NY Magazine is Annoyingly Right and Infuriatingly Wrong

E. Alex Jung, a gay man writing for New York Magazine’s “Vulture” (I often consider it an apt name due to its propensity to pick apart things often better left alone) has recently written an article that hovers somewhere on the border between condescending and outright insulting when it comes to the common perception of women’s sexuality. Every so often, between astute observations and a comprehensive history of fujoshis and slash fiction, Jung tends to betray a particular characterization of women, portraying them as if he’s wandering through an asylum and pressing his greasy little nose up to the glass as he peers in on them in their padded rooms. The article, Girls Who Love Boys Who Love Boys which is a clear rip-off of Lucy Neville’s monograph, Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica, seeks to make the attempt to explain what Neville already has, making sure to lean heavy into the concept of the fujoshi and the current surge of awareness happening within a more mainstream audience.

Jung talks about women going through “mass psychosis” due to the six episode Canadian show Heated Rivalry, a gay hockey tale based on one of the most tepid romances I’ve ever read in my life. For anyone who’s already steeped in the culture, the show is good but not incredible. It’s nice to see gay male romance getting its place in the sun and finding success among an audience that will keep it alive for many years to come. Yadda yadda, I’ve talked about this stuff before. In fact, for every paragraph Jung wrote I probably have a blog post saying the same thing or at least addressing the topic, insisting that in order to get there, we need to be here. What do I mean by that? Jung addresses several issues, such as the tensions between gay men and the women who write these fantasies that seem so removed from the “real” queer male experience. Realistically, would the “real” queer male experience make this much fucking money? Maybe someday it could, but in order to get there, we have to be here. Women are writing these stories for women and (white) women are the demographic most likely to be catered to by large streaming services. Welcome to capitalism.

It’s more than just capitalism though that’s gotten in the way of popular M/M romance’s ability to properly represent an authentic gay male experience, of course. As Jung succinctly points out: “There is more compulsory masculinity, less faggotry.” Part of this comes from the intended audience (women writing for women) and part of it comes from the relatively unsexy aspects of faggotry that would boggle mainstream audiences. Unfortunately for most of us women who’ve been wallowing in faggotry for the past decade or so, people still consider it a joke. For most of our recent media history that’s hit mainstream popularity, Roger and Carmen (The Producers) are about as close to faggotry as we can get before straight male disgust becomes the overarching joke. Of course Heated Rivalry isn’t flirty, fun, and faggy—that’s not what women connect with emotionally even if it’s what they love the most about their real life gay friends (authenticity!). For people looking for male vulnerability and masculine thirst traps, darling little twinks with glitter on their cheeks and blow up their noses just…isn’t the vibe. (It’s my vibe, hit me up boys, let’s get some mimosas and play online games.) Women who read/watch gay male erotica aren’t looking for their next best friend, they’re looking for the ability to see a man’s vulnerability and imagine a better world because of it.

What shouldn’t piss me off but still does is this paragraph:

I’d like to propose a writ of reconciliation. Gay men and fujoshi have more in common than not as persecuted sexual minorities. We have similar animating interests. Gay critiques of M/M romance and BL are reminiscent of early critiques of drag that said the art form was mocking women. In both instances, the subjective I is key; the BL writer is not writing about gay men but herself, just as the drag queen is creating a female persona for himself. Playing with the semiotics of the “other” gender is a way to explore those aspects within oneself that social norms have prohibited (hence why many M/M writers and drag queens are nonbinary and trans). When the critic believes themself to be the target of derision or fetishization, the reality is that it may not be about them at all.

Mostly what pisses me off is the first sentence. You? You, Mr. Jung? You? We, who have been out here in the trenches for long enough that the word “slit” in erotic fiction isn’t an immediate immersion-breaker (you’re wearing khakis right now aren’t you?) have been fighting for this to be understood for over a decade. We’ve even used the exact same equivalence, but now, a man who’s not even part of the kinky weird fandom community (that we know of) and is merely what seems to be a bystander to it has decided to propose this as if it’s some kind of miraculous thought that’s never been proposed before! Hallelujah! Praise be! A man came and had an idea so it should be taken seriously now. A man who describes female longing as mass psychosis. Great.

It absolutely pains me to admit that this article is almost necessary in order to plainly spell out everything that needed to be said to the mainstream audience and it almost extra pains me that it probably had to be talked about from a gay man with very little skin in the game. Broader acceptance of fujoshi and slash culture begins in the queer sphere and maybe due to this, more folks will end up wandering through to the weirder shit in the back where I and my friends hang out making transgressive queer gender fuckery. It doesn’t escape me that we’re making these inroads during a type of great political upheaval, laying it all out and trying not to let all of it end like Cabaret. We need each other and even if it’s tough letting a man rehash the exact thing we’ve been screaming for ages, sometimes you gotta just be here to get there. Begrudgingly.

Still, it might take longer than my lifetime for people to get where I am and the last thing I need is some well-meaning journalist to shine a light on places like Ao3 (as Jung does right at the end of the article) so that people with bad intentions can come find us and come for us. It’s one thing when there’s a level of inaccessibility between the folks reading the articles and the depths they’re not prepared for, it’s a whole ‘nother animal to be linking to fics. This type of journalism almost doesn’t seem like it has the welfare of Ao3 or its denizens in mind, and linking fics there has about the same impact as linking to some innocuous clip on a site which also simultaneously hosts the Russian Lathe film and a myriad of cartel videos. Let’s try not to do this shit in the future, hmm?

For fuck’s sake, guys. Let women enjoy things. Do we have to always have a goddamn reason? Is it any of your business anyway? Jesus Christ.