Seeing people say that fanfic writers are âfetishizingâ gay men (and itâs almost always gay men specifically, and from what Iâve seen bi/pan/etc men are rarely mentioned or included) bothers me every time I see it, and I think I figured out why. I get where theyâre coming from, and thereâs nothing wrong with them being uncomfortable with m/m fic, but they donât really seem to help people not fall into what they call âfetishizingâ.
First thing, the definitions of what is and isnât so-called âfetishizingâ (because the term âfetishizingâ doesnât apply to people, just non-sexual things - the word youâre looking for is âobjectifyingâ) have varied from the askerâs definition to merely people shipping a m/m ship. (Yes, that has happened on this hellsite.) The biggest problem with this is no one knows if what theyâre writing is or isnât a problem, which then can scare them out of writing. In my book, thatâs a major loss. No one should be too scared to create, but thatâs where we are now.
Secondly, this veers awfully close to the concept of âfandom policeâ, where a subset of people determine what is and isnât âallowedâ to be written/drawn/shipped, and thatâs just not right. Adding on to this point, the people who care enough to learn would end up not writing because theyâll constantly be  worried that their stuff would fall into the ill-defined category of âfetishizationâ, while the people who donât care⌠wonât care. Youâll end up with less fic overall, and the stuff that is there will still be what makes you uncomfortable (and this isnât going into the fact that no one is obligated to cater to any one specific person, and no group of people as a whole find the same things uncomfortable. I  believe there have been other people who have pointed this out in the past). You are the only one responsible for curating your own online experience, and if that means avoiding m/m fic like the plague, so be it. Donât ever make people stop creating just because it makes you uncomfortable.
And finally, what (to me) is the final straw, is that the people saying fics are âfetishizing gay men/mlmâ are almost never the ones giving writing advice aside from âjust donât write itâ, which is absolutely useless. This is kinda like the âfandom policeâ point, I know, but it needs to be its own thing. There are writing blogs dedicated to helping people write LGBT+ characters respectfully, and (as far as I can tell) people complaining never refer the writers theyâre complaining about to those blogs. (As a side note, I follow one of them, and theyâve used âfetishizeâ a grand total of once, and that was answering an ask that specifically asked about avoiding it.) Not to mention that a lot of the worst of those fics are written by younger fic writers, and honestly, theyâre not that much better at writing m/f fic. They need to learn how to improve in general, not be shamed out of writing for fear of offending someone.
tl;dr version: the people most often talking about fetishization are misusing the word, getting awfully close to being the âfandom policeâ, and are doing nothing helpful for those (mostly young) writers to get it right.
(I will say though, I havenât actually stumbled upon anything other than the mischaracterization that fits what the asker is talking about? Itâs probably the fandoms I read fic for (FE is the biggest I look in, and the one thing I actually ship there is a m/f rarepair), but my point about providing resources in the form of a writing advice blog still stands. Odds are the authors (who may also be gay teens themselves) donât know/understand that those tropes are harmful. (It may also be because I only read explicit fics about a select few pairings, and avoid other ones.) I donât suppose it helps to point out that fanfic writers and readers are mostly women, and if youâre looking for m/m content that is created by and for LGBT+ men, youâre looking in the wrong place (and outside of Tumblr/AO3/FFN (kinda - stuff on FFN seems to skew more to m/f ships last time I looked there, which is admittedly a long time agon), youâre probably not going to see explicit content like the stuff that upsets you. Itâs just not a thing in most places), and there are sites specifically for the kind of content you want.)
(A few side notes that donât apply to the original asker but are still relevant to the topic: A not-insignificant number of people claiming that other people are fetishizing gay men are actually teenage girls who have m/m ships  and are trying to make the other ships/shippers look bad (while behaving the same way with their ships), and as a counterpoint, there are gay/bi/pan men saying that what those people are doing isnât fetishizing, or if it is, it doesnât really matter in the context of fandom (fictional characters are not real people, so people shipping m/m pairings arenât actually hurting anyone). (What a person likes to read/write doenât really reflect how they behave in real life.) This also ties in to how some people (again, not the asker, or at least not as far as I can tell) are illogically holding fanwork to a much higher standard than published original fiction, despite the latter having a much wider spread (most people I talk to regularly in real life had no idea what fanfic even was before I explained it, and I wouldnât be surprised if other fic readers and writers have had similar experiences). As I said, these donât really apply to the asker, but theyâre things that Iâve seen elsewhere when the topic comes up.)
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