I'm curious for your thoughts on this subject. I dislike the way antis use the term "yaoi" and "fujoshi" since I feel like these terms were created to mean specific things (in Japanese culture) and antis often apply it without considering differences between slash and yaoi. Also, I dislike the way they use yaoi to pretty much mean fetishizing mlm/content, and fujoshi as fetishizing women since both terms are from Japan and I feel weird seeing these terms associated with fetishizing.
I also am really bothered by the way English fandom has adopted genre words from Japan to meanĀ āthe worst version of [x]/fans of [x]ā. it feels like a form of looking down anything coming from Japan/Japanese culture and treating Japanese culture as the source of these āworst versionsā.
(a lot of what follows is from light research Iāve done over the years and personal experience. Itās my opinion and experiences rather than a closely researched and heavily sourced essay.)
I think the reason for this weird English-speaking take is two-fold:
Americans/western culture interprets the Japanese subgenreĀ āyaoiā and its Japanese creators & fans through the lens of American/western culture and finds them wanting
the reinterpretation of the concept ofĀ āyaoiā andĀ āfujoshiā in American/western culture and the unfortunate associations created as a result
Without going into historical depth, any western - particularly American - interaction with Japanese culture is an unequal one. Besides the ignominious end of WWII, the American army was the means of forcing Japan to reopen their borders in the 1850ā²s. And frankly: western culture has been obsessed with Japanese culture (and other East Asian cultures) for literal centuries. and weāve been taking their cool shit and appropriating and bastardizing it for just as long.[$]Ā
the way that the wordsĀ āyaoiā andĀ āfujoshiā are being treated now is, in my opinion, an extension of this.
(this post was heavily updated on August 2-3rd, 2018, to add a lot more about the word āfujoshiā: it originally focused more on āyaoiā. huge thanks to blogs like @rottenboysclubā, @oh-suketoraā, and @satans-tiddiesā for all the information theyāve put out on tumblr about these words.[%] )
American understanding of yaoi in Japan & its Japanese fans
Americans donāt understand yaoi or fujoshi in their original Japanese context, but we belittle and denigrate it as if we do.
BL (Boyās Love) and its subgenreĀ āyaoiā seem to have a similar relationship to Japanese fans as āslashficā and mlm fiction does to American fans.Ā But that doesnāt mean we understand yaoi/BL in the context of Japanese culture or that we interact with yaoi/BL the same way Japanese fans do.Ā Same for the wordĀ āfujoshiā - a term that seems to have been coined in a derogatory context but wasĀ āreclaimedā by the very female-aligned fans that it was meant to denigrate.Ā (but more onĀ āfujoshiā later.)
In Japan, the word āyaoiā is more equivalent to a Japanese acronym for the English āpwpā (plot? what plot?) than a word referring to mlm. LikeĀ āpwpā in its original usage,Ā āyaoiā indicates a fanwork or small-time/one-shot original work (doujinshi) that has little to no plot and/or focuses almost exclusively on the sex part of a fictional ship, though āyaoiā is specifically applied to mlm-focused āplotlessā fanworks*.
(*itās worth noting that - as mentioned in the wiki link above - the word āyaoiā does not, on its own, have a meaning attached to BL. it has more to do with who adopted the acronym for common use: specifically, BL doujin writers.)
āyaoiā has fallen out of use in Japanese fan circles. āBLā -Ā āboyās loveā - is the word which is more of an umbrella term for mlm in the wayĀ āslashā is in English-speaking fandom, covering everything from explicit sex to soft pre-romance hand-holding. however, āyaoiā was the word thatĀ became known as the Japanese-equivalent mlm fan genre toĀ āslashā in English-speaking circles, which had the unfortunate effect of leading English-speaking animanga fans to compare only the most tropey, explicit mlm content from Japanese fandom against all varieties of mlm āslashā content from English-speaking fandom.
This was comparing apples to oranges; a more equivalent Western fandom comparison to JapaneseĀ āyaoiā would probably be silly oneshot crackfic and kinkmeme fics. But the misapprehension was already in place and only got worse as some of the tropes of the explicit versions of yaoi genre doujinshi became increasingly known - the āsemeā (ātopā) and āukeā (ābottomā) and their supposedly male/female-like roles, the ārapeyā tendency to show the uke as crying and reluctant under an aggressive seme, etc.
These kinds of tropes donāt sit well with a modern American audience. And Japanese bl fans have had their ownĀ conversations about whether bl/yaoi is harmful to or supportive of Japanese gay cultureĀ (and long before Western / English-speaking fandom circles were having them, at least in a widespread way.)
