Tbh I feel there’s a widespread condescension towards all things that are liked and done by women, including but not limited to fanfiction, romance novels, “indie girl voice” amongst other things. Even queer AFAB folk who usually think they are feminist are not immune to it.

It’s ingrained in us to think: yeah fandic is usually bad, cringey, and indulgent.

BL is bad bc it’s thought to be written and read by women. Fic is bad bc it’s thought to be written and read by women. Romance is trivial and sappy bc it’s thought to be written and read by women.

It’s like the recent thread that was going around that was making fun of “bad writing” in MDZS fanfiction. It reflects the widespread notion that fanfiction is generally of poor quality. It’s cringey, indulgent, filled with bad erotica, and Mary-sue fantasies.

But remember that this idea emerged BECAUSE fanfiction is written by women.

“But I’m not making fun of fanfiction because it’s written by women. If a cishet man wrote like this, I would make fun of him too.”

But ARE you making fun of cishet men?

When people say that they are gender-blind, race-blind, free of prejudice, most often, that’s just a lie to comfort yourself that you’re a good person. No one is gender or race-blind. That’s not how social psychology works. That is not an empirical fact.

If you think that you are gender-blind and “I would make fun of a man for doing this too” then I invite you to recall every instance you have made fun of someone for doing that particular thing, and then count how many of them were AFAB, and how many of them were cishet men.

Probably most of them are AFAB, bc the thing you so hate is PREDOMINANTLY DONE BY AFAB PEOPLE, NOT CISHET MEN.

“I’d make fun of men for doing it too.” But you aren’t making fun of men.

Because men don’t do it.

AFAB ppl do it. And that’s why you’ve been socialized to hate it.