Tapas and LGBT Sensitivity Failures

[snailienz]

Over the the past (a little over) a month, I as a queer person have been slowly feeling...unsettled by how little time is taken to consider people like me when making Ads and Social Media posts.

The first time I noticed it was when an ad for a comic that was about a "woman in disguise" seemed to be worded in a way that made it seem like she was a trans woman. It felt strange, being excited about a story that was about people somewhat like me only to be told that no, this was about a cis woman. I brushed it off, it felt like poor word choice.

The second time I saw it, I was immediately angry. The team had put up adds about the comic where a girl is paid by a rich gay man to pose as his fiancé. That was fine, and could be a cute story given it is written well, but the problem was that instead of saying "My rich gay friend" at first it said "this rich gay" which is something that is really dehumanizing. They fixed it, I let it go.

Now the BL genre is already pretty divided. I actually consume a lot of it myself and it can be pretty fun when written well...but I have my qualms about it's tropes. Namely, "seme" and "uke" which devolve gay men down to their sexual positions and stereotype how those people look and act to be as much like straight people as possible.

The third time, which involved this, was what caused a problem for me.

Now, I don't indulge in twitter drama. I don't like arguing. But I had to comment on a post I saw. "Let's make our own BL oc!" Kind of a weird post, but okay!

I went to see what the components were...and the first one was "seme/uke/seke" and It was like all of what had been happening this past little while came back in my face.

So I commented on it.

And people lashed out at me over it. In fact, it seems a huge group has been hounding anyone who finds offense with the post.

Am I the only one feeling this stuff? It's getting a bit out of hand.

[phoenixrenaissance]

I dunno, seme/uke/seke are labels, not really defining characteristics. If a creator cannot expand past the stereotypes associated with the term than that's the creator's fault and if a reader thinks that real people can be boiled down to these stereotypes than that's the reader's fault.

Maybe that response isn't exactly on topic. I just don't see anything inherently harmful with the create an OC meme or the terminology if people actually apply critical thinking and creating and don't just fall back on stereotypes. (Unfortunately not all people will, but you find that in all walks of life)

[VibrantFox]

You're not alone. I hadn't even spotted the thing till an artist I follow retweeted it and yeah it's a shame that's even in there.

I get Tapas is trying to market to the demographic that makes them money but it's been tiring to see so I just try to ignore it as best I can

[Kura]

You missed out on the weird 5 year old turns 18 overnight BL post, I envy you for that.

But yeah, I know the post you are talking about. I left a comment mentioning it was a little weird, because I didn't want to rip it or tapas apart. It's a drawing prompt after all, one that wasn't thought through, yet I seem to getting treated like someone that is directly attacking the entire fujo-fandom???? What's worse is the post is getting all kinds of hateful comments, ranging from "homophobes mad" to "why are the gays so butthurt" to accusations to gatekeeping (???) to even racist comments for some reason??

All I did was mention that it's weird to make a whole character creation drawing prompt based on being gay. It's just, really weird. Your character being straight, gay or anything else under the LGBTQ rainbow is usually something you're naturally gonna give your characters when creating any character in general. It's not a special nor unique prompt that fits with this character create meme like "make your own mermaid" "make your own vampire" "make your own catboy" or even series specific things like "Make a Spiderverse OC" or "My Hero Acidemia OC"

Treating gay like it's not normal and a fantasy OC, and further more specific sexual roles and positions. Is just... really weird and really gross.

[cassidybueter]

I haven't seen those ads, but the kind of queerbaiting in the "woman in disguise" ad would make me really uncomfortable, too. From your description it seems like the ad was really targeting LGBT readers wanting representation.

As far as the "seme/uke" thing goes, a lot of the gay people I know do like to throw around the labels of "top/bottom," so I suppose it can be useful to them. But at the same time straight people applying those labels to gay people and characters can come off as injecting binary stereotypes into same sex relationships. Pairings between masculine and feminine gay people definitely happen, but every couple is wildly different and I would like to see more variety in how gender and sexuality are expressed.

[Iris-Grimoire]

There's a real disconnect from the ads and some recently approved works and their support of the LGBT+ community. Is it okay to dehumanize the characters into sexual positions first, actual writing later just because it's gay people? We had SEVERAL threads about how BL gets constantly othered and it's why we have mods in the first place, and then this drops from the company account.

