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Anonymous Coward · 16h

I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable but I really wanted to ask you since someone I follow follows you, I'm on shojoseiyuritwt a lot and this topic comes up a lot (how yaoi have transmisogyny and is heteronormative). The reason why in transfeminist circles they say yaoi is transmisogynistic is because of this (I'm quoting a tweet from a girl I follow)

So much of fujo media is about reproducing the same patriarchal dominance hierarchies in new ways: Uke/Seme, Omegaverse, etc…

It’s all about creating a subordinate class that it’s okay to abuse and dominate because that’s their “proper” position to be subordinated.
The transfeminized subject, the Uke/Omega/Twink, as you pointed out can be subjected to violence to be put into their “proper place.” as being subjected to the same patriarchal violence without the ability to name themselves as women.

And my transfem fujo friend thinks the same, im not transfem so i didn't want to overstep by asking her tbh that’s why i send this to you. I'm sorry for the inconvenience (pls ignore my other ask when i was being informal!)

I'm not uncomfortable anon, I'm baffled. It's very different.

I'll be frank, to me this all reeks, absolutely and totally, of actively wanting to be victimized: a work "reproduces" the "patriarchal" dominance of every day life, which is to say, it just reflects the desire of people whose fantasies are influenced by their environment, no different than any transfem puppygirl. Trans women are not even in the equation for the question, so the fact that a general """reproduction""" of "patriarchal dominance" (like... what, the bottom is girly? Come on now) is somehow specifically transmisogyny as if it is at all aimed at trans people or focused on hatred and bigotry towards them, overtly or otherwise, and that this is said by transfeminine cliques.... well, victim narrative editorializing is pretty clear there, don't you think, anon?

"It’s all about creating a subordinate class that it’s okay to abuse and dominate because that’s their “proper” position to be subordinated."

And the matter of fact is, I'll be honest, this just sounds like it comes from people who do not read yaoi and have a very distortded idea of what it is about - you and the girlies seem to think that it mostly consists of hardcore omegaverse rape and porn torture - most of it is bland generic sex fantasies, lol. It is not a "class" that is "okay to abuse", it is transgression of basic societal and personal values - the basis of all eroticism, from the paleolithic to now (the Dead Man at Lascaux is dying and ithyphallic, violating the death taboo that was so strong to the archaic paleolithic man, while showing the eroticism of the situation by his erect phallus as he dies).

In other words, these people are not creating a scenario in which this is "okay" in real-life, they know it is wrong and enjoy it due to that knowledge, the same way that a blasphemy kink only works if the blasphemer is aware that they are engaging in a transgression of religious taboo.

"The transfeminized subject, the Uke/Omega/Twink,"

None of those are transfeminine, you are Coping. They are cis male diegetically and in the grander scheme of things they are feminine cis males so that the CIS FEMALE reader can self-insert into it. There is no "transfeminized subject" here at all, this is cope pomo speak to try to make random yaoi sound transphobic.

"as you pointed out can be subjected to violence to be put into their “proper place.”"

I'm sorry friend, but not only are you wrong, but you actually got it totally backward here on why these stories work for the women who enjoy them: the reason is not for the uke to be "put in his proper place", it is the woman self-inserting as the uke, who, now "metamorphosed" into a man in this romantic/sexual fantasy, is on more equal footing with the top than she would be if it was a straight fantasy. Increased equality between the uke and seme is the point and the basis of the whole fantasy, and the transgression of that equality being erotic is why it seems to turn rapey or why it tends to feminize the uke so commonly: because it is unexpected, "wrong" even, for the man to go through such female-coded violence.

Not to say you can't enjoy it from another lens - mine is wholly different obviously, I'm not a woman, cis or trans, and I am on HRT so I am not quite a man either - but this is the general lens people enjoy it through, whether they realize it or not. None of this is transmisogynistic. Often yaoi is about a man-wife who is treated more equal than an actual wife would be - in that sense, it reflects female anxieties around men. In another view, it is that men are not emotional with each other and yaoi allows for a breaking of that and makes the very emotionality of the stories erotic - this is why most straight men into yaoi are into it at all, that emotionality. Sometimes it is just about women wanting to peer into the "world of men" which is a transgression of the "proper place" assigned to them by society - it is no different than the instinct that drives yuri boys, himedanshis, then, and is motivated by rough equivalents (i.e. men don't talk to each other and that's hot vs women can be basically girlfriends with their friends and that's cathartic because I can't even cry in front of my friends without being called some slur) - again, no transphobia in any of this. To miss such basic analysis and interpretation - which are well known and widespread - and to go straight to "well it's gotta be bigoted against me specifically" is just wanting to play victim.

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