and like...i'm not even a reader of bl and i can tell you that is the primary reason, people word it badly but i think that is actually why a lot of straight women are bl fans(alongside yknow, hot men)
people are wayyy too misogynistic when it comes to talking about fujoshis and bl fandom

removing women out of the focus doesn't get rid of that, but bl stories primarily focusing on (obviously) queer and gay men means that most of the stupid bullshit that is straight relationships is not exactly present(at least in a major way misogyny and the patriarchy affect everything)

like wrt to the heated rivalry discourse, to me it makes sense why straight women would prefer bl over het and thats because of how tiring heterosexual dynamics are in fiction. its often so trite and boring
its not because of the "existence of women" its the existence of the cisheteropatriarchy

for m/f couples especially because people think a guy and a girl just interacting in the same space means they Have To End Up Together
more then ever i actually do want 1) more stories where men and women are actually purely platonic and 2) more romcoms that arent just skater boy syndrome

people also underestimate specific genres as well, like the romance genre gets so malinged so often(and thats because of misogyny pretty much) but i genuinely think writing a good romance story is hard
its not easy to develop compelling chemistry between characters! we see a lot of shitty writing-

I enjoy good execution of cliches tbh, and there is a reason why people keep telling the same stories over and over, its because people want to read them
and deconstructions are not always great by virtue of being a twist, it can be annoying too

it was my first time cosplaying too(at least in a serious way) and I felt like i learnt a lot from it
also people recognized harrow which made me so happy because wow there are locked tomb fans in the UAE??

and this obviously is inclusive of trans women, i don’t think it need to be said that it is, but unfortunately transphobic people exist, i think it’s especially important that trans women are in stories and are the main characters of them, and that they get to be given depth and be loved too

what people should learn is to just expand your media diet,and try to emphathise with women centric stories(and that doesn’t mean reading hetslop, it means branching out to read feminist stories and storylines and stories that actually cherish and care about women and what they go through)

in the meantime, people can and should enjoy BL/mlm stories, but they should also try to uplift and support wlw/GL as well(and it’s not hard to do at all because there’s so many very well written GL/wlw stories out there!!)
when you confront your own biases you end up being a better person

i think also the answer is for more people to give GL a chance, or just try to understand that it’s not hopeless and we can fight for a future for where woman being cherished and loved is not alien to many women
we’ve gotten very far with feminism and the fight is not over yet, facism can be beaten

some of the reason why women have gravitied to BL, is that they feel that a lot of romances with women into men end up feeling too unattainable because of misogyny
i just think that’s sad
it’s sad that people have to remove women entirely to enjoy romance stories

the second we can have this conversation without implying women are brainless individuals who don’t understand what they do…is when we can actually meaningfully discuss how misogyny, homophobia,lesbophobia and the patriarchy,transphobia have had a hand in how people view male/female centric stories

i’m not going to fondly think back oh it was soooo great you forced me to wear something i explicitly said i didn’t want to wear
i will just remember that i hated myself and you for it

i told my mom repeatedly several times that i don’t like to wear dresses, and she keeps buying them
she acts as if she’s doing me some favor by making me wear it
she isn’t