I thought I would write something profound about the Great Yaoi Controversy, but after reading all the posts and comments, my head is spinning. Chris Butcher started the latest round with this post at Comics.212, and I’m pretty much in agreement with him. As he says in the comments section (slightly out of context, but it’s too good to pass up):
Here’s the thing: We’re not in Japan. You know it and I know it. Boys in Japan aren’t reading Shoujo manga, under penalty of getting the crap kicked out of them. But boys here will buy girl manga and it’s really no big thing. I think it’s really… narrow-minded, but also unprofitable to be deliberately excluding a market that is drawn to the material.
For some reason this really bugs Tina Anderson:
Quite frankly, this reverse-entitlement issue is nothing new and the whole issue in Japan passed quite quickly, like around mid 90’s, when BL got popular. Again, another case of the Queens in Court getting their balls in a snit because the Double-Xers were making a fetish of gay sex. Oh, but they were making money while doing it and that’s just ten times wrong…
I get that there’s value in a house like Drama Queen publishing books “for women by women,” but this isn’t a zero-sum game. The guys aren’t taking away the girls’ books; they’re supporting the market. My daughters aren’t threatened by David Welsh’s shoujo habit, after all; he’s just helping keep the books they like in print.
In comments on David’s post on the topic, Tina asks
Why would a woman want to write a manga for gay men?
That question stops me dead. Why wouldn’t a woman want to write a manga for gay men? Are we only supposed to write for women? And can gay men only write for other gay men? Am I trespassing because I enjoy David Sedaris’s pieces in the New Yorker? The notion that a writer would only write for one type of people just boggles my mind. Yes, we all have our intended audience, the folks we aim our writing at. But if someone else reads what I’ve written, I’m delighted—not appalled.
David has a similar response to mine:
Why would any manga creator want to limit their audience?
And Tina says
A manga creator that writes for a what is all ready a specific audience. There’s no need to have your hand in every pie.
But I don’t think adding men to the audience means the woman has to change her style. In fact, she shouldn’t: The men like the yaoi the way it is.
As for men writing yaoi, for men or for women, Alex Woolfson says of his work:
They are action-romances where yes, guys love each other and try to protect each other and kiss and get naked and a whole lot more — and I want to tell those stories in a way that can turn on a straight woman in Florida as much as a gay guy here in San Francisco.
Is it yaoi? A couple of years ago it was hard to argue that a manga-style comic written outside of Japan was manga, but genres evolve, and so does language. Maybe yaoi written by men for men will evolve into a separate sub-genre, or maybe it won’t. Either way, I don’t think anything is gained by trying to shut out one type of writer based on who they are.
I don’t read much yaoi, but I do read a lot of shoujo and josei manga, and my daughters cringe when their Unspeakably Old Mother heads for the manga section in Borders. “Grow up,” I tell them. “This is America. I can read what I want.” My father read kids’ comics all his life, or until Alzheimer’s stole his ability to enjoy them, and he never got a cease-and-desist letter from the people that publish Archie and Jughead. Read what you like, write what you want, no need to apologize. Life is too short.
Wow! I had no idea that there was so much controversy! IMO, if I was writing Yaoi — I’d write and communicate my own artistic/creative vision unadulterated. Whether that falls into a man/woman/gay man/ lesbian category would be subjective.
If the thinly veiled homophobia of Tina Anderson’s comments on her site and on David’s are indicative of the attitude at Dramaqueen I’m certainly not going to waste any of my money on their product.
Yes, Tina Anderson is a homophobe. Oh my G*d. I took this to AMLA and discussed it with the ladies there; no one is saying gay men can’t read yaoi—but stop whining because mangaka don’t consider their motivation gay men. That was it. Why you’re blowing this completely out of the water is beyond me.
I think it’s unfair to throw around crap like ‘I won’t support DramaQueen because Tina Anderson is an a**hole’ is completely out of line and unfair to the men and women at Dramaqueen. You may dislike me all you want, I don’t mind that, but don’t bash the company I write for, just don’t buy my work.
Because you’re making money off of fetishizing gay sex, while telling gay men that they don’t have the right to have an opinon about it. You may not be a homophobe, but that is a homophobic attitude.
