Idk Nunew seems to be living for the outfits. If he wants to be extravagantly femme in frilly outfits, let him…
I'm saying Nunew does. The actor. He picked the genre of his next series, and he picked this, and when you see him prancing around on BTS clips, he's on cloud nine.
When I said 'Nunew', I meant Nunew, and when I said 'Khanin', I meant Khanin.
it seems like dmd spent their entire budget on sets and costumes which are so comical on khanin that i can't take…
Idk Nunew seems to be living for the outfits. If he wants to be extravagantly femme in frilly outfits, let him do that. It doesn't feel out of place in this setting to me. If he wants to play the one pursuing a guy for once instead of the one being pursued, let him do that.
Neither explicit gender-nonconformity nor a bottom pursuing a top are common in BL, and I appreciate the unspoken expectations of the genre being upended/expanded. I've seen many a BL top be far more insistent and lax about consent than Khanin is, and the viewership usually doesn't seem to mind that. Why is it different now that the shoe is on the other foot?
But yeah Khanin is having a bit too much fun being a spoiled high class brat, and I hope he learns in the next arc, which seems to be about activism and power struggles. He seems to be gearing up to oppose the monarchy, though he's clearly still tempted to stay complacent and look at pearls all day.
I don't agree he has no agency though. Sure, he's useless in a fight and he's not competent at much else, but that's not what agency is about. Khanin makes decisions that affect the plot (for better or worse), so he has agency.
It's not really weird that China is the first to do a BL with mpreg. The 2015 Chinese movie 'Monster Hunt', aimed at kids, had the ML getting pregnant and giving birth to a little monster. This movie was so popular it broke all sorts of box-office records. I lived in China in 2015, and yeah the advertisements showing that little white and green monster were Absolutely Everywhere.
Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant and gives birth in the 1994 movie 'Junior', which was also fairly popular in a lot of countries in the west.
So yeah, not a new trope on the big screen. And neither of these movies are very sexual at all.
There are trans men (meaning ftm) who can get pregnant. Obviously omegaverse isn't explicitly about trans people,…
I'm not familiar with omegaverse at all, but the more I hear the haters speak, the more I want to watch this show. If it pisses people like you off this much, that can only mean that in one way or another it breaks all the cishet norms that need to be broken.
Thx for making it so clear that you are not on team LGBTQIA+ and there's no reason to listen to your hateful conservatism.
I have only one question: WHY?It's such a shame that they chose to adapt a story with a ridiculous trope of a…
There are trans men (meaning ftm) who can get pregnant. Obviously omegaverse isn't explicitly about trans people, but have you considered how transphobic it can come across to call men who can get pregnant 'deformed women' or a 'sex kink'?
Just because you're personally disgusted by something, doesn't make it wrong. By that logic, homophobes could just call gay people disgusting, consider gay sex an absurd kink in need of banning etc, and they in fact do say those things. How do you not realize you're doing the same thing to a different topic?
GAP the series, the very first full length GL in existence, outperformed literally all BLs in terms of views (yes…
So I think there's been a misunderstanding. You say I'm shifting 'the blame' for 'the problem', and I'm sitting here like 'huh? What problem? What division? What am I even supposed to be defending straight women from?'
I think you may mean 'GL isn't getting enough views' with 'the problem'? Or no? If so, idk to me it looks like GL is absolutely booming. It's growing ridiculously fast. In terms of YouTube viewership GL shows are on average outperforming BL shows. I'm far more inclined to celebrate than to complain right now. We're winning! GL is winning right now! Yay! I want to be giddily gushing about all the shows we're getting, not fighting. GL isn't perfect (e.g. I wish there was more butch rep but omg 'Be My Angel''s trailer is beyond adorable and I hope it becomes a huge hit and changes that), but it's making strides insanely fast, so right now I don't see a problem we need to be assigning blame for.
Some people watch only BL, some people watch only GL, and some people watch both. I think all of those options are fine, regardless of those people's orientations. My point with the 'let's stop judging people for their media consumption habits' was that I don't think it's inherently a problem if someone only watches BL. I don't think it's evidence of bigotry. So yeah I do want everyone to just get along and stop judging each other for what media we enjoy.
For me, a reason I didn't use to watch GL as much, was because of my gender dysphoria. I didn't want to be reminded of anatomy I wished I didn't have. Getting top surgery helped. I specifically didn't want to watch women on screen, and I don't think that was a problem. It was a coping mechanism that I was allowed to have.
For some afab aces who are sex-repulsed, like me, it is hard to watch women be sexual, because if they identify too closely with the character while the character is being sexual, they might mentally put themselves in the character's position, which could trigger sex repulsion, and lemme tell you that's not fun at all. I don't think that's a problem they need to fix. Not watching women be sexual is fine, actually.
For some women (regardless of orientation), societal misogyny is a traumatic thing to be reminded of, so they don't want to see it happening to female characters on screen, and the easiest way to avoid that is to avoid watching media with female characters in it at all. I think that's fine. I'm not at all saying people who don't want to watch female characters are being misogynistic and problematic. It can just be a coping mechanism or escapism. That's what I mean with 'misogyny or the avoidance thereof can be a factor in media consumption preferences'. I've been trying to tell you that it's not an accusation. I don't really understand how you interpreted my 'hey let's stop with all the judgment' as 'I judge people'.