But Americans are ill-equipped to judge the situation from the sidelines. To provide a few examples of things we generally donāt have cultural context on to truly understand yaoi (BL, tbh) and its Japanese fans:
LGBTQ+ culture in Japan
the Japanese flavor of gender essentialism
social and societal pressures on Japanese people, particularly women (trans, cis, and intersex) & nb ppl who identify as femme-aligned
what it means to beĀ āfeminineā in Japan
strongly gendered roles in the bedroom (sex in Japan)
Without knowing all this, how can we understand why yaoi (or BL) is constructed the way it is? how can we understand what draws peopleĀ to it, or how it sits with Japanese LGBTQ people?
But because many yaoi tropes donāt sit well with Americans in the context of our own culture and increasing openness to LGBT+/queer people, and because weāve given yaoi a false equivalence with a western genre of fiction that has a much wider range of subject and form, weāre apt to look down on yaoi asĀ ābad mlmā and on its āfujoshiā fans as genuinelyĀ ārotten womenā.
The international reinterpretation ofĀ āyaoiā & international yaoi fans
the other way the wordĀ āyaoiā is used by many people in fandom-centric tumblr - anti and non-anti alike - is in reference to how Americans/Western fans āinitiallyā interacted with Japanese-sourced mlm (āinitiallyā being when yaoi became well-known enough for a noticeable interaction to appear in American/western geek subculture).
Manga and anime had a popularity boom in the US around 2003/2004 thanks to improving internet speeds and the 24-hour cartoon channel Cartoon Network looking for fresh animated content to air. Media companies caught on and a glut of manga and anime were officially licensed, translated, and sold overseas.
As the popularity of Japanese media grew, the wordĀ āyaoiā became more popular and widely used in fandom circles, usually as a substitute forĀ āslashā orĀ āgayā (fictional mlm) when the source material for the fannish subject was Japanese in origin. I think this hit its peak around 2006-2007; at that time many teenage and young adult anime fans (primarily female/femme) who enjoyed slashfic/mlm fic called themselvesĀ āyaoi fansā.Ā
Why wasĀ āyaoiā so popular in America/western culture? and why did its fans get such an awful reputation over time?
as for popularity, hereās a few aspects:Ā
Just another word forĀ āslashā - it wasnāt so much that yaoi as a publishing genre was popular as that there were a lot anime fans in fandom using the wordĀ āyaoiā for their mlm fan content instead of the wordĀ āslashā. (and it still is used this way in some circles.)
male-attracted teenās first fanservice - because of the size of the boom and the comparative diffidence of American marketers to young (male-attracted) people, a young anime fanās first published media experience with the sexualĀ āfemale gazeā directed towards men was more likely to be sourced in Japanese BL content.
American gaze on Japanese male companionship - manga geared towards young men / perceived men in Japan (such as Shonen Jump titles) features a lot of male companionship and tight bonds of friendship. So does American media, but American male culture rarely allows men to touch one another in friendly ways (any gentle touch from a cis man is treated as expressing sexual interest).Ā Japanese male friendship culture lacks this physical distance. Guess how it was interpreted, and guess what kind of effect it had on American anime/manga fandom.
relatedly, this LGBT/queer read on Japanese-sourced masc-centric content, plus the willingness of works aimed towards femme audiences to present all-but-canon mlm relationships, probably functioned as a poor manās substitute for the lack of LGBT representation in American media in some cases.
and some reasons for the terrible reputationĀ āyaoi fansā garnered:
American āyaoi fansā in the mid-2000ā²s were mostly teenage girls/femme-aligned young people, and it is an American pastime to shit on teenage girls for being teenagers and girls at the same time.
10 years on, those teenage girls are young adults in their 20ā²s looking back on their younger selves with embarrassed disgust. That is: the wordĀ āyaoiā started to garner its sour taste in the 2010ā²s because thatās when most of the teenagers of the 2000ā²s outgrew that particular flavor of immaturity.
a lack of LGBT/queer culture awareness and education in America. Yaoi or slash fanworks may have been Babyās First Gay Content. It also might have been the entire extent of their knowledge about non-straight anything because America had by no means the same level of LGBT/queer visibility that it does now and certainly didnāt (doesnāt) educate about it. people said and did some awful stuff out of sheer ignorance and lack of thought.
fandom got better about it because resources improved and visibility increased, which was itself in some measure because of the popularity of mlm fiction in fandom circles leading to people doing more research and queer fans educating those who knew less. BL wasnāt necessarily intended as queer rep, but it did act as a gateway to queer culture for people who discovered things about themselves through BL.
socially inappropriate behavior of many, many kinds - including those who refused to separate fiction and reality and treated real mlm like live fanservice (āomg real life yaoi!ā). But as an icon of āyaoi fan in the 2000ā²s cringe cultureā, perhaps nothing is so prominent and well-known as the āyaoi paddleā.
why is the yaoi paddle so illustrative and iconic? Well - the paddles were sold at anime conventions as a silly novelty item. Anime convention attendees tended (and still tend) to skew young, particularly compared to other nerdy social gatherings. Ā And as you would expect of a bunch of (a) overexcited young people (b) relatively lacking in supervision and (c ) surrounded by things liable to raise their excitement levels even more, they did a lot of foolish things when handed wooden oars that were easy to swing around and hit people with.