I can assure you that DramaQueen is anything but homophobic. I am very sad to see that you are passing judgement on a whole company and it’s employees based on personal statements of one of the artists working on one of our projects, even thou knowing Tina personally I can state beyond any doubts that she has no issues whatsoever with the gay community or homosexuality. If you are referring to the statements I assume you are, then you are misunderstanding the point Tina was trying to convey. It had nothing to do with homosexuality, it was about BL and the fact that the genre is greatly misunderstood. The article you are referring to is not about yaoi controversy , it is about the fact that the Japanese mangakas do not consider their work gay porn. There is a genre called Bara in Japan that caters to gay men, yaoi is targeted to women, just like shounen is targeted to guys and shoujo to girls. It doesn’t mean people outside the target audience can’t read it, I encourage anyone to try reading yaoi, but from there to demanding yaoi is gay porn and claiming DramaQueen is selling gay porn dressed as yaoi, is pretty much creating a controversy.
**Because you’re making money off of fetishizing gay sex, while telling gay men that they don’t have the right to have an opinon about it. You may not be a homophobe, but that is a homophobic attitude.**
Ok, I concede this, but meh, turnabout is fair play, a woman’s sexuality has been in the ‘fetish follies’ with men for as long as men have been creating erotic material. I think they call it, exploitation. I know no one likes to be dealt the exclusion card, it stinks.
To quote one of my more articulate peers:
“What the west isn’t at all comfortable with is the notion that BL can legitimately be targeted to women. Especially not when BL seems to be dealing exclusively not only with the male sex but with minority members of the male sex, who are perhaps understandably sensitive about territorial infringement.” -Jeane /AMLA
I never said you couldn’t read it, write, or whatever—but don’t get pissed when BL mangaka don’t scream that you, the gay man, are NOT their motivation. That was the point I was making. No, you aren’t the target market in Japan; who knows, maybe you will be the target market here someday, but don’t hold your breath waiting for female mangaka stateside to begin seeing you as their market.
-Tina
I’m willing to concede that I over-spoke in criticizing DramaQueen and Tina, and I apologize. But I think, Tina, that you’ve willfully misinterpreted the point that many people are trying to make. I understand that yaoi comes out of a specific cultural paradigm, and in that culture it means one thing. But this is not that culture. Gay men are going to take an interest in yaoi, and have an opinion on it, and in many cases they are not going to like the messages that images that appear to be of gay men send.
As I said at Chris’s site, I think one of the fundamental points that’s confusing this discussion is that “bara” is not really known in the West, largely because no publisher has shown a willingness to invest in it the way that multiple publishers have pushed yaoi. So, for gay male manga fans, the ONLY material representing “gay men”, at the moment, is yaoi. And to have yaoi creators and yaoi fans seem to say “no, this isn’t for you, this is for us alone, even though it looks to be about you” is galling.
You’re right. In the West that sort of shell game isn’t going to fly. Especially as more and more OEL mangaka come into the mix, English creators who are not as segregated from the ‘gay community’ as our Japanese counterparts can and will write and portray their relationships more realistically, because we know the gay community is out there buying books.
But what prompted me to post at Precur, and prompted me to ignore the ‘grousing’ at 212, was this notion that, what is being brought from Japan, should in fact be touted for the ‘genderless market’ when it was never created for anything other than women. Please don’t tell me, someone who’s been a fan a very long time, who reads the manga and writes the manga, that entry saying that publishers need to ignore the very market that made them possible stateside [the lady fans here] and start catering to the ‘gay market’ which is slowly growing, is multifaceted or brilliant. Brigid, Mr. Butcher may say whatever he likes, he may read whatever he likes, but please don’t tell the very women stateside who made yaoi licensing financially viable to ‘grow up’ when they find issue with something they’ve always perceived, as theirs.
Hey, my son doesn’t play girls field hockey, and you know what, my daughter is ok with that—until he does. 0_0.