My insight that societal misogyny can play a role in media consumption habits doesn't prevent me from getting along with anyone at all, other than you. You're the one bringing the division. You're trying to read between my lines to figure out if I'm 'implying' all kinds of horrific shit, but I don't really work like that (it's the autism). I say the things I mean, and I don't mean other things with it. I wish you'd stop. I'm not trying to be accusatory, I'm just trying to be informative and thorough, hence the links to the deep dives. Female-dominated queer fandom spaces are a special interest to me. I love them so much, in all their diversity. They're home.
Autistic & ADHD queer women & nonbinary people who enjoy m/m ships are my entire real life social circle. If I dropped them out of my life for something as trivial as them preferring BL over GL, I would have no friends left to play DnD with. Why would I have a deep-rooted aversion towards the people who are my home, whom I belong with, who dragged me out of the depths of social isolation, depression and self-hatred? Being accused of hating queer women and defending straight women is a first for me. I'm usually accused of the reverse. I don't hate straight women either, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't biased in favor of queer women.
I understand that the conversation within fandom online right now is really charged and heated. I think it's because the current wider political situation is putting a lot of pressure and trauma onto queer people, so they're more likely to blow up at each other. I see queer people online throw blame around in all directions right now, so I guess it makes some sense for you to assume I'm trying to do the same thing. I'm sad about that. All of the judgment and defensiveness makes open conversation impossible. Face to face conversations with my irl friends are so much easier. We get to actually discuss stuff in depth without someone halting the conversation by blowing up and accusing everyone else of being the devil in disguise. The difference is trust. Queer people online have stopped trusting each other.
I don't have much hope you'll be any more charitable in interpreting what I'm writing this time around, but I guess I'll hold out hope that one day you'll be less reactive and quick to draw conclusions, and who knows, maybe you'll re-read what I wrote and see that you accidentally reached the opposite conclusion of what I meant. Whatever you're dealing with in life that is causing you to assume the worst of others, I hope it gets better. I wish you the best.
Please do share the links to the articles you're referring to. It is genuinely my special interest. And if you have better statistics to share, I am dying to see them.
Placing oneself or others within the alpha/beta/omega paradigm in response to levels of dominance and submission…
'Pseudoscience'? It's fantasy. It doesn't claim to be realistic. Do you consider superhero movies pseudoscience?
I admit I made the mistake of not reading some of your other posts before spending effort on responding. I didn't know you were of the opinion that trans people don't and shouldn't exist. I shouldn't have wasted my breath. I'm glad I disagree with you on a bunch of stuff. It tells me I'm on the right track :)
Complaining about a show reinforcing gender norms while insisting that people are obligated to stick with the gender they were assigned at birth for life is the ultimate form of hypocrisy.
Have a nice day. I've lost interested in talking to you.
Placing oneself or others within the alpha/beta/omega paradigm in response to levels of dominance and submission…
Well yeah obviously don't literally refer to yourself as an alpha/omega/whateverthefuck lol. That'd be real awkward.
I think the thing where they're adding another set of restrictive genders/norms on top of the ones that we already have could be a useful way to analyze the ones we have irl. We're exposed to real life gender norms so much that they kind of get normalized and a lot of the more subtle things start to fly under the radar, but adding a second set of fictional gender norms that we're not as submerged in in daily life could make them more salient, and could make gender norms in general seem as alien, arbitrary and absurd as they really are.
So yeah, I think them being equally confining is kind of why they're an effective tool for storytelling. That's what makes them a good allegory. I think the alpha/omega/whatever system is supposed to make you uncomfortable, and then you're supposed to be uncomfortable with the gendered system we have in real life by extension too. Kind of like those shows that flip gender roles for men and women, to emphasize how absurd they are when the shoe is on the other foot. (E.g. 'The Other Half of Me and You', very fun, would recommend.)
But obviously that's only one way an author could use the genre. It could also be used to try to reinforce, naturalize or eroticize traditional gender norms, which I'd be far less interested in watching personally. I think the genre has a lot of potential for good and a lot of potential for bad. It definitely allows for creatively and diversely exploring gender/power/sexuality dynamics, and I think diversity is good. That's my bold stance. Diversity good.
Most people are always going to have gender identities, gender expressions, sexualities, and a lot of people simply do have fantasies that involve domination and submission etc. I think it's okay to explore all of that in fiction, as well as in real life as long as its safe and consensual.
While I personally am a nonbinary ace, I can't expect everyone else to follow in my footsteps and do as little gender and sexuality as possible, can I? It's not like it was a choice for me. I think rather than trying to abolish gender and all of its facets entirely, it would be better to open up the floor and let people choose which parts they want to embody and which they don't.
If we want to critique and dismantle gender norms through fantasy, I don't think making all characters perfectly equal to each other in all facets of gender and power in some sort of gender utopia would be an effective way of doing that. It would once again prescribe a singular correct way to be. It would become a dystopia real fast, which might accidentally send the message that the gender norms we have now are at least better and more natural than not having them, so we should stick with them. I don't know how it'd be possible to do criticism of gender norms in media without showing what they're like in real life in their full toxic glory, flipping them in 300 directions, exaggerating them, morphing them into something alien yet familiar etc. That seems like the most direct way to address it.
