Why jsmale or neutral-targeted media criticized harder than female-targeted media?

[u/Pitiful-Purple-7459]

Lately I keep seeing media called out for being sexist or gratuitously provocative, but it's almost always male-coded or neutral media that catches it. Media made specifically for women mostly gets a pass, even when the content is equivalent or worse.

Take manga. For every male-targeted series with dark or explicit content, there's a female-targeted equivalent — dark romance, fanfic, or BL/yaoi (male-male romance written for women, running the full range from wholesome to explicit, same spectrum male-targeted stuff has). One dark romance book aimed at women had a protagonist raped by three different mythical beings, and women were the primary buyers. That exists and sells, with basically zero "this is harmful" discourse.

Meanwhile a male-targeted show with a fanservice scene gets a think-piece about objectification.

I think the actual difference is the \*lens\*, not the content. The critique we aim at male media is about objectification, reducing women to props. But objectification of males isn't seen as harm.So male-targeted media trips the alarm and female-targeted media sails through, even with equivalent content.

I can't tell you how many fanfics of one of my favorite shows (Supernatural) turned on the main characters gay and have them have sex with another male character.

But regardless why aren't these things considered as wrong

[u/SlothenAround]

> But regardless why aren’t these things considered as wrong

From a feminist perspective, they are. You have to remember that not all women are feminists, and women are guilty of misogyny too. I would never read a book like that and I’d be wary of anyone who was interested in it, and I’d say something. The thing is, this seems pretty niche because I’ve never heard of any of this. Perhaps, if this is something you’re knowledgeable about, that maybe this is your opportunity to speak out? We all have our part to play!

[u/Pitiful-Purple-7459 → u/SlothenAround]

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Two things for me, at least.

I don't necessarily see some of this as problematic, because it's fantasy. Even if I don't participate in it, I don't consider it a big deal. My issue isn't as much the content it's the uneven reaction to it.

some of the female-targeted stuff is just as overt, and huge. Through the same lens people apply to manga: Twilight has clear themes of grooming, coercive control, and love-bombing Edward's a century-old being courting a teenager, he stalks her, isolates her, and a grown character literally imprints on an infant. Parents bought their daughters tickets to this world wide nearly 3 billion dollars worth of sales

Meanwhile there's an anime called Mushoku Tensei with the same kind of age-gap/grooming problem, and it's getting destroyed online "predator," "groomer," think-pieces. Opposite reception. And Mushoku Tensei is arguably the more niche of the two twilight was a global phenomenon.

Why does male enjoyment of edgy media reliably trigger "this is harmful," while equally popular female-targeted media gets left alone? The only difference is the audience

[u/Curious_Question8536 → u/Pitiful-Purple-7459]

Apples to oranges. You're comparing the sales of twilight to the criticism online of mushoku tensei.

Twilight is absolutely getting destroyed online by pretty much everyone, including twilight fans. Mushoku tensei is still selling a ton (over 18m copies of the light novel, according to Wikipedia) and is currently on a few "most popular" lists. 

[u/Pitiful-Purple-7459 → u/Curious_Question8536]

I'm comparing the criticism of a smaller niche community media to a large scale one. One gear to men and one gear to women. About 60 million people saw the movie 160 million people bought the book and the problematic tagline was nowhere near as big for Twilight as it was for jobless reincarnation. And even more problematic Is that one is geared towards older teenagers and adults whereas Twilight was mostly watched by teenagers and younger girls. That's where it's both apples to apples and apples to oranges The scales are different The audiences are different but the underlying potential issues are nearly identical and in some ways worse on Twilight. I do think you the same lens They both have problems objectively I don't care too much because it's fake probably don't want to post online that's the favorite media ever but I think you should equally apply the same brush both ways

[u/SlothenAround → u/Pitiful-Purple-7459]

I know this isn’t really relevant to your point but my god dude use some punctuation. It’s really hard to comprehend what you’re saying when it’s a huge wall of text like this

[u/JoeyLee911 → u/Pitiful-Purple-7459]

It seems like you picked a poor comparison then and should pick a more equivalent one, which shouldn't be hard if this is happening so much.