one of the things i think about a lot when the discussion of fujo mainstreaming / "why do women love m/m" come around is like. i had a thing for a guy in late high school, and i really liked him in a way that wasn't the usual artificial or i guess performative way i had been dating up to that point. a lot of the actual impulses and emotions involved were still opaque to me at the time but i did know that i didn't want to just Be His Girlfriend like i was used to doing.
unfortunately the only way i could express this was as "i want to make him cry," which got taken by our mutual friends as a statement of sexual sadism, which it was not; it was definitely something much closer to The Fujo Emotion than anything else. i wanted to see him be vulnerable, for me, because i wanted him (because i wanted him, because i wanted him, because i wanted him); i wanted to be the person with power and in charge whose expectations and desires would be prioritized; and last but not least i wanted him bouncing and moaning on it. i didn't have words for any of those things, or to express how all of them were part of the same impulse i didn't know how to embody! or enact. and i think a lot of that is both present for people who aren't me and not palatable to put into think pieces. like sometimes it is a sex thing! but it's not the sex thing you think it is.