I have a theory as to why there's been so many extremely negative comments on this page (and I'm not necessarily accusing you personally of doing that, or of anything in the coming paragraphs, I'm just ranting about a trend I'm seeing). I think it's that people are icked out by 1, the idea of male pregnancy, and 2, sexual power dynamics being openly discussed and labeled, rather than being represented more implicitly as they usually are, for example with visual markers of femininity/masculinity, and tropes such as which character gets damseled and which character does the rescuing. The 'slip and catch' trope that usually happens very early on in a drama is essentially a way to convey to the audience which character is supposed to be the top. Is it more progressive to make all of this messaging implicit, rather than outright saying 'welp this one's the alpha, that one's the omega, now you know'. I don't think so. I think making the gender roles explicit and exaggerated makes it easier for them to be questioned and for their ubiquity to be torn down.
I'm noticing that 'Revenged Love', another currently airing CBL, is getting overwhelmingly positive comments, even though the relationship dynamic between the leads is basically 'powerful toxic macho guy is going to take what he wants from the broke and physically weaker bottom, and isn't all that concerned with consent.' The bottom is very much positioned as the unwilling gatekeeper to sex, and the top is positioned as the aggressive pursuer who always wants sex and has to be slowly tricked into feeling romantic affection by someone playing hard to get. Sex is posited as the eventual inevitable price to pay for keeping a romantic relationship with a man, and not as an optional mutually pleasurable equal experience desired by both. The woman in the relationship (or her male stand-in) isn't supposed to have sexual desires of her own, outside of responding to the desires of the guy. (Obviously those are all scary things for a female author to have internalized and to have developed her own sexual desires in relation to, so she writes about it happening to someone she doesn't have to identify with as closely; a male stand-in. So it kinda is about gay men, but it also kinda isn't.)
All of this is the hegemonic sexual script to a T. It's the epitome of regressive sexual politics (and I'm not saying you're not allowed to enjoy it, Revenged Love is hilarious let's be real). I think the reason Revenged Love isn't catching flack for doing the exact thing that Desire is catching flack for, is that all of the regressive gender norms in Revenged Love are implicit. Desire makes people uncomfortable by naming them explicitly.
Humans tend to first experience an emotion, and then come up with a reason for why they're experiencing it. People are first experiencing disgust, cringe, maybe even shame at this display of sexuality that doesn't have the decency to obfuscate itself, and rather than looking inwards as to why they're uncomfortable/disgusted, they blame their discomfort on the thing causing the disgust, and come up with reasons as to why the thing is objectively morally wrong.
I'm personally pretty repulsed (not by choice, it's largely an effect of gender dysphoria, am trying to work on it) by most forms of sexuality and all forms of pregnancy, so for me 'it icks me out' doesn't trigger 'it must be morally wrong in some way', cuz like, if it did that, I'd hate 99% of the human population. This 'Desire' show doesn't trigger more disgust for me than other forms of sexuality. I see no objective reason why male pregnancy would be morally wrong to depict, and I see no objective reason why powerplay that gets odd wolf names would be more wrong than the implicit gendered power dynamics I see all the time in BL (and GL, and straight media, and RR shows that flip them, and general society.)
According to conservative ideology, women aren't supposed to have sexual desires, and if they do, they should have the decency to at least be discrete and normative about it. This show dares to not be discrete or remotely normative (imagine discussing it with your conservative aunt), and I think that's setting off a lot of viewers' 'this is indecent, I shouldn't watch this, I shouldn't be that kind of person'-internalized misogyny response.
'My Stubborn' is getting the same treatment, because (from what I've seen from the five minutes I could watch before tapping out) it also dares to be overtly sexual, and not in a 'tasteful' or downplayed way. It's not modest. If you want to watch it, you're forced to face the fact that you're watching an overtly sexual thing and enjoying it, while usually the BL genre helps you obfuscate that fact with classy lighting and fancy camera work that leaves the most 'indecent' parts up to the imagination.
It's fascinating to see people almost universally bash My Stubborn as 'trashy', 'no plot' and 'not worth watching', and then see it turn up on 'most popular' on kisskh's homepage. I really do think a lot of people are watching it, feeling ashamed for doing so, and then bashing the show and shaming others for watching it, in order to morally distance themselves from it and ease their own cognitive dissonance. I think the bashing is really just perpetuating purity culture.
I don't think there's anything actually wrong with women having sexual desires, so maybe the shame isn't necessary, and then the bashing also wouldn't be necessary. The thing people are uncomfortable with is themselves, not the show, and that's really a thing to solve within yourself, not to yell at others about. Heaping shame onto viewers of this show probably does more to reinforce and perpetuate the hegemonic sexual script than the show itself ever could.