-Tina
I didn’t see any female telling gay men to shut up about their ‘opinions’ you you say Dorian. Howevber I think a lot of female yaoi readerships do get annoyed when some gay men complain in a way that suggest they *demand* yaoi to be cater to them, and urging Japanese female authors to adapt and understand their real gay male thinkings, and put gay men’s interest as most important while ignoring all that where yaoi get to where it is today. BL/Yaoi is a subgenre of shoujo manga from Japan that was and has always been a female interest, I’ve seen the long, struggling road for females to see this ‘secret garden’ of their flourish over the years in Japan. Complain and have your ‘opinion’ all you want, just keep in mind that the BL/yaoi manga that’s coming out of Japan will ALWAYS reflect their female readers’ interests first and foremost, and will always be what works for female first rather than male (most female just have different take on eroticism than most male), because that’s just what they are. There are specific genre of Gay manga (Bara) in Japan that are written by men for men’s interest.
So maybe gay men aren’t the target market for yaoi. It would still be nice if the Japanese mangaka wouldn’t be so flamingly homophobic in their marginal comments about the gay men they are portraying, whether their characters are actually gay men or male characters coded as women. That nasty, vicious, *active* homophobia on the part of the mangaka (like, oh, say, the crap in the margins of FAKE and Yami no Matsuei) puts a really bad taste in my mouth whenever I read shounen-ai or yaoi comics. There’s a difference between targeting an audience and vitriolically excluding and badmouthing the population they are supposedly depicting.
And sometimes, that homophobia carries over into the fandom, leading to some nasty dialogue in which, sorry to say, a lot of people who are feeling defensive do, in fact, state things in a homophobic fashion, whether they (or their friends) consider them to be homophobic or not. (Get this: us queer folks? have to deal with internalized homophobia all the time. That’s right! WE’RE homophobic TOO! *gasp* It’s culturally ingrained, and one has to become aware of it to defeat it — spending your life denying it isn’t going to eliminate it.)
This whole “get over it” attitude is the *exact* silencing tactic that anti-feminists (lots of threatened men) use on feminists. In fact, it’s a popular tactic by anyone feeling threatened in this culture. You talk about the long, hard road women have had to get their market — it is, in fact, homophobic and anti-feminist to use the tactics used on you and your kindred to silence another minority. Get over yourselves and your defensiveness and try to learn how NOT to marginalize others, how to recognize your own UNINTENTIONAL homophobia, and try to see your way to opening up the market to *everyone*.
Good grief.
A dyke
Melody, I know I have seen those “Shut up! It’s not for you, so go away!” opinions around (and, in all honesty your comment borders on that as well). Meanwhile, I still haven’t found those condemnations of how YAOI misrepresents gays, though I am curious to the basis of this perspective since, based on what I’ve read, I don’t see a basis to make that conclusion.
So perhaps its a matter of the circles where we visit?
For me the big point is the one Christopher starts with, the frustrating way YAOI manga creators talk about their work ‘isn’t really gay’ but then try to explain why by noting the emotion, the romance, the longing feelings as if this wasn’t part of the gay experience. It suggest an attitude that, to paraphrase John Stewart, being gay isn’t part of the human condition but just some kinky fetish, that romance and passionate love aren’t part being gay.
***For me the big point is the one Christopher starts with, the frustrating way YAOI manga creators talk about their work ‘isn’t really gay’ but then try to explain why by noting the emotion, the romance, the longing feelings as if this wasn’t part of the gay experience.***
The way ‘Japanese Yaoi Creators’ talk about their work? As I said before, it doesn’t shock me at all. Many Japanese mangaka are simply out-of-touch with the gay community in their own country, so much so, many manga-ka know zilch about the community. They make no efforts to write for the men in that community, and I think many mangaka being licensed stateside [Kodaka, Yuuka, the rest] are true ‘deer in the headlights’ in interviews because they don’t know how to define their works appeal and here they are being asked not only to define their work, but to define why it’s so appealing to just women. 0_0. It’s going on in Japan right now as well, BL is, for the first time in Japan, getting media coverage and it’s not nice coverage. ^^;
For whatever reason I’m being called out for ‘hating the mens’ and being exclusionary, only because I really trying to get the point across from the Japanese perspective of it really just being for women over there, and yes, they make no real effort to understand ‘what’s real’. I know being gay is more than just the sort of sex you have, so I think this feeling that all ‘BL creators the world over’ have this monster-misconception about the lifestyle isn’t fair. Unfortunately, in the very genre I write for, I have more male fans than female [I know this because of my doujinshi sales] and this notion that western djka are creating in the same form of empathy-vacuum that native to many Japanese creators just isn’t fair.