The biggest problem with that post is that a large account about yaoi works QRTed to vaguepost that some people dared to not like the seme/uke/seke stuff, and it seems their followers went into the post to start fights or QRT with their own hot takes. And well, now other big artists that do MLM saw this and are pretty disgusted.

The first few times that Snailenz mentioned seemed like mistakes that fell through the cracks, but this is just getting deliberately uncomfortable. Fiction is fiction, yes, but it affects real life and well it sucks pretty bad that the public view of the site is going right back into the "problematic yaoi library" view it used to have, taking its LGBT+ artists with it.

[jjfresh]

Well, thank you for the enlightenment on seme/uke, I never knew what it was called something. I have a little theory as to why yaoi is like that and it has to do a lot with who draws yaoi and where they learnt it from.
Because I've noticed a very big difference when I've read something that was written by a gay manga artist that wasn't even yaoi, and the former.

It's definitely a good point to bring it up because it just feels stupid, and not much different than the format used in shoujos, just the "woman" has more balls (not a pun btw) and the "man" can be a little "rougher."

Yaoi continues to spiral in that direction (I may be thinking of manga more than online comics). Some old yaoi was like that too but there were several that didn't make the main characters a "man" and a "woman." Though there would be a feminine or pretty boy as the love interest, they weren't in dominant/submissive roles.

---

Also just to add to the ads you're referring to, Do you know if the artist might be ESL? Like Chinese for that first one you mentioned?

[KRWright]

Also just to add to the ads you're referring to, Do you know if the artist might be ESL?

These are coming from the Tapas social media account, not independent artists.

[snailienz]

That's the issue: people will more than likely not apply critical thinking and will follow the stereotype.

the post is meant to be a design challenge, but what does "seme" look like?

I'm sure you pictured something.

That's the problem. People do not work like that in real life. And sexual positions shouldn't be the first trait you consider when making a character.

[phoenixrenaissance]

I just think you could apply that same logic to any number of labels.

[snailienz]

depending on what label you mean. yeah. there are a lot of harmful labels out there that promote stereotypes.

[snailienz]

An update: The post has been removed now. But i still feel like this is a long running topic that needs to be addressed. If staff wants to be an ally, they need to get someone to vet lgbt related posts so this stops.

[Bree_Mana]

As an LGBT person I find that I want to read more BL but shy away from it because I don't want to be flooded with bad representation and stereotypes.

Heres the thing. That first post with the weird wording about the secret girl and this most recent BL one give false representation on what it means to be trans or gay

it makes trans people look like something thats fake or over exaggerated. It makes gay people appear sexualized and like their whole Identity is just about being gay. all of the prompts on that BL post are just surface level features OR something that wouldn't/shouldn't come through with just one OC design. Making characters Gay or trans is fine, but basing the entire character around that one aspect, especially if it is to fetishize is a real problem. not only does it make LGBT people feel uncomfortable and like we don't have a place on this site but it also gives people outside of the LGBT community wrong ideas about us and makes it harder to get support when we need it.

this reminded me of a story I wrote several years back that featured 2 gay teenagers falling in love and the first question I got asked when I shared my work was 'who's the boy and whos the girl' this is the type of thing these sorts of posts normalize to Cis-het people, its not positive representation

which sucks because I initially joined tapas FOR the LGBT inclusion.
when I first joined I saw this comic called 'Rock and Riot' about lesbians in highschool on the first page and it was just a simple love story. I saw LGBT comic and creators in a variety of styles promoted on the front page. That year they had a massive pride collab on the site with all sorts of creators and it filled me with joy to see the representation I was lacking as a kid!

Now I just get recommended a bunch of BL that all looks the same and I'm too scared to look at because of how prevalent these tropes are and I feel like there isn't a space for legitimate LGBT stories if sex or scandal isn't the main focus. which is really too bad.

[Freemints30]

2-cents, I just find it strange. Like there is some clear disconnect with marketing and the community (and everyone else). Really this is just gonna cause tapas to have "trashy yaoi" stigma. Like I understand the click bait and sensalisation if all you care about is the views and not care about the reputation.