If bashers were really in this to make a dent in abolishing normative gender norms, they'd be taking aim at bigger fish, like formulaic Hallmark romcoms, 'my wife keeps nagging me' sitcoms, kids movies, 'how to pick up women'-podcasts, or the way all female news anchors wear make-up and long hair while none of the male ones do etc, and not at an obscure piece of media that's doing something so radically different from the norm that it might give your grandma a heart attack if she knew, and that's straight up illegal in the country it was produced by.
The fact that it's getting this much backlash tells you that its doing something that clashes with conservative norms, because otherwise people probably wouldn't notice, wouldn't care, wouldn't bother. Embedded gender that usually flies under the radar is a much more progressive and effective target of your ire. Everyone else has already had a go at bashing Desire. People are aware of the criticisms about it by now. Maybe move on to greener pastures.
You know how trans women keep getting accused of 'reinforcing gender norms' when they wear dresses and make-up, while cis women who do the same never get accused of that? Yeah. That. That's what's happening here. It's a laser-focused targeting of a thing that breaks a norm, and accusing said thing of reinforcing the norm, because the thing caused you to be aware there is a norm to be broken, so to you the thing seems like the origin of the problem. The thing caused emotional discomfort/cognitive dissonance, and attacking the thing resolves that.
This uses a progressive style of arguing, but it's not progressive.
Wait so the omega is going to turn out to secretly actually be a tier above alpha, an 'enigma', and their bottom/top dynamics are going to switch? And the alpha is the one who's going to get pregnant? I'm not familiar with omegaverse and I'm gonna be real I understood maybe 30% of what was happening in that trailer, but I think I got that right? If so, that's excellent! Exaggerated genderbending with extra steps!
The second couple is a dude (whose status I didn't catch) who hates omegas, but falls in love with an omega who is pretending to be a beta, I think. And a third couple is an omega man with an alpha woman. Right?
If so, wow, I thought this show was going to be about a typical hyperdominant hypermasculine alpha's toxic relationship with a submissive feminized omega, and that's not my cup of tea, so I was planning on watching 10 minutes of this and then tapping out, but now I'm thinking I might actually watch this.
Heck yeah flip all the gender dynamics in all directions! Make the dynamics so diverse that by the end of this, we look at our own very gendered societies and think 'wow, so limiting, let's instead have everyone choose which role they want to occupy regardless of whether they're men or women, masculine or feminine, tops or bottoms, whether they want to mix it up, or whether they want their dynamic with their partner to be strictly equal on all of those factors.'
I think that showing a diversity of power/gender dynamics, any of which can be either toxic or healthy depending on whether they're wanted, is maybe a good way to show people that they have options. They don't have to follow gender roles if they don't want to. But if they do want to follow (aspects of) them, that's also okay. They can mix and match, follow the parts they like, reject the parts they don't. Gender roles just shouldn't be obligatory.
But I haven't actually read or watched any other pieces of omegaverse media other than video essays about it, so maybe I shouldn't have such high hopes, and maybe it'll still turn out to just be reactionary toxic shit, who knows. Looks like it's going to be pretty wild regardless.
I don't know where your statistics come from. Anecdotal experience? I guess as a counter-anecdote, I personally know cishet women who watch GL, and lesbians who watch BL. Not that you should put much stock into anecdotes.
Everyone has some degree of misogyny stuck in their system, simply because sexism is embedded in society and every piece of media we consume in subtle ways. Deconstructing it within yourself is a continuous task. I think it would be impossible for a person who has grown up within a sexist culture to not have been affected by it in one way or another. So yeah, "misogyny and the avoidance thereof plays a role in which ships people are into" isn't intended to be an accusation. I'd consider myself trans (nb), ace and pan in a somewhat sapphic way, so you really don't have to defend those groups from me.
I'm sad that there seems to be a culture within fandom nowadays that heavily moralizes what media people do and don't consume. I see a lot of people feel the need to either offer watertight moral justifications of their media consumption habits or change them. I see a lot of people quickly judge the media consumption habits of others as evidence of bigotry or as evidence of not being queer enough. I don't think this is healthy. I think it's healthier to try to apply a critical lens to the media you do watch, and to try to non-judgmentally dig into 'hey what's causing me to enjoy this'. I think the relentless judgment really impedes self-discovery, self-acceptance, growth, empathy, creativity, diversity, the creation of community, etc.
I'm seeing the judgment lead to people defending a piece of media they enjoy as absolutely perfect, as something that couldn't possibly perpetuate anything harmful no matter how subtle, because otherwise they'd feel personally morally tainted by still enjoying that piece of media. In reality there's no such thing as a perfect piece of media, and that's okay. We SHOULD dissect the imperfect politics of media we enjoy, while still being allowed to enjoy it, so that we can improve upon it. (But also, there are limits, don't give money to authors who are going to do evil things with it irl.) We shouldn't pretend a piece of media is perfect when it isn't. When we start defending its less than ideal aspects, that's when we become complicit in perpetuating and normalizing them.
You don't seem interested in clicking links to deep dives on the topic, since you haven't so far, but if I'm wrong about that, let me know, I have a long list of them to share :)
Mainland China's ruling party is known for suppressing narratives deviating from conservative ideologies. Omegaverse's…
That first line was a direct quote from that first article I linked, which you would've known if you'd bothered to read it.