I think if anything, OEL/BL has an obligation to represent a more realistic portrayal of the lifestyle, even in their most frivolous of plots; but at the same time there are those who’d argue with me that this notion is completely unfair because BL is all fantasy without boundaries. The responsibility lies with the creator, will he or she choose to create for a genderless market, or will they choose to create and market to their own gender.
-Tina
I think this whole argument can be solved very easily.
Japanese Mangaka aren’t writing about gay men, they’re (mostly) writing about MSM.
And since the gay community isn’t the same as the MSM (lack of)community, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
When representatives from the MSM community start knocking on mangaka’s doors, then they can have a nice long talk about how MSM are portrayed in manga. Until then, I’m with Tina, it ain’t about gay men and it ain’t for gay men, so no need to claim and blame.
As for Fake being homophobic, WTF? The mangaka might use homophobia as a point of humor(usually at the homophobes expense), but she has never portrayed gays in a negative light. Ryo is gay and a competent cop, even a good fighter and crack shot. Even if Japanese mangaka aren’t afraid to use the words “fag & homo”, the MSM they’re portraying, even if they are effeminate, are invariably admirable, desirable and sympathetic.
Compare that to something like “he Producers”. Homophobic epithets are never used, yet the homophobia comes through loud and clear.
This is a different *culture* you’re casting aspersions on. (In typical white colonialist fashion.) I’ve noticed, in Asia, while people are generally more accepting of weirdness, they’re also more bold about mocking and/or teasing weird people. They don’t seem to have the same internalized terror of being different because it’s all out in the open. (But, I could be completely wrong.) Regardless, Japanese Mangaka do not have to bend to the social mores of Americans. Their work was never intended to have appeal outside of Asian cultures. We can’t expect them to conform to our social mores simply because we are currently exploiting one of their cultural artifacts for our profit and entertainment. Pretty f-ing arrogant to even suggest it, if you ask me.
The only thing we can do is to stop importing Yaoi. Not sure how that would help the gay community.
BTW, why are lesbians so upset over homophobia anyway? Lesbian affections are so accepted as to be featured on prime time TV. Lesbians don’t suffer from bashing at anywhere near the rate as gay men. Notice all the media that use lesbian couples to “humanize” homosexuality? Want to make homosexuals palatable and give exposure to their cause? Use lesbians!
That nasty, vicious, *active* homophobia on the part of the mangaka (like, oh, say, the crap in the margins of FAKE and Yami no Matsuei) puts a really bad taste in my mouth whenever I read shounen-ai or yaoi comics.
JM, could you tell me what you found homophobic about FAKE? Our reactions differ greatly. From a gay perspective, I found it to be very positive. My one minor problem with that series centered on racial issues.
**Regardless, Japanese Mangaka do not have to bend to the social mores of Americans. Their work was never intended to have appeal outside of Asian cultures. We can’t expect them to conform to our social mores simply because we are currently exploiting one of their cultural artifacts for our profit and entertainment. Pretty f-ing arrogant to even suggest it, if you ask me.**
And that was my point from the very start. However, over at Precur, my defense of the Japanese-Mangaka mindset and the fandom it caters to, today turns into…Tina Anderson says I’m not female enough to read BL manga so I can’t read or talk about it anymore. (>_>); all because I disagreed with his assessment that the 212 entry was rant disguised as discourse. Brigid brings it here and turns it into, Tina Anderson says gay men have no right to read it, thus prompting the ‘homophobe’ dart.
You can’t ask Japanese mangaka or the licensors who publish them to simply begin, as you say, ‘bend to the social mores of Americans’ or anyone else in the West. I’ve never cared who reads me, anyone who knows my work, know this. But I don’t expect Kodaka to be held to a standard of responsiblity that really has nothing to do with her original intentions as a creator.
-Tina
{{all because I disagreed with his assessment that the 212 entry was rant disguised as discourse. }}
Worded wrong. Forgive me. I disagreed with his assumption that the post was scary-logical. To me it was ranty, not to Mr. Welsh.