But when if involves a community of people then it's just...brah. Tapas get your head in the game, and pay more attention to how your marketing comes off as.

[Random_Guy]

This. This sums up my feelings on all this very well.

[Bree_Mana]

glad it was resonating with you!

[ratique]

Good morning!

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The recent post has been removed and I am very sorry it was online this long. We are currently reviewing internally what our next steps will be for this specific issue.

The community has been very loud and clear regarding some of our recent mistakes, and we are hearing the input. Everyone at Tapas cares very deeply for the well being of their creators and their community. Many of us are part of the LGBTQ+ community as well and want to ensure that what we share is not causing any harm and instead empowers fans and creators to enjoy their favorite comics/novels.

In order to improve, we've taken strong measures, including reviewing our current workflows that allowed some of the content to be published, improving our guidelines and building a diversity and inclusion focused team. I'm very sorry for the harm this has caused.

Thank you for your overall support of Tapas and caring deeply about safety of the community. I appreciate all of you.

Isabell / AKA Ratique
Creator Happiness Manager

[BrambleberrySquirrel]

I’m a gay man. I read BL and create my own BL comic. In general though I’ve just accepted that most BL stories do not represent realistic relationships between men. BL and Yaoi are primarily written and consumed by straight women. This is a big part of where the stereotyping and weird heteronormative gender roles come in.

I don’t write a GL comic because I know that I don’t have the necessary background to do those relationships justice. Anytime you have someone writing a story about people whose experiences are drastically different from their own they are going to get things wrong. Especially if they don’t have input from the kinds of people they are trying to represent. Having more queer writers in genres focused on non-heterosexual romance is honestly the only way to fix this. You can see this in how male/male relationships are handled in the Bara genre, which in contrast to BL/Yaoi is generally written and consumed by gay men. Hopefully this genre catches on, but right now it’s still pretty niche.

That being said, since the main audience of BL/Yaoi is straight women and it’s doing incredibly well, trying to make the genres more realistically representative of the relationships they depict may not be wise from a business perspective. Seeing Tapas find a way to feature and promote queer stories by queer writers with ad content that is at least reviewed by them as well would be a great step in the right direction though.

[HGohwell]

On the specific subject of BL, there is an argument that most people know it's not realistic (I'm not sure everyone who reads is aware of this but I do understand the argument) in the same way you enjoy a slasher horror but know it's not realistic or an action movie but know t's not realistic or know romcoms aren't realistic. They know it's not realistic but enjoy it. And the BL actually should only encompass BL that falls and plays into these tropes. That it has genre conventions like any other genre and just a romance between two men without the tropes should be Gay Romance and would fall under LGBTQ+ stories.

One quick way to deal with this would be a proper if vague description of genres when you select them. Does Tapas consider BL a genre with it's own tropes or just any story forced on gay romance? That way both readers and creators would know what to expect from BL, unrealistic and tropey and we should look to LGBTQ+ for more realism or potentially more realistic ones somewhere mixed in, you've just got to find them?

I do notice Tapas seems to mostly promote BL of the typical tropey variety (and tbh this accusation could be leveled against some of the het-romances promoted too). I understand you promote what's popular and Tapas is a business, but it would be nice to have a bit more variety. I appreciate GL and LGBTQ+ are newer categories on Tapas and probably not as popular, I'm only just starting to see them turn up on the front page regularly, so I guess they're working on it (I hope they're continuing to do so so we get more variety there.).

[KRWright]

I think one of the biggest issues with BL that we're seeing right now is the clash between queer identity and cultivated identity.

One of these is about the labels people apply to themselves and are tied into the real world experiences of people who identify under these labels (so in the instance of BL: gay men, trans men, trans masc people who also are attracted to men). The other label is a largely consumptive identity based around the content and commodities people consume (gamer, Whovian, fujoshi, etc are examples of cultivated identities).

The issue comes when these two models clash, when a person who has built their identity around what they consume comes up against the lived reality of someone whose identity has been commodified. As a brand, Tapas does need to move away from allowing cultivated identities to decide marketing and acquisitions powers, because ultimately while the money is there you can end up in very sticky situations with that: cases in point Gamergate or the most recent Star Wars movie.