"It's possible that they'd make an exception" but they demonstrably haven't, so why are you talking with an air of authority about what the CCP is and isn't likely to censor?
I think the CCP making an exception for ABO is about as likely as the pope making an exception for furry porn because furries are animals so that's just a nature documentary. It's ridiculous on its face.
But I'm done arguing about this now. I'm going to go do something fun with my time. Goodbye.
Mainland China's ruling party is known for suppressing narratives deviating from conservative ideologies. Omegaverse's…
So I went to the Chinese internet (because I speak Mandarin) to go check for a second, not because I doubted, but because apparently you need actual proof for something this obvious.
So in conclusion this series was filmed in Taiwan in order to avoid censorship. It has Taiwanese producers, but mainland Chinese actors, and a mainland Chinese original author who was involved in production. Since this wasn't shot in mainland China, they're not obligated to go apply for a Film Public Screening Permit from the SARFT, so no this wasn't approved.
When the series was announced Chinese netizens were unanimously baffled and in disbelief about it being from Mainland China. ABO is considered pretty wild in China too. The CCP is conservative. They're not going to suddenly make an exception because it includes pregnancy. That's a wild thing to believe. I'm baffled anyone bought it at all. But you got a couple of people to click that heart icon on your comment somehow. Sad.
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When I said 'Nunew', I meant Nunew, and when I said 'Khanin', I meant Khanin.
Neither explicit gender-nonconformity nor a bottom pursuing a top are common in BL, and I appreciate the unspoken expectations of the genre being upended/expanded. I've seen many a BL top be far more insistent and lax about consent than Khanin is, and the viewership usually doesn't seem to mind that. Why is it different now that the shoe is on the other foot?
But yeah Khanin is having a bit too much fun being a spoiled high class brat, and I hope he learns in the next arc, which seems to be about activism and power struggles. He seems to be gearing up to oppose the monarchy, though he's clearly still tempted to stay complacent and look at pearls all day.
I don't agree he has no agency though. Sure, he's useless in a fight and he's not competent at much else, but that's not what agency is about. Khanin makes decisions that affect the plot (for better or worse), so he has agency.
Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant and gives birth in the 1994 movie 'Junior', which was also fairly popular in a lot of countries in the west.
So yeah, not a new trope on the big screen. And neither of these movies are very sexual at all.
Thx for making it so clear that you are not on team LGBTQIA+ and there's no reason to listen to your hateful conservatism.
Just because you're personally disgusted by something, doesn't make it wrong. By that logic, homophobes could just call gay people disgusting, consider gay sex an absurd kink in need of banning etc, and they in fact do say those things. How do you not realize you're doing the same thing to a different topic?
Or maybe you meant to be transphobic idk.
I think you may mean 'GL isn't getting enough views' with 'the problem'? Or no? If so, idk to me it looks like GL is absolutely booming. It's growing ridiculously fast. In terms of YouTube viewership GL shows are on average outperforming BL shows. I'm far more inclined to celebrate than to complain right now. We're winning! GL is winning right now! Yay! I want to be giddily gushing about all the shows we're getting, not fighting. GL isn't perfect (e.g. I wish there was more butch rep but omg 'Be My Angel''s trailer is beyond adorable and I hope it becomes a huge hit and changes that), but it's making strides insanely fast, so right now I don't see a problem we need to be assigning blame for.
Some people watch only BL, some people watch only GL, and some people watch both. I think all of those options are fine, regardless of those people's orientations. My point with the 'let's stop judging people for their media consumption habits' was that I don't think it's inherently a problem if someone only watches BL. I don't think it's evidence of bigotry. So yeah I do want everyone to just get along and stop judging each other for what media we enjoy.
For me, a reason I didn't use to watch GL as much, was because of my gender dysphoria. I didn't want to be reminded of anatomy I wished I didn't have. Getting top surgery helped. I specifically didn't want to watch women on screen, and I don't think that was a problem. It was a coping mechanism that I was allowed to have.
For some afab aces who are sex-repulsed, like me, it is hard to watch women be sexual, because if they identify too closely with the character while the character is being sexual, they might mentally put themselves in the character's position, which could trigger sex repulsion, and lemme tell you that's not fun at all. I don't think that's a problem they need to fix. Not watching women be sexual is fine, actually.
For some women (regardless of orientation), societal misogyny is a traumatic thing to be reminded of, so they don't want to see it happening to female characters on screen, and the easiest way to avoid that is to avoid watching media with female characters in it at all. I think that's fine. I'm not at all saying people who don't want to watch female characters are being misogynistic and problematic. It can just be a coping mechanism or escapism. That's what I mean with 'misogyny or the avoidance thereof can be a factor in media consumption preferences'. I've been trying to tell you that it's not an accusation. I don't really understand how you interpreted my 'hey let's stop with all the judgment' as 'I judge people'.
My insight that societal misogyny can play a role in media consumption habits doesn't prevent me from getting along with anyone at all, other than you. You're the one bringing the division. You're trying to read between my lines to figure out if I'm 'implying' all kinds of horrific shit, but I don't really work like that (it's the autism). I say the things I mean, and I don't mean other things with it. I wish you'd stop. I'm not trying to be accusatory, I'm just trying to be informative and thorough, hence the links to the deep dives. Female-dominated queer fandom spaces are a special interest to me. I love them so much, in all their diversity. They're home.
