as usual, i always wonder why people claim that cishet creators and consumers fetishize queer media but cishet media themselves is relatively free from any accusation of fetishization
could it be that queer media is always perceived as Something Horny And Impure hmm

it sucks to read tweets about queer media being claimed to be written by those who fetishize them but then see cishet media be free of The Fetishes
very few people would lay that same amount of attention YoI gets on some random cishet work for example

the irony of people accusing queer media of sexualizing queer people is that it really reifies the sexualization of queer people
there’s no alternative perspective that suggests queer guys in yoi are not being sexualized
instead, it’s guilttripping an imaginary cishet audience

if pop queer media criticism is just “guilttripping” and “questioning the intentions”, then fuck that shit
we should be past purity tests of “who’s actually queer”
you can say you dislike the relationships in yoi like any normal human being
don’t dress it up as Universally Bad

when you make your biased criticism sound objective, you’re not protecting the queer community but you’re actively harming it
you are diminishing their perspectives because you believe these works can’t possibly be queer
this is why the reification is real and dangerous

it’s pathetic how many people buy into the narrative that Some Queer Media are created to fetishize and in order to combat that, we must guilttrip and do everything we can to say how impure these works are
good job being “allies” and telling queer people they’re not queer i guess

when the world is gaslighting queer people into believing they’re just horny deviant cishets since forever, i can only view this trend as something similar even if it’s with the “good intentions” of protecting queer people
this line of thinking is dangerously heteronormative

it boxes in queer people’s experiences as stereotypes and anything that deviates from it must be a horny cishet
lesbians can’t possibly watch bl media, gay men can’t possibly read yuri, those two sexualities also can’t possibly enjoy cishet media too
this is my conclusion

this line of criticism is made by people who cannot imagine queer people doing anything but the stereotypes they’ve concocted from heteronormative ideologies on lgbtq life
it’s the same bullshit you hear in race: asians can’t possibly fail their exams!!!!

all these “anti-fujoshi” arguments reek of heteronormativity and i don’t think people want to recognize how much it closes off queer expression to the point tons of things must now be understood as “cishet”
i also ask “if a work is indeed fetishy, do we just give it to cishets?”

i don’t get why people believe queer folks can’t make cishet media queer for their purposes
this is a thing found in queer academia and film circles
jack halberstam’s the art of failure explores how Dude, Where’s My Car can get pretty queer
don’t let cishet media just be cishet

heteronormativity is implicitly inside all these arguments: nothing cishet-ish can be queer and queer people should enjoy media that’s only meant for them
look at your arguments and tell me how you aren’t being heteronormative
how this ideology isn’t cis heterosexual supremacy

let’s put it another way: what is actually bad about cis women enjoying BL? why must they be shamed about reading the romantic and sexual encounters of men? there’s certainly concerns about misrepresentation but what is wrong with cis people reading queer media?

yes, cishet creators and audiences tend to demean representations of queer people but i also believe queer people can do that too
a certain review of a popular lgbtq manga surely did that
why can’t cishet people enjoy queer media? why is there a need to gatekeep?

and for the sake of argument, let’s also discount the real and extremely likely possibility that many “cishet” consumers reading these works are in the questioning phase who haven’t “made the jump” yet
why are we still against cishet people watching yuri on ice?

because here’s the thing about arguments against cishet people consuming queer media, they don’t actually make sense
you’re telling everyone that queer people are here to stay but you also don’t want cishet people to read their works
how is this solidarity? how is this helping?

heteronormativity wants queer and het people to be separate
if people of all sexualities and genders mingle, then this normativity will actually be questioned and challenged
all those “hey straight people, read some gay books” are needless posturing if they can’t read yuri or BL

there’s an imaginary circumscribed lgbtq reading list only for cishets
and it’s the media where they see gay people suffer and maybe enjoy their life for a bit
heteronormativity loves that shit because it seeks to limit people’s imaginations for what being queer means

under heteronormativity, the story of being queer is the story of suffering and the little joys we can have
no future, no exit, all loss
any work that depicts a happy future must be fetishy and therefore a delusion by the cishets
queers, we have to imagine, must suffer

one day, an anime called Yuri on Ice tries to challenge that assumption and see a world where oppression could not exist
sure, we can mention the japanese lgbtq community didn’t get much out of it and thought it was fetishy too
but the world outside saw it as liberation

and that is an important part of Yuri on Ice’s legacy
i’m no fan of the show but i know many people who were touched by its depiction of relationships and had begun to explore what gender and sexuality meant to them
it takes away the chains of heteronormativity to let us imagine

is it wrong to imagine a world where queer people can live happily? is it wrong that these dreams could come from “fetishes”?
i haven’t even mentioned the history of queers who started to dream from actual fetishy shit
i can only ask “is it wrong for something to be happy?”

