falls apart, but as a generalisation of how our society is structured this is trivially true. Most of our powerful and/or wealthy positions are held by men. Men get paid more for the same work. Men get promoted more easily. If you do not believe this, in any respect: fuck off. What this means for this topic is that a woman doing something, and a man doing something can and often do have many differences with respect to the differences in power between these ‘roles’ in our society. These differences matter.

To the second, BL, even if we take it to it’s wildest worldwide scope (that is, we treat it not just as a genre of Japanese comics, but conflate it with the broader slashfic genre and countless other things), is not mainstream or mass-media. The amount of harm problematic elements of BL can do to the world, in comparison to mass-media or mainstream media as a whole are rather low. Sure, everyone knows of that somewhat skeevy somewhat homophobic girl with yaoi paddles at a con in the 00s. Sure. But we all also knew endless numbers of older men into other genres of anime who went to cons in part to prey and harass underage girls. Weird we only use one to denigrate a genre and the other we conveniently forget. Part of my issue with the universality of these criticisms as presented to BL is that they are posited specifically to BL and not universally. There’s a bias of selection happening, and that bias can only be misogyny and homophobia.

“Straight women are into men” technically speaking it isn’t just this premise on it’s own that is faulty here, but the clause ‘straight women’ and what it is contributing to the persuasive power of this argument. Emphasising the assumed heterosexuality of the audience is not completely wrong from a factual level and the statement is correct a priori. The reason straight women are mentioned at all is, in part, to apply a non-minority term to a minority. Why? Because if you left ‘women’ as the sole descriptor here the misogyny in the whole argument becomes blatant. If we are criticising women as a whole, if we are criticising women’s desires as a whole, all we are doing is expressing the patriarchal view that women having sexual desires or thoughts are morally wrong. This is simply misogyny. To posit there is a moral wrong in sexually desiring men is rearranging the patriarchal systems that say women are the sexual objects in society. It is misogynistic. It is homophobic.

Furthermore, while I am happy to accept ‘straight women are the target audience of most BL’ it is worth saying that BL is fundamentally a queer genre. It is a genre that exists against the grain of heteronormativity and gender roles by it’s fundamental nature of being by and for women, and in how it frames men. It may not always be gay, but it is always queer.  And as a queer genre it has always been a place with a disproportionate number of queer people in it. Gay and bi men, yes of course, but perhaps more prominently than that (Really, take this with alot of salt, go find better scholars of Japan and BL than me, an egotistical dabbler who doesn’t even speak Japanese) BL has been a place for gay and bi women. BL may be primarily targeted towards straight women, especially if we’re talking about anime, but, if I am not completely mistaken, it is also a genre with a much queerer audience than bigger ones you let off the hook for being straight.

In summary, the argument from Objectification fails as it:

• Ignores the difference in power dynamics between the sexual desires and expressions of men and women.
• Treats niche media tropes as having the same degree and kinds of harm that mass media tropes do.
• Only sounds at all compelling due to word play that hides its inherent misogyny; its dislike of women having sexual desires about men.
• Only gets to use that deception due to people being more damning of works aimed towards women and girls.

Thus far I have focused on the argument from Objectification, yet my conclusion has very little to do with objectification itself. This is because the argument from Objectification has the same flaws that most criticisms of BL as a genre faces in the West, at least from people who are at least attempting to not be bigots.

When people argue that “BL is bad because it has a consent issue” that is often accepted as a fine reason to not like, or to disparage BL and BL fans. Yet, that argument can only work if BL actually had an issue with consent and if that issue was unique or heightened by being BL. As I am sure anyone reading this will be aware of when I mention it, most media has this very same consent issue. From romantic comedies, action shows, to dramas it is easy to find all these issues with consent in practically any other genre. Why is it that BL gets characterised as the problematic genre over those punchy-shonens that everyone loves? Over that sketch based romance show everyone loves? And when it is brought up in common parlance in other genres, it is still disproportionately targeting works by and for women.

Of course, the answer here is trivial. It is because people do, when they are brought up, accept those arguments about every other genre, they just treat BL more harshly. Again, this can only be due to either misogyny or homophobia. You are either treating BL more harshly because BL made the sin of being a genre about men’s often romantic relationships between each other and you cannot stand that – homophobia – or because a genre that places emphasis on the sexual desires of women, often by women deserves less – misogyny. There is no other option. Men do not consume works targeted towards women in the same numbers that women do consume works targeted towards men. ‘Neutral’ works exist yes, but it is also just as often a male targeted work that we treat as neutral in the discourse. This is simply the natural progression of devaluing the feminine.

If you will allow me another tangent the misogyny angle is also quite present in literary circles. Romance, and other genres popular with women, have historically – and still to this day – been derided or devalued as works. These are genres that are often primarily written for and by women and the criticisms they face are often just as applicable to genres and novels elsewhere, but again, if its for or by women, it is lesser in our zeitgeists.

Even within the realm of works targeted at women and girls though, BL is still more derided. Shoujo – that is Japanese comics primarily aimed at young girls up to and including teens – is often overlooked, yes, and is also often derided or restricted as being only ever romance. But, you won’t often see faux-trustworthy anime sites, the sites that determine the canon for what people think of shows in the Anglosphere, start their summary with “If you can stand shoujo-“. Perhaps you will see the phrase “Shoujo isn’t for me” or perhaps it, and shows aimed at older women, will be oddly missing from critical or longform attention but to be openly hateful of it? People only get away with this due to misogyny, and people only attack it in such a relatively scornful way because they hate the idea of two men being cute together.

If you supposedly like certain relationship dynamics, narrative forms or countless other genre staples present in those few prestigious shoujo/josei (adult women targeted comics) romances that people love and get anime adaptations, you like BL. This isn’t me being flippant, this is simply me calling your bluff. BL never stopped being shoujo. It never stopped being josei. Yes, you can find BL targeted towards straight men, but it is far more niche and does not get anime adaptations unlike it’s sibling genre yuri-for-straight-men does. Anime adaptations shape the popularity and overview of media in Western English speaking discourse, which is why I am giving particular weight to it. A manga that only got an illegitimate scanlation has far less sway than the latest anime adaptation airing this season, even if that adaptation does not get any particular attention.

I am not gonna ask for you to treat women-targeted media better sites that I previously said should not be reading this. I simply cannot expect you to improve in such a fashion, you have been awful in this regard for too long. But at the very least, if you cannot ignore these genres as heavily as you love to, at least put some degree of effort into challenging your assumptions about this genre. There is no need for you to be so hateful towards it. You probably don’t need to hate women, nor the very concept of men having relationships with each other.

Everyone else: we just need to think more about what we value, what we denigrate and how we talk about media. We can, and should, do better.