The Case for Fujo-separatism [2026-Mar-06]

(AKA stop telling me to watch Heated Rivalry)

A key issue I have encountered through identifying myself as a fujoshi is that on occasion people will recommend that I watch Interview with a Vampire or Heated Rivalry. This stems from a misunderstanding over what being a fujo implies; in my view there are two camps of fujoshi which can be broadly divided based on whether they want to fuck Chris Evans or not. I am choosing to represent this difference as two overlapping schools of thought: fujo-misogyny and fujo-misandry. It should be noted that these schools of thought frequently overlap, but most individuals lean more in one direction or the other.

I will here lay my cards on the table and say that I identify primarily with fujo-misandry. I believe that fujo-ism is incomplete without an element of misandry or at least a distrust of conventional masculinity, and a recognition that it is broadly undesirable in real life. In effect I am positioning male/male romance on a scale where transfemininity and relationship-symmetry are good and proximity to cismasculinity and oppositionalism are bad. If you disagree with this you can make your own arcane political ideology and compare notes with me.

Fujo-misogyny, which is the category I'm attributing to the Steve/Bucky shippers, stems from a desire to portray heteronormative relationships without confronting misogyny. A typical fujo-misogynistic work is uninterested in the actual mechanics of same-sex relationships. It functions as a pure escapist fantasy for the presumed cis-straight female audience to project themselves into a conventional looking relationship without having to unpack their own relationship to misogyny.

These works are very interested in maintaining the masculinity of their characters. The men are almost always tall, strong, short-haired, and otherwise conventionally masculine. It is for this reason that these works will usually go out of their way to lessen the perceived "gay-ness" of the relationships; characters are often "straight with one exception" so that he remains theoretically available to the audience, and to distance him from any negative preconceptions the audience has about real gay people. Because critically, these are not stories about gay relationships, they are straight relationships that happen to feature two men.

This begs the question "why not just depict a heterosexual romance?", which can be answered in two ways. The first is that many women have deeply internalised misogyny and struggle to see female characters having interiority and agency. From this perspective only males can be "real people", and a relationship between two real people is more interesting than between a man and his object. The second is more escapist; recognising the unhealthy mechanics of heterosexuality and getting to see them played out without the depressing reminder of systemic misogyny. Keyly, both of these impulses stem from a fetishisation of toxic heterosexuality and a willingness to indulge in it without acknowledging its real-world impact.

Fujo-misandry, in contrast, tends to be more deconstructive, stemming from a meditated dislike of heteronormative relationships and a willingness to explore sexual and romantic dynamics that emerge from subversive and unconventional relationships. The most obvious aesthetic difference in this category is a preference for abstracted male characters, by which I mean a focus on illustration and a disinterest in celebrities. There is a clear preference for the feminine within the masculine: presenting androgyny, bishounen, and crossdressing as beautiful, sometimes idealised and even preferred. For that matter, a fairly reliable way to tell if a work leans towards fujo-misandry is to ask if a straight cisgender man would feel comfortable identifying with its protagonists if you took them out of a gay romance.

Because of their interest in male femininity, fujo-misandristic works are more likely to address gender dysphoria as a thing that exists. If a man has girly hair and clothes, consistently takes a feminine role in his relationships, and otherwise has seemingly no interest in performing masculinity, then it becomes worth entertaining the idea that he might not wish to be a man. To the fujo-misandrist this is a captivating idea as it challenges the idea of what it means to be a man. If the character accepts these feelings then you can explore the beauty of transformations and genuine acceptance and admiration of femininity, or maybe they don't want it, in which case you can explore humiliation and emasculation. To the fujo-misogynist this is unthinkable; to add femininity or remove masculinity is to ruin the appeal of the characters, and thus break the escapist fantasy. And as such you will rarely see more than the lightest gestures towards femininity or dysphoria in these stories.

In practice, the audience for fujo-misandry appears to be more queer-leaning girls looking for either introspection on masculinity, or indulgent representations of girly boys. Fujo-misogyny, in contrast, seems to attract mostly straight girls who want a simple and pure fantasy. The two can and do overlap, take DRAMAtical Murder for example. There is a fujo-misandrist tone to the character designs in that game: each possessing at least some traits that a typically masculine straight man would be ashamed of. Koujaku for example is a tall, strong, confident man, but a key part of his appeal is his beautiful long hair, total absence of facial hair, and his profession as a skilled women's hairdresser. Even the biggest most masculine character in the game, Mink, has a design accented with pink and pastels. Yet there is a clear fujo-misogynistic tilt to it as well. Aoba - as a stand in for the presumed cis straight female audience - is an obligate bottom, and characters never have to deal with their sexual identity beyond the occasional "but we're both boys". The game actively avoids introspection in service of maintaining a heteronormative slant to its romance.

All this to articulate one point - on the surface you and I want the same thing, we both want boys to kiss, but while our interests may on occasion align over the same piece of art, this does not mean we're getting the same thing out of it. I like Slow Damage because I want to see two cute boys being mutually sadomasochistic in bed. You like Slow Damage because Taku is "daddy". We have nothing in common.

In conclusion, while I will at least give the TV show points for being actually gay rather than fake gay, I will never have any interest in watching Heated Rivalry because it idealises a type of masculinity I left behind a long time ago. I want a subversion of masculinity, not a fetishisation of it. I have no interest in hunky manly men, and I get nothing at all out of characters like this in a romance like that.