This is no less true for those of us who are fans of shoujo, of June, of slash. We have our mailing lists, our newsgroups, our IRC chat sessions. We have web pages dedicated to our favourite series, our favourite characters, our favourite pairings -- and webrings linking our web pages to one another.
We know one another's aliases, and sometimes even one another's real names. We know one another's quirks, kinks, tempers, taste in artists. We know to whom among us we can turn for information, for good stories, for help in finding that elusive volume of a doujinshi that everyone else wants, too.
And so sometimes it's hard to remember that there's a another world Out There, where the books and stories and art that we love so much are considered aberrant.
Being the misanthrope that I am, it's never been much of an issue; the few people with whom I choose to spend my time are fans of shoujo and slash as well. Of late, however, my coworkers have been weaselling their way into my social life (I'll have to put a stop to that; but that's another story!), and they ask questions, and they make assumptions.
"Oh," they say, "you've got a web page. Let's see it!" I give them the URL. "Oh," they say later, in a different sort of tone. "You write....stories. About gay men."
"I never thought about it that way," I reply. "I just write stories."
Word spreads.
"What are you reading?" asks one fellow at work, and snatches from my hands volume one of 'Itokodoushi' ('cousins'), which is not only sort of graphic, its main characters are, well, cousins, and while that doesn't bother me in the least, when a translation of the title is demanded, his face turns a little green. He doesn't even notice the ramen noodles getting sneezed out of Tatsuya's nose. He can't get past Toshi and Tatsuya playing what amounts to 'blowjob poker'.
I am always briefly puzzled by such reactions before recalling that society still hasn't gotten over that nasty fear of homosexuals and homosexual behaviour. Or is it the incest that bothers them? I can never remember.
"Oh," exclaims another coworker, an expression of bright discovery on her face. "I never realised before, these are all girls on here." She's looking at the Weiss shitajiki -- one of each member of Weiss -- tacked to the cover of my cupboard. I assure her they're male, and with a dubious expression on her pretty little face, she pursues it no further. For a brief moment, she had been positive that the rumours of my sexual orientation were true, and that it all made sense, now.
I never think about how the characters could look female to Other People. They don't look female to me. They don't have breasts.
I'm ducking back into my cave now, for the next little while, to gloat over my most recent acquisitions. I have doujinshi, in which various male characters from various shounen series dress up in aprons and throw one another to the floor for a sound fucking. I have manga in which boys agonise over being in love with one another, in which (male) students agonise over being in love with their (male) professors, in which two boys simply fall in love and have lots of juicy sex.
Inside my cave is my computer, behind which lots of people who like reading about the juicy boys are hiding, willing to talk to me about my groovy new toys and books.
I'm not coming out again for a long, long time.