Forum - View topicINTEREST: BL Manga Café Closes Due to Safety Concerns Around Male Non-Customers
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xxmsxx
 Posts: 576 |
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This point is quite interesting. I have a feeling this "women-only" criteria for the café can be somewhat correlated with how BL gained a foothold with female audience in the first place. The manga magazines in Japan are traditionally (often not always) separated by their target audience. Talking to industry folks, they often describe a manga/anime as "for guys" or "for girls". Every genre is expected to try to target a specific stratum of audience, while everyone wants to target the widest audience possible and anyone can pick up a magazine to read whatever, it is a lot safer to publish a "girl-targeting" story in a "girl-targeting" magazine and make reasonable guesses to the predictable revenue. BL came from Shoujo, which is female-targeting already. The romantic and sometimes sexual but not always relationships in the story provides a space for girls to explore (or fantasize) about inter-personal relationships as well as a variety of topics that cannot be delved into in a Shoujo or even Josei story. So perhaps BL has always had some exclusionary element to it to begin with because other genres, whether female-targeting or not, cannot provide a space for girls to enjoy this type of exploratory content. The café likely reflect pre-existing ideas about BL and its target audience. I think it is perfectly possible for guys to enjoy some BL but some guys who may or may not enjoy BL will come to the café because they know girls will be here because they also have pre-existing ideas about BL and its target audience. |
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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So men are not allowed to like the same things as women or non binary people?Your statement comes off as being sexist.But look in part there are people who are stupid but it doesn't mean everyone of a certain gender(or lack there of) will be that way. As for the cafe itself closing it is awful. But there are people of all genders(or non gendered) who enjoy Boys love or Yuri or what type of fandom out there who would want to visit such places.I hope they could see that.I enjoy Yuri more than BL but i do enjoy both types of stories. |
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Meongantuk
 Posts: 355 |
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People need to remember that women reading (or making) BL is so stigmatized to the point it's considered NORMAL to harass them because they're "Disgusting immoral fujoshi." This cafe is basically basically targeting such women, giving them safe space to enjoy their hobby without worrying about getting harassed. It's pretty natural for them to react extremely and assume for the worst because it's how people (mainly men) treat them, the worst.
The fact the announcement mention "men with unknown intentions" rather than just men, kinda show that they at least know there are some actual male customers, just that there are more unknown men than male customers. A bunch of men who aren't the women's acquaintance and presumably not interested in BL gathering at night (midnight even)... When most of the cafe's customers are women, the kind of women that got stigmatized and harassed by men for liking their hobbies. Those men looks like red flags to me. I dunno, maybe night is safe for women in other countries, but late night is surprisingly not safe for women in Japan, bl lover or not. Last edited by Meongantuk on Sat Mar 05, 2022 12:52 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kyo Hisagi
Posts: 257 |
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I think the main outtake that MANY men visited AT THE SAME TIME for some reason and this cafe barely had any before. I think. That's what I am getting from this.
Nothing wrong with men reading BL, obviously. I've read few myself |
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MagicPolly
 Posts: 1595 |
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Yeah as a guy I would understand why large numbers of men visiting at night specifically would be worrying. It gives me the same energy as straight men who go to gay bars to hit on the women there (yes this analogy isn't perfect)
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Cutty Mink
Posts: 26 |
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I've been ingrained within numerous anime communities since 2000 and don't think I ha ve ever seen guys pretending to like BL to creep on girls. It seems pretty obvious that pretending to be gay to get with girls is highly unproductive. I'm very doubtful this is as commonplace as you make it out to be. Last edited by Cutty Mink on Sat Mar 05, 2022 1:02 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Kyiev
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Men is not allowed because women are sexist too. Haha
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Ming Yi
Posts: 212 |
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This situation is more nuanced than it looks. People are reading more into the fact that the manga cafe specializes in BL than the fact that it's a women's only space where men are suddenly showing up at nighttime for some reason. Japan has a society where women are encouraged to quit their jobs when they get married, they're "not marriage material" if they're over 25 or have "unfeminine interests", and the fact that there are women-only carriages in trains. |
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Meongantuk
Posts: 355 |
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You don't need to read BLs or act gay to pretend you like BL. Plenty of popular anime/manga has large female following who ship the male characters. You just have to pretend you like the male characters being shipped with each other. ex. Levi and Erwin from Attack of Titan, Gojo and Geto from Jujutsu Kaisen. If you can withstand the horniness, it's actually pretty easy to enter that side of the fandom, and nobody would call you weird for liking the series or characters (as individuals not as a ship) either since those characters are popular among men too. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2404 |
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The main audience for BL is women so... why doesn't a women only BL manga cafe make sense to you? Anyway, kind of a sad story. I hate it when the niche places I like to go to close down, and this is a pretty unfortunate reason. |
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merr
Posts: 476 |
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Doesn’t Sendai still have a large homeless population that hangs out by the station? I’m betting these men were showing up to use the cafe as shelter.
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Sheriru
 Posts: 127 |
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Damn, some of these comments are not it. Yuck. Some of you look like you would also give the Woman the fault she's was r#ped because her Outfit showed Skin.
Gross |
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Banken
Posts: 1280 |
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Japan is full of businesses that are women-only. I don't think I've ever heard of a men-only business. Except maybe sex work businesses... Virtually every arcade has a "women only" purikura section. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3467 Location: Finland |
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'Sectioning' is somewhat different matter, that is pretty common in the West too, baths would be an obvious example, and I think something to that effect was mentioned in the comments before too. You're not forbidding the use of the establishment as a whole, unlike which is the case here. |
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Northlander
 Posts: 903 |
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The article specified that this was a BL cafe. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by asking you if you know what BL means, because I'm pretty sure you do. I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of what you said, but I would like to add that the rising prominence of "karens" will tell you that entitlement and asshattery isn't necessarily solely limited to one gender. Privilegie and wealth/power often brings out the worst in people. It's just been men's domain for quite a while, and often for the very dickheadish reasons you're probably thinking of right now. As far as this cafe goes; I'm not against any establishment limiting its doors to its core audience. It goes without saying that BL manga would primarily interest women, so if a lot of men suddenly barge into the place at odd hours, I would fully understand why the staff and main clientele would be apprehensive. I have no idea whether gay men are interested in BL -- it's always possible -- but those would have to take that up with the owners of the cafe if they want entry. Having a lot of men invade the place en masse at night just.... comes across as weird, especially if they don't even clarify why they're there. Then again, I also remember reading -- or rather, seeing -- the picture series of Zac visiting Japan, including a picture or two from a BL store in Japan, where the customers gave very weird looks to the two tall non-Japanese men who "obviously didn't belong" (as the article put it), so I will admit to chuckling a bit when this article kinda made me remember that. |
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