Talk:Fujoshi

suspicious edit or valuable correction?

I don't speak Japanese, but maybe someone else can check this edit? It was made on March 17 and is the only edit by that user. I checked the Wikipedia page on Fujoshi and discovered that a similar edit was made on the same day by an IP user. Maybe this person is right, but I'd like a second opinion. ETA: Someone on twitter is telling me the change matches their understanding. Maybe it just needs to be explained higher up in the page that the correct translation is not the common explanation spread in English-speaking communities. Also I think one of the changes from rotten to spoiled might be incorrect because the sentence was describing English-speaking anti-fujo arguments? --aethel (talk) 00:26, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Gengoroh Tagame

This tumblr post claims that "Gay comic mangaka Gengoroh Tagame has stated that many Japanese people will take on the fujoshi or fudanshi label as it’s more socially acceptable than coming out as gay in Japan, and he has noted that most mangaka that work on BL manga are either lesbian/bisexual, or they’re actually trans or nonbinary (a few have recently come out as x-gender)." It would be nice to get a source and add this.--Assassin J (talk) 00:47, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

I'll bet they're referring to a panel transcript posted by Deb Aoki. It's the thing people always link to. I don't know if there's a more current link, but the one I've seen passed around is only available via wayback machine now.

It's from a panel at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in 2015. The panel title was "Gay Comics Art Japan". It featured Tagame, Graham Kolbeins and Anne Ishii (editors/translators for Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, from Fantagraphics), and Leyla Aker, Senior Vice President of Publishing at VIZ Media. The actual quote from Tagame is:

"Furthermore, going back to the gender of creators, that’s problematic as well because sometimes BL creators– and I’m speaking just from personal acquaintance with some of these creators– may be biologically female or identify on the page as heterosexual women, but sometimes they’re actually lesbian or transgender."

I'm not sure where the quote about it being more socially acceptable to come out as liking BL or the thing about being "x-gender" are from. I didn't spot that in the TCAF transcript. It sounds plausible, but I haven't seen an actual quote from Tagame. X-Gender is just a Japanese term that means something like nonbinary. I'm not sure if there are a lot of culturally-specific connotations to it beyond that. Franzeska (talk) 21:59, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

BL vs. yaoi claim?

"only the BL sub-genre of Yaoi" is a phrase on this page--my understanding (which could be wrong) is that BL isn't a subgenre but a synonym of yaoi, or that it is the publisher term that has been increasingly adopted in place of yaoi. Can anyone confirm?--aethel (talk) 14:46, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, BL is a general term for m/m aimed at a presumed female audience. 'Yaoi' is an older term that had a more specific meaning in Japanese, but it got adopted widely outside of Japanese. I'm not quite sure what the current phrasing is trying to indicate. Only Asian m/m stuff? Only explicit? Only non-explicit? Regardless, 'fujoshi' is a pretty general term, so the subgenre shouldn't matter. Franzeska (talk) 22:35, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

OK I updated the intro paragraph. I'm not sure if the original was trying to say something about the usage of the term being more limited in English-speaking fandom, but if so, I think it would be easier to understand if explained in a separate paragraph.--aethel (talk) 22:10, 15 May 2024 (UTC)