Autistic & ADHD queer women & nonbinary people who enjoy m/m ships are my entire real life social circle. If I dropped them out of my life for something as trivial as them preferring BL over GL, I would have no friends left to play DnD with. Why would I have a deep-rooted aversion towards the people who are my home, whom I belong with, who dragged me out of the depths of social isolation, depression and self-hatred? Being accused of hating queer women and defending straight women is a first for me. I'm usually accused of the reverse. I don't hate straight women either, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't biased in favor of queer women.
I understand that the conversation within fandom online right now is really charged and heated. I think it's because the current wider political situation is putting a lot of pressure and trauma onto queer people, so they're more likely to blow up at each other. I see queer people online throw blame around in all directions right now, so I guess it makes some sense for you to assume I'm trying to do the same thing. I'm sad about that. All of the judgment and defensiveness makes open conversation impossible. Face to face conversations with my irl friends are so much easier. We get to actually discuss stuff in depth without someone halting the conversation by blowing up and accusing everyone else of being the devil in disguise. The difference is trust. Queer people online have stopped trusting each other.
I don't have much hope you'll be any more charitable in interpreting what I'm writing this time around, but I guess I'll hold out hope that one day you'll be less reactive and quick to draw conclusions, and who knows, maybe you'll re-read what I wrote and see that you accidentally reached the opposite conclusion of what I meant. Whatever you're dealing with in life that is causing you to assume the worst of others, I hope it gets better. I wish you the best.
Please do share the links to the articles you're referring to. It is genuinely my special interest. And if you have better statistics to share, I am dying to see them.
I admit I made the mistake of not reading some of your other posts before spending effort on responding. I didn't know you were of the opinion that trans people don't and shouldn't exist. I shouldn't have wasted my breath. I'm glad I disagree with you on a bunch of stuff. It tells me I'm on the right track :)
Complaining about a show reinforcing gender norms while insisting that people are obligated to stick with the gender they were assigned at birth for life is the ultimate form of hypocrisy.
Have a nice day. I've lost interested in talking to you.
I think the thing where they're adding another set of restrictive genders/norms on top of the ones that we already have could be a useful way to analyze the ones we have irl. We're exposed to real life gender norms so much that they kind of get normalized and a lot of the more subtle things start to fly under the radar, but adding a second set of fictional gender norms that we're not as submerged in in daily life could make them more salient, and could make gender norms in general seem as alien, arbitrary and absurd as they really are.
So yeah, I think them being equally confining is kind of why they're an effective tool for storytelling. That's what makes them a good allegory. I think the alpha/omega/whatever system is supposed to make you uncomfortable, and then you're supposed to be uncomfortable with the gendered system we have in real life by extension too. Kind of like those shows that flip gender roles for men and women, to emphasize how absurd they are when the shoe is on the other foot. (E.g. 'The Other Half of Me and You', very fun, would recommend.)
But obviously that's only one way an author could use the genre. It could also be used to try to reinforce, naturalize or eroticize traditional gender norms, which I'd be far less interested in watching personally. I think the genre has a lot of potential for good and a lot of potential for bad. It definitely allows for creatively and diversely exploring gender/power/sexuality dynamics, and I think diversity is good. That's my bold stance. Diversity good.
Most people are always going to have gender identities, gender expressions, sexualities, and a lot of people simply do have fantasies that involve domination and submission etc. I think it's okay to explore all of that in fiction, as well as in real life as long as its safe and consensual.
While I personally am a nonbinary ace, I can't expect everyone else to follow in my footsteps and do as little gender and sexuality as possible, can I? It's not like it was a choice for me. I think rather than trying to abolish gender and all of its facets entirely, it would be better to open up the floor and let people choose which parts they want to embody and which they don't.
If we want to critique and dismantle gender norms through fantasy, I don't think making all characters perfectly equal to each other in all facets of gender and power in some sort of gender utopia would be an effective way of doing that. It would once again prescribe a singular correct way to be. It would become a dystopia real fast, which might accidentally send the message that the gender norms we have now are at least better and more natural than not having them, so we should stick with them. I don't know how it'd be possible to do criticism of gender norms in media without showing what they're like in real life in their full toxic glory, flipping them in 300 directions, exaggerating them, morphing them into something alien yet familiar etc. That seems like the most direct way to address it.
I have a theory as to why there's been so many extremely negative comments on this page (and I'm not necessarily accusing you personally of doing that, or of anything in the coming paragraphs, I'm just ranting about a trend I'm seeing). I think it's that people are icked out by 1, the idea of male pregnancy, and 2, sexual power dynamics being openly discussed and labeled, rather than being represented more implicitly as they usually are, for example with visual markers of femininity/masculinity, and tropes such as which character gets damseled and which character does the rescuing. The 'slip and catch' trope that usually happens very early on in a drama is essentially a way to convey to the audience which character is supposed to be the top. Is it more progressive to make all of this messaging implicit, rather than outright saying 'welp this one's the alpha, that one's the omega, now you know'. I don't think so. I think making the gender roles explicit and exaggerated makes it easier for them to be questioned and for their ubiquity to be torn down.
