Fictosexual Manifesto

As with current theorizations of asexuality… desire for two-dimensional [nijigen] characters forces us to reconsider what sex is and how legal and social proscriptions deny sexual access and the rights of full sexual citizenship. (Elizabeth Miles 2020. 274.)

To create an autonomous object of desire within the fictional space of manga and anime: was this not the ultimate dream of the otaku? They sought to create fiction not as a stand-in for the “real” sexual object, but fiction that had no need to be secured by reality. For this to work, not even the elaborately constructed fictional worlds would suffice. In order for fiction to attain its own autonomous reality, it would have to be desired for its own sake. (Tamaki Saito. 2011. 151.)

Written by SH Liao [They/Them] (NTU-OtaStudy Group)

This article is not only a manifesto in anticipation of starting a novel movement but also a preface to two important articles by sociologist, Dr. Yuu Matsuura. They research the “Invisibilization and resistance of people who do not feel sexually attracted to other humans in reality”. Thus, These two articles revolve around the theme of “Fictosexuals”, and more exactly, the theme of “Fictosexuals” related to “Nijigen” in the Japanophone context. The two articles are:

“Multiple Orientations as Animating Misdelivery: Theoretical Considerations on Sexuality Attracted to Nijigen (Two-Dimensional) Objects” (With English abstract.)

“Bishojo as Metaphor: Gender Trouble by Animating Misdelivery “

Among them, the former discusses how a sexuality attracted to “Nijigen” objects is possible and why it should be taken more seriously, meanwhile, the latter does a supplement focusing more on the clarification of “Nijigen” and how Fictosexuality can change social/sexual conditions. We would like to thank Dr. Yuu Matsuura for allowing us to publish the traditional Chinese translations of these two articles, and for giving us a lot of advice on relevant issues.

In order to make it easier to read these two articles, I provide relevant context for understanding: first, the context and particularity of Fictosexuals; second, why and how they were erased and invisibilized by society; finally, the political position of them and criticism should be done.

How are Fictosexuality different from other sexualities and mainstream anime/manga fandom? Fictosexuality exists as a Sexuality that doesn’t conform to “sexual orientation”

Fictosexuality refers to “feeling sexual attraction to fictional objects but rarely having similar feelings to real humans”, or more generally “having sexual/romantic/marital desires for fictional characters”. Fictosexuals in anglophones are known as members of the Asexual Spectrum (A-Spec). As a member of the A-Spec, it is difficult for Fictosexuality to apply the concept of sexual orientation, because their identities are not wholly established through the “heterosexual matrix”. That’s by no means to say that asexuality is not a sexuality, but rather that the A-Spec provides us with a more dynamic epistemology of sexuality and criticizes the “compulsory sexuality” of our society. It is within this new schema of sexuality that Fictosexuality is recognized as a term and an identity.

But this doesn’t mean that Fictosexuals began to exist with the asexual movement after 2000, but are identified by various other identities in early years, the most of which is “Nijigen complex = Nijicon”. As early as 1989, in the “Book of Otaku”, “Nijicon” was listed in the ranks of “the third gender/sexuality (Dai-san-no-sei)”. But as an afterthought, Fictosexuality has rarely been taken seriously as a sexuality in these four decades. It was not until the anthropologist Galbraith reorganized the history of otakus that he faced up to this sexuality and quoted Tamaki Saito’s psychoanalytic otaku research to articulate it as “otaku’s sexuality = an orientation of desire toward fiction” (Galbraith. 2019.). However, Saito’s theory did not go beyond the territory of “heterosexual matrix”. Meanwhile, Galbraith didn’t further analyze and theorize this “orientation”, and how this “orientation” is different from the “sexual orientation” of “hetero/homo”-sexuality. All this until Dr. Matsuura clarified the position and possibility of Fictosexuality through the conceptualization of “multiple orientations of animating misdelivery” in these two articles; The concept of “multiple orientations” originally from the context of psychiatry was translated to describe the dynamic characteristics of the A-Spec, and also pluralized the narrow and biased concept of “sexual orientation”.

