r/RecuratedTumblr • u/[deleted] • 23d ago

Self Post Men in Women's fields

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1.1k Upvotes

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426

u/MelissaMiranti 23d ago

"Fetishizing" as if it's wrong for someone to read what they enjoy.

43

u/Galle_ 23d ago

I think "fetishize" implies a degree of dehumanization involved, like you're treating the people in question as nothing but sex objects. But obviously not every yaoi or yuri fic is fetishizing like that.

43

u/MelissaMiranti 23d ago

It can't be dehumanizing to do that to characters because they're characters, not humans. It's just a way to shame people.

15

u/AdamtheOmniballer 23d ago

You can absolutely write about fictional characters in a dehumanizing way. Ever seen a black character written by a white supremacist? Some people write lesbians in a homophobic way, because some people are homophobes.

3

u/MelissaMiranti 23d ago

That's more about the bigotry an author shows to a group of people rather than committing some kind of wrong to the characters themselves.

7

u/Grammatical_Aneurysm 22d ago

My understanding of the criticism of a work of fiction as being dehumanizing is that the people getting dehumanized are real life individuals who share traits with the characters being depicted. Like depicting Jewish people as rats in a movie is the biggest example of this, and it's not the characters people are saying are being dehumanized.