I'm noticing that 'Revenged Love', another currently airing CBL, is getting overwhelmingly positive comments, even though the relationship dynamic between the leads is basically 'powerful toxic macho guy is going to take what he wants from the broke and physically weaker bottom, and isn't all that concerned with consent.' The bottom is very much positioned as the unwilling gatekeeper to sex, and the top is positioned as the aggressive pursuer who always wants sex and has to be slowly tricked into feeling romantic affection by someone playing hard to get. Sex is posited as the eventual inevitable price to pay for keeping a romantic relationship with a man, and not as an optional mutually pleasurable equal experience desired by both. The woman in the relationship (or her male stand-in) isn't supposed to have sexual desires of her own, outside of responding to the desires of the guy. (Obviously those are all scary things for a female author to have internalized and to have developed her own sexual desires in relation to, so she writes about it happening to someone she doesn't have to identify with as closely; a male stand-in. So it kinda is about gay men, but it also kinda isn't.)
All of this is the hegemonic sexual script to a T. It's the epitome of regressive sexual politics (and I'm not saying you're not allowed to enjoy it, Revenged Love is hilarious let's be real). I think the reason Revenged Love isn't catching flack for doing the exact thing that Desire is catching flack for, is that all of the regressive gender norms in Revenged Love are implicit. Desire makes people uncomfortable by naming them explicitly.
Humans tend to first experience an emotion, and then come up with a reason for why they're experiencing it. People are first experiencing disgust, cringe, maybe even shame at this display of sexuality that doesn't have the decency to obfuscate itself, and rather than looking inwards as to why they're uncomfortable/disgusted, they blame their discomfort on the thing causing the disgust, and come up with reasons as to why the thing is objectively morally wrong.
I'm personally pretty repulsed (not by choice, it's largely an effect of gender dysphoria, am trying to work on it) by most forms of sexuality and all forms of pregnancy, so for me 'it icks me out' doesn't trigger 'it must be morally wrong in some way', cuz like, if it did that, I'd hate 99% of the human population. This 'Desire' show doesn't trigger more disgust for me than other forms of sexuality. I see no objective reason why male pregnancy would be morally wrong to depict, and I see no objective reason why powerplay that gets odd wolf names would be more wrong than the implicit gendered power dynamics I see all the time in BL (and GL, and straight media, and RR shows that flip them, and general society.)
According to conservative ideology, women aren't supposed to have sexual desires, and if they do, they should have the decency to at least be discrete and normative about it. This show dares to not be discrete or remotely normative (imagine discussing it with your conservative aunt), and I think that's setting off a lot of viewers' 'this is indecent, I shouldn't watch this, I shouldn't be that kind of person'-internalized misogyny response.
'My Stubborn' is getting the same treatment, because (from what I've seen from the five minutes I could watch before tapping out) it also dares to be overtly sexual, and not in a 'tasteful' or downplayed way. It's not modest. If you want to watch it, you're forced to face the fact that you're watching an overtly sexual thing and enjoying it, while usually the BL genre helps you obfuscate that fact with classy lighting and fancy camera work that leaves the most 'indecent' parts up to the imagination.
It's fascinating to see people almost universally bash My Stubborn as 'trashy', 'no plot' and 'not worth watching', and then see it turn up on 'most popular' on kisskh's homepage. I really do think a lot of people are watching it, feeling ashamed for doing so, and then bashing the show and shaming others for watching it, in order to morally distance themselves from it and ease their own cognitive dissonance. I think the bashing is really just perpetuating purity culture.
I don't think there's anything actually wrong with women having sexual desires, so maybe the shame isn't necessary, and then the bashing also wouldn't be necessary. The thing people are uncomfortable with is themselves, not the show, and that's really a thing to solve within yourself, not to yell at others about. Heaping shame onto viewers of this show probably does more to reinforce and perpetuate the hegemonic sexual script than the show itself ever could.
If bashers were really in this to make a dent in abolishing normative gender norms, they'd be taking aim at bigger fish, like formulaic Hallmark romcoms, 'my wife keeps nagging me' sitcoms, kids movies, 'how to pick up women'-podcasts, or the way all female news anchors wear make-up and long hair while none of the male ones do etc, and not at an obscure piece of media that's doing something so radically different from the norm that it might give your grandma a heart attack if she knew, and that's straight up illegal in the country it was produced by.
The fact that it's getting this much backlash tells you that its doing something that clashes with conservative norms, because otherwise people probably wouldn't notice, wouldn't care, wouldn't bother. Embedded gender that usually flies under the radar is a much more progressive and effective target of your ire. Everyone else has already had a go at bashing Desire. People are aware of the criticisms about it by now. Maybe move on to greener pastures.
You know how trans women keep getting accused of 'reinforcing gender norms' when they wear dresses and make-up, while cis women who do the same never get accused of that? Yeah. That. That's what's happening here. It's a laser-focused targeting of a thing that breaks a norm, and accusing said thing of reinforcing the norm, because the thing caused you to be aware there is a norm to be broken, so to you the thing seems like the origin of the problem. The thing caused emotional discomfort/cognitive dissonance, and attacking the thing resolves that.
