How you feel about many of the comments that just aggressively scream straight by minimizing Jiwan's childhood abuse by his parents and constant hate-criming as just an inability to get over his 'insecurities'.
It always irritates me when I read comments under a yaoi, it’s mostly demonising a character and, doing so while the commenter obviously doesn’t understand the character and often just screams ignorance in my opinion. I suppose it’s due to many factors such as the consumer base for this genre being predominantly women and a large percentage being straight, they seem fairly narrow minded when it comes to queer struggles(not always ofc). His character struggles with a very queer specific experience, and while some of the readers can understand where his intentions and motivations are coming from, for someone who will never experience this level of discrimination will probably equate his behaviour to something they could experience. I imagine a straight woman is putting herself in mc’s shoes and her boyfriend being jiwan, for her, the queer part of his story is completely stripped so she only sees his behaviour, which, without the internalised homophobia, his main reasoning behind why he pushes mc away, is just going to look like he’s playing around and wasting mc’s time, due to regular insecurities and using him and his kindness. It’s unfortunate and obviously not all straight readers are like that, and they can empathise with the character. This is just my guess on how they are able to misinterpret a character so bad but, I think it makes sense, as a reader I often try to relate to characters all the time so it’s not a far fetched theory, I think? (Sorry it’s so long I tried to cut it short I swear, sorry for any mistakes also, it’s 3am so my brain is starting to feel like mush in my skull lmao)
Couldn't have said it better myself. Ofc not all straight women (people) are lacking empathy, I'm pretty sure a majority empathize with the uke, but the very loud minority make me uncomfortable, and I'm just a queer woman. Can't imagine how queer men would feel.
Totally, it’s definitely ignorance on their end, hopefully as they consume more queer media, such as yaoi, they will educate themselves more on things like homophobia and its affects on people, though I’m not sure yaoi is the best representation half the time, so I’m not too surprised they can’t seem to sympathise with a character representing life a lot of real queer people experience, especially a more realistic, less idealistic portrayal. Thank you so much for this discussion btw lol. ^^
Haha don't thank me, you're the one who actually said the interesting and insightful stuff. And yes, you're right on yaoi not really being the best representation half the time, which is why it's so important to actually interact with queer communities in real life. I hope the people in these comments actually do that, or at least try to gain more empathy by educating themselves at the very least.
I typically avoid yaoi with kids since it’s always mpreg and my gay self hates the “pregnancy scare” trope in general (it doesn’t really feel like it represents the beauty of queer family dynamics), but I can get behind these gems that show one way queer couples can actually end up having kids, it’s equally as beautiful and actually feels like representation, our sunny days is another great example, now I just need a story with an adoption. (This was my main talking point but the story overall was really enjoyable).