Don’t Worry Fujoshi
Won’t Bite You
These days,
being fujoshi—the Japanese term used
to describe women who are interested in reading or watching any fictional media
focusing on relationships between boys (yaoi)—is
not wrong. Although common people will consider fujoshi as weird human beings, or even getting disgusted by their
interest but I am against that perception. My very first reason is that being fujoshi
does not determine someone’s sexual orientation. Recent online surveys of
English-speaking fujoshi indicate
that 60% of them are straight. Although the rest 40% are not, but there is no impossibility
for women who are not fujoshi will have
the same sexual orientation. In fact, the
surveys have not included fujoshi in
Japan and other non-English-speaking countries, which have greater number of
women with heterosexual orientation. It is related to an indication mentioned
in Wikipedia that Western fujoshi may
be more diverse in their sexual orientation than Japanese ones and that Western
ones are more likely to link yaoi to
supporting gay rights. However, in fact yaoi
has nothing to do with gay people because yaoi
is originally aimed at female audiences. The second reason is that fujoshi read or watch yaoi
for enjoyment only. In various special issues of literary magazines, yaoi writers and artists such as Kaneda
and Miura—who are also fujoshi—, simply
state that they like yaoi because it
is fun. This simple explanation is often doubted by researchers, saying that women
who like yaoi must be caused by
problems of sexuality. However, in reality, the reason why fujoshi read or watch yaoi
indeed is just because they find it enjoyable. It is proved in a study done by
Akiko Hori which said that most fujoshi
are keenly aware that their fantasies about yaoi
are exactly that—fantasies, and nothing more. Moreover, Shigematsu also states
that enjoyment of fantasies “doesn’t suggest the fantasizer wants to act out
these fantasies”. Lastly, the basic reason why I am opposing the negative
conception of fujoshi is that I am
also one of them. I myself notice that the phenomenon is quite popular out
there, so it is not like being fujoshi
is such an uncommon thing.
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