[ SECRET POST #6962 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6962 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #994.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

02. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/dd4891d8d3d3.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

Sometimes I wonder if fetishization can be part of the process of recognizing not just monster types as genuine characters, but real life peoples as human.

I grew up in a conservative area, and online yaoi fandom was my means of understanding and accepting even my own homosexuality back then. Same with gender bending kinks and crossdressing, only to crack the egg.

Secret because fetishization is still seen as a sign of bigotry, especially with weirdos who can't accept sexuality except when it debases people they demand be beneath them.

[(Anonymous)]

I... have no idea what you mean OP?

+1

[(Anonymous)]

OP your many, many thoughts do not connect and we need more to be able to unpack this...everything.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, but I think they're saying they 'fetishized' gay men in yaoi then turned out to be queer, and they 'fetishized' crossdressing and turned out to be trans.

Which sure, happens, but still absolutely doesn't make it a reasonable thing to assume a person who fetishizes X thing is or want to be X thing in general. Cishet men with a big ol' titties fetish do not, in fact, wish they had breasts IRL

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

I see. I showed the secret to my friend too, and they think it might also mean that OP is one of those people who believe if you're not in the community it means you're fetishizing. Like only gay men can read/write/enjoy male slash type of thing?

I'm curious about the monster bit though. Maybe it was OP lamenting about Sasquatch the other day. They were sad there were no cryptids in their area they could seek out and bang. lol

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, maybe the person who appears to be a cishet white male weeb who fetishizes submissive asian women might turn out to be a trans girl who wanted to be the girl all along. 99.99% of the time, it'll just be a racist creepy dick though.

You can volunteer to hang around that grenade and pray it's a dud, but I won't be.

[(Anonymous)]

I do genuinely think it’s often a step in the process of societal change. Somewhere between “no depiction at all” and “fully equitable depiction”, you get fetishization, enforced stereotypes, and token inclusion.

No one needs to be happy about it, but I think that looking back through the history of various groups’ depictions, it’s often somewhere along the way to progress.

[feotakahari]

There’s a writer who pops up in various communities before getting banned. He’s attracted to dominant black women, and he thinks that makes him anti-racist, so he thinks anyone who calls out the racism in his writing is “the real racist.”

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is a really common process - so many people attracted to queer themes in fandom then turn out to be queer themselves. I think this is not quite the same as fetishisation, though - fetishisation involves reducing a person to *only* the relevant characteristics. So someone can write a fic about, say, a trans woman, and one person can read it because it touches something within them, and another person can read it because "ooh hot". I don't think either reaction is wrong, but how you relate to real people who share the characteristic determines whether you're treating them as a fetish or not. (And I don't mean just direct interaction - it used to be really common for people to write slash fic and also be homophobic IRL and think gay people shouldn't have rights!)

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with all of this except the last part. I never really was part of the whole yaoi fangirl era but I did read a lot of fics (most of them slash &yaoi) and not one writer I saw had an issue with gay men. They were the ones getting death threats and told they were going to hell, it's where "don't like, don't read" kinda stared I thought. Most of them just shrugged it off, it was part of the experience. Not one of them agreed from what I saw.

This was in the 90-2000's, so maybe our timelines vary.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Nope, same era, 1994 onwards for me. I wasn't into Japanese fandoms at the time so I don't know what the yaoi scene was like, but I very much saw slash writers who would proclaim that this was all fiction so it was fine, but in real life they don't support gay people. (Plus the whole "smarm" scene where it was presented as totally normal for two guys to be platonically doing all kinds of things you would call part of a relationship!) I'm a lesbian, so this was off-putting to say the least! I also received death threats and was told I was going to hell for writing slash (almost always from Americans, so being told I didn't live in their country and was an atheist was always fun to make them scream more), and vividly remember the "this contains SLASH, don't like, don't read" disclaimers.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Ah, different circles then. tbh my sister would know more. Back when ff.net had forums she modded a couple of them and actually talked some people through their homophobia. She's still friends with a couple, one girl in particular who later realized she liked women and most of her ire was internalized.
I just read anything and everything I could get my hands on, mostly yaoi, and while I didn't socialize much, I definitely think I'd remember if it mentioned in a fic/profile if they didn't approve irl. But I absolutely agree most of the hate, especially the religious sort, were all from americans. Sorry people threatened you as well, it was almost normalized but never a good time for sure.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Yeah, I was never on ff.net, I was on usenet then email lists before livejournal and it was definitely happening there. Most slash writers were absolutely chill in the early days, but I think as slash got more popular and mainstream (for certain values of "mainstream") in some fandoms, i.e. not off on its own separate list, people felt the need to get louder about hating real life queers. The absolute last time I remember it happening was around S2 of Supernatural.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I can definitely see that sort of build in popularity having that sort of backlash for sure. I remember there being a lot of general phobia around that time too. Even though 2007 feels so late, I think it was a few years after gay people were given a lot of the same rights, (marriage, etc,) in the states especially, so the loudness would definitely come from a mix angry people just being assholes. Still, I hate that it was still happening in an area like fic and fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I definitely saw people in the 90s write slash and have a disclaimer that they didn't support gays in real life. They were the minority, though, of an already minority community.

[(Anonymous)]

Nayrt

Yep you are right, they existed, and homophobic slash writer were a rarity even back then. I have no idea why people nowadays say it was pretty common. It wasn't.
Maybe they wrote insensitive and borderline fetishising stuff, sure, but they weren't overtly homophobic and most people even supported gay marriage when it was mostly a mirage back then.
They were absolutely no more homophobic than the general population of the time. Let's remember that the 90s and 00s were not great decades for gay rights or any sensitivity toward minorities.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if you've studied literary theory, but you've just stepped into a huge literary concept of processing otherness (racial, sexual, disability) by using monsters as a metaphor.

[(Anonymous)]

I figured they were just the one talking about Sasquatch the other day because as a monsterfucker it must be hard for your ideal cryptid to not live in a city near you.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it’s complicated with no one size fits all aspect to it at all.

For some people I think sexualising different people from them can help them discover things about themselves.

And for some it’s going to be an othering kink where they’re not considering the people they’re kinking on as actual people.

And I don’t think there’ll be a quick way you can tell where someone is on the scale without interacting with them. That said I don’t assume someone is like the latter without good reason, but I have met them across my life and they’re always gross to interact with.

[(Anonymous)]

I think there is some truth in that. But exposure and fetishization aren't a guarantee that someone will become less bigoted.

I could have sworn years ago I saw a headline that there have been research where the liberation of porn on the internet has influenced some people to be more open to the LGBTQIA+ community.

But again, I'm aware that people who fetishize certain groups, it actually can make them think less of those groups and dehumanize them.
Like men who fetishize trans women but will unironically watch Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais comedy shows.

It's not one or the other, but it does open up avenues for change.

[(Anonymous)]

Attraction =/= fetishization, though. If someone is straight and enjoys gay fic, but they love the characters and story, I don't consider that fetishization even if the sex turns them on. Fetishizing groups of people usually comes from objectifying them, not being attracted to them as people.
There's a leagues different from like, open minded guys who like women regardless of genitals, and trans chasers who see trans women as "the best of both worlds" or "have the libido of a guy" (yes, I've actually heard this) while not seeing them as women worth anything more than a "freaky" hookup.