I'm a grad student studying gay manga for my PhD. Anyone got questions?

What is phd

Have you written any studies about it? I'd love to read it.

It's a type of postgraduate degree! Basically the degree you need to be a college professor.

My dissertation is coming out in the winter, so not on hand but soon. It's about social media algorithms their relationship to western fan consumption of BL and GL

I loved your responses to that other thread and I love hearing that you're publishing on this topic!! It's incredibly funny (and tragic ig) to me that today's self-proclaimed alt kids are just perpetuating purity culture.

OK wait question, what's your thoughts on ABO as feminist lit LOL? Omegas essentially taking the role of women, being discriminated against because of their "second gender", and how that extreme society is portrayed.

wah thank you! I kind of regret being so harsh because I was mad, but it's one of those things that gets me really heated. it's wild to me how the dialogue from people who claim to champion like queer rep or whatever have the same exact arguments and perspectives as the people they claim to be nothing like

It gets me so heated too cause it's really the same exact talking points over and over, like no critical thinking, and women are always at the brunt end of it. Tale as old as time tho amirite

oh this is actually really interesting!! i'll link it if i can find the paper but there's this study that was done as like, ABO being a form of extreme catharsis for women. Since like, m/m (or f/f) in general has been used in the past as a conduit for safe exploration of sexuality and gender without the trappings of real gender expectations. ABO sort of takes that envelope and pushes it even further. I think that it sort of allows readers to explore their understandings of sex and gender without being bound by the reality. It's sort of been used to explore female-coded isolation--by writing a male character as an omega, the experience of being treated as other in female-coded ways are imagined to be experienced by a character who represents the male norm. Ultimately, i think it's equally a catharsis of sex and gender expectations and a fun, smutty ride lol

exactly. i really never see this sort of policing happen to men, it's almost always women without fail. it's really frustrating, and honestly the fact that people think misogyny (and often racism targeted towards nonwestern creators) is justified because of some half-baked moral stance that can be summed up as "you're bad for enjoying something" is so so disturbing. really its the same mentality as church pearl clutchers who judge others by a set of nebulous moral rulings that they can't atone from lmao

Yess I've seen that perspective, I'd love to see the study if you do find it! It's a lot hotter to read a guy being sexualized, assaulted, commodified, etc because of his biology because with a woman... that's just reality. I read this fun ABO fic before that also explored if omega suppressants gave bad side effects, leading to a chronic illness, and how the omega accepts that as his harsh reality (and better than the alternative) but the alphas can't understand it.
Also on the topic of catharsis! There's this manhwa "Sadistic Beauty" that starts off as just standard femdom exploration but becomes more of a revenge fantasy and it's interesting to read peoples negative reactions to it. To me, it was satisfying to see the female lead torture this misogynistic guy who had belittled her for years yet most people comment stuff like "lets not normalize rape" and "see, women can assault men too!". Just very one-dimensional analysis.

yes I've seen this trend getting worse and worse to the point where people are actually getting death threats, like you are fighting the wrong persons, young people want so badly to have something to fight for and have a activism for and I'm like every single day more rights of queer people are being taken away it's actually terrifying and you are over here fighting about how someone enjoys and consumes queer media, like from my experience the majored of people who like BL are queer themselves why are we fighting each other over petty things. Like let's work together to get real shit done, Bl has done so much good on terms of queer media and that person was like yea they suck but I'm still going to enjoy their work which is mad disrespectful.

I really like your analysis on this, your witing is really good. Not really a question, but have you ever read Takatora-kun to Omegatachi? I've always wondered how it would be viewed by the social sciences since it supports a lot of radfem talking points but has no women in it.

And it's often women pitting themselves against other women! Like aghh I hate it. Men just wouldn't entertain these conversations in the first place, since they have the privilege not to. Like most men will never truly concede to a woman that ALL her experiences are affected by her gender, as if it's a personal attack on them. It's incredibly frustrating and I've gotten into reading books on female rage because of it lol.

Do you have any personal favorite yaoi works that you can recommend to me?

And are you currently teaching at uni?

exactly. it's soooo disrespectful, it makes me so angry. what people don't realize is that the arguments they're making are advocating for the same things that the people who want to take rights away, it's the horseshoe theory in full effect. they're all cannibalizing each other.

This is actually interesting! I read the first few chapters that manga a while ago and didn't really notice any radfem talking points (that being said, I read it a while ago). That also might be because I don't read a whole lot of Omegaverse in general that I don't have a lot to compare it to, but I remember the society being very gender essentalist so i can totally see what you mean by radfem points.
I'd love to hear what your thoughts are, as someone who probably remembers more about it or possibly knows more about ABO!

I'll absolutely send it if I find it. Frankly I have a lot of omegaverse papers in my roster so it might take a bit. Really interesting about the fic, too!

Also, YES. Sadistic Beauty. That's a really interesting point and subject you bring up. I read through it too, and upon first read I couldn't finish it because it deviated so heavily from what I expected going in. But then later I did a sort of reflection and came to the same conclusion you did about it being a revenge fantasy. Femdom in a lot of ways is all about the reversal of roles sexually, but Sadistic Beauty really pushed that further with the idea of role reversals socially. It sort of asks the reader "is femdom enough? is that *really* enough to balance the scales, when there's mutual pleasure". I think it was extra impactful because people do often associate femdom acts like pegging and such as inherently "punishment" because it puts men in a position of less power, but this really strove to be like "sexual gratification is not punishment, this is REAL punishment"

Haha, may have just been me reaching, but I felt that the omegas in universe acted as stand ins for women, so it lent itself to a lot of feminist talking points. Like the MC having to remove only his uterus via an unlicensed surgeon due to laws banning the removal of the womb. The societal pressure of omegas to give birth, and the rape culture and victim blaming the author showed also felt pretty pointed to me personally.
I only mentioned this because I thought your views on ABO perfectly articulated what ABO was about, and was also what the manga was trying to satirize, but most of the comments I saw(not on this site) seemed to be more insulted than anything, so I wondered how someone with your view points would feel about it. That being said, I really enjoyed reading your comments on this thread! If you ever get around to rereading it, I'd love to see your opinions on it.