At about the same time that anime fandom was truly exploding in size and the yaoi paddle craze was hitting its peak, the internet was juuust about bandwidth friendly enough to allow people to take videos and upload them to this awesome new site āyoutubeā.
Iād say āyou can imagine what kinds of videos people uploadedā but you donāt have to imagine. you can see for yourself. The human interest news articles practically wrote themselves. And while yaoi paddles were quickly banned from conventions and their popularity dropped almost as fast, it was an impression to linger. particularly, IMO, combined with other invasive social behaviors that were somewhat more tolerated at anime conventions back then: āglompingā, āfree hugs!ā signs, awkwardly following relative strangers around conventions as nominal āfriendsā, cosplayers publicly āmaking outā as āfanserviceā, etc.*
so this is the image of theĀ āyaoi fanā today - a young, white American cis girl at an anime convention in 2007, lacking self-restraint, social grace, and the ability to distinguish fiction from reality. and though this image has little to do with the original Japanese concept, we use the Japanese word to conjure it.
*these behaviors werenāt limited to young female / perceived female āyaoi fansā by any means, but partially because of yaoi paddles, ācringe cultureā and āyaoi fangirlsā were inexorably linked to one another.
International (mis)use ofĀ āFujoshiā: a Brief History
In contrast with āyaoiā, the wordĀ āfujoshiā has a comparatively short history in American culture. It had a brief rise to popularity in the early- to mid- 2010ā²s, but for the past year or two it has been heavily invoked by the (so to speak) āfandom policeā as an invective against (perceived) women who ship fictional mlm and/or create explicit fictional mlm fanworks.
āfujoshiā (Ā č 儳å ) is a compound word composed of the kanji/hanzi forĀ ārottenā/āfermentedā (č ) andĀ āwomanā (儳å ) and is a homonym with an old Japanese word forĀ ārespectable womanā (婦儳å ).Ā It was coined on 2ch (a Japanese text board popular with men) to insult (perceived) female fans whoĀ āqueeredā media content written for & centered around men: re-imagining (canon straight) male characters as queer/gay/bi, shipping them with one another, and discussing/creating explicit, sexual work around those ships. (sound familiar?)
In its original insulting context, aĀ āfujoshiā was woman who was no longer a desirable marriage partner because of her interest in BL. She had ruined herself by marinating in sexual fantasies - and not even normal sexual fantasies about having sex with a man herself. Instead, she had fantasies about men having sex with men! Not only had a fujoshi woman lost her cute naivete and innocence: sheād also turned into a sexual deviant. She was fermented, overripe, disgusting, undesirable.
I donāt know how long this meaning had any clout, because Japanese BL fans - BL fans from all over Asia, in fact - embraced theĀ āfujoshiā label. to me, the implication of the āfujoshiā reclamation reads like a giant, queer āfuck youā to the kind of dudebros who hated them: āyou find me undesirable because i like gay/queer content? Thatās hilarious, because I never wanted you in the first place.āĀ
And to this day (mid-2018),Ā 'fuā/ č , āfujoā/ č 儳, and its varieties (č ē·å, č äŗŗ, etc) have positive connotations in kanji/hanzi-using fandom circles.
The word āfujoshiā reached English-speaking Western fandom eventually (I want to say in the late 2000ā²s/early 2010ā²s). It came to us already reclaimed and was picked up as a positive self-label. In those earlier days, Western fandom called themselves āfujoshiā in a way much more similar to how Eastern fandom still uses it:Ā
Itās not my job to please you.
Iām allowed to enjoy taboo things like queer fanworks, headcanoning canon straight male characters as gay, and sexually explicit content.
If you think that makes me gross, then fine: iām gross. your opinion doesnāt hurt me. in fact, I embrace it.
(now go away and let me ship.)
this connotation ofĀ āfujoshiā enjoyed a brief period of popularity. There was a fandomĀ āsweet spotā for slash in 2011-2012: shifts in public opinion meant shipping gay ships wasnāt utterly taboo anymore and AO3 was a safe space for sharing slashfic. āFujoshiā came to semi-replaceĀ āyaoi fanā in the English lexicon, at this time, becoming synonymous withĀ āships gay ships in animanga fandomsā, with the added bonus of partially shedding the connotation of loving old yaoi doujin tropes in oneās slashfic.
