This is a long one, anon. I hope you're ready.

I will admit that I don't have my finger on the pulse of BL, so I don't really know what the newest developments are.

Here's my attempt at an explanation. Old BL pulls from a very long tradition of homosexual and homosocial practices in Japan, which I will not be recapping. Keep this in mind.

In America, gay rights are treated as modern. Especially post 9/11, we began integrating it into the mainstream. It is one way that we distinguish ourselves from other countries. Making claims (unsubstantiated or not) that a country is homophobic and then using that to paint its people as primitive and ungovernable.

It was advantageous to postwar Japan to align themselves with these modern values via cultural exports. Part of their soft diplomacy, yeah? (Even if the support for gay rights is only superficial in some ways.) So the internet becomes a major trade route for ideas and art, a lot of which is pornographic material.

The hard-working early internet weeaboos of America then internalize a specific idea of homosexuality by consuming Japanese BL. But we're still dealing with the anti-Asian propaganda of the last century, which was designed to portray Asian men, the Japanese included, as pathetic, weak, and feminine. So the gay man they think of is unavoidably molded by this anti-Asian sentiment. Men in BL become innately linked with femininity. (Also, while all of this is going on, Japanese artists have their own domestic cultural feedback loop of gay men being equated with femininity. Like I said, I won't get into it because I'm not an expert.)

And what comes of all of this? The Americans who consume BL in the 2000s further popularize the stereotype of the effeminate Asian man. They develop a fantasy of what gay Japanese men are like, untouched by the ravages of the HIV/AIDs epidemic and detached from other gay American struggles. Namely, that of labor and racism. Let's not forget that prior to the 2000s, gayness in America was associated with working-class people of color, especially sex workers.

Furthermore, by removing the BL boy from his own historical Japanese context, he becomes an easily moldable gender thing that we store in a vacuum. He doesn't have to deal with racism, because he lives in homogenous manga land. He doesn't have to deal with labor issues, because the legitimate struggles of Japanese workers are trivialized by the stereotypes we as Americans already put in place.

My god, and then this simulacra of a man is imported as an example of 'gender envy' or whatever for white transmasculine people. After deeming Asian features to be closer to femininity, it's no wonder that so many trans men think of BL and Asian men as achievable models of masculinity. That creates its own feedback loop of white trans men emulating only Asian men and further popularizing the stereotypes!

(Of course, not all of this is/was purely perpetrated by white Americans. There is some truth to the fact that certain subcategories of the men in Asia are, all things considered, quite feminine. That's the only disclaimer I'll give. I'm trusting you to understand that I can't address every nuance.)

I'm bitter because I'm also partly Asian, if that wasn't clear. And a lot of the racism and homophobia/transphobia I've experienced has been from white fans of BL.

Anyway. We can move on.

Hmm. Interesting analysis of me. You're probably right. I imagine it's probably a dysphoric thing on some level; I spent enough of my life as a woman, so now I don't really enjoy fetishistic, hyperfeminine portrayals of men. It almost feels like forcible feminization. (If my entire rant above hadn't given it away, I have complicated thoughts about being feminized.)

There's this pervasive, overarching trope in BL of men becoming feminine in the presence of a more masculine man. Bottomification, if you will. I think it's tied to anxiety about being a perpetrator of violence. Patriarchal guilt, even. It's more socially acceptable to be the passive role in a violent situation, and so a lot of BL (original and fanworks) aim to align the viewer/reader with the bottom.

I think I am tired of stories that follow passive individuals. So as a result, I care less about these BL narratives that seek to appeal to a female audience. (Not because women are passive, but because of the way the marketing has molded gay male characters to suit societally female anxieties.)

Now I've really laid bare some of my psychology. Not that I think any of it would surprise anybody. I try to be open.