BTW, more on the homophobia thing… I have a developmentally delayed brother. Everytime the community conjures up a new word to describe itself, within a few years the label becomes stigmatized and you can’t use it anymore.
Retarded—>Mentally Handicapped—>develpmentally delayed—>differently abled—>special needs
Why does this happen? Because no one *wants* to be retarded.
Same thing with homosexuality. No one wants to be gay(outside of the gay community), therefore *fag* and *homo* are stigmatized.
But in Japanese manga, the guys who like guys are cool. They’re sexy, they are kick ass fighters, they take action, they’re admirable. Japanese mangaka might be free with the epithets, but they also are working from a cultural mileu in which guys who like guys are often portrayed as ultra-competent, desirable (even to women), deadly and beautiful.
If everyone wanted to be retarded, would “retard” be an insult? Would any synonym *to* retarded be an insult?
Instead of attacking the epithets, attack the *portrayls*. Make it cool for men to like men. And that’s what yaoi does.
Quite honestly there aren’t many gay characters in western media that make me want to slip into a gay male skin and play awhile. They’re either played for laughs, asexually tragic or as a statement against homophobia. I don’t want to be a laughingstock, a tragic, asexual character, or a statement!
But do I want to be a detective investigating the mob who can shoot with pinpoint accuracy and keep his cool in any situation, who also happens to find other men attractive? YEP! Do I want to be a cool as ice sorcerer who can stop twenty tons of spikey steam roller with a bit of paper, who also has a hankering for man flesh? You bet!
And so it goes. Yaoi creates men who like men who you want to *be*. And for me that’s what makes it special. (The only western media I think came close was “Brokeback Mountain”. I know a lot of people didn’t like it, but the characters not only were sympathetic but they made me want to be them, despite their tragic flaws. Because they were competent (bull rider, roper, herder, fighter), physical, sexual and damn cool.)
That’s what Japanese mangaka are bringing to the west, “gay” characters who are not just sympathetic but create in their audiance the desire to be them, to emulate them and to admire them.
**That’s what Japanese mangaka are bringing to the west, “gay” characters who are not just sympathetic but create in their audiance the desire to be them, to emulate them and to admire them.**
Now that’s the rub, and this is what legitimately bugged Mr. Butcher at 212 about Kodaka. She herself was insistant that she did not see her characters as “gay” characters. Of course it led to a tirade that made me click elsewhere…
I’ve seen the words ‘gall’ and ‘rude’ and ‘inconsiderate’ tossed around in terms of mangaka, and the Japanese BL scene. I get the overall impression that it’s finally hitting home to licensors that yes, you can bring over the Japanese ‘BL’ but you’re going to have to leave the ‘Japanese BL fandom constructs in Japan’. My issue is, should they? It was the fans stateside [like yourself I assume] that enjoy the Japanese notion of exclusivity because it just makes it all the more special, and these very fans are what prompted BL licensors to get on the ball.
Don’t support creators that purport what you perceive as homophobia with malice. I don’t think Kodaka is homophobic just because she says her characters aren’t gay. Now I, an OEL creator who’s lived a life very in touch with the gay community, WOULD BE homophobic for creating a same-sex relationship with all the emotional, sexual, and real-life impact native to any human couples in a relationship, and then turn around and say… “NO they aren’t gay—they’re just two men in love and it’s not meant for gay male readers.” That would be a smack in the face because of course gay men are going to pick up my work…whereas in Japan, Kodaka’s work is bought largely on exclusive, by women.
-Tina
What about bisexual male characters? Since many gay guys don’t think bisexual men exist, are they a possible shelter for these stories? After all, people write stories about unicorns without having to take the unicorn’s concerns into consideration.
I’m just asking because there is a legitimate situation where you can say that two guys who are bonin’ eachother aren’t gay. Which is that they identify as bisexual, or they’re MSM who identify as straight.
Another interesting thing is… gay as an identity evolved due to antagonism and stigma by Christian societies against men who had sex with men, in other words most men don’t want to be seen as gay and, in reaction to that, those that are have created their own identity to “push back” on the negative preassure.
In Japan Christian morality isn’t as entrenched (their nanshuko tradition ended a mere 100 years ago rather then 1700 years ago for us.) So there isn’t as much of an understanding of gay as an protective identity. In Asia there aren’t words to describe “gay” so they import western ones.
