Western LGBT fans and entitlement

Meta
Title:	Western LGBT fans and entitlement
Creator:	heipaoshi
Date(s):	January 12, 2020
Medium:	Text, Dreamwidth post
Fandom:	Mo Dao Zu Shi, BL, Panfandom, Chinese and Asian fandom vs Western/white fandom
Topic:	Incest, Fujoshi, Race and Fandom, Anti-shippers, the "Freaks of Color" comment
External Links:	"dreamwidth post". Archived from the original on 2020-01-25.
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Western LGBT fans and entitlement is an essay by heipaoshi discussing incest shipping, fujoshi and anti-fujoshi, representation, racial and sexual minorities in fandom at large, but particularly Mo Dao Zu Shi and other Asian media. The essay comments on passionpeachy's infamous "freaks of color" statement, calling it "blatant racism" and explaining why incest may be popular among Chinese female fans. It was originally posted on Dreamwidth and then cross-posted to tumblr.

Excerpt

Western LGBT writers in fannish spaces have a sense of entitlement over Asian characters' identities. In MDZS fandom, this entitlement manifests in the growing 'anti-fujoshi' sentiment; the obsession with the "right" way of creating/consuming content with LGBT characters.

This increasingly vitriolic type of virtue signalling isn't unique to MDZS fandom, but it highlights the way people impose western values and cultural norms onto Asian spaces. A recent example of this occurred on twitter, when a Chinese fan compared East/West reactions towards (fictional) incest. Specifically, Eastern fandom's acceptance and enthusiasm versus western fandom's avoidance and disgust. A prolific fanartist replied to the post, referring to POC fans who 'support' incest as "freaks of colour".

...

there is a lack of understanding about Chinese culture and the way it informs fan spaces. Incest fiction has been argued to 'showcase a feminine attempt to re-order the power structure in the family by means of eros'. Chinese BL culture often serves as a space where social, cultural and political conversations can take place in a traditionally conservative and oppressive regime.

...

A new trend occurring in the MDZS AO3 tag are authors claiming their stories are 'for the gays only'. Clicking and reading these stories, I started to wonder how many of these authors were Chinese, or even Asian. What made them so confident in their right to claim these characters, which was never their intellectual property in the first place, and attempting to stop others from accessing them?

The Chinese BL genre is a 'transnational Chinese public sphere where women from diasporas around the world could discuss and debate all kinds of fannish, feminine and political topics'; it is a movement that has created a space for itself in a repressive regime, spearheaded by women. It is not for western LGBT individuals to claim; not a media where they should expect their values and culture to be upheld. The expectation that it should is an insidious remnant of colonisation.

Western LGBT writers in fannish spaces have a sense of entitlement over Asian characters' identities. Frequently, they speak over Asian voices in the community and impose their own values and cultural norms on Asian spaces, often misunderstanding Asian values and norms in the process. They claim Asian characters as their own and attempt to restrict access to it, falsely believing that these characters and universes are their own. That tweet is a culmination of these experiences causing frustration for Chinese and Asian fans within the community.

Western LGBT fans and entitlement

Responses

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

*record scratch* Um. Does the word "Wincest" ring a bell? How about Thorki? If these Western fic writers think our tradition has no incest ships, they are delusional. This sounds like yet another outgrowth of "anti" culture, which continues to baffle me.

mecurtin[1]

fail_fandomanon had a discussion about the meta on 14 January 2020: Re: Cnovels, ^{Archived version}