So to start off, I haven't watched it or read the book it's based on, so to be clear, this isn't about the shoe itself; from what I've seen, many gay, bi, and otherwise queer men and masc people have positive things to say about the show; and I'll take male homosexuality being allowed to exist on tv as something other than a punchline or only being allowed to be the safe, desexualized version where being gay is just two guys who like musical theatre and charcuterie boards.

The thing about the fetishization is that it doesn't necessarily have to be something that originates within the media itself. Heated rivalry can have a good, humanizing portrayal of queer men and mlm relationships, and also the marketing, fans, and culture around it can be fetishistic.

In the case of HR, those who criticize it, including queer men, have received anything between insults to outright harassment. A lot of the news coverage and discourse around it focuses on women's love and approval of it, with marketing leaning into it being for "the female gaze."

Personally, I don't care by itself if women find two guys having sex hot; if you can treat real world people with respect and as humans, I don't care what you get off to. However, the issue is that all discussion around fetishization of real world queer men by women gets shut down; people use the excuse that because the inverse happens to women it's fine and queer men should put up with it, that it's somehow different because women have a more naturally "moral" sexuality, and just dismiss the issue of women sexually harassing and assaulting men.

I think this issue may be even more heightened with the release of the Epstein files, as now many people are using the horrific crimes to spread misandrist ideas and myths that ignore the realities of male victims and female perpetrators, despite these crimes also happening to men and many women being highly involved in cases like Epstein (and there's a whole other discussion to be had about how those fundamentally sadistic and self serving women get treated as victims who did out of devotion to the patriarchy and not because they're, you know, the same kind of predators as the men they worked with)

I know it seems wild to tie these two things together, but my point is that we are currently at a point where those who claim to be better than this, will actively lable the dehumanization of men, even those they claim to protect, as some sort of justice or defensible position. HR discourse is of course not in anyway equivalent to sex trafficking, but it part of a culture that suggests male victims, regardless of demographic, to be worthy fodder for "justice"

I am curious to hear your guys' thoughts on this