On the other hand, in today’s East Asia where anime and manga are mainstreamized, with the proliferation of various mediation and fictional artifacts in our social life, it is not rare to have emotions for fictional characters. According to demographic surveys, more than 10% of the Japanese young population have ever felt love for fictional characters. (Eds. JASE 2019: 246) But Fictosexuals are still different from mainstream “allosexual” anime/manga fans who have interpersonal-sexual-desire(Taijin-seiai, IPSD). Even in fandom, they may have the possibility of being excluded or precarious. Because they have different types of sexual/emotional lives, have differences in emotional catharsis and interaction practices of fictional characters, and face different kinds of anxieties, pressures, and shame, or even exposure to different kinds of stigmatizing, humiliating, and silencing — symbolic violence. However, except for a few scholars and activists, such a different situation has not received enough attention.

Even so, Fictosexuals can be otaku, Yaoi fans, Yuri fans, Yume fans, and so on at the same time, and they can also use the resources from fandom to manage their relationship with fictional objects, or find their own living place in fandom. But the most important point is although they can bring possibilities beyond the previous schema of sexuality, however, that in the previous schema of sexuality, Fictoseuality is not only invisiblized, but also regarded as hobbies and eccentricities, and is used to satisfy the voyeurism of the “normals”. And the anxiety, estrangement, and stigmatization faced by Fictosexuals have not received well caring and healing. In the following example, they are even stigmatized with pathological frameworks.

Why are Fictosexuals not taken Seriously? “Erasure and/or Foreclosure” and InterPersonally Oriented Sexuality-Centrism

In 2020, a tweet promoting the LGBT+ pride flag appeared on Twitter in Taiwan. After displaying a wide range of identities, Zhǐ-Xìng-Liàn (anime/manga-sexuals, now we translated it by fictosexuals) appeared in it; however, the first reply of the tweet, instead of expressing homophobia or approval, angered “Zhǐ-Xìng-Liàn is only a fake! It shouldn’t be included in LGBT+!” Such ignorant denial is the everyday life faced by Fictosexuals. When the concept of Fictosexuality was accepted by the Japanophones, the F-seku people referred to this symbolic violence as “InterPersonally-Oriented-Sexuality-Centrism (Taijin-seiai-chūshin-shugi, IPOSC)”. In Dr. Matsuura’s previous research (2021), this kind of symbolic practice of “invalidating the attempt to change the status quo” is divided into two types, which are the “① foreclosure — unintelligiblization” of excluding from the cognitive schema as reducing them to minority exceptions to deny its existence, and the “② erasure — invisibilization” of incorporating into the previous mainstream cognitive schema to deny its difference. These two types of symbolic violence, de-meaningfulize the claims and cries of Fictosexuals, and at the same time cancel the possibility of Fictosexuals changing society.

In the discrimination of IPOSC, all desires must be desires toward humans (or IPSD), and fictional artifacts can only be a substitute or fake for reality. Not just with netizens, but even with pseudo-critics who have read some books. Examples are the malicious tricks played by two scholars:

Otaku claim to hate pedophilia. But like the self-gratification of pedophilia, the otaku’s self-gratification via manga-bishojo may bring out fatal consequences: since they cannot love real women, they consequently fail to marry, and their sexual desires … cannot be fulfilled or realized in reproductive biological terms…. otaku are losers in the bourgeois marriage market… (Yiu & Chan. 2013: 862. emphasis added.)

The two not only continued to spread the social myth of “Otaku = Pedophile”, but also “Foreclosure” Fictosexuality of otaku by calling them “fatal consequences” from a heteronormativity and sexual-normativity viewpoint. That is, they easily and irresponsibly exclude Fictosexuality from the discussion by treating them as pathological exceptions that cannot be understood and do not need to be understood. In my perspective, this is implying that for them, Fictosexuals need to undergo “conversion therapy,” although they adorn it with the term “globalization of the otaku gaze” in academic style. If we face up to Fictosexuality as sexuality, isn’t this logical leap undoubtedly a conservative right-wing’s intimidating speech against sexual minorities? I can’t find a more blatant IPOSC than this.

Even the most famous intellectuals may unconsciously “Erasure/Foreclosure” the existence of Fictosexuals, just like Chizuko Ueno’s controversial comment to otaku :

Otaku said, “It’s bothersome to date a girl. Galgames are better than that.” … If there is a woman who gets inside that game [Translator’s note: “let a real woman perform the ideal image of ‘Virtual Female’ from man”], there will naturally emerge creak and dissonance, and noise will occur. They say the noise is “bothersome”, but relationships are always bothersome [laughs]. If the men who feel bothersome just withdraw from the actual interaction altogether, so do it. It would be nice if they could die out peacefully (Heiwa ni horobi) while playing galgames, and without committing sex crimes. That way, the men who dislike noise don’t reproduce again. (Ueno 2006. 433–434. emphasis added.)

