Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online: Creating Community Through Marginality

Abstract

As passionate fans of nonnormative media, fujoshi—female fans of male–male romance Japanese comics—often experience harsh criticism, which fujoshi reportedly deflect with self-denigration. Through a close discourse analysis of two key posts from a popular internet bulletin board, this chapter sought to examine how such self-denigration functions and helps form community. Both posts had many similarities, including frequent self-denigration, and both were able to create a sense of community to differing degrees. Although Post 1 included many playful contextualization cues, Post 2 generally did not, and responses to Post 2 were more critical, suggesting that without contextualization cues, self-denigration may become face-threatening acts to the in-group. In comparison, the noncritical acceptance and self-disclosure of Post 1 is similar to discourse on ibasho ‘one’s sense of place’, suggesting fujoshi can successfully create marginalized spaces of tension that function as positive ibasho, thus questioning whether marginalized spaces are inherently negative.