#tl;dr keep a solid head on your shoulders and don't make sweeping generalizations about people or culture based on portrayals in webnovels

[hunxi-after-hours]

Reading QianQiu after passively reading enough of your metas that I got faaar too involved without *knowing* anything and I'm *loving* it, so thank you so much! Sort of trying to do my best to read slowly because I unfortunately don't know enough Chinese to read the original and the translation isn't complete (and MTL is not my thing, especially as someone who has worked in translation). Anyways, just wanted to let you know that I love you and your posts and thoughts on danmei, on YanShen, on *flails arms* literally everything. 🥺

Sadly, recently I've sort of seen a lot of anti-fujoshi sentiment around (blocked the tag, but then the guilt-tripping kept churning in my head, so I went down the rabbit hole of discourse and uh, you know how *that* goes), so I meant to ask you something, as you're one of the rare people whose intellect I deeply, deeply respect. I know you've talked about fujoshi and the history of that term in some depth before and I too have looked at other Japanese breakdowns of this thing, but I was thinking that...what *does* constitute "fetishisation"? When does it crossover from shipping into *that* territory? I...struggle seeing myself doing anything of that sort, not because of some egoistic moral purity but because... I've literally blubbered and sobbed, complete with very nice sounding hiccups, over these mlm stories, Hunxi, as I'm sure many of us have too! Maybe it's romanticisation of gay ships, but that's not similar to fetishizing, and mlm... *is* about gay romance so lol. I'm just confused about this deal: what's the line? Is there even one? Shouldn't fetishisation be a concern about...real queer relationships (I tentatively offer the example of idol-shipping) and not characters in fictional landscapes?

sldkfjsdlkj okay first of all anon I want to point out the deep, deep irony in asking someone who identifies as ace to weigh in on fetishization discourse, because someone out there deserves to get at least a chuckle out of that

secondly, I do want to reiterate that I deliberately avoided talking about fetishization discourse in this post precisely because I feel dramatically unqualified to do so, but uhhh sure, guess I'll throw my 0.2 cents below the cut, all imaginable qualifiers apply

let’s come at this sideways, so hold my hand, we’re going on a thought experiment:

let’s say, for purposes of discussion, that there is a man with an Asian fetish. for ease of caricature, let’s say he is a straight, cisgender white man with an Asian fetish. Asian women turn him on; he is interested in becoming sexually and romantically involved with Asian women; he experiences sexual arousal in the company of Asian women; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

so a fetish is, by its dictionary definition, an object or person, physical or imagined, that causes sexual arousal. An Asian fetish means that Asian women, or perhaps Asian-ness in general (whatever that means to you), causes sexual arousal. still with me?

cool, because here’s the thing about sexual arousal: it has fuck-all to do with consent

arousal is a bodily, physiological response to stimuli (external or imagined), which means that, generally speaking, we don’t have control over what arouses us. people can become sexually aroused by stimuli (pornography, sexual contact) without wanting to be aroused at all. arousal is not a sign of secret consent, or secretly wanting sex. me being allergic to pollen isn’t an indicator of my secret hatred for flowers--it’s a bodily response to external stimuli. Likewise, arousal just happens--it’s an indicator of nothing more, and nothing less, than the fact that something has triggered a physiological response, and it happens to be sexual in nature

so back to our hypothetical straight, cisgender white man with an Asian fetish. he discovers one day that there is a pattern to his sexual arousal, and that he’s really, really into Asian women. okay

I don’t think there’s anything inherently, morally, existentially, metaphysically wrong with having a fetish, just as there isn’t anything inherently, morally, existentially, or metaphysically wrong with having allergies. so your body has a certain response to certain external stimuli, okay! the question that follows, then, is this: what do you do about it?

let’s say our hypothetical, straight, cisgender white man decides to learn more about Asia, since hey, he’s got a vested interest, right? perhaps he begins taking Japanese lessons, which leads to him taking Japanese history courses, which leads to him studying abroad in Japan, which leads to him to writing a dissertation, to getting a P.h.D., to becoming one of the foremost Japanologists in the Anglophone sphere (oh, let’s assume he’s an English-speaker too for simplicity’s sake). He marries his Japanese girlfriend of seven years and celebrates every other new year’s with her family, where he chats up his in-laws with his accented-but-fluent Japanese and never fails to delight the distant cousin who still thinks it’s wildly novel that this white man can speak Japanese and reference anything from history to memes.

