in defence of bl

[adevyish]

someone ripped off the manga seven days and westernized it, and when they were called out claimed it was because they were making it “realistic” to “lgbt culture”. (the book is date me, bryson keller and there are more details in this twitter thread.)

i hate this assumption that manga can’t be realistic to the lgbt+ experience; i hate this stereotype that bl manga creators are all cishet women when it’s plainly not true; i hate this idea that stories of japanese lgbt+ experiences cannot be valid because they must conform to western ones. there have been so many creators who have worked to push the boundaries of this genre their stories were sidelined to, to include and focus on lgbt+ stories in japanese mainstream media.

(i’m thinking of kinou nani tabeta which ran in a seinen magazine, of yuri on ice which avoided pigenonholing by its slow reveal, of no.6 which wasn’t a romance at all.)

the first time i saw an lgbt+ portrayal in media, it was as a preteen and it was one of either “ma vie en rose” or cardcaptor sakura. looking back, cardcaptor sakura was such a gift; it was so normal for boys to like boys or girls to like girls or people to like anyone. i didn’t pick up on everything, but i did pick up on touya and yukito’s relationship. and it was presented so matter-of-fact.

it took me a long long time before i realized i read bl, and manga that was not pigeonholed into bl/gl but had lgbt+ relationships, because i did in fact see myself in them. i felt like i was scolded for so long for liking bl and slash and for “fetishization”, when i’ve been reading slash fanfics by wlw authors the entire time i’ve been in fandom and i’ve read femslash by the same authors just as long. they were my way of exploring myself, when i didn’t have any other means to.

do i wish there were more gl manga whose characters and storylines i found compelling? yeah sure. but there’s so much bl with beautifully human characterizations, with beautifully human struggles out there that’s been so readily dismissed.