This uses a progressive style of arguing, but it's not progressive.
The second couple is a dude (whose status I didn't catch) who hates omegas, but falls in love with an omega who is pretending to be a beta, I think. And a third couple is an omega man with an alpha woman. Right?
If so, wow, I thought this show was going to be about a typical hyperdominant hypermasculine alpha's toxic relationship with a submissive feminized omega, and that's not my cup of tea, so I was planning on watching 10 minutes of this and then tapping out, but now I'm thinking I might actually watch this.
Heck yeah flip all the gender dynamics in all directions! Make the dynamics so diverse that by the end of this, we look at our own very gendered societies and think 'wow, so limiting, let's instead have everyone choose which role they want to occupy regardless of whether they're men or women, masculine or feminine, tops or bottoms, whether they want to mix it up, or whether they want their dynamic with their partner to be strictly equal on all of those factors.'
I think that showing a diversity of power/gender dynamics, any of which can be either toxic or healthy depending on whether they're wanted, is maybe a good way to show people that they have options. They don't have to follow gender roles if they don't want to. But if they do want to follow (aspects of) them, that's also okay. They can mix and match, follow the parts they like, reject the parts they don't. Gender roles just shouldn't be obligatory.
But I haven't actually read or watched any other pieces of omegaverse media other than video essays about it, so maybe I shouldn't have such high hopes, and maybe it'll still turn out to just be reactionary toxic shit, who knows. Looks like it's going to be pretty wild regardless.
I don't know where your statistics come from. Anecdotal experience? I guess as a counter-anecdote, I personally know cishet women who watch GL, and lesbians who watch BL. Not that you should put much stock into anecdotes.
Everyone has some degree of misogyny stuck in their system, simply because sexism is embedded in society and every piece of media we consume in subtle ways. Deconstructing it within yourself is a continuous task. I think it would be impossible for a person who has grown up within a sexist culture to not have been affected by it in one way or another. So yeah, "misogyny and the avoidance thereof plays a role in which ships people are into" isn't intended to be an accusation. I'd consider myself trans (nb), ace and pan in a somewhat sapphic way, so you really don't have to defend those groups from me.
I'm sad that there seems to be a culture within fandom nowadays that heavily moralizes what media people do and don't consume. I see a lot of people feel the need to either offer watertight moral justifications of their media consumption habits or change them. I see a lot of people quickly judge the media consumption habits of others as evidence of bigotry or as evidence of not being queer enough. I don't think this is healthy. I think it's healthier to try to apply a critical lens to the media you do watch, and to try to non-judgmentally dig into 'hey what's causing me to enjoy this'. I think the relentless judgment really impedes self-discovery, self-acceptance, growth, empathy, creativity, diversity, the creation of community, etc.
I'm seeing the judgment lead to people defending a piece of media they enjoy as absolutely perfect, as something that couldn't possibly perpetuate anything harmful no matter how subtle, because otherwise they'd feel personally morally tainted by still enjoying that piece of media. In reality there's no such thing as a perfect piece of media, and that's okay. We SHOULD dissect the imperfect politics of media we enjoy, while still being allowed to enjoy it, so that we can improve upon it. (But also, there are limits, don't give money to authors who are going to do evil things with it irl.) We shouldn't pretend a piece of media is perfect when it isn't. When we start defending its less than ideal aspects, that's when we become complicit in perpetuating and normalizing them.
You don't seem interested in clicking links to deep dives on the topic, since you haven't so far, but if I'm wrong about that, let me know, I have a long list of them to share :)
And here's one from SuperThai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBqJYny3dcM
And Hong Jin: https://youtu.be/TrTbUyWV60U?list=RDTrTbUyWV60U
Official YouTube channel. He has songs.
"It's possible that they'd make an exception" but they demonstrably haven't, so why are you talking with an air of authority about what the CCP is and isn't likely to censor?
I think the CCP making an exception for ABO is about as likely as the pope making an exception for furry porn because furries are animals so that's just a nature documentary. It's ridiculous on its face.
But I'm done arguing about this now. I'm going to go do something fun with my time. Goodbye.
https://star.ettoday.net/news/2754256
https://today.line.me/hk/v3/article/MLgErXy
https://movie.douban.com/subject/36923520/
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%9E%82%E6%B6%8E/65225113
So in conclusion this series was filmed in Taiwan in order to avoid censorship. It has Taiwanese producers, but mainland Chinese actors, and a mainland Chinese original author who was involved in production. Since this wasn't shot in mainland China, they're not obligated to go apply for a Film Public Screening Permit from the SARFT, so no this wasn't approved.
When the series was announced Chinese netizens were unanimously baffled and in disbelief about it being from Mainland China. ABO is considered pretty wild in China too. The CCP is conservative. They're not going to suddenly make an exception because it includes pregnancy. That's a wild thing to believe. I'm baffled anyone bought it at all. But you got a couple of people to click that heart icon on your comment somehow. Sad.