He still has an Asian fetish, which becomes relevant in the bedroom, becomes relevant when his girlfriend suggests children and he thinks about it and says sure, you just got tenure and I’m a year away from it, if you really want a kid let’s have one, and anyway they’ve been married for three years so it’s not like this is anything new to them

but back to where we began, which is with a straight, cisgender, Anglophone white man with an Asian fetish. can we say, in this idealized, hypothetical scenario of interracial romance and domestic bliss, that he did anything wrong?

was it wrong of him to study Japan? no, gatekeeping fields of study based on ethnicity is pretty backward, essentialist, and counterproductive. was it wrong of him to date an Asian woman? no, since we’re assuming that their relationship is fully consensual and joyful. was it wrong of him, a straight, cisgender Anglophone white man, who enjoys all the intersectional privileges based on his race and gender and birth and presentation, to date an Asian woman? no, because no single individual person is responsible for global systems of hegemonic, imperialist, and heteropatriarchal power structures that have formulated over literal centuries of human existence. individuals may participate in these power structures; they may be complicit, participatory, rebellious, subversive, but individuals are not, by virtue of the accident of birth, responsible for the existence of structures that preceded them into the world

all of which is to say, I think our hypothetical, straight, cisgender white man with an Asian fetish who dedicated his life to studying Japan and married a Japanese woman has, well, tried his best. sure, his point of departure might have been sexual arousal, but he didn’t stop there, didn’t let that become the end-all and be-all of his relationship with Asian-ness

so it seems to me that the problem of fetishes is not that they exist, but in how we respond to them--which is to say, the transition from ‘fetish’ to ‘fetishization,’ the verbifying of the noun in question

fetishization is a problem when it reduces the object (or person, real or imagined) to nothing more than its sexual purpose. when Asian women are reduced to nothing more than sexual objects, flattening their complexity and humanity into nothing more than a thing that inspires sexual arousal--that’s a problem. or hmm, what else gets slapped with the ‘fetishization’ label... oh sure, why not--loyalty kinks (also known as fealty kinks, often seen in bodyguard-client dynamics, or soldier-commander dynamics, or vassal-lord dynamics). is there anything inherently wrong with enjoying those dynamics, or portrayals of these dynamics? no, of course not--these relationships can be incredibly powerful and moving, in fiction or in reality, and there’s a saying somewhere about babies and bathwater that seems relevant here. the point is, if you reduce these relationships of intense loyalty and devotion to nothing more than the fact that you get sexually aroused by them, that’s where I think you’d run into trouble

so, back to the original question: where does enjoying a mlm relationship in a text end, and fetishizing mlm relationships begin? well, if the above logic extends this far, then the line is drawn at the reduction of mlm relationships to nothing more than the consumer’s sexual arousal. the line’s a bit wonky in fiction/media because, like--look, if it’s pornography or PWP fic, the whole point of it is sexual arousal, and we are not getting into a discussion about the morals of pornography--but again, the line is drawn at action, and specifically action that affects other people. if our hypothetical, straight, cisgender white man with an Asian fetish decided not to go out of his way to do anything about his Asian fetish (we’re not going to condemn him for what he does alone in the privacy of his bedroom, but let’s say he doesn’t catcall Asian women or stereotype them or make advances upon them either), then like. idk, that seems fine to me, you’re not obliged to make a sexual fetish your life’s driving purpose either, that’s like saying everyone with a foot fetish has to become a podiatrist and uhhh that seems a little ill-advised but that might just be me

this is getting stupid long again sdflskdfjslk but I think the tl;dr of it is that it’s perfectly fine and normal to have a fetish, just be critically aware of how it motivates your actions and the way you think, speak, and act (and how your thoughts, words, and actions affect the people you interact with). reductive fetishization doesn’t have to look like catcalling women on their street based on physical appearance; it might look like a blockbuster movie that reduces other people, aesthetics, or cultures to sexualized and exoticized set dressing with no complexity or critical examination. it might look like romanticizing or sexualizing fictional queer relationships and forcibly projecting that fictional romanticization/sexualization onto very real queer people and attempting to reduce them to your personal fantasies, regardless of their own experiences, feelings, beliefs, and desires. it might look like blithely or belligerently ignoring cultural complexity and historical context in favor of the specific interpretation that turns you on

tl;dr for real -- just be respectful and aware of how your preferences and biases influence the way you speak and interact with other people, especially in fandom spaces, and idk you’ll probably be fine

#uhhhhhhh does this belong in the tag I'm throwing it in the tag #hunxi thinks about danmei and gender #idk I do think that danmei is very much about female fantasies and female desires in East Asia #idk how much of it is actually about gay men #the concerns over danmei literature appropriating gay male voices are valid I think #but it's also not something that most of us have any qualifications to speak on #tl;dr keep a solid head on your shoulders and don't make sweeping generalizations about people or culture based on portrayals in webnovels #um #tw fetishization discourse #I think? #that being said if folks could stop fetishizing 知己/知音 that'd be lit thanks