miniXOR

of course you can write about an experience that is not your own, that is the point of fiction. you can write about sexuality and love without leering and fetishizing. but even IF these women are using gay men more as sexual symbols/blorbo archetypes and fetishizing them… i joke that this is “reparations” but i dunno. i actually believe on a pragmatic level that women fetishizing men is probably fine. i know that sounds crazy but with the way our society is structured this is really not that harmful. the worst i have ever experienced was a girl in high school excitedly telling me about a BL drama when i told her i was gay and i found that very endearing. mildly tonedeaf but supportive teenage girls have never harmed me meanwhile hateful teenage boys certainly have. and the biggest sufferers of the cutesy angsty gay male obsession in fandom spaces are usually women!

there’s also “what if these many of these supposed straight women authors are transmascs?” this is often the case too, and here’s the thing. sometimes, these stories are more grounded in fandom and fanfiction than irl experience. AND THAT IS OKAY because DUHHHHH of course young transmascs probably often are excluded from the horrifically transphobic mainstream of gay cis dudery and do not have as much experience in said communities. i do not CARE if a teenage trans guy is writing unrealistic yaoi he is expressing himself and figuring himself out. cis gay guys who have been in the game for decades can write some wildly unrealistic smut too!