When Kodaka says her characters aren’t gay, does she mean that they would never be able to love other men besides their beloved? I’m guessing that she also doesn’t consider them het either, because they would never be able to love a woman. (Het as an identity arises out of gay as an identity.)
Incidentally, if enough media that portrays men who like men as desirable comes to the west, might it tip the scale for our own stigmatization? And start to break down the *need* for “gay” as a protective identity?
**After all, people write stories about unicorns without having to take the unicorn’s concerns into consideration.** I recall this being brought up at AMLA and someone said, ‘It’s just too real-life now isn’t it?’ LOL! What happened to my fantasy! ^_^; Point taken.
**When Kodaka says her characters aren’t gay, does she mean that they would never be able to love other men besides their beloved?** Exactly my point. It’s not homophobia on the part of Japanese mangaka or the scene, it’s just a different cultural awareness; yet it’s an awareness that cannot transcend OEL/BL because the west is identity conscious and is expect to create and consider accordingly. So why all the outrage from pundits who think it’s what they are being told to write and think and read.
**Incidentally, if enough media that portrays men who like men as desirable comes to the west, might it tip the scale for our own stigmatization? And start to break down the *need* for “gay” as a protective identity?** There is a creator named Alex who runs the Yaoi911 blog, and I think you might have touched on one of his goals as a creator of yaoi who self-identifies as gay. Let’s break it down here in the west as creators by making something for everyone without getting caught up on who reads what and how it should be perceived.
I still stand by my original Q. to Dave Welsh in terms of Japanese mangaka: Why would a woman want to write a manga for gay men? Suddenly because she’s licensed in the US she should now be more considerate of the identity of ‘gay’, even in Japan? [Hence my ‘pie’ comments, you don’t have to write for everyone, but you shouldn’t have to be held accountable when everyone doesn’t like what you write!] I stand by it, even for OEL creators. Only you can decide what you want to create and who it’s for; so what if someone you didn’t intend on liking it does…do they have the right to demand you recognize them though?
-Tina
-Tina
The only problem I have with what you’re saying is that, as a creator, I don’t want to have to concern myself with gay politics everytime I write about two men who like eachother.
I also believe I understand where the opposition is comeing from too. Here we are importing really positive images of men who have sex with men from Japan. Perhaps some of the first truly positive images of “gay” men — competent, self-assured, intelligent, kick-ass, masculine — seen in the west. And then we’re turning around and saying that these guys aren’t really “gay” they’re… well… they’re just not gay.
I can see how that would be a source of irritation and/or anger for guys who identify as gay.
However, on a deeper level, these characters belong to the same group of men as gay men. Men who have sex with men. They just don’t *identify* as gay. (At least according to many of their creators.)
I think this whole argument can be solved very easily.
Japanese Mangaka aren’t writing about gay men, they’re (mostly) writing about MSM.
And since the gay community isn’t the same as the MSM (lack of)community, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
When representatives from the MSM community start knocking on mangaka’s doors, then they can have a nice long talk about how MSM are portrayed in manga. Until then, I’m with Tina, it ain’t about gay men and it ain’t for gay men, so no need to claim and blame.
Looking at the stories, though, I disagree that BL is exclusively about MSM. (Now at this point, the discussion hinges on terminology so I’ll spell mine out — I’m looking at MSM strictly as the “down low” culture because anytime you try to publicly have a relationship with someone of the same sex, you’re living the gay experience — that’s how people see you and that’s how you’re treated.) Desire comes to mind, with Toru slowly realizing that there’s genuine love to be found in his relationship with Ryoji and struggling to come out to himself. Similarly, I don’t see a big difference between Only the Ring Finger Knows and Trick, a gay movie. Both follow the same conflicts and character journeys, with setting and sexual content being the major differential. Sure, a title like Gravitation doesn’t reflect the reality of what a famous couple would actually encounter, but that’s the nature of escapist entertainment there’s plenty of gay work that doesn’t reflect reality, either.
