since i'm being controversial today anyway, i also think that a huge root of the "anti-fujoshi" stance stems from western social justice practice, namely that if you're lgbt, you have the automatic right to "criticize" all lgbt content, even if it's not content catered to you.

there is this biologically essentialist & ahistorical (not to mention plainly weird) assumption that there's some single, overarching, monolithic "lgbt community" and that this "community" all has the same ideas and practices and beliefs and goes through the same things.

a lot of western/white lgbt people nowadays genuinely act like "lgbt" is an ethnicity of its own. it's why you even get lgbt people accusing each other of "appropriating" specific subcultures. the language of critical race theory + anti-imperialist academia is used for the sake

of lgbt representation discourse and politics. and so because people think that there is this immutable, monolithic lgbt community that transcends culture, nationality, geopolitics, and language, the attitude is that "this content features lgbt people, therefore i am entitled to

criticizing it, picking it apart, and demeaning its creator". that's why i saw western feminists hating the handmaiden for its "male gaze", the assumption being that dissection of the "male gaze" is something that looks the same in every lesbian feminist or lgbt circle

around the world. it's why i see "anti-fujoshi" boldly ignoring japanese cultural context and even saying that the term has become "negative" in the west and therefore it's okay for people to hate fujoshi. it's even why i've seen people unironically say that they have to watch

"foreign lgbt movies for representation" (which sounds very condescending and paternalistic, btw). "i am lgbt, therefore this somehow impacts me specifically and so i have the right as a consumer and as an lgbt person to speak on it".

maybe when it comes to western lgbt content you do. absolutely you do, especially when western content is targeting lgbt demographics & luring them in with the promise of representation.

but danmei novels? BL manga? bollywood gay romance movies? lgbt films from nonwestern nations? they don't exist first and foremost for "THE lgbt community", they exist for the consumers and readers in THEIR specific nation/culture/region.

you are not oppressed by india's criminalization of homosexuality (which yes was repealed last year) just because you're lgbt. the people who were and still are affected by that are INDIAN lgbt people and only them.

i will never take someone else's oppression and claim it as my own just because we share a label. lgbt politics does NOT transcend culture; it is EMBEDDED within that culture. the homophobia of my community members doesn't impact WHITE lgbt people, it impacts SOUTH ASIAN lgbt ppl

the same applies to lgbt cultural products. these films, novels, and manga don't exist to cater to your representation ideals, and were never meant to do so. they were not created with you in mind, or for your validation, critique, or approval.

you don't actually have the automatic right to critique BL/danmei/etc just bc you happen to be lgbt because it's not a cultural product that affects you or is targeted toward you. sekaiichi hatsukoi may be cringe but it has zero impact on how lgbt people in the united states

are perceived or what legal rights they have. bollywood movies have a whole host of problems but whatever goes on in them has no impact on gay people outside of south asia. to take and claim that experience for yourself not only reeks of

a victimization complex, it's also incredibly orientalist and entitled. not to mention that it ignores that the actual lgbt and feminist communities of these nations (japan/china/india/south korea/etc) have their OWN reflections, thoughts, feedback, and criticisms of these

cultural products. see, for example, that the BL genre has evolved over time directly as a result of the feedback japanese lgbt people have given BL mangaka. that's why some of the earliest BL manga may have indeed eroticized rape as a trope or

had characters with severe internalized homophobia, but BL mangaka nowadays don't play nearly as much into those tropes as they used to. and they did that not because teenagers and jobless adults on the internet wrote call out posts but because people in their own nation &

professional circles gave feedback and criticism. whatever issues people have with the lgbt cultural products of their time, i leave it up to the people of those nations to primarily take up the mantle of addressing those issues.

and that assumption that lgbt people/women aren't already doing that also goes back to the imperialist idea that the west is the most progressive and that nonwesterners don't know any better or that they're regressive.

it's our job to criticize western lgbt cultural products bc we are the consumers of it, that content is targeted directly at us, and it does indeed impact us. the same can't be automatically and inherently said of other cultural products.

even fair feedback is fine, but when you malign an entire genre and all of its creators just bc of personal discomfort, you're being orientalist. i don't know how else to put it.