(This blog was written for the Pride series on BLDA. I usually wouldn’t upload such specific blogs on here, but in this case I believe that this blog works also as a stand alone and doesn’t need to be read as part of a series. I also think this topic is very important and not often discussed. So I believe this blog has it’s place here.)
Hello, hello, hello, my friendly Misfits
And welcome to the last blog of our current Pride series “People Like Us”. I hope you enjoyed the different views on Pride and queerness in all the different blogs. But I for one am mighty proud of our little team and what we have done so far.
So today it’s my turn to shed a little bit of light onto Pride and my own country. But since I am a bit more like a nomad moving through the world, I want to take the opportunity to look at another place I call home: BLDA and the entire BL community.
Because one question that always comes up in my brain is, where do we, as fans of the genre, stand in the entire LGBTQ+ community? Is Pride even an event we can celebrate here? Who or what are we?
Before I start in my tiny attempt to find answers to some of these questions, please let me make it very clear that my gender study days are long behind me and English is still not my first language. Writing academically in another language is pretty much a totally different kettle of fish and I apologise if I get stuff wrong or use the wrong words. Please feel free to kindly correct me in the comments, if you see something you think I worded wrong.
This is just my attempt to find answers to something that has bubbled in my brain for the longest time really. So yeah, have some patience with me and let’s just deep dive into the weird and wonderful world of gender and sexuality.
Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys…
When I noticed that I had a strong preference for gay love stories on television I was not really weirded out or something. Because I had older male relatives and believe me, lesbian porn is something all males watch during puberty. Or at least all boys I had met. So I just thought that this is just me being a bit weird, but in the end nothing else then my male counterparts.
Well, after talking to some of my peers, I noticed that I was a tiny bit wrong with my view on how normal my obsession with gay love stories was. I thought I was pretty much alone in my “special interest” and for the longest time I just filed it under “strange things you like, but no one else does”. And then… I found the internet….
And suddenly I noticed, I am not the only woman lusting over gay men and their romantic endevours. I found gay men, heterosexual, bisexual and lesbian women, trans men and women and also the lonely hetero guy inbetween a sea of girls. And what I found even more interesting was, that the likes and tastes of this group of people differed so much, that the only real common ground was the fact that it’s about gay love and affection in some form. Some people were watching gay porn, some were just watching anime, some were reading fanfics. And again, the topics in these different stories (yes, I classify porn here as a story too. I am aware of how funny this sounds.) could again not be more broad. We had stories about puppy love, the one true love, about polyamory, about having kids and a family, about historical events or about some really dark and fucked up shit.
The longer I have been in this community, the more I understand that the differences between all of us are so extreme, that literally the only common ground are gay men and our love for them.
Some of you might have stumbled over the word “girl fag” already here or there. I would say this word is the attempt to give our very eclectic community a name. There are a ton of different definitions for girl fags and this definition also changed over the years. The concept of girl fags has been around for quiet a long time and the word itself found its way into the media in the 90ties.
So the definition that most scholars would use for girl fags is that they have a certain attraction to gay or bi men. How this attraction looks can be totally different once more. So this can go from fantasising about two men having sex all the way to wanting to be one of these men having sex with another man.
Now one could say that what I am describing is something that can’t exist. If a female assigned at birth wants to be a gay man then she HAS to be a transgender male. And in some cases this is true. Some girl fags feel like they were born in the wrong body and that they have been a gay man all their life. But for some it doesn’t work at all. They are happy in their body with their assigned gender and are not planning on changing any of this. Some can even be hyper feminine and feel more like a drag queen.
So you can see the definition for girl fags is very wide. In earlier years this definition was a lot more stringent, it felt and it put gender more into the focus. It was more about women wanting to have a penis to have sex with men. Or at least that’s what it sounded like in a lot of the research papers out there. But then again these research papers are often written by people from outside the community and I think sometimes this can be a bit difficult.
During my researches I have to say I found a mental picture about girl fags which I feel is the best representantive. And that’s to see us as a continuum.
We have on the one side fag hags, heterosexual women who like to be around gay men, but don’t have a sexual interest in them. One the other side we have transmales who like gay men. Sometimes they are called transfags, but I really hate that word.
So we have these two end points on a long line. On one side we have fag hags, on the other gay transmales. And girl fags belong right in the middle of this long line. We are in a grey area between gender and sexuality and we are proof that things are not as black and white as some people might like to think.
Because in the end it’s like I said in the beginning. We are such a diverse community and we all have different likes and dislikes. We all get something else out of our shows and our obsession with gay love stories. So viewing us and our “special interest” as a continuum on a line feels like the most workable way to look at us as a community.
We are all very different, but in the end, we all share the same love. And in our case that’s BL.
So where do we stand in the LGBTQ+ community? Are we even allowed to feel like we are part of it? And this is for me a very clear yes. Because we are right in this Q. We are queer in the bestest form of it’s meaning. We share a common ground but in the end we are all as different as any rainbow is different in the sky.
We are absolutely part of this bigger and wider LGBTQ+ community and we don’t have to be ashamed of who we are. I know that girl fags often have a bad reputation. We are fetishising an entire sexuality, we shouldn’t do this, we shouldn’t do that.
But actually we definitely still should. Because it’s our life, our happiness and our love. Sexuality is always something personal and special and I am sure that for a lot of us here on BLDA BL also has something to do with their own sexuality. It’s not just about watching a cute love story. It’s about watching a love story with TWO MEN being the centre of the story. And no, we don’t have to watch gay porn or very heavy skinship to make the connection between BL and sexuality.
Because women function differently in this area from men. Might it be due to our socialisation or maybe just due to our nature. That’s for more clever people to decide but me. But for most girl fags one sexually charged look between to male lovers can have the same effect as hard core pornography. As I said, women work different in this department and we can find other things then the actual sexual act even more sexy or arrousing.
What I really want to stress is, that if BL for you is a part of your sexuality, then that’s absolutely okay. Wherever you find yourself on the long continuum of different gay love enthusiasts, you are 100 percent okay the way you are. Females usually get trained not to have any form of sexuality or if we do, then just very well hidden. It’s almost like there is a bit of shame and guilt attached to anything that could be seen as female sexuality.
And just like all the queer activists that came before us, I feel that we also have the right to stand up for what makes us us. It might not define our entire being, but it’s part of us and it’s okay and it’s nothing that we should be afraid to show or share. Because it’s natural and it’s in the end about the same as all the other fights in the name of the LGBTQ+ community.
It’s about fighting to be able to live a happy life in a way that fulfils you and that brings love to you. We are also part of the queer universe and just like a lot of fighters for the cause have stated before us:
We are here, we are queer, get used to it.
First posted on BLDA
Your Heart's Content 