Tapas and LGBT Sensitivity Failures

[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.

[GesuGesu]

@HGohwell I do consider BL as unrealistic fiction when consuming it, and most people I know around my age (upper 20s-30s) are also aware of its tropes genre when they read it as well. The stereotypical "fujoshi" behaviour we see online is often new fans of BL who are still young and discovering a genre that they assume is reality and not fiction.

My friend, a consumer of BL, (cis male, bisexual) calls it "a genre that's very similar to shoujo romance, from the types of couplings like teacher x student, to the wild tropes like wall slams". We all don't consider shoujo manga to be realistic, and he similarly compares BL manga to shoujo manga.

BL feels like that middle ground between shoujo and josei manga. It has the unrealistic flappy romance adventures that shoujo would have, but characters would often be older like the office ladies from a josei manga. Considering that it is technically considered a genre "made by women, for women", this description of BL fits well as a road between girlish shoujo and mature josei.

If I wanted realistic LGBT stories, I would specifically read stories that are tagged LGBT, not BL. I consider BL to be it's own genre.

[HGohwell]

Unfortunately, it's often the youngster who are loudest and most annoying in most areas. So, I do think it's quite useful for us older fans not to berate them for it but to try and teach them. Most of them will mature out of it. One credit I will give to Twilight is Stephanie always said she never wanted Bella to be a role model. It wasn't supposed to be for people to look up to, it wasn't supposed to be realistic, it was just what she wanted to write. And I think that approach needs to be taken with more typical tropey BL. Just some acknowledgement that this isn't what you should be looking for irl. Unfortunately this doesn't always work.

My friend, a consumer of BL, (cis male, bisexual) calls it "a genre that's very similar to shoujo romance, from the types of couplings like teacher x student, to the wild tropes like wall slams". We all don't consider shoujo manga to be realistic, and he similarly compares BL manga to shoujo manga.

This is true and I think it's partly because of the perceived sexual nature of it. The same way Erotica in general is looked down on compared to romance genres no matter what the actual story.

If I wanted realistic LGBT stories, I would specifically read stories that are tagged LGBT, not BL. I consider BL to be it's own genre

As I say, something like a sentence at the top of the BL search or when you select it while making your comic/novel to make clear what it's supposed to be along the lines of "typically highly something-ized (there's a word here that's not simplified or stylized but I can't think what it is, fictionalised maybe, just something saying unrealistic without saying unrealistic) romances between men relying typically Japaneses tropes" or "typically stories focused on a romance between men" would make it clearer what Tapas thinks BL is.

[spadedigsbutts]

Yeeah tbh Im not even sure how the marketing is helping that much. Ive met a ton of people, queer and not, who were so put off by the fetishization and creepiness of Tapas ads and such that they pretty much vowed to never support the site as creators or readers. I talked to a bunch of people recently and they had similar stories, saying how the app has such a trashy reputation because of these ads that most normies wont even pick it up...

[snailienz]

I think it important to state that I never said “Ew no BL nasteee” I said “the trope of seme/ uke should stay dead because it’s harmful” and I stand by that statement. It’s uncomfortable especially when a platform you’re supposed to be associated with posts about it.

A person enjoying tropes is also LARGELY different than a business perpetuating tropes that are harmful.

[rajillustration]

I do think that we're heading into an era of maturity for LGBT+ content on the internet, where it is becoming more mature than it was 10 years ago. I won't dive into detail more than other people have, but I feel a little bit like we're repeating history, like how there were a lot of blacksploitation novels and movies right after civil rights in the 70's. A lot of older BL will not age gracefully, is all I'll say.

I do think that eventually there will be enough education on this subject that these stereotypes will fade into memory. But, it can't happen unless you bring these things up, so thanks for being brave and saying something. It's not like kids who are writing this stuff are getting educated about this in school (because a lot of BL--it's written by teens and college students). And if the company doesn't do it's part to act mature and stop stereotyping, then how would the kids who are using the platform?

[snailienz]

Okay bringing my own celebration of my own story and characters into an about whether or not seme and uke are harmful stereotypes and not actually fantasy is uncalled for, but I’ll bite.

I celebrate that aspect of my characters because I feel good creating characters and stories based off my experiences. I’m a trans man, I write a story about a trans boy. I felt like pronouns and stuff was important because not everything is apparent visually. I put the lgbt detailing on my icon to attract an audience that celebrates it too. If you do not prefer that, then you are more than welcome not to follow the comic.

I don’t subscribe to fiction affects reality, actually. You clearly glazed right over “a person enjoying something is different from a company perpetuating a stereotype”

[miss.monocle]

Also just gonna add my two cents here.

The terms used in the ad were sexualizing of gay men. BL is in no way bad, the sexualization of all BL as being "insert sexual terms here" is bad. As we saw in both the replies to the ad and some on here, people don't see the issue of seeing these men as only their sexual descriptors. That has a very negative impact on the gay community being seen as just people who are gay, not as some hypersexual stereotype. Also, why was Tapas even advertising such a concept with sexual terms? When Tapas has certain restrictions on sexual media due to wanting to remain in the app store, why would they make an ad with sexual terminology? But since it's taken down, that is less of an issue.

Also, ADVERTISING THAT YOUR CHARACTERS ARE LGBTQ+ BECAUSE YOU ARE IN THAT COMMUNITY TOO IS NOT JUST SHILLING FOR VIEWS! That is the kind of attitude that makes it so impossible to make a diverse comic popular in progressive circles. Stop being so harsh on the people making content about their own identity and being proud of that. Doing so is frankly, a very bad look. Like, how else are we supposed to advertise our stories to the main audience we write for?

But yeah, thank you Tapas for correcting the mistake. Now we can see why promoting those sorts of ideas is damaging to the LGBT community, because they lead to others attacking members for making LGBT positive content.