When am I going to learn to stop reading meta?

[cashew]

Sometimes, when I stumble across meta I disagree with, I'm hit with the urge to shout back. So instead of leaving comments in a conversation I don't really want to be having, I'm making a dreamwidth entry to dump my thoughts so they can go away and I can read my trashy mysteries in peace.

BL is problematic because it doesn't portray gay sex in a healthy way VS People are always overly critical of women's literature and BL is staunchly women's literature

Both can be true simultaneously and it's like...this isn't unique to BL? You think cis-het romance is somehow free of problems? You think works targeting other demographics, in general, aren't being overscrutinized?

I'm seriously getting tired of the problem being constantly framed as "look at this minority group's needs being ignored". It's very valid and I'm not saying it doesn't bear repeating.

I'm just personally tired of the same points getting repeated ad nauseum by every new generation of fandom influx who have to beat the horse of my chosen genre of entertainment. I'm especially fucking tired of people trying to tell me that preferring one genre is somehow "problematic".

Here's a new thought: people don't pick their entertainment to be educated. People pick their entertainment to be entertained, and that means all the social biases that comes with being born into a particular society. Trying to get people to be more "aware" about their entertainment consumption as a form of activism is pointless.

If you want to make a difference politically, then go engage with politics. If you just want to engage in intellectual analysis, realize that literary criticism isn't gonna do anything to move the political needle. It's only good for breaking down the various social factors that goes into shaping our literature, but in terms of activism? It does exactly nothing.

If academic exercises actually had political impact, we'd be in a much better place.

So stop trying to tell women how they should read. Let them read their trashy romances, het or BL or otherwise. Let them be picky. Let them be problematic. Stop trying to expand their horizons or control their choices. Sure, make recommendations, but leave it at that. They can damn well decide whether they want to follow your recs for themselves. Stop trying to shame women into consuming a genre they're not interested in consuming. Stop trying to shame women into abandoning a genre they enjoy.

But most importantly, stop couching your activism as academic analysis. Academic analysis requires a nuance that works against political activism and vice versa. The two goals are incompatible.