In this interview with Ueno, those who are tired of “dating girls” are considered shall “die out peacefully”. What was erased by Ueno’s IPOSC was the possibility of “noise” as a struggle between asexuality and compulsory sexuality, and the ontological possibility of subversion by “Bishojo” and “Nijigen” as non-human artifacts. That is, Ueno violently incorporated the existence of Fictosexuals into the mainstream framework of IPSD, thereby canceling their existence meaning and their possibility to change society. The reductionism committed by Ueno is not only pure gender dualism but also the phallic-centered reductionism criticized by Preciado in “Countersexual Manifesto”:

The attachment to psychoanalytic language has prevented most feminist and queer interpretations of lesbian and trans sexualities from understanding the dildo beyond its relationship to the phallus…. the dildo as a sexual technology… is an operator of the body’s sexual plasticity and of the possible prosthetic modification of its contour and identity. (Preciado. 2018. 63–64. emphasis added.)

Preciado emphasizes the agency and plasticity of the dildo and our bodies as technological artifacts in the age of technology, thus, claims that the dildo should not be incorporated into the psychoanalytic phantasy of the phallus. These existences are ignored because they cannot be understood by the IPOSC discourse — the “literalizing fantasy” in the following parts.

Similar questions can also be seen in the TV anime “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG”, in which ‘DI: Vegetarian Dinner: FAKE FOOD ‘ as the title raises questions about Sù-Shí (Taiwanese Buddhist vegetarian cuisine). However, in this dialogue between the characters Batou and Togusa, only an essentialist answer is provided:

Batou: [Sù-Shí ] is different from Japanese Shojin cuisine in that it not only cooks the ingredients directly but uses the beans or mushroom cuisine to represent the appearance of meats…

Togusa:… But speaking of it, why would Taiwanese monks come up with such a troublesome cooking method? If you don’t know the taste of meat from the beginning, isn’t there no need to go to such trouble?

Batou: Although that’s it. But before one becomes a monk, one can eat whatever they want, no matter how deep the ascetic training is, nobody can’t forget the memory of that time… (S2E8: 13:30–14:15)

Batou’s answer decontextualized the Humanistic Buddhist (rén-jiān-fó-jiào) history of this “vegetarian meat”, which was first promoted to the general public. At the same time, it denies the existence of Taiwan’s “vegetarian meat” as a “cuisine” independent of “meat” among various cooking techniques for a long time — Ignoring the fact that “vegetarian meat” cuisine is not only a substitute for “meat”, but also a “cuisine” that anyone can enjoy, is foreclosures the existence of “vegetarian meat lovers” who simply like vegetarian meat.

But unlike taste preferences, once a similar logic is adopted in the perspective of sexuality, it becomes symbolic violence coming from IPOSC. On the contrary to these IPOSC discourse, in Dr. Matsuura’s two articles, the possibility of the existence of fictosexuality as non-interpersonal-oriented-sexuality and the possibility of “gender trouble = subversion [of Identity] by animating misdelivery,” which idles the reproduction of rules and norms in the real world was discussed and theorized.

For IPOSC, Fictosexuality is not a desire toward humans, so it cannot be regarded as a sexuality(“a fake”), and Fictosexuls are not qualified to be juxtaposed with other sexualities or LGBT+. Not only that, for IPOSC, fictosexuals should need “conversion therapy” or to “die out peacefully”. These cases point out that rampant IPOSC has adopted their oppressing strategy to Fictosexuals, by inculcation to Fictosexuals of inferiority on the one hand, and by “erasure/foreclosure” on the meaning of Fictosexuality existence on the other. And this kind of ideology, together with the increasingly rampant expression regulation, Moe-Phobia, Fix Art, and so on after 2000, is oppressing the space for the survival of Fictosexuls. As far as this current social condition is concerned, under the unending projects of third-wave feminism and queer movements, we need to face up to the precarious position of Fictosexuality. And this vision also extends to how to rethink the possibility of the question of “how to change society” in identity politics accompanied by this neoliberal society.

