A comment I got on a site called Anime Feminist

[feotakahari]

“The problem is that men come along, see a genre that is fundamentally not about them, and then co-opt it and make it about women suffering instead. It's like they can't accept, for one moment, that a story in the universe exists and isn't about how great men are. Men also write grimdark stories where everyone suffers, of course, but it by no means makes up the majority, or even remotely close to a majority, of all stories written by men. Yet 100% of Magical Girl stories written by men are about specifically women suffering. Do you not see the discrepency? That being said, even if 100% of all stories written by men were about suffering, not just the Magical Girl ones, it'd still be dubious for them to write Magical Girl stories - because it's about them taking a genre meant for women and instead making it about what men want to see. 90% of anime is already heavily male-oriented, and yet men seem intent on making the remaining 10% cater to them too."

This post physically nauseates me. That is not a figure of speech.

I'm trying to figure out how to express how I feel about the idea of genres as walled gardens, into which some kinds of people can enter while others must be kept out. The closest I can come is to try and imagine how I would feel if someone told me that it was wrong or bad for someone like me to write stories that were "meant for" someone else. As it turns out, how I feel is like I'm going to throw up.

Comments

[yvannairie]

My ears are ringing from all the radfem dogwhistles in that post. Like, wow, all women want to do is write stories about women succeeding and living happy lives cocooned in soft femininity, right? And all men want to do is make women suffer and fail?

(I don't even mind the criticism that some people write "bad Magical Girl" stories, because I do agree on that part -- Magical Girl stories that aren't ultimately power fantasies, I think fail to meet the requirements of genre and thus fail as Magical Girl stories, becoming simply stories about girls with magic powers. But see how I can make that criticism without turning it into janky "men and women are Different and Write Different Stories and therefore Genres Are Walled Gardens" radfem shit?)

[zenolalia]

I get what these kinds of commenters think they're saying: that magical girl shows as a genre cater to a specific set of power fantasies common among women and girls, which tend not to see as much writing and production as power fantasies common among boys or across arbitrary gendered lines.

But saying, "having less magical girl content is better," is so actively counterproductive to their intended goal. Like, I don't feel personally upset by these kinds of posts, because I get caught instead on the sheer stupidity.

To use that person's own rhetoric, 90% of major media focuses on subjects that are "supposed to be" appealing to boys or men, or across gendered lines, and only 10% focuses on subjects that are "supposed" to be appealing to women and girls specifically. And they're calling for the reduction of that 10% down to 5% or 3%, because it doesn't meet their weird little standards for Pure, Valid, Good content.

Also, Madoka Magica (these complaints always come back to Madoka, in the end) is a fucking delight and its success literally revitalized the magical girl genre from a severe slump in production quality AND quantity, so who CARES if it was a man's project, since it opened the gate for literally dozens of high quality women's projects since then! We would not have shows like Flip-flappers, and the much praised re-makes of Sailor Moon and Card Captors would have had a much more difficult time getting funded, without the revitalization of the genre that "tragedy porn written by men" created.

Madoka it proved that magical girl anime could be a solid investment: that it could make back the money on a big budget, and could appeal to multiple markets including the desirable otaku markets where most of the money is made, instead of just a young girl's market which ultimately has limited monetization options because it's tied to parents' pockets.

If anything, the proliferation of tragic magical girls (in ADDITION TO traditional magical girls), should be blamed on capitalism and finance, not ~*~bad evil manliness of men~*~.

[feotakahari]

I have given up defending Madoka Magica to its detractors, for a lot of the same reasons I have given up defending Chobits. Some people are going to think it’s sexist, and there’s not a lot I can do to change their minds.

*showing my age here*

[flamingsword]

I can see where people are coming from in criticizing the doggedness of men to take stories that are not about them and somehow make it about them. My Little Pony porn being posted to the MLP main tag, a tag followed by thousands of kids, on tumblr springs to mind. There were several bad actors that could not be convinced that they were creating a chilling environment and ruining things for little girls, despite being told such by actual little girls.

And when women and non-men take men's stories and make them about non-cishet men or about the female side characters then we are terrible pornographers who have to be chased off of blogging platforms, even when stuff is tagged correctly or posted in locked communities. (Yes, I am still bitter about LJ)

Sometimes we get cease and desist orders. Sometimes we get sued. Not all of the C&D'ed webrings were hosted by women or had greater than average female participation, but when people wanted to portray a delegitimizing picture of such fandoms, they were heavily painted as being for women and effeminate or gay men.

Mens stories are "legitimate" in the mainstream in a way that womens and queer folk's stories are not, so to make them more "legitimate" to men, the women/ whoever in the stories must virtuously suffer. Women suffer, queer men suffer, lesbians suffer and die in a proportion much higher than anyone else ...

There is so much about our culture that makes me want to cry, vomit, shake things, and send everyone to therapy.

Re: *showing my age here*

[feotakahari]

You’re not wrong. Sailor Moon had plenty of dark content on its own, but it doesn’t get to be considered “mature” like Madoka Magica does, and I think that’s because it’s considered too “girly.” Still, that’s a problem with fandom and culture, not with Madoka Magica or Sailor Moon.