BTW, why are lesbians so upset over homophobia anyway? Lesbian affections are so accepted as to be featured on prime time TV. Lesbians don’t suffer from bashing at anywhere near the rate as gay men. Notice all the media that use lesbian couples to “humanize” homosexuality? Want to make homosexuals palatable and give exposure to their cause? Use lesbians!
Well, for one thing, homophobia includes lesbians but why should a lesbian care about homophobia directed at gay men? I’d say for the same reason why I should care about homophobia directed at lesbians (which includes the queer equivalent of “model minority” stereotyping) — the foundation comes from the same place and regardless of the target, it hurts us all. Saying ‘that doesn’t affect me, so I don’t care’ really just enables the oppressor.
“anytime you try to publicly have a relationship with someone of the same sex, you’re living the gay experience.”
Or bisexual?
“The foundation comes from the same place and regardless of the target, it hurts us all.”
Say what?
How does it come from the same place?
I just find it interesting. Because there is always, in every gay group I’ve ever been part of, online or in real life, an Angry Lesbian(tm). A lesbian who is hoppin’ mad about our heterosexist society and not afraid to yell, scream or stab someone to prove it. Yet the guys who are most, literally, hurt by homophobia are the gay guys and I’ve yet to met one with the same brick-in-the-face aura of sheer fury as an Angry Lesbian(tm).
To me it’s like watching a Christian and Jewish talk about Nazi Germany. The Christian is hot and bothered about his congregation being snarled at by the Nazis(cause the Nazi’s want to supplant the worship of Christ) while the Jew just sits quietly, not saying a thing about how his whole congregation was slaughtered.
Sometimes you just have an urge to tell the Christian to STFU. Even though, technically, they were both persecuted for being part of a religion.
I still stand by my original Q. to Dave Welsh in terms of Japanese mangaka: Why would a woman want to write a manga for gay men? Suddenly because she’s licensed in the US she should now be more considerate of the identity of ‘gay’, even in Japan? [Hence my ‘pie’ comments, you don’t have to write for everyone, but you shouldn’t have to be held accountable when everyone doesn’t like what you write!] I stand by it, even for OEL creators. Only you can decide what you want to create and who it’s for; so what if someone you didn’t intend on liking it does…do they have the right to demand you recognize them though?
I guess it’s all about perception, if you look at Kodaka’s comments as a shrug with a “Well, gay men might look my work, but they weren’t my target audience.” or a “I don’t know why gay men might read my work and I’m uncomfortable with the idea.” My initial reaction (and Christopher’s as well) was the former.
Kodaka may be bringing an image of gay men as cool, sexy and kick ass but she undermines any good that may do with comments like that… at least not until can make an argument about why gay men shouldn’t like her work that meshes with her gay audience.
That makes me realize that, from where I’m coming from, there’s a key question that hasn’t been answered in a satisfying way. Why shouldn’t gay men enjoy Kizuna? Because it wasn’t written specifically for them? Because Kadaka isn’t comfortable with the idea of including gay men in her audience? It’s not because of themes of “pain and deep longing” because a gay male audience can certainly relate to that.
It’s been said previously, there’s a difference between catering to a market and making a subset of your audience that they’re not welcome. To move to another media, what if Russel T Davies reacted to the largely female audience of Showtime’s Queer as Folk by talking in interviews about how he couldn’t understand why women would watch his show and how they couldn’t possibly relate to his characters?
Should be “Jewish Priest”.
BTW, just to continue the analogy, imagine the Christian going on and on about how the Nazis persecuted *religious* people and how evil they were for doing so. Without once pointing out that, despite the fact that the Nazi’s persecuted *religious* people, the Jews *really* got the short end of the stick.
Kodaka is from another culture. She isn’t depicting gay men, she’s depicting men who love men(or one, specific, man). *She* sees a difference. We probably *can’t* because we aren’t in the same culture.
By depicting men who love men in a positive light without recognizing them as gay, she doesn’t do any disservice to gay men. Because gay men are *also* part of the larger set of men who love men. Who are, thus, being served by being portrayed positively.
Get this clear. She is from a different culture. She does not understand the concept of “gay” the way we do. She probably sees people trying to make her characters into “gay” men as cheapening the love they share because, as she sees it, they could never love another man aside from their “one true and only”. In the same way she doesn’t see her characters as het, because they could never love a woman, not because they are gay, but because that woman would not be their “one true and only.”