Political Possibility of Fictosexuality: The Misdelivery Possibility in Action as Animating = Breathing Life into Things

In the first place, if [they] do not recognize the existence of readings other than the mapping of the “real flesh-and-blood body” or exaggerated stereotypes for the Kyara image, then [they] cannot see the level of the “things (Mono)” itself that is the object of desire in Fictsexuals. Again, this is nothing but a denial of reality. (Ito. 2022: 438. emphasis added.)

As Go Ito said, the desired objects of Fictsexuals are always fictional artifacts. This is a fact that must be recognized, but the previous debates on them have already confused the different problematics in “fiction and reality” issues. In these two articles by Dr. Matsuura, what is clarified are the rationales that have turned into a pool of stagnant water in the previous research. Dr. Matsuura pointed out that in the discussion about fiction, the ontological existence of artifacts cannot be arbitrarily reduced. Grounding on the knowledge revolution launched by Silvio’s “Animation versus Performance”, if we face up to the ontological existence of artifacts in a Fictosexual relationship, what actually happens in the process of animating=breathing life into artifacts by Fictosexuality is the subversion of the previous symbolic order and social prohibition.

Matsuura cites Hiroki Azuma’s Derridean reading on Freud:

“Ecriture” of Derrida… refers to sign movement without identity. So uses the ecriture to understand the representative representation (Vorstellung-Repräsentanz)… That is to say, the sublation (aufheben) of the image by the signifier will always fail, and the delivery address of desire continuously cannot be fully identified [misdelivery possibility]. (Azuma. 2011. 253.)

Then once we no longer reduce the non-human ontological existence, we will discover the subversion of identity brought by “multiple orientations of sexuality-attracted-to-Nijigen-objects/Non-IPSD” different from performance as an anthropocentric logic is:

Misdelivery is dislocation caused by non-human actors [signs, language, the materiality of media, etc.] between the sender and receiver of information. Due to that misdelivery, the sign itself becomes image, and the representative representation ceases to be a “representation”. As a result, what should have been a sign representing the real world, in itself becomes beings in a new category. In other words, the subversion by animating misdelivery, that is, transforming the method of perception or the way of desire through animation constructing the beings of a category that did not exist before. (Matsuura. 2022a. 68. )

With the action as animating, the “misdelivery” of image (the Imaginary) importing signifier (the Symbolic) occurs, and our perception and desire are being subverted by it; Whether it is “Nijigen characters”, “dildo”, “vegetarian meat” and so on, they have all become a new category of beings, and provide us with different ways, skills, and ethics to perceive and desire.

The possibility of this kind of subversion is what Dr. Matsuura calls “the misdelivery possibility”, that is, the political possibility of Fictosexuality. The gender trouble that Butler hoped for became possible from another dimension in this process. These subversion ignites from the horizon of sexuality, just like Galbraith’s genealogical research on otaku, and the microscopic relationship between Fictosexuals and fictional objects; until it is burning in the territory of gender, just like the Pan-Chen Lo’s Taiwanese “Wei-Niang (close to “cross-dressing” but have different contexts in otaku and bishojo)” ethnographies, and the recent rise of “virtual bishojo avator (babiniku)”, to “reveals the multiple ontology of gender (Lo, 2021).” And we see these subversion not only at the reproduction of symbolic order in sexuality, gender, kinship, and fertility fields but also at the borderline between humans and non-humans. The subversion by this “animation” is just like what the character “Haraway” in the theatrical anime “Ghost in the Shell: Innocence” said in a dialogue with Togusa:

“Haraway”: … The existence of androids has nothing to do with utilitarianism and pragmatism. Why are they anthropomorphic [Hitogata]? And why should it be an ideal image anthropomorphic? Why do humans strive to make androids look like themselves? [Smoke]… Do you have children?

Togusa: Only have one person of daughter.

“Haraway”: So-called children are usually outside the norms that belong to humans. That is to say, a human can only be called a human if one has an established self and acts completely according to one’s own will. Then, as pre-humans, what are children living in chaos? They are anthropomorphic in appearance, but on the inside, are clearly different from humans. The puppets [Ningyou] in the girls’ play house are not representations or exercising equipment of real babies. The girls are not doing an exercise of baby-rearing at all, rather playing with the puppets may be similar to actual baby-rearing behavior. (00:16:20–00:17:30. emphasis added.)