But in the last few years - starting in around 2014/2015, I want to say - there was a shift in the attitude towards shipping mlm here on tumblr.Ā
mlm fans who are seen as women - whether they are or not - are increasingly told that shipping fictional slash ships or creating fictional content about men in love with/having sex with men is terrible. mlm shippers/fanwork creators who arenāt mlm themselves - especially perceived-female mlm shippers/fanwork creators - are apparent no different from theĀ āyaoi fangirlā stereotype above: the 2007 cis white socially awkward fangirl, holding a yaoi paddle and screaming with excitement about real life yaoi!!! whenever two real gay men kiss.
the wordĀ āfujoshiā - still tied to the English-speaking concept ofĀ āyaoiā by both words being Japanese in origin and related to mlm fan content - was about to get unreclaimed with a vengeance ⦠by American/Western fans with hardly a drop of knowledge about Japanese culture, fandom, or language.
And itās been every bit as ugly as you can imagine.
āyaoiā andĀ āfujoshiā on tumblr today (mid-2018)
fandom on tumblr, deeply into policing everyoneās fannish interests in the name of social awareness, invokesĀ āyaoiā in a two-fold way:
āyaoiā as a doujinshi subgenre in Japan: featuring fictional mlm in sexual situations for titillation written by Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people) for Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people), and the distasteful feelings American/western culture bears towards its tropes as being unacceptably unrealistic andĀ ābackwardsā by modern progressive American standards.
āyaoiā asĀ ācringe cultureā: an imperialistic American/western read on Japanese media content + exposure to Japanese BL, blending unfavorably with a lack of education on real LGBT/queer culture, a lack of alternative LGBT/queer media representation, and teenagers being teenagers
Tumblr fandom police, feeling that āfujoshiā was equally bad asĀ āyaoiā by dint of being adopted as a label by animanga slashfic fans & as another Japanese word relating to mlm shipping, proceeded to co-opt, redefine, andĀ āun-claimā the wordĀ āfujoshiā:
āfujoshiā, but literally. having gotten wind of the literal meaning of the wordĀ āfujoshiā, but completely lacking the context under which the word was created, invoked, and reclaimed, fandom policers designated their own negative meaning forĀ ārotten girlā.Ā āfujoshiā meansĀ āstraight girl thatās rotten because she fetishizes gay men!ā fandom policers say - even though that has literally nothing to do withĀ āfujoshiā in its proper context.
telling East Asian fujoshi they canāt call themselves fujoshi. having decided the wordĀ āfujoshiā is tied to being homophobic (by āfetishizingā gay romance), and that its derogatory of women because they rely on their own re-take on the literal, negative meaning, American fandom policers start attacking East Asian fans that proudly call themselves fujoshi. (I wish I was joking.)
In summary, English-speaking fans are using their own twisted, ill-informed, and imperialistic treatment and understanding of Japanese concepts to turn those words into pejoratives for use in petty ship wars.
(And when you put it like that it kind of starts to look a little ⦠well ⦠racist.)
[%] This post was never intended as an exhaustive resource - as noted at the beginning of the post, it was based on my absorbed knowledge from being in animanga fandom as an American for many years - but thanks to the blogs I listed, who have a much more thorough knowledge of kanji / hanzi-using fan spaces such as Japan/China/Taiwan, Korea (in part), etc, I learned a lot about the current usage ofĀ āyaoiā (or lack thereof) in Japan & how fujoshi was adopted as a popular label over the last 9 months.
If youāre ever looking for more information on these topics, I would especially point you to @rottenboysclub, as their blog is focused on educating English-speaking fandom on Japanese queer/LGBT+ and fandom terminology.
[$] regarding western tendency to appropriate Japanese culture - Japan is eager to export the unique aspects of their culture. but how many times have you seen an English article with titles like ā10 Reasons Why Japan is So Weirdā or ā25 Weird Things About Japan that will make you say ābuy why?āā (the literacy rate in Japan being nearly 100% is #3 on this list). and okay - Japanese culture is remarkably different from American culture. But this āJapan is so weirdā talk is often accompanied by a tone of mild superiority.
consider how we treat Japanese cultural products such as movies. The recent Death Note debacle is only the latest in a long string of this kind of nonsense (though thank goodness itās getting the reputation it deserves.) Remember The Ring? American remake of Ringu. And of course thereās dozens of other examples of Americans buying or taking things from its original Japanese context and trying to make it ābetterā for a mainstream American audience, even though the American audience liked the original Japanese product just fine. (Dragonball Z comes to mind.)
(On the flip side you have āweaboos/weebsā, the contemporary word for āJapanophilesā, putting Japanese culture on a pedestal, which is not any better, and disgust with āweebsā tends to be extended to the aspects of Japanese culture they worship.)



























