As a Psychology student, rereading this manga from an older perspective honestly made me wanna barf. Then I immediately took to the comment section as though explaining how objectively terrible this manga is would somehow stop a possible anime adaptation. Still, I'm glad that more people are calling this manga out, even to a lesser degree.
Sadly, there seems to be a lot of audience for yaoi anime with dubious consent, almost all that i've watched is like this. And seeing the comments here, seems like many are unaware how sensitive of a topic mental illness is.
Honestly, most of the readers just take the characters saying 'I Love You' at face value and don't bother thinking about the relationships any further; if they're healthy, consensual, sane whatever. Anything can be forgiven as long as it's smoothed off with a declaration of love. At that's because, at the core of it, yaoi is created primarily by straight women for other straight women. It can be likened to how and what males think and conceive about lesbians. There are some good works out there, both by females, straight and gay males, as long as they care about their characters and about writing a good story. Female written yaoi can be terrible at times if written from the point of view of females despite being about gay men. The successful yaois are the ones written through the eyes and experiences of gay men to showcase their lives. Plus, the core audience of yaoi are straight females who either want a substitute for porn without the prevalent misogyny, are misandrists, or have internalized misogyny. A lot of times these are teens or young adults, and the occasional damaged females. A lot of yaoi is also bad because the audience keeps celebrating mediocrity, and thinks that any representation is good representation ignoring how misrepresentation can harm the marginalized communities. This section of the audience also argues how yaoi/fiction doesn't affect reality, ignoring how the more rabid fujoshis can and do send death threats to mangakas, objectify homosexual relationships, and even objectify real life people. This is a direct influence of the more harmful tropes of yaoi. Allies and members of the LGBT+ community have argued against straight males fetishizing lesbians for years, but on the other end of the spectrum we have straight females fetishizing gays. It's a toxic environment, only most of the time, the guilty straight males in question don't pretend to be advocates of the LGBT+ community like the guilty straight females in question do. It's perfectly acceptable to read these types of manga and enjoy our respective kinks, but like it or not, yaoi has influenced our culture and that is a fact. Similarly, people can dislike and criticize whatever they want that's on a public forum without being dragged for breaking the delusional nirvanas these readers have concocted. Like what you want, but be brave enough to admit when it's morally reprehensible, objectively harmful, or even subjectively terrible. If you want to argue, do it with proper counters instead of insults or logical fallacies. This post is calling out a lot of hypocrisy and terrible tropes and most will skip reading it, some will resort to insults in order to reaffirm their prejudiced and toxic beliefs, but as long as even a single person (you included @Elliyah) realises something clicked while reading it, I'll be very happy.
*occasional damaged grown women.
*ignoring how misrepresentation (no matter how well-intended) can further harm the marginalized communities.
Adding, I too like my kinks and porn yaoi due to both a lack of healthy Dom!females and the misogyny prevalent in straight porn and hentai (even yuri), but most of the time I don't hold those type of manga to be the standard of a relationship, gay or not. And so, if called out by someone to enjoy a toxic manga, or while surfing the comment section find a negative review, I either ignore, argue or acknowledge the point presented instead of devolving into insults or gatekeeping. That, is something the community of this site needs to learn. What every needs to learn, actually, including me. Anywhoo, I think my 4 am philosophy epiphany is done, I shall now proceed to pass out and apologise in advance to the unfortunate fool who'll choose to read my ramblings.
Waaah i almost jumped and called you senpai!
I'm really flattered with what you said and also thankful for the input. I've been trying to grasp what fetishizing gays in yaoi is, coz i came here for the good stories and good sex between good-looking 2D men, i really couldn't find anything wrong with it and i don't think what i do is fetishizing it. But with what you said, and with your comparisons, i think i have a better understanding on why people think reading yaoi is awful. I thought that there's a lot of badly written yaoi just because not everyone's a good storyteller, didn't know that it's actually this harmful in society already.
Lol, well like you said, the audience are mostly teens, so being less sensible is a given. I enjoy acting like a 14 year old here sometimes.
And oh i love your ramblings!
Honestly, I don't think reading yaoi is awful. That'd also make me a hypocrite. It all depends on how you receive and interpret it. If its purpose is to be a quick guilty pleasure, then that's fine, be a good story then that's brilliant, but some readers seem to have immersed themselves into fujoshi lifestyles and apply yaoi tropes to real life. Contrary to claim, fiction does influence reality and vice-versa. Fiction is a part of our culture, and culture ofc influences everyday life. Thankfully, the more cumbersome audience who're so toxic in nature are both young, and small in quantity, doe they're so loud that there seem to be in majority. Read what you want, just don't lie to yourself is all I have to say and think about these types of readers. And yes, there's a lot of bad yaoi because there're bad storytellers, but also because yaoi is meant to be fetishizing material which I think should be called out.
Ps. you can call me senpai, my cute kouhai ;)
I know this is some porn manga, but it's unrealistic, okay? Exposure therapy is real but it doesn't work like this. You don't talk about it in the coffee shop and proceed to doing the first task right after. Succeeding it is even more impossible especially the uke's condition is quite severe. (I read about a patient before that underwent exposure therapy, it could take months to do one task successfully and even after that, sometimes you won't be able to do it again coz brain's gotta adjust slowly y'kno) And also if this happens in real life, with the seme continuously pushing a patient like that, i mean just imagine the psychological damage, he could even get sued for malpractice lol. That's why it's so funny how many people are commenting here as if not aware of this simple common sense. Idc if you liked this manga, no problem w that, this has enough smuts. But don't justify it as if it were right. Dubious consent is never okay, okay?