Or bisexual?
I tend to see bisexuality as part of the gay experience, with the usual variances on the times of discriminations one faces (most notably the “anything that moves” stereotype — I remember seeing some daytime talk show with a married couple where the wife was bisexual, the host kept asking the husband how he could trust her not to cheat on him with a woman, as if her bisexuality made her more prone to cheat than a heterosexual wife). Bisexuals can face discrimination within the LGBT community much like transgendered people. Besides, if we’re talking about relationships, yeah a bisexual in a same-sex relationship is living a gay experience.
As for Trick and OTRFK, they both follow the same conflicts — guy A has a massive (yet presumed unreturnable) crush on guy B, guy B makes the wrong first impression when he meets guy A, lots of angst and unintentional hurt follows until guy A realizes that guy B really likes him (and that he himself is likable) and guy B works up the nerve to apologize for the behavior that caused the false impression. The trimmings are different but the conflict and characters’ journey are very much the same.
What’s interesting about the “gay identity” and it’s slow cultural colonization of other societies (as the west brings its social stigmas along with its culture) is that the indigenous society importing the idea seems to pick up on the concept of stigmatization but doesn’t understand the idea of differentiating “men who like men” from men in general. So, instead of understanding the “gay identity” they couple it with something that’s stigmatized in their own culture.
In Muslim cultures they don’t understand the *social* stigma towards men who have sex with men, so, in order to be “gay”, a man not only has to have sex with men, but to be a transexual who wants to be a woman.
In Japan it seems like gay is being coupled with promiscuous. So, in order to be “gay” a man not only has to have sex with men, but *lots* of men.
In Bali it seems they’ve coupled “gay” with pedophilia.
And so it goes. :(
***a “I don’t know why gay men might read my work and I’m uncomfortable with the idea.” My initial reaction (and Christopher’s as well) was the former.***
Again, like I stated above, ‘a deer caught in the headlights.’ LOL! We’re talking about a woman who’s first language isn’t English and she’s being asked her thought on ‘why she thinks men like her work [BL], coming from Japan where no man would even admit to liking it…0_0. I think I might choke on that Q myself [if I were a Japanese mangaka]. ^_^; ** that meshes with her gay audience.** Her gay audience in the states…right? Because there is a marginal, if not downright miniscule, male audience her in Japan. ^^
***Why shouldn’t gay men enjoy Kizuna? Because it wasn’t written specifically for them?*** I don’t think anyone was questioning that, perhaps if you were asking a western creator this, a better answer might have come to light. ** Because Kadaka isn’t comfortable with the idea of including gay men in her audience*** again, I hear the ‘wee bit of anger there’ that has influenced this debate from the beginning.
I don’t think Kodaka ever meant to say, I DON”T LIKE GAY MEN READING MY WORK IT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE, EW, I honestly think it was a point of being unable to express herself logically. ‘Gay men read my work? I don’t know what to say about this, it makes me uncomfortable because I cannot give an answer on this, I have no basis from my own experience at home to tell you what I might think?’
Not speaking for Kodaka, but I’m just saying [as someone whose own words have been taken way out of context in the last 48 hours] this can and does happen. 0_0.
-Tina
Considering the Asian penchant for modesty… I think Kodaka might be saying “this makes me uncomfortable” because she doesn’t trust her ability to write to a gay male audiance. She might be uncomfortable about gay men’s *reactions* to her work because she’s concerned they would find things to disagree with.
I’ve actually heard that expression before. The weird thing is, this goes on at DMP all the time. We get young men on the site who log on and ask questions and they get smacked with elitist notions [I’m a MOD there so I can’t dole out my usual acidic dose of charm =_=;] instead I have to say look ladies, DMP licenses material that has cross-appeal, stop being so childish and let’s just all read the sh*t. On that same note, I get women who turn their nose up at my work and say, that’s not BL, it’s gay. When Dave Taylor at Love Manga sent us questions for our interview, the subject of ‘why do you think your doujinshi sells more to gay men than to yaoi fen’ I avoided it. I did so because, male on male is going to appeal to all fans of male on male, and I wasn’t going to be able to express that without coming off as a b-word. Yet here I Bee….