In the animating action of “play house”, the “misdelivery possibility” is the possibility of the puppet — the transitional object being discovered as new beings. But just like Togusa’s angry denial of “Haraway”’s post-human claim, these subversive effects don’t always change society, because “(misdelivery) doesn’t happen if left alone (Azuma. 2020. 92);” In Togusa’s denial, what was imposed was the “broken of the transitional objects”, and the animating action of “play house” could only “end to lose its meaning.” This means that there is a kind of social inertia, which is constantly “erasure/foreclosure” the possibility to change. This kind of social inertia is precisely the symbolic violence of the aforementioned IPOSC:

The multiple orientations of non-IPSD, that is, the desire oriented to the object constructed by animating; although it originates from the historical product of IPSD, it will also relativize IPSD. However, on the other hand, the existence of such sexuality is cleverly invisibilized by society. (Matsuura. 2022b. 152. )

Critical Resistance against InterPersonally-Oriented-Sexuality-Centrism: Relativizing = Denaturalizing to InterPersonally-Oriented-Sexuality

For this symbolic violence, these two articles cite Butler’s concept of “literalizing fantasy” as a critique against IPOSC. Butler used “literalizing fantasy” to criticize the heterosexual matrix, and used the term to refer to an ideology that desire and identity must be tightly bound to a unique, essentialized, and literalized thing (naturalized sexed organ). It is precisely because of this “literalizing fantasy” that the heterosexual matrix must be followed. In Matsuura’s interpretation, this “literalized fantasy” that defines “all desires originate from heterosexual interpersonal oriented desires” has given birth to the two malignant tumors of gender binarism and IPOSC, and Erasure/Foreclosure “the misdelivery possibility” of Fictosexuality, and even oppress the Fictosexuals into an invisibilized and unintelligiblized precarious position as mentioned before. In this regard, the marginalization faced by Fictosexuals and other gender-nonconformity people has a similar logic of oppression. However, we still have the possibility to build up the coalition, resist and deconstruct “literalizing fantasy”.

Therefore, whether Fictosexuals or not, we must relativize = denaturalize interpersonally oriented sexuality, that is, resist to make IPSD become self-evident = naturalized, and further survival, discourse, practice, and shape related ethics based on it. These relativizing pratices not only help Fictosexuals find their own political position and space for survival, but also possibly help to live well with relationships and situations with fictional objects in micro perspective, and relieve our certain anxiety and pressure ( Karhulahti & Välisalo. 2020.). Furthermore, in order to survive in this conservative society, it is necessary to seek political coalition building through affinity to undoing “literalized fantasy”. The coalition — affinity commonly includes different kinds of asexuals (A-Spec), non-interpersonal-oriented-sexualities (non-IPSD), and objectophilia/objectum-sexualities, but it can also include otaku, Yume fans, Yaoi fans, and Yuri fans. Moreover, it can include trans+, nonbinary, gender-nonconformity people and different branches of feminism, etc. (For further discussion on the coalition subject, see the article “The Common Point between IPOSC and Cisgender-Centrism” )

In this way, in this cyborg town where humans and non-humans are entangled, what we finally see will no longer be the clumsy decayed Pygmalion myth of anthropocentrism, but a new-animism scene that Haraway hoped — the boundary subversion of cyborg or newborn companion species as social others:

By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation. (Haraway. 1991. 150.)

Like… search for realist representation in the realm of the fantastic-qua-antirepresentational…. the “realist resemblance” claim does not ask the question we are interested in here in any analytically new and interesting way: What are characters? What do they desire? How do they inhabit and haunt media? What are the conditions and effects of becoming-character? Against the background of anthropocentrism, we might propose character-centric realism, a view which… offers itself up as an alternative in order to disorient our general human-centered thinking and symmetrize the field of investigation for both humans and non-humans. (Nozawa. 2013.)

References

Donna Haraway. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.

Elizabeth Miles. 2020. “Porn as Practice, Porn as Access: Pornography Consumption and a ʻThird Sexual Orientationʼ in Japan.” Porn Studies, 7(3): 269–78.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti and Tanja Välisalo. 2021. Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters. Frontiers in Psychology. 11:575427.

Meg-John Barker & Jules Scheele. 2016. Queer: A Graphic History. Icon Books.

Patrick W. Galbraith. 2019. Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. Duke University Press.

Paul B. Preciado. 2018. Countersexual Manifesto. Translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn. Columbia University Press.

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