if we cannot imagine a world like yuri on ice’s because it’s a “fetishy escapist dream”, then we have succumbed to heteronormativity
we cannot imagine a happy world for queer people
they (including me) are just tokens, to be protected from reality, to be boxed into “expectations”

calling something fetishy and kinkshaming are the tools of heteronormativity
in history, people used to shame queer people for liking the “wrong” gender
today, only blatant homophobes do that
but homophobia exists as long as heteronormativity persists
it’s just subtler

homophobia now exists as arguments that attempt to limit and censor the imaginations of queers and cishets, to tell someone they’re not “queer enough”, to suggest anything sexual and optimistic must be for cishets
it’s just like how racism is cloaked and embedded to structures

until we allow ourselves to see queer people as living happily on this earth, we’ll just have to admit all of us are homophobic
much like how we have to recognize we are racist
we are compromised because we live in a white cishet supremacist world

if a work like Yuri on Ice gets lambasted for being “fetishy”, this is the depressive line of thought i feel all the time
dreams are “fetishy” and i guess we just want to censor our dreams so we can tell ourselves the “realistic vision” of queer people is that they suffer

misery porn, not happy porn, is what queer people under this heteronormative vision are all about
even if Yuri on Ice was actually fetishy, it’d be happy porn at least
i really cannot imagine myself as happy after all
at least give me that dream for a bit...

i’ll just end the thread by saying to Yuri on Ice fans that your arguments are logical and valid but they rest on a need to clarify it isn’t fetishy
you need to argue despite YoI not being fetishy, there is no problem being fetishy or that cishet women enjoy watching it

you need to accept people will remain entrenched in their heteronormative view that YoI is “porn” so you must then argue “So what’s wrong with it being happy porn then?”
you need to fight heteronormativity, not just homophobia and misogyny

it’s a fucking tall order, i know, but you need to point out how much heteronormative kinkshaming bullshit there is in their arguments
YoI is just their punching bag but it represents any media that doesn’t conform to heteronormativity
this is why their arguments make zero sense

queer people need more “happy porn” regardless of Yuri on Ice’s status as porn or not
these arguments are denying queer people from having any kind of “happy porn” and we need to go against it
for me, i’m gonna have breakfast and maybe tweet more optimistic things
life is sad

p.s. if you want happy gay girl porn (okay, there’s no sex but you get the idea), this doujinshi is translated into english and released on the artist’s booth page
i helped out with the tlc https://twitter.com/richard_effendi/status/1278332998035714048

shit like this is why i firmly believe the “fetishizing” argument is defeatist
if self-defense means adding an imaginary statistic number and letting The Men decide what’s lesbian porn, i give up
everyone, let’s give up on the concept of queer porn
there’s no porn for queers

yes, homophobic cishets masturbate to porn of queer people (fake or real) but they also will masturbate to everything
we need to fucking fight people and take control of what porn is
otherwise, queer porn will always be the domain for straight people

this is also why the fight for queer media is related to sex work
if sex work is still deemed as disgusting and submissive to cishets, then we lose everything when it comes to sex
this fight is intersectional but very few people will admit this
they’d rather degrade sex work

bad faithers are fucking everywhere but i hate it when they randomly bring in sex work to justify anti-fujoshi arguments
wow good job in showing not only you can’t read and how heteronormative you are but also not understanding how misconceptions of sex work perpetuate misogyny

as an aside, i want people to envision the history of minorities (whether it be based on sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, religion etc.) not as a history of defeat and compromise but as a history of continual struggle and solidarity against the status quo

if we can’t imagine the people we are supposedly allying with as fellow strugglers and instead prefer telling them to fit our picture, then we are submitting ourselves to doom